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

Charity’s brows rose. Her cheeks flushed with colour. She dropped her gaze to the tapestry she had forgotten still rested in her lap. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. They are both handsome men,” Agatha replied. “What we want to know is why they were here? Why, I cannot ever remember you saying that you had cousins in London.”

“I don’t,” Charity replied honestly.

She hated to be evasive with her friends. The urge to tell them everything just so they could contentedly go home was so strong that Charity found herself contemplating what she could tell them that the men from the War Office would be happy with. The fact of the matter was that she couldn’t tell them anything because she had been sworn to secrecy.

“Are you in some sort of trouble?” Monika murmured quietly.

Charity went still. “No. Why do you ask?”

Monika dropped her tapestry onto the table before her. “Maybe because the man, the taller one with the brown hair, had a gun under his cloak.”

Gertrude gasped. Her eyes were wide as

she looked from Monika to Charity and back again. “Did you see it?” she asked Monika in a horrified whisper.

“I am afraid they have heard about the kidnappings,” Charity said. “They came around to check I was all right, that’s all.”

“I say, you have not received any kind of threat, have you?” Alice cried. “You are more than welcome to stay with me if you have.”

Augusta Applebottom nodded emphatically. “I think you should come home with me, dear.”

Charity mentally groaned. “No, I have not been threatened. They were just worried, that’s all. I say, you haven’t seen anything untoward going on in the area, have you?”

Alice Brownlow’s small grey eyes widened. “Is there something we should know?”

She placed a shaking hand on her pearls around her neck as if to protect them from thieving hands.

“No,” Charity hastened to assure them. “I just read in the broadsheet that women had been snatched.”

“Oh, but they were young women, not old like us,” Alice gushed with a heady sigh of relief.

“Speak for yourself,” Monika chided, tipping her pert nose high into the air. “I am not old, I am matured.”

“Matured? Don’t you mean mature?” Edwina prompted.

“No, I am like a fine wine. I have matured with age and continue to mellow and grow ripe,” Monika announced with a severity that belied the twinkle in her eye.

“More like a stinky cheese,” Gertrude muttered around a rueful look.

Monika rolled her eyes. “I prefer wine,” she replied. Suddenly, she levelled a look on Charity that was hard. “If anybody should try anything I shall just land my tapestry bag on their heads. That should cook their goose.”

Everyone nodded.

“I think we should take our tapestries with us wherever we go from now on,” Alice suggested.

“How about if we meet daily while the brigand is a threat to us?” Edwina cried, her face wreathed in a delighted smile.

“I think we have to plan how we are going to get home. None of us should walk about unchaperoned. We have to go in twos,” Monika warned.

“Well, that is you in trouble then, my dear, because you live at the end of the lane all by yourself. Anybody who has to drop you off will have to double back to get back to the village by themselves,” Gertrude replied. “It defeats the purpose of leaving here in twos.”

Monika nodded but her face turned militant. “I should like to dare them to try to kidnap me,” she thundered, slamming an uncharacteristic fist on her knee.

“I think it would be wise to go in twos to keep everyone safe. Don’t linger outside, and don’t answer your door to anybody when you are alone. Don’t forget that some of the kidnappings have happened in broad daylight.” Charity mentally winced when she realised everyone had gone perfectly still and now sat staring at her with wide eyes.

“I say, you do know something, don’t you?” Alice Brownlow prompted.