Her heart sank to her toes. But the more she thought about it, the less she worried. Papa hadn’t talked like someone who didn’t want to see her again. He would look for her; she knew he would. And she would look for him.
She’d found him once. She could do so again. Here, in Heathbrook. She would see him again. She would. And so long as she knew he was there, somewhere, looking for her, she would know she was loved.
Chapter Two
London, Spring 1818, fifteen years later
Charlie Jonquil despised London. Unfortunately,one of his closest friends, Newton Hughes, meant to get married there, and Charlie was too good a fellow to disappoint Newton or his soon-to-be bride. So, he found himself in the heart of that pulsing metropolis, wishing he were anywhere else.
“You look as though I’m forcing you to attend your own hanging,” Newton said, eyeing him from across the carriage in which they, along with their friend Thomas Comstock, whom they all called Toss, were riding to Newton’s betrothal ball.
“Might as well be,” Charlie said. “You know I don’t care for social occasions.”
“And you know I know that’s not entirely true.”
“I don’t care forLondon, then.”
“A decidedly odd conclusion for one as logical as you,” Toss said.
“Nothing could be more logical,” Charlie countered. “Gather together every family and individual in the kingdom with ample time and money. Add to that a metropolis teeming with pointless ways to spend both. Multiply that—”
“Lud, not mathematics,” Toss muttered.
“You set him off,” Newton said.
Charlie was undeterred. “Multiply that by an unhealthy societal obsession with appearance and frivolity, and no other sum can be reached but one that speaks of—”
“Shallow insincerity,” his friends finished in unison with him.
They all laughed. Charlie’s tendency to wax long and impassioned on the subject of his exaggerated hatred of London was a well-established jest among them.
“I hope you’ll find some means of being at least a little charming,” Toss said. “You must live up to Caroline’s name for you.”
His niece had long ago, when pronouncing names had been a struggle for her, dubbed him Uncle Charming. “I suppose I could try.” He pretended that doing so would be a burden.
“I certainly hope so,” Newton said. “This betrothal ball is being held by the Duke and Duchess of Kielder, an honor only two other ladies have been granted, and they were the duchess’s sisters. I could not deny my sweet Ellie such an impressive introduction to London Society.”
Charlie really did understand the reason they were there and the utter futility of expecting Newton to attempt to change the location of the prewedding events or the ceremony itself. Charlie had other objections. “Was there no means of uninviting Artemis?”
Artemis Lancaster was the closest thing to an enemy Charlie had ever had. They’d managed something of a cease-fire between them during Newton and Ellie’s courtship, which they would have to reclaim to some degree after their friends were married.
“As the duchess is Artemis’s sister and my Ellie is her particular friend and Falstone House is her London home... no.”
Charlie sighed dramatically. “I hope the fact that I am not tossing myself from this carriage will afford me ample credit for the depth of my dedication to our friendship.”
“I will see to it you are immortalized in verse,” Toss said.
“Pentameter, if you would.” Charlie nodded very soberly. “Nothing is more impressive than pentameter.”
Toss eyed him with feigned confusion. “For one wishing to be a leading lecturer in mathematics, you have decided opinions about poetry.”
“Pentameter is a very mathematical meter,” Charlie said. “That is why I prefer it.”
“You are going to be an insufferable don, you realize,” Newton said. “All your students will groan on their way to your lectures and run out afterward, rejoicing in their hard-won freedom.”
Charlie could laugh at that. “I happen to enjoy the mathematics lectures I attend. And I’m not the only one who does.”
“You lot are strange.” Toss shook his head.
