by Mary Balogh
“No, no,” Lord Francis was saying, “I shall convey Miss Downes home myself. If someone would just hold my horses’ heads for a moment.”
She leaned heavily against his arm—it was such a nicely solid arm—while the world about her made up its mind whether to stop completely or swing around again. She was not quite sure afterward how she got back up into the high seat of his phaeton. She rather believed that he climbed up there with her in his arms, though how that could have been accomplished was beyond her comprehension. Certain it was that he drove away—magically, a clear path, lined with spectators, opened for him—with her fitted tightly against his side, one of his arms about her to prevent her from toppling either forward or sideways, something she might well have done.
Something was bothering her—apart from the painful throbbing at the back of her head. She had not summoned up the courage to feel back there yet, but she suspected that she must have a goose egg sitting on the back of her skull. She frowned.
“You saved me,” she said. “It was wonderfully courageous of you. You might have got hurt.”
He looked down at her—somehow her head, hat and all, was nestled on his shoulder. “Miss Downes,” he said dryly, “you render me speechless.”
But that was not what had been really bothering her. She frowned again. “Lord Francis,” she said, “were the dogs really in danger?”
Edgar would not have waited to be asked—he had not done so after the incident of little Henry. But then Edgar assumed all the annoying privileges of an older brother. Lord Francis Kneller was far more polite.
He did not answer for a while. During that while Cora realized how shockingly improper it was to be riding in the streets of London like this. She felt very thankful yet again that it was only Lord Francis. His arm and his shoulder really did feel remarkably comforting.
“The dogs certainly did panic,” he said at last. “As did the horse. Someone or some creature might definitely have come to harm. I can only wish that I had been the one to land on the bottom so that it would have been my head that was banged. I wonder how I am to explain to her grace that you came to harm while under my protection.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to sit up and changing her mind hastily, “but you saved me from much worse harm, as I shall be sure to explain. There would have been no danger, would there, if I had not jumped down. The dogs would not have panicked and neither would the horse.” It was a horrid admission to make even to herself. Honesty compelled her to admit it to him as well.
Surprisingly he chuckled. “It is a debatable point,” he said. “But it would be as well to keep that fact between the two of us, Miss Downes. Your image as a heroine has swelled to twice its size this afternoon. That can do you no harm at all on the marriage mart.”
“Oh,” she said, mortified. “Does it push up my value?”
He chuckled again. He sounded genuinely amused, she was relieved to find. He was not unduly annoyed with her, then.
“Let us just say,” he said, “that it will do you no harm to be seen as heroic. And there is no doubt at all that your actions with regard to Bridgwater’s nephew truly were.”
Cora grimaced. “You should talk with my brother about that,” she said.
He looked down at her again. His way of guiding his horses with just one hand was remarkably impressive, she thought.
“They were not?” he asked her.
“Edgar says that the child would have swum to the bank without my assistance,” she said. “He says that I almost drowned him.”
Lord Francis’s voice sounded amused when he spoke, but he did not laugh again. “That was remarkably unhandsome of him,” he said.
“Well,” she said, “he is my brother, you know. Do you have brothers or sisters, Lord Francis?” Then she remembered that he had a brother who was a duke.
“One brother and two sisters,” he said. “Two of them older than me. I know what that can be like. But let us not disallow your image as a heroine, Miss Downes. The beau monde is enormously cheered by it. We are a jaded lot, you know. We must constantly seek novelty and entertainment. A female heroine is irresistible.”
“So we must tell lies?” she asked him doubtfully.
“Not at all,” he said. “We need say nothing. There were a dozen witnesses to this afternoon’s heroic act, Miss Downes, and a hundred more who will convince themselves that they were witnesses. They will describe what they have seen, and each new teller will embellish the story told by the one before. You will find that single-handedly you have saved four innocent and lovable poodles from certain death—not to mention having saved Lady Kellington from an irreparably broken heart.”
“Oh,” she said. But her thoughts were diverted. “Why does the road keep rushing up toward me when I can feel that you are holding me securely in place?”
“Close your eyes,” he said, his arm tightening about her.
She did not even realize until she was inside the hall of the Duchess of Bridgwater’s town house that she had allowed him to carry her there. This was becoming something of a habit—an unfortunate one for him. She wondered what soap or cologne he used. It smelled good. It was subtle. Almost manly. Well, she thought, to be fair she must admit that on anyone else she would not have thought of qualifying that judgment. And she really did not care that Lord Francis Kneller favored bright, foppish colors and elegant manners. She liked him just as he was.
Edgar would have scolded her without stopping for endangering other lives as well as her own and for acting so brainlessly. He would have done so even knowing that she had banged her head and was not feeling quite the thing.
“She has had a slight accident,” Lord Francis was explaining to her grace. “I believe it is altogether possible that she has a lump on the back of her head that will need attention. If you will allow me, ma’am, I will carry her up to her bed.”
“Soames.” Her grace’s voice was one of calm command. “You will send for Sir Calvin Pennard and ask him to attend me without delay, if you please.”
Sir Calvin, Cora guessed, must be the duchess’s physician.
“Follow me, Lord Francis,” her grace said, still in the same tone of voice. “I hope there is a good explanation for what happened.”
“I do believe you will hear explanations in every drawing room and ballroom in town for the next several days, ma’am,” he said. “Miss Downes was injured in the performance of an act of extraordinary courage.”
Cora looked once into his face and held her peace. She really was feeling very dizzy indeed. And she remembered now that her toes were still rather sore too.
MISS CORA DOWNES was confined to her room for two days following the incident in the park. Sir Calvin Pennard, the Duchess of Bridgwater’s physician, had insisted upon it, mainly for the sake of her head, but partly too for the sake of her feet.
She was allowed no visitors during those two days. Her grace and Elizabeth and Jane kept her company. The only exceptions to the prohibition were the Duke of Bridgwater, who made his bow to her one afternoon, inquired after her health, and congratulated her on her act of bravery, and Lord Francis Kneller, who paid a courtesy call and was invited to Miss Downes’s boudoir, where her grace’s maid played chaperon.
“I feel so silly,” Cora said, stretching out her hands to Lord Francis and forcing him to cross the room to her when he had intended merely to stand inside the door for a few minutes. It was true that she was fully dressed and that her hair was up, though in a looser, more luxuriant style than he had seen before, but she was reclining on a daybed and he found himself having to suppress improper thoughts. “I am never ill and never bedridden. How kind of you to call. And how tiresome you must find me.”
He squeezed her hands, released them, and seated himself on a stool beside her. She spoke with utter candor and no noticeable intent to draw a disclaimer or a compliment from him.
“On the contrary,” he said anyway. “I am honored that you have admitted me when so many have been turned a
way after presenting their cards, Miss Downes.”
“Everyone is so kind,” she said. “Especially when I was so foolish. I have even been sent flowers. Look at them. My room looks like a garden.”
She spoke with an enthusiasm and an emphasis on certain key words that were not at all ladylike. Most ladies of his acquaintance would behave with wilting grace under circumstances like these. Cora Downes was clearly fretting from the inactivity.
“You are,” he said, “a heroine, ma’am. Every gentleman in town wishes to make his bow to you. Every lady wishes to kiss your cheek.”
“How absurd.” She laughed, throwing back her head and showing her very white teeth and making no attempt whatsoever to reduce her amusement to a mere simper. “Lady Kellington has called twice and sent a servant three other times to inquire after me.”
“Lady Kellington,” he said, “is rumored to love her poodles more than she has ever loved any person, including her late husband and her four children.”
“That is because dogs are invariably affectionate to their owners,” she surprised him by saying. He had expected a reaction of shocked disbelief or of riotous amusement. “Sometimes when I want to wound Edgar—it is usually when he has been scolding me for something or other—I tell him that I love Papa’s dogs more than I love him. He tells me that is because the dogs do not have enough brain power to recognize my shortcomings.”
“Older brothers and sisters,” Lord Francis said, wonderfully diverted, “are a pestilential breed.”
“Yes, they are,” she said. “But I miss Edgar. And Papa. I suggested to her grace this morning that she send me home as soon as I am deemed well enough to travel. I have been nothing but trouble and embarrassment to her. But she says I must stay until she finds me a husband. I think it will be an impossibility. No man who is a gentleman will want to marry me.”
Lord Francis wondered if all young ladies who were not quite ladies discussed such matters freely with near strangers. But he would wager not. Miss Cora Downes was one of a kind, he suspected.
“I believe you will be surprised, then,” he said. “Perhaps you should be warned, Miss Downes, that you are very much in fashion.”
She fixed him with an intent stare. “In fashion?”
“Indeed yes,” he said. It was quite true. He had expected it, especially as it was late in the Season and everyone was starved for novelty. But it had happened even more forcefully than he had anticipated. “Drawing room and ballroom and club conversations have centered about little else but you and your heroic deeds in the past two days. And it is a veritable mountain of cards that are piled on the table downstairs. I believe that when you finally go out, Miss Downes, or even just downstairs, you will find yourself besieged.”
She paled. “I hate being conspicuous,” she said.
Which, in light of her behavior in the park a few afternoons before, was a rather comical thing to say. He did not laugh.
“I believe,” he said, “that her grace’s wishes for you may well be fulfilled quite soon. And your own too. I assume you do want a husband?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “But not one who wants me only because he thinks I am a heroine, or because Papa is wealthy. Not one who will remind me every day for the rest of my life that he has elevated me on the social scale. Only one who will like me and perhaps love me as well. And one I can feel affection for. And respect. And not an old man. Not one above—oh, thirty at the most. And not an old poker face. I would like someone who knows how to laugh, someone with some sense of the absurd. Life is frequently absurd, you know. Why are you chuckling? What have I said?”
“Nothing,” he assured her. But he was enjoying himself. He had woken this morning feeling mortally depressed again and had realized that he had been waltzing with Samantha in his dreams and she had been smiling at him and telling him that she was with child. Only as he woke up had he realized that it was not his child. Oh, yes, life was frequently absurd. Much as he had admired Samantha for the last several years, he would never have expected to feel like a sick and lovelorn boy at her marrying someone else. “I imagine, Miss Downes, that you will have your choice of several candidates. You must make a check list and interview each one.”
“You are making fun of me.” She looked sharply at him and then went off into peals of laughter again. “Now what I should do is marry you.” She held up a staying hand even as he felt a slight stirring of alarm, and laughed merrily once more. “But I will not. You are Lord Francis Kneller and your brother is a duke. You are far too high on the social scale for my comfort. Besides—” She blushed, bit her lip, and smiled.
He waited with raised eyebrows for the completion of the sentence, but it did not come.
“I am devastated by your rejection, ma’am,” he said. He got to his feet. It was time he took his leave. “I shall go elsewhere to nurse my broken heart.”
“Oh, must you leave?” She looked suddenly wistful, but she smiled again. “Yes, I suppose you must. It was very kind of you to come and to take me driving the other afternoon—I did not have a chance to thank you at the time. And to dance with me that first evening. You are a very kind gentleman. I believe you must be a close friend of the Duke of Bridgwater and are obliging him. But you have made me happy too. Good afternoon, my lord.” She offered her hand.
“It has been my pleasure,” he said, bowing over it and even lifting it to his lips.
He liked her, he thought as he was descending the stairs a minute later and taking his hat and cane from her grace’s butler. She interested him and amused him. He really must see to it that she was well married. There would be no lack of suitors. Already several would-be husbands were sounding him out on the subject of Miss Cora Downes and her prospects—and he was not even a relative or guardian. He had learned from Bridgwater at White’s this morning that there were others. Both the duke and his mother had been approached by several interested parties.
She could be betrothed and married within the month if she chose to be. He would miss her—a strange thought when he had known her but a few days. But she was the only person he had found since the marriage of the Marquess and Marchioness of Carew who could take his mind off his own personal depression and even make him laugh.
It was strange, he thought as he wandered along the street—he had not brought a carriage with him. Different as the two women were—he would be hard put to it to discover one point of likeness between Samantha and Cora Downes—there was a certain similarity in his relationship with them. He and Samantha had teased each other a great deal. He had teased her earlier this year about being in her seventh Season. He had told her that if she was unmarried at the end of it, she must don caps and retire into spinsterhood. She had teased him about his appearance. He had dressed partly to amuse Samantha, though not entirely, he had to admit. He hated the swing to soberness in gentlemen’s dress and fought the trend. He dressed to please himself.
Perhaps the reason Samantha had never taken his courtship or even his marriage offers seriously was that she did not take him seriously. A man who always teased and joked could be seen as a man without depths of feeling or character, he supposed. He could remember how alarmed Samantha had been at his first angry reaction to her telling him about her betrothal. And so he had retracted his words, assuring her with a smile that he had been merely trying to make her feel bad—and had succeeded.
Cora Downes did not take him seriously either. Why else would she have announced so boldly that she should marry him? Would she have said that to any other man in this world? And what was that “Besides—” that would keep her from marrying him? Besides, he was a shallow man who could never be taken seriously?
It was as well, of course, that Cora Downes felt that way. He wanted no more than a teasing relationship with her and she wanted no more with him—her ambitions were very modest. She had no aspirations to the aristocracy in her search for a husband.
But it was a disturbing insight into himself he had just had, for all that. Was he
so cleverly masked that no one could see beyond the mask? Maybe that was as well too. Bridgwater had certainly known his feelings for Samantha—had even warned him not to wear them on his sleeve. But he doubted anyone else had known, and he doubted that even Bridgwater realized that he was still pining. It would not do at all for anyone to know how constantly he had loved a woman who had spurned him and recently married a man she had not even met six months ago.
The very thought of anyone knowing made him shudder.
IT WAS ALL unbelievably true, what Lord Francis had warned her about. She was in fashion, as he had phrased it. In her language that soon came to mean that she was very much on display.
Everyone wished to gawk at her. It was not a polite word to use of the ton, but Cora was learning something about the ton. Its members were very much like ordinary people except that they couched their behavior in somewhat greater elegance. Everyone gawked. And everyone wished to pay their respects to her and to congratulate her.
The story of the Hyde Park incident had crystallized by the time she made her appearance again. Lord Lanting, it appeared, had lost control of his mount, a fierce, unmanageable beast, which could—and would—squash a dozen poodles or half a dozen maidens underhoof without a qualm. Had not the animal been at Waterloo and learned its ferocity there? Lord Lanting had done his valiant best, poor man, but he had lost control.
Lady Kellington’s poodles had been for it. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that there would not have been a single survivor if events had been left to take their natural course. Lady Kellington herself had already foreseen their imminent demise and had been in the hysterical stage of a first-class fit of the vapors. The scene had been set for a spectacular disaster.
Enter Miss Cora Downes, heroine of the Bath incident involving that poor dear infant, Lord George Munro’s son, the Duke of Bridgwater’s nephew. Miss Cora Downes, with no thought for her own life and safety, had launched herself from the high perch of Lord Francis Kneller’s phaeton—she might easily have broken both ankles, not to mention her neck, in the process—and had thrown herself between the beast’s flashing hooves and the innocent, shivering dogs and plucked them to safety in the nick of time.