Page 11 of Pride: The Rogue
“Oh?” Livian attempted to wrestle her foot free. “I am hard-pressed to say how it could possibly be any worse,” she said dryly.
Mr. Dryver gestured to the front and back of the carriage. “The wrong time, by a fraction of a second, miss, and neither of us would be here discussing the yew t-tree.”
“It could always be worse,” Livian mouthed that reminder, this time believing it.
The voice of her old nursemaid, Bertha, whispered in her mind.
“Remember, me girl. Trees are sanctuaries. If you know how to speak to them, you must also listen and learn the truth from them, too…”
“What is the tree trying to tell me?” she whispered.
“Miss L-Lovelace?”
The driver’s worried query cut through her musings the very same time the driving wind and rain broke past her previous panic and terror.
“Never mind, Mr. Dryver.” Livian swept her gaze over the countryside. “M-Miss Billy and Mr. Giles?” she asked after the carriage that’d departed ahead of them.
“Can’t say, miss. I suspect given the previous tracks and the lead they had on us at the last stop, and the point at which the skies opened up—”
Livian stopped paying attention somewhere around Mr. Dryver’s next ‘and’.
Undoubtedly, if she could reverse course, she would do so.
The universe, the Lord, Mother Nature, all were hollering in her head to go back to her family; that rushing off without their knowing to marry a man she didn’t even know, would bring only the greatest of regrets.
“…so I’d venture, they’ve probably gone on far enough ahead to have found a coaching inn,” Mr. Dryver was saying. “O-Or, d-depending on the trajectory of the storm, they could have missed it e-entirely.” He tipped his head back and peered through narrowly slitted eyes at the passing rain clouds. “…h-hard to see…”
Mr. Dryver’s teeth had begun to rattle with the same intensity as Livian’s, but he continued prattling on. “B-b-but there,” he pointed up at the sky, “I-I’d say th-they may have b-been f-fortunate enough to d-dodge.”
Livian gave thanks for that measure. It was bad enough poor Mr. Dryver was going to perish on this journey Livian had dragged them on.
It could always be worse…
Hugging her arms around her middle, Livian braced against the pummeling rains. “W-We are stranded th-then.”
They’d not survive. Not in a carriage that, if the waters continued to rise, was swept away.
“The f-fortunate th-thing, miss?” he bellowed into the wind. “Th-There’s an i-inn n-not far from here.”
Livian closed her eyes and sent prayers skyward.
After all, failing to heed her big sister’s warnings and dying for it, would be the ultimate “I-told-you-so” she’d face when reunited with Verity behind those golden gates.
It could always be worse.
“How far, Mr. Dryver?”
“P-Perhaps a m-mile or so.”
It could always bebetter, too.
On a sigh, Livian opened her eyes and looked to the young driver. “Which way then, Mr. Dryver?”
He pointed north.
Very well. They’d walk, then.
Yanking her heavy, muddied, hems from the sodden Earth, Livian trudged over to the carriage, and climbed inside.
