The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (29 page)

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.

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.

“Stay very still, Mary,” the earl said in a voice of dreadful calm, “and do not look down. Aunt Cora and Papa will get you down in no time at all.”

It was plain to see that Gabe had not lost any boyhood skill at climbing trees, Lord Francis thought. Cora was already at the inside end of the branch on which Mary sat. She was chatting to the child as if they were both sitting on the nursery floor whiling away an idle hour. She was also showing a delicious expanse of leg—or not so delicious, perhaps, when he remembered that she was showing it to two other men as well as to him.

“Let me, Cora,” the earl said when he had climbed up
close to her. “You go on down. Be careful. Frank is down there to catch you.”

But she was already seating herself on the branch and sliding very carefully along it toward Mary. It creaked and Jennifer, somewhere behind Lord Francis, stifled a moan with both hands.

“You would not be able to reach her from the trunk,” Cora said, sounding very calm, “and this branch is not particularly strong. It will bear my weight, I believe, but not yours. I will hand her back to you.”

The branch groaned again. So did Jennifer. Samantha gasped.

“You are over water,” Lord Carew called up, all calm practicality. “It will be a soft landing at least if the branch does not hold. Can you swim, Lady Francis?”

“Of course she can swim,” Lord Francis said. “She saved a child’s life in the river in Bath earlier this year.” He raised his voice. “Be careful, dear.”

She was sitting beside Mary, smiling at her. Her dress was up almost to her knees. Gabe was leaning out from the trunk, stretching out a hand, which was at the end of an arm approximately three feet too short to pluck his daughter off her perch.

She really was a cool one, Lord Francis thought, staring appreciatively, wishing that Carew would have the decency to lower his eyes.

“Mary,” she was saying conversationally, though her words carried quite distinctly to the ground, “I am going to pick you up. I want you to pretend that I am Mama or Nurse lifting you from your cot. You must not fight me. I am going to hand you to Papa, and Papa is going to carry you down to Mama. All right?”

Mary did not reply. But she played her part to perfection. Perhaps she was too petrified by terror even to fight when she was lifted away from the illusory safety of the branch, Lord Francis thought. Cora lifted her
slowly across her own body and set her down again on the branch, where Gabe could reach her. He scooped her up with one hand and swung her in to safety, between his body and the trunk of the tree.

“There,” Cora said briskly, smiling brightly. “That was not so difficult, was it? There really was no danger at all.”

The tree branch disagreed. It creaked and groaned. And then with a crack that would have put a pistol shot to shame, it snapped free of the trunk and plunged into the water below, taking its shrieking occupant with it.

Jennifer was at the foot of the tree, arms reaching upward. But she turned her head and screamed. So did Samantha. Carew yelled. So did Gabe, who came down the tree with Mary with reckless speed. Michael whooped. Mary was crying loudly.

Lord Francis, having assured himself that the branch had not hit his wife on the way down, knelt on the bank and reached out an arm toward her. He was grinning. If everyone else only knew her better, they would all be doing likewise. Only Cora, he thought.

“Come on, Cora,” he said, when she came up gasping and sputtering. “Grasp my hand.”

Her scream was cut short by a watery glug. But her head shot up again almost immediately to reveal to him two panic-stricken eyes.

“I-CAN-NOT-SW—”

She was under again, but Lord Francis had not waited to hear even the half-completed final word. He had dived in to the accompaniment of more screams and bellows from the bank.

She fought him like a wild thing. He had to confine her arms with one of his own, turn her over onto her back, and clamp his free arm beneath her chin before he could swim the six feet to the reaching hands that extended
from the bank. But he ignored them and hauled her out himself.

She acted as if she had swallowed half the lake. She knelt on all fours, coughing and heaving and wheezing, gripping the grass with clawed fingers. Her ruined dress clung to her like a second skin. Her hair, still partly caught up in its pins, hung about her face in an enviable imitation of rats’ tails.

Lord Francis knelt beside her, leaning over her, thumping her on the back. “Don’t fight it, Cora,” he said. “The breath will come. Try to relax.”

Finally she was only gasping. “Oh,” she said, staring down at the grass, “I want to die.”

“I think you have cheated death for this afternoon at least, dear,” he said. He caught sight of the sleeve of his lemon coat and grimaced inwardly. He was beginning to feel the reality of the breeze that had kept Gabe from taking out the boats.

“I want to die,” she repeated.

“Towels,” Jennifer said. “There are towels and blankets in the boathouse.”

“I will fetch them, Jenny,” Samantha said and went racing off along the bank. Carew went after her.

Lord Francis patted his wife’s back as reassuringly as he could. He had understood her wish to slip quietly out of this world. She did not want to straighten up and have to look anyone in the eye.

“Here, Cora.” The earl knelt down at the other side of her and set his coat over her back and about her shoulders. “Sam and Hartley will have towels and blankets here in a few moments. My dear, how very brave you were. You must have known that branch would go as soon as you made the exertion of lifting Mary. I do not know how we will ever be able to thank you.”

Mary was crying quietly in her mother’s arms. Jennifer’s voice was tearful too when she spoke. “To me you
will always be the heroine who saved Mary’s life, Cora,” she said. “You risked your own doing it and very nearly lost it. How very wonderful you are. How very fortunate Francis was to find you.”

“It was all my fault.” Michael began to wail. “I nearly killed Mary and Aunt Cora. It will be quite all right if you spank me, Papa.”

“That is extraordinarily magnanimous of you, son,” his father said dryly. “My guess is that your punishment has been ghastly enough. But on the way back to the house you and I will have a little chat about the care we owe the ladies who have been placed under our protection. And although gentlemen are allowed to cry when there is good reason, as Mama and I have told you before, they are not well advised to wail in prolonged self-pity.”

Michael was quiet again.

Samantha and Carew were back with an armful each of towels and blankets. Enough to dry and warm a whole pack of drowned rats.

“Wrap yourselves up, both of you,” Carew said, “and hurry back to the house. Samantha and I will go ahead as fast as we can, if we may, Jennifer, to order water to be heated. At least it is a warm day, though I do not imagine either of you can feel the truth of that at the moment.”