Page 12 of The Lady's Companion
“He’s not friendly then?” Susan asked, feeling her hopes dribble away.
“Oo knows? He could be shy or queer as Dick’s hatband.” The nursemaid smiled when the coachman blew his horn. “And here we are, miss, and I don’t mind saying it’s high time!”
It was high time, and then some, Susan agreed as she left the mail coach, stiff in all her joints and with a head so huge she felt like turning sideways to get out of the door. The coachman unstrapped her trunk and dropped it into the snow. Shaking her head at the ostler, who would only expect coins she did not have, Susan tugged the trunk close to the inn door. She glanced briefly at her reflection in the window, thankful to discover her bonnet straight and her hair still smoothed in place. Aunt Louisa always did say I had a knack for that, she thought. At least I will not frighten the shy, retiring, and elusive David Wiggins, be he ever so queer.
He was also the nonexistent David Wiggins. When Susan worked up her courage to enter the taproom and inquire of the innkeep, he only shook his head. “Haven’t seen him today, miss. Not at all.” The innkeep sighed and stacked away the last of the glasses. “Of course, it’s been a rum day for the hostelry business. I misdoubt he can get off the place, what with all this snow. CanI speak you a room, miss?”
She shook her head. “Thank you, no. I am to be Lady Bushnell’s companion, and a letter was sent for someone to meet me. I can wait for conveyance.”
“That’d be David Wiggins, then. Some tea, miss?”
She shook her head again. “I would like a glass of water, if you please.”
The innkeep eyed her more closely. You are wondering why I am dressed so well, and such a nipfarthing, she thought, her humiliation complete. Her eyes were beginning to fill up and she wanted to look away, but she raised her chin higher instead. After another moment’s appraisal, the innkeep turned away, then came back with tea.
“I can’t,” she protested.
“Take it, miss,” he said, his voice kind. “We all end up at low tide sometimes.” As she sniffed back her tears, he looked under the counter. “And Lord bless us, here’s a pasty left from supper. Let me stick it on the hob a moment, and you’ll never know it wasn’t fresh.”
“I mustn’t,” she began.
“You must and will, or I’ll get ugly,” he said, his tone firm. Something tells me you have daughters, Susan thought as she sipped the welcome tea and then followed him a moment later to a table as he brought the meat pie. “And look at this, I even found a bit of soup all sad and lonely,” he said, setting it down with a flourish beside the pasty.
She couldn’t speak, but he didn’t seem to expect her to. He gazed around the room while she blew her nose hard, and then he began to stack chairs on tables. “It’s not a big village, miss, is Quilling, but we’re good enough for most,” he said at last.
Her headache was gone by the time she finished eating. The innkeep had busied himself in a back room somewhere, and she had the taproom to herself. She ached for sleep, but there wasn’tanything she could do but sit there, back straight, like a lady, and wait for David Wiggins to show up.
As anxious as she was to meet him and take his measure, Susan felt no qualms about his nonappearance. She was used to dealing with men who did not keep promises or deliver what was promised. A woman unfamiliar with Sir Rodney’s frippery ways would probably have worn the floorboards through to the ground, pacing back and forth. If one has no expectations, one is seldom disappointed, she told herself as her eyes grew blurry and midnight turned into one o’clock. The innkeep had given up trying to give her a room upstairs, and said good night an hour before.
It was nearly two o’clock when she realized with a prickle down her back that someone was standing in the taproom doorway, looking at her. She hadn’t heard anyone come in, but there was a subtle difference in the air of the room, as if it had rearranged itself to accommodate another body. Intruding on stale tobacco was the fragrance of hay, remembered just vaguely from the years before Papa sold the estate.
I should be jumping out of my skin, she thought as she breathed the tiny odor and felt the intensity of someone’s eyes on her. I wonder if the landlord has any ax murderers in Quilling, or Caribbean conjurers left over from market circuses. She smiled to herself. I think it must be David Wiggins.
Just as she turned around, the man in the doorway gave an enormous yawn, the epitome of all yawns. “Sorry,” he said when he could speak. “It’s been a day, Miss Hampton.” He straightened up from the doorframe, where he had been leaning. “I’m David Wiggins and I’ve come to fetch you.”
His voice had the lilt of the Welsh in it, and he had the look of dark folk beyond the Dee, Wye, and Severn rivers. If he was a little taller than some, and blockier of build, she considered, that would account for the Wiggins side, which might be English. Hisdark hair and eyes and a certain intensity of observation about him told the Welsh side. And his lovely speech. But he was much too young to fit her fiction of a retired sergeant from the Regulars. Oh, dear me, she thought. I shall have to change my strategies.
“You’re David Wiggins?” she said, wondering instantly at her stupid question.
“Said I was,” he commented. “And you’re our latest lady’s companion, pain in the side, burr in the balbriggans?”
Double dear me, she thought. “I’m Susan Hampton,” she said, sidestepping the question. “And I don’t know what balbriggans are, sir.”
He didn’t reply right away, but he turned his head a little away from her and smiled into the dark, as though someone else were there. “I’ll tell it this way,” he began in his musical voice. “I hope you’re wearing woolen balbriggans under all those skirts, because we have to walk partway.”
He looked at her again and raised one eyebrow. You’re hoping I back out, she thought, returning his gaze, even though her cheeks flamed. Her anger blew in and out like a spring wind through an open door. She shrugged into her coat again, and pulled on her gloves, determined not to falter.
“I’ll manage,” she said. “And you can mind your manners.”
Again he turned his head away for that surreptitious grin, and he chose not to rise to the bait. “Come along then. I’ll send someone to fetch your trunk in the morning.”
She followed him into the inn yard, understanding why she had not heard him approach, with the snow muffling all sounds. The deep winter silence made her want to speak in whispers, had she possessed any desire to address David Wiggins, which she did not. Still, he had come a long way through the snow. She could at least follow with good enough grace and not let him know her legs were already cold.
The snow was deep. He set a brisk pace and she floundered behind him, her lips set tight against any word of complaint. She focused her attention on his perfectly disreputable hat, a wide-brimmed, squashed-in felt monstrosity. He wouldn’t dare ever set that thing on the floor, she thought. A dog would commit misdemeanors on it. She chuckled in spite of herself. He looked over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised.
“You’re a rare one, Miss Hampton,” was all he said. “Too bad you will not last.”
He talks as though he has murdered and buried a row of lady’s companions in the shrubbery somewhere, Susan thought as she labored on. Probably killed by his devastating wit. She suppressed most of her laughter, but still he looked back, and this time took her arm, tucking it close to his side.
