Love Across The Pond by Amy Corwin

Author:Amy Corwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Fireside Romance
Published: 2016-07-22T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Sleep was an impossible dream. Or perhaps it was just her dreams that were impossible. In any event, Charity could not go back to sleep, and she finally washed and dressed. Her spirits were as low as they’d been the night her father had died.

Why did Edward Archer have to prove himself to be the same sort of nasty-minded man as all the rest? Even Officer Carmichael had stooped to making lewd suggestions the first time he’d tried to evict her.

As if tolerating his company was better than starving.

Nonetheless, she felt ill when she thought about what Mr. Archer might be thinking about her.

A glance at the clock showed that it was barely twenty minutes past six. Mrs. Granger would be up by now, making bread. Even Janet and Kitty were probably awake, preparing to eat breakfast and start their daily chores.

Charity paced back and forth. The room felt smaller and smaller with each turn, until it seemed as if she barely walked three paces before she had to turn again.

The feeling of confinement was intolerable.

She grabbed her old shawl and left her room. She walked toward the staircase, pausing to stare at Mr. Archer’s door.

It wasn’t shut.

A slim, dark line showed at the edge of the door. She slipped over and peered inside his room, but it appeared to be vacant. While the sheets and quilt on his bed were rumpled, no one lay asleep under them, and the chair was empty. Even the embers in the fireplace had long since gone out, leaving only gray ash.

Where was he? A chill shook her, and she grabbed the edges of her shawl, pulling it more closely around her shoulders.

Had Officer Carmichael returned? Were they searching the house even now?

What would they do if they found the box of gold?

Nothing. She shook her head. She was being silly. They were searching for runaways, not the Stonewright fortune. They didn’t know about it, and even if they did, what did it matter to them if her inheritance took the form of Spanish doubloons?

Mr. Archer had finally seen her father’s will, which left everything to her. No one could deny her right to the fortune.

The only difficulty lay in her preventing them from stealing anything they found, and the only way she knew to prevent that was to oversee any search.

But where could they be?

Officer Carmichael was certainly interested in her cellars. Perhaps he would start there again, since they exerted such a strong attraction for him. She headed for the servants’ passageway and slipped through it to the kitchen.

Mrs. Granger, Janet, and Kitty were all busy with some sort of argument, and flour was flying everywhere as Mrs. Granger slapped her bread dough with a vengeance, as if to punctuate the point she was making to the sisters.

Beyond them, the cellar door gaped, the space beyond black as pitch. She flicked a glance at the cook and two maids and eased along the wall to the opening. No sense in disrupting

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