Look Before You Leap by Virginia Heath (Excerpt)

Chapter ONE


WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, SEVEN YEARS BEFORE …

Good gracious me! What on earth is all that muck on your shoes, Charlotte?”

Trust the eagle-eyed Miss P to appear in the hallway at the precise moment Lottie was trying to sneak back up the stairs.

“You really need to start looking where you are going, Charlotte, and how you go there.” The owner of Miss Prentice’s School for Young Ladies, Lottie’s new home for the foreseeable future, peered at the mud-covered toes of Lottie’s boots in resigned despair. “When you bound about everywhere at the speed you tend to, unpleasant things splatter.” Then her nose wrinkled in exasperated disgust. “A proper young lady should always avoid mud at all costs, dear. It isn’t seemly to be wearing it. It hints at a complete lack of decorum.” The older woman huffed out a sigh, shaking her head before repeating, as she seemed to do hourly, with the resigned patience of an absolute saint, her mantra and the ethos.

“You are one of my protégées, Charlotte. Handpicked because I know that deep down you have so much potential to succeed.” She glanced at the shoes again and shuddered. “Very deep down. But to unleash all that potential, to become the crème de la crème and a true protégée of this school, you have to start embracing and embodying all of the Four D’s.” While Miss P launched into the already familiar lecture, Lottie bit the inside of her lip so that she would not give in to the overwhelming temptation to roll her eyes and tell her new mentor that she was probably wasting her time. There wasn’t anything genteel or subdued to be found in Lottie’s character and you could place all that she knew about behaving like a proper young lady on the head of a pin. And there would likely still be space left on it.

“The Four D’s are the pillars that define who we are, Charlotte. Duty. Decorum. Diligence.” Miss Prentice counted each word on her upheld fingers. “And discretion at all times! At. All. Times!” The index finger wagged now. “It needs to become a habit, dear. It needs to be ingrained until it is second nature. That”—she wafted a regal hand to encompass the entire building—“is what makes my graduates so special. What ensures that they are the most-sought-after employees in any great house. There are run-of-the-mill governesses, or secretaries, or lady’s companions, Charlotte, and there are my protégées.” Miss P’s chin lifted with pride, and rightly so. Being a protégée guaranteed one of her girls earned double the salary of all the run-of-the-mill governesses, secretaries, or lady’s companions serving the ton.

That was the single biggest reason that Lottie was determined to make a success out of her stint here, despite all her many glaring character failings.

That and the inconceivable fact that Miss P had seen something in her to handpick her.

Her!

Lottie Travers!

Tomboy extraordinaire.

Nobody had been more shocked than she had been when the letter of invitation had arrived out of the blue at the family farm a month ago, and while her father and brothers had almost wet themselves laughing at the prospect of her training to become one of the crème de la crème, they had all been unanimous. It was an amazing opportunity too fortuitous to turn down. Especially when fortune and the Travers clan were virtual strangers and, through no fault of their own, money ran through their hands like sand through a sieve. This could, if she really, really, really tried to suppress practically everything that made her uniquely her, help her family financially.

“You have been given a great opportunity here…” Those wily schoolmistress’s eyes dropped to Lottie’s boots again. “Yet all that mud makes me wonder if you are paying any attention at all in your deportment lessons.”

“I am paying attention and I will try harder in them, Miss P, I promise. It’s just…” There was no point denying some of the unfortunate truth she was trying so hard to contain. “I grew up on a farm and therefore, I suppose, I don’t really pay much attention to mud because it is everywhere.”

Miss P sighed, her exasperation softening. “I know, dear, and I should make allowances, no matter how much potential I see in you. Let us blame my passionate reprimand on the morning grumps when I am most prone to lecture.” She gently reached out to tuck one of Lottie’s errant blond waves behind her ear. “You have years to become a true protégée and I am expecting too much for you to be proficient in the Four D’s in just a week.”

“I will try harder, Miss P, I promise.” For both Miss P and for her five menfolk struggling to make ends meet back in Kent.

“I know you will, dearest.”

Eager to escape now that the mood had changed and before Miss P questioned her further, Lottie offered a grateful smile before she turned. She went to dash up the stairs, then remembering that decorum seemed to be her biggest nemesis, stopped her feet from running to attempt a suitably decorous ascent instead. She managed all of three stairs before Miss P decided to ask the question she’d been dreading anyway.

“But where exactly have you been to get so muddy at”—she glanced at the grandfather clock, incredulous again—“six o’clock in the morning?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” With an awkward shrug, Lottie turned and then crossed her fingers behind her back to negate the necessary lie while she shuffled her filthy feet beneath the hem of her dress. Cursing herself for not having the wherewithal to clean them outside while simultaneously hoping that her kindly new mentor wouldn’t notice that the boots, which were caked in mud, were also, in fact, not the dainty sort that any decorous young lady should be wearing here in Mayfair at all.

Instead, they were sturdy men’s boots.

To be more precise, they were her youngest brother Dan’s riding boots. Shamelessly pilfered from his wardrobe and stuffed in her trunk along with several pairs of breeches liberated from each of her other three brothers’ closets on the morning she had departed the family farm. “I went to watch the sunrise in the garden.” Another lie she made sure to cross her fingers to mitigate against. Because according to the gospel of her twin middle brothers Matthew and Luke, if you could get away with crossed fingers without someone demanding to see them, that went some way to canceling the lie out. A falsehood went from being a lie to being a fib, and fibs weren’t quite as bad. “I am never good at sleeping in a strange bed.”

Another lie, her third in quick succession and one that would have definitely had her called out at home. Both her father and her four brothers knew that she could sleep anywhere—even upright if necessary—never mind that her new bed here was an absolute delight. Plump feather pillows, an even plumper mattress, a thick and cozy eiderdown, and sheets so smooth and crisp she sighed with unadulterated pleasure every single time she slipped between them. Lottie would even go as far as to say that she had never slept so soundly in her life as she had in the six nights she had been here and, from someone who always slept like the dead, that was saying something. No doubt the rich and frothy bedtime cocoa that all the students were plied with also helped her swift drift into blissful dreamland too.

She had a decent bed at home, of course, and Papa worked his fingers to the bone to ensure that none of his five children had ever gone to bed cold or hungry. But the sheets in Aylesford were old and well-darned and nobody had ever taught Lottie how to make cocoa. If her mother had known, she had taken that secret to the grave with her, because there was no recipe for it in the stuffed notebook of collected wisdom dear Mama had written for her when her daughter had been barely ten and she had known the end was near. As that precious tome included a recipe for a salve to soothe a snakebite, when there weren’t any snakes in Kent and probably weren’t any in the entire British Isles either, her practical and thorough mother hadn’t had the first clue about cocoa either. Which was a great shame because Lottie knew she would have loved it. So would her brothers. And Papa.

A wave of homesickness hit her hard.

Lord, how she missed her menfolk. The noise, the laughter. The incessant teasing. The freedom that came with living in an all-male household two miles outside of the village. Back home, alien concepts like decorum didn’t exist to trip her up and remind her of how little knowledge she had about behaving like a lady. Which in turn made her suddenly mourn her mother all over again.

As that pain must have shown on her face, Miss P reached up for her hand and squeezed it tight. “It is perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed, dear, especially when all this is so new. But it will pass, I promise. And it’s not as if you are never going to see home again, is it? You’ll be back with your family for Whitsun and Christmas and Easter. A whole month in the summer with no pedantic old ladies nagging you about the need for avoiding mud.”

“I know,” said Lottie, feeling guilty at Miss P’s sympathy when it wasn’t in any way, shape, or form deserved this morning. “But there is something about the hour before dawn that reminds me of home. Maybe because it is the only time that London is truly quiet and I’m a country mouse at heart.” One used to galloping across her father’s fields at the precise moment the sun poked its head above the horizon.

Nothing woke you up better than the glorious exhilaration created by thundering hooves beneath you while the wind rushed over your face. It was even better if you could race someone beyond competitive, like Stephen, who considered himself the best horseman of the family, and then beat them. But alas, her eldest brother was a day’s carriage ride away from Mayfair. A crying shame when he was a huge fan of a morning gallop too, and thought himself the best at it.

Which of course he wasn’t now that his baby sister had trounced him on their last steeplechase—and she had been on the lesser horse.

“Well, there is no harm in watching the sunrise out in the fresh air here. So long as you stay within the sanctuary of our garden. If a worldly-wise woman like myself isn’t safe on the streets of London in the dark from those who lurk in the shadows ready to take advantage, I dread to think what would happen to a naïve and unchaperoned country mouse of barely sixteen. How on earth would I ever face the families if something happened to one of my girls?” Miss P tensed as she contemplated that horror, making Lottie want to wince again.

Because she had, indeed, learned firsthand this very morning that there were lurkers in the dark shadows of Mayfair ready to take advantage. Half Moon Street might well be the home of the respectable, and the whole area might well be a well-to-do and leafy enclave during daylight hours, but she had certainly seen some evidence of the dissolute in her fast jaunt through the parks that abutted it this morning! Certainly enough to confirm that it wasn’t the sort of place a genteel and delicate young lady should venture alone until the rest of the world woke up.

However, one of the advantages of growing up in a house full of brothers was that she was also as far from delicate as it was humanly possible to be. She had her father’s height, so she towered over most women, and a lifetime of farmwork had made her muscles strong. With so many overbearing and quick-tempered siblings all vying to be top dog, she had also always known how to fight. She had a wicked right hook and a decent enough left one if Dan’s now wonky nose was any gauge. Besides, from the moment womanhood had begun to blossom and the local boys had come sniffing around her, her overprotective brothers had taught her how to hone all those things to fight really dirty. That was why she knew every weak spot on the male body and how to turn a randy stud into a gelding quick sharp—and had done so on more than one occasion.

The miller’s son, especially, back in Aylesford, had certainly been able to hit some very high notes in church for several weeks after he had attempted to take some liberties with her person at the last harvest festival, that was for sure! Or at least more liberties than she was comfortable granting. A stolen kiss or two was one thing, because a kiss was harmless in the grand scheme of things, but she had drawn the line at his hand up her skirts!

“Should I ask cook to save some breakfast for you so you can grab another hour of sleep?” Miss P’s concern and generosity were doing nothing to ease Lottie’s guilt. Guilt that she was lying. Guilt that she had snuck out. Guilt that she had broken several school rules in her quest for an hour of familiar freedom when she really appreciated being here. And yet more guilt at not being ladylike enough despite all her best intentions. “Two if you need it. I could inform your first teacher…”

Lottie shook her head. Talk about killing her with kindness! “No need. I am wide awake now.” She smiled at her new mentor as she extracted her hand from Miss P’s concerned grasp and backed up the stairs, the shame at her outright disobedience now somehow outweighing her need to be at one with the great outdoors again. Perhaps because that unbearable itch had been scratched? She certainly hoped so because this was too good an opportunity to ruin with her usual wild ways.

“But as I am up, I might as well make myself presentable and then go help Miss Denby set up the classroom for our deportment lesson—where I promise I will make a concerted effort to soak up every word and then act on all of them from this day forward.” She resisted the urge to cross her fingers again and instead clasped both hands primly out in front, determined that she had told the truth rather than a lie because she really would try. Papa would tell her never to look a gift horse in the mouth, and she appreciated that becoming a governess one day would give her the life that he wished he could’ve given her. Fine clothes. Fine company. A decent salary and no more backbreaking work in the fields alongside her brothers. “I am determined to make everyone proud.”

“That is very good to hear, Charlotte. Once you’ve learned to curb that unfortunate streak of wildness inside you, I have every faith that you will be a protégée par excellence.”

Ready to get on with her own day, Miss Prentice spun on her heel and headed toward her office and Lottie sagged in relief as she plodded upward to her bedchamber.

That had been too close a call for comfort.

Now she knew that Miss P’s day started at six o’clock, if she ever ventured out on another morning jaunt again—which of course she wouldn’t—Lottie would be sure to be back by a quarter to, next time. She also needed to find a secure place to store her brother’s boots where she could swap them out for more appropriate footwear before she came back in.

And in view of the fact that Mayfair before dawn was nowhere near as safe as Kent was and the ne’er-do-wells had seemed much worse, she should probably also consider taking some sort of weapon with her if there was a next time too. A stocking filled with a few marbles would be small enough to conceal about her person but still effective enough to deliver a decisive wallop if she needed to whack any lurking scoundrel—

“Where the hell have you been?” Her new friend and roommate, Portia, emerged from their bedchamber door and grabbed Lottie by the shoulders, simultaneously shaking them as she dragged her inside. Only once she had kicked the door closed did Portia hiss, “We’ve all been worried sick!” She jerked her pretty, dark head at Lottie’s abandoned bed, the plump eiderdown now yanked back to reveal the pillows she had arranged to resemble a sleeping body beneath the covers. Behind that, the worried faces of her other two new friends and roommates, Georgie and Kitty, added several fresh layers to her already massive guilt. “We were on the cusp of raising the alarm and thought you’d run away back to your farm!”

“We thought she had run away,” corrected Kitty with a pointed look at Portia. “She thought you’d snuck out to indulge in some clandestine petting with that stable lad we all collided with in the park yesterday because Portia always likes to think the worst.”

“Who can blame me?” Portia shook Lottie’s shoulders again. “You were flirting with him outrageously! For almost an hour too! And while I think that the rules that society expects we women to follow are archaic and that our reputations shouldn’t be the be-all and end-all when character is more important—the rest of society is yet to wake up to that unfairness.” Her friend’s finger wagged just like Miss P’s had. “You still have a reputation to protect if you want to become a protégée and I am sure I overheard you agree to meet that stable lad today when I had to practically drag you away from him! Is he who you were up to no good in the small hours with?”

Lottie considered trying to lie again until she realized it really wouldn’t wash. She had hoped to sneak in and change before her three friends woke, but as they were all clearly wide awake now, that horse had bolted. Emotions were obviously also running high, so she was unlikely to get any privacy now to strip out of the muddy breeches concealed beneath her skirt, which would undoubtedly give the game away anyway. And she couldn’t not change out of Dan’s riding boots before she ventured downstairs again because they were another dead giveaway of what she had been up to. Any more than she could completely deny the accusations about the stable lad, when she had gone out of her way to flirt outrageously with him. Would have probably even kissed him if he’d asked, if it ensured that he lent her a horse. Would have probably kissed him even without the promise of a horse, truth be told, because he had been rather handsome despite his lack of cleverness and there really was no harm in kissing—so long as nobody else found out. “Yes—but—” Her three friends gasped in unison.

While Georgie’s and Kitty’s jaws dropped in shock, Portia’s finger jabbed before Lottie could finish her sentence.

“I knew it!” Portia sank to Lottie’s unoccupied mattress, squashing the pillow corpse as she put two and two together and made six hundred and fifty-six. “Oh, good heavens above. You actually did sneak out in the small hours for a clandestine meeting with a boy! What were you thinking?” Scandalized eyes locked with hers with touching, friendly anguish, reminding her so much of the supportive bond she had once shared with her mother. “Have you been … ruined now, Lottie?”

The other two gasped again at the ramifications of that possibility, and this time Lottie couldn’t help but roll her eyes at their ridiculous overreaction.

“Of course I haven’t been ruined! I am not an idiot, girls! I have no intentions of rolling around in the hay with Albert.” At their further gasp at that unladylike retort, she realized that her new friends had lived much more sheltered lives than she had, confirming that Miss P’s comment about Lottie’s “wildness” did perhaps hold more merit here in polite society than she had originally feared. “Nor do I intend to.” Which was also sort of the truth. Handsome Albert might get a stray kiss here and there in the future, especially if he kept lending her horses like he had today—if she was ever silly enough to do that again—but she did have some standards. That meant that Lottie was resolute that while a kiss was just a kiss, she would reserve any sort of hay rolling only for someone special. “I like Albert—but I don’t like him in that way!” Only true love could convince her to lift her skirts and she knew herself well enough to know that a man needed to be more than just handsome to touch her heart. He had to be … perfect.

“Then why risk your reputation for him in the first place?” Kitty’s question was a fair one. “Why flirt with him and then sneak out to meet him at a wholly inappropriate hour unchaperoned?”

“Because he has unfettered access to a stable full of horses and I’ve missed riding mine.” A truth which, even to Lottie’s own ears, sounded mercenary as she blurted it. “I flirted outrageously with him so that I could borrow one this morning. That is all.” Another benefit of growing up in a house full of men was Lottie knew how their minds worked. A pretty face, some batting lashes, and the opportunity to feel attractive and impressive were all most men needed to be twisted around a woman’s finger.

Was it wrong to use that weapon against one if he was daft enough to be so easily manipulated?

Probably. But …

“You’ve been out riding?” Portia said it with more incredulity than she had said “ruined.”

“Yes.” Lottie offered a weak smile, hoping they would understand that her motives weren’t actually malicious—more medicinal. “I really needed the wind in my hair.” So much she physically ached.

“I see,” said Portia in a clipped tone that suggested she really didn’t see at all. “You’ve made us all worried sick since dawn.” She pointed at the exposed pillow corpse in disgust. “And you’ve lied to us all too.”

“I have never lied to you and I resent the implication!” Although the guilt at the string of whoppers she had just told Miss P with crossed fingers called her a hypocrite. “All I am guilty of is sneaking out for an hour to ride around the park for the sake of my sanity, and that is hardly a crime.”

“In a court of law, a lie by omission is still a lie, but that is by the by. I personally think that it is a crime that you willfully betrayed our trust in disappearing without any prior words of explanation, and you abused our friendship by preventing us from raising an alarm because we didn’t want to get you into any trouble.” Portia’s eyes narrowed. “And you forced us to do all that because you missed riding your horse?”

“Well … when you put it like that, you make a short and harmless canter sound thoughtless.” Which had always been Lottie’s main problem, according to her papa. He always nagged her to think about the consequences of her actions before she acted, whereas she tended to dive in headfirst. Worrying, in her humble opinion, solved nothing. It just made you feel miserable and Lottie wasn’t one for misery. “And selfish.”

“That’s because it is selfish!” Portia surged to her feet again, her outraged finger prodding afresh. “What were we supposed to say to Miss Prentice or one of the other teachers if they had wandered in here and asked where you were? Or do you deny that you expected your friends to lie to cover for you?”

“Well … I…” Suddenly, the seemingly necessary feel of thundering hooves beneath her while the wind whipped her hair didn’t feel quite so necessary as keeping her three new friends her friends.

“Forget being ruined, you could have been kidnapped!” Always the most fanciful of the four of them, Kitty’s eyes filled with tears that wounded far worse than all of Portia’s incensed but correct accusations. “You could have been murdered, Lottie!”

“Which as you can all see, I plainly wasn’t.”


Copyright © 2025 by Susan Merritt