Wulfric watched idly as the lady drew off her glove, extended her arm over the water, smiled beguilingly at the approaching baron, and dropped the glove in blatant invitation. It fluttered down into the water six inches from the bank.
Lord Powell minced forward in response to the mating call and would have fished out the glove with the silver tip of his cane if someone else had not ruined the game for both him and his potential light-of-love.
That someone else came hurrying up behind Mrs. Beavis, calling out to her that she had dropped something and at the same time bending over to retrieve it. There had been no rain in days. It was hard to know how the grass could be slippery unless on this relatively windless day some of the water had slopped over the edge of the bank. However it was, the lady rescuer’s right foot slipped toward the edge, she made a clumsy effort to transfer her weight to the left in order to regain her balance, failed, flailed her arms, shrieked loudly enough to draw the attention of every single mortal in the vicinity who was not already watching her, and pitched sideways into the water with a resounding splash.
Wulfric drew his horse to a halt and watched with pained resignation as Lady Renable and Lady Mowbury exclaimed in horror and Powell, doubtless seething with wrath, played the gallant and hauled Mrs. Derrick out of the Serpentine.
Mrs. Beavis strolled onward as if oblivious both to the scene of disaster playing itself out behind her and to the fact that she now wore only one glove.
Mrs. Derrick meanwhile stood with chattering teeth on the bank of the Serpentine, her new bonnet with its pink and lavender plumes dead on her head, her pink walking dress and darker rose spencer clinging to her like the flimsy drapery of a Greek goddess. She dripped water everywhere while Powell withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and swiped ineffectually at her.
Lady Renable and Lady Mowbury fussed about her.
The numerous spectators gaped and exclaimed.
“S-someone should r-return this g-glove to that l-lady,” Mrs. Derrick said, holding it aloft.
Wulfric, tempted for only half a moment to ride on, sighed instead, swung down from his horse’s back, and left it to its own devices while he approached the scene with firm strides, shrugging out of his long drab coat as he did so.
“Lord Powell will doubtless be glad to do it,” he said, taking it from her hand and dangling it between his thumb and forefinger before the nose of the baron, who was only too delighted to be released from the necessity of having to cope with one half-drowned lady and her two ineffectual companions while his lady-love walked out of his future.
“Oh, I say, Bewcastle,” he said. “I say.” He made his escape.
“Allow me, ma’am,” Wulfric said briskly, tossing the coat about Mrs. Derrick’s shoulders and overlapping its edges at the front. He gazed grimly into her eyes. There was not another lady of his acquaintance—including Freyja—who was so adept at getting herself into the most ghastly public scrapes. Why he had been fated to be on the spot when this one happened he could not imagine.
And how he could have chosen this woman—though there had been no conscious choice in the matter—to fall in love with he would never understand even if he lived to be one hundred.
“H-how excruciatingly m-mortifying!” she said, huddling inside the coat and gazing back at him from beneath the former brim of the dead hat while the plumes drooped forlornly about her shoulders. “It s-seems inevitable that you should be c-close by to witness my humiliation.”
“It would seem to me, ma’am,” he said curtly, “that you ought to be thankful for it. Lord Powell’s handkerchief would not suffice to wrap about you.”
He turned toward Lady Renable, since she still seemed in no state to take charge of the situation.
“I shall take Mrs. Derrick up before me on my horse, ma’am,” he said, “and convey her home without further delay.”
He did not wait to listen to her thanks or to hear Mrs. Derrick’s reply. He strode grimly back to his horse, which was quietly cropping the grass, supremely indifferent to a scene that had every human within sight riveted. He mounted and rode the short distance to the bank. He reached down one arm.
“Set your hand in mine and one foot on my boot,” he instructed her.
It was not easy, of course. She needed both hands to clutch the coat to herself, since she had not had the sense to slide her arms into the sleeves, and the bottom six inches or so of the garment bunched on the grass around her. But with a little help from Lady Renable, who held the coat, and with a little inelegant pushing and hauling from Lady Mowbury and himself, Mrs. Derrick was finally seated sideways before his saddle, the coat still about her to preserve her modesty and provide a little warmth.
“I would suggest,” he said as two soggy plumes threatened to drip Serpentine water down inside his shirt collar, “that you remove your bonnet, ma’am.”
“Oh, yes, indeed,” she said, one arm coming out from inside his coat and undoing the wet ribbons. She gazed at the bonnet when she had taken it off, and he gazed at her wet, squashed curls. “Oh, dear, I suppose it is ruined.”
“I know it is.” He took it from her, looked around until he saw a hopeful-looking serving maid close by, and held out the offending garment to her. “Here, you girl, dispose of this for me.”
He handed her a guinea to go with it, but from the look on her face, he guessed that the dead bonnet was the greater prize to her. She bobbed a series of curtsies and showered him with thanks—or what he supposed were thanks, since she spoke in an atrocious and almost unintelligible cockney accent.
Mrs. Derrick chose that moment to start laughing. At first it was a shaking of the shoulders that might have been a fit of the ague caused by her dunking, but then an explosion of mirth burst out of her, and he could see that her eyes were dancing with merriment. Before he could give his horse the signal to move, almost all the gathered spectators chose to join her and she poked out one hand yet again to wave to the crowd.
And—damn it!—swathed though she was in his drab coat and with squashed wet curls, she looked suddenly quite dazzlingly lovely.
At last they were on their way. Wulfric found himself in unfamiliar waters—with no pun intended. Unlike Mrs. Derrick, he was
not
accustomed to finding himself in the middle of an undignified, farcical scene that would doubtless be the topic of every drawing room conversation for days to come—especially as Mrs. Beavis had had a part in it. And more especially since
he
had had a part to play in it too.
But how could he have left her there to shiver on the bank when it did not appear that anyone else had been about to offer her any practical assistance? She would not have been laughing then—though he suspected that he might be wrong about that.
“Do you wonder,” she said, “that Oscar often viewed me as a distinct liability?”
“I do not wonder at it at all,” he said cruelly.
But the strange thing was—the
very
strange thing—that annoyance was beginning to be displaced by something far different. He found himself wanting to laugh as she and the crowd had just done—to throw back his head and bellow with mirth, in fact. Even the incident with the yew tree in the churchyard last summer could not compete with this. He had never in his life witnessed anything so hilarious.
He did
not
laugh. For one thing they were within view of a number of people every step of the way to Renable’s house and drew enough curious glances without his adding fuel to the inevitable gossip by presenting his audience with the unheard-of picture of a merry Duke of Bewcastle. And for another thing she must be feeling cold and miserable despite her laughter, and courtesy dictated that he not be seen to mock her.
“I suppose,” she said, “I did not present a graceful picture as I fell in, by any chance?”
The arm that he had about her waist to hold her steady was growing distinctly damp. His drab coat was probably going to be ruined.
“I am not sure,” he said bluntly, “there
is
a way to tumble gracefully into water, since by no stretch of the imagination could it be called a dive.”
She sighed. “And I suppose,” she said, “I drew considerable attention to myself. While it was happening, I mean. I
know
I did afterward.”
“You shrieked,” he said.
“At least,” she said, “I rescued that poor lady’s glove. She did not even realize she had dropped it.”
For a woman who had been married for years before being widowed and who must be very close to thirty if not past it, she seemed to be a dangerous innocent. He might have left her with her illusions, but he was back to feeling annoyed with her. How could she possibly have tumbled into the water? The glove had been no farther than a few inches from the bank.
“She dropped it deliberately,” he told her. “Lord Powell was to fish it out—without falling in.”
She turned her head and looked at him wide-eyed. “But why?”
“She is . . . not quite respectable,” he told her. “And Powell is doing all in his power to court her favors. She is playing hard to get.”
She stared at him while he guided his horse out of the park and onto the street. That frank gaze was considerably disconcerting when her face was less than a foot from his own. And he had forgotten how very blue her eyes were—and how they could suddenly laugh, as they did now.
“I spoiled his moment of gallantry and triumph, then,” she said. “Oh, the poor gentleman.”
He might really have laughed outright then if he had not had to concentrate upon maneuvering his horse past a crossing sweeper who had darted across the road to snatch up a penny a pedestrian had just dropped for him.
She was still looking at him after he had completed the maneuver. Laughter still lurked in her eyes.
“And I have embarrassed you horribly,” she said. “You see now how fortunate you were that I rejected your rash proposal last summer?”
“I do indeed see,” he admitted curtly.
She turned her head at last to look front again.
“Well, I am glad about that,” she said after a brief little silence. “But though I am deeply mortified that you had to witness what happened this afternoon, I am also grateful that you were there. Wet as I am, it would have been a very cold and a very long walk home.”
She also would have been ogled every step of the way—as she would realize for herself if she looked in a mirror before stripping off her clothes in her dressing room. Her dress had looked like a second skin. It was even pink, for God’s sake.
They were approaching Renable’s house.
“I
do
thank you for your assistance,” she said. “And you do not have to worry that I will ever embarrass you again. We will be returning to Gloucestershire the day after tomorrow. This is good-bye.”
He held her in place as he dismounted and then lifted her down, a soft, wet bundle inside his damp coat. She would have taken it off to return to him before running up the steps to the house, but he held it firmly in place.
“I will come inside with you,” he said. “You must wear the coat up to your room and then send it down with a maid.”
“That is very kind of you,” he said.
“It is very
practical
of me, ma’am,” he said pointedly, preceding her up the steps and rapping the brass knocker against the door.
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, yes, I see.”
And she did too, apparently—her cheeks were flaming when he turned back to look at her.
“Good-bye,” she said when they were inside the hall and the butler and one footman regarded her wooden-faced. “You will be very glad to be rid of me once and for all.” But for once, he noticed, her eyes were focused on his chin rather than on his own eyes—and they held none of their usual sparkle.
“Will I?” He bowed to her as she made her awkward way to the stairs, clutching his coat about her with one hand and lifting it off the floor with the other.
Would he?
Embarrassing as this afternoon had been, had it also turned out to be something of a fortunate escape? She was a truly dreadful woman. It was no wonder her dead husband had considered her a liability. It was no wonder the Elricks were hostile to her and had even warned him against her. She had an inappropriate sense of humor—she had
waved
to the crowd instead of hanging her head in shame. She attracted disaster like iron to a magnet. She was a
schoolmaster’s
daughter.
Yes, it was indeed fortunate that she was leaving town the day after tomorrow and that it was very improbable he would see her ever again. It was fortunate that she had not been at home to his call this afternoon and that he had come upon her at just the moment he had.
He should have used the word she had used. He should have said good-bye.
Yes, he would be very glad to be rid of her once and for all.
Now, if he could just rid her from his mind too and his . . . heart?
A maid brought his soggy coat down to him after a few minutes and he left the house, mounted his horse, and rode away—out of her life.
He rejoiced at being saved from a very serious disaster.
C
HRISTINE WAS FEELING
a touch depressed.
Well, it was more than a touch, if the truth were known. Hermione and Basil had called during the morning. They had
said
they came to satisfy themselves that she had not taken a chill from yesterday’s dunking—about which they had heard, of course. They would surely have had to be deaf in all four ears
not
to have heard. Their real reason for coming, though, Christine had known, was to satisfy themselves that she was really and truly leaving the next day.
She was.
Melanie had bemoaned the fact that they could not stay longer, but then she had remembered that Phillip—her eldest child and only son—was to have a birthday within the week and she would only just have time to make the journey and plan his party.
They were leaving. Christine had never been happier in her life—or more depressed.
No sooner had her in-laws taken their leave than the Earl of Kitredge had arrived, also to ascertain that Mrs. Derrick had taken no lasting harm from her unfortunate accident in Hyde Park. But then he had asked with a great deal of pomp and head-nodding and winking if Lady Renable would grant him a moment or two alone with Mrs. Derrick, and Melanie, the fiend, with a merry smirk for her friend, had whisked herself out of the room.