by Mary Balogh
He lowered his head again to rest between her breasts. He said nothing. But she could hear him drawing in slow, deep breaths.
“Francis,” she said wistfully after a while, looking up at tree branches and fluffy little clouds and blue sky, “do you really not mind that I am so large? Do you really think me a little bit beautiful?”
He groaned.
“My breas—My bosom is not too large, Francis?” she asked him anxiously. “My hips are not too wide?”
He was grinning when he lifted his head. He was also flushed and there was a certain look in his eyes. “Shall I prove to you just how very beautiful and attractive you are to me, dear?” he asked.
“Here?” Her voice had gone up a few tones in pitch. “Now? But would it not be dreadfully improper, Francis?”
“Dreadfully, dreadfully so,” he said. But one of his thumbs was already feathering over one of her nipples.
“Francis,” she said, “you never behave improperly.”
“Shall I stop, then?” he asked into her mouth without removing his own first.
“No,” she said hastily. “No, I will never tell anyone. I promise. Oh, what are you doing now?”
But what he was doing was so very pleasurable that she gave no more thought to daylight or sunshine or impropriety. At least not for a long, long time.
THEY WERE LYING side by side and hand in hand on the grass, gazing up at the sky. He thought he had probably been sleeping for a few minutes. He had never before made love in the outdoors. It was an experience well worth repeating and one he certainly would repeat since he appeared to have a very willing partner in impropriety. He squeezed her hand.
“They will be wondering back at the house where on earth we are,” he said. “Perhaps we should begin to think of going back.”
“I shall die,” she said, but she sounded reasonably cheerful at the prospect of her own demise.
He could not resist. “They probably all know very well what we have been up to,” he said. “They will greet us with rosy faces and shifty eyes.” He had no doubt that it was the truth too.
“I shall die!” she said with considerably more conviction.
“And they will all be purple with envy,” he said. “Doubtless none of them have ever had the courage to do what we have just done.”
“Someone might have come, Francis,” she said. “I would have died.”
“Actually,” he said, “while you were panting and mindless with passion, a dozen or so gardeners did emerge from the trees. They did not stay long, though. They were very discreet.”
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
1
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.
He expected her to ride inside the carriage with him? Did he not know how very improper …? But clinging to propriety seemed absurd under the circumstances. And the prospect of being inside any structure, even if only a carriage, was dizzying.
“I did not expect to ride inside, sir,” she said.
“Did you not?” He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Come, come, Miss Gray. I shall try to curb my appetite for dining on tropical birds until after we have reached the next village.”
She set her hand in his and immediately noticed the hole worn in the thumb of her glove, twisted around and perfectly visible. “Thank you,” she said, feeling horribly mortified. And then as she settled herself on one of the seats, her back to the horses, and felt the warmth and softness of the blue velvet, she had to swallow several times to save herself from a despicable show of self-pity. She twisted the thumb of her glove inward in the hope that he had not noticed its shabbiness.
The gentleman closed the door again and seated himself opposite her, and the carriage lurched into well-sprung motion. She smiled at him a little uncertainly and tried not to blush. She could not remember another time when she had been quite alone with a gentleman.
ALISTAIR MUNRO, DUKE of Bridgwater, was on his way to London to take in the Season. His mother was already there, as was his sister-in-law, Lady George Munro. George was there too, of course, but his presence was without threat
. And both of his sisters were there with their respective husbands. Bridgwater knew perfectly well what the presence of his female relatives in town during the Season was going to mean for him. He was going to be paraded to every ball, concert, soirée, and whatever other entertainment the ton could invent for its collective amusement, the ostensible reason being that they could not function without his escort—though presumably they had done very well for themselves during the first part of the Season, and all of them had husbands to be dragged about with them except his mother, who needed no escort at all. The real reason, of course, would be to expose him to the view of all the young beauties who were fresh on the market this year and of their mamas. His mother and his sisters—and his sister-in-law too—were determined to marry him off. He was, after all, four-and-thirty years old—alarmingly old for a duke with no heir of his own line.
The trouble was, he had been thinking gloomily before his thoughts had been happily diverted by the sight of a brightly flamboyant ladybird standing beside the road, one arm outstretched—the trouble was that he was beginning to lose his resistance. He was very much afraid that he might allow himself to be married off soon. For no other reason than that he was filled to the brim with a huge ennui, a massive boredom with life. Why not get married if his mother was so set on his doing so? It was something that must be done sooner or later, he supposed. There was that dratted matter of a nursery to be set up.
He was horribly bored—and restless—and depressed by the knowledge that life and love were passing him by. He had used to be a romantic. He had dreamed of finding that one woman who had been created for him from the beginning of the world. He had not found her all through his hopeful twenties. And then he had become nervous. Some of his closest friends had been tricked or forced into marriages not of their choosing, and he had panicked. What if the same thing should happen to him? There was Gabriel, Earl of Thornhill, for example, who had become involved in a reckless scheme of revenge and had ended up snaring an unwanted bride for himself. There was his closest friend, Hartley, Marquess of Carew, reclusive and unsure of himself, who had married for love one of the loveliest ladies in the land and had then discovered that she had married him under false pretenses. And there was Francis Kneller, who had kindly taken the gauche and alarmingly reckless Miss Cora Downes under his wing despite her being a merchant’s daughter, and had ended up having to marry her after he had inadvertently compromised her. That last disaster had happened six years ago. Bridgwater had avoided any possible romantic entanglement since then.