“Yes." Bonnie nodded. “Yes, I was run down by a carriage.”
“Umm." He grinned, and Bonnie observed that he had beautiful teeth. “It would be somewhat more accurate to say that you ran the carriage down. Be that as it may, I brought you to my home—which is in Grosvenor Street at the intersection with Duke—and summoned my physician to attend you. Selwin is a rather chilly fellow, but I’ve always found him competent, and he could detect no serious injury.”
It hadn’t been a dream then, Bonnie realized; she had overheard a portion of Dr. Selwin’s conversation with . . . with . . . “Who are you?” she blurted out.
“The Earl of Sedgewick." In lieu of a bow, he inclined his head. “I was driving the curricle you had the misfortune to encounter. At any rate, Selwin did indicate there might be injuries he could not detect,- and we should explore that possibility without delay. Move about and advise me if you feel any pain.”
Bonnie obediently flapped her arms and stretched her legs and twisted her torso, gasping again from time to time as her muscles shrieked in agonized protest. "I feel pain everywhere,” she reported grimly.
‘‘But not in any particular place?”
“Particularly in my shoulder.” She gingerly touched the spot.
“Yes, that was the point of your impact with the carriage, and Selwin said you’d sustained an excessively nasty bruise. And that you’d be generally stiff and sore for a day or two. But I count it an excellent sign that you’ve no excessive pain in any other location. I believe we can safely conclude that you emerged from the accident virtually unscathed.”
That was easy for him to say, Bonnie thought grouchily. He was not the one who ached in every limb and organ of his body.
“What is your name, by the by?” Lord Sedgewick asked. “Bonnie,” she muttered. “Bonnie Gordon.”
“Bonnie.” He knit his brows, and Bonnie noticed that— unlike his hair—they were untouched with gray. “Surely that isn’t your legal name.”
“No, my legal name is Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth.” His frown deepened. “Would it be rude of me to inquire how ‘Elizabeth’ came to be shortened to ’Bonnie’?”
“It was my grandfather’s doing. He came down from Scotland as a young man, but he never lost his accent. And when he first saw me—or so the story goes—he said, ‘My, what a bonnie little lass.’ I’ve been called Bonnie ever since.’’ “I trust someone commended his sharp eye? You are a bonnie lass, if not so little any longer.’’ The earl’s own blue eyes swept her face, then suddenly narrowed, and he tilted his head as if to obtain a better perspective. “What an odd coincidence,” he murmured. “You look astonishingly like my sisters.”
“Then I can only collect that your sisters do not look in the least like you.” Bonnie snapped. She regretted her sharpness, but his scrutiny was rendering her prodigious uncomfortable.
“In point of fact, they do not,” he said mildly. "My sisters keenly resemble our late mother, and I'm told that I myself am the very image of our father. But let us return to you. Since I assume you are not in the habit of jousting with carriages, I am compelled to wonder why you were in such a monstrous hurry.”
“I was . . . was escaping,” Bonnie said.
"Ah.” He flashed another grin, and his eyes began to twinkle. "Escaping from a man. I’ll warrant.”
"Five men actually,” Bonnie said. She perceived no reason to mention Mr. Crawford. "Mr. Theodore Powell, my employer—whose carriage was bearing down on me from the opposite direction—and his four sons. The eldest of whom is ten.” she added hastily as Lord Sedge wick’s mouth dropped open with shock
“You were their governess then,” he said with unmistakable relief. "The boys’ governess, I mean.” Bonnie nodded. “But am I to understand that Mr. Powell was pursuing you in his carriage?”
"No, no; he was not even aware I was gone. I left without notice, you see . .
There was nothing for it but to relate the entire story, and this Bonnie proceeded to do—starting from the day the mouse had been loosed in the schoolroom and ending with the moment she had charged into Lord Sedgewick’s curricle. The earl began to chuckle before she was half-through, and by the time she Finished her tale, he was roaring with laughter.
"Oh, I say.” He pulled a handkerchief from one pocket of his coat and mopped his streaming eyes. “My mother often declared that I was the wickedest child in Britain, but I fear I should have lost that distinction at once had the Powell boys been my contemporaries.”
"It is not amusing,” Bonnie said sternly. But his merriment was infectious, and she was hard put to stifle a giggle of her own.
“And where precisely were you going?” Despite her admonition, Lord Sedgewick was still chuckling a bit.
“I intended to engage a hackney to drive me to the Swan with Two Necks. From there. I planned to take a public coach to my aunt's home in Cheshire.”
“I see.” The earl had overcome his mirth at last, and he shoved his handkerchief back in his pocket. “Then I daresay your aunt will be most alarmed when you do not appear. We must write and advise her of the delay—”
“No,” Bonnie interposed. “Aunt Grace wasn't expecting me, and I doubt she’d be much alarmed in any case. We never did get on, and we’ve scarcely communicated during the past Five years."
“I . . . see,” Lord Sedgewick repeated, this time stringing the words out. His eyes searched her face again. "In short, Miss Gordon—or so I infer—you are presently accountable to no one.”
Bonnie rather liked his phraseology: “accountable to no one" sounded far kinder than "alone in the world." "That is correct," she confirmed aloud.
“Well. well, well.”
His tone suggested that she had revealed a startling piece of information, but before Bonnie could puzzle his reaction out, he rose from the bed.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Never mind You must eat even if you aren't hungry; you're altogether too thin. I shall send Nell up to help you change for dinner."
Evidently. Bonnie thought irritably, he had decided that— having narrowly failed to kill her—he was now free to order her about as he pleased. She started to protest that she didn't want to change for dinner, but when she glanced down, she discovered her dress quite ruined: black with dirt from top to bottom and featuring a great rent on one side of the skirt. Nor had the earl afforded her an opportunity to object, she saw, looking up again; he had left the room and closed the door behind him.
Bonnie sighed and eased herself out of the bed. Lord
Sedgewick’s reference to a change of clothing had led her to assume that her portmanteau had been rescued from the street and brought to his house, and after peering about a moment, she spied her bag—considerably the worse for its recent travail—situated between the door and a tall mahogany wardrobe. She hobbled across the room, distantly noting the Aubusson carpet underfoot, retrieved the bag, carried it back to the bed, and laid it on the counterpane. Since she had packed her two remaining gowns near the bottom of the portmanteau, she was compelled to remove her nightclothes and undergarments in order to reach the ancient white muslin dress beneath. She withdrew it from the bag, shook out the wrinkles, draped it over the footboard of the canopied bedstead, then gazed uneasily at the rest of her things.
She did not know the exact hour, but she surmised from the dim light poking between the draperies that it was well into the evening. By the time she and Lord Sedgewick had finished their meal, it was likely to be half past nine or later—a most inconvenient hour to resume her interrupted journey. So though the earl had not specifically stated that she was to spend the night under his roof, Bonnie had to suppose this was his intention; and she belatedly wondered whether there was a Lady Sedgewick. If not, the situation was highly irregular to say the least—
A great pounding at the door ended Bonnie’s speculation, and before she could instruct the party to enter, the door flew open. Bonnie initially fancied she was witnessing nothing short of a miracle, nothing less tha
n a living mountain; but the mountain soon proved to be a massive woman clad in a voluminous black dress. How she got about at all, Bonnie could not conceive—she was far from young, her hair entirely white—but she fairly bounced over the threshold and strode briskly across the carpet.
“I’m Nell,” she announced gratuitously, reaching Bonnie’s side. “As his lordship is holding dinner, there’ll be no time for a bath, so I brought some water for the basin."
She indicated the pitcher in her hand, marched to the far wall of the bedchamber, emptied the pitcher into the basin atop the rosewood washstand. marched back to the bed. All in under twenty seconds, Bonnie calculated, marveling anew at her speed.
“Is that what you think to wear?" Nell demanded, frowning at the muslin dress. “There’s a spot on the sleeve. A red spot.”
“Yes, I . . But how did one explain that one had been caught between opposing forces in a furious red-currant-tart fight? “I know," Bonnie concluded lamely.
“I’ll tend to it while you wash up," Nell said. “Hurry now, for I’ll be back by the time you’re done.”
Bonnie had little doubt of this, and as soon as the door had closed in Nell’s wake, she stripped off her clothes and limped as quickly as she could toward the washstand. A satinwood dressing table stood just beside it, a mirror above, and Bonnie paused a moment to study her reflection. Except for a smear of din on her right cheekbone, her face bore no mark of the accident, but she sucked in her breath when her eyes fell to her right shoulder. She had sustained a nasty bruise indeed—a ragged purple-black circle fully four inches in diameter—and she was almost grateful that the high neck of her old-fashioned dress would hide it.
Nell was as good as her word: Bonnie had scarcely completed her washing and donned a fresh set of underclothing when the door crashed open again. The elderly servant was a trifle deficient in courtesy, Bonnie felt, but clearly an accomplished ladies’ maid, for the currant stain was gone. Nell assisted her into the dress, and as she began expertly fastening the hooks and eyes at the back, Bonnie glimpsed a perfect means of ascertaining her host’s marital status.
“Are you Lady Sedgewick’s abigail. Nell?” she inquired with studied casualness.
"Was, miss,” Nell responded sorrowfully. "Yes. I was her ladyship's abigail until the dear woman died."
“How . . .”
Bonnie had started to say “splendid," and though she succeeded in biting back the word, the thought lingered. She was inexplicably pleased to leam that the earl was not presently married, but the fact that he was widowed somehow rendered the situation less compromising. Or was that specious reasoning? Widower or no. he was a remarkably handsome man, not much above five-and-thirty. she judged—
“How what, miss?" Nell once more shattered her reverie.
“How . . . how tragic,” Bonnie murmured.
“That it was.” Nell heaved a tremulous sigh. “She was a saint, was Lady Sedgewick, and she’s sorely missed. But there. I’ve finished.” She patted Bonnie’s back in confirmation. “! don’t have time for your hair; Alice will be needing me in the kitchen. And I’m afraid I couldn’t do much with it anyway.”
Her keen black eyes traveled from the unruly red curls on Bonnie’s forehead to the stray tendrils snaking toward her shoulders, and she drew another sigh. “Comb it yourself as best you can. But do hurry because his lordship is waiting in the dining room.”
On this decidedly uncharitable note, Nell sailed out of the bedchamber, and Bonnie snatched her comb and brush from the counterpane and rushed back to the dressing table. Since her hair had grown so long, she hadn’t been able to do much with it either, and ten full minutes of effort produced no visible improvement. But what did it matter? It didn’t signify a whit whether Lord Sedgewick approved her coiffure or not. With a sigh Nell might well have envied, she dropped her ineffectual instruments on the dressing table and—her muscles beginning to throb again—trudged across the room, out the door, and into the corrida.
Bonnie had neglected to inquire whether Lord Sedgewick had children, but the two bedchambers she passed en route to the staircase suggested that he did not. Or—if he did—that the children had not accompanied him to town, for the bedchambers were furnished much like hers, and she saw no toys or other personal effects. In fact, she reflected, stopping to peer briefly into the rooms on the first story, the entire house looked rather sterile; and she surmised that the earl—like most of the ton—spent but a few months of the year in London. It seemed a pity that the fine Adam furniture in the saloon and the two smaller parlors was so little used, and she entertained the same impression she had that afternoon in Oxford Street; that of observing a world she could never be a part of.
Bonnie had also failed to ask the location of the dining room, and when she reached the ground floor, she arbitrarily approached the door on the left side of the vestibule She realized at once that she had erred, but she lingered on the threshold of the library, her eyes enviously raking the floor-to- ceiling shelves. Shelves laden with books, she noted; this room, at least, was used. She remembered, with a stab of dismay, that she had left her own books in the schoolroom in Portman Square. Not many books; over the years, she had “lent” much of her collection to the Powell children, and few of the volumes had been returned. But now she possessed no books at all, and she was sorely inclined to forgo dinner and devote the evening to an investigation of the treasure spread before her. However, she supposed Lord Sedgewick would soon desire Nell to hunt her down, and she turned reluctantly away and traversed the foyer to the archway on the opposite side.
As Nell had stated, the earl was awaiting her, already seated at the head of the table, and he did not rise when Bonnie entered the room. Instead, a male servant—the butler, she presumed—stepped forward to assist her into the chair at Lord Sedgewick’s right. He then proceeded to the mahogany sideboard and returned to the table with two steaming bowls of soup.
The earl began immediately to eat, and—following his lead—Bonnie discovered herself hungrier than she'd fancied. Indeed, she amended, she was ravenous, and the mulligatawny was superb, but she could not quell a vague sense of disappointment. His arrogance notwithstanding, she had found Lord Sedgewick quite charming, a thoroughly amusing com
panion; and his unexpected reserve was most disconcerting. She looked up from her bowl, wondering if she had somehow offended him, and perceived—to her further discomfiture— that he was watching her. Not merely glancing in her direction from time to time, as would be normal in the circumstances. No, he was studying her, his sapphire eyes once more narrowed in speculation; and at length, Bonnie grew so nervous that she was hard put to finish her soup.
“The ... the food is excellent,” she stammered at last. Five full minutes had elapsed since the butler had removed the soup bowls and delivered the entries, and she could bear the silence no longer.
“Umm?” The earl shook his head, as though physically dislodging a spell. “Ah, yes, the food. Yes, Alice has been in the family since I was a boy. In fact, my city staff is a family in itself. Alice is Nell’s sister ... I trust Nell’s services were satisfactory, by the by?"
“Oh, yes," Bonnie assured him. She elected not to add that Nell’s services would be somewhat more satisfactory if she did not burst unbidden into the bedchambers of his lordship’s guests.
“I’m delighted to hear it. At any rate. Alice is a widow, and Kimball”—he nodded toward the butler—“is her son. I bring only the three of them from Dorset when I come up to London. A small staff by any standard, but sufficient'for a bachelor who spends little time at home."
“Yes,” Bonnie murmured, “I was deeply sorry to leam of your loss. Did your wife die recently, Lord Sedgewick?”
The earl was seized by a fit of frenzied coughing—apparently he had choked on a morsel of lamb—and Bonnie regarded him with concern, belatedly regretting that she had introduced such a painful subject. Lord Sedgewick groped for his wineglass and, after two or three great swallows, succee
ded in clearing the obstruction from his throat.
“My wife?” he sputtered. “However did you conceive the notion that I’d been married?"
“Nell told me she was Lady Sedgewick’s abigail—"
“Nell was my mother's abigail," he interjected. “Mama died five years ago, and there’s been no Lady Sedgewick since. Nor will be. not in my lifetime. No, Miss Gordon, I’ve never been wed and never intend to be.’’
“What a foolish thing to say!" she chided. "One day you’ll fall over head and ears in love and change your mind in an instant."
"That I shall not,” he said smugly, "for you are wrong on two counts. In the first place, I am firmly persuaded that love is a myth foisted on humanity by generations of poets and novelists. If it is not a myth, how is it I’ve survived for six-and-thirty years without suffering a single one of the distressing symptoms they describe?"
He made it sound less a myth than a disease. Nor did Bonnie have a ready answer to his question, which was obviously rhetorical in any case.
"And if I were to experience such symptoms," the earl continued, "I shouldn't dream of wedding the object of my . . . ah . . . aberration. I have encountered hundreds of beautiful women, and I daresay I’ll encounter hundreds more before I'm done. To restrict my attentions to only one would be akin to . . . What is your favorite food. Miss Gordon?"
“Chocolate," she said. "Though I fail to see what possible connection—”
"Chocolate.” He nodded. "But fond as you may be of chocolate, you could scarcely live on it alone, could you? And if you could, if you tried, you would soon grow most dreadfully tired of it, would you not? My own favorite food is roast beef, but I certainly don’t wish to have it at every meal."
Apparently Lord Sedgewick viewed the female sex as a banquet laid out for his exclusive delectation, and Bonnie could not but wonder her place on the table. He had already remarked her thinness, and as she was somewhat taller than the average and had pale red hair, she fancied he might well perceive her as a carrot. But she would not dignify his odious analogy by deigning to discuss it any further.
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