The Charlotte Series: Book 3: The Pretender's Gold

SECTION II-SUMMER 04

Chapter 4

London 1870

Summer stood still as a statue while the seamstress tucked and pinned. Her mother thought her dutiful, cooperating so pleasantly with the endless hours of fittings. It was the one aspect of her coming out ball that Summer didn't absolutely loathe. It gave her the perfect excuse to turn her thoughts toward home...toward Kingsdown Ranch.

Mother walked away from it all...from America, from Kingsdown Ranch and from Papa and Hank. Mother told everyone she was a widow...that Papa and Hank had died in a terrible accident. Summer's mood turned black as the mourning she'd been forced to wear. How could mother just pretend...

"Ouch." Summer jerked away the pin that stuck her tender waist.

"So sorry, my lady." The poor girl mumbled around a mouthful of pins.

Her wide frightened eyes fixed on Summer for only a moment before they dropped demurely. Summer thought the poor girl might choke on the pins as she frantically spit them into her cupped palm and began muttering her apologies.

"No real harm done." Summer offered the poor girl a smile.

"Thank you, my lady." She sighed softly as she returned her focus to the fitting.

The seamstress wasn't much older than herself. And really what was it that made them so different? The place in town they were born?

Her mother was the daughter of an English Viscount, born on the family's country estate near Kingsdown. Summer was the daughter of an English country gentleman.

...who sold everything and moved to America.

So really, she wasn't any higher on the social scale than the maid.

Probably lower, since she was born in America...on a ranch...in the middle of nowhere.

But it was a ranch that she missed so much. A smile curled her lips and lightened her heart. Hank was going to send for her.

Soon.

She'd written sheets and sheets to her brother when she first arrived but never received a response. One day when she was especially heartbroken she removed herself to her room after tea to cry and wallow. Her lady's maid tried to console her and finally broke out in tears also. Summer's tears dried up as concern overrode her self-pity.

After several minutes she was able to coax out of the girl that her letters were never franked. Merry (a fitting name for a delightful girl that was always smiling) confessed that the letters were turned over to her ladyship. Once, Merry was delayed in leaving because she was pulled into service to help with the tea. That's when she saw the letters went into the fire.

Merry was a tender heart and she knew if Summer's letters never went out, then perhaps her family did write to her but the letters never made it to Summer. So Merry conspired with her brothers to intercept the mail and when they finally found a letter for Summer they copied the direction and sent word to forward all mail to another address in Cheapside.

Summer learned this was the residence of Victory Belle, one of Merry's many siblings. The letters came with regularity after that. Merry was their secret postman, funneling the letters in her apron pockets as she came and went each week on her day off. Hank was a faithful correspondent, even when the news was not good.

His first several letters were bittersweet in the news they shared. But Summer read them all so many times she could recite most of them from memory.