The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (14 page)

She was about to turn her head to smile at him again when she suddenly froze. A group of gentlemen had appeared in the ballroom doorway. Lord and Lady Fuller were hurrying across the room toward them. The music stopped abruptly. There was a buzz of well-bred excitement.

And then the gentlemen parted so that another could step into the doorway and pause to observe the scene. An enormously large gentleman. A gentleman larger than any other Cora had ever seen in her life, she would swear.

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she muttered and wondered what had happened to all the air in the room—and where she had misplaced her knees.

“There is nothing to fear,” Lord Francis had drawn her arm firmly through his and held it now against his side. “He is only a man, Miss Downes.”

Which was about the stupidest thing anyone had ever said to her in her life. She could hear the sound of teeth clattering and drowning out all other sounds. Only a man! He was the Prince of
Wales
.

And then she wished she had not verbalized his name in her mind.

All the dancers had retreated to the edge of the ballroom and waited in anticipation of His Highness’s finishing with greeting his hosts and proceeding deeper into the room.

Cora tugged on Lord Francis’s arm. “I have to leave,” she told him. “I have to go.” But she knew even as she said it that in order to leave she was going to have to skirt about that huge mound of royalty standing in the doorway. “Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Let us hide. Find somewhere to hide.”

She thought she saw amusement in his eyes for a moment and felt horribly betrayed—her only friend was turning against her. But it was gentle concern, she saw when she looked closer.

“He is going to promenade about the room,” he said, “and stop to exchange civilities with the chosen few. There are several hundred here who are only too eager for that honor, Miss Downes. We will skulk in the background here and merely bow and curtsy when everyone else does. I can assure you that the royal eyes will not even alight on you. But you will be able to go home afterward to boast that you have been within arm’s length of the Prince Regent himself.”

His voice was calm, matter of fact, almost bored—but
a little too kindly to be entirely so. He spoke that way only to reassure her, she knew. She was reassured though her heart thumped and she felt as if she had just run five miles uphill against a stiff wind. Why did someone not pump air into the room?

A great dense mass of persons began to move slowly clockwise about the ballroom. The Prince of Wales was hidden somewhere among them, Cora tried not to tell herself. A wave of bowing gentlemen and deeply curtsying ladies preceded their progress, though every few moments all came to a halt as the hidden prince presumably favored some poor soul with his notice.

Cora cowered back against the wall as they drew closer and tried to worm her way slightly behind Lord Francis while clinging to his arm at the same time. She distorted her face and nibbled furiously at one cheek. If only she could suddenly discover a door at her back. If only she were four feet tall instead of being far closer to six.

And how foolish she was being. She was Cora Downes. If everyone in this room were to line up in order of rank, she would be at the very back of the line. Dead last. She was a nobody. A nothing. The realization was enormously reassuring. She relaxed marginally, though the thought did touch the edge of her consciousness that it would not take a great deal to cause her to vomit. The thought was pushed aside with haste.

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” she muttered as the cavalcade drew closer. The Duke of Bridgwater was part of it. In fact, he appeared to have the royal ear. The royal ear and the enormous person to which it was attached hove into sight. A slight tightening on her arm reminded her to sink into a curtsy. Horror of horrors, she had almost been left standing upright five feet above all the persons who surrounded her. As it was, she crouched low and looked down hopefully for trapdoors.

One more moment and they would pass.

“Ah,” the haughty and languid voice of the Duke of Bridgwater said quite distinctly. “Here she is, sir.”

“Where, Bridgwater?” the man mountain asked, and Cora emerged from her curtsy to find a million eyes riveted to her person—at least that many.

“Curtsy again,” Lord Francis muttered to her as a path opened magically in front of them and he led her forward.

She curtsied as he led and almost had her arm yanked from its socket. Fortunately Lord Francis seemed far more in control of his faculties than she and allowed her to dip down where she was before taking her forward to stand before the Illustrious Presence.

She would die. There was nothing left in life to do now but die. Preferably now or sooner. Before the agony could be prolonged.

Everyone was still looking at her. Everyone was also smiling at her. From some distance away there was the faint smattering of applause. She felt the hysterical urge to giggle.

“My dear Miss Downes.” Her
hand
was in the Prince of Wales’s
two hands
. He was drawing her to her feet. She had curtsied again. She had lost the support of Lord Francis’s arm. She looked about her wildly, but he was there at her side. “I beg leave to offer you my own personal thanks as well as those of the nation for your act of extreme bravery in saving the life of the Duke of Bridgwater’s nephew.”

“Oh, it was really nothing at all, Your Majesty,” someone said. “I-I mean, your gr—. Oh dear, I do not know what I mean.”

There was a burst of laughter from everyone within earshot and the prince himself shook alarmingly with it.

“Your modesty becomes you, my dear,” he said. “His
Majesty and I need more subjects like you. Enjoy the ball.”

And the procession moved on. The dipping and bowing proceeded to Cora’s left.

The people about her were nodding and smiling and murmuring their own congratulations—though whether for her supposed heroism or for the honor that had just been accorded her Cora neither knew nor cared. She grabbed for Lord Francis’s arm

“I am going to faint,” she told him. “Or vomit.”

“Come.” He led her back behind the crowds, who were still standing and watching the royal progress and craning their necks to see whom else he would favor with his personal notice. Cora was gasping. She was in deep distress.

And then blessedly there
was
a door and he was opening it just wide enough to usher her through and follow himself before closing it behind them.

Fresh air. And darkness. And privacy.

Cora drew a deep breath and then really did faint.

ORTUNATELY SHE HAD WARNED HIM
. A
ND FORTUNATELY
too it was the first of her predictions of what was about to happen to her, rather than the second, which came true. He caught her sagging body in his arms, looked hastily about in the darkness, to which his eyes had not yet accustomed themselves, spotted a wrought-iron seat not far away on the balcony, and carried her toward it.

Carrying Cora Downes about in his arms was becoming a habit, he thought. An uncomfortable habit, for more than one reason.

He set her down on the seat and took the empty place beside her. He set one hand at the back of her head and eased it downward almost to her knees. He should, he thought belatedly, have spoken with someone before stepping out of doors, and sent a message to the Duchess of Bridgwater. It was not at all the thing to be out here alone like this with a single young lady.

If that damned Prinny had not decided to put in an appearance, of course, all the French doors would have been wide open all evening and lamps lit on the balcony. There would have been guests strolling out here and his being with Miss Downes would have been almost proper.

But then if Prinny had not come, she would not have
fainted. The waltz would have been at an end by now and she would have been dancing with her next partner. He would have been on his way elsewhere.

Oh, yes, indeed he would. “Oh, dear,” she said, addressing her knees, “did I faint?”

“Take some deep slow breaths,” he advised her. “The air is cooler out here. You will feel better in a moment.”

“How very foolish of me,” she said after following his directions. “Thank heaven it was only you who saw me have a fit of the vapors. I
never
have fits of the vapors, you know. But then I have never been in the presence of royalty before.”

He felt uncomfortable again. As he had while they had waltzed. She had misinterpreted his attentions to her. She was falling in love with him—had perhaps already fallen. Almost every time she spoke to him she expressed a preference for him. But only tonight, after Bridgwater’s words, had he noted the fact. He did not believe she was setting her cap at him. She was far too open and candid for that. Yet she was not even trying to hide her feelings. She must assume that he shared them.

Bridgwater had been right. He had been amusing himself bringing the woman into fashion, introducing her to eligible gentlemen, playing matchmaker, and all the while he had been giving the impression that he was taken with her himself. He had given her the same impression.

What a coil! He had been so preoccupied by his feelings for Samantha that it had not struck him anyone could possibly think him interested in any other woman. And yet he had been at pains to hide his broken heart.

“You acquitted yourself very well,” he said. “The aftermath will be our little secret, Miss Downes.”

She sat up and looked at him. He could not tell in the
darkness if she had recovered her color, but he set a steadying arm about her shoulders just in case.

“He actually spoke to me.” She set her palms against her cheeks. “He actually took my hand in his. And
I spoke to him
. What did I say? Did I make an utter cake of myself?”

“Not at all,” he said.

“Yes, I did.” Her eyes, fixed on his, widened in horror. “I called him ‘Your Majesty.’ And then I remembered that only the king is called that, but I could not remember what I should call him—and
I told him so
. Ohh!” She wailed out her distress and hid her face on his shoulder.

He wished she would not. She had a physical presence it was difficult to be unaware of when she was close. He wished he had not set his arm about her shoulders. It appeared she had recovered from her faint even if not from her mortification.

“He was charmed,” he said.

She started to laugh then, her head still against his shoulder. At first it was silent laughter and he thought in some alarm that she was shaking with grief. But soon she was chuckling softly and then laughing helplessly.

Even when one had entirely missed a joke, Lord Francis had learned in the course of his life, it was sometimes impossible to remain serious in the presence of someone else’s mirth. He found himself chuckling along with her.

“I was bobbing like a cork in the ocean,” she said. “And I swear there were no bones at all in my knees. It is amazing I did not fall flat at his feet.” She succeeded in delivering this speech only after several pauses for merriment en route.

“He would have been even further charmed if you had,” Lord Francis said. “He likes nothing more than to see people prostrated by his majestic presence.”

They both found this little conversational exchange irresistibly hilarious.

“He is e-enormous,” she said. “If I
had
fallen and he had trodden on me, I would be as flat as a piece of paper. You would be able to write a letter on me.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “There is a great deal of visible majesty there, is there not?”

She set her arm about his neck, presumably to steady herself, while they bellowed with unholy—and quite unkind—glee.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, my chest hurts. Would we be charged with treason if we could be heard saying such disrespectful things?”

“We would have our heads chopped off in the Tower,” he said. “With a giant ax by a hooded headman.”

They found the prospect of such a gory fate enormously tickling. They clung to each other, snorting and wheezing, absorbed by silliness—as Lord Francis reflected afterward when it was too late to go back and behave with more dignity and more decorum. He could not remember any other occasion when he had so abandoned himself to uncontrolled foolishness.

The Prince of Wales had not come to Lady Fuller’s ball to dance. He had come to receive the homage of the
ton
and play the part of grand, majestic gentleman. Having received the one and acted out the other, he took his leave, and the ball resumed. But before the excitement had quite died down and before the music had struck up once more, there was something imperative to be done. Lady Fuller had the message taken to several footmen, and her guests, seeing their intent, followed them gratefully to the French doors and prepared to spill out onto the balcony for fresh air and blessed coolness before the serious business of enjoying themselves began again.

That, at least, was the scene as Lord Francis re-created
it for himself in his imagination much later. He was not inside the ballroom to observe for himself, of course.