Page 39 of Miss Harvey's Horribly Lovable Fiancé
“He does, sir. Quite well indeed.” Except yesterday, he may’ve suffered a major shock.
The portly innkeeper winced, then scratched his gray stubble. He disappeared in the back room and emerged with a pewter mug of tea that he set before her. “No maid with ye this time. Where do ye go?”
Without forethought, she said, “Marlborough.”My father’s lodge.
“A ways that is. Do ye need a lad, Miss?”
It took her a second to understand he meant to inquire if she needed a male protector. “No, Mister Watts. I am capable.”
He shook his head. “Ye do na look like it.”
He cocked his head, listening to his wife as someone climbed the back stairs to the rooms. He turned back to her. “I don’t like a young woman out and about on her own, Miss.”
Esme wanted to counter that she had her gumption and her gun, but to most men such affirmations raised only alarm. Her father and Giles who would never say such things of her. But oh, how would they ever forgive her this scandal?
She took a drink of her tea. To fight her melancholy, she switched the subject. “I say, sir, how goes your Mabel?”
Their daughter was Esme’s age. Two years ago, Mabel and she had struck up a fine conversation about horses, beer and men. “I like strong brews of each,” Mabel had confided and they’d laughed together like ten-year-olds.
“She wed, she did.”
“When was that?”
“Last June.”
“Congratulations. Who is the fortunate groom?”
Someone strode about in the rooms above. Odd hour for more travelers to appear, but Esme could not fault the Watts’s hospitality.
Ida appeared in the door to the stables and gave Esme a piercing look. That surprised Esme. Ida had liked her years ago. If she now eyed her charily, Esme suspected that the news of the Courtland runaway bride had spread as quickly as she herself had ridden away.
“Our Mabel? Ahhh,” said her father, proud.
“She married the wheelwright from Marlborough.” Ida sailed into the gathering room. “A fine man. Ten years her senior, but earns a goodly sum. She’s to birth her first in a few weeks.”
“Big as this inn, she is!” William joked.
Ida gazed at William, her eyes wide with some secret message that Esme had often seen pass between married couples like her own mother and father. Whatever they implied, Esme would never know.
“Did you say you go to Marlborough?” William asked as he stacked beer barrels against the far wall.
“I did,” she said.
“If ye need a room there, ye could go to our Mabel. She and her Tom do have one to let.”
The glare that Ida threw her husband could have lit forest fires. But her husband seemed totally confounded and shook his head.
“Thank you for the suggestion, Mister Watts.”But I’ll keep to my father’s tidy little box.
“Good, you’ll go to ‘er then. She’d like it. She liked you.”
“And I in return, sir.”
Ida sidled over to her husband and gave him a strong elbow in the side.
“Wha?” He took offense and rubbed his ribs with two hands.
She tossed him a look that would sour milk.
