The Five-Minute Marriage by Joan Aiken Read Free Book Online Page B

water.
    There she was, bobbing about among the lily leaves, thrashing the water with her velvet-clad arms, and shrieking at the top of a pair of exceptionally powerful lungs:
    “ Help! Help! I shall be drowned. I shall die for certain. Help, help! Oh, why does nobody save me? Help! Help! Will no kind soul come to my aid? ”
    Bodkin and the postilions were gazing at Jenny in stupefaction. All seemed reluctant to take action. Then Bodkin, evidently unwilling to ruin his livery by jumping into the water, if it could be avoided, ran to the carriage boot, and pulled out the rope which was always carried there in case of an overturn.
    “ Here, miss! Try if you can catch hold of the rope ’ s end! ” he shouted, and hurled the rope so accurately that it knocked off Miss Baggott ’ s green velvet Waterloo hat.
    “ Oh, help—bubble bubble—my hat, my hat! Oh help me—I can ’ t reach the rope! ”
    Amid Jenny ’ s deafening cries, Bodkin drew back the rope, recoiled it, and threw it again; but the sufferer in the moat, either out of anxiety not to lose her hat, which she now grasped with one hand, or because her eyes were full of water, seemed very unhandy at catching the end of the rope; she missed it a second time and then a third. Meanwhile she continued to splash and flounder among the lily pads, sometimes submerged and silent, sometimes half out of the water and shrieking, insensibly all the time drawing nearer to the inner margin of the moat and the archway that gave onto the courtyard.
    At this juncture reinforcements arrived in the shape of three men running over the grass, evidently alerted by all the cries and commotion.
    “ Merciful heavens! What in the devil ’ s name is going on? ” demanded one of them. “ Is somebody being murdered? Or is a pig being killed? ”
    At the instant when they came through the archway and emerged onto the bridge, Jenny had finally just succeeded in catching hold of the rope ’ s end, and had suffered herself to be towed through the lilies to the outer bank, and then drawn slowly up it.
    She stood then, dripping, gasping, hysterically laughing, crying, and exclaiming on the bridge, ruefully regarding her draggled plumage and streaming apparel.
    “ Oh, my feathers! Oh, my fringe! Oh, my dear, dear Miss Carteret, I thought I was a goner! I thought I should be drowned for sure! Oh, Mr. Bodkin, my preserver! How can I ever thank you for saving me from a watery death? ”
    “ I scarcely think you could have achieved a watery death in three feet of moat, ” dryly observed one of the three men who had come through the archway.
    Miss Baggott gazed at him reproachfully, and Delphie turned to look at him.
    He was unusually tall, a strongly built individual with a profusion of jet-black hair, somewhat carelessly arranged, and a decidedly sardonic expression on his long face. He wore a riding costume of drab buckskins, a plain but well-cut jacket, highly polished top boots, and a neckcloth of dazzling whiteness. He was much too young to be Lord Bollington—in his middle thirties at the outside. Perhaps Lord Bollington had a son? speculated Delphie, and realized how little she knew about her hypothetical cousins.
    “ Nay, but consider the stems of the lilies! ” remonstrated Jenny, in answer to his remark. “ You can have no idea how dreadfully I found myself entangled among them—my arms and limbs all tied up, quite powerless!—and my head being slowly pulled under by the current—I had begun to despair and feared every moment would be my last!—But it is no matter now; ‘ twas but a trifle! ” she added heroically, fetching up an absolutely graveyard cough from the region of her diaphragm. “ Ahem, ahem! Now that I am on dry land again, I think nothing of it at all; ‘ tis not of the slightest consequence, after all! Pray let us not refine upon it any longer. Only, I think perhaps I had best get afore a fire, and replace these sopping things by dry ones—or I might easily