The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (17 page)

He penned an acceptance.

V
AUXHALL WAS INDEED
magical. As soon as they entered it from the river entrance, Cora knew that it would be this place above all others she had seen in London that would remain in her memory and in her dreams. It had been a hot day and the evening was still warm, with just enough of a breeze to set the lamps to swaying in the branches of the trees, sending their colored circles of light dancing over the paths beneath.

An orchestra played in the pavilion and a few couples were already dancing in the space before it. Vauxhall was the place for lovers, Jane had said earlier, blushing and making sure that she was out of earshot of her mother—and even of Elizabeth. There were broad paths for strolling and there were a few narrower, darker paths along which a couple might lose themselves for a few minutes if they were clever enough to arrange it and discreet enough not to be gone long enough to be missed.

Perhaps, Jane had said, her hands clasped to her bosom and her eyes closed, so that Cora knew that really she was thinking aloud—perhaps at Vauxhall she would be kissed for the first time. Jane and the Earl of Greenwald, Cora guessed, were hotly in love and were finding irksome the fact that their wedding must wait until after her elder sister’s.

It must feel good
, Cora had thought,
to be hotly in love
. She thought so even more when they arrived at Vauxhall. Although they sat down first in their reserved box to eat supper, she longed to dance and to walk along the shady paths. She wished there were someone a little more romantic than Mr. Corsham with whom to do both—she wished there were someone with whom
she
would wish to steal a kiss. But she intended to enjoy herself anyway.

Her spirits were dampened somewhat when she spotted Lord Francis Kneller in another box not far distant from her own. He had not seen her yet. He was with a party that included the very lovely Lady Augusta Haville and several other ladies and gentlemen, all of whom, Cora realized, had titles. Just a few weeks ago she would have been terrified of all of them just on that count alone.

He was seated next to Lady Augusta and was deep in conversation with her. He looked his usual elegant, just slightly to-the-left-of-masculinity self. His coat was lavender, his waistcoat silver.

In fact Cora’s spirits were a little more than dampened. She felt downright depressed, if the truth were to be told. She was not jealous—Lord Francis would not flirt with Lady Augusta any more than he would flirt with her or any other lady. But she was envious. She wanted him to be seated next to her, looking at her, deep in conversation with her. Oh, dear, she thought, she
was
jealous. She wanted him for
her
friend. She did not want to share him.

Share? She almost laughed aloud even though Mr. Corsham was in the middle of a very serious description of a pair of grays he had almost bid upon at Tattersall’s this very week. There was no question of sharing Lord Francis. He was not interested in her any longer. He had not spoken to her in a week. He might have come to
Lord Greenwald’s box at the theater during the intermission to pay his respects to her. He might have hurried down Oxford Street to greet her. But he had kept his distance both times. Now tonight he had not even noticed her though she had already stolen at least twenty glances at him.

Supper was over finally and she danced, first with Mr. Corsham and then with a viscount who was the unfortunate possessor of two left feet and the inability to feel rhythm. Then she walked with Mr. Corsham and two other couples, including Jane and her earl. The duchess and the earl’s mama stayed in the box.

It was all so very beautiful, Cora thought as they strolled. She tried to imagine that she was walking with someone very special. Though it did not really matter that she was not. The place and the evening were lovely in their own right. Peaceful. Soothing. She tipped her head back and tried to see the sky and the stars beyond the lamps and the swaying branches of the trees.

Lord Francis had also walked along this way. He had had Lady Augusta on his arm and another couple had gone with them. They had not yet returned. Perhaps, Cora thought, they would meet farther along the path. Perhaps they would stop and converse. Though she did not really want to do that. She knew now that he had been deliberately avoiding her during the past week. She would not force him into a meeting. And she would not be able to talk or laugh with him, anyway, when he had Lady Augusta on his arm and she was on Mr. Corsham’s.

No, she hoped they would not meet.

Jane and the earl had slipped to the back of the group. Soon enough, Cora noticed, they disappeared altogether. She smiled to herself. They would as quietly reappear after a few minutes, she was sure. They were ever discreet, those two. The other couple had got a little way ahead.

And then there was a distraction, just at the moment when Cora thought she saw Lord Francis and his group approaching from a distance. A rather poorly dressed woman—anyone who could pay the admission fee could get into Vauxhall and perhaps there were ways of getting in without even having to pay—said something to Mr. Corsham and caught at his sleeve. He spoke gruffly to her and tried to shrug off her hold, but she clung tenaciously and launched into a tale of woe that would doubtless have caught Cora’s interest and sympathy if she had been at leisure to listen. But she was not.

A young child darted out of the trees to her left and wailed at her, clinging to her evening gown as he did so. He was a thin, ragged, barefooted little urchin. Cora bent to listen to him, all frowning concern.

“Me bruvver,” he said with a gasp. “He’s stuck up a tree, missus. He’s too scared to come down. An’ we’ll be whipped for sure if we gets caught in ’ere.” Having delivered this pathetic speech without pause, he resumed the wailing, and the clinging turned to tugging.

Cora spared one fraction of a moment—no longer—to glance in Mr. Corsham’s direction. But he was still engaged in trying to detach the woman from his arm and apparently had not noticed the child. Yet somewhere to Cora’s left, among the dark trees, a child was caught in a tree and might fall out of it at any moment, and both boys would be in trouble if caught. Without a doubt they had sneaked into the pleasure gardens, hoping to observe all the splendor of the proceedings from the branches of a tree. Poor little mites.

Without even a word to Mr. Corsham, Cora grasped the child’s thin hand and sallied off with him into the darkness. It did not even enter her mind that it was a strange coincidence for both her escort and her to be accosted with woeful stories almost at the same moment.

“Do not be afraid,” she instructed the little boy in her most reassuringly maternal voice. “We will have your brother down from his tree in no time at all. I am an expert tree climber. The secret is never to look down—
never
. And as for being whipped, I shall see that no harm comes to either of you. Doubtless it was naughty of you to sneak in without paying, but everyone knows that boys will be boys.”

The child trotted and panted at her side.

“Now,” Cora said when they were deep along surely the narrowest, darkest path in Vauxhall, “where is he? I do not hear him crying. He must be a brave lad.” Or one so petrified by terror that he could not even utter a sound.

“ ’Ere, missus,” the child said, speaking quietly and tonelessly and coming to an abrupt halt.

Cora stopped too and peered upward. And felt an arm come about her waist from behind and another about her neck. And smelled the disgusting odor of onions and garlic and rotten teeth and sweat. A hand found its way over her mouth while she stood in mute surprise.

“Quiet, my luverly lydy,” a hoarse male voice advised her, “an’ nobody will come to no ’arm. Tyke ’er bracelet, Jemmie, an’ be quick about it. Oi’ll get this.”

Jemmie, the pathetic little urchin with the brother up a tree, set about trying to relieve Cora not only of her bracelet—an extremely expensive gift Edgar had given her for her last birthday—but also of her wrist. The male of the disgustingly bad breath and body odor raised the hand of the arm that was about her waist and grabbed the pearls that Papa had given her mother on their fifth wedding anniversary, only months before her death.

Cora bit his hand, stamped on his foot, and backhanded the boy simultaneously. It was an extremely unclean hand, and it was against her principles to strike a
child. But she was very angry indeed. She had come into this dark thicket to risk her own safety and one of her favorite gowns in climbing a tree to rescue a petrified infant—and as a reward she was being manhandled and robbed.

It was marginally satisfying to hear the man yelp and the boy screech.

If she could only turn, she thought, she would be able to deliver her finest blow, the one Edgar had instructed her to deliver if ever she found herself in a tight corner—this corner felt about as tight as a corner could get. Edgar had actually blushed when teaching her, but he had been quite adamant about it.

The trouble was she could not turn.

But suddenly the child seemed to be levitated straight up into the air and then went flying through it to land sprawling several feet away—fortunately he released his hold on both Cora’s wrist and her bracelet before he began the flight. At the same moment the unwashed man released his hold on her person and her property, roaring as he did so.

Cora whirled about, making the instantaneous decision to use her
right
knee as her right leg was perhaps a little stronger than the left. But she had no chance to use either. She was forced to stand and watch like a helpless female as someone else grappled with the robber—someone who looked suspiciously in the darkness as if he might be wearing a lavender evening coat.

The boy fled quietly into the night.

Cora clasped both hands over her mouth. He would be slaughtered. Oh, the dear gallant man. He knew nothing about thugs and ruffians as did she, who had lived in Bristol for most of her childhood and had frequently been taken to the docks by her father.

He was going to be killed at the very least.

She waited for an opening to come to his assistance.
It came quite soon, when the ruffian came staggering backward. Fortunately, he must have tripped over a tree root. Cora steadied him with both hands from behind for a moment and then allowed him to continue his fall. She kicked him in the side with her slippered foot when he was down, doing marvelous damage to her recently healed toes.

“There,” she said crossly, setting her hands firmly on her hips and glaring down at him, “take that!”

Obviously the thief knew when he had met his match. He pressed the heel of one hand against his jaw, grimacing and working it from side to side, and then scrambled in ungainly haste to his feet and disappeared into the darkness after his young accomplice.

“Well,” Cora said, peering after him, “we certainly taught
him
a lesson.”

But then she whirled about, in sudden mortal fear lest before his flight her assailant had murdered Lord Francis Kneller.

E HAD SEEN HER AS SOON AS SHE ARRIVED AT
V
AUXHALL
, one of a party of ten, which included Greenwald and Lady Jane Munro and the mothers of the newly betrothed couple. They had taken a box quite close to the one he occupied with Lady Augusta and her party.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to have caught her eye and smiled and nodded. Indeed, several times he had felt her eyes on him. He could have strolled across to the other box to pay his respects. He need have stayed only a few moments. Instead, he had pretended not to notice her. He had ignored her altogether.

It had been a gauche and inexplicable thing to do. He could not understand why he had done it. It was not as if he had quarreled with the woman. Far from it. The last time they had been together they had laughed so hard that they had had to hold each other up. And it was not as if she had ever meant anything to him. Good Lord, he had not avoided even Samantha after she had announced her betrothal. He had been a guest at her wedding. It had been foolish to behave as he had tonight.

But the trouble was that with every minute that passed, it had become more difficult suddenly to notice
that she was there at Vauxhall, in full view, a mere few yards from the box he occupied. He had even looked away from her when she danced. He had been very relieved when someone suggested a walk.

He would put matters right when they returned, he had decided. He would hand Lady Augusta back into the box and stroll across to Greenwald’s, pretending that he had just noticed them. Not that it would sound very convincing. Even the Duchess of Bridgwater and Lady Jane must be wondering why he had suddenly become so blind. Cora Downes must be feeling quite upset with him. Lord, he hoped she did not fancy herself in love with him.

But it had seemed that he would not have to wait until the return to the pavilion. He had walked the length of the main path with Lady Augusta and another couple, deftly turning aside the former’s hints that they explore one of the darker side paths. They had been strolling back again, enjoying the warmth of the evening, admiring the lanterns and the dancing colored lights they created on the path, nodding at acquaintances who passed them.