Read Online The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet by Mary Balogh - Free Book Online

Kneller needs diversion while he looks about him for another Incomparable to whose court to attach himself—his words, not mine, I do assure you, Mama. He can do Miss Downes nothing but good. Perhaps he can teach her to be a little less—exuberant.”
    The duchess laughed. “I find her delightful, Alistair,” she said. “But you are right, of course. She needs polish. I actually saw her throw back her head last evening and laugh. I was caught between horror and amusement.”
    “If it had been Lizzie or Jane,” her son said, his eyebrows raised, “there would have been no question of amusement, Mama.”
    “Oh, no, indeed,” she agreed fervently. “I do hope that between us, you and I—and perhaps Lord Francis, if he will be so obliging—will be able to smooth out some rough edges. Cora deserves a respectable husband after what she did for dear Henry, Alistair.”
    “We will try what we can do, Mama,” he said. “But I hope for your sake she will not blame us at some future date for lifting her out of her own class and making her unhappy.”
    C ORA COULD NOT remember a time when she had enjoyed herself more. All her anxieties of last night and this morning and the early part of this afternoon had been for naught. Not only was it not raining, but the sun shone down from a cloudless sky and the day was hot, though only pleasantly so by five o’clock in the afternoon. In addition to these happy circumstances was the fact that Lord Francis Kneller had not forgotten his appointmentto take her driving in Hyde Park. He arrived punctually at half past four.
    She was wearing her favorite of her new day clothes—a bright yellow muslin dress with blue sash and blue cornflowers embroidered about the scalloped hem, and a straw hat whose brim was trimmed with artificial cornflowers and which sported a wide yellow ribbon stretched over the brim of the hat and tied beneath her chin. She carried a blue parasol. She wore a pair of her old shoes, a regrettable fact, but better than wearing no shoes at all—which seemed the only alternative for today at least.
    Cora was feeling very smart indeed. Her papa had given her a vast sum of money to bring with her to London, with the strict instructions that a certain specified amount of it was to be spent on fashionable clothes. And Edgar had made her a gift of another large sum with which to buy herself baubles and gewgaws, as he had phrased it. She had been happily obedient to the wishes of both.
    Another fact was contributing to her happiness. She had had a dreadful thought sometime during the night, when she had woken to think back to the ball and to flex her stinging toes gingerly against the bandages a maid had swathed them in. And the thought had haunted her all day. What if Lord Francis Kneller’s appearance last evening was uncharacteristic of him? What if he was not after all a rather foppish gentleman? What if he appeared today to take her driving, looking as forbiddingly masculine and aristocratic as the Duke of Bridgwater had looked in her grace’s drawing room? She would die. He was
Lord
Francis Kneller, after all. His father had been a duke. His brother was a duke. Her tongue would tie itself into one giant knot and she would doubtless simper and stammer and blush her way through the ordeal of a drive in the park with him.
    Not that a duke’s son or even a duke was inherently superior to Papa and Edgar and the other men of their class with whom she was acquainted. But it was one thing for the head to know that. It was another for the body and the emotions to act in accordance with the belief.
    She had longed for and dreaded the arrival of Lord Francis Kneller. She had bitten both cheeks to shreds.
    Yet again all her fears had been for nothing. He was standing in the hall of her grace’s house when she came downstairs at the summons of a footman, and she felt herself exhale in relief. His coat was not quite pink or quite a mulberry color. It was halfway between the