The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet

by Mary Balogh

  “Oh,” she said, “you think I am foolish and you are quite right. But you do not understand, Francis. You were born to all this.”

  He set his hands on her shoulders and drew her against him despite the presence of a footman in the hall. He wished he could take her back to their room and close the door. He wanted this meeting as little as she did.

  “Come,” he said. “I will be there beside you, dear.”

  She looked up at him. “Francis,” she said, “do not let me fall down the steps. There are four of them—or is it five? Oh, I cannot remember whether there are four steps or five. What if I think there are four and there turn out to be five?”

  “Your eyes would see the fifth,” he said, tucking her arm through his. “But there are only four.”

  He could hear her drawing a deep breath and releasing it slowly.

  The carriage was already being drawn away in the direction of the stables. Carew was saying something to Gabe. Samantha was bent over Mary, listening and smiling at her.

  God!

  And then she looked up and spotted them coming down the steps. Her eyes lit up as only Samantha’s could and she straightened up. There was no outer sign yet of her condition, he half noticed. She was dressed all in pale blue. Small and dainty and blond, she was all delicate beauty and light.

  “Francis!” she said. “Oh, we knew you might come, but we did not know for sure. We did not know you had come. Hartley, look who is here.”

  “I see, my love,” Carew said. “Good to see you, Kneller.”

  But Lord Francis only half noticed him. Samantha was hurrying toward him with eager light steps and a brightly smiling face, and both her hands were stretched toward him. He was saved from making an utter fool of himself only by the fact that though her hands came to rest in his, her smile was for Cora, who was still clinging to his arm.

  “Cora, dear,” he said and then wished he had not added the dear—it sounded affected. “Meet the Marchioness of Carew. And the marquess.”

  He had a chance to complete only half the introduction. Samantha dropped his hands and took Cora’s.

  “I have been so eager to meet you,” she said. “Francis has been a dear friend for a long time. I take it unkindly that he married in such eager haste that Hartley and I could not even attend. He attended our wedding, you know.”

  “It was rather hasty,” Cora said.

  Carew had come limping up to them. He bowed to Cora and smiled. “Lady Francis,” he said, “I am happy to make your acquaintance. We were delighted to learn of your nuptials from Bridgwater and Gabriel. Now tell me what you think of Yorkshire.”

  Samantha laughed. “Hartley swears that there is nowhere on earth to compete with it for beauty and the freshness of its air,” she said. “You must be careful to give the correct answer, Lady Francis. Though you must not let him bully you. Francis, lemon yellow for the afternoon? You match your wife’s dress almost exactly. I am delighted to discover that you have not become a sober married man.”

  They decided to join the walk to the lake. Carew’s disability never stopped him from doing almost all that other men did, Lord Francis had discovered—even challenging far larger men to fisticuffs. Carew offered his arm to Cora, who appeared to have mastered her terror, perhaps at the sight of a very ordinary-looking marquess who was no taller than she and who could very easily pass for the landscape gardener he loved to be.

  Gabe swung his daughter up onto his shoulder and took a hand of his son. Jennifer took the other.

  Lord Francis offered his arm to Samantha.

  She was very tiny. The top of her head reached barely to his chin. There was a familiar feel about her on his arm, a familiar fragrance. He marveled that for six years he had been part of her court. He had danced with her, walked with her, ridden with her, driven her, talked and flirted with her, even offered her marriage. And yet never had he felt the trembling awareness of her that he felt now. He did not like the feeling at all.

  She talked to him about Highmoor, about the building of the bridge, which she had planned with Carew after she had first met him, when she had not even realized that he was Carew but had mistaken him for the landscaper, she told him now with a laugh. She told him about the little pavilion, the rain house as she called it, that they planned to build next year at the far side of the bridge. She asked him about Cora, and he found himself telling her about his wife’s fame as a heroine. He told her with some amusement about her encounter with Lady Kellington’s poodles and about her chase after the Duke of Finchley’s hat.

  “Do you wonder that I was enchanted with her?” he asked and was surprised to find that the words had come without conscious thought. Cora had enchanted him. She still did. He thought with some affection of her recent terror, when she had realized that the Marquess and Marchioness of Carew were approaching.

  “No, I do not wonder at all, Francis,” Samantha said. “Oh dear, she is so wonderfully tall and elegant. I am mortally jealous. When I reached my twenty-first birthday, I do believe I was still persuading myself that eventually I would grow up. With the emphasis on the up, that is.”

  Cora did indeed look very fetching today. She was wearing the yellow dress with blue accessories that she had worn in the park the first time he drove her there. Somehow the clothes had not been permanently damaged as his own had been. Someone had sewn the sleeve back into the bodice. She was talking to Carew and laughing at the same time. His usual sunny Cora.

  “Hartley and I are going to have a child,” Samantha said. “Did you know? I am very proud of the fact that it does not show yet, but Hartley cannot wait for it to do so. I am not putting you to the blush, am I, Francis? I have never thanked you, by the way, for what you did for him that morning at Jackson’s. Though I am still ready to do murder over the fact that you allowed him to fight. You and the Duke of Bridgwater both. Oh, his poor face. It took weeks to heal.”

  She did not monopolize the conversation. She listened to him and led him on to tell her more about himself and Cora and their wedding. But when she did talk about other things, he noticed, it was Carew who was at the center of everything. The focus of her life. The center of her universe.

  It never ceased to surprise Lord Francis that of all the men who had courted her over the years—and they were legion—she had chosen Carew. Carew was, of course, the wealthiest man of his acquaintance. But he knew it was not that. Hers was a love match. The realization had never brought Lord Francis a great deal of comfort.

  “If it is any consolation,” he said, “I daresay Rushford’s face is still healing and never will entirely heal, Samantha.”

  “That name.” She shuddered. “Please do not mention it. Tell me how Lady Francis likes Sidley. Has she made any changes yet? Has she gone to war with your cook? You were always shamefully in awe of the woman.”

  “They are the best of friends,” Lord Francis said. “They have exchanged recipes. Cora gets fed in the kitchen. I still do not dare set a foot inside it.”

  She laughed. “Lady Francis is a woman of character,” she said. “I saw it in her face when I first looked into it and everything you have said about her confirms me in that impression. You are a very fortunate man. I am delighted for you. I have wished for your happiness more than for anyone else’s I know.” She squeezed his arm a little more tightly. “You need a woman of character, Francis, because you have so much of your own.”

  Yes, it was true, he thought, looking at his wife. She was still laughing gaily with Carew. She had a great deal of character. Delightful character. Even her weaknesses were utterly endearing. She was terrified of aristocracy but of almost nothing else that he had discovered. Yes, he was a fortunate man. He felt a sudden and totally unexpected rush of nostalgia for Sidley and the weeks he had spent there with Cora, getting to know her in every way a man can know his wife, learning to adjust his ways to hers, accepting the comfort she had brought into his life.

  He longed to be back there. They would spend most of their time th
ere, he thought, rather than moving restlessly between London and Brighton and other spas in search of entertainment. They would make a home of Sidley. They would bring their children up there and spend time with them, as Gabe and Jennifer did with theirs. She had told him once that she wanted half a dozen children. He hoped he could keep himself from burdening her with quite so many. But he had the feeling that Cora would never do anything by half measures. He smiled.

  “Francis.” Samantha squeezed his arm again. She was looking closely at him. “You are fond of her. Jennifer told us what happened and I was so afraid for you. Ask Hartley if I was not. But I was hopeful too. You had written to Gabriel that the first time you were caught together you were both laughing so hard that you had to cling to each other. And the other time you were rescuing her because she had been duped into going to the rescue of a child who was supposed to be stuck in a tree. She sounded so nice—what a lame word. I did not believe you could help being fond of such a woman. And you are. I can see it in your face. I am so glad.”

  He was exceedingly fond of her, he thought. Exceedingly. He could not quite imagine his life without her now. He tried to imagine being here alone, unmarried, unattached, free. He tried to imagine having taken his leave of Cora at the end of the Season if they had not been forced on each other. He tried to imagine her at home with her family in Bristol and himself here alone at Chalcote.

  He would be missing her. He would be lonely without her. The laughter would have gone out of his life.

  In fact, he thought, he doubted he would have stayed here. He would have seen, as he was seeing now, that his friends, though undoubtedly fond of him, had lives of their own, Gabe’s entwined with Jennifer’s, Samantha’s with Carew’s. As they should be. He would be the outsider, the one who did not quite belong despite the warm hospitality with which he would have been treated. He would have been lonely.

  And he would have remembered Cora. He would have missed her. Dreadfully. He would have gone after her. He was sure suddenly that he would have gone after her.

  Why? Just because he would have been lonely? Just because she made him laugh?

  “Yes,” he said, “I am fond of her, Samantha.”

  “I am so relieved,” she said. “I really feared that—that I had hurt you. I would have hated that more than anything in the world.”

  “I told you at the time,” he said, covering her hand with his own for a moment, “that I had been teasing, Samantha, that I had been trying to punish you for deserting your court by so suddenly announcing your betrothal to a man we did not even realize you knew.”

  He had told her in a rash moment that he loved her and had then had to spend days retracting his words, convincing her that he had not spoken the truth.

  Had he spoken the truth? Had he loved her? Did he love her? She was a beautiful woman who had been his friend for years. She was married to a man she loved. There was no place for him in her life. He was married to a woman of whom he was exceedingly fond, a woman he might well have married, he realized now, even if circumstances had not forced him into doing so. There was no room for Samantha in his life. Marriage, he realized now, was a very private business. A universe of two that would expand only with the birth of children.

  Yes, perhaps he had spoken the truth. Certainly there had been enough pain. But that was the past. This was the present. His future was walking on the arm of Carew.

  “Well, I am very glad, Francis,” Samantha said, sounding as enormously relieved as he was feeling. “Now we can resume a friendship that I feared might be broken.”

  THEY WERE ALL inside the boathouse looking at the boats. All except the children, who had grown tired of standing still, especially when Gabriel had told them that it was a little too windy today to take the boats out. They had gone outside to play. Cora wandered out too after a while. She had done nothing but chatter and laugh ever since they had begun this walk. She was tired of chattering and laughing.

  Her heart was bleeding. She examined the words in her mind for theatricality. But she could not persuade herself that she was exaggerating her pain and her misery. Her heart was bleeding.

  There had been that familiarity again when the Marquess of Carew’s name had been spoken. But she knew as soon as she saw him that she had never met him before. Even if she had forgotten his face, she would not have forgotten his severe limp and his twisted right hand, which he tended to hold against his hip. And then the marchioness’s name had been mentioned—Samantha. Jennifer had only ever referred to her as Sam. Samantha—the name had sounded so familiar, but Cora did not know this lady and she could not think of anyone else she knew with that name. They had been married quite recently, just a few months ago.

  And then suddenly, out of nowhere, it seemed, as she had walked from the terrace on the arm of Lord Carew, it had hit her like a hammer over the head. She could almost hear Pamela Fletcher’s voice. Lord Francis was a part of Samantha Newman’s court for years, you know … He was devoted to her … It was rumored that he was heartbroken when she married the Marquess of Carew earlier this Season … He is a cripple.

  Samantha, Lady Carew, was exquisitely beautiful. She was everything Cora would most like to be. She was small, dainty, blond, pretty. And she had walked to the lake on Francis’s arm and had glowed at him while he had kept his head bent toward hers and the whole of his attention fixed on her. They had looked quite gorgeous together.

  He was devoted to her … he was heartbroken.

  Cora had walked all the way to the lake with Lord Carew, who was a kind and an unassuming gentleman, making gay conversation, laughing, having a merry time, and every step of the way she had been aware of Francis walking with the woman he loved. And yet he was stuck with her, Cora, for the rest of his life.

  She walked along the bank beside the lake, not seeing anything, feeling about as miserable as it was possible to feel. How he must hate being married to her when he loved Samantha, who was the embodiment of female perfection. How could she have done this to him? How could she have allowed herself to be drawn into accepting his very gallant proposal? It was to Samantha, or someone beautiful like Samantha, that he should be married.

  She wanted her papa. She wanted Edgar. But even the realization of how self-pitying and how childish she was being did not help.

  “Papa,” she whispered.

  “Papa!” a voice shrieked and Michael hurtled headfirst into her.

  “What is it?” She caught at his arms and looked down into a frightened little face.

  “Mary,” he said, gasping. “She is stuck up that tree.” He made a sweeping gesture behind him with one arm. “She will not come down. She is going to fall. And I am for it. I called her a scaredy and she went up. Now Papa will spank me.” He began to wail.

  A child stuck up a tree. Cora winced for a moment, but this was no ruse. There were no thugs with stinking breath attached to this plea for help.

  “Come along,” she said, taking the little boy’s hand. “We will rescue Mary together. I am a famous tree climber. I have a brother too, you know, and had to keep pace with him while we were growing up. Your papa will not even need to know. It will be our secret.”

  She marched along the bank, forgetting all about self-pity and misery. There was a child in difficulties, even perhaps in danger. An infant who was sitting on a branch of an old oak tree, clinging to it with both hands while her feet dangled over the water of the lake. An infant who was too terrified even to cry.

  “Hold tight, Mary,” Cora called cheerfully, pulling off her hat and tossing it to the grass, and hitching her dress above her ankles with one hand. “I am coming for you. You are going to be quite safe.”

  “Aunt Cora, do be careful,” Michael said as she set off on her ascent.

  17

  E HAD NOTICED HER LEAVING THE BOATHOUSE BUT had not immediately followed her. Perhaps after all she was overwhelmed with the company, he thought, and would welcome a few minutes to herself. But after a while he left quietly and looked in
both directions for her. The others followed him outside.

  There was no sign of her. Only of young Michael, who was standing beneath a distant tree, hopping from one foot to the other, or so it seemed, until he spotted them. Then he raced toward them, waving his arms wildly.

  “No. Go back,” he could be heard to be yelling when he got a little closer. “Go back inside.”

  “Mischief,” the Earl of Thornhill murmured in Lord Francis’s ear. “They are up to something and do not want us to know. It doubtless involves getting their good clothes either wet or dirty or torn or all three.” He raised his voice. “What is it, Michael?”

  “Where is Mary?” the countess was asking.

  Where was Cora?

  Michael burst into tears. “It was all my fault, Papa,” he said. “I am owning up, as you said I should always do.”

  “Where is Mary?” The countess asked a little more sharply.

  “I called her a scaredy,” Michael said with fresh wails. “And she went up the tree. She cannot get down. She is going to fall.”

  “The devil!” the earl muttered, striding toward the tree his son had indicated. “What have I told you about leading Mary into danger? She is little more than a baby.”

  Michael trotted along at his side. “But she will be quite all right, Papa,” he said. “Aunt Cora has gone up to rescue her.”

  Lord Francis had not needed to hear it. When his eyes had gone to the tree Michael had pointed to, he had seen something alien among its branches. Something yellow with a blue sash. Something with very visibly bare ankles.

  Of course Aunt Cora had gone to the rescue.

  He would have grinned if he had not also been able to see Mary, a tiny infant perched out on a tree branch that overhung the lake. Jennifer, both hands over her mouth, had seen the child too and was making noises of acute distress. Samantha was setting an arm about her shoulders and making soothing noises.

  Lord Francis and the Marquess of Carew hurried after the earl to the base of the tree.