Chapter 3

"Alaina, please, you do not have to pack."

"Someone has to pack for you," Alaina reminded Caroline. Alaina was up to her arms in fine gowns that she was trying her best to fit into a small portmanteau, though every time she squeezed in another gown, a pair of shoes seemed to fall out, even hitting her on the arm at one point. "Ow," she murmured quietly. "I cannot believe how many gowns you have."

"I will not go." Caroline flung herself down on the bed, something she had done numerous times this last week as they prepared for their visit to the Duke of Peddleton's house. She covered up two more of the dresses, which Alaina promptly began to pull out, trying her best to free them from Caroline's weight.

"You have said that to your father many times. Has he once listened to you?"

"No!" Caroline sat up, releasing the gowns with such suddenness that Alaina fell promptly onto the rug beside the bed. At one point, they both would have laughed at such ridiculousness. Today, though, they could only manage brief smiles. "I will not go." Caroline pulled gowns out of the portmanteau and dropped them on the bed again.

"I don't think you understand how packing works, Caro."

"Ally!"

"I know, I know." Alaina held up her hands in innocence as she stood again. "Listen, my friend. You and I have considered every opportunity this last week, but neither of us can think of a way to get you out of this."

"What are you saying?" Caroline asked wildly, flinging her dark hair behind her head. "That I should just resign myself to being miserable forever?"

"Never." Alaina kneeled on the bed beside her friend and rested her hands on Caroline's shoulder. A look of sudden calmness came over Caroline's features at this touch. "Caroline, all I'm saying is we need to think of another plan. Perhaps in the meantime, there is no harm in you meeting the Duke of Peddleton. What if you were to meet him and fall hopelessly in love with him?"

Caroline snorted in such an unladylike manner that they both giggled.

"It could happen," Alaina said eagerly. "Love has been found in stranger places. Look at Benedict and Beatrice, Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra."

"Some of them had rather unhappy ends," Caroline reminded her hurriedly.

"Perhaps I didn't pick the best examples," Alaina murmured. "Yet think of it, Caro. There is always the possibility that the Duke of Peddleton is a better man than you fear him to be."

"How can he be?" Caroline asked with sudden passion. "He has asked for my hand without ever meeting me. He has shown absolutely in one firm stroke how little he cares for me or who I even am."

"He has asked to meet you."

"Alaina, you are determined to think well of him."

"I'm not, though I'd say you are determined to think ill of him," Alaina warned softly. "All I'm saying, Caro, is that he may not be the Devil."

Caroline abruptly stopped arguing, but she heaved with every breath. Comforted to at last have some peace, even if it was a tense one, Alaina returned to the packing. She paused once when she lifted a fine gown from the bed. It was her favourite of Caroline's, made of Pomona green silk, so bold compared to the other pastel dresses she so often wore. Alaina ran her hands lovingly over the brocade across the bust of the dress before she laid it into the portmanteau and turned her back on it.

As a maid, she had never had the blessing to wear such things, but she couldn't help admiring them in the briefest of moments. It was all too easy to be distracted by the luxury and the beauty that Caroline occasionally took for granted.

"Oh, this is hopeless." Caroline flung herself back down on the bed again, narrowly missing one of the dresses that Alaina managed to snatch up in time. "I cannot comfort my heart as you can comfort yours. I know I shall be miserable there. I know it! Why? Because I am being ordered around like a piece on a chessboard. That is how my father sees me; I am sure of it."

"Perhaps you should start considering what you will like about this move rather than what you are dreading," Alaina suggested with hope as she tried to stuff more shoes into a second portmanteau that she placed on the floor. "There must be something."

"Hmm." Caroline sat up in thought.

All around them, the air was growing dusky and dark. Within a few hours, they would be asleep, and time would race forward until the next morning, when they would embark on their journey. At the thought, Alaina glanced towards the window and the setting sun.

She couldn't help being hopeful, even if Caroline refused to be. A new place, with so many new people, was it so wrong of Alaina to hope that perhaps amongst those people, she would meet someone? That perhaps she would not have to live her life alone forever?

"Yes, there is one good thing at least," Caroline said, sitting forward and picking up shoes to help Alaina with the packing.

"What's that?" Alaina asked, shifting her focus away from the window.

"I shall not have to see my father so much." Caroline wrinkled her nose. "He and I have always been like cats and dogs. I shall be delighted not to have to see him every day." The triumph with which she declared these words made Alaina still as she kneeled beside the pile of shoes.