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At the first ball that Sir Andrew and Lady Suzanne Ffoulkes attended as husband and wife, there was great consternation when the beloved dandy Sir Percy Blakeney arrived five hours late, with a black eye and a bandaged cut running down his cheek and under his cravat. To heap insult upon this injury to his reputation, he then proceeded to dance five out of the remaining eight dances with his wife.
The sigh of relief was almost audible when Sir Percy released his wife to go dance with his good friend Sir Andrew Ffoulkes (who had also danced overmuch with his own wife, but then that was to be expected from a lovesick newlywed). Lady Atherton and Lady Malcolm, along with the Comtesse Géroux, who had recently been snatched from the guillotine and brought safely to England by the Scarlet Pimpernel, immediately cornered Sir Percy to compliment his cravat and hopefully discover the thrilling story that lay behind his injuries and his dreadful lateness.
“Oh, dear Sir Percy!” giggled Lady Atherton, “whatever happened to you? You look absolutely dreadful!”
Sir Percy plucked at the starched lace at his cuff. “Dreadful, dear lady? Pray, say not ‘dreadful,’ but ‘debonair,’ or ‘à la mode,’ or perhaps ‘as handsome as ever except slightly the worse for wear due to the harrowing incident of which we have as yet heard nothing.’”
“I just meant your face—that black eye looks so painful—but of course you’re always handsome,” Lady Atherton started to apologize, but she was quickly drowned out by the other ladies begging to hear the tale of Sir Percy’s “harrowing incident.” The crowd around Sir Percy was growing quickly; even His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales came wandering over with Lady Bonham on his arm.
“Now, you see, it was all the fault of my horse,” Sir Percy began. “He’s such a nice horse, really not deserving the tarnish I am about to place on his reputation. I’ve written a poem about his ignominious acts. It’s a very nice poem, a sonnet even. Would you like to hear it?”
“Yes, do tell us!” cried Lady Malcolm.
“The poem! Tell us the poem!” Lady Bonham echoed her.
“Yes, we must hear the poem!” Lady Atherton cried loudest of all, to atone for her previous folly.
Sir Percy cleared his throat. “Well then, since you insist. ‘A Tale of a Disobedient Horse,’ by Sir Percy Blakeney, Baronet.
“This evening, while astride my fearsome steed,
I realized my cravat had come untied.
I reached to fix it, but my charger shied;
A pin slipped, and my cheek began to bleed.
My horse, pricked by the pin, rushed on at speed,
Ignoring all the “halt”s and “whoa”s I cried.
With horsemanship and skill I stayed astride,
But still the blasted stallion would not heed.
At last, we reached a stream too deep to cross,
Though valiantly the nag plowed through the foam;
He bucked and launched me towards a patch of moss,
Then fled as I lay mired in the loam.
With injured face, I thought upon my loss,
And horseless, turned my weary footsteps home.”
More than twenty people were gathered around Sir Percy by this point, and they all burst into applause as he concluded his sonnet. “Bravo!” some cried, and “Encore! Encore!”
Percy bowed deeply. “So you see, I hurt my face in falling off my horse—not to mention the problem with my uncooperative cravat—and then I had to walk several miles home. And of course, when I finally reached my house, what should I find but the demmed nag waiting for me right outside his stable, completely unrepentant. I was not at all presentable after that blasted hike. You might even have been correct in calling my appearance ‘dreadful,’ if you had seen me then, Lady Atherton. Of course I could not come to the ball in that condition, with my cravat all torn and my shoes all muddied. I had to change my attire three times before I was satisfied. It was such an ordeal, and I’m sure my horse was just sitting out there laughing to himself the whole time.”
“I’m so sorry, Sir Percy!” Lady Bonham commiserated.
“What a dreadful experience!” Lady Atherton said, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “I mean, what a harrowing adventure.”
“You could indeed call it a dreadful experience, your ladyship,” Percy replied. “It was quite, quite dreadful, and extremely distressing. But I survived it, and here we all are now, healthy and hale. Well, except for this,” he indicated his black eye. “Ah, Lady Ffoulkes, you look lovely! Will you honor me with a dance?”
Suzanne slipped forward from where she had been standing at the edge of Percy’s audience, and curtsied. “Certainly, Sir Percy. I would be honored.” As Sir Percy and Suzanne walked across the ballroom to take their places for the cotillion, the crowd dispersed. The Prince of Wales asked the Comtesse Géroux to dance, and the others wandered off or found dancing partners of their own. By the time the dance began, the crowd around Sir Percy was but a memory. His tale was not forgotten, however, and whispers were already spreading the story of his disobedient horse far and wide. He would be asked by enthralled admirers to repeat the poem many more times before that evening ended.
It was not until half past three in the morning that the Blakeneys finally left the ball. The Prince of Wales escorted Lady Blakeney to her carriage, where Sir Percy waited with reins in hand, driving the carriage himself as was his custom. Radiant in her burgundy silk gown and with a ruby-studded Scarlet Pimpernel in her hair, Marguerite made her last farewells and settled herself next to her husband. With a flick of the reins, they were on their way to Richmond.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Marguerite turned to her husband. “I heard that you went riding and your beautiful chestnut stallion threw you, giving you two black eyes and a cut cheek and making you walk twenty miles home.”
“Well, I didn’t specify the color of the horse nor the distance I walked, and I think you can verify for yourself that I have only one black eye; but the rest of the tale is as I told it.”
“How odd that you should have had time to go riding for pleasure when the messenger who came right before I left for the ball told me that the Day Dream had not yet arrived at Dover when he was there.”
“Odd indeed,” her husband agreed.
There was a moment of silence, then Marguerite could bear it no longer. “What happened in France, Percy? How did you hurt your face? Are you all right? Did you rescue the Patenaude family? You must tell me what happened!”
Percy laughed shyly and put his arm around her. “We got the Patenaudes out almost exactly as planned. There were plenty of out-of-work citizens hanging around that we easily organized into a mob to kidnap the family out of the mill where they were being held. Then Andrew and Tony sneaked them out the back way into our carriage while I harangued the crowd. It got a little rough at the end when the mob realized their victims had vanished. I was mostly able to convince them that it must have been those evil revolutionary leaders over in Nantes, trying to steal their glory by executing the Patenaudes themselves. The mob all rushed off toward Nantes, but not before a couple peasants decided they were angry at everybody, whether responsible or not, and started punching everything in sight.”
“Is that where you got the black eye?”
“I’m afraid so. Zounds! At least they waited until the rest of the League was miles away before throwing any punches. Lady Malcolm and Lady Atherton might not have believed us if we had claimed that Ffoulkes, Dewhurst, Hastings, and myself had all managed to get thrown by our horses on the same day. Strains the imagination, what?”
“Don’t worry, dear, you would have written an epic poem that could convince even the Prince of Wales himself. Perhaps Sir Andrew and Lord Tony would have been racing each other and accidentally collided, while you and Hastings were observing their race, and tripped over yourselves in your haste to see if they were all right.”
“Perhaps,” her husband agreed. “Or perhaps as I was walking home after my chestnut stallion threw me, Ffoulkes saw my distress and ran to my rescue, but tripped and fell into a ravine. Then Hastings and Dewhurst came by and fell in while trying to help me get Ffoulkes out of the abyss.”
“If that’s the most plausible story you can devise,” Marguerite said, “then you are indeed fortunate that you were the only one with a black eye.”
“Quite fortunate,” Percy agreed, “but not nearly as fortunate as I am to have someone as understanding as you to come home to.”
Marguerite smiled and snuggled closer. “I may be understanding, but there’s one thing I don’t yet understand, and that’s where the cut on your cheek came from. Was that also due to the fisticuffs of the mob?”
“I’m afraid not,” Percy replied. “The cart with the Patenaudes had gone on ahead while I talked to the mob, and I had to ride through the forest in the dark to catch them up. My horse was smart enough not to run into anything, but he didn’t take the trouble to avoid anything that he could pass under. This included, unfortunately, some low-hanging thorny vines. My face collided with the thorns, and I definitely got the worse of the encounter. That demmed horse acted as if nothing had happened.”
“So your injuries are the fault of your horse, after all!”
“Of course. It helps one’s excuses to have the ring of truth if one bases them upon reality.”
“I’ll remember that. Next time I’m dressed up as a tricoteuse to rescue someone off the tumbrils and I get punched in the face, I’ll tell everyone I had an accident while I was knitting.”
“That’s the idea,” said Sir Percy. He shook the reins. “Speaking of horses, we had better hope that these four cooperate or we won’t get home before dawn.”
“I don’t mind arriving home at dawn as long as you’re there,” said Marguerite.
Percy offered her the reins. “In that case, would you like to drive?”