A Spinster's Awakening (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 2)

He knew trouble was afoot. His suspicions were proven correct when a cheery face suddenly appeared in the window and tapped rapidly on the glass.

“Cooee!” the elderly woman called who boldly peered into the house to see why the door wasn’t answered immediately.

“The tapestry group,” Angus sighed with a mental curse. It couldn’t be anyone else given the small gaggle of ladies carried various items of sewing paraphernalia.

“Yes, the tapestry group,” Charity murmured.

“I am afraid that now they have seen you neither of you can go anywhere. They won’t stop asking questions until they get all the answers they are satisfied with.”

“They mustn’t know about our arrangement,” Angus warned.

“How am I supposed to keep it from them? Do you not think they would notice you?” She motioned to his powerful length standing so masculine and handsome in the middle of her sitting room. “How am I to lie?”

“Leave that to us, just follow the story. Let us answer any questions they might ask,” Angus warned.

“Just don’t stop being who you usually are. Let us give them excuses and build the story as we go,” Aaron suggested.

“I hate lying to them,” Charity growled.

She purposely ignored the increasingly heavy thuds on the front door. They positively vibrated around the house and warned everyone that the ladies were getting impatient. Even so, Charity couldn’t answer it until she was sure she was doing the right thing.

“They are worried now they have seen me with you,” she said quietly.

“That’s understandable,” Angus sighed. “Just let them in and stay calm. At some point, we will leave just so long as we have your assurance we can use your room. With your agreement, I will return at about ten tonight. I will give three brisk but quiet knocks on the back door. If you don’t hear three knocks, don’t answer the door. All right?”

Charity’s head was reeling. She watched Angus’s lips move but couldn’t focus on his words. Her mind was running in several different directions, driven along by the panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She had never felt so out of control of her life before, and it was a little overwhelming.

I have suddenly gone from having an empty house and being miserably lonely to having my life driven along by a handful of probing people who don’t seem able to mind their own business.

She didn’t say that aloud, though. She wouldn’t be so presumptuous or rude. Not least because the men in her sitting room were trying to capture someone who was willingly destroying innocent young people’s lives. That thought, and that thought alone, was enough to make Charity square her shoulders and march toward the door.

“Can we stay?” Angus pressed before Charity could leave the room.

“Meet the tapestry group first,” Charity warned. “Then decide.”

Angus and Aaron were left staring at an empty doorway.

“You may want to take your chances with the kidnapper, though,” she muttered as she went to answer the door.

Angus lifted his brows. In the silence of the house it had been easy to hear her muttered sentiments. He shifted a wary gaze to his friend and colleague who was studying the two ladies peering into the room at him.

“I do believe we have jumped from the frying pan and into the fire,” Aaron murmured.

“I do believe we have taken up position in the middle of a gossip’s paradise,” Angus grunted. “Jesus, what have we done?”

“Brace yourself,” Aaron warned as he

took up a fighting stance, as though he was prepared to do battle.

Angus mentally began to pray for the fortitude to get through the forthcoming interview, and sternly reminded himself that it would all be worth it in the end.

Aware of the expectant silence behind her, Charity stalked to the door before she talked herself out of answering it. She suspected the men might not want to stay when they realised what the tapestry group was really like.

“Oh, my dear, I didn’t realise you had company,” Alice Brownlow gasped as she burst into the hallway, side-stepping around everybody who was in front of her. She glanced about expectantly then dropped her huge tapestry bag onto the floor at her feet as though right at home. Hurriedly, she began to yank at the voluminous folds of her cloak, seemingly unsatisfied with having to wait for everyone else. Still dragging her cloak off her shoulders, she stalked straight into the sitting room.

“Well, who do we have here?”

Agatha Renton stepped into the house and looked about her.