“You forget, Mr Darcy. I am a country-bred girl. I have ridden in carts aplenty, though not so far as we have to go.”
My coachman suddenly decided it was his place to answer for me. “You would go only as far as Bromley, ma’am, where Mr Darcy has a team and a proper coach for hire could be found.”
“In that case, Mr Keller,” she said, “I shall be delighted to be ready to leave as quickly as I may.”
Well!I fumed as she went back into the house. Keller and Miss Elizabeth Bennet had given me my orders without so much as a by-your-leave. My coachman, observing me closely, spoke consolingly, which could only annoy me further.
“It is not soveryfar to go, sir,” he said as if I were twelve years old. “And if the lady does not object and the rain does not fall so heavily today, you should make fair progress. With luck, she could be in London tonight.”
I scrubbed my face as I struggled to contain my temper. “Very well,” I said. “And our horses?”
“I should stay with them, sir,” he said carefully. “Mr Carsten can manage a mule, I would hope.”
“As can I, but—Is there truly no other way?”
He was not terribly moved by my objections and only shrugged. “Stock of quality would be worth a fortune here, sir. Mrs Hamilton cannot protect them. No one here could be trusted to do so. You could string Windsor along behind you, but to do so with two Belgians besides, one of them lame, is to invite aggravation and delay. If you are willing to sacrifice them, I shall bait them and leave them to fend for themselves until I can return.”
I had paid a fortune for that team, and I did not have the indifference required to leave them for Mrs Hamilton to fret over.“You will at least draw us a map,” I said in glum defeat.
“Aye. Let me empty this cart and water this animal, and I shall join you in the kitchen directly, sir.”
The indignity of sitting on the floor of a farm cart fell to Carsten. He had beside him Windsor’s saddle, the bundle of our bags wrapped in oil cloth, and a basket filled to overflowing with sandwiches and tins of ale, the last a benefice of Mrs Hamilton who seemed near tears to wave us away with her handkerchief. Keller secured my horse to the rear of the cart and then stood to one side looking paternalistically at our equipage, satisfying himself it was as serviceable as it could be. He then helped Miss Elizabeth, who stepped bravely up to the seat beside me.
“We must look like a farmer and his wife on the way to church,” I grumbled.
She only laughed. “An improvement to how we must have looked last night. Had we come to the door of a manor house, we would have been turned away. How forlorn we were! I could not help but think of the flight into Egypt. Come, surely you can see the humour in this scene, Mr Darcy?”
“I am trying, ma’am.”
“Hmm. Let us talk of something other than our misfortunes, shall we? What shall we name him do you think?” She gestured to our mule.
“Snail, perhaps?”
“That was unnecessarily rude, sir. How about Ajax? Or Hector? What say you, Mr Carsten?”
“I believe we should call himthe mule, ma’am,” he replied with amiable ease.
“Poo. Neither of you have any sense at all of this beast’s qualities. I say we should call him Trusty. Perhaps he will turn out to be just that. Come, Trusty,” she called to himencouragingly, “let us proceed through the mud with as much pride as we can, shall we?”
By dribs and drabs, I fell in with her enthusiasm. To her, this was but a continuation of our escapade, and I sensed I had better stop pouting or risk lowering myself even further in her estimation.
“Yes, come along, Trusty Snail,” I called. “We shall make a London clipper of you if we do not find a coach for hire.”
Rather than return to the main road, Keller had directed us on a route around the piece of the main road he considered to be the most likely to be obstructed, keeping in mind our original intention which was to find our way to Bromley. However, his information had been pieced together from what he could gather from speaking to the aged owner of the mule and cart, for the roads we were to take were only country lanes and not on the map he carried in his brain. He made this disclaimer by saying that if we did not reach Bromley, at the very least, we could find a decent posting house on a well-travelled road closer to town.
“I am rather amazed it has not rained yet,” Miss Elizabeth remarked, looking up at the sky.
“Hush,” I said. “Lord, now we are in for a downpour.”
“Mr Darcy! Surely you of all persons are not superstitious.”
“I was not before encountering this mule. I am braced for the worst.”
“What next? Shall I see you with a rabbit’s foot on your watch chain?”
“Carsten, see to the rabbit’s foot, will you? And while you are about it, I would like a scarab and a pressed four-leaf clover to carry in my pocket.”
I do not know how, but by the early afternoon we found ourselves enjoying a merry picnic seated on a log at the side of a stream. My boots were fairly ruined, I observed dispassionately as I chewed—as were hers. Wisely, she had changed out of herclean clothes to preserve them since we had no notion of what the day would bring. As to the six inches of mud on her hem from the gown she wore yesterday, she seemed not to notice. With a pang, I recalled the first time I had seen her this way, and I had judged her unfairly for what I now considered a strength in her character.
