Lady Charlotte's First Love by Anna Bradley

Author:Anna Bradley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2017-10-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Charlotte stepped off the edge of Lady Chase’s terrace into a nightmare. Her gaze darted back and forth across the lawn, but with every glance she sank deeper into the hellish dream. Rows of muslin-clad backs met her gaze, all of them stiff with outrage.

Somehow, she’d always known she’d end up here, and she wondered now, dimly, why she hadn’t seen it would happen today. Perhaps because even in her darkest dreams, the dreams that woke her in the dead of night clammy with panic, she hadn’t imagined it would happen this way. So publicly. So decisively.

But it had happened—no, it was happening even as she stood here, her heart shriveling in her chest.

She had nowhere left to go.

An anticipatory hush fell over the young ladies on the lawn as they waited to see what she’d do. Charlotte struggled to stay calm enough to think. She could turn and walk up the terrace steps and try to find Iris Somerset, but already her wrist felt ready to snap under the weight of the plate in her hand, and her knees shook under her skirts. What if her legs refused to hold her and she fell to her knees, her plate shattering on the stone terrace at her feet? It would make a terrible crash, and everyone would see, and they’d know…

She could keep moving forward onto the lawn, but what then? She’d reach the end soon enough, and short of fleeing into the gardens she’d be no better off than she was now. No. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing her run. No matter how much she bled inside, she’d never let them see it.

The lawn swam before her eyes, but Charlotte raised her chin and pulled her spine taut and straight.

You’ve survived worse than this.

She took a step forward, determined to put an end to the scene, but just then a high-pitched squeal broke the silence. Charlotte jerked her head in the direction from which it came, puzzled. A second squeal joined the first, sharp and malicious, and then she knew with a sickening certainty what it was. A feminine titter, still subdued, but spreading like wildfire from one blanket to the next.

Her knees began to buckle beneath her, but just when she was certain she must collapse, the plate she carried was lifted from her hand.

“Lady Hadley.”

Long, warm fingers closed around her wrist and a strong forearm appeared under her fingertips. “I beg your pardon, my lady, for not being more attentive.”

Charlotte looked up, dazed, to find Julian looking down at her with such an expression of grief in his dark eyes it made her breath seize in her lungs, and her own eyes fill with tears.

But if his eyes were soft with regret as they rested on her face, his mouth was pulled into such a hard, tight line his lips had gone white at the corners. She didn’t know whether his fury was for her or for the ladies who scorned her, but she didn’t care.

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