Chapter 13
She woke with a violent headache and a very tangled mind. Where was she? And why was the world bouncing around so painfully?
“At last.”
Rosamunde forced her eyes open, turning her head toward her cousin’s voice by her side, hissing with the pain. Poor Diana looked as bad as she felt.
In fact, Diana looked extremely peculiar.
“Are you spotty?”
Diana touched her blotched face. “Does it work? I thought it such a clever idea.”
Rosamunde closed her eyes. She must be in a drugged dream. Diana would never be happy about pimples. Nor would she ever wear such a dull, plain outfit, and a mob-cap.
Her face was tapped gently. “Rosa! Stay awake. We have to fix you.”
“Don’t do that. Please.” Rosamunde opened her eyes again and found that Diana was still spotty. All over her face. She had a particularly revolting pimple on her left cheekbone. Inflamed red with a pus-filled center. “Are you real?”
Merriment sparkled in this strange Diana’s eyes. “Only in a manner of speaking. I’m your maid.”
“What a peculiar dream.”
Diana thrust the spots closer. “It’s not a dream, Rosa.
It’s a disguise. Pay attention. We can’t leave Brand Malloren somewhere and be seen in the same area.
It’s too easy a link. So I stopped off in Richmond—you were dead to the world—and sought a little help from a friend of mine.
An actress. She found me these clothes, and painted my face.
I don’t think anyone will recognize the Countess of Arradale, will they? ”
Rosamunde focused on the enormous pimple. “No. Especially as it will never cross their minds.”
“Quite. No one who matters notices servants. We’re approaching Thirsk, however, so we have to do you.”
Rosamunde raised her hand to guard her face. “No spots!”
“No, no. Just a lot of ordinary face paint.”
“I don’t want face paint either!”
“Well, you must have it.” Diana lifted a wooden box onto her lap and opened it. “You’re my mistress. The sort of high-born lady who wears a great deal of maquillage.”
Rosamunde had the sinking feeling that this was all too real. “I don’t like face paint. It looks horrible.”
“Think, love! You can’t show your scars, and a mask would draw attention, but heavy paint will hardly get a glance.”
Rosamunde’s mind, however, had jolted to other matters. “Where is he?” She sat up, despite the pain in her head. “What have you done with him? What have you done?”
“Nothing!” Diana said, pushing her back. “Hush. He’s underfoot. And before you protest, I couldn’t prop both of you up for four hours. He’s safer where he is.”
Brand Malloren was the cushion beneath her feet! He lay curled in the tight space on the floor of the carriage, but at least Diana had put a folded blanket under his head.
“Oh dear.” She raised her feet, but there really was nowhere else to put them.
“Don’t fuss. He’s fine.”
Rosamunde had to put her feet back on his shoulder, but she leaned down, despite her throbbing head, to test the pulse at his neck. Slow, but steady and strong. And this time he wasn’t particularly cold.
She sat back up. “Put a blanket over him please.”
Diana rolled her eyes, but she did it, finding a rich brown one under the opposite seat and dropping it over him.
“Oh dear,” said Rosamunde. “This is so like what happened to him before. He was so ill. Oh, faith … !”
“What?”
“The symptoms. He said he was no hard drinker. He must have been drugged that time, too, and with something similar. He’ll hate me.”
“A good thing under the circumstances.”
When Rosamunde tried to object, Diana interrupted. “Rosa, if he hates you, he won’t try to find you.”
“If he hates me enough, he might.”
Diana looked struck by that. “And a Malloren. Lud. All the more reason for disguise!”
Rosamunde flinched from the pots of paint. What she wanted was to curl up with Brand and go back to sleep, to stay asleep until her stomach settled and her head stopped pounding. Perhaps never to wake up. She had to go through with this, however. For Digby and Wenscote.
“Can paint really mask my scars?”
“Dulcie showed me how.” Diana uncorked one squat pot. “This stuff is a sort of paste that can be used to fill in wrinkles. Or scars. Turn this way.” She tilted Rosamunde’s face, then began to apply it thickly.
“I’m going to feel stiff as a board.”
“Probably. You won’t need to laugh or talk, so don’t worry about it.” Firm fingers smeared on the temple and cheek. “There. Almost gone.” Diana pulled out another pot and applied a creamier substance all over Rosamunde’s face.
“That’s not lead, is it?” Rosamunde asked, pulling back.
“No! Come back here. Everyone knows the dangers of white lead by now.” Diana moved back to consider her work. “It’s working. Even I can hardly see the scars, and a casual glance would never detect them. And no one will recognize you, either. You look different. Older.”
“Delightful.”
“If I can be spotty, you can be a hag.” Diana put away the two pots and opened some more.
“I don’t feel at all well, Diana,” Rosamunde said, queasy at the smell of the grease.
“We have to do this.” Diana took Rosamunde’s chin in a firm grip. Teeth in her lower lip with concentration, she tried to paint an eyebrow, then let out an unladylike curse. She opened the window and yelled, “Stop the coach.”
“Stop the coach?”
“Stop the coach!”
It halted with a jerk. “Is something the matter, milady?”
“No. Just keep it still for a few minutes.” With no further explanation, Diana set to work and Rosamunde felt the brush whisper over her brows.
“Better,” Diana said. In moments she’d done the lips, too. “I’ve made them thinner and darker. A veritable hag!”
“Thank you, I’m sure.”
“My pleasure to serve you, milady. What else? Ah yes, patches!” She produced a little box and some glue, and pressed a number of black patches around Rosamunde’s face.
“Stop! Anyone will think I’m pox-scarred.”
“Good. If they detect any scarring, that will explain it.” She tilted her head to consider her work. “I think I have a gift for this. Drive on, coachman!”
As the coach rocked into motion once more, she produced a mirror from the box and held it up.
Rosamunde stared at a stranger. With pale paint, black brows, red lipstick, and scattered “beauty spots,” her face looked garish.
Fashionable ladies and gentlemen generally used some paint—it was part of being welldressed—but this was extreme.
However, she knew some did paint themselves this way, especially if they had problems to hide, such as scars from the smallpox.
Or if they thought they could preserve an illusion of youth.
“I’m not scarred,” she whispered, touching her cheek. “How very strange.” The mirror showed ghosts of the wounds, but as Diana had said, to a casual glance, her face was unblemished.
“And no one will know you,” Diana said. “I’m going to powder your hair, too. No grease. Just a light dusting to disguise the true color. Blue, I think.”
“Blue?”
“I’m sure you’re just the sort to wear blue powder.” She dusted it carefully, but a cloud still floated around Rosamunde.
“If I sneeze, I’ll likely scream with pain.”
Diana stopped, and peered at her. “Pain?”
Rosamunde realized she’d not said anything about it before. “I have a headache. A bad one.”
Diana hastily put away the powdering brush and even tried to waft the hazy cloud away. “You should have said.”
Rosamunde just leaned her head back against the seat.
After a moment, Diana said, “Look, Rosa.”
Rosamunde opened her eyes to see that strange face in the mirror again, this time crowned by faded hair.
“It is miraculous,” Diana said, “even if by accident. Dull, like your mother’s hair. It adds decades to your age.”
“You’re right.” Rosamunde just wanted to close her eyes and fight nausea.
“Just one final touch …” Diana dug in a pocket and pulled out a glittering handful.
Jewels. Probably the ones Diana had worn this morning, for Diana loved glittering jewelry. She and Rosamunde jokingly called them her “sparklies” for, indeed, for daily wear she paid little attention to value and selected for glitter.
Now she clipped earrings to Rosamunde’s lobes, clasped a couple of items around her neck, and a few more around her wrists, then slipped rings onto Rosamunde’s limp fingers.
“I hate wearing a lot of rings.”
“What a grump you’re being. Just four, then. There. Now you are the very picture of a decadent lady of fashion, and as far from Rosamunde Overton as can be imagined.” Diana glanced out of the window. “We must be close to Thirsk now. Time to dispose of our burden.”
“He’s not—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Diana said with a wave of a pale hand made strange by the lack of glitter. “He’s a prince and a hero. But we still have to dispose of him.”
“Here?” Rosamunde saw only fields. “He has to have shelter of some kind.”
“Rosa, it’s summer, and this isn’t the moors!”
“Shelter,” repeated Rosamunde stubbornly.
Diana muttered, but she studied the surrounding countryside. “There’s too much traffic on this road, anyway. We’ll have to turn off. Find a hay barn or some such.”
She commanded Garforth to take a turning ahead.
“It’s nowt but a track, milady.”
“Take it.” Diana peered out of the window. “There’s a signpost. It has to be a road of sorts.”
When they slowly turned off the highway, however, a jolt warned that Garforth had been right.
Signpost or no, it was little better than a track, ridged and rutted by hoofs and cartwheels and set into stone by summer sun.
Rosamunde tensed, refusing to complain of the jolts of pain as they bumped along.
She deserved to hurt as much as Brand would.
“The signpost was to New-something,” Diana said, clinging to the strap by her side. “A mile and a half. That’s not far and surely somewhere along here we’ll find a place to put him. Look, there’s a barn. It will serve.” She called for Garforth to stop.