An Unpracticed Heart

Chapter Seventeen

Charlotte's candle had burned down at least an hour before. She glanced towards the fireplace, at the glowing embers there, and rolled onto her side again, as if a change in position were all she needed to clear her mind and drift off into slumber.

The house was quiet, and yet every thump, every creak was as loud as cannon fire. Another footstep from somewhere above her, and she let slip a curse and threw back the covers. Her bare feet sought out the floor, and she reached blindly for the threadbare dressing gown she knew she had tossed onto the end of the bed before dropping her head onto the pillow.

Rubbing her arms through the thin sleeves, she paced towards the fire and prodded at the coals with the poker, sending up a spray of spark that banished the shadows to the corners of the room. The last chime of the clock had marked the time as a quarter past two. She straightened up and replaced the poker before adding another scoop of coal to the burgeoning flames. After several minutes of waiting for them to ignite, she glanced at the window and counted the hours until morning. If she wanted any sleep this night, it would most likely not be until dawn brightened the edges of the sky.

It was the constant patter of her thoughts that kept her awake. It had only been a few hours since she'd bid farewell to Lord Cowden, since her stepmother had retired to her room and left Charlotte to fend for herself for the remainder of the evening. And so she'd gone to the kitchen to filch a few cream tarts, and picked out a book from the her father's shelves before climbing the stairs to her tiny room near the attic.

Now the tarts sat heavy in her stomach, and the book sat forgotten on a chair near the fire. And here she stood, gazing out a small, poorly glazed window that fogged beneath her breath as she counted down the days until her departure for her Wales.

Twelve days. And she said it again aloud, as if those words held the power to draw a path between herself and the moment she would arrive at the home of this Lord Lynley with his overwhelmed wife and their passel of children.

Of course, she did not have to go. It was something she told herself over and over again. She was not a child, though her passage into the realm of adulthood had not brought her any greater freedom with it. It was an easy thing, to pretend that she was no longer bound to any of her stepmother's demands. But what would happen to her if she were to leave? If she chose to forge her own road forward, she would be doing so with little more than the clothes on her back and the few coins she had in her reticule. And by rights, not even that much truly belonged to her.

She had considered looking for work. She was in possession of enough of an education that seeking employment as a teacher or a governess was not beyond her abilities. Or even a seamstress working in a dress shop, if it came to that. But she would need help in doing so, wouldn't she? No one would hire her off the street, and simply using her father's name as recommendation would only count against her, for how would it look for the oldest daughter of a marquess to be wandering the streets of London, seeking out employment like a common member of the working classes?

And Lady Alvord would never allow her to earn an income in exchange for her labor. Send her to Scotland to help with the running of the household? Journey on to Wales to serve as a companion and possible nursemaid to a large family? Easily borne, as long as Charlotte didn't earn a coin in exchange for her troubles. And so she was trapped, bound by the rules society set on gentlewomen, making it vulgar for them to earn their keep. But as a woman and, worse still, a fortuneless one, she had absolutely no power to do as she wished.

Charlotte leaned forward until her forehead thunked against the window. And there was Lord Cowden, hovering at the fringes of her thoughts. A man who would not consider marriage to her, would not even touch her for fear of ruining her. She should at least have felt some gratitude towards him for that much, but all it did was serve to remind her that her life, her choices, were not her own. Even should she want to risk destroying her reputation...