Reluctant Bride by Joan Smith Page A

meal.
    “Glandower will get everything else, too,” she went on, undaunted. “He’ll end up with all the Elizabethan things. Lizzie’s diamonds will sit around the neck of God only knows who—some cit’s daughter, or worse. There is one marriage I have no sympathy with at least—Weston Braden’s and Mrs. Cummings’s. It was bad news for us.”
    “What age is this Glandower fellow?” Blount asked.
    “Twenty-five or thereabouts, wouldn’t you say, Lizzie?”
    “About that, yes.”
    “He sounds a good match for you, Miss Braden,” he suggested.
    “Ah, well, when she turned down Lord Beattie, it is not likely she would be taking up with a grinner like Cummings,” Maisie told him.
    “You are truly devoted to the monastic life, to have rejected Lord Beattie,” he congratulated me. “Is this the same Lord Beattie who resides at Eastgate?” he asked, with a suspicious twitching of the lips.
    “That’s the one. Do you know him?” she asked.
    “Very slightly. He was a good friend of my grandfather. I am more closely acquainted with his son.”
    “I shall take Mitzi for a walk while you two finish your carrion,” I said, arising on an impulse.
    “Finish it? I wish I might start it! Here is the servant, at last,” he exclaimed.
    I was vexed with Maisie for being so forthcoming with Sir Edmund. She is usually close-lipped with the neighbors, but there is often less constraint in our conversation when we are amongst strangers. I suppose it is knowing that we will not have to see them again that accounts for it. We need not care for the opinion of those who are nothing to us, still I disliked her readiness to gossip. I would speak to her about it, in a polite way.
    I put Mitzi on her leash and took her for a walk along the main street of Andover, while I awaited for the two carnivores to finish their meal. It occurred to me I might encounter my dashing colonel, as he was also headed to Winchester, but I saw nothing of him. The afternoon was wearing well along when we remounted the carriage, but with the new team of grays, we made good time. It was our hope to arrive at Winchester in time to meet the coach, and apprehend the walleyed person in the green jacket as he descended. Sir Edmund felt that with the new team, there would be no difficulty in doing it as the stage stops so often, and sets such a sluggish pace.
    Perhaps he was correct. If Maisie’s ankle had not begun “pulsating,” as she described its condition, we might have made it. She started twitching restlessly in her seat, then leaning down to  massage the ankle, or to try to loosen the bandage. I don’t know what she was doing down there, but I knew she must be in discomfort.
    “Let’s have a look at it,” Blount said, after glancing at her gyrations a few times.
    Maisie has her fair share of maidenly modesty. “You take a look, Lizzie,” she said, with a little blush.
    “Shall I don a blindfold, or will you be satisfied if I just look out the window, Maisie?” he teased. The two of them had achieved a first-name basis back at the inn while I walked Mitzi. God only knows what other family secrets she told him.
    “Promise you won’t peek,” she answered, in accents worthy of a coquette. He turned obediently to look out the window as I lifted her leg up, to see the ankle mushrooming to an enormous size, with the bandage put on at Devizes cutting into the swelling.
    “Good God! This has got to come off! Sir Edmund, look at this!” I was too worried to honor her wish for modesty.
    He looked around. His eyes grew wider as he reached down to touch the swelling with an exploratory finger. “We have got to get you to a sawbones, Maisie,” he said at once.
    “What about the Winchester stage? We don’t want to miss it. If we don’t overtake the walleyed fellow there, we won’t know where to look for him. Though it does hurt. It pulses, like a heart, you know.”
    “It must be the bandage that causes it. It can’t be infection. There