Chapter One
Lady Evangeline Stafford-Hill,sister of the formidable Duke of Aldingbourne, was not supposed to be standing next to a filthy road in the Austrian countryside, with mud dripping from the brim of her bonnet, the entire front of her pelisse, and unless she was very much mistaken, the tip of her nose.
Yet here she was. Splattered, head-to-toe, with muck, mud, and other things too ghastly for a lady to mention.
But Evie, despite being a lady, certainly would. She lifted her glove to sniff at the presumed speck of mud and confirmed her worst fear.
’Twas not mud, but manure. Well, wonderful. Stranded, adorned in manure. And barely forty miles from Vienna.
How much worse could things possibly get?
The carriage wheel, it appeared, was lodged so deeply in the rut that the axle was sunk in the mire.
Evie had jumped out and given the driver some helpful advice as to how to get out of it again. With a lever, she’d suggested, a long one. She’d rattled off a long list ofother recommendations and been about to snatch the lever from him to demonstrate how to do it properly, but the man had roared, most ungratefully, she found, in the crudest dialect, “Will you shut up, woman!” Which she understood nonetheless.
So, Evie tried to put her talents to use elsewhere and climbed on a rock, propped her hands on her hips and let a dark gaze rove over the dreary, rain-logged, muddy countryside.
At that point another vehicle swept past them.
Did they see their predicament?
Did they stop to offer help?
Did they stop to offer to take her along?
They did not.
The carriage sailed past with deadly speed, showering her top to bottom in a generous spray of puddle water.
Evie spluttered.
She clenched a murky, gloved hand to a fist, shaking it after the carriage that was speeding away merrily, entirely unaware that it was responsible for her plight. She uttered a string of curses so loud and colourful that the coachman, who was attempting to lift their carriage wheel with the lever, dropped it in fright.
Splash it made, and another wave of mud sprayed towards her, but this time Evie had the foresight to jump for cover. Except now the sudden jolt caused all the trunks to come tumbling from the roof. Which, in turn, caused her maid Nellie and her companion Clara to shriek. At least they’d had the intelligence to wait on the other side of the road, where they remained safe and dry. Alas, not their clothes, which had come tumbling out of the trunks, flying about in a merry flag of colours, until they fluttered and landed (how could it be otherwise?) smack inthe quagmire.
Aghast, Evie stared at her clothes swimming in that cursed puddle that seemed bent on ruining her life.
So she did the only sensible thing that one could do in such a situation.
She laughed.
“My lady!” Clara called out with considerable alarm. “Are you quite well?”
Evie held her side. “Oh, quite, quite well,” she gasped after she found her breath.
Not an auspicious beginning for her grand adventure, not the thrilling escapade she had visualised.
For she was running away, and no one, not even her brother, who was currently in Vienna, entangled neck-deep in diplomatic negotiations and the complications of his own private love affair, had an inkling of what his spirited, wayward sister was about.
She wondered whether, by now, he’d even noticed she was gone, then decided it was unlikely.
Evie had told him, rather cleverly, that she was on her way to visit her childhood friend, Pippa. Her brother had been completely taken in, not even questioning how she had discovered the whereabouts of her long-lost friend.
(She hadn’t).
That was, of course, because Julius had not been quite himself these days. Though she rather suspected his current distraction was due to the fact that he was trying to solve the mysterious reappearance of Catherine, his dead wife.
Who was now found.
