Page 54 of The Captive
But as sleep claimed him, he pictured her, small, golden-haired, bustling about, her voice a lullaby to calm the most tortured soul.
***
Gilly woke knowing the time had come to quit dawdling and get herself back to Mercia.
ToSevern. To Severn, the house, the household, the little girl who would not speak, and yes, to the man trying to find his footing with all of it. Mercia was part of what Gilly returned to; he could not be the whole of it.
“Safe journey, your ladyship.”
Meems offered his good wishes, such as they were, from the front steps as the traveling coach came around the corner from the mews.
“My thanks. You may be assured I will report to His Grace that I was graciously received by his staff in his absence.”
Meems looked pained, but offered her a nod, and then stepped back so a footman could hand her up.
She took out her anthology of poetry and tried to read, but the exercise was useless. The day was overcast, the light quite dim, and her mind darted about like a caged finch. The coach rolled on, until Gilly came abruptly awake somewhere among the fields and farms of Surrey.
The coachman’s voice came to her, low and soothing, but with a panicked note under the words. The horses cantered over a rare smooth stretch of road, and still, the coachy urged them to slow.
“Ho up, lads. Easy…easy… There we go, boys. That’s it…”
A sharp crack, and the team tried to bolt, while the coach bobbed crazily behind them.
Gilly fetched up hard against the wall, grabbed the leather strap above her head, and started praying while the coachman resumed his crooning and pleading.
“Now, laddies, ho ye, ho and ho and that’s it… Good boys you are, good boys you be…”
The coach came to a stop, swaying on its springs.
A white-faced groom peered in the door. “Yer ladyship’s right enow, then? That were a rum go there for a bit. ’Is Grace will ’ave our arses—our ’eads if ye’ve suffered ’arm.”
Eight years of marriage came to the aid of her composure. “I’m fine. What happened?”
“Wheel come loose. Lost it a good mile back, but we’ve a good team, and they came right, didn’t they?”
He was as pale as death, suggesting they’d had a very close call. The coach listed heavily, but was held somewhat upright on the three remaining wheels and the web of harness. The wheelers shifted restively at the unaccustomed distribution of weight, while the coachy kept up his spoken lullaby.
“Perhaps I’d best stretch my legs a bit,” she said, and the door was open before she’d collected her reticule.
“Perkins is ’olding the leaders, yer ladyship.” The groom’s voice still held a quaver that suggested danger had been only narrowly averted.
“I’m sure all will soon be in order,” she said, offering him a smile. Smiling was a skill, and Gilly had learned to apply it in all manner of difficult situations. “John Coachman,” she called up to the box, “your passenger is unharmed. Shall we get out the muzzle bags and send a groom for the wheel?”
“Muzzle bags?” The man blinked down at her, his complexion every bit as ashen as the groom’s. “Oh, aye, for the ’orses. Dunston, be about it, then fetch that blasted wheel.”
Gilly assessed the sullen sky, saw rain wasn’t an immediate concern, and fetched her book from the coach. She stuffed the poetry in her reticule, and over the slow pounding of her heart, sorted through the situation to find the next necessary task.
There wasn’t one, except to offer a familiar prayer for her continued existence.
She marched to a nearby stile, perched upon it, took out her embroidery, and began to stitch.
By the time she’d finished three tidy inches of hem on a handkerchief for Lucy, Dunston was pushing the wheel up the track like a large, ungainly hoop. The wheel was intact, which was a relief, because there wasn’t a farmhouse or smallholding to be seen.
“The going will be slow,” the coachman said, “but once we bang the wheel back on, we’ll get ye on your way, your ladyship. From His Grace’s grandda’s time, we’ve carried spare pins and such in the boot of the traveling coaches, otherwise you’d have to walk to the next village.”
“How far would that be?”
“A good half league, and it do be threatening rain.”
