The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (32 page)

He expected her to ride
inside
the carriage with him? Did he not know how very improper …? But clinging to propriety seemed absurd under the circumstances. And the prospect of being inside any structure, even if only a carriage, was dizzying.

“I did not expect to ride inside, sir,” she said.

“Did you not?” He made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Come, come, Miss Gray. I shall try to curb
my appetite for dining on tropical birds until after we have reached the next village.”

She set her hand in his and immediately noticed the hole worn in the thumb of her glove, twisted around and perfectly visible. “Thank you,” she said, feeling horribly mortified. And then as she settled herself on one of the seats, her back to the horses, and felt the warmth and softness of the blue velvet, she had to swallow several times to save herself from a despicable show of self-pity. She twisted the thumb of her glove inward in the hope that he had not noticed its shabbiness.

The gentleman closed the door again and seated himself opposite her, and the carriage lurched into well-sprung motion. She smiled at him a little uncertainly and tried not to blush. She could not remember another time when she had been quite alone with a gentleman.

A
LISTAIR
M
UNRO
, D
UKE
of Bridgwater, was on his way to London to take in the Season. His mother was already there, as was his sister-in-law, Lady George Munro. George was there too, of course, but his presence was without threat. And both of his sisters were there with their respective husbands. Bridgwater knew perfectly well what the presence of his female relatives in town during the Season was going to mean for him. He was going to be paraded to every ball, concert, soirée, and whatever other entertainment the
ton
could invent for its collective amusement, the ostensible reason being that they could not function without his escort—though presumably they had done very well for themselves during the first part of the Season, and all of them had husbands to be dragged about with them except his mother, who needed no escort at all. The real reason, of course, would be to expose him to the view of all the young beauties who were fresh on the market this year and of
their mamas. His mother and his sisters—and his sister-in-law too—were determined to marry him off. He was, after all, four-and-thirty years old—alarmingly old for a duke with no heir of his own line.

The trouble was, he had been thinking gloomily before his thoughts had been happily diverted by the sight of a brightly flamboyant ladybird standing beside the road, one arm outstretched—the trouble was that he was beginning to lose his resistance. He was very much afraid that he might allow himself to be married off soon. For no other reason than that he was filled to the brim with a huge ennui, a massive boredom with life. Why not get married if his mother was so set on his doing so? It was something that must be done sooner or later, he supposed. There was that dratted matter of a nursery to be set up.

He was horribly bored—and restless—and depressed by the knowledge that life and love were passing him by. He had used to be a romantic. He had dreamed of finding that one woman who had been created for him from the beginning of the world. He had not found her all through his hopeful twenties. And then he had become nervous. Some of his closest friends had been tricked or forced into marriages not of their choosing, and he had panicked. What if the same thing should happen to him? There was Gabriel, Earl of Thornhill, for example, who had become involved in a reckless scheme of revenge and had ended up snaring an unwanted bride for himself. There was his closest friend, Hartley, Marquess of Carew, reclusive and unsure of himself, who had married for love one of the loveliest ladies in the land and had then discovered that she had married him under false pretenses. And there was Francis Kneller, who had kindly taken the gauche and alarmingly reckless Miss Cora Downes under his wing despite her being a merchant’s daughter, and had ended up having to marry her
after he had inadvertently compromised her. That last disaster had happened six years ago. Bridgwater had avoided any possible romantic entanglement since then.

And so he was bored and restless and none too happy. He had taken to staying away from home at Wightwick Hall in Gloucestershire, which could only remind him of the domestic bliss he had once dreamed of and never found, and instead wandered about the country, going from one house party to another, from one pleasure spa to another, in search of that elusive something that would spark his interest again.

He was coming now from Yorkshire, from an extended Easter visit with Carew and his lady at Highmoor Abbey. He had also seen a great deal of the Earl of Thornhill, whose estate adjoined Carew’s. And as fate would have it, Lord Francis Kneller had been staying there for a visit, though he and his family had returned home a few weeks ago. Three couples, three marriages, all of which had frightened the duke out of his dreams of love and romance and happily ever afters. Three couples who were ironically proceeding to do what he had once dreamed of doing himself. Three happy and prolific couples. The two estates had seemed to teem with noisy, unruly, exuberant, strangely lovable children—Thornhill’s three, Carew’s two, and Kneller’s four.

Bridgwater had never felt more alone than he had for the last several weeks. He had been a valued friend of everyone, a spouse and a lover of no one. He had been a favored uncle to nine children, a father to none.

He was desperate for diversion. So desperate, in fact, that he rapped on the front panel almost without hesitation as a signal for his carriage to stop when he spotted the little ladybird who was standing out in the middle of nowhere begging a ride when no respectable woman had any business doing either. Of course she was no respectable woman. She looked ludicrously out of place in
her surroundings. She looked as if she might have just stepped out of a particularly lurid bawdy house—or out of a second- or third-rate theater.

Well, he thought, if love and romance had passed him by, there were other pleasures that assuredly had not—though he preferred to draw his mistresses and even his casual amours from the ranks of the rather more respectable.

She was disconcertingly dusty and shabby and wrinkled despite the splendor and gaudiness of the garments she wore. She was unconvincingly meek and mild, clutching at her shabby reticule with both hands as she stood beside his carriage and directing her eyes downward at it as if she expected him to wrest the wretched item from her grasp and give Bates the order to spring the horses. He was sorry in his heart that he had stopped. He was really not in the mood for the kind of gallantry that her type called for. And one never quite knew how dangerous it was to dally with total strangers. He felt irritable. But he had stopped. It would be cruel to drive on again and leave her standing there just because he was bored and not really in the mood, after all. Someone else had obviously kicked her out of another carriage and abandoned her, creating a rather nasty situation for her.

He just wished she would not play the part of demure maiden. It was rather like an exotic parrot masquerading as a gray squirrel.

But then she raised her eyes and looked full at him, and he saw that they were fine eyes—hazel with golden lights. They were large and clear and intelligent. They coolly assessed him. He sighed and hopped out to hand her in. He could not, after all, allow her to squeeze in between Bates and Hollander and distract them from the serious business of conveying him a certain number of miles before nightfall without overturning him into a
ditch. Perhaps it would relieve his boredom somewhat to discover between here and the next village why she was in the process of walking all the way to Hampshire with only a small and shabby reticule for company.

Miss Gray. Miss
Gray
. It was too laughably inappropriate to be real. Miss Whatever-Her-Name-Was was also traveling incognito, he thought. Well, let her keep her real name to herself if she so chose. It mattered not one iota to him.

In addition to the fine eyes, he noticed, studying her at his leisure after his carriage was in motion again, she had a pretty face, which he was surprised to see was free of paint. Her auburn hair, just visible beneath the appallingly vulgar bonnet, clashed unfortunately with everything she wore—except for the gray dress he could glimpse beneath the cloak. She was younger than he had at first thought. She was not above five-and-twenty at a guess.

Her eyes, which had been directed at her lap, now lifted and focused on his. Oh, yes indeed, very fine eyes, and she was experienced at using them to maximum effect. He resisted the impulse to press his shoulders back against the cushions in order to put more distance between them and his own. He raised his eyebrows instead.

“Well, Miss
Gray
,” he said, putting a slight emphasis on her name to show her that he did not for one moment believe that it was real, “might one be permitted to know why you are going to Hampshire?”

It was an impertinent question. But then she was no lady, and he had a right to expect some diversion as payment for conveying her a few miles along her way.

“I am going to take up my inheritance there,” she said. “And I am going to make an advantageous marriage.”

He folded his arms across his chest and felt eternally
grateful to the fates that had arranged for him to spot her beside the road as his carriage sped past her, though he had been dozing a mere five minutes before. He was not to be disappointed in her. She was going to regale him with a wonderfully diverting and extremely tall story. As tall as Jack’s beanstalk, perhaps? She also, he noticed, spoke with a refined accent. Someone had invested in elocution lessons for her.

“Indeed?” he said encouragingly. “Your inheritance?” Having made such a bold and vivid start, surely she would need only a very little prodding to continue. He would explore the inheritance story first. When they had exhausted that, he would prompt her on the advantageous match story. If she was very inventive, he might even agree to take her on to the next village but one.

“My grandfather recently died,” she said, “and left his home and his fortune to me. It is rather large, I believe. The house, I mean. Though the fortune is too, for that matter, or so I have been informed. It was a great surprise. I never knew him, you see. He was my mother’s father, but he turned her off when she married my father and never saw her again.”

He would wager half his fortune that the father would be a country vicar when she got around to describing him. It was the old cliché story—the great heiress marrying the poor country curate for love and living happily and poorly ever after. Bridgwater had hoped she would be more original. But perhaps she would improve once she had warmed to her story.

“Your father?” he asked.

“My father was a clergyman,” she said. “He was neither wealthy nor wanted to be. But he and my mother loved each other and were happy together.”

They would both be deceased, of course. Now what would Miss Gray have done when they died? She would have taken employment, of course, rather than go begging
to her mother’s wealthy father. Of course. Nobility and pride would have conquered greed. Employment as what, though? Something suitably genteel. Not a chambermaid. Never a whore. A lady’s companion? A governess? The latter at a guess. Yes, he would wager she would decide on the governess’s fate. But no, that would be impossible. She would not be able to choose the governess’s role convincingly when she was dressed as she was. He wondered if she would think of that in time.

“They are both deceased?” He made his voice quiet and sympathetic.

“Yes.”

He was pleased to see that she did not draw a handkerchief out of the reticule to dab at her eyes. She would have lost him as an audience if she had done so. Abjectness, even as an act, merely irritated him. More important, she would have doomed herself to getting down at the very next village. He wondered who had booted her out of his carriage a few miles back and why. His eyes moved down her body. The cloak was rather voluminous, but he guessed that it hid a figure that was perhaps less voluptuous than he had first thought.

“I took a position as a governess when Papa died,” she said. “In the north of England.” She gestured vaguely in his direction.

A very strange and eccentric governess she would have made. He amused himself with images of her in a schoolroom. He would wager that she would hold the fascinated attention of children far more easily than the gray, mouse-like creatures who normally fulfilled the role. The mistress of the house might have an apoplexy at the sight of her, of course. The master of the house, on the other hand …

“And then,” he said, “just when you thought you were doomed forever to that life of lonely drudgery,
you received word of the demise of your grandfather and his unexpected bequest.”

“It
was
unexpected,” she said, looking at him with an admirable imitation of candor. “He did not even reply to Papa’s letter telling him of Mama’s passing, you see. Besides, my mother had a brother. I suppose he must have died without issue. And so my grandfather left everything to me.”

“Your grandfather lived in Hampshire?” he asked.

She nodded. She looked at him with eager innocence. With a butter-would-not-melt-in-my-mouth look. He wondered where she had slept last night. Her cloak looked distinctly as if it might have been slept in. The dreadful plumes in her bonnet looked rather sorry for themselves. And he wondered too how much money her reticule held. Certainly not enough to buy her a stage ticket to wherever it was she was going. Unless, of course, she disdained to spend money so senselessly when she could cajole bored travelers like himself into giving her carriage room in exchange for stories—and perhaps, if not probably, in exchange for something else. Perhaps if he asked her given name, she would call herself Scheherazade. Scheherazade Gray. Yes, it would suit her. Was she hungry?

But he did not want to feel pity for her. He wanted to be amused. And so far she was marvelously diverting. He had cheered up considerably.