Page 7 of How Not to Marry a Duke

"Then I shall write about the sheep. Perhaps they are secretly pirates in disguise."

"Sheep cannot be pirates. They don't have hands."

"A compelling argument." Florinda kissed her forehead, then James's, then scooped Charles up for a final embrace that left a smear of jam upon her travelling dress. "Be good for your governess. And do not let anyone convince you that sheep are boring. They have their own adventures; they simply don't boast about them."

The carriage was indeed waiting.

Florinda climbed in without looking back, settled herself against the cushions, and waited until the palace had disappeared entirely from view before allowing herself to feel anything at all.

Then, with no one to observe, she pressed her fists against her eyes and breathed very carefully through the tightness in her chest.

She was not going to cry. She had cried quite enough over her last romantic catastrophe, and she refused to waste tears on this one. This was merely... logistics. The practical rearrangement of an inconvenient person. It had nothing to do with love, or rejection, or the slow, grinding realisation that she had spent four years making herself indispensable only to discover that she was, in fact, entirely dispensable.

Stop it, she told herself fiercely. You are not a Gothic heroine. You are a practical woman with a perfectly serviceable brain, and you are not going to spend this journey wallowing in self-pity like a character from one of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.

The crossroads appeared after two hours of determined not-wallowing.

Florinda knew these roads. She had travelled them countless times as a girl, visiting neighbours, attending assemblies, riding between the great estates that dotted the countryside like jewels on green velvet. To the north lay Raventhorn, where Margot and Percy would be waiting with gentle sympathy and well-meaning suggestions about eligible bachelors.

To the south lay Ashbourne House.

Home.

The estate had been empty since Margot's marriage. The staff maintained it, aired the rooms, kept the gardens from reverting entirely to wilderness. But no one lived there. No one walked the halls or took tea in the morning room or sat beneath the old oak tree where Florinda had read her first novel and dreamed her first foolish dreams about love.

No one would find her there.

No one would press her to consider her situation or evaluate her prospects or make polite enquiries about whether she had given any thought to her future. She could simply... exist. Quietly. Invisibly. Without being managed or arranged or disposed of.

"Stop the carriage."

The coachman obeyed, though his expression when Florinda emerged suggested he had concerns about her mental state.

"There has been a change of plans." Florinda kept her voice crisp, authoritative—the voice Margot used when managing household crises. "We will be proceeding to Ashbourne House instead of Raventhorn."

"My lady, I was instructed⁠—"

"I am aware of your instructions. I am countermanding them." She climbed back into the carriage before he could argue. "Ashbourne House. The south road."

There was a long pause. Florinda could practically hear the coachman weighing his options: defy a direct order from the lady in the carriage, or defy the indirect orders of the King who employed him.

The carriage began to move. Southward.

Florinda exhaled.

It was a small rebellion. A tiny act of defiance in a life that had been carefully, deliberately compliant. She would still be shipped off to the country, still be removed from the palace, still be expected to find herself a husband like a good, obedient spinster.

But she would do it on her own terms. In her own home. Alone, if she wished to be alone, without well-meaning family hovering about reminding her of everything she had failed to become.

The south road wound through familiar countryside. Past the village where she had once danced at assemblies. Past the church where her parents had married. Past the boundaries of a dozen estates she had visited as a girl, dreaming of futures that had never quite materialised.

Past the stone markers that indicated the border between Ashbourne land and the Carthedge estate.

Florinda glanced at the markers without really seeing them. Carthedge Hall was nearby—she had visited it as a child, played in its gardens, attended a ball there once when she was seventeen and foolish and convinced that the heir apparent had looked at her with something like interest.

Frederick.

She pushed the name away. He was engaged now. To someone suitable and proper and possessed of the good sense not to expose her stockings to visiting monarchs. Whoever Lady Penelope Ashworth was, Florinda was certain she had never once in her life played pirates with small children, and she was equally certain that Frederick's future wife did not lie awake at night remembering a clumsy kiss in a stable that had meant nothing to anyone but the foolish girl who had initiated it.