The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (18 page)

And then in the distance he had seen the unmistakable tall figure of Cora Downes approaching on Corsham’s arm. For some reason he could not fathom, Lord Francis had felt jittery and breathless at the prospect of meeting her. He had considered after all drawing Lady Augusta off the path. He had not done so because he knew that the woman wanted to be kissed, and that after she was kissed she would as like as not expect him to call upon her papa tomorrow morning to discuss marriage settlements. He had become adept over the years at avoiding such situations.

Perhaps, he had thought fleetingly—but he had dismissed the thought as absurd—that was why he had attached himself to Samantha Newman’s court for so
long. Samantha had never been in search of a husband. And though he had loved her and offered for her several times, he had never really expected her to have him. There had been deep shock in discovering that she
would
have someone else and in haste too. Shock and humiliation. And heartbreak.

What would he do? he had wondered now. Nod pleasantly to Cora Downes and walk on by? Stop to converse with her and Corsham? Normally he did not have to think consciously about such matters. Normally he acted from instinct. What would instinct have him do, then? Stop and talk, of course. It would be the polite thing to do.

But before he had been able to do it—before he had been anywhere close to doing it—he had seen Miss Downes and Corsham fall prey to one of the oldest tricks in the book of thieves. A woman had approached Corsham from his side of the path and caught at his arm. Doubtless she would be spinning him a tale of poverty and starving children. As soon as his attention was engaged, a pathetic little urchin had approached Miss Downes from her side of the path and clutched at her gown. His tale would be even more heartrending and of course it would be falling on the most fertile ears in London. She had disappeared with the child almost immediately. Corsham and the other couple with them had not even seen her go.

There would be one more in the trees, of course. A man, in all probability, someone strong enough to relieve her of her jewels and valuables. And perhaps too—though not likely in the presence of the lad and with the woman not far away—of her virtue and even her life.

“Pardon me,” Lord Francis had said hastily to Lady Augusta, who had had her head turned back over her shoulder while she addressed some remark to the couple who were strolling with them. “Someone to whom I
must pay my respects.” And he had gone hurrying down the path in unseemly haste and crashing into the trees after Miss Downes and the boy—Corsham had still been demanding that the woman unhand him.

Lord Francis had lost a few moments trying to force a path among dark trees before he realized that a few steps to his left there was a ready-made path, albeit a narrow one. But he had been quite right. Even in the darkness he had been able to see that there were now three figures ahead of him, a man and a boy dealing with a struggling woman. Both the man and the boy had let out sounds of pain just before Lord Francis launched himself at them, mindless with fury.

The boy had been easy to deal with. Lord Francis had merely lifted him from the ground with one hand on the collar of his ragged coat, and flung him. At the same moment he had got his arm about the man’s neck, just as the man had his about Miss Downes’s. The element of surprise had been on Lord Francis’s side. The man had released his prey with a roar of mingled surprise and rage, and had spun about.

Lord Francis had not spent several mornings of each week for several years past at Jackson’s boxing saloon for nothing. He was fit and he was competent, even skilled, with his fists. Jackson had always told him that he could be one of his star pupils if only he had a little more desire. Desire tonight was no problem at all. A few preparatory punches gave him the opening he needed and he landed a right upper cut to the man’s chin with a satisfying crunching of bone and snapping of teeth. The villain reeled and in the natural course of things would have crashed to the ground within another second or two.

Nothing ever followed its natural course when Cora Downes was involved, of course. Somehow she had got herself behind the tottering rogue and reached out her
hands to steady him. For one moment Lord Francis thought she was holding the man up so that he could deliver another blow. For the same moment he was terrified that she would be taken down with the man and squashed beneath him. But she stepped deftly aside, let him fall, and then kicked him in the side.

“There,” she said fiercely, planting both hands on her hips, “take that!”

She probably hurt her foot more than she hurt the thief’s side, Lord Francis thought. The man scrambled to his feet almost immediately and made off into the darkness. It was probably as well to let him go rather than try to confine him and take him into custody. Lord Francis made no move to pursue him. Miss Downes stood looking after him.

“Well,” she said, “we certainly taught
him
a lesson.”

Bless her heart, Lord Francis thought, relief beginning to replace his rage, she had restored the sanity of farce to a potentially nasty situation. He almost grinned at her when she spun around to face him.

“Lord Francis?” she said. “Oh, it
is
you. Did he hurt you? How foolish of you to come up on him like that. He might have
killed
you.” She took a couple of steps toward him.

“I suppose,” he said, trying to set his coat and sleeves to rights on his shoulders and arms, “you had the situation quite under control, Miss Downes?”

“No.” The confidence went from her voice and one of her hands crept up to clutch her pearls. “No, I was deceived. The child said he had a brother stuck up a tree. They had crept in here just to watch the festivities, he told me, and would be whipped if they were caught. But he had that—ruffian waiting here.”

“You are all right?” Lord Francis asked her, trying to see her expression in the darkness. “No real harm has been done? They picked a perfect victim, of course, although
I am sure it was accidental on their part. You never could pass by anyone in trouble, could you?”

“I am all right,” she said. But he watched her shudder. “He was dirty. He smelled dirty. He touched me. He had a hand over my mouth. They were going to take Mama’s pearls and my bracelet from Edgar. I feel—I feel dirty too.”

The intrepid Miss Cora Downes was beginning to suffer from delayed shock. She was beginning to come to pieces. Lord Francis took a step toward her.

“They are gone now,” he said, making his voice as soothing as he was able. “You are quite safe. I will not allow them to come back and harm you.”

She closed the gap between them in sudden haste and grabbed for the lapels of his coat. Her face came burrowing into the folds of his neckcloth that had taken his valet half an hour to perfect a few hours before. But that appeared not to be close enough. She straightened up, hid her face against his shoulder, wrapped her arms tightly about his neck, and pressed her body against his from shoulders to knees. Lord Francis was given the distinct impression that she would have climbed right inside him if it had been possible to do so.

“Hold me,” she commanded him.

He held her. Tightly. And felt as if someone had moved the sun a few million miles closer to the earth and was beaming its heat directly at him. Good Lord—oh, devil take it! He furiously ignored his body’s interest—a euphemistic word if ever he had thought of one—and concentrated all the power of his mind on giving her comfort.

“Shh,” he told her softly, though she was making no noise. “I have you. You are quite safe, Cora.”

He wished her bosom would not heave against his chest as if she had just run a mile or more.

“Ah.” She sighed deeply into his shoulder. “You smell
so good.” Perhaps she needed to say it again in case he had not heard it the first time. Perhaps she merely needed to look into his face to make sure that she really was with someone with whom she could feel safe. She lifted her head and looked into his eyes—their noses and mouths were almost touching. “You smell so very good.”

No one had ever before told him that he smelled good. Somehow Miss Cora Downes made the words sound quite blisteringly erotic. He tipped his head slightly to one side so that their noses would not collide, focused his eyes on her lips, muttered “Cora” from somewhere deep in his throat, and had his mouth perhaps a quarter of an inch from hers when hell broke loose.

“Well!”

That was the start of it. The word was uttered in the shocked, outraged, haughty voice of Lady Augusta Haville.

She had brought a whole army with her—or so it seemed in the dark, close confines of the path. The couple they had been walking with was there, as was the couple Miss Downes had been with—as well as Greenwald and Lady Jane Munro and Corsham himself. There were a few other people too, people Lord Francis suspected he might know if only someone would come along with a branch of candles so that he could see better.

Apparently not one of the lot of them needed a branch of candles or even a single candle to know very well what he was up to. And of course they were very nearly right. Another quarter of a second and another quarter of an inch and he would have had no cause for outrage at all.

“Well, Kneller,” Mr. Corsham said stiffly, “it is plain to see that they were right all along.”

No one needed to be told who
they
were or what it was they had been right about all along.

“No sooner do I turn my back for the merest moment …” Mr. Corsham did not finish his sentence, but turned his back once more and stalked away.

“Cora,” Lady Jane said, sounding tearful.

“Come, my love,” her betrothed said. “This is none of our concern, I believe.”

Except that Miss Cora Downes was his invited guest and might have been robbed and ravished and murdered, Lord Francis thought.

“And I thought to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Lady Augusta said, a universe of scorn in her voice. She was presumably addressing herself to Lord Francis. “But you could not wait for the opportunity to rush to the arms of that
slut
.”

“Oh,” Cora Downes said, sounding more interested than shocked, “is that
me
she is talking about?”

“If the glove fits, wear it.” Lady Augusta spat out the triumphant cliché with an equally clichéd toss of the head and turned to march away, taking the other couple from her party with her.

“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.

C
ORA 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.