Page 2 of Black and Silver

She took a step toward the door, more than ready to attend to her final errand before departing.

Regina shifted to block her way. “There’s more to it, my lady. I can tell. Is there something else you might like to tell me? Something that would enable me to assist your flight?”

Again, Minnie bit her lip and debated how much she wished to share. Not even her three dear friends knew what she was planning. If they did, they would surely attempt to convince her not to take the particular course of action she had planned.

“Alright,” Minnie sighed. “But you cannot tell a soul.”

“My lady, you know I am the soul of discretion,” Regina said, as stiff and powerful as any male butler. Perhaps more so.

Minnie peeked to Clarence, whose eye sockets were just visible above the edge of her valise, surrounded by frilly underthings, then glanced back to Regina.

“My parents have arranged a marriage for me,” she said, speaking as though the fact were a humiliation. To Minnie, at her age of nearly forty, it absolutely was. “I have evaded their marital plots for what I thought was long enough for me to be considered an eccentric, unmarriageable spinster, but then a friend of my father’s somehow produced a son who was widowed a few years ago, one Lord Owen Scurloch, and it was agreed by everyone but me that the two of us should wed to affirm some sort of ridiculous land pact or commercial deal, or whatever those men deem more important than a woman’s autonomy.”

“This is precisely why the Mercian Plan must succeed,” Regina sighed, looking much more sympathetic.

“Yes, well, there’s more to the story,” Minnie told her with a wary side-eye, fetching her gloves from her dressing table and putting them on. “The wedding nearly took place last month.”

“Did it?” Regina asked, surprised and clearly drawn in by the story.

“It did,” Minnie said gravely. “In fact, I may have fled the church on the morning of the wedding and bundled myself straight off to London.”

Regina looked impressed. “You escaped your unwanted fiancéat the altar?”

“Yes,” Minnie said, desperate to run her errand and moving toward the door again. This time, Regina stepped aside and accompanied her out into the hallway as Minnie continued with, “I managed to make it to London and the safety of the club, as you know, but unless I take drastic action, I will have no option but to hide forever within the walls of the Oxford Society Club. And while that is amenable to some of our dear, unfortunate sisters, it is not the life I want.”

Indeed, the Oxford Society Club was the permanent home and self-imposed prison of at least two younger women who knew that if they left the shelter of the club’s walls and were caught on the street by various family members, who stalked the streets outside as if they would lay siege, they would be abducted back to their own kingdoms and forced into marriages they did not want.

Unless Britannia was united under Mercian law.

“And so you plan to flee to Sweden to be free?” Regina asked.

Minnie sent her a sidelong look as they descended the stairs to the ground floor. “I plan to do more than that,” she whispered.

They reached the front hall, and she turned this way and that, making certain no one was near enough to overhear her. Then she leaned closer to Regina.

“I plan to feign my tragic demise,” she whispered, feeling a thrill in her gut as she spoke the words.

Regina pulled back and stared at her with wide eyes. Then she glanced up and down Minnie’s black-clad form and smiled.

“If anyone can accomplish that mad task, it will be you, my lady,” she said.

Minnie wasn’t certain she approved of the way Regina beamed as if they were about to attend a drama. “You mustn’t tell anyone,” she hissed. “Although I will tell my dearest friends. Eventually. Once I am established in Stockholm.”

“Do you propose to meet your tragic end on this journey to Wales?” Regina asked quietly.

“Yes,” Minnie whispered. “I’ve arranged passage on a fishing vessel in Bristol that will take me to Ireland. From there, I will assume a new name and identity and travel on to Stockholm.”

“Does Lord Lawrence know about this plot, my lady?” Regina asked.

Minnie pinched her face in frustration for a moment. Lord Lawrence was the vehicle to aid her in reaching Bristol, but he did not know that she had no intention of traveling to Wales at all.

“He will not know until the last possible moment,” she said, marching on toward the outside door. “If fortune favors me, he will not have to know at all.”

“It is always better to let your coconspirator in on any plots you wish to hatch,” Regina counselled, opening the door for Minnie and letting in a blast of frosty air as she did.

“I suppose I shall have to tell him something at some point,” Minnie said with a sigh. “But with any luck, I will not.”

“Very good, my lady,” Regina said with a perfectly stiff bow.

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