Chapter 1 #3
"One might also think," Lady Honoria interjected with a tone that could have frozen the lake they'd just emerged from, "that this is neither the time nor the place for such observations. Arabella, we are leaving. Immediately."
"But the fete..."
"It is over. For us." Her mother's tone brooked no argument. "Penelope, dear, would you be so kind as to collect Arabella's... that is, would you..."
"I'll gather her things," Penelope said, taking pity on Lady Honoria's inability to form coherent sentences in the face of social catastrophe. "Including the dog, I assume?"
"The dog," Lady Honoria said with feeling, "may find his own way home. Or not. I find myself remarkably indifferent to his fate."
Thistle, as if sensing he was being discussed, chose that moment to come, tail wagging with the enthusiasm of one who has had an absolutely splendid time and fails to understand why everyone else seems so tense.
He was covered in mud, pond weed, and what appeared to be the remains of Lady Nottington's dignity.
"Look," he seemed to say with every wag of his disreputable tail, "I've had an adventure!"
"Yes," Arabella said weakly, reaching down to grasp his collar before he could share his adventure with anyone else's clothing. "We've all had quite enough adventure for one day."
As she was led away by her mother, who had adopted the grim determination of a general conducting a strategic retreat, Arabella couldn't help but glance back toward the lake.
The Earl of Blackthorn was standing by his horse, a magnificent black stallion who was eyeing his waterlogged master with equine disapproval.
As if sensing her gaze, he looked up, and their eyes met across the distance.
For a moment, neither moved. Then, deliberately, he raised his hand to his forehead in a mock salute; the gesture of a soldier acknowledging a fellow survivor of battle.
Despite everything, her mortification, her mother's horror, the fact that she could hear Lady Nottington having what sounded like a genuine fit of vapors, Arabella felt her lips twitch.
She raised her own hand in return, a brief wave that could have meant anything or nothing, and then allowed herself to be dragged away from what would undoubtedly be remembered as the most spectacular social disaster of the season, if not the decade.
Behind them, she could hear the crowd erupting into conversation like a dam bursting. By evening, she knew, the story would have been embellished beyond recognition. By tomorrow, it would be the talk of three counties. By the end of the week, she would be thoroughly ruined.
The thought should have horrified her. Instead, as she squished her way across the lawn with her mother maintaining a grip on her arm that suggested she feared Arabella might make another break for aquatic freedom, she found herself thinking about the warmth of the Earl's arm around her waist, the way his voice had sounded against her ear, the unexpected kindness of his lie to her mother.
*
"You realize," her mother said as they reached the carriages, "that this changes everything. Your season, your prospects, your..."
"My reputation," Arabella finished. "Yes, Mama, I'm aware."
"Are you?" Lady Honoria turned to face her daughter, and Arabella was surprised to see tears in her mother's eyes.
"Are you truly aware of what you've just done?
Lord Nottington was preparing to offer for you.
I had it on excellent authority from his mother.
A respectable match, a good family, a secure future. And now..."
"And now," Arabella said gently, "Lord Nottington will offer for someone who doesn't throw herself into lakes to save drowning dogs."
"Thistle wasn't even drowning!" her mother exclaimed, gesturing wildly at the dog who was now attempting to make friends with their coachman. "Dogs can swim!"
"He was struggling," Arabella protested, though she had to admit that Thistle's current state of muddy enthusiasm suggested he had recovered remarkably well from his near-death experience.
"He was struggling," her mother repeated flatly. "And so you decided to struggle with him. In front of everyone. With Lord Blackthorn."
The way she said the Earl's name, with a combination of awe, horror, and something that might have been speculation, made Arabella's stomach perform an interesting maneuver that had nothing to do with lake water.
"He rescued me," she said carefully.
"He touched you," her mother corrected. "In public. While you were both soaking wet and everyone was watching." She paused, seeming to wrestle with something. "The ton will have a field day with this. The Beast of Blackthorn and the Lady in the Lake. They'll dine out on this story for years."
"The Beast of...Mama, you can't call him that!"
"I can call him whatever I wish in the privacy of our own carriage," Lady Honoria said, but there was something in her expression that Arabella couldn't quite read. "Though I suppose... no, it's impossible."
"What's impossible?"
Her mother looked at her for a long moment, and Arabella had the unsettling feeling of being assessed like a horse at market. "Nothing. Get in the carriage. We need to get you home before you catch your death of
cold. Though frankly, that might be preferable to what we're going to face tomorrow."
As Arabella climbed into the carriage, her wet skirts making the process both difficult and undignified, she caught sight of Penelope approaching with her spencer and reticule.
"Well," her friend said, handing over the items with an expression of barely suppressed mirth, "you've certainly ensured that no one will be talking about Lady Nottington's turquoise ribbons anymore."
"Small mercies," Arabella muttered, accepting her belongings.
"Oh, I don't know," Penelope continued, her eyes gleaming. "I thought the whole thing was rather romantic. The brooding Earl, the drowning damsel, the dramatic rescue..."
"The dog," Arabella added dryly. "Don't forget the dog."
"How could anyone forget the dog?" Penelope gestured to where Thistle was now being forcibly loaded into the carriage by two footmen who looked as though they were reconsidering their career choices. "He's the hero, really. Without him, you'd never have ended up in Lord Blackthorn's arms."
"I was not in his arms," Arabella protested, though the heat rising to her cheeks suggested otherwise.
"No? My mistake. It must have been some other lady wrapped in his embrace whilst emerging from the lake like something from a Byron poem."
"Byron would have made it much more elegant," Arabella said, attempting to wring water from her hem with limited success. "Less dog, more dignity."
"Dignity is overrated," Penelope declared. "Besides, I noticed Lord Blackthorn didn't seem particularly concerned about his dignity when he dived in after you."
This was true, Arabella reflected as the carriage began to move.
The Earl of Blackthorn, who was famous for avoiding society, who hadn't been seen at a public gathering in over a year, who was rumored to refuse all invitations and speak to no one outside his immediate circle, had thrown himself into a lake to rescue her without a moment's hesitation.
"He was probably just afraid of the scandal if I drowned," she said, though even she didn't believe it.
"Yes," Penelope said dryly, "because being seen hauling a waterlogged debutante out of a lake whilst everyone watches is exactly the sort of thing one does to avoid scandal."
The carriage hit a rut, jostling them and causing Thistle to bark with enthusiasm. He seemed to view the entire afternoon as a big adventure created specifically for his entertainment.
"You know what this means, don't you?" Lady Honoria said suddenly, having been ominously silent for several minutes.
"That I need a new gown?" Arabella suggested hopefully.
"That you need a husband," her mother corrected. "Immediately. Before the gossip becomes completely unmanageable."
"Mama, it's not that serious..."
"Not that serious?" Lady Honoria's voice rose to a pitch.
"You were in his arms, Arabella. Pressed against him.
Soaking wet. Your gown was..." She paused, apparently unable to voice what Arabella's gown was.
"Every person there saw it. By tomorrow, the story will have grown beyond all recognition.
By the end of the week, they'll be saying heaven knows what about Lord Blackthorn and you. "
"But nothing happened!" Arabella protested. "He rescued me from drowning."
"You weren't drowning," her mother and Penelope said in unison.
"From potential drowning," Arabella amended. "It was an act of kindness, nothing more."
"Kindness," her mother repeated, as if the word was foreign to her.
"The Earl of Blackthorn, who hasn't shown his face at a social gathering in over a year, who refuses all invitations and speaks to no one, suddenly develops a sense of kindness that compels him to throw himself into a lake to rescue a young lady he's never met? "
"Perhaps he's simply a good man," Arabella suggested, though she had to admit her mother had a point. The Earl's reputation was legendary. His appearance at the fete had already been surprising enough, but his dramatic aquatic intervention was unprecedented.
"Men," her mother said with the authority of one who had been married for twenty-five years, "are never simply anything. Particularly not earls with mysterious pasts and facial scars that make them look like Gothic novel heroes."
"Mama!"
"What? I have eyes, Arabella. The man is disturbingly attractive if one likes that sort of brooding, dangerous aesthetic. Which, apparently, you do."
"I don't. I never said..."
"You didn't have to say anything," Penelope interjected helpfully. "The way you were looking at him when he carried you out of the water said everything quite eloquently."
"He didn't carry me," Arabella protested weakly.
"No? Then I am mistaken. You must have been floating."