by Jo Beverley
“Mistress Naisby,” she said, finding it hard to shape the words, and watching as if down a flashing tunnel as Diana stripped the sheets off the bed.
“Yes? What?” Diana bundled them up and tossed them aside. She’d brought fresh ones. No, not fresh.
“Where did those sheets come from?”
“They’re mine. They’ll look as if they’ve been slept in for a few days, but nothing more.”
Rosamunde watched the Countess of Arradale make a very untidy bed. She’d probably never done it before. She’d been meaning to ask something. Something important.
“Mistress Naisby…”
“Yes?” Diana turned, the bundle of soiled sheets in her arm and shook her head. “Faith, but you’re in a state, love.” She put her other arm around Rosamunde and hoisted her to her feet. “Come on. You can sleep it off in the coach. If all goes well, we can be back here tonight, and you can be home tomorrow. Sober.”
“Not drunk,” Rosamunde insisted.
“I know, love.” Diana steered her toward the doorway.
“Mistress Naisby.”
“What about the old witch?”
“How much did she say to use?”
“All of it to be sure to render a strong man unconscious for a considerable amount of time.”
“Oh good,” said Rosamunde miserably.
Diana held her closer as they worked their way down the stairs. “At least by this time tomorrow, it will all be done with. Except,” she added in a whisper, “for the consequences, we hope.”
Safe in the hall, Rosamunde put her hand over her belly, as if there might already be something there to feel.
“All done,” she echoed. “Except for the consequences.”
Chapter 13
She woke with a violent headache and a very tangled mind. Where was she? And why was the world bouncing around so painfully?
“At last.”
Rosamunde forced her eyes open, turning her head toward her cousin’s voice by her side, hissing with the pain. Poor Diana looked as bad as she felt.
In fact, Diana looked extremely peculiar.
“Are you spotty?”
Diana touched her blotched face. “Does it work? I thought it such a clever idea.”
Rosamunde closed her eyes. She must be in a drugged dream. Diana would never be happy about pimples. Nor would she ever wear such a dull, plain outfit, and a mob-cap.
Her face was tapped gently. “Rosa! Stay awake. We have to fix you.”
“Don’t do that. Please.” Rosamunde opened her eyes again and found that Diana was still spotty. All over her face. She had a particularly revolting pimple on her left cheekbone. Inflamed red with a pus-filled center. “Are you real?”
Merriment sparkled in this strange Diana’s eyes. “Only in a manner of speaking. I’m your maid.”
“What a peculiar dream.”
Diana thrust the spots closer. “It’s not a dream, Rosa. It’s a disguise. Pay attention. We can’t leave Brand Malloren somewhere and be seen in the same area. It’s too easy a link. So I stopped off in Richmond—you were dead to the world—and sought a little help from a friend of mine. An actress. She found me these clothes, and painted my face. I don’t think anyone will recognize the Countess of Arradale, will they?”
Rosamunde focused on the enormous pimple. “No. Especially as it will never cross their minds.”
“Quite. No one who matters notices servants. We’re approaching Thirsk, however, so we have to do you.”
Rosamunde raised her hand to guard her face. “No spots!”
“No, no. Just a lot of ordinary face paint.”
“I don’t want face paint either!”
“Well, you must have it.” Diana lifted a wooden box onto her lap and opened it. “You’re my mistress. The sort of high-born lady who wears a great deal of maquillage.”
Rosamunde had the sinking feeling that this was all too real. “I don’t like face paint. It looks horrible.”
“Think, love! You can’t show your scars, and a mask would draw attention, but heavy paint will hardly get a glance.”
Rosamunde’s mind, however, had jolted to other matters. “Where is he?” She sat up, despite the pain in her head. “What have you done with him? What have you done?”
“Nothing!” Diana said, pushing her back. “Hush. He’s underfoot. And before you protest, I couldn’t prop both of you up for four hours. He’s safer where he is.”
Brand Malloren was the cushion beneath her feet! He lay curled in the tight space on the floor of the carriage, but at least Diana had put a folded blanket under his head.
“Oh dear.” She raised her feet, but there really was nowhere else to put them.
“Don’t fuss. He’s fine.”
Rosamunde had to put her feet back on his shoulder, but she leaned down, despite her throbbing head, to test the pulse at his neck. Slow, but steady and strong. And this time he wasn’t particularly cold.
She sat back up. “Put a blanket over him please.”
Diana rolled her eyes, but she did it, finding a rich brown one under the opposite seat and dropping it over him.
“Oh dear,” said Rosamunde. “This is so like what happened to him before. He was so ill. Oh, faith… !”
“What?”
“The symptoms. He said he was no hard drinker. He must have been drugged that time, too, and with something similar. He’ll hate me.”
“A good thing under the circumstances.”
When Rosamunde tried to object, Diana interrupted. “Rosa, if he hates you, he won’t try to find you.”
“If he hates me enough, he might.”
Diana looked struck by that. “And a Malloren. Lud. All the more reason for disguise!”
Rosamunde flinched from the pots of paint. What she wanted was to curl up with Brand and go back to sleep, to stay asleep until her stomach settled and her head stopped pounding. Perhaps never to wake up. She had to go through with this, however. For Digby and Wenscote.
“Can paint really mask my scars?”
“Dulcie showed me how.” Diana uncorked one squat pot. “This stuff is a sort of paste that can be used to fill in wrinkles. Or scars. Turn this way.” She tilted Rosamunde’s face, then began to apply it thickly.
“I’m going to feel stiff as a board.”
“Probably. You won’t need to laugh or talk, so don’t worry about it.” Firm fingers smeared on the temple and cheek. “There. Almost gone.” Diana pulled out another pot and applied a creamier substance all over Rosamunde’s face.
“That’s not lead, is it?” Rosamunde asked, pulling back.
“No! Come back here. Everyone knows the dangers of white lead by now.” Diana moved back to consider her work. “It’s working. Even I can hardly see the scars, and a casual glance would never detect them. And no one will recognize you, either. You look different. Older.”
“Delightful.”
“If I can be spotty, you can be a hag.” Diana put away the two pots and opened some more.
“I don’t feel at all well, Diana,” Rosamunde said, queasy at the smell of the grease.
“We have to do this.” Diana took Rosamunde’s chin in a firm grip. Teeth in her lower lip with concentration, she tried to paint an eyebrow, then let out an unladylike curse. She opened the window and yelled, “Stop the coach.”
“Stop the coach?”
“Stop the coach!”
It halted with a jerk. “Is something the matter, milady?”
“No. Just keep it still for a few minutes.” With no further explanation, Diana set to work and Rosamunde felt the brush whisper over her brows.
“Better,” Diana said. In moments she’d done the lips, too. “I’ve made them thinner and darker. A veritable hag!”
“Thank you, I’m sure.”
“My pleasure to serve you, milady. What else? Ah yes, patches!” She produced a little box and some glue, and pressed a number of black patches around Rosamunde’s face.
“Stop!
Anyone will think I’m pox-scarred.”
“Good. If they detect any scarring, that will explain it.” She tilted her head to consider her work. “I think I have a gift for this. Drive on, coachman!”
As the coach rocked into motion once more, she produced a mirror from the box and held it up.
Rosamunde stared at a stranger. With pale paint, black brows, red lipstick, and scattered “beauty spots,” her face looked garish. Fashionable ladies and gentlemen generally used some paint—it was part of being well-dressed—but this was extreme. However, she knew some did paint themselves this way, especially if they had problems to hide, such as scars from the smallpox. Or if they thought they could preserve an illusion of youth.
“I’m not scarred,” she whispered, touching her cheek. “How very strange.” The mirror showed ghosts of the wounds, but as Diana had said, to a casual glance, her face was unblemished.
“And no one will know you,” Diana said. “I’m going to powder your hair, too. No grease. Just a light dusting to disguise the true color. Blue, I think.”
“Blue?”
“I’m sure you’re just the sort to wear blue powder.” She dusted it carefully, but a cloud still floated around Rosamunde.
“If I sneeze, I’ll likely scream with pain.”
Diana stopped, and peered at her. “Pain?”
Rosamunde realized she’d not said anything about it before. “I have a headache. A bad one.”
Diana hastily put away the powdering brush and even tried to waft the hazy cloud away. “You should have said.”
Rosamunde just leaned her head back against the seat.
After a moment, Diana said, “Look, Rosa.”
Rosamunde opened her eyes to see that strange face in the mirror again, this time crowned by faded hair.
“It is miraculous,” Diana said, “even if by accident. Dull, like your mother’s hair. It adds decades to your age.”
“You’re right.” Rosamunde just wanted to close her eyes and fight nausea.
“Just one final touch…” Diana dug in a pocket and pulled out a glittering handful.
Jewels. Probably the ones Diana had worn this morning, for Diana loved glittering jewelry. She and Rosamunde jokingly called them her “sparklies” for, indeed, for daily wear she paid little attention to value and selected for glitter.
Now she clipped earrings to Rosamunde’s lobes, clasped a couple of items around her neck, and a few more around her wrists, then slipped rings onto Rosamunde’s limp fingers.
“I hate wearing a lot of rings.”
“What a grump you’re being. Just four, then. There. Now you are the very picture of a decadent lady of fashion, and as far from Rosamunde Overton as can be imagined.” Diana glanced out of the window. “We must be close to Thirsk now. Time to dispose of our burden.”
“He’s not—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Diana said with a wave of a pale hand made strange by the lack of glitter. “He’s a prince and a hero. But we still have to dispose of him.”
“Here?” Rosamunde saw only fields. “He has to have shelter of some kind.”
“Rosa, it’s summer, and this isn’t the moors!”
“Shelter,” repeated Rosamunde stubbornly.
Diana muttered, but she studied the surrounding countryside. “There’s too much traffic on this road, anyway. We’ll have to turn off. Find a hay barn or some such.”
She commanded Garforth to take a turning ahead.
“It’s nowt but a track, milady.”
“Take it.” Diana peered out of the window. “There’s a signpost. It has to be a road of sorts.”
When they slowly turned off the highway, however, a jolt warned that Garforth had been right. Signpost or no, it was little better than a track, ridged and rutted by hoofs and cartwheels and set into stone by summer sun. Rosamunde tensed, refusing to complain of the jolts of pain as they bumped along. She deserved to hurt as much as Brand would.
“The signpost was to New-something,” Diana said, clinging to the strap by her side. “A mile and a half. That’s not far and surely somewhere along here we’ll find a place to put him. Look, there’s a barn. It will serve.” She called for Garforth to stop.
Almost weeping with relief to be stationary, Rosamunde struggled to focus and saw a ramshackle wooden building in a field. It stood open on one side, showing it held only the remnants of last year’s hay. She wanted to protest that it wasn’t good enough, but made herself be silent.
It would serve.
It seemed very isolated, though. He could lie there forever.
She heard Diana giving instructions and moved her feet so he could be pulled out. She closed her eyes to stop herself from fussing. Then he was gone, and her feet settled on the empty floor.
She tried to keep her eyes closed, to leave it to the others, but it was impossible. She looked, and saw him being carried across the hummocky field by the two young grooms, Diana following with his boots. Even though they were strong young men, they couldn’t help the fact that one arm dragged almost on the ground and his head lolled.
Rosamunde grabbed the blankets and struggled out of the coach. Once down the steps, she had to pause to let the whirling world settle, praying her stomach would not embarrass her. The thought of how sick he’d been the last time heaped burning guilt on her head. If she had the choice again, she’d not have done this to him, not even for Wenscote.
As soon as she could, she set off doggedly across the field, determined to make sure he was as comfortable as possible.
She saw the men toss him on the remnants of hay, and broke into a run. “Stop it!”
Diana turned. “Rosa…” but then she shook her head and grabbed the blankets. “Look, I’m going to tuck him in as snug as a babe.”
Rosamunde ignored her cousin’s disgruntled tone and watched, hand braced against a weathered post. Then she stared. “Diana! The crests.”
“Bother.” Diana pulled a corner loose and glared at the embroidered crest that was probably on every item she owned. She looked up at the two stoical servants. “Do something, Culver.”
Without expression, her groom knelt to slice off the crested corner of each blanket, tucking them into his pocket.
“There,” she said, standing and brushing straw off herself. “Can we go now?”
Rosamunde wanted to say no, wanted to tuck him in herself, wanted to give him one last kiss. In truth, she wanted to lie by him, ready to care for him when he awoke. He seemed comfortable enough at the moment, but she knew the kind of hell that awaited him. She’d witnessed it last time, and now was experiencing it herself to some degree.
It had never been about her own needs, however, except for the wicked night that she had stolen from fate. As she deserved, it had only made things worse. She allowed herself one last look, then turned and walked to the coach without a backward glance.
After settling herself in her seat, she pointedly looked away from the field as Diana sat down beside her, and the coach moved off.
It was done.
It was over.
No looking back.
“Apparently we can’t turn on this road,” Diana said, as the coach heaved up, then fell into another dip with a bone-shaking jar. A moan escaped Rosamunde.
“Oh, love. Is it that bad?”
“It’s only what I deserve. He’ll be worse—Ah!” Another lurch sent agony through her.
Diana stuck her head out and commanded Garforth to stop.
But after a brief exchange, she said, “We can’t possibly turn the coach, dearest. But it’s under a mile to the next place, and we’ll go as slowly as possible. Surely at New-whatever, we must join a better road.”
As the coach began to inch forward, Rosamunde tried to keep her head as still as possible and not complain.
“I can never understand these things,” Diana muttered.
Rosamunde opened her eyes a chink and saw that Diana was struggling with a book of coaching maps. “What was the last pla
ce we passed? I can’t find New-anything near Thirsk… Oh, Rosa.”
Rosamunde knew from the tone that it had nothing to do with the map. She realized she had tears on her cheeks.
“It’s just the drug. And the pain.”
“Pain over what?” Diana demanded, dabbing at the tears with her handkerchief. “He’s just a handsome charmer, but there’s nothing there for you, love.”
“I mean the pain in my head.” It wasn’t the whole truth. She hadn’t known grief could cause such physical agony.
A wheel caught in a particularly deep rut, jarring the whole coach. She groaned.
“Devil take it!” Diana exclaimed. “And there’s nothing we can do other than stop still for eternity.”
“We could walk,” said Rosamunde, and then, “Yes!” She started to fumble for the door.
Diana restrained her with one hand while shouting at Garforth to stop so they could get down. Soon Rosamunde was standing on the road, her head swimming, pain beating at her, but pain under her own control. “This is better,” she said. “Better.”
Diana put her arm around her waist. “Come on, then, love. On to the New-place.”
Rosamunde accepted her help and trudged forward, tussling with tangled thoughts. She was suffering in mild form what Brand Malloren had after she’d found him. He’d been drugged before. By whom? And why?
Could he be in danger?
She stopped. “It’s not right to leave him there.”
Diana forced her onward. “Rosa, stop this! What do you think we should do? Deposit him tenderly at an inn with the whole world knowing who left him there?”
“We’re in disguise.”
“Not a good enough one for that!”
“But what if the wrong people find him?”
“Wrong people? What wrong people?”
Rosamunde tried to explain, though she feared she wasn’t making herself very clear.
“Enemies,” scoffed Diana, sounding distinctly grumpy—walking was not her favorite occupation and she doubtless wasn’t wearing sensible shoes. “If so, it was by a chance thief. Why think of enemies and plots?”
“I don’t know. I just am!” Rosamunde’s head was pounding with each step. “Why would a chance thief move his victim to the middle of nowhere?”
