The Abandoned Bride by Edith Layton

people’s lives. She would be i n this office many times again, she realized. For this was to be her life, and this was to be her future.
    She did not have to leave for Paris in the morning, even Lady Cunningham had not really expected that, Miss Parkinson had said. “They always like to make impossible demands at the start, even the best of them,” that astute female had confided, forgetting in her attempts to cheer Julia, that she ought not draw the lines between her wealthy patrons and her favored clients by calling the former “them,” somewhat scornfully, as she always did when she was alone with her sister.
    “That way, when you can’t go along with them, as they know you can’t, they think they have you beholden to them by their generosity. No matter,” she had gone on briskly. “Lady Cunningham leaves tomorrow morning, as planned, with the children and their nurse. You’re to take the packet when you can (and I really think a week’s time is long enough to make her grateful when she sees you, yet short enough not to make her angry at a delay), and meet up with her at Quillack’s Hotel in Calais.”
    Miss Parkinson had been quite right. A week’s time was sufficient to all purposes. It was both long enough for Julia to make her regret her decision, and short enough to cause her to feel panic. She shopped for trinkets to send home along with her explanatory letter. She purchased some small things for her own wardrobe. She accepted congratulations on her success from Mrs. White, along with a great many stories about both the perils and the pleasures of foreign travels from the experienced ladies at the boarding house. Then, without hesitation she set out from London by day, reached Dover by night, and sailed on an advantageous tide an hour into a new day.
    Now the sky brightened to a clear fresh morning and Julia left the rail to seek the privacy of her cabin: For she knew that an unaccompanied female must never seem to be loitering, for any reason. So when the packet was docked, and customs agents boarded it, Miss Julia Hastings appeared to be a calm, composed, purposeful young female, and even the French officials did no more than to rest their eyes upon her appreciatively when they thought she wasn’t looking.
    Though she was outwardly cool, it took every bit of her training not to show her excitement. Once she had accepted her fate, it was the resiliency of her character which made her admit the thrill she felt knowing that she was to travel in a foreign land. She had some French, from lessons taken with Lord Quincy’s daughters, but now no syllable she heard from the streets struck sense to her ears. Perhaps it was because the information received from her eyes had taken precedence.
    She stared at the citizens of Calais as the hired carriage took her to the hotel. There were peasants in their colorful garb, solid middle class citizens looking not too dissimilar from the stolid English burghers she had seen in Dover, and both French and English soldiers walked the same streets without rancor. In fact, she thought as the carriage drew up to the hotel, these citizens didn’t seem to be a defeated people, they seemed happy and busy and perhaps only felt relief rather than resentment, now that Bonaparte’s fate seemed finally settled.
    Julia was pleased that the manager of the hotel spoke English, and she softly and clearly stated her name and the name of Lady Cunningham. At the mention of her new employer, the manager gave Julia a wide smile and a knowing look. In fact, she thought with annoyance as he grinned at her, this was the first time since she had arrived in France that she had been the recipient of the sort of look that the good women of Mrs. White’s establishment had warned her against. So her back was very straight and her head very high when the manager showed her directly into a private salon, before he even attended to her luggage.
    “Miss Julia Hastings to see Lady Cunningham,” he