“Though he’d been soldiering with a mangled hand for months, the injuries he sustained in that disastrous fall ruined his fighting career,” I murmured. “Perhaps I should thank you for it, or Ban and I never should have found each other.” I raised my quizzing glass and anxiously glanced about the theatre. Perhaps he had first paid a visit to another box. All through the opera, I fidgeted with my fan, my gloves, and my glass. Ban never did arrive.
It was nearly midnight when the performance ended. Riddled with consternation, I sent my footman to each of Ban’s favorite haunts, scouring the clubs in search of my lover. When Giles returned to Berkeley Square he was in such a state that even his shoe buckles seemed to tremble.
“What—what is it, man!” I exclaimed.
“Colonel Tarleton’s left—gone—fled—gone—for Dover, ma’am.”
“Dover!” I didn’t know whether to swoon or make a dash for it. Had he heeded his mother’s directives after all? What to do? What to do? Do I stay? Follow? I could not bear to imagine Ban fleeing from me into the night, forswearing our rendezvous and abjuring me forever.
Certain I could not live without him, my decision to give chase was sealed. I would catch up with his carriage and convince him to reverse his course. If he’d already crossed the Channel I’d be lost, for I could not simply follow him. I’d have to return to London, arrange for a passport to France, and then secure a booking on one of the packet boats bound for Dover. I had not a minute to lose!
“How are the horses?” I demanded of Giles.
“They’ll never make it to Dover, ma’am. You’d have to change them at a posting inn at least once on the journey.”
“Too difficult to arrange to have mine brought back here.”
“Might I suggest you hire a post chaise, ma’am?”
“Do it then—and quickly!” I rang for Dorcas and instructed her to watch over Maria, for I was quitting my establishment immediately and did not know when I might return. I did not even take the time to change into a suite of traveling clothes; the gold tissue faille gown I had worn to the opera would have to serve, though it was tremendously décolleté and would not ward off an evening chill, even in July. Within the half hour, Giles had secured the post chaise. It was two o’clock in the morning when the coachman cracked his whip and, otherwise unaccompanied, I departed Berkeley Square for Dover.
The coach lurched and rumbled on the open road, its clattering wheels keeping time with my heartbeat. The motion engendered such sharp and lingering pains in my belly that I thought to rap on the box and demand that the driver stop at the nearest inn, so I might rest. The air inside the carriage was stale and rank, the odors of sweat, of hair pomade, and a half dozen different perfumes lingering in the tatty velvet upholstery.
“I think I spy a coach up ahead,” the coachman yelled, just as I was prepared to tell him to quit the highway.
“We must overtake them!” I shouted as I let down the glass. I leaned my head and torso out as far as the opening would permit, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the fleeing conveyance up ahead. Though reason would dictate that Ban was well away from London by now, emotion declared it had to be his barouche.
The night air cooled my perspiring breast. I strained to keep my eyes on the other carriage as the horses kicked up the dust with their hooves and the wind churned up the chalk ruts lining the roads, caking my nostrils and lungs with the fine powder and making unruly tangles of my coiffure. I was damp all over.
But in time I grew too exhausted to play the panting puppy, and withdrew my head and my exposed poitrine back into the post chaise. The chills, or something very like them, had indeed overtaken me, for I could not seem to stop my limbs from trembling. The pains below my abdomen increased and I rattled to and fro within the confines of the carriage like the contents of an egg being shaken by an ill-tempered child.
As we bounced and clattered at breakneck speed one of the wheels rolled into a rut and we jounced along in a sort of rolling limp as the coachman tried to right us. We lurched again and I was tossed about, frantically groping for a leathern strap to grasp. I cannot say whether I then fell asleep or lapsed into a state of insensibility, but at some point I was conscious that my limbs had seized up, erupting into uncontrollable spasms. Then all went black before my eyes.
When next I opened them, I was lying on my back staring at the underbelly of a timbered roof, the odd piece of hay poking out from the thatch like an unruly strand of flaxen hair. A chambermaid was lighting a rush candle.
“Am I dead?” I whispered.
“No, miss. But you was carried inside by the coachman and the innkeeper, Mr. Alsop. Dead frozenlike you were.”
I had been cold; I remembered. “Why can’t I move my legs?” I muttered.
“Dunno, miss. There was a midwife here yesternight, and she thought it best to send for the doctor.”
I glanced about the room. Beside me on a stool rested a basin of water. The rag draped upon it was splotched with blood. Mine?
It was sticky between my heavy legs that would not move. I reached for the rag to mop my brow and discovered that my fingers, clawlike, would not unbend to clasp its edge.
Panic seized my breast. I had surely lost Ban, for he was undoubtedly in Calais by now. And why did my extremities disobey my commands?
“How long have I lain here?” I asked the girl.
“Nearly a day, miss. You was insensible for several
