by Mary Balogh
“Stay very still, Mary,” the earl said in a voice of dreadful calm, “and do not look down. Aunt Cora and Papa will get you down in no time at all.”
It was plain to see that Gabe had not lost any boyhood skill at climbing trees, Lord Francis thought. Cora was already at the inside end of the branch on which Mary sat. She was chatting to the child as if they were both sitting on the nursery floor whiling away an idle hour. She was also showing a delicious expanse of leg—or not so delicious, perhaps, when he remembered that she was showing it to two other men as well as to him.
“Let me, Cora,” the earl said when he had climbed up close to her. “You go on down. Be careful. Frank is down there to catch you.”
But she was already seating herself on the branch and sliding very carefully along it toward Mary. It creaked and Jennifer, somewhere behind Lord Francis, stifled a moan with both hands.
“You would not be able to reach her from the trunk,” Cora said, sounding very calm, “and this branch is not particularly strong. It will bear my weight, I believe, but not yours. I will hand her back to you.”
The branch groaned again. So did Jennifer. Samantha gasped.
“You are over water,” Lord Carew called up, all calm practicality. “It will be a soft landing at least if the branch does not hold. Can you swim, Lady Francis?”
“Of course she can swim,” Lord Francis said. “She saved a child’s life in the river in Bath earlier this year.” He raised his voice. “Be careful, dear.”
She was sitting beside Mary, smiling at her. Her dress was up almost to her knees. Gabe was leaning out from the trunk, stretching out a hand, which was at the end of an arm approximately three feet too short to pluck his daughter off her perch.
She really was a cool one, Lord Francis thought, staring appreciatively, wishing that Carew would have the decency to lower his eyes.
“Mary,” she was saying conversationally, though her words carried quite distinctly to the ground, “I am going to pick you up. I want you to pretend that I am Mama or Nurse lifting you from your cot. You must not fight me. I am going to hand you to Papa, and Papa is going to carry you down to Mama. All right?”
Mary did not reply. But she played her part to perfection. Perhaps she was too petrified by terror even to fight when she was lifted away from the illusory safety of the branch, Lord Francis thought. Cora lifted her slowly across her own body and set her down again on the branch, where Gabe could reach her. He scooped her up with one hand and swung her in to safety, between his body and the trunk of the tree.
“There,” Cora said briskly, smiling brightly. “That was not so difficult, was it? There really was no danger at all.”
The tree branch disagreed. It creaked and groaned. And then with a crack that would have put a pistol shot to shame, it snapped free of the trunk and plunged into the water below, taking its shrieking occupant with it.
Jennifer was at the foot of the tree, arms reaching upward. But she turned her head and screamed. So did Samantha. Carew yelled. So did Gabe, who came down the tree with Mary with reckless speed. Michael whooped. Mary was crying loudly.
Lord Francis, having assured himself that the branch had not hit his wife on the way down, knelt on the bank and reached out an arm toward her. He was grinning. If everyone else only knew her better, they would all be doing likewise. Only Cora, he thought.
“Come on, Cora,” he said, when she came up gasping and sputtering. “Grasp my hand.”
Her scream was cut short by a watery glug. But her head shot up again almost immediately to reveal to him two panic-stricken eyes.
“I-CAN-NOT-SW—”
She was under again, but Lord Francis had not waited to hear even the half-completed final word. He had dived in to the accompaniment of more screams and bellows from the bank.
She fought him like a wild thing. He had to confine her arms with one of his own, turn her over onto her back, and clamp his free arm beneath her chin before he could swim the six feet to the reaching hands that extended from the bank. But he ignored them and hauled her out himself.
She acted as if she had swallowed half the lake. She knelt on all fours, coughing and heaving and wheezing, gripping the grass with clawed fingers. Her ruined dress clung to her like a second skin. Her hair, still partly caught up in its pins, hung about her face in an enviable imitation of rats’ tails.
Lord Francis knelt beside her, leaning over her, thumping her on the back. “Don’t fight it, Cora,” he said. “The breath will come. Try to relax.”
Finally she was only gasping. “Oh,” she said, staring down at the grass, “I want to die.”
“I think you have cheated death for this afternoon at least, dear,” he said. He caught sight of the sleeve of his lemon coat and grimaced inwardly. He was beginning to feel the reality of the breeze that had kept Gabe from taking out the boats.
“I want to die,” she repeated.
“Towels,” Jennifer said. “There are towels and blankets in the boathouse.”
“I will fetch them, Jenny,” Samantha said and went racing off along the bank. Carew went after her.
Lord Francis patted his wife’s back as reassuringly as he could. He had understood her wish to slip quietly out of this world. She did not want to straighten up and have to look anyone in the eye.
“Here, Cora.” The earl knelt down at the other side of her and set his coat over her back and about her shoulders. “Sam and Hartley will have towels and blankets here in a few moments. My dear, how very brave you were. You must have known that branch would go as soon as you made the exertion of lifting Mary. I do not know how we will ever be able to thank you.”
Mary was crying quietly in her mother’s arms. Jennifer’s voice was tearful too when she spoke. “To me you will always be the heroine who saved Mary’s life, Cora,” she said. “You risked your own doing it and very nearly lost it. How very wonderful you are. How very fortunate Francis was to find you.”
“It was all my fault.” Michael began to wail. “I nearly killed Mary and Aunt Cora. It will be quite all right if you spank me, Papa.”
“That is extraordinarily magnanimous of you, son,” his father said dryly. “My guess is that your punishment has been ghastly enough. But on the way back to the house you and I will have a little chat about the care we owe the ladies who have been placed under our protection. And although gentlemen are allowed to cry when there is good reason, as Mama and I have told you before, they are not well advised to wail in prolonged self-pity.”
Michael was quiet again.
Samantha and Carew were back with an armful each of towels and blankets. Enough to dry and warm a whole pack of drowned rats.
“Wrap yourselves up, both of you,” Carew said, “and hurry back to the house. Samantha and I will go ahead as fast as we can, if we may, Jennifer, to order water to be heated. At least it is a warm day, though I do not imagine either of you can feel the truth of that at the moment.”
But Cora was still on her hands and knees, observing the grass a few inches from her face. “I want to die,” she muttered.
“I think it would be best if you all left us here,” Lord Francis said, taking one of the blankets and draping it over his wife after first removing the earl’s coat. “We can get out of our wet clothes. And Cora needs a little time to recover.”
He could see at a glance about the group that they all understood. Cora was huddled under her blanket like a lopsided tent, her bottom elevated higher than her head.
“Come when you are ready, then,” the earl said. “We will have hot drinks ready for both of you and enough water for two baths. Take my hand, Michael. We will stride on ahead. Is Mary too heavy for you, Jennifer?”
“I will help with her,” Samantha said. But before she left with Jennifer and the child, she knelt down and set her hand lightly on Cora’s head. “You were wonderfully brave, Lady Francis,” she said. “How I admire your fearlessness.”
“Bravo!” the marquess added quietly. “It is o
ne thing to look up at a height and think it is nothing at all. It is another to be up there looking down and knowing that there is a very real danger of falling. My congratulations on your courage, ma’am.”
“Oh, Francis,” Samantha said, “your poor coat. And it was so splendid.”
And finally they were gone.
SHE COULD HEAR that they were gone. She knew that he had not. She wished he had. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to be a million miles away. Preferably dead.
“Get out of your wet things, Cora,” he said. His teeth were chattering. His voice came from somewhere above her and then she felt a dull thump close beside her. He had thrown down his coat. His poor ruined coat. It was the second coat of his she had caused to be ruined. Something else fell on top of it. He was undressing.
“There is no one here,” he said, “and no one will come back here. You will feel better when you have taken off your wet things and dried yourself and wrapped yourself in a blanket. I will spread our clothes out in the sun. They will dry in no time at all.”
What he said made sense. But there was someone there. He was there. She did not want him to see her. She was so very ugly. She wriggled out of her dress under the protective covering of the blanket and then, after a little hesitation, out of her chemise. She hauled off her silk stockings. One shoe had still been attached to her foot. The other was not. It was probably resting on the bottom of the lake. She teased the pins out of her hair and pulled at the matted mess. It was hopeless.
“Here,” he said. “Take a towel.”
“The blanket has dried me,” she said. “Francis, I have never been so mortified in my life.”
He was silent for all of two minutes. She suspected he had walked a little distance away to spread their wet clothes on the grass. Then he was sitting beside her, wrapped in another blanket she saw a few moments later. He somehow knocked her off balance and then caught hold of her and turned her so that she was sitting beside him. It was very deftly done. She clutched the blanket closer and tried to hide her head beneath it—without much success.
“There really is no need to feel embarrassment, dear,” he said, freeing one bare arm and setting it about her shoulders. “What you did really was very brave. I do not know how Gabe would have got Mary down without you.”
“Probably with great speed and dignity,” she said.
“No.” His fingers were combing through her hair, easing their way patiently through the matted knots. But his hand stilled suddenly and he fell silent. Cora could see it coming as if it were a mile away and galloping inexorably toward her. She hunched her shoulders and braced herself. “Cora, you cannot swim?”
“I never could learn the trick,” she said. “Edgar tried to convince me that water is heavier than I am, but I have never been able to believe it. I expect to sink like a stone when I lift my feet from the bottom, and I always do.”
“Then how in thunder,” he asked, “did you save Bridge’s young nephew?”
It was too embarrassing for words. She had tried to tell everyone at the time, but no one had been willing to listen.
“I jumped in without thinking,” she said. “And I caught hold of him and tried to save him. But I was only dragging him under with me. Fortunately we were right beside the bank and Edgar reached out and grabbed us both. He told me afterward that it was obvious little Henry could swim and that he was in the process of doing so when I dived in. Left to myself, I would have drowned him. Edgar said I was brainless—he is forever saying that—and I was. And so I became a great heroine while Edgar was censured for cowardice because he did not jump in. He said it was unnecessary because little Henry was so close.”
It was a lengthy, horrible tale. And now Francis too would know just how great a fraud she was.
He threw back his head and shouted with laughter while her stomach contracted with humiliation.
“Cora,” he said when he had finally brought his glee under control, “you are priceless. Only you! You truly are the delight of my life.”
She finally succeeded in burrowing her head beneath the blanket. She set her forehead on her knees and clasped her arms tightly about them.
“I want to go home,” she said.
His hand stilled again on the back of her neck. “No, dear,” he said. “There is no need. Truly there is not. What was embarrassing to you was proof of your great courage to everyone who watched. They will be waiting for you at the house, Cora, to thank you again. Believe me, they were all overcome with admiration and gratitude for what you did.”
The thought of going back to Chalcote was frankly terrifying. But she had not meant that. “I want to go home,” she said.
His voice sounded sad. “We will go then, dear,” he said. “Tomorrow morning. I have been missing Sidley too. We will go home and spend what remains of the summer there.”
“To Bristol, not to Sidley,” she said. “I want to go home to Papa, Francis. Where I belong. You must stay here with your friends. You will be happier when I am gone. We will both be happier.”
She was on her back on the grass then, the blanket stripped right away from her face. And he was looming over her, a frown on his face while his eyes searched hers.
“Cora,” he said, “what is this? I have hurt you? But I did not laugh in derision. I laughed because I was amused by your peculiar form of intrepidity. You act first and think later when you perceive that someone is in danger, do you not? It is a delightful aspect of your character. But I ought not to have laughed. I am so sorry, dear. You needed comfort and I laughed at you. Please forgive me.”
His face blurred before her vision. “I am so ugly,” she said. Ugly inside and out. She was so abject and cringing and self-pitying. She had never been like this before not rescuing little Henry and before being taken off to London to meet the ton. Before meeting Francis and being stupid enough to fall in love with him. She had had some dignity once upon a time.
“Ugly.” He repeated the word without expression. “Ugly, Cora? You?”
“I am as tall as a man,” she said. “I have large feet and hands. And I am—I am a lump. I have a coarse face and a bramble bush for hair. I am ugly and you must hate me.” There. How was that for groveling, sniveling self-flagellation? And she hated herself too at that moment. And hated herself for hating herself.
“Cora.” There was amazement in his eyes. She blinked her own and saw it there. “I can remember your concern about the size of your feet, though they have never looked noticeably large to me. I had no idea that you perceived yourself as ugly. I am amazed. Almost speechless again. How can you not have realized how very beautiful you are?”
“Ha!” She would have been proud of the world of scorn she threw into the single syllable if she had not been feeling quite so wretched.
“Cora.” He wrestled with her for a moment, but he won—of course. Her blanket parted down the middle and she lay fully exposed to his view in bright, sunny daylight. And view her he did, moving his gaze slowly down the full length of her body to her toes. “You are quite out of the common way, dear. I think I would have to agree that your face is not pretty in any accepted way. It has far too much character for bland prettiness. Your hair is—glorious. I have been selfishly glad since our marriage that only I am permitted to see it at its most glorious, when it is down. Your body—well, perhaps I had better bring up the memory of my humiliation on our wedding night. I—ended it all far too fast because I had lost control. Because of your—beauty, Cora. You are truly—magnificent. You see how tongue-tied you always succeed in making me?”
Francis. Always so very gallant. She reached up an arm to touch his face but let it drop to the grass again.
“I wish I could be beautiful for you,” she whispered, “as she is beautiful.”
“She?” His eyes snapped to hers.
“She is so small and dainty and pretty and blond-haired,” she said. “And so sweet too. I wish I could be those things for you, Francis. Or better still, I wish I had said no when you
asked me. I meant to say no, but when I opened my mouth to say it, yes came out instead. She is as lovely as I have always longed to be.”
“My God.” He lowered his head to rest his forehead beneath her chin. “You are talking about Samantha. You know! Ah, Cora, I had no idea you knew.”
She threaded her fingers through his hair. “It is all right,” she said. “You said yourself I was not the woman of your choice. But you have always been good to me, Francis. I think I would like to go home, though. Home to Papa.”
“Ah, Cora,” he said, lifting his head and looking down into her eyes. “I would not have had you know for worlds, dear. If there were someone with whom you had been infatuated not long before our marriage—and indeed, perhaps there is—I would not want to know. I would feel inferior, insecure. I would know that you did not marry me for love and I would imagine that you did love him—that you still do. I wish you did not know about Samantha.”
She smoothed her hands through his hair.
“I must admit,” he said, “that despite the great contentment I have found with you in the month of our marriage, I was a little apprehensive about seeing her again. I need not have been. I walked to the lake with her earlier and all I could see was you—your tall elegance as Samantha described it with envy in her voice. All I could think about was you and how I wished we were at home alone together in our own haven of domesticity. All I could think about was being with you and talking with you and laughing with you and loving you. Perhaps for me it is as well I came here. I have discovered just how deep my feelings are for you. But it has been a less pleasant experience for you. Don’t leave me.
Please don’t leave me. Give me a chance to make you as happy as you can possibly be with me. To make you love me as I have come to love you.”
“Francis.” She smoothed her fingers over his temples and through his hair. “I really am brainless. I fell in love with you even when I still thought—oh, you know.” She could feel herself flushing.
He smiled slowly at her.
“Besides,” she said with a sigh, “I could not really go back to Papa to stay, Francis. At least I do not think so. I knew it all along but ignored it. I have to stay with you. I think we are going to have a child. Nothing has happened since our marriage and something should have happened more than a week ago.”