by Mary Balogh
“I was almost robbed,” Cora Downes said. “Lord Francis came to rescue me.”
But they appeared to have lost the bulk of their audience except for a now sobbing Jane, an embarrassed-looking Greenwald—Lord Francis suspected that the two of them had been up to clandestine business in the woods when they should have been walking with Miss Downes and Corsham and keeping an eye on them—and the sheepish-looking couple who were members of the same party.
The rest of the audience were doubtless breaking speed records in their haste to get back to the pavilion and the crowds in order to spread the glad tidings.
“Hush,” Lord Francis said, setting an arm about Miss Downes’s waist and drawing her against his side. “Come, I will escort you back to Greenwald’s box. Her grace will take you home.”
“They thought we were having a tryst here,” she said, sounding dazed. “Did they not realize it was only me—and only you?”
Lord Francis suspected that they—every last one of the spectators—had known those facts very well indeed. They were the same couple who had been discovered in close embrace out on the deserted balcony of Lady Fuller’s ballroom.
“Come,” he said quietly. “Take my arm.”
She took it. “This is ridiculous,” she said. Her voice had gained strength. “How very foolish people are. Yes, take me back to the pavilion, Lord Francis, and we will tell everyone exactly what happened. Will they not be embarrassed to have so misjudged the situation?” She laughed suddenly and sounded genuinely amused. “You and I enjoying a secret tryst—what a delightful joke! Can they not see it?”
Probably not, Lord Francis thought, patting her hand soothingly. He could not see it himself. In fact, he felt about as far removed from laughter and jokes as he had ever felt in his life.
CORA HAD BEEN shut up inside the Duchess of Bridgwater’s house for four whole days, even though the sun had shone brightly from a cloudless sky for all of those days and summer was upon them. And even though there had been plans and engagements for every morning and afternoon and evening of those days.
No one had called. She had been nowhere.
It seemed that she was in something of a scrape. Her grace and Jane and even Elizabeth were very kind about it, but they made no attempt to tell the world how ridiculous the situation was. And they did not encourage Cora to brazen it out by keeping her engagements.
It was definitely ridiculous. It had been from the start. When they had arrived back at the pavilion after that dreadful incident with the thieves—the woman must have been an accomplice too, Cora had realized in a moment of inspiration—it had appeared that everyone was looking at them and that an unnatural hush had fallen over the gathered revelers. Cora was not given to conceit. She was not one to imagine that everyone was looking at her when in fact everyone was not.
Cora would have stood in the middle of the dancing area before the pavilion and addressed the mob since she obviously had their attention anyway. She would have told what had happened. She would have explained how clever the woman and the boy had been and how evil-smelling the man had been. She would have described her struggles and told about how she and Lord Francis between them had vanquished the foe. She would even—since she was not conceited—have admitted to that moment of weakness when she had felt suddenly dirty and violated though no serious harm had been done and had needed the comfort of Lord Francis’s arms.
She would have made them all lower their eyes in embarrassment at their mistake. And then she would have made them laugh and everything would have returned to normal. Not that she would ever again admit Mr. Corsham to her smiles and her conversation and her company. He had behaved with a shocking lack of gallantry. Good heavens, he had fallen into the trap quite as much as she had. And it had certainly not been he who had come galloping to her rescue.
But she had been given no chance to tell her story, and to her chagrin Lord Francis had made no attempt to tell it either—except in a hushed voice and in the barest of details to her grace, to whose side he had escorted her without pause. He had ended his explanation with the advice that her grace take Miss Downes home immediately and keep her there until he called the next morning.
And so Cora had known all the indignation and all the ignominy of being hustled out of Vauxhall, Lord Greenwald’s party all behind her like silent whipped dogs, feeling as if somehow she was in deep disgrace.
She had been brought home—though it was not home at all, she had been only too aware for four whole days—and kept there. And Lord Francis had not come the day after Vauxhall or any day since. No one had come.
She wanted to go home, Cora decided. She wanted Papa and Edgar and her familiar world. A world that was ruled by sane laws of common sense. She wanted to have done with this world. It had been an exciting world and a gratifying world—she was not going to pretend that it had not been fun to be a heroine. But it was a silly world.
She had asked her grace if she might go home. She was only an embarrassment now to the family that had brought her here. Elizabeth and Jane still had commitments to honor and naturally enough the duchess must wish to concentrate on the progress of her daughters’ betrothals. But the duchess was being gracious about the whole thing. Cora must stay and relax, she said. All would be well. She was very sorry that she had been the cause of all this unpleasantness. She should have found Cora a husband in Bath.
Cora felt like a nuisance even though she could feel no guilt over anything that had happened. Nothing had happened. She could not understand how anyone could have imagined that anything had—especially with Lord Francis Kneller, of all people. But she felt a nuisance. She felt in the way. All she could do, she supposed, was to stay quietly here until everyone returned to the country next week and she could go home to Mobley Abbey. There would still be plenty of summer left.
Lady Augusta Haville had called her a slut, she kept thinking. Oh, how she would dearly love to slap that young lady’s face for her. In her world, in Cora’s world, women did not go about being so vulgarly insulting to one another. And this was supposed to be the genteel world? Ha, Cora thought.
Lord Francis had been about to kiss her, she kept thinking. On the lips. Papa and Edgar often kissed her—they were an openly affectionate family. They kissed her on birthdays and when one or other of them was coming or going. Always on the forehead or one of her cheeks. Sometimes she felt a little weak-kneed when she remembered that Lord Francis had been about to kiss her on the lips. And she wondered what it would have felt like. She smiled to herself when she caught herself in such wonderings. Like a brother’s kiss, that was what. It would have been comforting just as his arms had been and his body had been—she had been a little surprised to find that there had been nothing at all soft or effeminate about either, though her eyes had given her the same message before. And he had been able to carry her before.
He had called her Cora. Her name had sounded softly feminine on his lips. She had always thought that her name had an unfortunate resemblance to the cawing of crows.
She was bored. For four whole days she was so bored she could have screamed. But even in Bristol and at Mobley she had learned that it was ungenteel for a lady to scream except in some dire emergency, like the sudden appearance of a mouse, for example. But whenever Cora saw a mouse, she forgot all about screaming in her curiosity to get closer to observe the little creature.
On the fifth day there was finally a diversion. Elizabeth and Jane were both at a garden party that Cora herself had been looking forward to. They were under the chaperonage of Lady Fuller. Her grace and Cora sat at their embroidery until the former was summoned to the downstairs salon by the arrival of a visitor.
Cora felt as if she were in quarantine for some deadly disease. The visitor would not be brought up to the drawing room, of course. She stitched on.
But then the butler returned with the request that Miss Downes join her grace in the lower salon. Cora put aside her embroidery and got to her feet with an eagerness that she despis
ed. Someone had called and was willing to say how-d’ye-do to her? What a miracle!
She stepped through the salon door, which a footman had opened for her, and felt her spirits soar even higher. She beamed at Lord Francis Kneller as her grace got to her feet and came toward the door.
“Lord Francis wishes to have a word alone with you, Cora,” she said. “I shall be upstairs, dear, if you need me.” She left the room.
Cora scarcely heard her. She hurried across the room, both hands outstretched, and smiled brightly at her visitor.
“Oh, Lord Francis,” she said. “How happy I am to see you.”
She could see immediately, even before he had clasped both her hands in his, why he had not called before. The poor man had been ill. He was deathly pale.
11
ER FACE HAD LIT UP WITH SUCH TOTAL DELIGHT THAT for the moment she seemed startlingly, vividly beautiful. For a moment he felt dazzled.
The past four days must have been dreadful for her. She had not been out of the house, her grace had just told him, or received any visitors. Even his own visit here, the morning after Vauxhall, had not been made to her. And Bridgwater had not called on her either. The girl was in awe of him, he had told Lord Francis with a grimace just an hour ago. He had thought it better to stay away.
But Bridge felt terribly guilty about the whole thing. It was his mother who had brought her to town, his mother who had undertaken to introduce her to the ton and to find her a husband not too far above her in station. And he, Bridgwater, was the head of the family. Ultimately the girl’s safety and reputation were his responsibility. And, to add to his guilt, there was the fact that it was he who had asked Kneller to dance with her at that first ball, to bring her into fashion.
But here she was, after four lonely days spent indoors, looking far more blooming than he felt. And as soon as the duchess left the room, she came hurrying toward him, her hands outstretched, and spoke as she always spoke—quite openly and without artifice. Cora Downes, he suspected, was incapable of calling a spade anything but a spade.
“Oh, Lord Francis,” she said as he took her hands in his and clasped them tightly. “How happy I am to see you.”
He felt doubly wretched, if that were possible.
She should have been pale and quiet. She should have hovered at the door, eyes downcast. But he realized something, and the realization amazed him. She had no idea why he was here. She had no idea what he had been doing for the past four days. She had no idea!
“I am so glad you have come.” She rushed onward with further speech before he could properly marshal his thoughts. “I am so desperately in need of a good laugh. You would not believe how dreary it has been here for the past four days. I have been advised not to go out, not to see anyone. I am sure her grace and the girls mean well, but really it is so ridiculous. Do you know what is being said? It was being said that evening, of course, but to have had the myth continued with since then is the outside of enough. Tell me how foolish you think it all is, and we will have a good laugh together.”
Her bright smile, delivered only inches away from his face, would have seemed coquettish with anyone else. With her, it was quite without guile. It was merely a bright smile.
He clasped her hands a little more tightly. “I am afraid,” he said, “you are in something of a scrape, Miss Downes.”
“Oh,” she said, and her smile faded instantly. “That is just the word her grace used. Is it true, then, that everyone really believes that we slunk away together for a tryst? I have never known any more stupid body of people than the ton. And that is what has made you ill, is it not? You are dreadfully pale, you know. Because you are a member of the ton, it has bothered you. You do not want to have the reputation of being a gentleman who seduces ladies. But no matter. The ton will forget. I will be going home to Mobley Abbey at the end of this week and in another week I will have been forgotten about here. You need not worry. But I am sorry that I have made you ill. You came to rescue me in Vauxhall, which was extraordinarily brave of you when you might have been killed. But instead of being hailed as a hero, you have landed yourself in a scrape. It is very unfair.”
She was looking at him with earnest sympathy. Good Lord, she was the one trying to get him out of the scrape.
“Miss Downes,” he said, “I must apologize for keeping you waiting here for all of four days. I have not been ill in my bed, you know. I have just returned from a visit to Bristol and one to my brother.”
Her eyes opened wide with amazement. “Bristol?” she said. “Oh, if only I had known you were going there. Mobley Abbey is only just outside Bristol, you know. I would have asked you to call on my father.” But she flushed suddenly and bit her lip. “No, that would not have done, would it? A duke’s son to call on a Bristol merchant. Perhaps it is as well I did not know. I would—”
“Miss Downes,” he said firmly. “It was to Mobley Abbey I went, not to Bristol.”
At last she was at a loss. “Oh,” she said.
“I went to speak with your father,” he said. “To offer for you. He approved my suit. A marriage contract, mutually agreeable to both of us, was drawn up. It will be signed as soon as I have had your consent. If I have your consent. Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
Any other woman but Cora Downes would have been expecting this, he thought. Or desperately hoping for it. Or dreading that it might not happen. Any other woman would have realized that there could be only disgrace ahead of her if this did not happen. But Cora Downes stared at him for several silent moments with blank eyes and a slightly hanging jaw.
Then she threw back her head and laughed so merrily that he almost found himself joining her.
“Oh, that is priceless,” she said when she finally sobered. “It is marvelous. I just knew that if only I could see you again I would laugh again. You are so funny. I almost believed you for a moment. Now, would not you have been surprised if my eyes had become starry and I had said yes? Then you would have known what it was to be in a scrape. Oh, I wish I had thought fast enough and done it.” She bit her lower lip and looked at him with sparkling eyes.
“It is no joke,” he said quietly.
He watched her smile fade very gradually and her eyes become wary. She continued to clamp her teeth onto her lower lip.
“No,” she whispered after a long while, and she drew her hands away from his. “Oh, no.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “You are being gallant. How foolish the ton is. How criminally foolish. But I am not a member of the ton, Lord Francis. I will not force you into anything so abhorrent to you.”
It was tempting. So very tempting.
“You have been compromised twice in the last week and a half, Miss Downes,” he said. “Both times by me. It will be better if we set it right—better for both of us. But let us not make it a negative thing. There are positives, are there not? I believe we like each other. We never seem to lack for conversation, and we are comfortable together. We seem to have the ability to make each other laugh. Will it be so bad for us to be married? I think it might be rather pleasant.”
He had convinced himself that it would. Surely friendship was an important ingredient of marriage.
“Pleasant,” she said. “You think no such thing. You cannot possibly wish to marry.”
“I am thirty years old,” he said. “A dreadful age to be, is it not? It is high time I was married. I can think of no one else I would rather marry.” No one else who was not already married, that was. Oh, Samantha!
“You would hate it,” she said. She was looking sympathetic again. “Marriage, I mean. And to me, of all people. I am not even a lady, Lord Francis. My father is not a gentleman. He is very wealthy, but he made his money in trade. You are more than a gentleman. You are a duke’s son, a duke’s brother. Good heavens, you have a title. I would be Lady Cora if I married you. That is absurd.”
“You would be Lady Francis Kneller,” he said, smiling, “not Lady Cora. Is it such a very daunting title?”<
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“You went to visit your brother,” she said. “What did he say? I will wager he was not pleased.”
That would be an understatement. Fairhurst had grown purple in the face. He had bellowed. He had reasoned and argued and cajoled and grown belligerent and thoroughly obnoxious. He had tried to lay down the law when there was no law to lay. He had stopped just short of disowning his brother, but he had made it perfectly clear that he would receive Lady Francis only with the greatest reluctance if she was not even a lady to start with.
“My brother is not my keeper,” he said.
“You see?” Her voice was accusing. “You cannot say that he liked it, can you? You cannot say that he gave his blessing. What did Papa say?”
Her father had surprised him—pleasantly. He was not in any way vulgar. On the other hand, despite his wealth and his newly won status as a landowner, he was not pretentious. He was candid, down-to-earth, forceful. After a very brief acquaintance with the father, it had been easy for Lord Francis to know why the daughter was as she was. The brother had been a little trickier to deal with. Also a man without pretensions, he was indistinguishable in manner and appearance from a born gentleman. He was a handsome devil, Lord Francis had noticed, and also a rather hostile one. He had not thought that marriage into the aristocracy would suit his sister.
“Corey does not take well to rules and restrictions,” he had said with eyes that had the same directness as his sister’s. “If she has fallen afoul of the ton this time, it will happen again. I will wager she does not even know that it has happened. She will never know because she does not deal in petty intrigues or gossip. It will happen over and over again. Corey is a walking disaster.”
Lord Francis had been unable to stop himself from grinning. “I have noticed,” he had said, “that farce seems to dog her footsteps.”
Rather than offending the younger Downes, he had seemed somehow to have pleased him. Relations between them had thawed somewhat after that.
