She burrowed farmer under the bedclothes and tried to shut her mind to what might be facing her. She must get some sleep. She had to be up early, and the day would be a long and tedious one of travel.
But sleep could not be willed. She shut her eyes tight and tried to lose herself in one of the fantasies she had begun indulging in quite soon after her marriage while she lay beside her quietly snoring husband trying to get to sleep. She had pot encouraged them very much since his death—they had made her feel too guilty and too empty.
And they would not serve now either. Her mind was just too addled with the knowledge that the next day she was going to have to step out of her mourning—though she had given up wearing black and even gray a month before—and into life again.
She tried to find some cool part of her hands or wrists to set against her throbbing forehead, and turned restlessly onto her side.
She wished she weren't going to Rotherham Hall.
She wished her headache would go away.
She wished Teddy were there and snoring at her side.
She wished that somewhere in her future there could be a man who would make the world an exciting place in which to live.
Teddy. Teddy.
2
Since the Earl and Countess of Rotherham were expecting eighteen guests—not including the two infant children of their eldest son—to arrive all within a few days of one another, it was no particularly strange occurrence that two groups of them should be travelling along the same stretch of road ten miles from Rotherham Hall at the same time.
Even so, it was probable that the two groups concerned would have remained totally unaware of one another's presence had the clouds that had been hovering threateningly over them for several hours not chosen to empty their contents on their heads and on the roadway toward the middle of the afternoon. They were quite reckless clouds. There was no thought to reserving some of their moisture so that they could rain merrily down for the next several hours. They emptied their load all in one glorious downpour. It was over in less than an hour.
The road became a glistening and oozing quagmire. Impassable, one might have said, except that there were a closed carriage, a gentleman's curricle, and a horse and rider who had to pass somewhere or huddle in misery beneath a hedge.
The Marquess of Kenwood, who was on the horse's back, would gladly have huddled. His horse's hooves were generously spattering him with mud, a steady waterfall from the brim of his hat was obstructing his line of vision, and an equally steady and cold stream was finding its way down the back of his collar. Who would have known it was June? He shivered.
However, he looked up and unhunched his shoulders at a shout from Lester Houndsleigh, a passenger in Ernie's new curricle, followed the direction of Lester's pointing finger, and saw a blessed sight indeed. A squat and ugly inn, sitting smugly almost on the road a few hundred yards distant, looked good enough to be heaven's gate. Images of a dry taproom, a warm fire, and a spicy glass of ale took his lordship's mind off the lesser comfort of a hedgerow.
Lord Crensford, inordinately proud of his new curricle and equally new pair of matched grays, purchased from Tatter-sail's only two days before, was not to be deterred by the small matter of a little mud on the road.Or by a great deal of mud, for that matter.The inn must be reached and disembarked at, of course—the cloudburst was deucedly inconvenient.But with such a splendid new vehicle to tool along
in, there was no reason whatsoever for caution.And it would be quite, quite demeaning to slow down behind the large, plain carriage that moved at a cautious snail's pace along the road ahead of him.
The marquess watched through the curtain of the waterfall before his eyes as his mad relative pulled his curricle across the roadway, quickened his pace—actually quickened it!—and swayed and slithered past the carriage.
And drove on blithely, totally unaware of the drama unfolding behind his back.
Lord Kenwood took a firm grasp of his horse's reins and drew it to a cautious halt as he watched, tense and helpless.
The carriage slid sideways, slithered, rocked, spun, and slid some more. The horses slid and squealed and reared. Probably no more than a few seconds passed before the coachman, with consummate skill and marvellously profane language, succeeded in halting carriage and horses, all of them upright and unharmed, though by the time he had completed his task the carriage was facing one hedge, and the horses were facing back in the direction from which they had come.
And such an unholy caterwauling was issuing from inside the carriage that the marquess—reason not taking much of a hand in his thinking at such a moment of crisis—was convinced that there must be at least a dozen maidens in distress locked up inside.
Ernie should be strung up by his thumbs, he thought grimly as he threw himself from hishorse'sback, landed with a loud splat in the mud, and raced to the door of the carriage. He had flung it open almost before the final oath of the coachman had drowned in the rain.
"You are quite safe now, ladies," the marquess announced as if he were personally and solely responsible for saving them from the horrors of hell.
His brain soon registered the fact that there were only two of them. A buxom maid, who might be passably pretty when she finally got around to closing her mouth and allowing the blood to flow from her face to some other part of her body, and when she lifted her mobcap back on top of her head where it belonged instead of down over her eyebrows where it had slipped, was screeching as if demented. It was a shame she had had the misfortune to be born female, the marquess thought irrelevantly. The army had thereby lost an excellent sergeant major.
Fallen sideways against her by the violent swaying of the carriage, and not yet put to rights again, was a lady. An exquisitely pretty young lady, whose pale blue pelisse and dress and white petticoats and stockings made her appear startlingly fragile and feminine in contrast to the misery of the elements outside the conveyance.
Of course, the petticoats and the stockings should not have been displayed to his interested gaze. Neither should a pair of slender and shapely legs, bared almost to the knees. And her bonnet was doubtless not positioned to her liking, skewed around on her head as it was so that one side of it almost covered her right eye while the other side was pushed back to reveal a riot of shining fair curls.
"Oh," she said, pushing away from her maid with ungainly haste and appearing undecided for a paralyzed moment—a delightful moment for the marquess—whether her bonnet or her skirts were in most urgent need of attention.
She finally decided on the bonnet. "Do control yourself, Bridget. As this gentleman has just said, we are quite safe now. I thank you for your concern, sir, but do you happen to be the imbecile who overtook us just now under such shocking conditions?"
"No, ma'am."No sense of loyalty impelled Lord Kenwood to speak up in defense of his traveling companions. Not at least when the lady blushed so hotly and becomingly and lookedsoprettily mortified as she brushed her skirts down and realized just how much leg she had been displaying for his delight. "I cannot imagine anyone having such a criminal lack of sense. I trust you are unhurt?"
