Page 105 of Unforeseen Affairs
“Tea, you said? Very well, then,” the doctor replied amiably.
Wonderful.First her parents, then Cousin Bess, and now Harmonia and her husband. The room was already far too claustrophobic for Charlotte’s liking. No doubt Marcus would also appear from nowhere at the last minute, along with his aristocratic wife who would insist they stand on ceremony and force polite conversation. At least Dr. Collier was on the quiet side.
Charlotte craved an escape—something that had become nigh impossible since her irritating injury. Really, she craved the company of one person in particular, but solitude would suffice for the moment if she could get it. But perhaps… well,someonehad fetched Harmonia from the railway station, someone her father did not care to mention in front of her…
Walter, the frazzled black and white spaniel, ambled forth, his milky eyes searching the sitting room for the most obliging lap. He moved in Charlotte’s direction, then paused to sniff outsomething interesting on the intricately woven rug just before her.
“Walter! No, no, no! You naughty beast!” Cousin Bess scolded. “Outside, outside!” She paused, then looked toward Susanna and Charlotte. “Oh, that does remind me, I forgot to mention—the new photographs arrived. They’re quite satisfactory this time, I think. I’ll have someone fetch them—”
Walter began to circle.
An escape route suddenly made itself clear.
“No! Naughty, naughty! Oh, Susanna, be a dear and pull the bell cord—”
“No need!” Charlotte stood up, carefully holding her freshly bandaged arm so as not to gasp in pain and prompt any overwrought sympathy or concern. “I shall take him outside.”
“But—” her father objected.
“It’s nothing, really.” Charlotte tried to think of how Colin might respond to seeing her unexpectedly. She smiled, hoping it did not look as awkward as it felt. “I find myself… desirous of fresh air.”
The others—save Dr. Collier, who was fiddling with the clasps on his bag—stared at her as though she’d just sung them a song.
Still forcing a smile, Charlotte nodded in confirmation, then bent down to scoop Walter up with her uninjured arm before he desecrated the fine carpet. As she made to depart before anyone could stop her, she heard her father make one more attempt.
“Now, I say—”
“Ajax,” cut in Susanna, a hint of warning in her tone, “they’re going to be married. What, then, is the problem?”
Charlotte smiled to herself, this time without a hint of falseness. They were going to be married.
And she couldn’t be happier for it.
“So the holes, then, are they tunnels?”
Colin crossed his arms in thought, staring at the once-lovely lawn before him, which was now dotted in several places with shallow pits. A pack of ragged, muddy children—some far muddier than others—roved about, armed with trowels and hand rakes, all of them barefoot. A mess of boots and stockings was piled haphazardly not far from where they stood now; no sooner had the Sedleys’ nanny excused herself to direct the Rickards’ nanny to the house than all the children had raced to shed their footwear.
Colin supposed he ought to have said something, but it was too late now. Instead, he had begun bracing himself for a well-deserved dressing-down.
“No!” shouted a young boy of about five, filthy up to his elbows. “They’re not tunnels! They’re barrows!”
“Barrows?”
“Aye,” the boy said solemnly, before setting back to his digging.
“What Luciusoughtto have said is ‘Yes, sir.’ We’re digging for a hoard,” said a punctilious, slightly older girl with long dark hair and sharp dark eyes that reminded him so much of Charlotte. She was the least muddy, though Colin supposed her mother would be cross to see the condition of the hem of her dress.
“Thalia!” called Georgiana. She was the only child whose name Colin already knew, as he had just escorted her and her parents from the railway station. “I think this is a better place to start.”
The dark-haired girl, Thalia, wrinkled her nose before bouncing off after her cousin.
Colin looked down to watch two smaller lads with a matching shade of ashy blonde hair—Mr. and Mrs. Hartley’s sons. They seemed content to sit in one nearby pit, slapping their handsagainst the bottom and cackling with delight as they sent showers of mud into the air.
Colin stepped backward to ensure he was out of range. He’d only agreed to Mr. Hartley’s request to accompany his groom to Blackburn in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of Charlotte. Her family had kept her locked away for days, and while he knew it was right and proper, he loathed being apart from her.
Getting away from the manor did have another bright side, though. Baron Methering had been trying to cajole Colin into joining his dailyhoplitodromosrun, a punishing trek about the grounds of the manor in full armor.Just like the Greeks, lad, the baron would puff as he hoofed past with an ancient, crumbling buckler on his left arm and a dented armet upon his head.Pinnacle of human form, the Greeks. Colin felt he could politely decline the sporting-mad baron only so many times, so he was happy for the ready-made excuse on this occasion.
He wasn’t accustomed to this kind of life, as a country grandee who whiled away his days upon a sprawling estate. But he would endure anything if it meant that he and Charlotte could soon begin their next adventure together. Not upon the waves; he’d privately decided that time had passed. But life was still wide open before him, rich with possibilities, which tempered the loss of the sail.
