Ye gads, the minx was slaying him.
After a pat of lip, she stood and twisted her bonneted head, and he was once again compelled to fling himself into the nearest shop doorway.
“Good day, Mr Cadwalader. Another bottle of your signature scent?”
Lud.
Whoever said one could lose oneself in London?
He hounded Miss Jones onto Duke Street and thus back to Piccadilly. A complete bloody square.
Was she addled?
And then, as though she had meant to all along, she glided into Fortnum & Mason’s.
A starving man’s torture chamber.
Prawns and lobster preserved in aspic jelly, scotch eggs and champagne.
He’d better wait outside.
So did just that.
And waited.
Still waited.
With a quarter hour passed, he girded his guts and entered the establishment, past the tea counter and the post shop. Past the array of champagne and wines. Through the rooms with crystallised fruit and seed cake. Past the French venison pâté and Scottish smoked salmon. Past the potted Stilton and marmalade.
She wasn’t there.
Not a trace of her.
With ire rising, he approached the doorman. “I say, have you seen a woman with snuff brown skirts, carpetbag and blond hair? Pretty with–”
“You must be that fellow the little lady warned us about. I’ve a daughter, so I have,” he growled, plunging his face near, “and you lecherous bucks pestering women are the scourge of our streets!”
And without so much as a ‘by your leave’, not one but two burly ruffians descended upon him.
“Have some tea, Amelia.”
Charlotte prodded forth a cup, steam curling from it like a will-o’-the-wisp.
“Thank you, and I do apologise for my lateness.” She stripped off her gloves, rolled her shoulders and sipped the brew.
Nigh an hour late for this meeting in Hatchett’s Hotel and all due to one particular pestilence.
Mr Cadwalader.
Who’d pursued her around half of London.
He must suspect her of something. How had she given herself away?
Her lack of indignation at his bared chest, perhaps? How would a proper governess such as Charlotte have acted?
Amelia eyed the lady as she tucked into a slice of fruit cake.
Likely, Charlotte would have raised a contemptuous brow, sniffed, and stalked from the room, not engaged in a battle of wits.
