The Fur Trader’s Lady (Ladies of the Wilderness #1)

Prologue

England, March 1803

S weat dripped from her brow as Lady Charlotte Fairfax hurriedly filled a small bag with a change of clothes and the scant coins she’d hidden away. She stopped every few seconds to listen for noise outside her door, her gaze following the bar of moonlight slicing across the floor. She didn’t have time to pack the dozens of expensive gowns hanging in her dressing room or take anything valuable from the only home she’d ever known. After leaving her guardian, Roger Rutherford, asleep in the study with a glass of bourbon in his hand, she would only have a few moments to make her escape.

A sound at the door made her pause, her pulse thrumming.

“Charlotte?” Roger’s voice slurred as he shook her doorknob. “Let me in! I did not give you permission to leave me. I still have plans for you this evening.”

Panic clawed at Charlotte’s throat, choking off her breath. Blissfield Manor had been a sanctuary from birth, but in the two years since her parents’ death, it had turned into her prison.

“Charlotte!”

Something fell against her door with a thud. Was that Roger?

“Open the door,” he said a bit quieter, his voice low and thick. “Did I tell you that you looked particularly lovely in that gown I had made for you?” She could imagine his feline smile. “I thought I might show you my admiration.”

Dread rippled up her spine, and she longed to scrub away the distasteful words. The offensive gown he gave her—and ordered her to wear—lay in a pile on the floor of her dressing room. The low décolletage had made her feel foul, while the looks he had given her throughout dinner made her want to crawl out of her skin. At the age of forty, he was more than twice her age.

She tiptoed across the thick carpet toward her desk where she’d placed Stephen Corning’s letter. It had arrived for her that morning and only made its way to her hands because he’d sent it through his mother, the cook. Mr. and Mrs. Corning were the only people at Blissfield Manor who had not succumbed to Roger’s false charm or deception. In a very short time, most of the servants who had been faithful to her parents and cared for her all her life had shifted their allegiance from Charlotte to her mother’s dishonorable cousin. Those who had not cowed to his every whim had been replaced—and she feared the Cornings were next. Roger had turned everyone against her to keep her captive at Blissfield Manor.

“I promise to be kind.” Roger’s voice was weaker now, no doubt from the effects of the alcohol. “After all, we shall be married in less than a fortnight. You cannot deny me forever.”

She would turn eighteen in two weeks and be free to marry whomever she wanted—but if she did not marry, Roger would be her legal guardian until she was twenty-one, as stipulated by her parents’ will. For two years, Roger had kept her by his side, never allowing her to meet anyone who might become a prospective husband. He planned to keep that honor for himself the day she turned eighteen, and she had little power to stop him.

Charlotte paused at her desk, trying to steady her breathing, forcing Roger’s words far from her thoughts. If she had any hope of escaping Blissfield Manor tonight, she must keep her wits about her.

Stephen’s letter gleamed in the moonlight, allowing her to read his words once again.

My Dearest Charlotte,

Your letter fills me with dismay. I’m sorry to hear that you have lost your parents and that Rutherford has become your guardian. I never trusted him, and it enrages me to know he has gained control over you. You must get away!

It is impossible for me to leave my post in Athabasca at this time. I am over two thousand miles from a ship, and it would take months for me to get approval to leave—if I was given approval—and many months after that to travel to you. You must steal away to Montreal and find a man named Reid McCoy. He returns to his home every three years to see his mother, and this will be the year. You must get to him before the beginning of May, or he will have already left for Grand Portage. He is an honorable, trustworthy man, and he owes me a debt for saving his life. If anyone can find a way to get you to me, it will be him. Tell him you are claiming the debt in my name.

When you get to the Rendezvous at Grand Portage, I will be there for the annual meeting and will make you my wife. Rutherford will have no control over you then. Make haste but be careful. He is capable of anything.

With all my love, Stephen

Stephen’s words were like an anchor of hope, the only solid thing she had to cling to in the past two years. When her parents had died, her father’s earldom, along with most of his property, had transferred to his distant cousin, Harold Fairfax. But Blissfield Manor and a sizable fortune were left for Charlotte upon her marriage. Roger Rutherford was named her guardian until she married. He planned to make her his wife in less than two weeks, but until Stephen’s letter had arrived, she had no way of preventing that inevitable nightmare. If she could get to Stephen and marry him, she would not be forced to marry Roger.

“I am losing patience,” Roger said, his voice stronger than before.

Charlotte quickly shoved Stephen’s letter in her pocket and returned to her dressing room to get a bonnet and a pair of gloves. Mrs. Corning had promised to have her husband prepare a carriage for her to ride into London, where she could book passage on the first available ship to take her to Montreal. If she was fortunate, Roger would not recover from his drunken stupor until late the next morning, and she would already be away.

Her doorknob shook again, and this time Roger pounded hard against the door. “Let me in, Charlotte. I’m in no mood to be denied.”

With trembling hands, she set her bonnet over her auburn hair, praying Roger would tire of his quest. It wasn’t the first night he’d come to her room this way, though he’d never forced an entry.

“I will get the housekeeper and have her open your door if you do not unlock it.”

Would he? She grabbed her small bag and rushed across the room to the window. Her watercolors, charcoals, and paints sat in their place near her easel, along with dozens of canvases. She would have to leave them all behind. Nothing was more important to her than her freedom. If Roger caught her trying to escape, he would place a guard in her room at all hours of the day and night, she was certain. She only had this one chance.

Looking down into the moon-drenched yard, she saw the carriage waiting, just as Mrs. Corning had promised. A horse pawed restlessly at the ground.

“You’ve given me no other choice,” Roger shouted. “I’m going for Mrs. Melton.”

Silence filled Charlotte’s room.

Mrs. Melton had become Roger’s strongest ally against Charlotte. The new housekeeper wouldn’t hesitate to open her door for the lecherous guardian. Terror filled Charlotte’s heart, and she had no time to lose. She didn’t think twice but crawled out of her second-story window and took hold of the trellis hugging the wall. Her dress caught on the weathered wood, forcing her to pause and untangle it. She had climbed this trellis as a child, often meeting Stephen at the bottom, where he had waited for her to run off and play. But it had been years, and she’d never done it in a long gown and with a bag in her hand.

She had no alternative. Carefully, but with urgency, she climbed down the trellis. When her feet touched the solid ground, she didn’t waste a moment and untethered the horse before stepping into the light carriage. There would be no driver to see her safely to London, though she didn’t care. The Cornings had been kind enough to offer this bit of assistance, and she would not ask for more.

With a flick of her wrist, she tapped the reins over the horse’s back and pulled away from Blissfield Manor cautiously at first, not to make too much noise, and then faster when she was farther from the house. She reached into her pocket for Stephen’s letter, needing to cling to something tangible, something linking her to a future hope.

But the letter was not in her pocket. Frantic, she reached into her other pocket, but it wasn’t there either. She looked around the carriage, opened her bag, and even glanced behind her at the road she had covered, but the letter was nowhere to be found. Had it fallen from her pocket in her haste to leave Blissfield Manor?

There was no time to climb back up the trellis to retrieve the message—and if truth be told, Roger would find a way to draw out the information from the Cornings one way or another. He would learn her destination, and if the last two years were any indication, he would come after her. He wanted complete control over Blissfield Manor and her fortune. Her only hope was to marry Stephen before Roger found her.

Tears streamed down Charlotte’s cheeks as she pushed the horse to a gallop and flew down the road, away from her beloved home toward an uncertain future in the dead of night. She would have to cross a frightening ocean, find a man she’d never met, and convince him to take her on a journey into the wilderness. If she made it that far, she would have to locate Stephen, a man she’d only known as a child, and do all that with the little money she had in her small bag.

The task felt impossible, but she would do whatever it would take to be free from Roger Rutherford.