Undoing of a Lady by Nicola Cornick Read Free Book Online

sharply to his. His dark gaze was implacable. “I believe we have matters to discuss.”
    “No—”
    “Indeed we do.”
    Mrs. Morton’s gaze was avid. Lizzie felt the panic flare inside her and blossom through her whole body, setting her shaking. Then the door chimed again and two ladies came into the shop, and Lizzie pulled her arm from Nat’s grip, diving through the open door 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