Lord Crenshaw was spending a great deal of time in London recently – for business, but rumours of his beautiful fiancée were everywhere, Mrs Dupont said, and everyone knew Katherine was part of the reason.
Katherine had liked the idea that she was talked about, that she would be glimpsed on this outing. Already invitations had begun to arrive at the house, though of course any social engagements were heavily curated by her aunt. A shopping trip had been allowed because she would be chaperoned by Mrs Dupont and a valet, with their driver waiting with the carriage outside.
But now she was alone.
Uneasy thoughts of scandal and impropriety made her clasp her hands inside her sable muff. She wasn’t supposed to be seen in town alone. How long until people started talking? She couldn’t wait here; people were staring. She would wait in the carriage, out of sight of prying eyes, and safely accompanied by Lord Crenshaw’s valet and driver.
She stepped out of the shop onto the crowded pavement, and her stomach sank, pulled down by the first tendrils of panic.
The carriage was gone.
The street looked cold and anonymous. She looked desperately around for any sign of the carriage, but it was nowhere to be seen. Its absence was strange and frightening. Where was Mrs Dupont? The carriage couldn’t really have left her here, could it?
But it had. They had all left her. The reality that she was alone on the streets of London made her skin chill. A terrible sense of being abandoned swept over her. Worse than the threat to her safety was the threat to her reputation. If anyone knew she had been out without a chaperone … Katherine was starting to panic, all the stories of young girls ruined by foolish indiscretions rushing into her mind.
As if enacting her worst nightmare, the shop owner emerged from the shop, and she realised that gossip was about to fly from here to the homes of every client he had in London—
‘Cousin,’ said a voice, a hand in hers steadying her.
She didn’t have a cousin. She didn’t know that voice. She looked up in confusion.
The boy who had taken her hand had a striking, high-cheekboned face, dark eyes and a tumble of dark hair. It was the sort of face you couldn’t drag your eyes away from, that would have been startling even if you saw it across a room. He was attractive in a breath-catching, Byronic way, like the electric feeling of clouds gathering in a storm.
She felt a startling, instant connection, her eyes meeting his. He raised his brows, asking silently if she would play along. He was offering to provide her with the perfect chaperone: a male relative. He had even said the word cousin loudly enough that passersby could hear.
She felt herself flush at the thought that this young gentleman – for he was a gentleman, surely – had seen her predicament and come to her rescue.
‘Thank you, cousin,’ she answered, just as loudly.
Looking back at the shopfront, she saw the owner relax and retreat inside, as though a minor mystery had been solved.
‘“Cousin”？’ she whispered, once the shopkeeper had gone. ‘We don’t look a thing alike!’
‘I wasn’t sure I could pass as your brother.’
Who is he? She was gazing at him. She couldn’t shake that feeling of connection. His actions in coming to her rescue were both impudent and chivalrous, of which she was meltingly aware.
She could feel the warmth of his hand beneath hers. Except for the one or two scrupulously respectable acquaintances selected for her by her aunt, she had not met anyone in London, certainly not any attractive young men. Her heartbeat was behaving oddly. What would Lord Crenshaw think if he knew a young man had taken my hand?
‘Where is it we’re going?’ he whispered back conspiratorially.
‘My fiancé’s carriage was supposed to be waiting for me.’ She said the word fiancé very intentionally. He didn’t ask, And where is your chaperone? He didn’t ask any questions about her situation, which was a sign of his gentlemanly manners, she thought. ‘We were returning home right away.’
‘And it’s gone?’
‘Yes, I – it’s – yes.’
‘Then I’ll find you a coach, Miss—’
‘Kent,’ she offered.
‘Miss Kent,’ he said.
The weather, which just that morning Annabel had described as ‘chancy’， chose that moment to change from chilly into cold wet drops that fell from the sky. The young man was perfectly gallant. He immediately stripped off his jacket for her to hold over her head, so that she was shivering but dry as he stepped out into the busy road to hail a hackney.