Page 11 of An Unwilling Earl
“Quite.”
“Apparently Lord Morris died a few years ago. A sudden illness.”
“And Lady Morris was left to raise Charlotte.”
“And her son.”
Jacob raised a brow. “Lady Morris has a son?”
“Edward. Or Edmund. Something like that.” Armbruster sat back and sipped his port while Jacob mulled over this new information.
“This is all very interesting,” Jacob said. “But it doesn’t tell us why Charlotte suddenly left or where she would have gone.”
“There is one person who might know. Charlotte’s best friend is Lady Sarah Crawford. She and Charlotte were friends before Charlotte was forced to live with her aunt.”
“And you think Lady Sarah can shed light on Charlotte’s whereabouts?”
“I think it’s a good place to start. If anyone knew Charlotte well, it would be Lady Sarah.”
Jacob nodded thoughtfully, his excitement turning to trepidation at what he might discover. Maybe Charlotte didn’t want to be found. Maybe Charlotte wanted to stay hidden.
Or maybe Charlotte Morris needed help and didn’t know where to turn.
Chapter Five
Charlotte was a wicked, wicked girl. That’s what her aunt would say. She would say there was something wrong with Charlotte because her mother had been a whore and she’d passed her evilness on to her daughter. It had been a constant barrage that Charlotte had learned to ignore over time.
But right now, this instant, Charlotte knew she was wicked because she was still waiting outside the gentleman’s club. Waiting for her rescuer to exit.Why? What do you plan to do when he does leave?
She was every kind of fool for standing here. It was cold. Spring pushed aside by winter’s last gasp. She was loitering under an awning of a fashionable store, and she didn’t have much time before the constable shooed her away…again. And still she stood there like the imbecile she was—or the wicked girl she was—just to get one more glimpse of him.
Fool. Fool. Fool.
Disgusted with herself, she pushed away from the doorway to head back to her cold lodgings, and that was when he stepped out of the club. But this time he was with someone. A someone Charlotte had never seen before.
The other man was as opposite her hero as one could get. Not overly tall but broad shouldered, his clothes marking him as wealthy and a bit of a dandy. Not ostentatious, but neither was his attire conservative, like her rescuer.
They were talking earnestly as they descended the steps. The other man carried a cane, but it was obvious it was a prop, for show. Her rescuer did not have such affectations.
They turned right, the other man talking away as her rescuer nodded occasionally, his mouth pulled down in a frown, his gaze trained on the path before him.
Charlotte’s new brain, the one created for survival in the rookery, recognized that he was ripe for pickpocketing. Thieves knew to look for those that were preoccupied.
She slipped out from the doorway and scooted across the street to fall in behind them, sauntering a few feet back. The other man waved his hand occasionally to make his point. Her rescuer interjected a few times. Once they laughed together, and the sound floated behind them to wrap around her. For a moment she longed for such companionship. She had Suzette, but they rarely saw each other, and never had they laughed together. Their lives were more about scraping a living and trying to find their next meal.
She thought of Sarah. Beautiful, lovely Sarah. They had been friends nearly since birth, but Charlotte had not seen Sarah since coming to live with her aunt. Aunt Martha had forbidden her friendship with Sarah. Charlotte missed Sarah almost as much as she missed her papa. So much that she would not allow herself to think about her.
The men had walked a few blocks, and Charlotte was becoming nervous, for they were entering the fashionable part of town, where shops gave way to larger homes, spaced farther apart, and governesses and nannies pushed prams through grassy parks.
She knew that just beyond those homes, a few streets away, was the rookery, but in these fancy streets such a thing could be ignored.
The men stopped at the corner and conversed for a bit. Charlotte was becoming uncomfortable. She couldn’t dawdle for much longer before someone became suspicious.
To her relief they didn’t speak for very long and parted ways, the other man disappearing toward St. James Square. Her rescuer stood quite still for a bit before seeming to come to a decision and turned right, toward Piccadilly.
Every part of her screamed not to, but she followed, curious as to his destination. Did he live in this part of town? If so, which house was his? Was there a hot meal sitting on the table in anticipation of his homecoming? Piccadilly was a well-off area where Sarah lived. If this man lived here, he was quite well-off, indeed.
Feeling like a voyeur, but unable to help herself, she continued to follow. The crowds started thinning out, and eventually, if they went much farther, he was going to notice her behind him. She supposed she could always tell him that he was the one who had saved her life and she’d seen him walking and wanted to thank him.
