Page 4

Chapter

TWO

Don’t let Papa know that I told you—but things here are currently direr than…

Lottie allowed the letter to drop to her chest to stare at her bedchamber ceiling some more. Her youngest brother’s words had haunted her for two entire days and nights and the worry for her menfolk was eating her from the inside.

If the circumstances were different, she would have hotfooted it home as soon as Dan’s missive arrived.

To roll up her sleeves and try to help in some way or simply to be there while they all put their heads together to find a solution.

But her friend Georgie was getting married today and Lottie was the maid of honor, so she was stuck here in London.

Unable to do anything practical and doomed to worry about her family in Kent until somebody came up with a viable way to make the best of this latest calamity to befall them.

Ideally a miraculous cure that would turn back time and stop all the early summer rain that had pummeled the Garden of England for most of the summer.

Because it had been that which had caused the majority of their barley crop to succumb to the dreaded mildew and die.

The Travers clan had always counted pennies.

They were experts at making do and making the best of things without having to contend with the failure of one entire crop as well.

Now the lack of money from the barley, on the back of the failure of half of last year’s wheat crop, guaranteed the upcoming winter months were going to be tough.

The thought of her beloved, if irritating, menfolk living hand to mouth, struggling to pay the rent while she lived in sublime comfort here in Mayfair thanks to the ceaseless largesse of Miss P, filled her with guilt.

That they were always relieved to have spared her all the trials, tribulations, and hardships of a farming life these last seven years made her feel worse.

Ordinarily, and much to Papa’s chagrin, Lottie would send three- quarters of her wages back home to them to help in some small way.

Sometimes he told her off and pressed all the money back into her palm the next time she visited and other times he didn’t because he had needed it.

There was no doubt he desperately needed her wages now, but she had none to give him.

Thanks to her own headstrong stupidity combined with the rebellious streak of wildness that refused to die within her, she was between jobs.

And, thanks to Dan’s letter, Lottie was presently kicking herself twice as hard for being lured—once again—by the overwhelming pull of a good gallop across the park at dawn, which had enticed her into her former employer’s stable.

Especially when she had rather enjoyed her short stint as a governess at his Berkeley Square house, even if the master himself was a complete and utter arse.

It might not be her fault that Lord Chadwell’s odious son had tried to blackmail her onto her back before breakfast, but it was very definitely her fault that she had given the libertine the ammunition to blackmail her with in the first place.

If she had thought about the consequences of her actions and not put thinking about them off to tomorrow, she wouldn’t have borrowed Lord Chadwell’s stallion that fateful morning and she wouldn’t have been caught red-handed by his frisky heir trying to return it.

She wouldn’t have had to kick that despicable scoundrel hard in the crotch to escape his unwelcome ardor.

No matter how much she relished the memory of the randy twit rolling around on the floor of the stables in tears afterward as he had clutched his aching, but thankfully freshly flaccid, genitals, the image did nothing to alleviate her current guilt one jot.

Because the son had then tattled to the father that she had been riding his horse without permission and Lord Chadwell had dismissed her on the spot for her insubordination.

All in all, it had not been her finest hour and now, thanks to her seemingly unconquerable recklessness, her family was paying for her stupidity while Miss P was charitably paying for her keep.

Again.

Because this was the second time in her career as a governess that Lottie had been dismissed for the want of a good gallop.

Although in truth, thanks to her own lack of willpower and wildness, it could very well have been the hundredth.

Even after seven years of trying, the need to ride like the wind at the slightest provocation had refused to subside.

Just when, exactly, was she ever going to learn her lesson? Or to put off thinking about tomorrow because she much preferred today?

Furious at herself, she reached for the old pocket watch she kept on the nightstand and almost sighed aloud when it told her that only ten interminable minutes had passed since she had last checked it.

It was only a quarter to five and after her second sleepless, anxious night in a row since Dan’s letter had arrived, she was wound as tight as a spring.

Worse, she couldn’t offload all her worries on her three soundly sleeping friends like she normally would. Because this was Georgie’s wedding day, for pity’s sake, and Lottie would not spoil that happiness for anything!

Pretending to be deliriously happy had taken every ounce of her effort last night when they had all gathered here at the school for their final night as four single ladies.

In honor of the occasion, Miss P had also put the four friends in their old dormitory, where they had reminisced and laughed until the small hours.

All a little tipsy thanks to the two bottles of champagne that Portia had smuggled out of her employer’s well-stocked wine cellar, which she had been adamant he wouldn’t miss.

It would have been a truly excellent night, too, if Lottie hadn’t been so consumed with worry and guilt.

She would probably confess all to Portia and Kitty once the bride left for her honeymoon, and then maybe that would make her feel better.

But until then, she had no choice but to bottle it all up inside and paste on a smile.

Silently, she slipped out of her bed and padded to her own bedchamber to dress.

She fully intended to don one of her day dresses before she watched the sunrise in the garden—but the moment she opened her wardrobe door, one of her riding boots fell out.

Tempting her like the serpent had tempted Eve to do the unthinkable again.

Except…

Perhaps it wasn’t quite so unthinkable today.

It wasn’t as if she currently had a job to lose, and a good gallop through the park would undoubtedly help blow some of the cobwebs from her exhausted but overly busy mind.

Perhaps it would also help her think of a solution to fill the empty Travers coffers because she had always done her best thinking at speed in the saddle…

No!

Not today, Satan!

She would push that alluring idea aside.

She had to.

There was plenty to loathe about London, but its large, leafy parks weren’t one of them. Especially at this ungodly hour when Guy Harrowby had them all to himself.

With the early morning mist and the unspoiled chirping of the dawn chorus, it reminded him a little of his estate in Kent.

Acres of empty green. No clogged roads. No crowds.

And best of all, at the hours he chose to use this route, no bloody irritating people who might recognize him either.

Which was probably why, whenever business forced him to come to this godforsaken place that he much preferred to avoid like the plague, he only ever ventured in and out of it via the parks where he rode at such a lick that he didn’t have to meet anyone.

It was a constant mystery to him why the residents of overcrowded London never availed themselves of this splendid shortcut either.

Because within three minutes of leaving his house on Grosvenor Square, he was in Hyde Park.

Which conveniently led into Green Park, which in turn took him directly into St. James’s Park, a mere hop, skip, and jump away from Westminster Bridge.

Not twenty minutes after he crossed the river, and he would soon be on the Kent Road, headed home.

Then the fetid capital, and most especially the cloying and supposedly polite society contained within it, would be an ugly blot on the horizon behind him.

Out of sight and, most especially, out of mind.

Just the way he liked it.

London—and Mayfair specifically—always set his teeth on edge.

This place made him feel small. No mean feat when he stood three inches above six feet and, according to his mother, blocked out all her light each time he dared to loiter in a doorway.

Yet this city had the power to diminish him until his skeleton shrunk to a withered shell inside his skin.

Although why he allowed this place to do that to him still was a constant mystery, when he had long ago decided that London—and Mayfair specifically—was beneath him.

It was filled with petty gossipmongers who had nothing better to do with their day than look down their noses at people in judgment.

And warped judgment too, because a man was measured here by his title first and his fortune second and while Guy arguably had both—then and now—he likely still did not possess enough of either to impress them.

Nor did he want to.

No indeed! The days of him dancing to the beat of the snooty ton’s drum were long gone.

Thank goodness!

He was no longer a member of any of the gentlemen’s clubs, refused to attend balls, or soirees, or even the supposedly “intimate” dinners he still occasionally got invited to.

And he wouldn’t be caught dead here during the dreadful cattle market the self-proclaimed great and the good called “the season” for all the tea in China.

He eschewed them all out of principle nowadays and he was a much happier fellow as a result.

Much happier.