Page 16 of A Stranger’s Promise

“Good day, my lord,” a small voice chimed from her side.

Incredulous, Charlotte glanced down to see the young boy attempting an awkward bow. The little devil. So, he didn’t want Lord Cassilis knowing about the hat, did he? Had the little troublemaker just handed her the answer to her problem? With the power of blackmail, she could make him dance to her tune. Delighted, she curled her lips into a wicked grin. Suddenly aware she’d once again gotten distracted, she glanced up, startled to see both men watching her.

“Then good day,” Lord Cassilis said. He turned and said to the man, “Come along, Nicholas.”

As both men strode away, Charlotte released a long, silent breath of relief. Two weeks. She had two weeks of freedom to clear her mind. But when her eyes followed Lord Cassilis’s thighs as he walked away, she knew she was going to need every hour of those fourteen days to rid her thoughts of the man.

She took a deep breath and shooed the children back to their room and, in short order, had them buttoned in their coats and bundled outside. The crisp morning air did little to clear her thoughts of Lord Cassilis. She hurried the children toward the coach as footmen tied the last trunk to the back of the waiting barouche.

“Hop inside,” she said. “We’ve quite the journey ahead of us.”

The boy hesitated. “Oliver,” he said with a rush, then added, “And Jane, after me mum.”

Jane stilled, not understanding at first, then smothered a delighted smile. Oliver. His name…or was it? The rascal could easily have drummed up the name so as not to be called Abigail. But then, did it matter? At least, she had him talking and, with the threat of the hat, she could get him moving, if need be.

“I must admit, Oliver is more fitting than Abigail,” she said, permitting herself a small smile as she waved him toward the barouche. When he didn’t move, she paused to prompt, “And?”

He stood, his brows drawn into a scowl. “Why didn’t you tell him, Miss?”

Ah, that hat. “Tell him? Tell him what?”

The boy faltered, then leaned closer and answered in a conspiratorial whisper, “The hat. Why didn’t you tell him about the hat?”

And relinquish her key to his soul? She placed her cheek close to his and whispered, “What hat? Just this once, I know nothing of a hat.”

He drew back with a kind of wary wonder, a grin tugging at his mouth. As if suddenly aware he’d revealed too much, he scowled again and jumped into the carriage, taking his sister with him.

Charlotte followed close behind.

* * *

The days passed in a blur. Snow fell, then melted, then fell again.

In daylight, they traveled through wintry wonderlands blanketed in white through the carriage windows. At night, the snow glittered like diamonds in candlelight under the bright light of the moon.

Muddy patches began to show through the snow, until the road turned into a sea of mud. Grime and muck caked the carriage, the children’s faces, their shoes and clothes, and even formed a crust on the hem of Charlotte’s skirt.

Everywhere Charlotte looked, she saw mud. She felt as if she swam in the stuff. Each night, she dragged the children into yet another inn, pulled off their wet, mud-stained clothes and shoes, and did her best to clean and feed them before settling them to bed. After a day cooped up in the carriage, they were rarely in a mood to obey. Their nightly ritual took far longer than it should. Each evening, she fell into bed exhausted to her very bones, only to awake from a dream of arriving at Castle Culzean, to find she had lost the children along the way.

Oliver’s cooperation turned out to be short-lived. By the end of the first day, he’d reverted to sullen behavior, and again refused to participate. With Lord Cassilis gone, she could no longer use the threat of the hat. Charlotte, however, babbled up a storm. With a never-ending wealth of energy, the child spent the day hopping from seat to seat, peering through the barouche’s plate glass windows with wide-eyed wonder and asking endless questions about each tree or clump of dry grass.

Gradually, the rolling hills transformed into wild slopes of harsh, desolate beauty. Dark clouds reappeared on the horizon to mask the sky once again. They rose early and travelled late into the night.

Finally, after what felt like a year, the mutton-chop whiskered footman greeted Charlotte as they stumbled out of the inn and said, “We’ve been fifteen days on the road, Miss Atchenson. Tonight, you’ll sleep in the castle on the edge of the sea.”

Charlotte flashed a huge smile of relief, too exhausted to reply.

A hum of excitement underlined the day as they rolled over moorlands dotted with fragile turf huts and through a dense forest of lichen-covered trees. Charlotte cried in delight at red deer that flicked their ears as they watched the carriage pass. Once the carriage left the forest, it followed a narrow road up the rising coastal cliffs as seagulls swooped overhead, wailing plaintively on a wind that carried the salty tang of the sea.

As they passed an apple orchard late in the day, the horses picked up speed, as if sensing themselves close to home. Finally, as the sun hovered on the horizon, they rounded the last bend in the road and the castle came into view, a spectacular display of turrets and battlements perched high on the edge of a cliff. Below, the sea pounded a craggy shore pitted with rock pools and patches of sand. She found the place wild, rugged—and as intimidating as the man who presided over it.

The children fell silent, she along with them, their eagerness to arrive replaced with a general unease that the long, tedious weeks now seemed to be ending too fast.

Before she could bolster her courage, the carriage rolled down the drive. Trees lined both sides of the road. Then the carriage rolled under a ruined archway and past a cluster of outbuildings presided over by a fine clock tower. At last, it reached the castle proper.

“Whoa there, lads,” the coachman called to the bays, and brought them to a stop before the castle’s massive main doors.

The footmen dismounted and the mutton-chop whiskered footman opened the carriage door. Charlotte sat still, too aware of her suddenly flailing courage, as well as the children’s stares. She had to be confident. Strong. She smiled gently, then scooted to the door and allowed the footman to hand her out.