Chapter 106

The door creaked shut, and his footsteps splashed along the passageway outside. She needed to dress quickly. Breakfast? And ten thousand pounds? Him so agreeable? Too good to be true. What if his next move was the bailiffs? It probably depended on how recognizable that frayed, fuzzy, badly drawn image was of Topaz. Splendor knew it because she knew Topaz well. Familiarity lent recognition. Him now? He'd been sitting directly beneath it. Surely he'd seen it? What if he hadn't? What if he saw it now though?
She tugged on her petticoat and thrust her arms through the sleeves of his coat. Even if she looked as if she'd been hauled through a hedge backward, forward, and as many ways as it was possible to be, she needed to get Topaz away from here now. Anyway, who was going to see her?
She pulled her hair free of the collar, pushed the door open. Fresh, dawn-lit air blasted in. She peered outside at the passageway. Empty, except for a few stray coils of mist. She grasped the cold frills of her petticoat and readied herself to bolt across the rubbish-strewn sea that lay like a derelict city between the barn and the inn door. Run, run, run, her feet slapped, and her breath quickened at her boldness. Run. Run, right into something hard, yet soft. Her mouth fell open, her eyes probably swallowed her face.
"Why, my dear ... "
She gulped. Lady Kertouche. It was, wasn't it? So the answer to that question about who was going to see her, was not just Lady Kertouche, standing right there before her, her dove gray cloak, fluttering like bats' wings around her, but bloody Babs Langley. And, behind her, having just stepped through the inn door, Earl Stillmore bearing a tray-a sort of tarnished silver affair-with a battered earthenware coffee pot steaming nicely on it and two cups. Gold-rimmed. Nice. With purple violets on them.
To make matters worse-although quite how they could be worse, Splendor's rapidly emptying mind hadn't the faintest idea-Lady Kertouche's mouth had fallen open, snapped shut, then opened again. Her brow crinkled.
"Is it you?"
Splendor swallowed. Who did Lady Kertouche think it could be if it wasn't just her, but her standing here with straw stuck in her hair and wearing Earl Stillmore's coat? The Virgin Mary? For a second Splendor wondered if she could deny it was herself.
Only there seemed no point in denial. "Yes. It is me. How-how very nice-"
Horrible was the word she raked the Saharan desert of her empty mind for. She darted her gaze to the earl, standing like a butler behind Babs Langley, a gypsy butler with eyes so slanted beneath his coal-black brows, all she could detect was the feral glint. But perhaps neither Babs Langley nor Lady Kertouche had seen him? Perhaps, were he to turn around and go back inside the inn instead of standing there like a prize pudding, this would be fine. Nothing she could not handle. She did handle things. It was her specialty.
Lady Kertouche touched her chest feebly. "On the whole, it is nice to see you here too-"
"Charming." Babs Langley sneered. "And ... and with you, Kendall ... "
Splendor's scalp shrunk. It wasn't to be fine. It was to be as far from fine as it could be. Lady Kertouche's jaw almost hit the ground.
"Why, I would never have thought you and well ... you Kendall ... "
What did that mean exactly? Why shouldn't she have thought? What was wrong with it exactly? That Splendor wasn't good enough for the likes of him? That she hadn't kept herself? That she was like every other woman around him that way?
"Thought...thought what exactly?" She might as well ask. Although standing here as she was in a petticoat and his coat, her hair like a haystack and that strange odor, one she had never read about in any of her papa's books, clinging to her, the answer to what was wrong was probably plain as daylight.
"Well, that you ...That he ... "
Lady Kertouche's velvet-gloved hand wavered in the direction of the he, looking even more diabolical than usual if that were possible, dark stubble dusting his jaw and upper lip, his eyes sunk so far beneath his brows she would need a team with pickaxes to excavate them. And she had thought he quite liked Lady Kertouche.
"If you mean the cat, do say so, Violetta," he said.
"Oh, not at all, Kendall. I merely ... well... "
Or was it because Babs Langley stood there? Babs Langley, who she would die rather than look stupid before. And he would too. It must be. Suddenly she saw it. He didn't know what to do.
"Oh, it is not what it looks."
In that second her voice came to her. In fact, more than her voice came to her, breaking the awful morass holding her in slimy paws. "No, I do not know how you can think anything amiss."
"Oh, my dear, I was not for one second thinking-"
"His Grace and I eloped."
"What?"
Lady Kertouche's exclamation was arrested by the tray dropping from the earl's hand and clanging off the ground, along with Lady Kertouche's dropping jaw.
"Yes." Splendor could see what a mistake it was to continue, but there was also the matter of the parties, the balls and the outings. So she did it anyway. These would grind to an immediate halt if it was known she had spent the night with a man in a barn. Besides, he could thank her for her genius later, just as she had him to thank for the ten thousand pounds that would make her continuance in that glittering world possible. "We ... well, you know how it is, I am sure. We just decided to avoid all the fuss and then ...Then there was the storm. It was so awful, it forced us to stop here for the night."
If the expression darkening his features was anything to go by, being forced to stop wasn't the only thing that was awful. The idea to take her by the throat and put a stop to her was plainly running through his disordered head. When she had dug him out of a hole? What was wrong with it for goodness' sake? Give him a second or so, and he would surely see the value of her claim. How it would inflame Babs Langley.
Besides, they could deny it, couldn't they, when all the fuss had died down, and they were all back in London? A joke, whatever. So there really was no need for him to appear quite so mummified. "Eloped?" Lady Kertouche was so beside herself her eyes matched her mouth in the soup bowl stakes. "My stars. Kendall ... You?"
He tilted his jaw. Sparks glinted in his eyes.
"But Kendall, you don't like ... I mean, since Marietta you have been a confirmed bachelor."
"Well." His smile was so saturnine, it would have skinned lemons at forty paces had there been any on that tray. "There is a first time for everything. Or so it seems. Including dropping this tray." He bent down. "You must excuse us, Violetta. The shock to my system has proved exceptional. As exceptional as Lady Splendor here."
A hot flush sprung like ivy up Splendor's neck.
"Oh, I think the shock is to all our systems, Kendall. Still, you cannot imagine how happy I am for you both. Do allow me to congratulate you. Such a happy, happy day."
"Please, no."
"Oh, I see." Lady Kertouche lowered her voice. "This is so very secret you don't want my good wishes? And yet so romantic you eloped and spent the night in a hay barn? I always knew you were a dark horse."
Splendor dug her toes into the grit and tried not to raise her gaze heavenwards, praying he wouldn't say it was so secret even he didn't know of it. Lady Kertouche's laugh echoed like an uneasy gale up and down the misty passageway. "For goodness' sake, I simply must tell you how happy I am for you. You have no idea after all you-"
"I said, if you don't mind, Violetta, there are things I would sooner not discuss.
Certainly I have no wish to discuss them here."
"Of course. But-"
"Violetta ... "
Splendor's toes bunched tighter, so the ball of her foot cramped. He straightened. "You will excuse me, excuse us both?"
"Of course! Morning coffee in a barn. How very romantic, Kendall. I have always known that the woman who next bagged you would be fortunate indeed. Oh, you do know that, my dear Lady Splendor?"
"Yes." Splendor tried to nod as Lady Kertouche's darkly shadowed eyes settled on her. In truth, it might have been easier to have nailed her fingers together. Smiling was like climbing the Himalayas on tiptoes. "Yes, I do. The luckiest woman alive."
"I do? Oh, how lovely. Exactly what you've said to Kendall. And he has to you. Well, my dear, we were never meant to be here anyway. Alas, one of my horses went lame. Chivvy's taken him to be shod. That's shod, not shot, before you get too alarmed. The road is quite windblown this morning. Strewn with tree branches and everything else you care to name. Do you know there is even a cart in a ditch not far from the crossroads? Yes. With a man lying snoring in it too. But there, you two have been safely tucked up here."
Safe and tuck were not the words that came to mind. Provided Splendor kept calm and explained herself, it would be fine. She hoped so.
As things stood, the ten thousand pounds and the breakfast had vanished down a slippery slope.