Finding Felicity

Chapter Twelve

The station heaved with students. They were either running for their train or sitting on their trunks, bored and cold, watching one train go by after another, waiting for their own.

As soon as Felicity had walked onto platform three, she had tried to loose Ethan in the crowd. She darted around other students and nipped between gaps, but the cumbersome trolley with her trunk on it prevented her from moving nimbly and cleared the students in front of her like a snow plough, so Ethan could see all too easily where Felicity was going.

Resting on top of her trunk was a medium-sized, caramel leather bag. Inside were the clothes of Felicity, returning to London from her first term at a Parisian finishing school.

Felicity had three difficulties. First, she had to separate herself from Ethan before they got on the train. Then, she had to find a suitable place to change. It would be tricky too, given that she had no one to help her and she was meant to be arriving into London dressed in the full suite of a wealthy young lady. Then, she must get off the train in London without Ethan seeing her. In fact, it was imperative that Ethan saw neither Felix nor Felicity on the train.

Once at King’s Cross, Felicity would need to swiftly hail a cab and find her way to Waterloo, where the train from Dover that she was supposed to be on, would have arrived. At Waterloo the footman should be waiting, as promised. She would have to figure out a way of getting into the station without the footman seeing her, so it would appear that she had just emerged from the platform. But that was later to come.

Once with the footman at Waterloo, he would escort her by train back to Marksford station, where a carriage from the house would greet them. Then, she would be home, with one day’s solitude before her family, and the Palmer-Greys, came up from London.

Just as the train was pulling into the station, Felicity, in her hectic rush to get away from Ethan, clipped the ankle of a well-dressed lady. The sound of fabric tearing was loud, even among the huge bustle of the platform crowd. The lady’s cry was even louder.

This was just what Felicity needed. Within seconds, a group of young men, eager to help the poor lady in distress, had swarmed around the faltering woman, closing the gap between Felicity and Ethan. He would have to load his trunk at the other end of the train and then get on a different carriage.

Felicity quickly delivered her trunk into the hands of a station porter so he could put her trunk in the luggage compartment, and then quickly alighted, leather bag firmly in her head, hoping to find a carriage to herself.

The first carriage was full. The second had only room for one more. The third had three in it, the fourth three again. Felicity was beginning to despair when she spotted another door open at the very end. Running, for she could easily do this in trousers, she reached it, flung herself inside, and slammed the door behind her.

Before anyone could see, she yanked the blinds down on the glass pane in the door and the window.

Voices passed by in the corridor, complaining about not being able to find a carriage. Felicity swiftly leapt from the window to the door, flicking the catch down just in time as the handle rattled.

“Excuse me, is there any room in this cabin?”

Felicity froze. She recognised that voice! She was certain it was not Ethan. It sounded more like William, but she could be wrong.

Voice shaking, she called out. “I’m terribly sorry, but my mother has the most awful headache. She needs silence and dark.”

William, or whoever it was, had obviously not been expected a woman inside. He coughed. “I’m very sorry, please do excuse us. I wish your mother well.”