The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (31 page)

She shrieked and he threw his free hand over his eyes while he laughed.

“You are horrid,” she said, having realized too late that he teased. “Francis, I am just
cringing
when I remember. I cannot stop remembering.”

“Now to which of your most embarrassing moments are you referring, dear?” he asked.

“I sat on that branch,” she said, “after handing Mary to Gabriel. I was a quivering jelly of terror because I have always been afraid of heights. Do not laugh, Francis. That is most unkind. But I could not merely
say
so, could I? I could not warn you to be on the alert because I could not swim. Oh no. I could not even just keep my mouth shut. I had to call out gaily and with
stupid
bravado. What did I say?”

“ ‘There. That was not so difficult, was it?’ ” Lord Francis said. “ ‘There really was no danger at all.’ ”

“Word perfect,” she said with a groan. “But my question was rhetorical.
Don’t laugh
.”

Lord Francis laughed.

“And the branch chose that very moment to break off,” she said. “It would have been perfect if I had been acting out a farce. I must have looked so
inelegant
, Francis. All arms and legs and shrieking panic.”

He laughed. “I can assure you,” he said, “that we were not all lined up on the bank assessing the elegance of your fall, Cora.” He could not stop laughing.

“It will head the list of topics for my nightmares for the next ten years,” she said. She giggled.

“Oh, I hope not,” he said. “No, no, dear, I have every confidence in you. You will find something else to replace that particular embarrassing memory before another month has passed.”

She was laughing at the sky with open and loud merriment.

“How horrid you are,” she said. “Do you mean what I think you mean, Francis?”

“I most certainly do.” He paused for a hearty laugh.

“You will continue to be the delight of my life, Cora, for the rest of my days. I feel it in my bones.”

They both roared with hilarity.

“And I shall continue to ruin your most splendid coats for the rest of mine,” she said. “I feel it in my bones.”

They rolled onto their sides to face each other and clutched each other as they bellowed with mirth.

“P-p-prinny—” he managed to get out. But more words were impossible.

If they had been standing they would have had to hold each other up. Fortunately for both, they were not standing.

The Plumed Bonnet

HE WAS TRUDGING ALONG THE EDGE OF A NARROW
roadway somewhere north of London—a long way north of London, though she was not at all sure exactly where, the fuchsia color of her cloak and her pink bonnet with its deeper pink, fuchsia, and purple plumes making her look like some flamboyant and exotic yet bedraggled bird that had landed on the dusty road. Anyone passing by—though so
few
vehicles seemed to pass by, and those that did were invariably traveling in the opposite direction—would surely just keep on passing when they saw her. Her half boots were the only colorless part of her apparel, being as gray as the road, though they were actually black beneath the dust, an old and shabby black. She clutched a creased and worn reticule, which contained her pathetically small and much depleted store of coins—frighteningly small, frighteningly depleted. It was no longer even plural, in fact. There was one coin left.

Anyone seeing her now—and anyone within five unobstructed miles could not fail to see her and even be blinded by the sight of her, she thought with a grimace—would never guess that she was an eminently respectable young woman and, in addition, a very wealthy one. She chuckled with a humor that only succeeded in frightening her more when she heard the sound of it. By her
reckoning, it was going to take her days, perhaps even weeks to walk to Hampshire—she could not be more precise than that. But by her far more precise reckoning, she had enough money left in her reticule to buy one loaf of bread—one small loaf.

Could one loaf of bread sustain her through many days of walking? What would happen if it could not? She pushed the thought firmly aside and quickened her pace. It would simply have to do, that was all. When there was no food left, she would have to go on without it. Water would sustain her. There was always plenty of that to be had. She just hoped that the weather would stay fine and would not turn too cold at night. It was early May, after all. But she shuddered anew at the thought of having to face yet another night out of doors. Last night, even before she had had cause to do so, she had felt distinct unease. She had huddled on the field-ward side of a hedge. She had had no idea that a night could be so dark or so filled with unidentifiable noises—every one of them starkly terrifying. Later, of course, there had been real terror, from which she had been saved in the nick of time.

She could not believe this, she thought, stopping briefly to look back along the road. She just could not believe it. It could not be happening. Not to her. She had lived the most dull, the most drab, the most blameless of lives. Nothing even remotely resembling an adventure had ever come within hailing distance of her. Now she despised herself for ever longing for one. Beware of making wishes, someone had said—she could not remember who—for they might come true. The trouble with dream adventures was that they were always happy and jolly affairs. This one was anything but those things. Indeed, she would be fortunate to survive it.

The thought was so horrifying and yet so very realistic that she chuckled again. She had always accused the
children of being melodramatic. She had always advised them not to exaggerate in the stories they told of their escapades.

Did nothing ever travel along this road? It was a main thoroughfare between north and south, was it not? But all she had seen all day—and it must be noon already—was a farmer’s cart laden with manure. It had been traveling hardly any faster than she, and it had stunk terribly, but nevertheless she had begged for a ride. Strange how easily one could take to begging when the need arose. She wondered if she would beg for bread when her one remaining coin was spent. It was a ghastly thought. But the farmer, black teeth interspersed with gaps, had gawped at her as if she were some strange bird indeed, and had muttered something totally unintelligible before driving on a few yards and then turning into a field.

And of course both a stage and a mail coach had gone by. They did not count. One could hardly beg a ride on a public vehicle. Of course there had been whistles and catcalls from drivers and male passengers alike, all dreadfully mortifying for a woman who was accustomed to being invisible.

She turned to walk determinedly on again. Perhaps it was as well that her valise had been stolen and did not therefore have to be carried, she thought briefly, until she remembered that if it had not been stolen, she would be on a stagecoach right now, considerably closer to her destination than she was. She could still hardly believe how stupid she had been to keep her traveling money and her tickets in her valise and to entrust that valise to the care of a friendly, stout, seemingly respectable country woman who had traveled the first leg of the journey with her, talking to her in most amiable fashion all the way. All she had wanted to do was go inside the inn before the stage drew up in order to use the necessary. She had been gone for five minutes at the outside. When
she had returned, the stout woman had gone. And so had her valise, and her money, and her tickets.

The stagecoach driver had refused to take her. The innkeeper had refused to call a constable and had looked at her as if she were a worm—a gray worm. She had still been wearing her own gray cloak and bonnet at that time.

Something was coming at last—something a little larger than a cart. It must be another stagecoach or post chaise, she thought with a sigh. But she stopped walking. She moved right off the road to press herself against the hedgerow. She did not want to be bowled over by a coachman who believed he owned the road.

It was a private vehicle—a plain coach drawn by four rather splendidly matched horses. The coachman and a footman were seated up on the box, both dressed in blue uniform. Obviously someone grand was riding inside, someone who would not only look at her as if she were a worm, but also tread her underfoot or under wheel without sparing her a thought—especially considering her present appearance.

Nevertheless, as the carriage drew closer, she held up one hand, at first tentatively, and then more boldly, reaching out her arm into the road. Panic welled into her throat and her nostrils. She did not think she had ever felt lonelier in her life—and she was an expert on loneliness.

The carriage swept past without slowing. The two servants did not even deign to turn their heads to glance at her, though the eyes of both swiveled in her direction, and they were nudging each other with their elbows and grinning before they passed from her sight. She bit her lower lip. But suddenly, a little ahead of her, the carriage not only slowed, but actually stopped. The coachman turned, somewhat startled, and looked back at her with a face that had lost its grin. She hurried forward.

Oh, please. Please, God. Dear, dear God
.

A passenger was pulling down the window on the side closest to her. A hand, expensively gloved in cream leather, rested on top of it. Someone leaned forward to look at her as she approached. A man. He had a haughty, bored, handsome face topped by thick, carefully disheveled brown hair. His voice, when he spoke, matched his expression.

“A bird of bright plumage painting the landscape gay,” he said. “Whatever is it that you want?”

Had she not been feeling so weary and so hungry, not to mention footsore and dusty and frightened—and embarrassed, she might have answered tartly. What on earth did he
think
she wanted, out here in the middle of a roadway, miles from anywhere?

“Please, sir,” she said, lowering her eyes to her reticule, which she clutched with both hands as if to make sure that that too would not be snatched away from her, “would you allow me to ride up with your servants for a few miles?” She did not fancy riding up between those nudging, grinning two, but doing so was certainly preferable to the alternative.

“Where are you going?” She was aware of his gloved fingers drumming on the top of the glass. She could tell from his voice that he was frowning.

“Begging your pardon …” the coachman said with a respectful clearing of the throat.

“For coughing in my hearing?” the gentleman said, sounding even more bored than before. “Certainly, Bates. Where are you going, woman?”

“To Hampshire, sir,” she said.

“To Hampshire?” She could hear the surprise in his voice, though she did not look up. “That is rather a distant destination for an afternoon’s stroll, is it not?”

“Please.” She raised her eyes to his. As she had suspected, he was frowning. His fingers were still drumming
on the top of the window. He looked toplofty, arrogant. This looked like an impossibility. “Just for a few miles. Just to the next town or village.”

The coachman cleared his throat again.

“We really must get you to an apothecary, Bates,” the gentleman said impatiently.

And with that he opened the door and jumped down to the road without first putting down the steps. She took an involuntary step back, aware suddenly of the emptiness of the road to left and right and of the fact that there were only three strange men confronting her. He was a large gentleman, not so much in girth as in height. He was a whole head taller than she, and she was no midget. She was horribly reminded of last night.

“Well,” the gentleman said, turning and bending to let down the steps himself, though the footman had vaulted hastily from his perch, “to the next village or town it is, Miss …?” He turned back to look at her, his eyebrows raised.

“Gray,” she said.

One eyebrow stayed up when the other came down. “Miss Gray,” he repeated, reaching out a hand for hers. She had the impression that he was mentally naming off all the bright colors of her attire and considering the incongruity of her name. Belatedly, she wondered why she had not thought of pulling the plumes from her bonnet this morning and tossing them into the nearest hedgerow.