Ten

Kate could not remember when she had enjoyed a journey so much.

Yes, the roads were dreadfully rutted and bumpy, jolting the travelers all about. But on their second day in the carriage, Evan had made a game of things. Whoever bounced the highest off the squabs got to pick a surprise from the hamper, which he had filled at the inn with biscuits and dried fruit. By the time they halted at midday, both Kate and Susan were groaning with sweets, far too full to do their meal justice.

That afternoon, one of the wheels stuck steadfast in mud, and not the combined efforts of Jerome and Hattie could pull it free. The wheel only sank further, setting the carriage at a crazy tilt.

“We’d best see what’s going on,” Kate said. Evan hopped out of the carriage, then helped Kate and Susan clamber down.

The coachman climbed from his seat to look at the buried wheel. “Aye, she’s stuck good and proper. Need something to dig with, I reckon.”

“We don’t have such a thing!” Susan’s light eyes were wide. “What’ll we do, Lady Whelan? How long will we have to stay here?”

Susan was so young, and she had been drawn so far away from the village of her birth. Kate put a calming—well, she hoped it was calming—hand on the maid’s arm. “We’ve got something we can use, surely. We just have to think of it. Even if we have to get Hattie to throw a shoe, we could dig with that.”

The coachman crossed himself. “Never say it, Lady Whelan. That mare’s the worst for throwing shoes.”

Within the harness, the mare tilted her head to regard them with reproachful eyes.

“Sorry, Hattie,” Kate murmured.

Evan frowned. “I have a little trowel in my trunk. A brush and pick too, though I doubt those will be of help.”

“Your antiquarian tools,” Kate realized. “How fortunate.”

“It would be more fortunate if I were carrying a spade with me, but we’ll make do.”

John Coachman helped Evan wrestle free his trunk, and he pawed through it and came up with a small case.

When he unfastened it, he cursed. The little digging tool was hardly longer than his hand. “I could swear it’s got smaller since I packed it. This was made for delicate work, not excavation.”

“Then let’s be delicate about digging out the wheel.” Kate gathered her skirts about her ankles and crouched beside him, near the stuck wheel. It was buried almost to the axle.

“My lady, you let me work on that.” John Coachman pulled her to her feet with more vigor than solicitude, then hesitated. “But we can’t leave the horses on their own.”

“They’re not going anywhere. This stuck wheel has seen to that well enough,” Kate said. “But I’ll see to them.”

As she stepped aside, she let the weight of her skirts brush against Evan’s body. He looked up, curious, and she did not know whether she ought to grin or to pretend ignorance.

She only looked at him, and it was difficult to look away.

The air was heavy with mist and the scent of wet grass, and as she crossed to the well-trained horses, a light rain began to fall.

Susan dogged her steps. “What can I do to help?”

“Dear Susan.” Kate considered. “Would you like to look for rocks that the men could use to smooth the path of the stuck wheel? Or would you like to get into the carriage and stay warm?”

“I’d be a fool not to want to get into the carriage, and I’m no fool.” A thin young woman, Susan’s lips were already losing color. “But I’d be an arse if I didn’t help, and I’m not that either.”

“That you’re not,” Kate agreed. “I would welcome your help, but you must get into the carriage if you start to shiver.”

“I will, my lady.” The maid set off, kicking at the wet grass.

Kate stood before the team, lightly holding their heads and talking soft nonsense to them. They were so large and powerful, these chestnuts, but they loved the sort of gentle voices and patient treatment that a mother lavished on her infant.

“Who’s a good boy,” she crooned, petting Jerome’s head until he closed his amber eyes and hung his head with contentment. “You’re like a big puppy, aren’t you?”

Hattie stomped—just once, just hard enough to draw attention. “Keep your shoes on,” Kate said, then turned her attention to the mare. One at a time, she talked soft nonsense to them, occasionally peeking around the side of the carriage to follow the progress of the work.

Susan had found some fist-sized stones to jam into the softening mud. Evan was using the sharpest of them to carve free the wheel, while John Coachman took to the other side.

Wet and cold and stuck, they ought to have been utterly miserable. But the trace of dewy rain on Evan’s features was like a glow, and at the sight of him, Kate had to bite her lip against a swell of emotion. How had she borne the journey from Ireland without him?

She had borne it because she knew no other option. She had borne it because she had never expected to see him again.

Sometimes she wondered at all she had managed to bear over the past years.

“Now!” called Evan. “Walk them forward, slowly!”

Kate clucked to the horses, tugging lightly at the pole and pole straps between them. “One step now…after me…”

Broad gray-brown hooves lifted and stamped into the earth. Powerful necks strained against the harness collars. “Come on, dear ones, follow me.” Kate backed away, glancing over her shoulder to make sure the road was clear. “Another step.”

The carriage swayed, its alarming angle deepening, then lurched upright again—and halted.

“Wait here.” Kate held out her hands to the horses, who looked at each other with as much doubt as equine faces could hold.

She raced around the side of the carriage. “What happened? Are we still stuck?”

Evan stood, mud-spattered from forehead to boot. “No, the wheel’s free.” He wiped at his face, smearing the mud. “See here? Between the digging and the stones, it’s rolled up onto solid ground. Until the rain makes a swamp of the whole road, that is.”

John Coachman groaned. “Did Hattie lose a shoe?”

“Definitely not,” Kate said. “She stomped her hooves at me, and all her shoes were on.”

“I’m getting into the carriage,” Susan decided, “even if it never goes anywhere again.” She climbed in and huddled on the floor.

John Coachman climbed atop his box again and took up the reins. “Come on, now. Let’s get into the middle of the road.” He chucked at the horses. Hattie shuffled her hooves, but the carriage stayed stubbornly still.

“What the devil?” Kate bent over, skirts trailing on the dirt as she looked at the four carriage wheels. “They’re fine.”

When she straightened up, Evan was grinning, his teeth white against his earth-smudged skin. “It’s Jerome, I’d wager. Your father told me he was an awful brat about his meals. If he gets a treat, he might walk on.”

“Geldings,” huffed Kate. “Such brats.”

“They have much to feel bratty about,” said Evan, with a gesture that made Kate redden.

She turned away, hiding her laugh, and asked Susan for the hamper. “If we didn’t eat all the biscuits…ah, he might like this.” She pulled a plum cake from the depths of the hamper and broke it in two.

Why not? Hattie pulled the same weight.

With the encouragement of the plum cake held out of reach, the horses extended their heads—then took a step, then another, and another, and soon the carriage was rolling. Kate scrabbled backward, skirts tangling about her ankles. With a whoop of glee, she let the team nibble the cake from her outstretched hands, then hitched up her skirts and bolted for the carriage door. Evan hopped inside, then hauled her in and pulled the door shut behind them.

They plumped onto the squabs, each sighing. In the dim of the carriage interior, the three wet, muddy, bedraggled people looked at each other—and as one, they laughed.

“We smell like a farmyard.” Kate looked ruefully at her gown. The cloth was rumpled and stained, probably beyond saving. A shame. She had few pretty clothes that had escaped the black dye of her mourning year.

“We’re wet as ducks!” Susan exclaimed. “John Coachman’s got his nice oilcloth, and we’ve got…”

“We’ve got brandy.” Evan reached into his coat pocket. “I took it from my trunk before we stowed all the tools again.” He leaned forward, shaking the silver flask. “Go on, take it. It’s fine Chandler brandy. All the best people use it.”

Use it, he said, and she remembered how she’d trailed it over him. So awkward, so eager. As hesitant as a virgin to whom everything was new.

The memory caused a pulse between her legs. When Susan offered her the flask, Kate demurred. “I’m warm enough already.”

Going back to the way we were had been a silent and tentative business. She should have known there was no going back once people became lovers. But how might they go forward?

For the rest of the day, and for the days of travel thereafter, the carriage rolled on, but she never came up with an adequate answer.

* * *

For the final two days of the journey, Evan felt his birthplace drawing nearer, along with the inevitable visit to his family. Wales was embraced by the sea, the touch of the water about the land always felt, even if not seen. The sea made it seem small and stretching at once, close to infinity and crushed by it. This swoop of dissonant feeling was what Evan liked best about it. A man had to be jarred free from his own grayness when he saw the blue of the sea.

Their destination, Holyhead, lay at the far reach of Wales on Holy Island—a nub of land off the Isle of Anglesey. Anglesey was itself cut off from the Welsh mainland by a river. The gap between the lands was not much wider than a man could fling a pebble in spots—if he had a wind in his favor and a strong throwing arm. The river was shallow when the tide was out, but with a quick current. Travelers were wiser to take a ferry than to try fording the river, especially if they traveled with a magic lantern and its fragile slides.

And so, with more plum cake and soothing words, they coaxed the pair of chestnuts to draw the carriage onto the flat surface of the ferry. The crossing took place without incident, unless one counted Jerome sneaking Hattie’s bit of plum cake with a swipe of his long tongue.

As they traversed the breadth of Anglesey, Kate’s face was pressed to the carriage window. “I have never been to Wales. I’ve always sailed from Liverpool in the past. I didn’t know it was like this.”

“Like what?” Evan couldn’t help but be curious how it appeared to her eyes.

“Well—it’s got a bit of everything, hasn’t it? Mountains and marshes, new farms and ancient standing stones within sight of the road. The sea all around, close enough to feel it.”

“When I bring myself to return here, such are the thoughts that sustain me,” he murmured.

She turned a keen eye to the unrolling land about them, hilled like a folded fan where Newmarket was flat as a sheet of paper. “It’s not unlike Ireland, is it? Not Tipperary, but the Irish coast. It’s all wild and green with a sense of its own great age.”

Thus she had used to speak, animated and bright of eye, during those long-ago slow evenings of peat fires and whisky. He looked out his own window, trying to see the landscape with the eyes of one who had never seen it before.

“You are right,” he agreed. “It’s not unlike the Irish coast we’ll soon see. Though here, more than in the rest of Wales, the people speak Welsh.”

“I don’t know a word of it. Does your family speak it? Will they expect us to speak it? They are expecting our visit, are they not?”

“They are,” he replied with a fair appearance of calm. “I wrote to them a few nights ago when I was sure of our arrival date. And no, they could not speak Welsh, even if they wished to.”

Which they didn’t. Rhyses took a perverse pride in not fitting with their surroundings, as though this showed mastery over it.

At the hour when daylight transformed into sunset, the carriage turned into the drive of Ardent House. The building was of rare construction, two stories of red brick that beamed against a moody sky from the end of a graveled drive and neatly clipped lawn. The structure was of perfect symmetry, quoined in stone, roofed in slate. Each of the main windows was pedimented and swagged, while small eyebrow windows lifted the roof as if in judgment.

A thousand years from now, antiquarians might uncover the ruins of Ardent House and deem it a structure of great beauty, built for effect rather than usefulness.

The Rhys family was the same—except for Evan, who never took to red brick as he ought. Evan, whose eyebrows tended to lift with mischief or knit with doubt, thus spoiling the symmetry of proper manners.

“I must warn you,” Evan said to Kate as the carriage drew to a stop before the front steps. “They’re nothing like your family.”

“God help the world if there were many families such as mine.”

“You say that with a laugh,” he replied. “But there is little of laughter in this house.” That was the mildest and simplest way to put the matter.

“Oh.” She sounded surprised. Thinking, maybe, of how she’d thanked him for giving her room to laugh. I would give you a laugh every day. Such a wish was a gift. “Thank you for the warning. I’m quite prepared to meet your family.”

Bleak humor tugged at the corners of his mouth. “That makes one of us,” he said.