Lady in Rags

Chapter Sixteen: Her Inattentive Prince

What had happened, though Verity didn't know it, was that shortly after she had left on her walk, Baby Henry had thrown himself in the stream.

Why he did it no one knew, except Baby Henry, and he never told. But he did do it. And it was Neil who had jumped in after him for his rescue. The stream was fast-flowing, faster still for the week of rain, and both boy and man were exhausted and wet when Neil finally managed to clamber back up the slippery bank to land, with the struggling toddler under one arm.

"Mouillé, mouillé," Baby Henry cried plaintively. "Mouillé."

"Oui, tu es mouillé," Mrs Prothero snapped at him. She looked around for Mr Prothero, but he and her mother-in-law had gone for a walk in the forest, and were too far away to have heard her screams. Only her younger sister remained in the meadow, hovering anxiously at her elbow to see if she could help.

She could not. There was no help to be had but a hot bath and dry clothes, and they were only to be had some ten miles away.

"We're going home," Mrs Prothero told her in French. "Tell George that we've gone home in the black carriage, to get dry."

Her sister promised to pass on the message, and, seeing she could do no more, returned to the picnic rug to re-read a letter she had received that morning, analyzing it for any possible hidden messages. A few minutes later, she distantly registered the sound of horses' hooves, but did not look up to the road to see the carriage go.

As the carriage rolled away, with Neil and Mrs Prothero and Henry inside, Neil couldn't help but suspect that Baby Henry, though weeping angelically, was secretly pleased with himself. Neil wasn't in the mood to blame him, for Neil was also secretly pleased with Henry. It had occurred to him, once he was back on the bank with Henry in his arms, that he had been quite the hero to rescue him, and though he had noted Verity was not around to see it, he thought hopefully that she might be impressed when she heard of it.

At four o'clock, when the storm had started up again, Mr Prothero and his mother- and sister-in-law had packed up the picnic things and decamped in the second coach.

"Where is the English man's little wife?" Prothero's mother-in-law asked him, as he took her hand to help her into the carriage.

"She went back with him, Mama," his sister-in-law said tetchily, from her seat. "She is his wife." For the main argument between the two women was that the sixteen-year-old girl wished to make a match of it with a man her mother thought quite unsuitable.

The girl spoke with such conviction that neither Prothero nor her mother considered for a moment that it might be assumption, not fact. And as for the driver of the carriage, who might otherwise have been trusted to count heads, he had been seeing double all afternoon. It came upon him, sometimes, this strange and wonderful affliction, and he was very quiet as his two masters directed him to start the drive home, lest he betray it to either of them.

His affliction was also responsible for the little accident the company experienced on the road home, doubling the length of their journey by the dreary wait under a drizzling awning in the village while two men, who were not seeing double, fixed the dislocated wheel.

It was grey, chilly dusk when the second carriage finally arrived at the manor, driven by Prothero, who had fired his drunken carriage man. Neil went down to the front door to meet it, attired in silk robes and slippers, as befitted a hero of his standing.

His smile faded as Prothero opened the carriage door, and only two ladies descended from it.

"Where's Verity?"

*       *       *

At that moment, Verity was huddled on the stone throne of Bastien's castle, damp in body and damp in spirit. She had waited some time for the carriages to return, and just as she had decided to walk the ten foreign miles back home, the drizzle had intensified once more to rain, leaving her with no option but to take shelter, and wait to be rescued.