Free The Beloved One by Danelle Harmon

before she even reached the landing.
    Mildred was stripped down to her stays when Ophelia entered the room.  The two sisters unlaced each other.  Grumbling about how Amy had always used to come in with the bed warmer before Lord Charles's arrival, Mildred slipped beneath the quilts of the bed they both shared and gasped at the feel of the icy sheets against her skin.  Ophelia quickly followed her in, and the two snuggled together for warmth, the cat under the covers with them.  Downstairs, they could hear the squeak of the floorboards as Amy moved about.  And they could envision her gazing dreamily at Lord Charles, and fancying him as she had no right to do.
    The thought made them both angry and nauseated.
    "Listen to her down there," Ophelia said hatefully.  "Fussing over him, making him cozy, digging her way under his skin like a tick.  I nearly strangled myself on that stupid string she's rigged up so he can find his way around.  Next thing you know, she'll be sleeping on his pallet to keep him warm!"
    "It makes me furious to see how nice he is to her.  Can you believe the way he defended her this afternoon?  I nearly fainted with shock and disgust.  He treats her like she's some well-bred lady, whereas us —"
    "Whereas us, he won't even speak to."
    Mildred jerked the covers up to her chin.  "If only he knew what she really was, he wouldn't even suffer her to talk to him, let alone take care of him."
    "Not that it's going to matter one way or another."
    "What are you talking about?"
    "Our resident aristocrat already has himself a fiancée."
    "What, some snob of a noblewoman over in England?"
    "No, some hussy down in Boston named Juliet Paige."  Ophelia leaned over and retrieved the letters she'd put on the night table.  "Here, read these.  They're the letters he had Amy write for him that we're supposed to post."
    The chilly air outside the covers forgotten, Mildred sat up, pulled the candle close, and read each letter.  She skimmed through the one to Lord Charles's commanding officer, showed markedly more interest in the one to the duke, and narrowed her eyes as she read the one to his fiancée.  By the time she finished it, her face was twisted with spite and jealousy.
    She hurled the letters across the room.  "I wonder what she looks like, the little twit!"
    "The tail end of a donkey, probably."
    "I bet she's no better than we are . . . yet she's the one who'll get to be called lady . . ."
    "And live in a grand house."
    "And have clothes that cost the earth."
    "And servants she can order about like an army."
    "And a husband that looks like Lord Charles . . ."
    A charged, resentful silence stretched between them.
    "Know something, Millie?"
    "What?"
    "I hate her."
    "So do I."
    "And I don't think we ought to post those letters."
    "We have to.  How else are we going to make him like us, if not by doing favors for him?  Don't be a dolt, Ophelia, we have to post them."
    "No, Millie, don't you be a dolt.  Blind or not, Lord Charles is an aristocrat, and my sights are set a lot higher than the local fishermen, artisans and seafarers!  Do you think I'm just going to sit here and let him slip through our fingers so some stupid cow down in Boston can have him?"
    Mildred shot a nervous glance toward the door.  "What do you have in mind?"
    "A plan.  A plan so good that she'll never have him.  A plan that will keep him here long enough for one of us to get our claws into him and a ring on our finger.  Now listen up, and listen good . . ."
    ~~~~
    At two o'clock in the morning Charles, still in the chair, finally woke to a house that had gone dead-quiet and the nearly unbearable weight of his own thoughts.
    Someone had covered him with a heavy wool blanket.  His skin was sensitive to the fabric — it made him itch — and he wondered if it had been the blanket, or the vivid, disturbing dreams, that had finally roused him.  They were still with him, those dreams.  In them, his hand was once more plunging