Devorah returned slowly to consciousness. She became aware first of smells: the odor of fresh sweat, followed by the more subtle scents of earth and grass and wildflowers and, perhaps, weeds. Next came a feeling of extreme warmth, as if a ray of heat were pounding down, enveloping her. She was so hot, so very, very hot and thirsty. Then came the excruciating throbbing at the back of her head, as if she had been viciously battered by a sledgehammer. She moaned and tried to open her eyes, only to be blinded by a blaze of sunlight. She shut them again and tried to rest, to ignore the brutal pain in her head and the parchedness of her throat.
“Look, Adam, she’s coming to,” said a disembodied voice with a precise British accent.
“She appears to be slightly disoriented, as if she has a concussion. She must have sustained a blow to the head, though how the deuce—?” an older, more arrogant voice answered in the same, elegant Queen’s English. “Brandy is what’s needed. Do you have any on you?”
“No, but Mother, you know, always keeps a flask in the carriage for just such emergencies as may arise. I see the team rounding the bend now. Shall I signal John Coachman to spring ’em?”
“No need. Just go wait for them and explain what has happened. The lady—if I may call her that—appears to have gone off again. I’ll see whether I can rouse her.”
Devorah made a supreme effort to open her eyes and focus on the figure crouched before her. Dark, piercing eyes set in a harsh, unfamiliar face stared back at her. She took in the strange cut of their owner’s black hair, then her gaze traveled wonderingly down to the white cloth tied at the stranger’s neck, the uptilted points of his exaggerated shirt collar and the antiquated cut of his blue jacket. Involuntarily, her gaze traveled still further down, and she saw with some embarrassment that he was wearing tightly fitted buff breeches fastened with buttons.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, startled, as her eyes flew up quickly to meet the stranger’s own.
“Come, that is better now,” he said in a slightly amused voice. A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth.
Devorah struggled to raise herself, and he reached out to help pull her into a sitting position. “Much better,” he said coaxingly. “How is your head?”
Devorah, still trying to assimilate the stranger’s unusual costume, felt the back of her head at the exact spot where the sledgehammer was battering her and realized with some shock that a lump had sprouted there. “Better, I guess,” she said. But where was she? Who was this man? If only she didn’t feel so confused.
A coach and four came rushing into view and, obeying signals from the younger man, slowed to a halt. This latter person, too, was clothed in knee breeches and boots and an antiquated coat, and when he turned toward his companion, Devorah saw that he sported a similar neck cloth and shirt points. Where had she seen that dress style before? It was strange, but—at the same time—familiar. It looked like something out of Regency England, she realized, the thought coming to her out of nowhere.
“Oh, no!” she cried out, falling backward. She knew, then, what had come of reading too many Georgette Heyer novels.
