Chapter 3
“Iam going to say this again,” Letitia said as they walked back to the carriage, after having hastily made their purchases, “but could you please try for once to be careful?”
“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean,” Clio said.
“No, of course not,” Letitia said. “But if you did know what I meant, I might note that a woman alone and unmarried will never have the freedom that a married woman enjoys. And if you were listening to the things that I said, I might observe that some people who like to take risks could benefit from that kind of social security.”
Clio tried not to be irritated with her friend when they repeatedly traveled the path of this well-worn argument.
She knew that Letitia meant well … and that part of her concern came from a clear-eyed view of her own circumstances.
Letitia had been born on the wrong side of the blanket to a noblewoman who had sent her child away to avoid the consequences of bearing an illegitimate child.
Letty’s own marital prospects were bleak, which had led her to turn to a profession as a governess.
“And a woman—married or not—will never have the freedom from consequences that men enjoy!” Clio protested, throwing up her hands. “At least not in England. But other parts of the world are different. We could have better lives there.”
In truth, Clio didn’t like to think about traveling alone if she ultimately couldn’t convince Letitia to join her. She didn’t want to be without a friend, without even platonic love.
Letitia sighed and looked out the window, which was more or less how this discussion always ended.
“All I need,” Clio told her friend, “is one uneventful Season in England. Then, Aaron will finally give up on this idea that I’m just waiting for a good English gentleman to sweep me off my feet, and then I can convince him to sign my dowry over to me.
We are not profligate women, Letty. We could live off that money for … decades.”
“You would make a wonderful patroness,” Letitia said with a teasing smile. Clio felt her shoulders relax when it became clear that the two would part ways—even for only a short while—on good terms. The carriage paused near a general goods store, and Letty put her hand on the door. “Just … Clio?”
Clio had long since given her friend leave to use her Christian name, though Letitia insisted on using titles when in public.
“Yes?”
Letitia gave her a look. Clio didn’t have a big sister, but if she had, she assumed that this would be the kind of look she received.
“Keep an open mind, all right?” Letitia encouraged her. “I know you think you know what you want without question, but just … don’t hide.”
“Would you settle for me trying not to cause more trouble?”
Letitia considered this briefly. “Yes. Acceptable compromise.”
Then she leaped out of the carriage nimbly and began crossing to the store, one hand on her hat as she looked down the street.
Clio felt a flicker of envy. She knew enough of Letitia’s story to know that her relative social freedom had come at a cost, but goodness if she wasn’t sometimes terribly jealous that Letitia could move through the world without constantly being chaperoned and observed and gossiped about.
“One uneventful Season,” Clio murmured to herself as she rapped on the roof of the carriage, indicating to the driver that she was ready to continue. Just one uneventful Season and she could return to her life of relative anonymity on the Continent.
The driver moved the carriage adeptly back into the flow of traffic down the street, then nimbly moved to go back in the direction they’d come, as Letitia’s budget did not extend to the high-quality shops on Bond Street, which had taken them away from Aaron’s Mayfair home.
They were nearly all the way back to the shop where she had met that needlessly difficult gentleman—why couldn’t handsome men just, for once, not ruin the pleasure of looking at them with all the irritating things they had to say?
—When Clio heard the scream of horses, followed by the shriek of a woman.
That was her only warning before the carriage jolted hard enough to throw her to the ground and then, almost lazily, tipped over until it came to a bone-rattling stop on its side.
For a moment, Clio just lay there, checking to confirm that she was still alive.
When her breath returned to her in a stabbing jolt, she accepted that she was, in fact, alive––and indeed, relatively unharmed. Death had to either hurt less or much, much more.
She was, however, in a very ungainly heap at the bottom of the carriage.
Or, rather, the side of the carriage. Which was now, as she could see through the cracked window glass, pressed against the cobblestone of the street.
“Ow,” she said, pushing herself up to a seated position.
After that, she registered all the yelling.
People in the street were shouting, the noise seemingly coming from all around the carriage. Through it all, one voice pierced through, more familiar than it ought to have been.
“What the hell is going on here?”
She couldn’t mistake that rough Northern accent. She made a face, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue, even though nobody could see her, and it made the faint ringing in her ears worse.
Somebody else, clearly cowed by the furious way the gentleman made his demands, murmured an inaudible reply.
“Well, no surprise,” growled the man from the toy store. “Look how much weight you put on this one side? No wonder the wheel went off its axle.”
He thumped a part of the carriage—Clio could no longer properly tell up from down—that was near to her ear. To her humiliation, she let out a shriek.
There was an ominous pause outside, then—
“Is someone inside here?” the gentleman demanded. The cowed voice sounded even more nervous this time around. “What the hell are you standing around for, then?” the gentleman snapped. “Who is in there? Are you all right?”
Clio assumed that this last question was for her sake, and she tried to summon her voice.
The noise and the shouting were starting to fray at her nerves, however, and she was getting a cramp in her leg from crouching awkwardly on the floor, and all of this came together to remind her that she was trapped in here, in this tight, closed space.
Alone.
“Ah, yes,” she said, her voice coming out thin and high. “Yes … I’m unharmed.”
There was another pause.
“Princess? Is that you?”
Clio’s humiliation was complete. Bad enough that she was trapped, bad enough that she was feeling anxiety clawing at her throat–but now this man knew it, too?
“Don’t call me that,” she ventured, but her voice was even thinner, even higher. She sounded like a bloody mouse in a children’s pantomime, for goodness’ sake.
There was some more pronounced rattling and shaking during which Clio couldn’t decide if it was better or worse that she couldn't see what was happening. Then the face from before, the handsome face that went with the irksome personality, appeared at what was now the top of the carriage.
For a moment, she was shocked enough that her fear vanished.
“Did you climb up the side of the broken carriage?” she asked incredulously. Good Lord, how devilishly risky. He could have tipped the whole thing right back over, with her inside getting rattled about like an egg meeting a whisk.
He was determined to be difficult, however, so of course, he mistook her.
“I told ye, I dinnae need your pity because of my leg,” he snapped. “Now, do ye want me to help you out of there or not?”
He must have grown up near the Northern border, she realized; hints of a Scottish accent crept into his voice, putting his origins even more remote than those of her cousin, Helen.
It was odd for a gentleman, as he had implied himself to be.
Most men of his class would have had tutors who schooled any regional accents out of their voices long before they left for school.
“Does it have to be you?” she asked sourly. “Not,” she added before he could get in a snit again, “because of your stupid leg. It’s because of your stupid personality that I would prefer another to offer his aid.”
To her surprise, this made him grin.
“My personality?” he asked, smirking down at her in a way that made her heart race … but not with the fear she’d felt moments before. “You are the one who goes around breaking things and then being pert about it, princess.”
“Do not call me that!” she snapped.
He tapped his chin, like he was considering. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” he said. “You made assumptions about me. Doesn’t it stand that I ought to be able to make assumptions about you?”
Clio huffed. “If you are offended that I thought you were a worker at the shop, maybe you are the one who has negative views about workers. I find toymaking to be an admirable profession. Who wouldn’t celebrate the folk who seek to please children with their trade?”
“How admirable,” he said dryly. “A revolutionary and a princess. Now, hush in there. I’m trying to work … unless you think you want to climb through this broken window, that is?”
It was very, very irritating to be at his mercy.
“No,” she said, crossing her arms. “Do what you must.”
His smirk grew more pronounced. “Say please.”
Clio shrieked again, this time in irritation.
Her dubious savior disappeared from view briefly, the ghost of his laugh echoing in his wake, and in the few moments that he was gone, Clio felt her fear begin to creep back in at the edges of her vision.
“Hurry, please!” she called.
There was no response, or at least, not one directed at her; instead, she heard him barking orders, asking one of the nearby tradesmen to bring him some tools. There was some banging, and, at one point, the carriage lurched sickeningly.
Clio pressed her hands to her middle, like she needed to hold herself in one piece. Even so, a whimper found its way loose from her lips.
“Can you hurry?” she said, the words a thin whine.