Page 121 of A Much Maligned Miss

Clambering up from her scraped knees, Caroline gave a desperate tug at her skirts, which appeared to be caught on something. Glancing back over her shoulder, she realized her screaming mother was desperately clawing at them from the floor of the carriage.

“Over there, miss!” Reg bellowed, pointing to a hackney cab pulled up against the pavement about a hundred yards away. He only had the chance to get the words out before Sidney Price fell on him with an angry roar.

Wrenching herself free to the sound of tearing fabric, Caroline dodged around a passing carriage. They were near a busy crossroads, and a driver brandished his whip and yelled at her, cursing her for a stupid fool. Ignoring him, Caroline weaved through the traffic, intent on her escape before she heard her mother’s voice upraised in fury, close on her heels.

“Get back here, Caroline! How dare you defy me, you wicked creature!” she shrieked. “I will make you rue the day you were ever born!” Mama looked like a demented scarecrow with her soiled gown and her dirty hair.

She was never going to stop, Caroline realized. She had lost all reason, and all appearance of sanity had now slipped like a mask from her true self, revealing the horrible truth. Mama was a monster.

Taking a fortifying breath, Caroline wheeled about to face her head-on. Her arms shot out and she shoved at her mother, hard, with all her might. Mama’s face looked so shocked by Caroline daring to lay hands upon her, that she went reeling backward without any resistance at all, an expression of the utmost surprise upon her face.

Her scrawny body flew backward into the passing traffic and there was a blur, a sickening thud and a crunch, and someone screamed. Caroline covered her mouth with her hand and turned her back to it, breathing fast. Oh God, she thought, closing her eyes tight. Oh God. She was going to be sick.

Dragging some air into her burning lungs, she made a break for Reg’s hackney cab. She only breathed it out once her fingers closed around the door handle and she hauled herself inside, panting hard.

“Gerwyn Street!” Reg shouted to the driver as he lumbered into the cab behind her.

“Oh Reg,” she quavered. “Did you see…?”

“It weren’t your fault, miss,” he said staunchly. “They were a pair of villains and no mistake.”

Well, she could not argue with that. “Are you very hurt?” she asked, looking at his bloodied nose and swollen red face.

“It’s nothin’, miss,” he said with a warning glance toward the driver. Taking his meaning, she drew the handkerchief from her cuff and wrapped it around his bleeding knuckles. He must have given as good as he got and that was saying something.

“That man,” Caroline said urgently. She turned to look out of the window and spotted Sidney Price lying in a heap as people started to jump down from their carriages to investigate the figure lying prone in the dirt.

“Don’t look, Miss Caroline,” he said. “It’s not a sight for a lady’s eyes.”

“Reg,” she said in a shaken voice, “I hope you realize you saved my life this day. Is he—?”

“I dunno and we ain’t stopping to find out,” he answered promptly.

Caroline twisted about and managed to get a last view of her mother lying still under the wheels of a halted carriage. It gave her a terrible flashback to Sophy lying dead under the pergola. Tears sprang to her eyes. Poor Sophy. Poor dead Sophy who had died in her stead. Her tears were for Sophy, she realized numbly, not Mama.

She sat back in her seat and took a deep breath. “Reg, please call up to the cabbie. I do not want to go to The Citadel after all, but to Gervaise’s uncle’s house in Melbury Square.”

50

Macey coughed discreetly from the library doorway and Gervaise looked up. “Yes, Macey, what is it?”

“Lady Atherton has arrived and is seeking an audience with you, milord.”

“Lady Atherton?” Gervaise repeated blankly, discarding his book.

“I took her into the small sitting room, my lord.” He hesitated. “I think you should come at once.”

Gervaise stood up. “I had every intention of coming,” he replied testily but then his uncle’s butler was not to know how he dropped everything and came running at Caroline’s merest word. Perhaps Macey imagined they were at odds with one another, and that was why he had moved back to Melbury Square without his wife in tow.

He paused on the threshold of the sitting room, steeling himself to stand firm against whatever objections Caroline saw fit to voice against their wholly necessary marriage. Emmeline was waiting even now to receive her as an honored guest in the Vance town house. They would be married from there by special license as soon as it could be arranged.

She would just have to face the inevitability of matrimony however little it might currently appeal to her. He opened the door, walked inside, and promptly forgot all the arguments he had lined up to make. Caroline was sat in a chair by the fire, and something was very clearly wrong.

Gervaise had the strangest sense of déjà vu as he took in her disordered appearance. Her hair was half up and half down, her hands dirty, and her gown torn. He strode forward and dropped down to kneel before her chair.

“Caroline!” He bit back the hasty words that rushed to his tongue, instead, taking her hands in his and staring at her face. “But what has happened here?” he asked, striving for a semblance of calm which he did not remotely feel.

“Never mind that now. I need to speak to you most particularly,” she began. When he opened his mouth, she interrupted quickly. “I will tell you soon, I promise, but not now. Instead, I need to ask you something with the utmost urgency.”