“I do not bill and coo,” David said. “I speak the truth.”
“You make us sound ridiculous,” Josephine said as she noticed David struggle to hold back his appreciation of James’ humor. “Only pigeons and doves do that, and if you are insinuating I am either one, well, ask David about my fist.”
James looked horrified and she sniggered.
“I got you worried.”
“Wretch,” David said. “Poor James was worried for a moment.”
“I was,” James agreed. “And I will steer clear of you when you are aggrieved about anything. But we digress, and we must get our stories straight. Therefore, David and I are off somewhere else. I have no idea where, but no doubt one of us will think of something before we get home.”
“Castleton, to discover if anyone knows any more about Cassel’s hare-brained ideas,” David suggested. “That gives us plenty of time to get me out of here. Plus, it is easy enough to report no one had a clue what Cassel meant. If anyone is bothered enough to inquire.”
“Ah yes,” James said with satisfaction. “Perfect. So, Josephine, if you accompany Lyddie and the men, I will get back as soon as possible with Peg Leg here.”
“And then we will see what happens next,” David added with a wink. “To any or all of us. So, love…”
“It’s up to me and Lydia to play dumb?” Josephine said. She ignored his endearment. Time enough to think of the connotations it suggested later. “I’m not quite sure I can manage dumb.”
“Well, not quite dumb, but not knowing or caring what we are up to.”
“Oh, that will be easy. We can roll our eyes and mutter about pea-brained men and their little foibles.”
David gave a crack of laughter. “Precisely.”
“And curse idiots who hurt their foot and get stuck in a cave in a storm?”
“No doubt. But do it in a positive manner, I beg you.”
“I’m not sure that is possible. However, please take care and do not get yourself killed. I would be most annoyed not to be able to say my piece because you were so careless as to lose your life.”
David had to laugh. “Yes, my dear.”
She grinned. “It is no laughing matter, and I know a pander-to-the-little-woman voice when I hear one. Right, moan over. What do I do?” She kissed David, unheeding of the way James watched with interest. “I mean it. Both of you take care.” She moved so her mouth was next to his ear. The next sentence was for him only. “I promise to talk to you tonight with my decision.”
“Then it behooves me to get back to hear it. Off you go.” He patted her bottom and she scowled even though she didn’t attempt to move his hand, which he left on her derrière for several seconds. She supposed she’d better complain for form’s sake. “And do not make free with my body.”
“Yet.”
Would she ever get the last word? “Maybe never.”
Did he really mutter, ‘God, it better not be never’?
Josephine followed James out into the drizzle and yelped as water almost immediately sloshed over her feet. “James, tell me honestly. Is he really safe?”
James inclined his head. “As long as we get a move on. Will says there’s more rain to come. The cave, so I have been told, won’t flood, but it could be difficult to get him out. Especially if he can’t put any weight on his foot.”
It was as she feared. “He can’t. He crawled there.”
James hit his head with the palm of his hand. “Therefore, as Will said, we need to move swiftly.”
“Then shouldn’t Will have stopped here with you to help you?” That seemed the simplest thing to do.
“Not when you are dealing with David, who is directing things as he knows they should be done. Me, I go for straightforward. He covers all angles. Which is why Will’s going to take you and Lyddie back and he and Bert will show themselves. Just in case anyone queries your story. Then they will come back here. If we can all pull together, our story will be taken, if not as gospel, as acceptable.” He indicated the rock face. “If you go up as he wants, I promise I will do everything in my power to make sure he suffers no more injuries.”
“Thank you. More than you will ever know, I needed to hear that.” Josephine took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
“It’s a rope again, I’m afraid, but Lydia thought these breeches might be a help. I was to tell you she often wears them under her skirts and rides astride. Her suggestion was you wear them without your skirts to make the climb easier. She has a clean riding habit with her for your ride home. I promise to avert my eyes. I prefer my face arranged the way it is, and I have reason to know how thrawn David’s temper can be when all does not go as he thinks it should.”
She could well believe it. An aristocrat to the core, with those imperative demands and intentions to care for and cherish those who mattered. A sweet sensation of being wanted filled her. It was a novelty, and she wished she had time to savor it. “After all I’ve been through, a rope without a shower of mud raining down on me will be child’s play.” Or at least she hoped it would be. “With no skirts to hinder me, it will be even better.” She took the proffered trousers, waited until James turned his back and pulled them on. Her petticoats she gathered up and knotted around her waist. The simple solution would have to do. At least she’d worn a skirt the day before and not a dress. That had made the change so much easier.
The sensation of no gown to cover her, of being exposed, wasn’t unpleasant, but it was definitely unusual. However, she could see how much easier it would be to clamber up the cliff with no skirts flapping around her legs.
“You can turn around now. What do I do with this?” She waved her soiled and ripped skirt.
“I’ll take it back with me and David. I’ll tell him you left it for him to take care of—before I explain what you are wearing and going to dress in. Shake him up a bit.”
“You are incorrigible. Do you always behave like this?”
“To him and him to me? Always,” James reassured her. “We bait each other but would fight to the death to aid the other if need be, and know anything we do would never be harmful. When we were growing up, I suspect we kept each other sane. And I stopped him really cutting up the traces. His father was enough to drive anyone to excess. He is a thoroughly unpleasant specimen.”
Just as she’d thought.
“Let’s do it.” Before she changed her mind and insisted she stay with David—propriety be damned.
Chapter Fourteen
Five minutes later, Josephine was on her way upward, and less than a minute after that could appreciate how scrambling up the scree and the side of the gorge was so much easier without skirts. No wonder men were such daredevils and took things like rock climbing and potholing in their stride. To say nothing of archery or swordplay. What a pity ladies’ pantaloons could not be regular wear for any strenuous activity. The fact said ladies were not intended to undertake such things was not lost on her. The grand dames would swoon at the thought of what she was at that moment attempting, let alone her wearing such clothes as she did.
James had foreborne from mentioning how she appeared in her unconventional attire, but she had caught the glimmer of admiration in his eyes before he’d masked it.
“On penance of your intended calling me out, I will do my best not to look at you as I guide you,” he’d said with a smirk.
“My what?” Bother him. She refused to get drawn on that subject. “You’re ahead of yourself there. I have not said I will marry him.”
“But you will,” James said confidently. “The pair of you mesh, match and complement each other.”
That was good to hear, but two could play at that game. “As do you and Lydia,” she said sweetly. “When do we congratulate you both?”
“At this rate, never. Now climb.”
She climbed.
Her gloves were soon sodden. She’d had the forethought to put them into her pocket earlier, so they hadn’t become soaked through, but now she wondered why she’
d bothered.
Halfway up her climb, the rain, which a few moments before had been a fine drizzle, came down in earnest. Water dripped from her eyelashes and nose. Her hair escaped its untidy knot and added to her misery as it stuck to her face. Josephine blew at it without much success. All she could do was carry on and hope there was a hot bath at the end of it all.
No doubt any cross-examination would ask why on earth she and Lydia had chosen to go for a ride in such weather. Their only response would be to insist they hadn’t thought it would get worse so fast.
Other than that… Her thoughts skittered to David alone in that tiny crevice of a cave, and with no idea what was going on. How would he and James succeed in getting out and back to Lady Foster’s? Would their story be accepted or would it throw up more questions than they could answer? What if he wasn’t able to move? What if…?
Enough. Lord, she was becoming morbid, and it was neither the time nor the place. Josephine managed to move up another three or four feet before she leaned on a smooth part of the rock face to catch her breath. Right then she couldn’t care less what people said about anything. Her attire, her attitude, her future. Nothing mattered except David being rescued.
“Josephine?” Lydia called down from the top of the gorge. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, I just needed to catch my breath. Last push coming up.” She took a deep breath and fumbled for her next handhold. Either she was becoming used to climbing or the incline was less steep, because it seemed a very short time later when her wrists were grasped and Will and Bert hauled her over the side.
Josephine collapsed into the grass, unheeding of how wet it was. She was little better. Even her chemise was damp.
“We’ve got her,” Bert called, presumably to James. “We’ll be setting off soon.”
“When you drink this and we pop behind a bush for you to get changed,” Lydia said with a grin. “You do look like a drowned rat.”
“I feel like one as well.” Josephine grasped the flask and, uncaring of how unladylike it was, took a hearty swallow of the fiery contents. The brandy warmed her insides as it slid down her throat and she almost sighed with satisfaction. “That’s better.”
She used the tiny square of toweling Lydia passed to her to dry her face and mop up some of the wetness in her hair. “Thank you. What happens next?”
“We get you out of those sodden clothes and into the dry ones I purloined from your room. They’ve been wrapped in oilskin so should be fine. I’ve reconnoitred and, if you can squeeze between those two bushes, there’s a small clearing amongst all the trees which is hardly wet at all. That will be the best place to change. Of course, you’ll need to get damp all over again, because we will have the eyes of everyone at the manor on us. Lots of tutting because we have been silly enough to ride out and be caught in the reoccurring storm. But at least you won’t be in the same clothes as earlier.”
That made sense. Josephine followed Lydia across the bumpy ground and slid between the indicated bushes. Lydia handed her a parcel. “Do you need any help?”
“Probably. I’m all fingers and thumbs.” Although the brandy had warmed her insides, her fingers were icy and she fumbled with buttons until Lydia brushed her hands away.
“Think of me as your ladies’ maid, albeit an inexperienced one.” Lydia worked swiftly, and within a few moments had divested Josephine of her blouse and jacket and slipped a deep red woolen riding dress over her friend’s shoulders. “I thought this would be the easiest thing for you to put on, and I have the jacket to go with it as well. Now all you need to do is get out of the breeches, which I will say look so much better on you than me, and do something with your hair. There’s a brush and some pins here. Keep the breeches. You have the figure for them. I look like a lumpy sack of potatoes without the proper underpinnings.”
Josephine laughed. “That’s the first time someone has said anything positive about my figure.” She ignored the compliments David had given her. Men said things to please, to help them get their own way. He is not that shallow, is he? Of course not. He is a true gentleman. She answered her own question. “Almost, anyway.”
Lydia raised her eyebrows. “What?”
“It’s true. For me, I accept we are all shapes and sizes and how good that is. The world would be very boring if we were all the same. To my parents, though, I am everything a woman should not be. As I can’t, and never could, do anything to please them, I stopped trying long ago and did what I wanted instead.” She considered how to continue. Those newly found feelings for David were too personal to share yet. Plus, in the cold light of day, he might regret what he’d said. She knew she wouldn’t. “In a few weeks, I move out of their house and into my own. I cannot wait. No more ton, and I imagine no more parents. Which, as I rarely see them anyway, will be no hardship.” She shrugged and smiled at Lydia.
“Jo…sephine, how awful.”
Josephine patted Lydia’s hand. “Do not look so aghast. I learned at a very young age that, as a female, I was of no account to them.” It was a relief that every time she said that out loud, a little of the hurt she’d carried all those years left her. “As time goes on, it matters less and less.”
“If I may be so bold, your parents are ill-informed and pathetic,” Lydia said passionately. “It is their loss. Why, when I left they’d asked for breakfast in their suite. I believe they were informed about the alarms of the early hours but told the maid it was nothing to do with them. Selfish, they have not even asked if all was well.” She put her hand over her mouth as she realized her faux pas. “I’m sorry. They may be your parents, but still. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but they do not deserve a daughter like you.”
“Oh, it does me good to hear that. I’ve often wondered why I deserve to be saddled with them. As they say, we cannot choose our family, more is often the pity.”
“There’s just one thing.” Lydia paused and tilted her head to one side. “Would you say we are now friends?” she asked.
“Undoubtedly.” There was no doubt in Josephine’s mind.
“Good. So, as a friend, I must ask. I thought you were going to marry David. Is that not what this whole house party is all about?”
Now the reason for their invitation made sense. “Not as far as I’m concerned. I came under duress and this visit is the last thing I will ever be forced to do. My swansong in the ton.”
Lydia laughed. “Does David know all that?”
“He does now.”
“And what did he say? He is a very determined man. When his mind is set on something, he rarely deviates from it.”
It was Josephine’s turn to laugh. “That he’d try to change my mind.”
“Dare I ask if he has?”
Josephine rolled the wet breeches into a ball and took the hairbrush Lydia handed her. She doubted she’d be able to do much more than pull her hair into a bun and pray no one looked at it too closely. “Not yet. He’s working on it, and I…well, let’s say I’m enjoying it all. But marriage is a big step. As far as he or anyone else knows, my next move is to my own house,” she lied shamelessly. “Men cannot have it all their own way as they seem to assume is their due.”
“Don’t I know it,” Lydia said gloomily. “What next?”
“We ride.”
* * * *
“Look, James, just go,” David said wearily, several hours later. “There is no way I can walk, you can’t carry me in this weather, and there is no point in us both being stuck here. Apart from anything else, there wouldn’t be enough food and you are like a bear with a sore head when you’re hungry.”
“I am not leaving you alone,” James said stubbornly. “We’ll get you out somehow.”
David gestured to the flooded gorge bottom. No grass could be seen except on top of the small outcrops of rock or hillocks. “How? Be sensible, Jamie. If nothing else, make sure Will and Bert know where I still am. Once the rain stops, the three of you can get me out and onto a horse, even if you have to carry me on a bloody
gate. Hell, once it’s dried out a bit, they will get a horse down here, and I’ll ride back without recourse to a gate or piggyback.”
“And how long will that be?” James folded his arms. “You could be here for days.”
That was the rub. “Honestly? I have no idea.” David squinted up at the sky. “But I doubt days. And in any case, if that seemed likely you could replenish my food supply.” He laughed at James’ first mulish, then horrified expression. “Seriously, if it seemed it would be an age, I’d agree to being dragged out somehow.” He squinted to peer outside, where dark clouds scudded overhead. David thought there might be a break in them to the east. Not enough to make a gnat a garter, as his godmama was wont to say, but it was a positive sign.
“This appears very localized. Hopefully, it will pass before much longer, and I swear, once it does stop, the ground will drain quickly. One of the bonuses of all those caves and potholes. Listen, Jamie,” David said earnestly. “I’m safe and dry in here. We’d need a hell of a lot more sustained rain to flood this cave. Plus, half the county would be underwater. That is not a scenario that is likely to happen. Nevertheless, you will have to go and tell Lady F. what is going on and stop her worrying. She’ll cover for us if need be, but you have to speak to her and make sure she hasn’t got the wrong end of the stick. Will and Bert aren’t likely to sensationalize, but all they really know is that their boys are safe, and I’ve hurt my foot. The longer it is before either of us shows up, the more she will imagine the worst.” David waited as James considered his words. Everything he had spoken was true, but he understood James’ dilemma. They had always watched each other’s backs. Always.
“And tell my lady I am thinking of her,” he added.
“Is she your lady?” James asked in a quizzical manner.
“I have no idea, but once I get out of here, I hope I discover she is. So will you go?”
James sighed. “I suppose I have no option. What do I tell anyone who asks why I am back and you aren’t?”
David went over various scenarios in his mind. “I think the best answer is that I went on to see someone, name not supplied to you, who had information but wouldn’t speak to anyone but me. And, ah, rather than you hang around in his terrible weather, I suggested you go back to reassure everyone. You could add that I said if necessary I’d stop around Castleton until the storm passed over. How’s that?”
The Viscount Meets his Match: A Regency Romance Page 22