Yes, three days later

Three days later Charlotte sat in the garden sipping tea in the afternoon thinking back on the weekend. By all objective measures it had gone as well as could be expected. Mr. Worthington’s outrageous behavior notwithstanding. Her ability to distract the man by throwing him together with the charming Miss Dunning had kept his demands from becoming too ****. Furthermore her conversation with Lieutenant Easton had resulted in the desired outcome. However, she acknowledged with the slightest of sighs that she was not completely at ease with her decision.

Her troubling dreams had not abated, if anything Mr. Fuller’s appearances had become more commonplace and not always as the colonial woodsman. He haunted her sleep each night sometimes in the role of a gallant hero and other times as the villain that captures the innocent maiden and uses her mercilessly. Worst of all Charlotte found that like that first night, the only way she could find sleep after these disturbing dreams by stroking herself vigorously to a climax. She worried about this new sexuality that had infected her like a fever. What was it about the irritating Mr. Fuller that made it impossible for her to return to her much more modest behavior?

She had of course touched herself like this since she first blossomed into womanhood, but only infrequently and in the past her caresses had been gentle explorations, not the urgent (at times even violent) fingering that she needed to satisfy the intense burning need that now gripped her. Even as her thoughts wandered she felt the urge to plead a headache and retire to the privacy of her room right now in the quiet time between tea and when she’d have to change for dinner.

Charlotte found herself blushing in shame at her inappropriate behavior. She had told no-one of her problem of course. Who could she tell? Certainly not her spinster aunts and not her female houseguests either. Neither Pricilla nor Beatrice were trustworthy enough to share something this intimate and private with. She giggled out loud as she pictured the elderly Reverend Edwards’ reaction if she tried to explain her problem to the rotund, balding vicar in the village church. Perhaps some of her girlfriends from school might understand, but in the past three or four years nearly all of them had married and their lives now revolved around their husbands and the new babies that seemed to arrive with regular frequency. It was hard to maintain her friendships with these women now that their lives seemed so different from hers. Maybe she could invite some of them to come visit next ... Shouts from the front of the house interrupted her musings.

“They’ve got him!” She knew at once who ‘he’ was. “They caught the elusive bugger!” Her heart jumped in her chest painfully as she slowly got up and **** herself to walk casually into the house. Her father’s office door was closed, but she could hear his triumphant roar through the thick oak paneling. Charlotte considered briefly knocking on the office door, but dismissed the idea immediately. Her father believed strongly that the estate business was no concern of hers. Instead she walked out to the stables and listened to the chatter of the stable boys as they recounted everything that they had heard from the village boys who ran up the hill with the news even faster than the official messenger sent by the shire reeve.

It had been Lieutenant Easton who caught the highwayman single handedly. He had left in the morning and by tea-time in the afternoon he had marched Black Brand back to the temporary barracks that the 43rd foot had requisitioned when it became clear that something had to be done about the increasing boldness of the outlaw. The buildings were just visible from the Marlton manor courtyard, a low freshly built barracks for the men, stables for the Colonel’s team and a few mounts for dispatch riders and a converted townhouse where the officers lived.

That’s where Mr. Fuller was right now. He must be somewhere in one of the three buildings she gazed down the hill in a hopeless attempt to make out where he might be. Would he hang as an outlaw or will the Easton be able to convince her father to allow him to serve his country in the King's Navy?

Not that she cared about the man. Or what happens to him for that matter.