Undoing of a Lady. Nicola Cornick

and out into the street.

       Where to run? Where to hide?

      She knew she had only a split second before Nat extricated himself from the shop and came after her.

      She could not speak to him. Merely thinking about it turned her so cold that she shivered as though she had the ague. She had made a terrible, terrible mistake and the only way in which she could deal with it was to pretend that it simply had not happened. If she spoke to Nat he would make her confront it and that she could not do.

      Run away, Lizzie thought. She had always run, all her life. She had seen her mother do it, too. It was all she knew.

      “Lady Elizabeth!”

      She spun around. Nat was coming toward her as briskly as the crowded street would allow. Saturday mornings in Fortune’s Folly were always busy. The road was crowded with carts and horses, with women carrying marketing baskets, children clinging to their skirts, with gentlemen strolling and ladies browsing the windows. Nat ignored them all, cutting a path toward her with ruthless determination. Lizzie dashed down the first arcade that she came to, past the wigmaker and the perfumery, into the china shop, where her flying skirts caught the edge of a display of fine Wedgwood plates, newly arrived from London, and sent them crashing to the floor. She didn’t stop, even at the shopkeeper’s cry of outrage, but hurried out of the back door, down a passageway, tripping over a rotten cabbage, sending a chicken running for its life. She imagined Nat stopping to pay the china merchant and knew that would buy her a few minutes. He would have to take responsibility for her breakages. That was the sort of thing that he always did.

      She had a stitch. She leaned on the edge of the stone parapet of the bridge over the River Tune and tried to catch her breath. There were cabbage leaves stuck to her skirts. Across the other side of the river she could see her brother’s land agent collecting payment from the coachmen who had their carriages drawn up on the green whilst the occupants shopped, visited the spa or walked on Fortune Row. This was Monty’s latest money-spinner following the tax on dogs he had instigated the previous month. She saw a carriage with the Vickery arms drawn up outside the circulating library. Perhaps Alice was in town and was intending to call on her after she had been to the shops. For a moment Lizzie longed desperately to see her friend and then she realized that it was not possible. Alice knew her too well. She would know instantly that something was wrong and then Lizzie would tell her the truth and that would be a disaster because she simply had to pretend. If she did not pretend—if she told all, and Alice sympathized with her—then all would be lost because she would disintegrate in misery and blurt out her love for Nat and the humiliation and loss would drown her.

      “Lady Elizabeth!”

      Lizzie straightened abruptly. There was Nat, wending his way between the carriages on the bridge and looking cross and disheveled now—he had cabbage leaves on his jacket, too—but still very, very determined. Oh dear. Time to run.

      “I don’t want to talk to you!” Lizzie yelled, startling several coach horses. “Go away!” She saw Lady Wheeler’s startled face staring out at her from one of the carriages and felt the hysterical laughter bubbling up within her.

      “Hoyden!” Lady Wheeler’s lips moved. Lizzie did not need to be able to hear her to know the words. “Wild, ungovernable, a disgrace…”

       If only they knew just how disgracefully she had behaved.

      Would they be kinder to her because her heart was broken?

      “Lizzie!” Nat bellowed.

      Lizzie took her life in her hands and dived between two carriages, hearing the coachman swear and feeling the heat of the horses’ breath against her face. Over the parapet, under the bridge, along the water’s edge, up into the village on the other side of the river, into the cabinetmakers where her unkempt reflection stared back at her from an endless line of mirrors for sale, the scent of beeswax in her nostrils, the gleam of the wood dazzling her…Someone caught her as she was about to trip on the pavement outside, but even as the panic grabbed her she realized it was not Nat but another gentleman, raising his hat, an appreciative gleam in his eyes. She could see Nat pushing through the crowd. Would he never give up? She grabbed a hansom cab. “Fortune Hall, quickly!” The coachman whipped up the horse and they were away before Nat could haul himself up into the cab beside her. Lizzie saw his furious expression as they pulled away. It was twice as expensive to take a hansom these days because Sir Montague taxed half of the drivers’ charges. Well, her brother could pay his own taxes this time, Lizzie thought. Her purse was empty anyway and she had dropped the bolt of blue spotted muslin somewhere in the street. She would not go back for it. She was not really sure why she had bought it in the first place.

      The important thing was that she had outrun Nat again. She did not look back.

      Chapter Four

      DAMN THE WOMAN! He had chased her through every back street and alley of Fortune’s Folly. He had had to pay the china merchant and soothe the outraged coachman and calm some skittish horses, and he was sick and tired of acting as Lizzie’s conscience and wallet. She was spoiled and headstrong and she never faced up to her responsibilities. She had been running away for as long as he had known her.

       She was running away from him now.

      Nat smoothed his hair, calmed his breath and watched the hansom cab disappear over the cobbles with a clatter of wheels and a cloud of summer dust. Lizzie did not look back. The tilt of her head, even the back of her spring straw bonnet, looked defiant. But he had seen her eyes and they had looked terrified.

      He bent to retrieve the parcel of blue muslin that was resting in the gutter. Goodness only knew why Lizzie had bought it. She was the least accomplished woman in the world with a needle and had always scorned embroidery and dressmaking.

      Nat felt a pang somewhere deep in his chest. He knew Lizzie so well. They had been friends for years. He cared for her. It hurt that she used to run to him for help when she was in trouble and now she was running from him. He did not even understand why she was running though he imagined that it must be because she was so shocked and scared and mortified by what had happened that she simply could not face him. But he could put all to rights if only she would let him. The first step was taken. He was free of the engagement to Flora, free to marry Lizzie instead. He could give her the protection of his name and he could claim her fortune in place of the one he had lost.

      If only he could make her stay still long enough to hear his proposal.

       If only she accepted it.

      With Lizzie one never knew.

      He twisted the brown paper parcel in his hands and heard the covering rip. He could deliver it to Fortune Hall in person and demand that Lizzie see him. Except that she would probably climb over the roof and run away into the woods again sooner than speak with him.

      For a moment he toyed with the idea of going to one of Lizzie’s friends, to Laura Anstruther or Alice Vickery, and asking for their help. He rejected the idea reluctantly, for that would involve some sort of explanation and his friends were already curious about the canceled wedding. He had received notes from both Dexter and Miles, his groomsmen, demanding to know what the hell was going on. If he asked their wives to intercede with Lizzie on his behalf the speculation would explode and although none of them would ever spread gossip or scandal, he could not expose Lizzie to such conjecture. No, he would have to sort this out unaided. That was appropriate since the disaster was of his creation. If only he had been stronger, had more self-control, more restraint. If only he had not found Lizzie so damnably physically attractive, if only he did not still ache for her with a devouring carnal need that was as shocking as it was misplaced. But again, if he married her that desire would no longer be inappropriate—or unfulfilled. He could make love to her every night and all day if he wished, as much as he wanted, sating his unexpected lust in the respectable marriage bed.

      Fortune Street at midday on a Saturday was an inappropriate place to be sporting a huge erection. Nat moved the muslin parcel to provide