Free My Surrender by Connie Brockway Page A

emerged from the crowd, carrying a broad bench between them. “Carefully now.”
    Gingerly they lifted Ginny to the bench. Their efforts, careful though they were, brought her to instant, painful consciousness. A cry of anguish broke from her throat.
    “It’s all right,” Charlotte said soothingly. “We’re taking you out of here.”
    “To where?” the gentleman in the green waistcoat asked anxiously.
    “My home,” St. Lyon answered.
    “No,” Ginny whispered, her eyes, great pools of agony, fixed on Charlotte. “Please.”
    “My house,” Charlotte said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I’ll stay with her. I can better look after her than you, comte.”
    St. Lyon did not argue. He stood up. “I’ll get my barouche,” he said and hurried back across the street.
    “Lottie.” The thin voice was barely audible, the syllables pressed out with great effort from between Ginny’s lips. “Promise.”
    “Quiet, dear—”
    “Lottie!” she gasped, her gaze wild. “You must promise me.”
    “Yes, yes,” Charlotte cooed, trying to calm her. “Of course. Anything.”
    Ginny shook her head, her face stricken. “You have to understand, Lottie. You must let no one dissuade you. You must go to St. Lyon’s castle in my place!”

5
    Culholland Square, Mayfair
July 18, 1806
    “Y OU MUST SOMEHOW CONVINCE both men to fall in with our plans,” Ginny whispered hoarsely to Charlotte. Her color was still ashen and pain had etched tiny lines at the corner of her lips. But though her eyes were dilated with the drugs the physician had left her, she seemed lucid.
    “Yes,” Charlotte assured her, settling the light coverlet more comfortably around Ginny’s slender figure, careful not to jar the leg cocooned in cotton batting and strapped between two wooden staves.
    “Drink this,” Charlotte urged, placing a cup of beef tea in Ginny’s hands. “You must keep up your strength.”
    Ginny jerked her head impatiently. “Can Ross be trusted?”
    “Yes.” Charlotte set down the cup. “I tell you again, his trustworthiness is without question. And his dedication is equal to either yours or mine.”
    “I do not doubt his dedication. I only doubt where it lies,” Ginny muttered. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting off a stab of pain as well as the mind-numbing influence of the drugs she had taken just before Charlotte’s arrival. “You said earlier you’d had a message from your…other associate.”
    “Yes,” Charlotte said, frowning at the memory of the short note that had arrived a few hours ago. “He wishes to speak with me this afternoon.”
    “Oh?”
    “We have only met twice before,” Charlotte explained, her expression shaded with puzzlement. “He is in a uniquely powerful position and it is imperative that his identity remains a secret. Until a few months ago I had never seen him properly. We always rendezvoused late at night and he kept to the shadows of whatever place we arranged to meet and even then had me leave the messages beneath a stone or in an urn as he watched from afar, then later he would retrieve them.”
    “A most cautious man,” Ginny said. “Why change now?”
    “I don’t know. I suspect he has heard of your accident and wishes to know how it affects our plan.”
    “Then you’d best go,” Ginny said and her eyelids fluttered shut.
     
    Charlotte wrapped the rough cloak more closely about her, glad that, despite its malodorous scent, she had borrowed it from her astonished scullery maid. Even the plainest gown in her wardrobe would have stood out like a beacon in this dingy sidestreet of Drury Lane. The driver of the hired hack, fearing not only for his cattle but himself, had refused to go any farther into the rookery, depositing her at the end of the alley with a grudging promise to wait a half hour before leaving.
    She could not blame him. Though the day was bright and the air mild, the stench rising from the open gutters running on either side of the deeply rutted road