Just Deserts (13 page)

‘
Don’t fret yourself on my account, Seph,’ begged Letty,
grasping that lady’s hands as they reached protectively towards
her, and returning their convulsive pressure.

‘
Very affecting,’ snapped Chiddingly. ‘You are both of you
out of your senses. As for your conduct, Miss Persephone Winsford,’
he began, apparently in no doubt of her identity.

‘
Don’t
dare
to criticise my
conduct yet again, sir,’ flashed Persephone, turning on him in
fury. ‘I will not bear it! You have no right.’

‘
None but the decency of a gentleman. And I have enough of
that, madam, at least to—’

‘
Oh,
please
,’ begged Miss
Farren hysterically from the top of the steps. ‘If Ned were to come
down! His room overlooks us here.’

The three looked up to see her standing in an agony of
apprehension, quite alone. Sir Charles Bunbury had disappeared,
clearly having no wish to participate in the brewing
storm.

‘
Plague take it, she’s right,’ exclaimed Letty, her
indignation giving place to lively apprehension. She turned to the
baron as to an ally, her tone hushed almost to a whisper. ‘I’d
better get her out of this, Chid. You know what Derby is. We can
trust Charles to keep mum. But let Ned but get in his cups and it
will be all over town in a twinkling. Come on, Seph.’

She began to push Persephone towards the curricle, but
Chiddingly intervened, his angry tones also lowered.

‘
Wait! She had better come with me.’

‘
Come with
you
?’ echoed
Persephone in accents of loathing. ‘I had rather be ruined tenfold
than travel one yard in your company!’

‘
Don’t think it will be any pleasure to me to take you,’
retorted Chiddingly. ‘But as your reputation will be far less at
risk, I shall have to swallow my dislike.’

‘
What is my reputation to you?’ demanded Persephone, her
voice rising. ‘If you imagine, sir, that—’

‘
For pity’s sake!’
hissed Lizzie Farren, running down the steps. ‘Go,
go,
go
!’

‘
He’s right, Seph,’ Letty said with regret. ‘We have left it
too late. It’s already long past eight and by the time we get to
town there will be any number of persons abroad to see us
together.’

‘
I don’t care,’ raged Persephone. ‘I am
not
going with
him!’

‘
You have no choice, Miss Winsford,’ Chiddingly announced,
advancing upon her. ‘And I am not staying to argue the
point.’

Then, before the women knew what he was about, he had
seized Persephone in his arms, lifted her bodily and swung her up
willy-nilly into his phaeton.

His victim, deposited in considerable disorder on the seat,
was so surprised that she had only time to utter a muffled shriek
of protest before the baron had leapt nimbly up to take his place
beside her and set his unmatched team of mixed greys in
motion.

Persephone’s first thought was of Letty. Hoisting herself
upright, she turned in her seat, and craning dangerously over the
back of the carriage, called out to her.

‘
Letty, Letty, I have not even thanked you! Lizzie, too!
Letty, write to me. Be sure I shall see you again.’

‘
Oh no, you will not,’ Chiddingly said. ‘What in Hades were
you about, you stupid little fool?’

Persephone turned back in
her seat to confront him.

‘
You will be sorry for this, my lord. How dare you take it
upon yourself to abduct me in this high-handed fashion?’

‘
Abduct
you?’
Chiddingly gave a short bark of laughter. ‘That is rich. Believe
me, Miss Winsford, nothing could be further from my
intention.’

‘
Well, if you think my reputation will be safe driving about
the countryside alone with you, you have even less understanding of
the conventions than I.’

‘
Have no fear. We will be picking up my groom at the Cock.
In an open carriage, he will be chaperon enough.’

This piece of information
enraged Persephone further.

‘
Very clever, my lord. You need not think I don’t realise
why you are so mindful of the proprieties. I do not flatter myself
you have the least interest in saving my reputation, but for one
circumstance.’

‘
Spare your breath, Miss Winsford,’ he said, though a tinge
of red crept into his lean cheek. ‘You may need it to explain
yourself to your parents.’

Persephone drew in her breath. ‘You would tell them of
this? The devil take you, but I believe you would. You despicable
cur! Distressing my mother with such a tale. My father,
too.’

‘
You should have thought of them before you embarked upon
this crazy adventure. Not,’ he added, ‘that I suppose even the
nabob capable of controlling your extraordinary quirks.’

‘
How dare you sneer at Papa?’

‘
I did not do so. He has all my sympathy, I assure you. Were
I in his place, there would be nothing for it but to cut my throat.
That, or administer a salutary whipping every day.’

‘
You—you scoundrel! You savage!
Ooloo!'
she spat out, reverting to the Hindi curses culled
from the lips of old Ufur. She threw at him the word that in India
was the deadliest insult.
‘Kuta!
Dog!’

It was wasted on Chiddingly. But he lost no time in adding
fuel to the flames. ‘Rail and rave as you please, Miss Winsford. It
but confirms me in my opinion of you.’

Breathless with rage, Persephone lost command both of her
voice and her senses. ‘I w-will not—stay to be—so in-insulted,’
jerked from her in a series of husky gasps.

Then she launched into the air, with the idea of throwing
herself from the fast-moving carriage.

In instinctive reaction, Chiddingly let go the reins and
grabbed for her, catching at her clothing and seizing hold of one
arm in a painfully violent grip.

Next moment, the horses were bolting, the phaeton careering
off the road, Persephone hanging hazardously over the side, her
fingers clawing frantically at the leather seat and the baron’s
person, desperate for a purchase.

‘
Hold on!’ yelled Chiddingly, panic rife in his
voice.

She had left off her heavy greatcoat which had been
forgotten in Letty’s curricle, and Chiddingly had hold of a handful
of the skirt of her habit. Holding to the one arm he had safe, he
leaned over as far as he dared, let go the skirt and seized
Persephone under the armpits. Exerting all his strength, he dragged
her back into the phaeton so that she lay half across the seat, her
hands locked on his coat, her limbs still trailing out the
sides.

For a few hair-raising seconds, the carriage rocked
dangerously on one wheel, as if the overbalanced weight on one side
might cause it to overturn as it swayed and bumped over the turf at
the edge of the road. Letting go of Persephone, Chiddingly
struggled to retrieve his reins. In a few moments, the horses were
under control again and he had brought them to a floundering
standstill.

Pausing only to tug Persephone fully into the phaeton, so
that she knelt on the floorboards, collapsing on to the seat, her
body heaving with panting breaths, Chiddingly leapt down to go to
his horses’ heads.

In the time it took to soothe them into a calmer frame of
mind, Persephone managed painfully to haul herself upright and sit
on the seat, where she remained, clothes and bonnet awry and
shoulders hunched over her lap. She was shuddering
uncontrollably.

But when Chiddingly called to her to take the ribbons so
that he might leave the horses standing, she pulled herself erect
and did so at once. As he leapt back up into his seat and snatched
back the reins, the natural reaction to the frantic anxiety of the
last few moments bubbled up and a stream of invective poured from
his lips.

‘
You crazy little fool! Do you want to get us both
killed? You are, without exception, the most totty-headed,
addle-brained,
lunatic
virago that ever drew breath! It was
clear from the outset that you have a reckless disregard for life
and limb, but I had not until today realised that you were bent on
self-destruction one way or another. I almost doubt the evidence of
my own eyes.
An
act of such foolhardiness passes
belief!’

He stopped at last, quite out of breath, as he saw that the
misadventure was having its inevitable effect. Slow tears were
trickling down Miss Winsford’s wan cheeks. He felt his anger
draining away, and reminded himself that it was no thanks to her
that the phaeton had not overturned and broken his horses’
legs.

‘
Well may you weep,’ he said in a savage tone, whipping up
his resentment.

Persephone dashed impatient hands across her
eyes. ‘I’m
n-not
weeping,’ she said on an angry sob.
Reaching up to straighten her bonnet, she hissed in a breath and
stopped. Then she put a hand to her shoulder, biting her lip and
wincing.

‘
Are you hurt?’ he asked brusquely.

‘
Not in the l-least,’ she lied.

‘
Well, you damned well deserve to be!’ He pulled her hand
away and reached to feel for the injury.

‘
Leave me alone,’ Persephone uttered, pulling away too
precipitately, so that she cried out in sudden pain.

‘
Let me see! I should not be surprised if I had wrenched
your arm quite out of its socket.’

With surprisingly gentle hands, he explored her upper arm
while Persephone endured in silence.

‘
It is a trifle swollen about the shoulder,’ he announced
presently. ‘I think you have strained it pretty severely. You will
have to rest it for a day or two. Does it pain you anywhere
else?’

Persephone shook her head, determined not to admit to any
other hurt, though she felt bruised and battered from head to
foot.

‘
Aside from that, I am perfectly well,’ she said, stiff with
pride.

‘
Don’t lie to me,’ Chiddingly snapped, his eyes on her white
face. ‘You are all but at the point of collapse.’

‘
I am nothing of the sort,’ she retorted in a stronger
voice. ‘You should be the more concerned to know whether your
horses have taken any sort of hurt.’

‘
I am,’ Chiddingly agreed. ‘But as they appear to be as good
as ever, I have leisure to attend to you.’

Persephone’s lip trembled. ‘You are the most loathsome,
boorish, unmannerly—’

‘
Excellent,’ he interrupted in a heartening tone. ‘That is
much more like you. A period of rest in a bedchamber at the Cock
and I am sure you will be so much recovered as to be able to think
of a great many more forcefully abusive adjectives.’

A low gurgle of laughter escaped her, and was
instantly suppressed. She was not going to be beguiled into
forgetting her grievances. This hateful man had not only interfered
in her actions in a very high-handed way, she reminded herself, but
had taken it upon himself to reproach her. And she was certain she
knew why.
Her
reputation had meant nothing to him,
were it not for the fact that he had designs upon Pen. She had
suspected it from the first night at the ball, and nothing in his
conduct since had led her to change her opinion. Well, if Pen was
fool enough to marry him—!

The phaeton had for several moments been in motion, and now
came within sight of the hostelry where Chiddingly’s groom awaited
him. Persephone, walking with some degree of caution, was conducted
by the landlady to a small bedchamber where she was thankful to
remove her bonnet and lie down, more shaken by her ordeal than she
had been prepared to admit even to herself.

An hour’s rest followed by a cup of strong tea did much to
revive her, and she rejoined the baron in a much better temper,
determined to avoid any further quarrel, at least before his
servant.

Chiddingly having taken a similar resolve, the first few
miles were accomplished in stiff silence, neither trusting
themselves to speak without giving way to one or other of the many
complaints they had both stored up, the one against the
other.

At length Chiddingly spoke, with a question that had been
lurking at the back of his mind, though thrown to one side by the
excitement and consequences of Persephone’s mad action.

‘
What were you and Letty doing at Epsom in the first
place?’

Coming out of the blue, the query caught her unprepared.
‘We came to see your try-out,’ she blurted before she could stop
herself.

Chiddingly turned to her, his eye kindling all
over again. ‘You did
what?’

Persephone was aware of the flush rising to her
cheeks and took refuge in defiance. ‘It was
my
idea. I
overheard you and Fitz talking of it in the Park and determined to
see for myself.’