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“The stables it is then, Jack,” he said, indicating the general direction with a sweep of his arm. “Mrs Dorley will take you to meet my head groom, Wickens.”
The boy nodded, then looked up at him with that impish smile. “It ain’t half been an adventure, Mr Patmore, and I’m right grateful you took me wiv you in yer coach an’ all.” He hesitated. “An’ I do love ‘orses, even tired, old ones wot jest need a bit of kindness like the ones at the ‘ome.”
“Good…that’s good, Jack.” Rufus found it hard to concentrate. Once he’d despatched the boy, he was aware of Mr Dorley, his butler, hovering nearby with a silver salver.
“This was delivered while you were gone, sir.”
Rufus took the thick package and sat down in his favourite wing-back chair near the window with a well-deserved brandy.
It had been a fraught few hours, but there was relief in receiving the information he’d sought a few days before. A message had come to him at Quamby House that it had arrived, and he’d used the excuse to leave more abruptly than he’d intended after Miss Montrose had been so hesitant in giving him an answer to his proposal.
He broke the seal, unfolded the letter written as a preface to the information contained within, and experienced a very real jolt of excitement.
So his hunch had been correct. It didn’t give him the evidence he sought, but the inference was there. And he’d have a definitive answer within days.
Curious, he put down the single sheet of paper and raised the first of several letters to the light.
The darkness was closing in, and Eliza had covered more than half the distance, according to the farm lad she stopped to ask along the way. His eyes had widened to see her, dressed as she was, and riding astride. Eliza’s only fear was that news of such a sight would travel fast to Quamby House, though if Caleb had done as she’d asked and sent everyone in the wrong direction, then she had a few hours’ lead.
Dressed only in a simple striped silk round gown, she wished she had something to ward off the cold. The day had been balmy with not even the need for a spencer as they’d sheltered from the sun in anticipation of the race finish. When the rain had come, Eliza had been in such an emotional state she’d given no thought to clothing.
Devil was tired too, now. She felt it in his movements. The moon was sufficient to see the road, but he plodded slowly while Eliza lay along his back, her face buried in his mane. She dreamed of Jack, and she thought wistfully of Mr Patmore, by turns.
So much had happened since she’d come to Quamby House less than a fortnight before and gazed upon the face of her son. She may have lost both, but at least she had seized her last opportunity.
They passed through a deserted village, and when they reached an expanse of cultivated paddocks, it began to rain, increasing in intensity. Eliza was wet through when she took shelter in a small wood. She soon decided there was little point in shivering beneath a large elm when she was already drenched, so she urged Devil into a canter. Only two more hours if they continued at this pace.
But the weather worsened; the road turned from a hard rutted surface into a quagmire and Devil, tired from his long race, began to seriously tire.
Fortuitously, Eliza spied a barn which proved empty but for a number of hay bales, which provided her with warmth and shelter until a large rat woke her several hours later. Screaming, she scrambled onto Devil’s back to resume her journey. Surely just another hour. That’s all she’d have to endure, and then she’d be at the residence that harboured Jack.
She wasn’t sure what the owner would say. She’d have to gauge the nature of the occupants. They’d look askance at her, but she didn’t care. She had nothing. Only Jack. Only Devil. What did it matter how they looked at her? All she wanted was to take her boy back to the cottage she’d inherited, and the rest of the world could be damned. She’d grow old as the reclusive and shunned spinster whom the fabulously wealthy Annabelle Montrose had passed over for good reason.
The rain continued as they went slowly through the village of Graymere. Eliza didn’t know how she could bear more of the cold, but had no idea how she could change her circumstances. It was perhaps two o’ clock in the morning; the world was asleep, and Eliza could hardly beg shelter, now.
From the northern side of the village, the gradient became quite steep, and the running rivulets had scored deeply into the mud. Devil picked his way carefully through the stony earth, but several times he slid. Each time Eliza closed her eyes, clung to his mane, and shifted position. She ached, but she had to place all her trust in the horse.
At the bottom, she was ready to sigh with relief and give herself up to the next part of the journey. Her destination was only a short ride up a steep hill from the next village to a small but imposing manor house at the end of a tree-lined drive.
She’d be able to see it from the village green in the moonlight, she’d been told.
But on the flat, when the worst should have been behind her, an owl flapped its alarm in a flurry of black feathers, and Devil’s easy demeanour deserted him. With a loud whinny he took off, and Eliza had to cling with all her strength to his wet and matted mane as the earth sped beneath her.
She shrieked, trying to bring him under control with her voice, but he was past heeding reason. The horse was tired, and his senses addled. Eliza was tired, but now fear fizzed through her veins. Death was just beneath her, for if she fell, she’d be cut to pieces by his hooves, or trampled.
On he galloped, careening in a wild zigzag pattern. Eliza felt her grip weaken as she was jolted like a rag doll.
“Devil!” she tried once more, and the horse stopped abruptly, sending her through the air. She landed on stony ground, winded, as her head hit the earth. For a long time, she couldn’t move, but Devil remained loyally nearby, waiting it seemed until she had the energy to drag herself to her feet. It was difficult to inspect herself in the poor light, but she knew she was bleeding when she wiped a hand across the back of her face and tasted metal.
“There’s the village, Devil. Just up the hill; it’s all we have to manage,” she muttered, but her whole body ached, her head pounded, and she shivered uncontrollably.
“Just along the drive,” she whispered, barely clinging on now as Devil negotiated the last stretch of driveway and somehow made a beeline for the stable where he sensed company and smelled the welcome scent of hay.
And as he whinnied in relief at the shelter, and brought his head down to take in a mouthful of hay, Eliza slid gracefully off his back and landed in the soft, welcome warmth of her own bed of straw.
Jack had never slept so well. He was used to wriggling, kicking boys—three of them to a bed in the foundling home—but here he could stretch out on what felt like a cloud, but really was a thick layer of hay in the loft. He could look down on the horses in their stalls below and imagine that this is where he’d always stay—in this house with these nice people, tending their horses.
The whicker of an intruding animal made him sit upright. Jack wasn’t used to sleeping alone, and while the warmth of the hay was comforting, he was also a little afraid once the head groom had disappeared to his quarters and closed the door, leaving Jack to make himself up a bed in the seemingly cavernous stable, on a platform above the stalls.
