Earl's Invention

by Diana Campbell

  “Good God!” The earl’s face was utterly devoid of color, and his sapphire eyes were wide with horror. “What the devil happened? The driver indicated you were involved in an accident.”

  “It was no accident.” Bonnie stifled another moan. “I was pushed in front of his coach—”

  “Do not try to talk,” David interposed sternly. "Oh, my poor girl . . . Kimball!” he roared. “Kimball! I need you at once!"

  “At once” extended to above a minute, Bonnie calculated, but at length, the butler raced through the front door and panted to a halt at David's side.

  “Kimball!” The earl was panting himself. "Give this man a pound or two.” He jerked his head toward the driver, whose own eyes widened with astonished delight at the news that he was to be rewarded so generously for his ordeal. “And then fetch Dr. Selwin immediately:; you are to run all the way to Charles Street. Fetch Dr. Selwin,” he reiterated, “and bring him to Miss Bonnie’s bedchamber the instant you return. I shall carry her up while you’re gone.”

  David returned his attention to Bonnie, spread his arms, and she shook her head.

  “I needn’t be carried,” she protested. “If you will just support me a bit, I can hop up the stairs—”

  “Nonsense,” he crooned. “Nonsense, sweetheart; you’re in no fit state to be hopping about. Come now, and I’ll have you comfortably abed in a trice.”

  She wriggled to the carriage door, and he scooped her effortlessly out; she would never have guessed him to be so strong. He bore her toward the house, and—recognizing that her dangling arms could only impede his progress—Bonnie twined them round his neck. And felt the strangest, loveliest sense of security; a warm well-being she had not experienced since her childhood, when Papa had laughingly carried her up the rectory stairs to bed. She melted against David’s chest, eagerly inhaling his clean masculine scent, her ankle almost ceasing to hurt; and sighed with regret when they reached her room and he deposited her carefully on the bed.

  “There,” he said soothingly. He perched on the edge of the mattress, took her hand, began to pat it. “Dr. Selwin will be here in a moment. And I’m confident he will find that the injuries you sustained in this accident are no more severe than those you suffered in the last.”

  “It was not an accident," Bonnie insisted, wincing as her ankle once more started to throb. “I attempted to tell you in the street that—”

  “Hush.” The earl laid one gentle, reproving finger over her mouth. “I don’t wish you to talk until Selwin confirms that you were not concussed.”

  Since her head had been altogether unaffected by the “accident,” Bonnie was quite certain she had not been concussed. And if, against all odds, she had. she could not suppose that

  speech would in any way exacerbate her condition. But it was clear David would brook no argument even had she been able to utter one, which—inasmuch as his finger was still blocking her lips—she could not. So she stared silently up at him and concluded that she must have been concussed after all, for his eyes looked peculiarly dark. Indeed, they looked more nearly black than blue, and they were regarding her with such intensity that her cheeks began to warm. Such unbearable intensity that she was eventually compelled to shift her gaze to the bedchamber door, and as she did so, a man loomed up on the threshold.

  “I am thoroughly tired of your emergencies, Sedgewick." he growled. He snatched off his beaver hat, belatedly realized there was no convenient place to put it, and hung it on the doorknob. “No,” he corrected, “I am more than merely tired: I am appalled to learn that you’ve run down another young woman in your curricle.”

  “I did not run her down,” the earl said, leaping to his feet. “But the circumstances of the accident do not signify—”

  “However, I cannot honestly profess to be surprised.” Dr. Selwin stalked on across the room. “No, as a physician, I can only lament the current passion for excessively fast carnages. A vehicle like yours, even if competently driven, is a fearful instrument of destruction. And when, as in your case, it is not competently driven, the destruction can be most frightful indeed.’’

  Much as Bonnie’s ankle pained her, she was hard put to repress a giggle, and consequently—or so she feared—she was wearing an exceedingly foolish grin when Dr. Selwin reached the bed and peered critically down at her. He was not at all what she had pictured, she reflected distantly. She well remembered his frosty gray eyes, but she would never have associated them with a round face, a short, stocky body, an unruly shock of sandy hair.

  “It is the same woman!” the physician screeched in the high-pitched voice Bonnie also remembered. Good God, Sedgewick, one might almost collect you were deliberately pursuing her. Though this time, I see, you got her ankle.

  Dr. Selwin seized said ankle, and Bonnie briefly feared— nay, prayed—that the pain of his inspection would render her unconscious. But she was not to be so fortunate: she was forced to lie writhing in agony while he tore off her shoe and twisted her foot expertly about. It was, perversely, only when he finished that her head began to swim, and she barely heard his pronouncement that her ankle was merely sprained. Hardly felt the pressure as he wrapped it in a bandage. Scarcely registered his advice to David that she should stay off her feet for three or four days. Three or four days at the least, the physician added; longer should her injury continue “unduly” to trouble her. Bonnie was at a loss to conceive that his definition of “unduly” might be: perhaps he would bestir himself to return if she lapsed into a terminal coma. She watched, her vision once more clouding, as Dr. Selwin strode across the Aubusson carpet and out of the room; and when he had vanished, David resumed his place on the edge of the mattress.

  “There,” he said again. “Did I not tell you? You suffered only a little sprain, and as you heard, it will be healed in a

  few days.”

  His words once more reminded Bonnie of the day they had met, but there was no mistaking the ragged note of relief in his voice. Indeed, she recalled upon reflection, he had been fairly frantic with alarm when he rushed up to the hackney coach, and she essayed a grateful smile. David stroked the hair at her temple— hair damp from the agony of Dr. Selwin’s ministrations—and at that moment, Bonnie detected a rustle at the bedchamber door.

  “David! Bonnie!”

  Even as Bonnie recognized the voice as that of Lady Hellier, her ladyship galloped into view and ground to a halt beside the bed.

  “Good God!” She stared down at Bonnie, her sapphire eyes seeming quite as horrified as her brother’s had been earlier. "I drove over to bring David a jar of my cook’s bilberry jelly.” She held it aloft in confirmation. “He adores bilberry jelly. But when Kimball advised me of your terrible accident. I insisted on coming up straightaway. My poor, dear child.”

  Lady Hellier sank on the mattress next to David, and their combined weights were so much in excess of Bonnie’s that she was compelled to grasp the opposite side of the mattress lest she roll into them.

  “My poor, dear child,” her ladyship repeated, sorrowfully shaking her head. “Well, it is clear, of course, that you must now return to Bermuda.” Bonnie wearily elected to allow this latest misidentification of her alleged homeland to pass. “Yes, when one is gravely ill, there is no substitute for a mother’s loving care.”

  “That is absurd, Judith." the earl snapped. “To begin with, Bonnie is not ‘gravely ill’; she has merely sprained her ankle. And if she were seriously injured, the worst possible course would be to subject her to a long, arduous voyage.”

  “I daresay you are right.” Lady Hellier frowned. “Yes, such a lengthy journey might prove detrimental to Bonnie’s delicate health. Consequently”—she brightened—“we shall send her to Robert’s and my estate in Shropshire. As most of the staff remains in residence, she will be in excellent hands."

  “That is nearly as ridiculous as your prior suggestion.” David’s tone was one of great disdain, but Bonnie observed a tiny twitch at one comer of his mouth. “Evidently you
failed to register the information that Bonnie has only sprained her ankle. Dr. Selwin predicts she’ll be up and about again in three or four days.”

  “Doctors!” Lady Hellier sniffed. “Physicians are invariably too optimistic in their pronouncements; I fancy they calculate that a cheerful patient will be less inclined to object to their exorbitant fees. No, I am very much afraid that dear Bonnie will be crippled for months, and you are prodigious ill-equipped to care for her.” She waved her hand about, as though she had just glimpsed a horde of rats scuttling along the bedchamber walls. “If you do not wish her to go to Shropshire, at least permit me to take her to Orchard Street

  "No,” David interposed firmly, his lips once more twitching. "I am quite prepared—and quite able—to supervise Bonnie’s convalescence myself. Even should it require months, which I am confident it will not. I expect Bonnie to resume her social activities within the week, and I daresay that by the end of the Season she will be engaged to a suitable gentleman. A suitable English gentleman,” he pointedly elaborated, "and then we shall have dear Bonnie near us for many years to come.” If the earl had expected his sister to leap to his fly, he was doomed to disappointment, for her ladyship merely emitted a small, delicate cough.

  "The . . . Season," she echoed carefully, as if the subject were almost too painful to discuss. "That is another reason I proposed that Bonnie return to Jamaica or settle herself in Shropshire.”

  She redirected her attention to her alleged niece, and Bonnie saw that her eyes were now glittering with their customary

  coldness.

  "I am certain, dear, that your mother sent you to London with every hope that you would, in fact, meet and marry a respectable gentleman. Therefore I can only collect—and I am sorry I must be the one to tell you—that Cornelia’s long residence in Antigua has altogether distorted her memory of English ways. Her scandalous elopement alone would render it monstrous difficult for you to make a good match, but occasionally, if a girl has a great deal else to offer, a man will forgive her unfortunate background.”

  Lady Hellier tendered a kind smile, but her eyes did not warm a whit. "However,” she went on, “you have nothing else to offer, and you can only find the Season a most wretchedly humiliating experience. No man will overlook the background of a poor Jamaican farmer’s daughter—”

  "Poor!” David gasped. "Good God, Judith, did I fail to mention . . . Well, obviously I did." He sheepishly shook his head. "The truth is that Thomas has been immensely successful in Barbados. His principal plantation is three times the size of Sedge wood ...”

  This was but the first of many embellishments the earl added to the tale he had previously told Lady Lambeth Bonnie’s father, she soon learned, owned no fewer than six plantations, as many sailing vessels, a rum distillery, numerous inns and retail establishments . . . The list went on and on. Lady Hellier’s eyes growing wider and wider with every word her brother uttered, until Bonnie was compelled to bite the insides of her cheeks most painfully lest the laughter welling in her chest burst forth.

  “I ... I see,” her ladyship stammered when, at last. David had Finished his narrative. “Well, that does . . . does cast a different light on Bonnie’s future, doesn’t it? Let me . . . ah . . . think on the matter.” She sprang off the bed so hastily that she nearly tumbled to the carpet. “Meanwhile, pray do enjoy your jelly.”

  She sped out of the room, and Bonnie clapped one hand over her mouth, fearing her mirth would escape before Lady Hellier had safely departed the house. She stole a glance ai David, but his tightly compressed lips, his indrawn cheeks, fueled her amusement, and she quickly looked away. At length, she heard the distant crash of the front door, and she and the earl simultaneously exploded with hilarity.

  “Well, I erred in one respect,” he sputtered when he eventually regained the power of speech. “Judith has not yet perceived that the time of your departure doesn’t signify. Had she done so, she would not be so dreadfully eager to spirit you out of my sight."

  “Yes, she was eager, wasn’t she?” Bonnie succumbed to a fresh attack of giggles. “When she realized my injuries weren t sufficiently severe to warrant my removal from London, she seized upon my unfortunate background—”

  “No, you have reversed it,” David interrupted. Judith didn’t know of your injuries until she reached the house. When she set out, her intention was to persuade me as she attempted to persuade you yesterday—that you should sail back to the Indies before you could embarrass the family any further. It was only when Kimball informed her of your mishap that she glimpsed a more convenient reason to send you away.”

  “When Lady Hellier set out,” Bonnie corrected, “her intention was to bring you a jar of bilberry jelly.”

  “That was merely an excuse. Since Judith has never called on me before, she had to fabricate some credible motive for her visit, and I do chance to adore bilberry jelly.”

  “I see,” Bonnie murmured, though she was not entirely certain she did. “And then, when circumstance forced her to confront me directly, she conjured up the argument that I should also be humiliated if I stayed in town for the duration of the Season.”

  “Precisely.” David chuckled. “And I wonder what she will do now I’ve advised her of your fictional wealth. If I know Judith, she will contrive to wed you to a marquis or a duke. . .”

  His voice trailed off, and his grin faded. “Yes, if I know Judith, she is already plotting how to capitalize on your imaginery fortune. Just as she sought to turn your accident to her own advantage.” He smiled again, but the merriment had left his eyes.

  Her accident! So distracted had she been by Lady Hellier’s antics that Bonnie had almost forgotten the terrifying incident in Bond Street. The last vestiges of her amusement evaporated as well, and she squirmed upright in the bed.

  “It was not an accident, David,” she said. “I tried to tell you so before. A man had been following me from the time I left the house, and he shoved me in front of the coach.”

  “You were attacked in Bond Street?” The earl’s brows knit with astonishment. “Why did you not scream for assistance?’ ’

  “Because he caught me by surprise. I had just signaled the hackney, and I was stepping away from the street when I felt his hands on my back.”

  “So you did not actually see him push you.” Bonnie shook her head. “Then I fancy the attack was a trick of your imagination. The pedestrians in Bond Street can be frightfully discourteous; I myself have been jostled off the footpath more than once.”

  “I was not jostled,” Bonnie insisted. “I was pushed. And inasmuch as the man had been following me—”

  “You are certain?” David interjected. “Could that not also have been a figment of your imagination?”

  “I think not,” Bonnie snapped His skepticism was beginning to try her patience. “I first noticed him in Grosvenor Street and next at the intersection of Bruton and Bond. At that point, I turned around, and I shortly realized that he had turned too. I halted in front of a corsetiere’s window to let him pass me by, and he stopped as well. Stopped and stood beside me for ten or fifteen minutes, I judge. And why would a man, if he were not following me, study a display of women’s undergarments for nearly a quarter of an hour?” “Some men have rather peculiar tastes,” the earl said dryly. “But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that he was following you. Perhaps he thought to rob you.”

  “That was my notion exactly. Indeed, that is the reason I hailed the hackney—”

  “Or perhaps he merely found you handsome.” David flew on. “And followed you in hopes of striking up a conversation. In either case, why should you suppose he wanted to do you physical harm.”

  “I think he was hired to do me physical harm,” Bonnie replied. “Hired by Lady Pamela Everett.”

  “Lady Pamela!” The earl stared at her in consternation, as though collecting that whatever Dr. Selwin’s diagnosis, she had been knocked altogether senseless by her mishap.

  “Not Lady Pamela herse
lf,” Bonnie amended. “She appealed to her father and brother, and they engaged someone to attack me. Precisely as she threatened they would.

  “Threatened?” David barked. “When did Lady Pamela threaten you?”

  “At the end of her call.” Bonnie swiftly related the final portion of their conversation. “I chose not to mention it.

  she concluded, “because I believed her threats were so much hollow bombast. However, it’s now apparent I was wrong.”

  “No, you were not wrong.” David shook his own head. “Haverford and Walsingham are barefaced scoundrels, and I’ve no doubt they do often employ questionable means to achieve their ends. But they would not stoop to committing violence on a woman.”

  “Then why was I pushed in front of the coach?” Bonnie demanded.

  “You were pushed—if you were pushed—by a particularly rude pedestrian. The man who was following you—if he was following you—had nothing to do with it. And if you were pushed or followed either one, I assure you that Lady Pamela was in no way involved.”

  “If?” Bonnie echoed irritably. “I was followed, and I was pushed—”

  “Hush now." David once more patted her hand. “Remember that Selwin counseled you to rest.”

  In point of fact, Bonnie did not remember this, but she was not prepared to dispute the earl’s claim, for she suddenly discovered herself very tired. So immensely, achingly tired that she was hard put to keep her head from wobbling on her neck, and she did not object—could not object—when David stood and gently maneuvered her to a prone position on the bed.