LITMIR.BIZ

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than dwindling into spinsterhood, my love, and I really think you should try to find yourself an agreeable husband, rather than regretting becoming an old maid when it is too late to remedy.

      Louisa no more believed in that love of Charlton’s than she did in her own ridiculous persona of lovely, impossibly fussy Miss Alstone, Ice Diamond of the ton, rumoured to have rejected more suitors than most débutantes imagined in their wildest dreams. Louisa knew her resistance to marriage would make her a curiosity to the bored gentlemen of the ton, so she’d made herself treat them coldly from the outset. Now her carefully cultivated aloofness was in ruins and, if she escaped Charlton, she’d be besieged by suitors and would-be seducers. In truth, neither Maria nor amiable, optimistic Brandon had it in them to stand up to Charlton for long and Uncle William and Aunt Prudence wouldn’t even try, so her reputation was already gone—a lost cause she couldn’t bring herself to mourn deeply. Perhaps it would persuade Kit to let her keep his house and help in his business, she decided, an old hope lightening her heart as she edged along the ledge, teeth gritted against the compulsion to look down into three-storeys’ worth of shadowy space.

      ‘I’d sooner starve,’ she’d told Uncle William truthfully when Charlton brought him into the unappealingly luxurious bedchamber she was imprisoned in to show how compromised she was only an hour ago.

      ‘As you please. I won’t have a notorious woman under my roof, so you can go back to the streets we took you from as far as your aunt and I are concerned,’ Uncle William had replied with a Judas shrug and added, ‘If you don’t want to wed Hawberry, you shouldn’t have run off with him in the first place.’

      ‘He abducted me from that wretched masked ball Aunt Prudence insisted on attending and you know very well I hate the man. Won’t you send me to Chelsea to await my brother’s return, even if you won’t help me in any other way?’

      ‘I’m done with you, madam. I wish I’d never taken you into my home when your return for my foolishness was to ruin your cousin’s chance of making a good match by stealing all her suitors.’

      ‘I couldn’t do that if I tried. I’ve no idea where Sophia gets her looks or her sweet nature since it’s clearly not from you. A normal brother would have helped us when Mama died out of compassion for your orphan nieces and love for your only sister, but you had to be paid a king’s ransom to house us once Kit was at sea mending all our fortunes,’ she told him bitterly as she saw the weasel look in his eyes and realised he’d known about this horrid scheme all along. ‘Don’t worry, Uncle William, I wouldn’t spend five minutes under your roof now if the only alternative was the workhouse.’

      Which seemed unlikely since her dowry was substantial, thanks to Kit’s efforts; if she could escape Charlton she’d live on that if Kit wouldn’t let her share his new bachelor home in Chelsea. A share of her fortune would fill Uncle William’s coffers very nicely, of course, but while her uncle and aunt had clearly plotted against her, could her cousin Sophia have known what was afoot? Louisa shook her head very warily and decided to trust one of two certainties in this shifting world that she suddenly seemed to have stumbled into. Cousin Sophia was far too amiable and feather-headed to be party to such a plan. She wondered how Uncle William came to have a sister like her lion-hearted, stubborn mother, and such a sweet widgeon for a daughter. Deciding the mysteries of heredity were unaccountable, she crept on along the façade of the hired town house, still trying to block the killing drop to the flagged pavement three storeys below from her thoughts.

      Louisa didn’t intend to marry; now the man she didn’t want to marry most of all was threatening her very soul, she wished she’d never agreed to give the marriage mart another try to appease her brother and sister. Her heart hammered against her breastbone as she took an unwary glance into the street below and fancied Death was creeping along the ledge behind her, his cold breath on her neck and bony fingers clutching a ghostly scythe. Since she’d rather die than wed Charlton, she crept on, keeping her thoughts busy with what came next.

      Could she evade her uncle and Charlton until her brother came home to dismiss their antics as the farce they ought to be? Her brother’s house would be the first place anyone would look for her and his minions lacked the authority or power to repel her enemies. Not quite true; one of Kit’s employees had both and she recalled her encounter with Kit’s most notorious captain as she ghosted past the empty rooms on this part of the third floor inch by heart-racing inch. Captain Hugh Darke had made a vivid impression on her, but he was one step from being a pirate and the rudest man she’d ever met, so little wonder if the image of him had lingered on her senses and her memory long after the man had left her alone in Kit’s office.

      Considering she’d spent mere seconds in Captain Darke’s darkly brooding, offensively arrogant company, his abrupt insolence and the satirical glint in his silver-blue eyes shouldn’t haunt her as they did. She fumbled her handhold on the neatly jointed stone at the very thought of explaining this latest misadventure to sternly indifferent Hugh Darke and had to swallow a very unladylike curse while she scrambled for another and terror threatened to ruin her escape in a very final way.

      ‘Confoundedly inconvenient, ill-mannered, cocksure braggart of a man,’ she muttered very softly to herself as she inched round the corner of the Portland Stone–faced building and finally reached the drainpipe to cling onto until the rapid beat of her heart slowed while she thought out her next move.

      Better with solid-feeling metal under her clutching hands, she decided to go upwards, since she’d got this far and risked being seen on the way down. Better to wait for solid ground under her feet after she had reached the last of this terrace of genteel houses, where there was less chance of being discovered clambering down from the rooftops of a stranger’s house, than if she swarmed down this one like some large and very fearful fly. The idea of meeting Charlton’s bullies again made her shudder with horror and she forced herself to forget their jeering comments and greedy eyes as she crept across the rooftops of Charlton’s unsuspecting neighbours.

      She reached the quiet and blissfully sleeping house on the end of the row and wasted a few precious moments debating whether to risk the roofs of the humbler mews that ran alongside the high town houses and reluctantly decided against it. Night had made courts and alleyways, relatively safe in daylight, into the haunts of the desperate and dangerous, but there were too many leaps into the unknown to spring across uncharted voids and risk the slightest miscalculation bringing her crashing down to earth.

      Slipping very cautiously to the ground at last, Louisa blessed Charlton’s love of the macabre for the ridiculous suit of black she’d found in a chest he’d thought safely locked. She grinned at the idea of him clumsily creeping about in the dark in some half-hearted imitation of Francis Dashwood’s infamous Hell-Fire Club of the last century and refused to even consider what Charlton got up to in his other life. His dark clothes had helped her escape and made her hard to see in the dark, so she blessed his secret vices for once and crept on through the chilling night.

      Kit’s house was the only place that offered her immediate sanctuary and access to the store of money he’d once shown her, in case she was ever in dire need of it and he was away from home. How prophetic of him, she decided, and at least she would be safe until dawn. Apparently six years of dull respectability had taught her to fear her native streets, so she launched into the fuggy darkness with her heart beating like a war drum and prayed she’d find her way in the dark before she aroused the interest of the night-hawks.

      Captain Hugh Darke woke very reluctantly from the nice little drunken stupor that he’d worked hard to achieve all the previous evening and peered at the ceiling above his head with only the faint, town-bred moonlight to help him work out whose it was and, more importantly, why some malicious elf was jumping about on his mysterious host’s roof and waking him from the best sleep he’d had in weeks.

      ‘And now I’ve got the devil of a head as well,’ he muttered, much aggrieved at such a lack of consideration by whoever owned the bed he was currently occupying.

      An insomniac clog dancer, perhaps? Or an iron master with a rush order his unfortunate founders must work all night to fulfil? Although that didn’t work; even he knew no iron founder would carry out his sulphurous

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