by Sheila Walsh
Against her will, Felicity found their fear contagious. “Surely, if you consider the matter urgent, you have a much faster vehicle here, ready and waiting?”
There was a shocked silence throughout the yard. Percy’s mouth dropped open. “Miss! You ain’t never suggestin’...?”
Felicity gestured impatiently toward the curricle, where the grays were now stamping and showing the whites of their eyes.
“Well, isn’t it obvious? Benson—you must be quite well able to manage them?”
“Drive his lordship’s cattle, miss?” Benson’s voice was a croak. “You’re never serious, Miss Vale?”
“Of course I’m serious. This is no time for levity.”
“Then I’m sorry, miss,” he said bluntly. “I ain’t precisely squeamish, you understand—but then I ain’t hellbent on committing suicide, neither—and suicide, near as dammit, is what it ’ud amount to if I was to do as you suggest. You wouldn’t know, miss,” he explained kindly, “never having been on the wrong end of his lordship’s tongue, so to speak. Meself—I’d as soon face a line of fire, any day!” A slight shudder shook the sturdy frame.
Felicity found such timidity vaguely irritating. “Oh really! How can you be thinking of yourself when Lord Stayne might at this very moment be lying unconscious?”
“That’s as may be, Miss Vale, but, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll harness the wagon, for less’n he’s dead, which God forbid, I ain’t chancin’ it! Very perticler, is his lordship! If I was to tool that little lot without his permission—and them fresh as they are—I’d be out of a job quicker’n you could spit, savin’ your presence, miss!”
She was obliged to admit that Benson could not be expected to put his job at risk. If there were only someone else...
Her glance strayed speculatively toward the waiting curricle and she experienced the sudden thrill of anticipation tinged with fear which always came to her in the face of a challenge ... Dare she? Oh, but she would dearly love to try! Even as the idea crystalized, she knew she would do it—and the decision was not solely governed by concern for Stayne.
A clamor of protest followed her as she climbed purposefully into the precarious driving seat and gathered up the reins.
“You must all do as you please,” she declared, looking down on a semicircle of distraught faces. “To my mind, this is no time to turn chicken-hearted! Are you coming, Percy?”
“Oh Gawd, miss! Don’t do it!” The young tiger’s face was screwed up in an agony of indecision. “I ... c-can’t ... don’t... ask me! I ain’t never been driven by a female afore!” The cry seemed wrung from him.
“Please yourself,” snapped Felicity, stiffing her own growing qualms. Somehow, sitting all alone, the ground appeared much farther away. She took a firm grip on the reins and on her fast-evaporating courage. “Right, my lads,” she ordered in business-like fashion. “You may let the horses go.”
The stable boys threw a last frightened glance at Benson, but he was busy bellowing for his own horse and merely shrugged, knowing himself beaten, so they let go—and with the sweet smell of freedom in their nostrils, the leaders sprang forward.
In the last split second Percy leaped for his perch, where he hung on, petrified, alternately shouting advice and wailing that they would be hurled into the first ditch and “killed sure!”
Felicity scarcely heard him. She suddenly found herself facing several very pressing hazards all at the same time—not the least of which was the unpleasant prospect of having her arms wrenched from their sockets as she struggled to contain the grays’ headlong progress, while resisting the very natural temptation to drag back so hard on the rein as to damage their delicate mouths.
Even her worry about Stayne paled before the enormity of what she was doing, yet a tiny corner of her brain was responding to the memory of skills painstakingly learned on the dusty streets of Lisbon years back; instinct sent the thong of the whip whistling forward to flick the leaders and instinct prompted her to exert just the correct amount of pressure to execute the sharp right hand turn which would take them down toward Long Meadow.
But for the most part, reality had ceased to have any meaning; these rhythmic, straining bodies compounded of muscle and sinew, beautiful and exhilarating though they were to behold, were not horses at all; they were flying emissaries—self-willed, misbegotten winged messengers of Satan bent upon destruction. And if they didn’t annihilate her, then at the end of it the Earl most certainly would!
As though endorsing these gloomy presentiments, Percy’s voice quavered behind her. “He’ll massacre us, for sure! A female driving the Guvnor’s grays ... and me a party to it! Oh, oh ... I’ll never hold me head up again!”
“For heaven’s sake, hold your tongue, boy!” snapped Felicity.
Bare branches clawed, hedgerow and thicket flashed by, and Percy’s voice rose again.
“There he is, miss! Oh, and mercy on us, isn’t he on his own two feet? Not even half killed! Nothing can save us now!” With which fateful pronouncement he subsided into petrified silence.
Felicity, mastering an overwhelming attack of nerves on seeing that ominously still, upright figure awaiting them, brought the team to a commendable halt. Percy scrambled down without a word and ran to the horses’ heads.
The ensuing silence stretched to deafening proportions. Felicity sat, her hands gripped in her lap; now that the excitement was over, she couldn’t stop them shaking. The realization that the Earl was not after all prostrate afforded her little relief; quite illogically, she had almost rather they had found him mortally injured. At least, she thought resentfully, that would have provided some justification for her actions.
Unable to stave off the moment any longer, she raised her gaze from contemplation of her hands and encountered so blistering a shaft of fury from those black eyes that she instinctively recoiled.
“What in thunder do you suppose you are about?”
Although he stood erect, she saw that he supported himself against a tree. Behind him a rotten branch had been torn violently from the massive trunk and hung by a shred of bark, creaking mournfully as the wind moved it.
Blood was oozing gently from a gash on the Earl’s temple and he was very white about the mouth, but whether from his injury or sheer temper Felicity wasn’t sure.
She was out of the curricle in an instant and at his side. “Oh indeed, you are hurt!”
His arm stiffened under her clasp.
“I—am—awaiting—your explanation, madam.” Each word seemed bitten off. “You do have—an explanation?”
“Yes, of course. Vulcan came back, you see ...” she began inadequately. “I ... that is, we thought you must have ... had an accident.”
The excuses rang lamely, even in her own ears. The sound of horses provided a momentary distraction. Benson came galloping into view, followed by one of the grooms driving a light wagonette. The Earl’s frigid glance lifted to take in this latest contingent of the rescue party.
“I see. Your corporate concern is ... touching!”
Again Felicity noticed the staccato speech. She looked at him closely. The scar on his cheek showed tight and puckered against his extreme pallor and his mouth was compressed in a thin line, but again, whether this was due to the gash on his head or anger, she couldn’t tell. She noticed that he still held to the tree.
Benson dismounted and came across, exchanging a hurried but expressive glance with Felicity.
“My lord—are you all right?”
“No, Benson— I am not all right.”
Benson looked closer. “Aye—well, that’s a nasty looking cut and no mistake. We’d best get you home, m’lord, and one of my lads can go for Dr. Belvedere.”
He looked unhappily from the curricle to the wagonette, seemingly at a loss. His lordship, however, was curtly decisive.
“Don’t talk like a fool, man! I need no doctor—and I need no help. Take that ... conveyance away. I shall have plenty to say to you later.”
; “You must not blame Benson for what has happened,” said Felicity quickly. “He did try to dissuade me.”
The Earl might not have heard. Master and servant looked steadily at one another, then Benson moved heavily back to his horse.
“Aye, well—you’ll do as you please, I suppose,” he mumbled.
“I will. And you may take Percy with you. He is at present skulking behind my grays.”
Percy showed a red, aggrieved face. “Doin’ me job, I am, Guv—looking after your bleedin’ horses!”
“Thank you, Percy, but I believe we may dispense with your help.” The Earl’s tone was cuttingly sarcastic. “You have helped enough for one day! The grays will not bolt, I think.”
The sorry cavalcade departed, leaving Felicity alone with Lord Stayne—he, thin-lipped and obviously exercising the tightest control—she, disheveled and flying bright flags of color in her cheeks.
Neither seemed willing to break the silence. In the end, nervousness made Felicity plunge flippantly: “I suppose you have sent them all away so that you may quarrel with me undisturbed!”
Even as the words tumbled out, she would have given anything to bite them back. Without quite meeting his eye, she rushed on, floundering in acute mortification: “I didn’t mean ... that is, I’m truly ... sorry, my lord. My behavior must ... seem unpardonable...”
“Unpardonable!” He gave the word a savage emphasis. “Yes, madam—I would certainly say unpardonable. I believe I shall be a long time forgiving you for this day’s work!”
His total rejection of her clumsily worded apology rankled; her first instinct was to meet fire with fire, but a niggling awareness of the enormity of her crime obliged her to attempt conciliation.
“Oh come, my lord,” she urged, “was it so very bad? No real harm has been done, after all.”
“No harm, you say! No harm that a young woman employed by me in a position of some responsibility disports herself like a mindless hoyden before my servants!” His raking glance was contemptuous. “If you could but see yourself at this moment, madam, you might think otherwise.”
Felicity was stung; for the first time she became aware that her hair had been torn from its pins by the wind and was spilling down her back in a most unruly fashion. With angry, resentful tears locking her throat, she gathered it with impatient fingers and crammed it under her hat in a gesture of defiance.
The Earl watched with an air of grim vindication. “However—deplorable though I consider your want of decorum—it is in the matter of my horses that I find you to be most glaringly at fault! To have commandeered my curricle as you did, against all advice, can only be termed a flagrant act of vandalism.”
“Oh, but I...”
“Be silent, madam! I must be thankful, I suppose, that you have not succeeded in maiming my grays beyond recall. As it is, thanks to your desire to emulate Letty Lade, I shall be surprised if I do not find their mouths sawn to pieces!”
“How dare you!” This time Felicity was too angry to be silenced. “How dare you be so tyrannical and ... pompous! Yes, pompous! Do you imagine for one moment that I would attempt to drive your wretched horses if I didn’t think myself competent? You have not troubled to check their condition!” She was well launched into the attack now and past caring about the consequences.
“Take a good look at them, my lord. Do they seem badly winded—or in any way discomforted? Look well, and if you can find so much as a strained fetlock or a bruised mouth, then I will endure your strictures! Furthermore, even if you did, which you won’t, it would not excuse your base ingratitude, which I find a poor recompense for what was a sincere, if impetuous, concern for your well-being!”
It was a long and, toward the end, somewhat involved speech. By the end she was so far convinced of the hopelessness of expecting or receiving any quarter that, for good measure, she added a final inflammatory thrust.
“And if you think so much of your precious grays, my lord, you ought not to keep them standing about in the cold when you might as easily rip up my character at home!”
She supposed that rage had finally deprived the Earl of speech until his hand slowly loosed its hold on the tree and he took a step forward, muttering thickly, “Yes, of course ... you are right...”
And then, under her horrified gaze, he began to sway alarmingly, his face the color of parchment.
“Oh glory!” Felicity’s anger evaporated instantly. She flew to his side and for the first time in her life thanked a j merciful providence that had built her on such generous lines; she eased a strong young shoulder beneath his oxter and clasped his arm around her neck.
“There now, dear sir—hang on. For pity’s sake, don’t you dare swoon on me!”
A feeble laugh shook him. “No chance!” he muttered.
He was almost dead weight, but Felicity managed to struggle as far as the tree, where he leaned back with eyes closed.
She eyed him in growing alarm, wishing fervently that he had not been so precipitate in dispatching Benson.
“Brandy, my lord? Do you have brandy?”
He seemed to sigh. “Left ... hand pocket.”
She found the flask and watched him drink. After a few moments he opened his eyes. “That’s better ... I shall do, presently.”
His color was indeed improving a little. She asked diffidently: “Do you feel strong enough to walk to your curricle, my lord? I think the sooner you are home, the better.”
“Don’t fuss, Miss Vale.”
“No, sir.”
A few more minutes passed; to Felicity it seemed an eternity until he said abruptly, “Give me your arm, now. We will go.”
He climbed into the waiting curricle and sank back with a sigh. Felicity followed quickly, reaching for the reins.
Stayne gathered himself with an effort. “Thank you, Miss Vale. I will drive.”
“Oh, my lord, be sensible!” she urged, worry making her less than tactful. It earned her a withering look.
He held out his hand and without further argument she relinquished the ribbons.
For a while all went well; then he misjudged a turn badly and swore as he corrected his error. Felicity sat tense, gritting her teeth, vowing she would not interfere again.
A few yards more and without warning the Earl brought the grays to a halt. He slumped in his seat, his J hands dropping between his knees, his breath coming in quick, shallow bursts.
“I fear ... you are right, Miss Vale ... any farther and I shall bring us to grief...”
Felicity had seen the symptoms many times. She conquered the shake in her voice, took the reins, and said matter-of-factly, “That would be a pity, sir. I daresay you have a little concussion, you know—from the blow you took.”
“Quite possibly,” he said, and shut his eyes.
When they reached the stable yard, Benson’s surly apprehension turned to concern. Under Felicity’s watchful eye he helped his lordship down and together they assisted him toward the house. Here, Cavanah, having been forewarned, waited with a strong, young footman. This was too much for the Earl. He straightened up and disposed of them all in a pithy, idiomatic sentence, before steering a lone, if somewhat erratic, course toward the library.
Felicity followed quickly on his heels, giving Cavanah a number of low-voiced instructions.
“You don’t think perhaps the doctor, Miss Vale?”
She smiled reassuringly. “I think not—for the present, at least.”
A footman came into the library, bearing a tray which he laid down silently on a table close to the Earl’s chair. He inquired if there was anything further Miss Vale would be wanting?
Felicity glanced at the tray and shook her head. The footman withdrew and she began to wring out a cloth in the hot water.
“I am going to bathe your head, my lord,” she said with deliberate cheerfulness. “Cavanah will send your valet presently to assist you to your room. I expect you will feel much more the thing when you are rested.”
“The devil I will!
” he retorted. “You are too busy, ma’am. I shall do very well if you will just go away and leave me be.”
“Presently, sir, when I have finished.”
She continued to dab at the congealed blood. He winced as she probed gently at the jagged gash, lest there be any hidden splinters.
“If you will just be still, sir...”
“Dammit, Miss Vale! I am not Jamie!”
“No, my lord.” She smothered a smile, glad that he was already sounding more himself.
Stayne squinted up, eyeing her with disfavor. “I’ll tell you what it is, my girl! You are getting above yourself— giving orders to my servants under my nose! If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a managing female!”
Felicity pressed a piece of court plaster firmly into place over the wound and turned away to rinse out her cloth.
“I can quite see now, sir, why you have never married. You are very nice in your notions of how females should and should not behave. You do not wish them to be clinging and dissolve into tears at the first sharp word, yet neither, it seems, do you wish them to be practical and show initiative.”
“Oh-ho! We are sharp-tongued today!” He winced again and put up tentative fingers to his temple. “Am I then so hard to please?”
She shook her head, laughing. “What you require is a paragon, my lord, and they are very hard to come by. You might, of course, take some dutiful little thing and train her to mind your ways. In fact, I wonder you have never done so.”
She paused before adding innocently, “I believe Miss Lipscombe to be quite conformable—though it is a well-known fact that girls grow to be very like their mothers!”
“Pray come here, Miss Vale.”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“Because you would box my ears!”
Before the Earl could reply, the door opened to admit a tall, spare man with a kindly, aesthetic face.
“Ah, John,” said Felicity. “You may take his lordship away now. It is time he rested. He still looks very pale and undoubtedly has a raging headache.”