Free What the Fates Decree: The Caversham Chronicles-The Titans of the Revolution by Sandy Raven Page B

form out of her head. She’d have to talk to him, maybe shake some sense into him. Get him to see through the helpless miss act.
    But first, she had to share with Penny the interesting behaviors of the countess, Lady Edgar, Olivia, and Marcus. Then she’d tell her friend about the handsome doctor. The cousin to the new earl.
    “I find it interesting that the very morning after he decided he would marry Miss Olivia, he left Rathcavan for Glasgow with the new earl.” Isabel spoke in a hushed tone, as she sat opposite Charlotte on Penny’s bed. The three of them gossiped about the dinner, and all the interesting discoveries. “And Miss Olivia! Her behavior!”
    “You noticed, too?” Charlotte whispered. “I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who saw that. Your brother must be careful.”
    “I was thinking that same thing,” Isabel replied. “I’m planning to talk to him.”
    “Miss Olivia is a prodigious flirt,” Charlotte added. “Indeed, she is of the first order. I know she is your cousin, Penny, dear, but she is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered.”
    “I am curious why he left so suddenly after becoming engaged to marry?” Penny mused.
    “From what I overheard when Miss Olivia was talking to Marcus,” Isabel said, “the new earl received a note regarding the accident at his iron mill and he and Mr. Santiago left immediately to set things to right again.”
    “He went to help his friend, and not run from Olivia,” Penny said. “Is she making it sound to Marcus that Mr. Santiago abandoned her?”
    Isabel nodded.
    “That is suspicious. Why would she do that?” Charlotte asked to no one in particular. Was he running from Olivia? Could it be because he still cared for Penny? And if he did, why did he not write to her?
    Penny, and Isabel also, were her two best friends. Charlotte would do anything for them, including protect them from men whose only intent is to hurt her friends. She wouldn’t even have to ask them to know instinctively that they would do the same.
    “I don’t know what to make of it,” Penny said, her voice flat and hollow-sounding. When her friend sat up on the bed, eyes glazed over with shock of the evening’s revelations, Charlotte realized she was still in a great deal of pain.
    “Why would Olivia say she didn’t wish to marry him, and then give the impression that she cared about him leaving and being away for so long.
    “I also have questions,” Isabel mused. “But it would be considered ill mannered of me to ask directly.”
    Charlotte agreed. “Could it be that he is still on his mission, and is that why he hasn’t written to you?”
    “I was under the impression that he was to leave the country,” Penny said. “That he had to go somewhere to do this translation work for the government.”
    “Scotland is technically another country,” Charlotte added. “But what is he translating, Gaelic?”
    “His specialty is the various dialects of the Arab countries,” Penny said. “I was under the impression that his mission was very secret and dangerous. But that doesn’t explain—”
    “—What he’s doing with your cousin in Glasgow,” Charlotte finished.
    “Do you think if you went directly to Lady Adina,” Isabel said, “and asked her what brought Nathaniel to Rathcavan that she might tell you? It seemed to me that she knew much and intentionally divulged little.”
    “I got that same feeling, too,” Charlotte said. She thought about the countess’ treatment of her granddaughter, and added, “Did you get the impression that Lady Adina just… tolerates Lady Edgar and Olivia? She didn’t seem to take seriously Lady Edgar’s claim that Olivia and Mr. Santiago are betrothed. She deflected any mention of it later, during dessert.”
    “You are right, Charlotte,” Isabel said. “I don’t understand why she isn’t happier for her granddaughter’s betrothal to Mr. Santiago. Does she not find him an appropriate match?”
    “He’ll be arriving