The Derring-Do Club and the Year of the Chrononauts Read Online Free Page A

choice between being an Angel of the Home or a Fallen Women. You don’t want to be a fallen woman now, do you?”
    “Maybe I do?”
    “Don’t be foolish. You don’t know what one is, so how can you have an opinion either way.”
    “You’re not married,” Charlotte countered. “Does that make you a fallen woman?”
    “Don’t be impertinent.”
    “I wouldn’t mind a Captain like Car–”
    “He has frayed cuffs and therefore no money. We need to find an Earl or a Lord or a Lancashire industrialist.”
    “But they’re all fat and ninety!”
    Earnestine gave Charlotte a glare: “You may tell them you are a Deering–Dolittle, but on no account mention that we are the branch from Kent.”
    “Our branch saved the Empire.”
    “Which hardly engenders a reputation as respectable stay–at–home young ladies.”
    Charlotte wondered how Earnestine could go on about respectable stay–at–home young ladies when she was being utterly horrid: “Stay at home!?”
    “Don’t whine,” Earnestine chided. “You’re becoming as bad as Georgina before she was married.”
    “But she’s ill now. She throws up every morning. I don’t want to catch Wife Ague.”
    “There’s no such thing, and she does it discreetly, whereas… from now on, you must be seen and not heard, Charlotte.”
    “But I’m not a child.”
    “You were complaining earlier that you were too young,” Earnestine pointed out. “A child must be quiet, whereas a young lady looking for a husband must be silent .”
    Charlotte went silent, but out of shock.
    “So it’s decided,” Earnestine said, summing up. “A husband.”
    Earnestine turned away, and Charlotte saw her dictatorial outline, her hawk–like nose and her pointy witch’s chin.
    That was it then, Charlotte realised; they’d been planning behind her back to farm her off to some old fuddy–duddy. Well, she’d have none of it. First chance she got she’d talk to Uncle Jeremiah: he always understood her, and he’d invite her in to his drawing room, where he always had macaroons in a tin.
    Earnestine and Georgina were talking to Caruthers and McKendry. She could hear them comparing this act with the other, preferring the magician or the dancers, and they were all just stupid, because obviously the military brass band had been the best.
    Charlotte took a few steps down until she was on street level, wanting to get as far away from Earnestine as possible.
    There was still a multitude of finely dressed theatre goers thronging the pavement. The near constant street hawkers and beggars had been pushed aside. Carriages and hansoms came up to collect passengers, but with much trouble as one vehicle remained resolutely parked at the kerb. Its blinds were drawn up, but the inside was dark, a black like pitch or treacle, except for a single, glowing red ember. Smoke drifted out as the occupant exhaled.
    Charlotte was drawn closer and closer, a step at a time, curious to see who waited within.
    A hand stopped her.
    A man had stepped in front. He had a broken nose, tilted to the left, and pugnacious eyes beneath an eyebrow split with scars. Perhaps, Charlotte thought, he was completely bald for, unusually, he had no moustache and he was hairless from the rim of his bowler down.
    He’d broken the spell: the bustle of the street crowded in on her like the school bell fills the corridors with commotion.
    “Excuse me, Miss,” he said, sternly in that self–important manner that only butlers or batmen seemed to possess. “That’s far enough.”
    “Oh, I just…” but Charlotte couldn’t think of an excuse. Usually, when she was breaking some school rule or other, she had one prepared.
    “Jones!” The voice, a woman’s, came from the dark interior of the carriage. “Who is it?”
    “I don’t know, Ma’am.”
    The embers waved imperiously casting tiny sparks of glowing ash to the breeze.
    The man, Jones, turned to Charlotte: “Who are you?”
    “Miss Charlotte Deering–Dolittle, if