Page 25 of An Unwilling Earl
“Then thank you. But you’re not following me into the rookery, and you can’t feed me.”
“We can buy food from one of the street vendors and eat at the park. It’s warm enough.”
“Don’t you care if someone sees me with you?”
“Not particularly.”
“You’re strange, my lord.”
“I think you can call me Jacob.”
“I’m not sure I want to. Besides, that’s not remotely appropriate.”
“Too familiar?”
“Not in the ways you are thinking.” Calling him by his first name would indicate a friendship, and she wasn’t positive that friendship with this man was wise.
…
In the end, Jacob won. Charlotte capitulated, and they were sitting side by side on a park bench eating fried fish and watching the ladies in their elaborate gowns and the men in their tall hats parade by.
Jacob was pleased that he’d bought more time with Charlotte. He wanted to know what she had meant when she said she wasn’t running from her aunt, but he could tell that she’d regretted her choice of words, and she refused to explain them. He’d had no choice but to back away from the topic and circle it for another time.
“I lay awake all last night worried that you hadn’t made it safely back to your lodgings,” he said.
“You need to have more faith in me.” She licked the grease off her fingers, and for a moment Jacob was distracted by the motion of her tongue flicking the grease and withdrawing into her mouth.
He cleared his throat, looked away, and squirmed in his seat a bit as his trousers were suddenly tight. She was a sight to see, dressed as a lad with her chopped off hair, but Jacob saw beneath all of that. When cleaned up and clothed appropriately she would be breathtaking.
“It’s not you I don’t have faith in,” he said. “It’s everyone else who lurks in the rookeries.” He paused with his next thought then decided to hell with it. He’d put it out there and see what she said. “It’s just me rattling around in my townhouse. I have plenty of extra rooms for you and the people you’re watching over.”
She looked down at the few bites left of her fish, and he could visibly see her swallow as if she had to force the bite down. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
At least it wasn’t an outrightno. He sensed that her resolve was cracking, and he moved in to widen that crack.
“What is the result that you want from this, Charlotte? In the end, what do you want to accomplish, hiding from your aunt?”
She raised her head and squinted into the distance. People were shooting them curious looks, but she didn’t seem to notice, and Jacob didn’t care. He was sure that they were a strange sight, a well-dressed gentleman eating on a park bench with a vagrant dressed in an odd combination of clothes.
“At first it was just to get away. To be safe. And then I started to think about my future. I have little to recommend me, but I can read and write. I have read that rich Americans pay English misses a lot of money to teach their daughters our ways. American heiresses are flocking to England in the hopes of marrying a titled gentleman.”
America?He didn’t like thinking of her sailing to America all alone.
“Excuse me for saying so, but the odds are still stacked against you. Especially if you have no letters of recommendation. Nor a title to your name.”
She waved an elegant, but dirty, hand in the air, reminding him that she was related to a marquess. “Do you know how many unscrupulous clerks live in the rookeries? I could make myself a countess or a duchess. I can pay someone to create a whole new person, and no one would know.”
I would know.
“A countess or duchess?” He raised an eyebrow, and she giggled. She actually giggled, and the sound pierced him. It was the most lighthearted he had seen her yet.
“I will admit that is stretching it a bit, but you understand what I’m trying to say. More than likely I will fashion myself a governess who has taught many young lords and ladies. I have some money saved up. Possibly enough for the documents and letters of recommendation, but not enough for the passage to America.”
Or clothes. She didn’t realize what it would take to perpetuate such a scam.
“Moving to America and starting over is very drastic.” He didn’t want to sound preachy. He could tell that she would not approve of being preached to, but someone had to tell her what a difficult task she’d set for herself.
“And running away from my home and family wasn’t drastic? I feel that fleeing to America would be easier than what I am doing now.”
