Lady's Wager Read Free

laughed. Then he’d assured her Eton
and Cambridge possessed little to recommend them to any lady. Only a censorious
look from Aunt Mary had stopped Charlotte from offering a curt reply to his
view of female education and the rest of the exhibit had been enjoyed in terse
silence.
    “You must be the only one of our sex in London who isn’t
interested in the only son of an Earl,” Elizabeth mused.
    “You mean a Viscount looking to refill the family
coffers?” Her dealings with the Comte, and many other men in Paris with long
pedigrees and little money, had hardly left her in awe of a title.
    “Not all men are after funds,” Lady Treadwell countered.
“And even a poor man may truly love a lady. Besides, a gentleman as well
regarded as Lord Woodcliff can hardly be called a fortune hunter.”
    “Then he’ll make some other heiress very happy by the end
of the Season.”
    Lady Treadwell wagged one finger at Charlotte. “Your
mother used to say such things. Like her, someday someone will catch your eye
and we’ll see you married yet.”
    “We can only hope,” Aunt Mary huffed.
    “Now let’s be off,” Lady Treadwell urged. “I can’t stand
here discussing men all day.”
    After bidding Aunt Mary goodbye, Lady Treadwell led
Charlotte and Elizabeth to the waiting landau. Charlotte settled in next to her
friend and across from Lady Treadwell as the driver took his seat and snapped
the horses into a brisk walk.
    “Do all young ladies in Paris speak as you do, or were you
the exception there as well?” Elizabeth asked Charlotte.
    “In Paris a woman of any real merit is expected to have an
opinion - here her opinion is confined to fashion. I hardly know what to say
without thinking I’m transgressing some sense of propriety or other such
nonsense.” Yet even Paris hadn’t been all happiness and charm, especially after
the Comte’s betrayal.
    “I sometimes forget how little of London you know and how
difficult it must be for you after so many years abroad,” Lady Treadwell
sympathized.
    Charlotte rejected her sympathy with a confident toss of
her head, refusing to admit to anyone how awkward and lonely London sometimes
made her feel. “It’s not so difficult. I have Aunt Mary and Lady Redding and
you and Elizabeth to guide me.”
    “Even if you hardly listen to anything we say,” Elizabeth
chided.
    “I listen, I just don’t always follow.”
    “Like your mother,” Lady Treadwell laughed. “She used to
give your grandmamma a world of trouble. But your father didn’t mind. He said
she made life interesting.”
    One pleasant aspect of London was being among so many
people who’d known her parents. From the landau, she spied a husband and wife
and their daughter leaving a grocer’s. The young girl with dark hair clutched a
paper twist of sweets as her father picked her up to carry her. The sight of
them together made Charlotte’s chest catch. How different life would’ve been if
Charlotte’s parents had lived. London would be her home, instead of a strange
land.
    As the landau made a turn and the family disappeared from
sight, Charlotte set aside her old pain. There was no use pondering what could
have been. They were in England now, and she would make the best of it.
    The Stuart’s fashionable neighborhood soon gave way to the
more densely packed London district. Flower girls, hawkers, piemen and ballad
singers all fought to be heard over the din of carriages, horses and carts
clacking across the stones.
    Charlotte took in the clear sky over the buildings,
wondering if Paris also enjoyed today’s fine, spring weather. Heaven knows when
she’d see the grand city or all her old friends again. Not until Napoleon was
defeated, and for her, the day couldn’t come soon enough. Hopefully, her
friends weren’t suffering too much under his rule and the Englishmen they’d
known in Paris had all been able to make it back home. There was no way to
know. All correspondence with France had been halted by the