Page 45 of Unmasked by the Marquess
Both men looked at the sky, which was an ominous sort of gray that signaled more than the usual London showers.
Alistair thought of Gilbert and Louisa, making a thoroughly foolish and unnecessary trip to Scotland. Elopement was always disgraceful, and this particular elopement made everyone involved look ridiculous. Alistair had no intention of being cast as the villain in a farce, the evil marquess from whose lecherous advances the fair maiden had to escape. That was all bad enough.
But then he thought of Robin riding through a storm on a skittish horse, and he felt a swell of fear rise up in him.
With every clap of thunder, the mare seemed to lose a bit of her nerve. Charity had been sweet-talking her for the last several miles and they were now thoroughly irritated with one another, not to mention soaked and hungry.
The roads were getting muddier and the rain was falling heavier. Charity was about to seek shelter in the next barn or cowshed when her attention was arrested by the sight of what looked like an overturned carriage. She spurred the mare through the mud and driving rain.
It was indeed a carriage on its side. The horses had become unhitched and were wandering freely in an adjacent field. But there was no sign of coachman or passengers. She wanted to believe that they had walked away from the accident, but who would leave a pair of matched carriage horses out in the rain? And she knew at a glance that nobody had walked away from this accident. They were either dead or in need of help. As much as Charity would have liked to catch up with Louisa before nightfall, she wasn’t leaving injured travelers on the side of the road.
As she approached, she could see the carriage’s wheels still spinning. Perhaps it had only just now overturned, then. She dismounted her mare and looped its reins over a fence post. Sounds were coming from inside the carriage, which had to be a good sign, she supposed.
But then she heard what the voice inside the carriage was saying. “Louisa!” The voice was anxious and loud and definitely belonged to Gilbert de Lacey. “Louisa!”
Charity ran the rest of the way. Since the carriage was on its side, she had to climb on top of it to reach a door. “Open the door, Gilbert!” she cried.
“I can’t! My God, is that you, Selby? Louisa hit her head, and I can’t get to the door without heaving her about. And one of my arms doesn’t seem to be quite the thing.”
She managed to open the door and peer inside. Louisa, evidently unconscious, had a gash across her forehead. One of Gilbert’s arms was at a nauseating angle. “Is she breathing?” she demanded.
“Yes,” Gilbert answered immediately.
That basic fact established, she resolved not to think any more about their injuries. What she needed now was strong men to get them out of the carriage. “I’m going for help. Was Aunt Agatha with you?”
“No, she—”
She cut him off. “Did you have a coachman?”
“Yes! Oh my God—”
“I’ll be back.”
She found the coachman, a boy of no more than twenty, facedown in the ditch that was supposed to provide drainage for the road. He was quite insensible but not bleeding, and she was at least able to drag him out so he didn’t drown. Then she grabbed Louisa’s valise, climbed back on the mare and rode for the farmhouse she thought she had glimpsed in the distance.
There was one other task she had to complete. Louisa would need careful nursing. Charity wouldn’t leave Louisa’s fate up to the ministrations of some incompetent stranger. But only a woman could nurse another woman. In the shelter of a woodshed, she struggled into Louisa’s soaked gown. Then she ran for the farmhouse and pounded on the door.
By the time they got Louisa out of the carriage and into the farmhouse, the rain had stopped and Louisa was half awake. She kept asking after Gilbert, which was so bloody typical of her that Charity nearly felt reassured.
The farmers must have been put out by the arrival of four strangers, three of whom were badly injured, but they seemed to be making the best of things. Their good-natured acceptance might have been helped along by the fact that Charity loudly and repeatedly referred to Gilbert as “his lordship.” Gilbert’s habit of shaking coins out of his purse like he was sprinkling salt on a fresh cut of beef probably also went some distance in winning the couple’s cooperation.
When she introduced herself to the Trouts as Louisa’s relation, Miss Church, Gilbert hadn’t batted an eyelash. In the commotion of rescuing Louisa from the carriage and bringing her into the house, she hadn’t found a moment to explain her disguise to the young man. How he supposed Louisa to have acquired a relation in the middle of nowhere, and where he supposed Robert Selby to have disappeared to, Charity could not guess. Either he was a consummate actor or as gullible as a newborn baby, and at the moment she didn’t much care which.
It was arranged that the coachman was to be kept in the kitchen, where the farmer’s wife wrapped him in a blanket and gave him a mug of broth. Gilbert, who insisted that he’d decamp to the nearest inn as soon as he had his bone set, sat in the parlor awaiting his fate. Louisa was to have the spare bedroom with Charity attending her.
Once they had gotten Louisa dry and warm, there was nothing to do but mop the blood off her head. If it had been anyone other than Louisa—hell, if it had been herself—she would have dismissed the quantity of blood as exactly what you’d expect from a head wound. Oceans of blood, but there probably wouldn’t even be a scar in a fortnight. But since it was Louisa, Charity could not be so complacent. When she looked at Louisa, pale hair spread out on the pillow, she still saw a young child, fragile and in need of protection.
The farmer’s wife brought dry clothes for Charity to change into. Mrs. Trout was short and blousy, which meant that her clothes fit Charity even worse than Louisa’s, but they were plain and sturdy and just the thing for getting covered in blood.
“Charity,” Louisa whispered once they were alone, “how did you manage to find me so quickly?”
The girl thought she had been stealthy, had she? Lord. “Call it a good guess,” Charity said dryly. “Listen, Louisa, I don’t mean to stop you and Gilbert from marrying, if that’s what you want to know. I never meant to stop you. I wish the pair of you happy.”
“But Lord Pembroke...” The fear in her voice was plain even though she spoke in a whisper.
Charity suppressed her irritation. However faulty Louisa’s reasoning and melodramatic her behavior, she truly had feared a forced marriage. Charity wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve Louisa’s mistrust, let alone a doctored sleeping draught from Aunt Agatha, but she’d try to ignore her hurt feelings until Louisa was well again.
“Pembroke has nothing to do with you. He doesn’t want to marry you at all.” Charity took a clean cloth and pressed it against Louisa’s wound. “You don’t need to worry about him. Close your eyes and rest.”
