But it did no good to dwell on any of it. The fact remained that Olive did not know what she’d gotten herself into, and she was in need of rescuing. So Clementine was going to rescue her. Because in her world, that was what people did for their sisters.
But as soon as that was done, Clementine was putting her foot down with Father. No more parties, no more balls, no more gentlemen. No moreLondon. She would leave that to Olive and retreat to Hill House. She had been telling Father for years that she was not going to marry, and he had been ignoring her for just as long. If there was one upside to this dreadful business, it was that he might finally accept defeat.
It made her shudder to think how near she had come to making such a terrible mistake. All the heartsickness she felt now was worth that fate averted.
A hawk soared into view, and she gasped in delight and awe—and gratitude. Tears prickled her eyes, as they sometimes did when the world was being too much itself—too beautiful and terrible and capable of expressing a kind of steadfast rightness through its creatures and its colors.
An all-too-human muttering had her reluctantly transferring her attention from the tableau above to a pair of men standing at the foot of the coach. It was the driver and the cabbage man. The latter was no longer silent but looking at her and speaking a great deal indeed.
Clementine’s three Seasons in London had not taught her much of use, but her childhood in the country had. She had spent enough time watching—deer bounding through the forest, a spider spinning a web in a hollow tree, the bowing of a willow in the wind as it bent to skim the surface of a pond—that she had learned to be sensitive to small shifts in the air. She had honed her instincts and learned to trust them.
She hitched her satchel up on one shoulder, picked up her skirts—and because she’d forgotten she wasn’t wearing any, that amounted to picking up two handfuls of air—and ran.
Twenty minutes later, she crept back into the yard, hoping Mr. Cabbage had departed with the coach. She hadn’t been planning on stopping here. Indeed, in her mind, she’d been going to take the London-to-Glasgow Mail coach all the way straight through to the end of the line. Forty-eight hours hadn’t seemed an impossible stretch. Her favorite ramble through the woods at home took two hours, and forty-eight was only that twenty-four times over.
She had not accounted for the corporeal realities of cross-country travel by Mail coach. There was the hunger, of course. She had anticipated the fact of that, filling her pockets and her bag with apples and walnuts and bread, but not the degree. She should have brought more food. Worse, though, was the discomfort. Before this, the longest trip she had made was between her family’s London home and Hill House in Kent—western Kent, not so terribly far from Town geographically, though in another sense, it was as far from London as the moon in the sky. And those journeys had always been undertaken in the family coach, which went more slowly than the Mail and therefore made for a much less rough-and-tumble experience. Here, by contrast, the hours and hours spent curled in on herself, the jostling, the lack of fresh air and light—well, it was grim.
So, part of her didn’t mind the fact that, twice now, the need to maintain her subterfuge had forced her to take refuge inside a posting inn and to wait for the next Mail coach, which, here at the Blue Lion in Thorpesden at four o’clock in the afternoon, was going to mean staying the night. The delay was regrettable, but the image of a soft, clean bed made her near delirious with want.
If this were a novel, she would not have attempted to make the trip without pause. She would have stopped along the way, asking at posting inns if anyone had seen a pretty young auburn-haired woman accompanied by an uncommonly tall gentleman wearing boots made of cotton.
But in novels, she would not have been acquainted with the man in question. He would have been a mere villain who had absconded with her sister, not a man Clementineknew—in all the senses of the word, to her great regret. Novels also disregarded how very many Mail routes there were to Scotland, but that was not the primary point. Clementine, unlike so many hapless literary heroines, knew that Theo was bound not for the nearest border town with an anvil and an unscrupulous innkeeper, but for Glasgow. He had friends there. He hadacolytesthere. There he would be sheltered and cosseted and flattered, and no one would give Olive any thought beyond her supporting role in the life of Mr. Theodore Bull. Theo wanted Olive, therefore his friends would move mountains that he should have her.
If there was any good to come from Clementine’sknowingof Mr. Theodore Bull, it was that she could use her knowledge—of his mind, his vanity, his habits, ofhim—to save her sister.
But since she was here, at the Blue Lion in Thorpesden, she might as well make like in novels and ask if anyone had seen Theo and Olive even if,unlikein novels, the answer would almost certainly be no.
She scanned the room. There was an innkeeper manning the bar she could interview, and she could get something to eat.
“Ye wantjustpotatoes?” the innkeeper asked after she’d ordered.
“Yes, but only if they are not cooked in beef tallow. I’d prefer them boiled.” The poor man was wearing such a look of befuddlement that she added, “Beef and its by-products do not agree with me.” She patted her stomach and made a mournful face.
“Ah, well, if that’s the case, this will see you in good stead.” He set a pie on the battered oaken bar. “’Tis only lamb in this one.”
She sighed and took a sip of her ale. Ale, it turned out, could be rather pleasant. Better anyway than the sickly sweet ratafia Theo had always pressed on her at parties. When the bartender turned away, she extracted a newspaper from her satchel, wrapped the pie in it, and deposited the whole package back in the bag. She would find a yard dog to give it to later.
“You made quick work of that, lad.” The friendly innkeeper was back. “My missus’s lamb pies are famous in these parts and for good reason, if I may say so.” He positively beamed with pride. “I tell her the last thing I want to pass my lips in the final minute of my life is a bite of her lamb pie.”
Clementine could not help but be touched by the man’s praise of his wife. What must it be like to be married to a man who valued one’s accomplishments enough to boast of them to strangers? Not that she was going to be married to any man ever—she had briefly entertained the notion, and look where it had gotten her. Still, if a ladyhadto be married, which she realized most ladies did—Clementine was unaccountably lucky not to number among them—it must be gratifying to be appreciated.
“Well, no, scratch that. The last thing I’d want to taste is a mouthful of her apple dumplins, if you get my meaning.” The innkeeper winked in a way that suggested to Clementine that it wasn’t a mixture of fruit and pastry he was talking about.
That was another thing about being a man: other men said the mostshockingthings to one as easily as if they were remarking upon the weather.
“Yes, quite.” She picked up her ale and took a long drink in order to avoid having to say more. She was nearly done with the pint and feeling much less distressed about life in general when the innkeeper returned. “I say, sir, I’m looking for someone who may have been here ahead of me. An unusually tall man, and he’d’ve had a very pretty auburn-haired woman with him.”
“Man wearing very strange boots?”
“Yes!”
“He’s taken a private parlor.”
“Oh!” Clementine was so shocked, she nearly fell off her stool. She righted herself and made a point to lower her voice. “He’s herenow?”
In novels, this sort of sleuthing would have yielded intelligence about which direction the fugitive lovers had gone and how long ago they had left, not that they wereunder the same roof at that very moment. But Clementine knew where Theo and Olive were going—Glasgow. And she had to admit that if she’d been any kind of detective, she would have been prepared for the possibility that the Mail coach would overtake Theo’s landau.
“Yes, indeed.” The innkeeper paused. “Bit of an odd one, he is.”
