The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (2 page)

HE
D
UCHESS OF
B
RIDGWATER, FORMIDABLY ELEGANT
in her purple satin evening gown with matching turban and tall plumes, bedecked and sparkling with the family jewels, looked Miss Cora Downes over with slow and methodical care, beginning at the top of her elaborate coiffure, and ending at her slippers, which were already cramping her toes.

The slippers were cramping her toes because she had unwisely taken the advice of Lady Elizabeth Munro, the duchess’s elder daughter, to buy the smaller of two sizes in footwear when in doubt, as gentlemen did not admire large feet. Cora’s feet were not extraordinarily large, she had decided, holding them out in front of her, unshod, as she sat on the edge of her bed soon after the advice had been given. And really she did not care much for gentlemen’s strange preferences in such matters. Did they crawl around on hands and knees examining a lady’s feet before going to any other lengths to discover if she was someone with whom they would not mind dreadfully spending the rest of their days on this earth? But there was no escaping the fact that her feet were somewhat larger than Elizabeth’s and decidedly larger than those of Jane, Elizabeth’s younger sister. But then Jane was more than usually small and dainty.

And so Cora had bought the slippers in a size smaller
than she ought because she had persuaded herself that she was in doubt. She now meekly bore the consequences of her own folly, though she knew she had not really begun to bear them yet. There was a whole ball to live through, a whole evening of dancing—if any gentleman could be coerced into dancing with her, that was. Cora would have squirmed with discomfort at the very real danger that none would if her grace had not been still examining her appearance.

Do not let her use her lorgnette
, she instructed some unseen power without moving her lips.
I shall die of mortification
. At the horridly advanced age of one-and-twenty she was decked out in virginal white and blushes and was about to make her debut into the
beau monde
. Jane, who was a mere eighteen years of age, had already made her curtsy to the Queen the year before, though she was still dressed this year in what Cora thought of as “the uniform.” When one added to the age difference the fact that Cora was larger than Jane—in
every
way, not just in the matter of feet—the result was depressing.

Elizabeth, who was nineteen, was dressed in pink and had put on, with her gown, a look of ennui that bespoke the seasoned lady of the
ton
. She, of course, was already nicely settled indeed, being betrothed to a marquess of enormous wealth and consequence and alarmingly advanced years—he was three-and-thirty—who happened to be in Vienna this year with the result that the wedding had been postponed indefinitely.

The duchess handed down her judgment at last. She inclined her head once and set her plumes to nodding a dozen times. “You will do, my dear Cora,” she said.

That was all she said, but it set Elizabeth to smiling graciously in almost comic imitation of her mama’s regal manner and Jane to squealing and squeezing her arm and exclaiming in glee.

“I
told
you you looked beautiful, Cora,” she said.
Which was a very loose paraphrase indeed of what her mother had said.

Cora tried not to look sheepish and giggled instead. It was strange how laughter, which she had always indulged in with unself-conscious spontaneity, had become giggling as soon as the Duchess of Bridgwater had taken her so determinedly under the ducal wing. Giggling, it seemed, was not a ladylike attribute and must be curbed at all costs. The most a lady could allow herself in company by way of displaying amusement was a well-bred titter. On the few occasions when Cora had practiced tittering, she had ended up with her head beneath a cushion, smothering the bellows of unholy mirth it had given rise to.

“We will be on our way, then,” the duchess said, smiling at all three young ladies who had joined her in the drawing room.

She really looked remarkably beautiful when she smiled—and even when she did not, Cora conceded in something like envy. It must be wonderful to have that kind of poise and grace and self-assurance. It was hard to believe that her grace could be the mother of Elizabeth and Jane and of Lord George Munro. It was almost impossible to believe that she was also the mother of the present duke, to whom Cora had been presented for the first time but yesterday. His grace was all elegance and formality and ducal hauteur.

Cora had had the uncomfortable feeling that his grace did not approve of her, even though he had bowed over her hand and even raised it to his lips—she had stood rooted to the morning-room floor, stupidly awed by the knowledge that he was a
duke
, a real live duke—and assured her of his pleasure in meeting her. He had even thanked her over the little Henry incident. Little Henry was his nephew, of course, and heir to his grace’s heir. But even so it had startled her to find that the Duke of
Bridgwater had heard about the little Henry incident. He had even called her a heroine and she had resisted only just in time the urge to look over her shoulder to see to whom he was speaking.

But then, of course, he must have wondered why his mother had brought to town a mere Miss Cora Downes, daughter of a Bristol merchant—a
prosperous
merchant, it was true, and one who had recently purchased a considerable property and renovated a grand old abbey that had been falling to ruins on it—with the intention of taking her about in society with her own daughters, his own sisters. He would have thought it very strange indeed. And so, of course, the explanation of what had happened with little Henry would have been given.

The truth was—at least, it was not
quite
the truth but what was perceived to be the truth—that Cora had saved little Henry from drowning in the shadow of the Pulteney Bridge in Bath and that out of gratitude the duchess, little Henry’s grandmama, had taken Cora into her own home to mingle with her daughters and to be elevated to the ranks of gentlewomanhood long enough to be found an eligible gentleman.

The Duchess of Bridgwater was going to find Cora a husband. Not from the ranks of eligible dukes and marquesses and earls, of course, amongst whom she had already plucked a mate for Elizabeth and planned to pluck one for Jane. But nevertheless, a gentleman. A man of fortune and rank and property. A man who had never soiled his hands or enriched his coffers with trade or business. Despite all the wealth of her father, Cora could never have aspired so high if she had not saved little Henry—well, sort of saved him, anyway—and so been catapulted into the benevolent good graces of the Duchess of Bridgwater.

Her grace and the girls would not even have been in such a questionably fashionable place as Bath at such an
unfashionable time as spring if Lady George had not been suffering through a difficult confinement. But her grace was fond of her daughter-in-law and of her grandchildren and had deprived herself and her daughters of all the pleasures of the first half of the Season in London. Perhaps fortunately for them, the incident of little Henry seemed to have precipitated the arrival into this world of his sister, who was delivered a mere two days later. Mother and child were doing remarkably well and were now being coddled with affectionate indulgence by the proud father.

And so at last, when it was already June, her grace had set off for London with two impatient daughters and a rather alarmed protégée, who wondered how a usually strong-willed young lady like her could find herself in such a predicament. Over the past few years, she had turned down no fewer than three proposals of marriage from remarkably eligible men merely on the grounds that she felt no more than a passing affection for any of them. As if
that
had anything to say to anything, her father had commented each time, rolling his eyes at the ceiling and making clucking noises of frustrated disgust.

Her father was rather tickled over the idea of her marrying a gentleman. So was Edgar, her brother, who had pointed out that she must marry someone and it might as well be a gentleman who might awe her into something like meek ladylike submission. She would make a horrid spinster, he had warned her, all stubborn will and bossiness with no domain over which to exercise her tyranny. She was fond of Edgar. It was a pity that some people had concocted the idea that he had behaved with cowardice in the incident of little Henry. How stupid and how totally untrue. But public opinion was remarkably difficult to manipulate, she had found.

Cora frowned and contorted her face until she could
bite the flesh of her left cheek. But she was seating herself in the carriage as she did so and the duchess was seated opposite, watching her.

“You are nervous, dear,” she said with gracious condescension. “It is understandable. But you must remember that you are dressed as well as anyone and that you have the manners to equal anyone else’s. And the fact that you have my sponsorship will silence any question about your eligibility to be at Lady Markley’s ball. Bridgwater has undertaken to present you with some eligible partners. I will do the like, of course. Now do smooth out the frown and the facial contortions, my dear. They are not becoming.”

Cora had already smoothed out the frown and had stopped biting her cheek. And a wonderful antidote to her sense of unfairness over what had happened to Edgar with reference to the little Henry incident was remembering why she was in the carriage so grandly dressed—with clothes Papa had been quite adamant about paying for.

She was on her way to a ball. Well, there was nothing so remarkable about that. She had danced at assemblies at Clifton and Bristol and of course in Bath. She loved the vigor of country dances.

But this was a ball in
London
.

This was a ball exclusively—well, not quite exclusively, considering the fact that she was going to be there—for people of the
ton
.

Cora’s stomach chose that inauspicious moment to rouse itself out of its quiet and comfortable lethargy in order to tie itself in knots. And then her dinner decided to protest the fact that it was sitting inside a knotted stomach.

She smiled vacuously at her carriage companions.

*  *  *

“S
HE IS A
diamond of the first water, Frank,” Lord Hawthorne said, sighing and gazing at the lady in question across the expanse of the ballroom. “She refused me a dance last week. Said her card was full. And then granted a set to Denny when he arrived late.”

Lady Augusta Haville’s bad manners in behaving thus only enhanced her reputation in his eyes, it seemed. Such was the extent of his cousin’s humility and confidence in his own charms, Lord Francis Kneller thought as he raised his jeweled quizzing glass to his eye and gazed through it at the lady. But then Bob was young and a trifle gauche and had doubtless blushed and stammered as he stood and bowed before one of the
ton
’s brightest jewels.

There had been only one lady all Season to rival Lady Augusta and she was now gone—to Highmoor Abbey in Yorkshire. As the wife of Carew, damn his eyes. Samantha. Lord Francis’s heart took a nosedive to land somewhere in the vicinity of the soles of his dancing shoes, a place where it had resided with disturbing frequency for several weeks past.

He was nursing a broken heart—in the soles of his shoes. He had not even realized quite how deeply in love with Samantha he had been until she had announced quite out of the blue a mere few weeks ago, as she was on her way to the park with him in his phaeton, that she was going to marry the Marquess of Carew. Carew! Lord Francis had not even known she was acquainted with the man. And yet he himself had been faithfully courting her and regularly offering for her for more years than he cared to remember.

“Yes,” he said absently. “An Incomparable, Bob.”

Lady Augusta was of medium stature, slender, graceful, and elegant. She was gracious and charming—except when she was rejecting gauche boys and then favoring
more suave admirers. She had skin like the finest porcelain and hair like a golden sunset.

She was aware of his scrutiny across the ballroom, despite the distraction of a largish court of admirers and was indicating in a thoroughly well-bred manner—nothing that would have been remotely apparent to any casual observer—that she would not take it at all amiss if he strolled about the floor and stopped to pay his respects and add his name to her dancing card.

“She would dance with
you
, Frank,” Lord Hawthorne said with faint and humble envy. “Ah, there are the fellows. Excuse me.” And he was off to join a group of other very young gentlemen, who would bolster up one another’s esteem and courage for the rest of the evening—probably in the card room, a more comfortably masculine domain than the ballroom.

Lord Francis lowered his glass and wondered what he was doing in Lady Markley’s ballroom. It was the last place he felt like being. But then these days any place on earth was the last place he felt like being. And yet he had realized with some logic and some regret during the past several weeks that there really was no other place to be than any place on earth.