And now, half an hour later, she found herself pushing through damp underbrush, her skirts disgracefully muddied, her bonnet hanging askew by its ribbons, and no sign of the wretched rabbit anywhere.
She squinted up at the canopy of trees above where the light filtered through in dapples, like sunlight through old lace. The woods were quieter than they ought to have been. She would call them ominous, perhaps, though Cordelia had always believed that most ominous things only became so when grown-ups spoke of them too seriously. Still, she paused and glanced behind her.
She had been walking in circles for perhaps twenty minutes when something white flickered at the edge of her vision. Cordelia froze, squinting her eyes. Then, it flicked again. There it was, just between the gnarled roots of a moss-laden tree, a blur of twitching pink nose and ears like crumpled silk.
“Poppy!” she gasped, pitching forward with such enthusiasm, she very nearly toppled into the bracken. “Oh, you idiotic creature, do you know how much trouble you’ve caused? Howmuch trouble I shall be in when it’s discovered I’ve taken to the forest like a milkmaid with romantic aspirations?”
The rabbit, in the true fashion of all things small and deaf to human pleading, did not so much as turn its head. Instead, it gave a great quiver and darted forward, deeper into the shadows.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Cordelia gathered her skirt in one hand, the other already reaching out uselessly. “You ungrateful morsel of fluff, come back! I am risking reputation, limb, and possibly death by duke for you!”
Then, she ran. Or rather, she stumbled, gasped, and charged in the general direction of forward, crashing through branches that clawed at her shawl and leaves that smacked her smartly in the face as if to say,You are no woodland creature, madam; return to your parlor.
Still, she pressed on as her hair loosened from its pins and her slippers grew damper with every squelch through unseen puddles until the manicured edges of the estate had well and truly vanished behind her.
The trees grew denser here. Somewhere up ahead, she heard the rustle of tiny feet and a soft thump… rabbit paws? Or merely her imagination which had always been inclined toward drama?
“Poppy,” she whispered though she was breathing hard now and rather wished someone had thought to follow her. “Poppy, you are the worst example of domesticity I have ever seen. Youshould be ashamed of yourself. If you were a child, I would have sent you to bed without—oh!”
She tripped spectacularly over a root half-buried in the moss and tumbled forward into a patch of ferns. For a moment she simply lay there, stunned, with her bonnet crushed beneath her chin and her limbs tangled in her skirt.
The canopy above seemed to sway gently, uncaring.
“I am going to perish,” she announced to no one, still facedown. “They shall find me here in a week, all because of a rabbit with no regard for propriety. The Dowager shall weep. Eliza shall blame herself. And the Duke shall have the dreadful satisfaction of being right.”
Cordelia had just caught her breath when the rabbit bolted again, dashing away from the base of the ash tree and through a hedgerow as though it had not just led her on the most maddening chase of her young life.
“Poppy, I swear to you,” she muttered, “if you do not expire of natural causes by year’s end, I shall consider it a personal affront.”
She followed more cautiously now, for her slippers were soaked through and her hem hung heavy with burrs and damp earth. The path, if one could call it that, opened into a small clearing, and there, nestled at the foot of a hill, stood a cottage.
It was no hunting lodge or picturesque folly made for romantic picnics and decorous sketching. No, this was ahome. It was stone-built and had a thatched roof with smoke curling from the crooked chimney and a henhouse off to one side from which a chorus of irritable clucking now rose in protest.
Cordelia stopped. So did Poppy. Then, the bunny slipped beneath the chicken-wire gate and vanished into the henhouse, as oblivious as ever to the havoc she trailed in her wake. Cordelia hesitated on the edge of the clearing.
This is someone’s home.
She could not just march up and demand the return of her stolen rabbit as though she were collecting a lost umbrella. What if the residents were suspicious? Or worse… curious?
But before she could muster the courage to approach, the cottage door opened with a soft creak. Cordelia froze, and then her stomach gave an odd little lurch, for it washim.
The Duke of Galleon stepped out into the sunlight with his sleeves rolled up. He looked far too at ease for a man of such famously rigid character. Cordelia’s heart thudded against her ribs.
She spun instinctively and pressed herself against the rough bark of a tree, just within the shelter of the hedge.
No, no, no. He cannot see me like this. Mud-stained, bonnetless, trespassing, breathless!
Oh heavens, she was breathless. She must look like a madwoman!
But then, a woman followed him out, and she was lovely. Of course, she was. She was also tall and fair with a crown of honey-blonde hair braided elegantly around her head and a gown that clung in all the correct places, as though it had never once been caught on brambles or soaked through with swamp water.
Cordelia’s chest tightened. She did not knowwhothe woman was norwhythe Duke was here with her, but her traitorous mind began building reasons fast enough to scorch her.
The woman laughed and stepped closer to him. Then, she wrapped both arms around Mason Abernathy’s neck, hanging around him like a lovely necklace. Cordelia almost choked on her own breath.
“Will you come back soon?” the woman asked, looking up at him with wide, adoring eyes.
The Duke smiled. Yes, he smiled! And then, he touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “I promise.”
