Something Discovered and Something Lost

The hand dropped her to the ground unfeelingly once they had reached their destination. She spluttered a little and sat where she was, falteringly regaining her composure. The gentleman who owned the grip that had saved her sat upon his horse, hands crossed over the reins, wordless. Finally, Lupin moved to rise. She rose to her knees, and there, hobbled by skirts and cloak, sat back on her heels, looking back at the scene of the accident. She noticed Flanders had bolted. She scanned the edges of her view anxiously, rising a little on her knees to get a clearer sight. She wondered if she saw a black shadow in the far stand of trees, but could not be sure. Her anxiety deepened. She had just lost at least a hundred pounds if he did not return. She might as well have given away two pleasant years of life. How could she recover her stallion? If anyone in the least intelligent found him, they would note his purebred lines and keep him for themselves. London was no small country village; a horse could be thieved easily. All this went through her head as she searched the park with her gaze. Of a sudden, she realized suddenly her rescuer and his mount stood yet by her, and turned to them with a start. Looking up into the gentleman’s face, she was about to make her thanks and leave, when she paused suddenly, and frowned fiercely. It was the gentleman, her gentleman, from the party. The one she had watched and followed. The blue brocade. She forced herself to stop gazing at him, and spoke with a semblance of firmness.
“Thank you, sir, for your kind – er – assistance,” she stated simply, looking straight into a pair of eyes that looked urbanely back at her.
“Are you a little mad?” The voice was perfectly polite, calm, a pleasant question
Lupin frowned again. She was disturbed by this familiar line of questioning by such a stranger. It could not be that he knew her, and she would not assume that he did. He was a gentleman, a proud and willful man used to being treated with respect by all and sundry.
She rose. “No, I am not mad.” She replied, her eyes snapping, but her voice perfectly decorous.
The gentleman studied her rather speculatively for a moment. “I believe your horse has bolted,” he commented calmly.
She raised her chin and looked straight at him. She was quiet for a moment as she studied him, his eyes, the small wrinkles about his mouth. That voice was so very familiar to her. She felt oddly at ease. “Yes,” she said, feeling strangely comforted. “And I must go to search for him,” she was really feeling quite brilliant, for just having fallen from a horse, being dragged along the ground, and meeting the key to a great mystery. She looked brightly up at him again. “I must go, sir, but I would ask your name.”
He was looking into the distance, but his eyes rested upon her in a warm, sleepy quiz. “I will indeed, miss, if you will grace me with yours.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Perhaps, but I think it is your place to fulfill my wish first.”
He bowed low and elegantly, with a slight flourish of his feathered hat. “Grefham, Lady, your most humble servant Grefham.”
Lupin looked him straight in the eye, and he gazed straightly back, with a slight question, a mocking one, in his. She said solemnly, honestly “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I must beg your leave.” And with that, she turned on her heel and strode decidedly away.

Lupin soon found herself in the eaves of a small copse, whose trees sparsely covered the ground at first, but fell closer and closer in as the eye wandered ahead, until she could see naught but wood and trees and bush to her front. She reasoned Flanders would not have gone a path that did not offer some incentive to the equine brain. A meal, a mate, or a road home were all possibilities, though the chances of a mare’s presence in the dismal rain, now sleeting slyly yet steadily upon Lupin’s head were slim. Suddenly, she saw in her mind the glassy black of Flanders wielding again high in the air above her, and suppressed a shudder. Nevertheless, she pressed on, searching every knoll and copse she could discover. When the darkness began to grow in the shadows, Lupin realized she had searched as much as was possible to her that day.

Dejectedly, she walked down --------- Street, her woolen cloak and the dress beneath it sodden, the little warmth she could muster prickling around the scratchy material at odd points, like her shoulders and hips. The rest of her – her nose, her fingers, and her waterlogged feet – moved half frozen. Lupin had decided to have a lark and had found disaster. Not only had she lost a year’s subsistence, but a fine amount and a good stallion, to boot. She quietly walked round the back of the house to enter, for always in the back of her mind there lay a small, quiet voice tallying up the damage a certain move might do to the clean surfaces of the mansion. Her chill and tired legs carried her to the servants’ entrance. Her mind concentrated through the rain on the rusty lock, and finally she wearily made her way up the deserted stairwells to her bedchamber.