Page 3 of Black and Silver

Minnie sent her a final, cautious smile, then stepped out into the cold, November morning.

Really, she knew her plan was a bit of a mad one. Chances were that she would not be able to add the additional, magnificent detail of feigning her own death in order to escape. She desperately hoped that all would unfold according to plan, though. Despite the excitement of beginning a new life in a new country, she thrilled at the idea of her family mourning her, of them holding a funeral for her. Perhaps she could even visit herown gravestone one day. Her family would certainly spring for a fine, elaborate headstone in the family plot, even if her body would never be found.

That would be the tricky bit, she thought to herself as she marched along the crowded street toward the seamstress she had entrusted with the construction of a particular gown she would need once the wheels of her plan had been set into motion. The idea was that she would find an appropriate body of water near a cliff or ledge of some sort when they had almost reached Bristol. She would tell Lord Lawrence that she wished to go for a solitary walk in the dark. It would be even better if the weather were foul and the winds fierce on that particular night. She would venture out alone and never return, and in the morning, nothing but her inky, black dress and her bonnet would be found.

Which was why she needed a dress of an entirely different sort. She had commissioned a discreet seamstress to construct a simple, blue gown for her in the Swedish style. She would conceal that gown under her regular clothing when she went out for her walk. Once she located the perfect cliff, she would remove her black gown and reveal the blue, Swedish one. As soon as the evidence was hurled off the cliff and into the ocean, she would run for the docks of Bristol, board the boat she’d arranged passage on, and—

Minnie caught her breath at the sight of a man stepping behind a corner at the end of the street ahead of her. He was gone as soon as she’d spotted him, but she knew Lord Owen Scurloch when she saw him.

At least, she thought she did. London was devilishly crowded, now that Joint Parliament had begun. The streets were so crowded that some of the lesser folk were being compelled to walk in the mucky streets rather than on the cleaner sidewalks.Owen was tall and broad, but with a quick glance, Minnie saw half a dozen other tall, broad men.

She picked up her pace, hurrying to the corner Owen had disappeared around, then cautiously glancing down that side street as she crossed it.

There was no one resembling Owen’s description at all within sight down that street. The traffic was thick with people dressed in the slight variation of costume of all the kingdoms of the New Heptarchy, but not a one of them looked remotely Welsh, let alone like Owen.

“I’m imagining things,” Minnie sighed and walked on, shaking her head.

She could not blame herself, really. She had legitimate cause to worry, as her parents had sent a letter addressed to her at the Oxford Society Club, where they knew she stayed in London, saying that if she was in London, she needed to return home immediately to face the altar or she would be fetched. She had not replied, so her parents could have no certainty that she was even in London. But if they had sent Owen to check….

Minnie put those thoughts out of her mind and hurried on to the seamstress. She was fortunate in that her commissioned gown was completed and already wrapped in brown paper and ready to go. She paid handsomely for not only the gown, but for the silence of everyone in the shop, then clutched her parcel tightly and headed out to return to the club.

Before she was halfway there, the creeping sensation that she was being observed, and perhaps followed, grabbed hold of her. It made her tense and clumsy, and she nearly crashed into one of the errand boys rushing about with deliveries more times than she could count. The way she kept continually glancing down side streets and looking over her shoulder caused more trouble than it brought relief.

It all seemed worthwhile when she spotted what she knew in her heart was Owen’s tall, broad form stepping into a pub across the street from her. Her rational mind tried to tell her that if Owen was in London and if he was following her, he would not be ahead of her on the street, and he most certainly would not step into a pub rather than confront her. Her active and expansive imagination was very much running away from her.

That did not stop her from ducking into the entrance of a haberdasher across the street from the pub and leaning against the window so she could observe the pub for several long moments to see if Owen emerged and went after her. It also didn’t stop her from taking a circuitous route back to the Oxford Society Club once she grew tired of watching the pub’s door. If Owen had come to London and if he’d found her, she would do everything in her power to avoid him and thwart whatever plans he had to capture her and force her into what amounted to indentured servitude.

By the time she finally made it back to the street where the Oxford Society Club stood, she was anxious and restless. The skies had clouded over, and raindrops were beginning to fall. She clung close to the sides of buildings as she walked, constantly glancing over her shoulder and trying to hide.

That was why, when Lord Lawrence stepped down from one of the carriages parked along the street in front of the club and greeted her with, “Good day, Lady Minerva. Aren’t you looking fetching this fine morning,” Minnie nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Hurry! Hurry!” she said, grabbing the sleeve of Lord Lawrence’s coat with her free hand and tugging him toward the entrance to the club. “We mustn’t be seen at all.”

Lord Lawrence smiled and moved quickly with her, as if he found the whole attempt at secrecy to be a game of some sort. Indeed, as they ducked into the club’s door when one of thefootmen held it open for them, he asked, “Are we escaping from the law today or evading some criminal gang?”

As soon as the door was shut safely behind them, Minnie straightened from her hunched posture and sent him a scathing look. If Lord Lawrence was going to be spritely and clever through the entire journey west, and if he thought he could tease her and she would laugh and titter like the rest of the vapid young ladies of thetonwho merely wanted an older, distinguished husband with silver hair at his temples, then he had another think coming.

Chapter Two

…and so, you see, kind sir, this is why I cannot accept your invitation to drive in Hyde Park with you this Saturday, as flattered as I am by the offer.

Lawrence sighed and refolded the letter he’d received from Lady Harriet Longstead several days before, tucking it into his traveling bag, along with the mountain of other communication he’d received since arriving in London.

“You can have this taken down to the carriage now, Danforth,” he said as Godwin House’s butler stepped into the room, two of the footmen behind him. He closed the case, but left it to Danforth and the others to secure as he headed out of the room. “I’m ready to leave all this behind me and return to the wilds from whence I came.”

He spoke with a smile and clapped Danforth on the arm before stepping away, but his heart was heavier than he wanted it to be. Lady Harriet’s letter was one of at least a dozen similarly gentle rejections he’d received in the last month. It was bad enough that it had taken him more than a quarter of an hour topuzzle out each letter when they were received, and it was not as if he cared overly much for any of the young ladies who had turned down his potential offers of courtship, but the rejection stung all the same.

His father had ordered that Lawrence and all his brothers and cousins marry, and he had proclaimed that the last of them to do so would inherit the cursed Godwin Castle. That had been in the spring, and now the year was waning. Cedric, Alden, and Waldorf had all found themselves the loveliest of brides. They were all exceedingly lucky in their choices as well. It was more than just being free of the burden of Godwin Castle, they were all blissfully happy.

The only two of them left unmarried were Lawrence and his cousin, Dunstan. And while some might argue that Dunstan was a lost cause, after being so cruelly eviscerated by his deceased wife in the few, short years of their marriage, Lawrence had his own theories about how Dunstan might surprise everyone by making it to the altar, sooner rather than later.

That left Lawrence as the presumptive heir to the family curse, and truly, there were days when he felt as though it had already fallen upon him.

He was trying to find himself a bride, trying desperately. It was not as though he did not want to marry and have a family, although at his age, approaching fifty, he was not certain he had the constitution for raising a gaggle of children. He yearned for marriage, longed to find a woman with whom he could spend what he liked to think was the second half of his life.

But Lawrence had never been lucky in love. He had a string of failed affairs behind him with nothing more to show for it than a gallery of erotic sculptures inspired by mistresses of the past and sketches of past fancies who had never taken him seriously. Possibly because of said gallery of erotic sculptures.

The fact of the matter was that as Lawrence’s reputation as a sculptor grew, his seriousness as a marriage prospect for the young ladies of thetondiminished. He had become the sort of man everyone wished to invite to supper, but whom few wanted any deeper sort of connection to.

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