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“I’m fine, Herbert,” she said in a surprisingly calm voice.
After a short effort that rocked the carriage even more in its precarious position, the door swung open and the face of Herbert Place offered a hand down to her. In a trice, the two women were standing in the cloud of dust that surrounded the carriage.
“What happened?” asked Alicia.
“Damn carriage must’ve hit a rock…or a boulder, more like. ‘Scuse my language, Miss. Are you sure you’re not injured?” asked Herbert, his hands nervously switching between reaching out to Alicia and kneading one another in a frenzy.
“We may be sore on the morrow, but I don’t think we’re hurt,” Alicia answered. She smoothed her dress and looked around. The scenery surrounding them was as empty and bucolic as before, though the green wilderness had gradually given way to fields of ripe wheat and apple trees. Really, all of the substance that had changed, as far as she could tell, was that they had stopped here, wherever “here” happened to be.
“I do hope whatever the problem is won’t take long to fix, Herbert,” Alicia said, shading her eyes with a hand and looking down the road. London was nowhere in sight, unfortunately. “Since none of us is hurt there’s no reason to linger here.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, Miss,” said the old coachman, scratching behind his dirty ear. “But I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere anytime soon.”
“What do you mean?” she snapped. “Surely there’s some way to right the…”
But as her eyes wandered to the wreckage of the carriage, Alicia’s protests died on her tongue. She was hardly an expert in such matters, but the splintered wood that jutted out from under the front of the vehicle and the twisted scraps of metal lying at her feet did not indicate a quick repair was likely. Not only was the whole vehicle tilted terribly to the right side, but the front-right wheel was missing entirely.
Visions of her warm, comfortable bed vanished before her eyes. Alicia bit her lip, hoping to stifle the tide of tears that swelled within her.
“Oh, Lord save us!” Jenny cried, tears coming as easily to the middle-aged woman as smiles.
“What are you going to do now, Herbert?” Herbert muttered to himself, pacing back and forth as the colour drained from his face. The team of horses was still hitched to the remains of the carriage and began to stomp and whinny more nervously with their driver’s distress. “How are you going to get Miss Alicia home now? You can’t bloody well carry her on your shoulders, you daft fool!”
Grace is going to be furious,she thought, swallowing. Her sister had made a point of insisting Alicia be present for some dinner party or other later in the week. Alicia had used this social obligation repeatedly during her visit with Missus Miggins, imagining it would be a convenient way to excuse her quick departure back for London. Now, if it was indeed as grim as Herbert seemed to think it was, there was no way she would be able to keep this appointment.
Hearing the distant cry of an eagle overhead, Alicia was jerked back to her present dilemma.Never mind Grace now!she thought to herself, biting her lip in consternation.That’s the least of our worries. Whatever are we going to do stuck out in the middle of nowhere like this?
“Ahoy, there!” called a strange voice from down the road. Alicia glanced toward the voice and sighted a rough-looking man a hundred yards off. At first, she paid him no mind, returning to her own fretting.
What are we going to do?she asked herself, fingers clutching her skirt nervously.What happens if we are still here on the open road come nightfall? Or if we are overrun by some wild animal or brigands this far from civilization?
“I say, is everyone all right there?” the voice called again with its odd twang. Alicia felt her hairs stand on end as she realized the man was coming closer to them, and she instinctively grabbed Jenny’s hand and walked them both behind the shattered remains of the carriage.
“Miss Alicia, what—?” Jenny asked quietly before Alicia hissed her into silence.
“We don’t know this man,” she said in a quiet voice. “He could be a…a highwayman, for all we know!”
“A highwayman?” the maid gulped. Against their better judgment, both women turned to peer at the oncoming man from behind the carriage, their eyes wide with fear.
“Y…yessir, thank you, sir, no problem here,” Herbert answered, sensing Alicia’s fear at the approaching individual. Even as he stammered this reply, the horses ceased their nickering and stood silently.
The stranger stopped and folded his arms, looking over every figure in the scene with a careful eye. He ran a calloused hand through his short-cropped, hay-coloured hair, then rubbed it against his clean-shaven cleft chin in thought. He was bareheaded and without a jacket, and the sleeves of his rough white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, exposing muscles that looked to have been built with years of hard labour.
He doesn’t look like a highwayman,Alicia thought, taking in the man’s appearance warily—not that she knew much of such things, apart from the drawings she had seen of the dashing Dick Turpin and his ilk in her books.
Indeed, from his shabby attire and the sweat on his brow, she guessed this man was more likely to be a labourer from the nearby fields, despite his almost patrician nose. Still, a simple man could be as dangerous as a robber, she reminded herself, her stomach twisted in knots.
“Well, I don’t mean to argue with you, sir,” the man said in a slow, deliberate voice. His pale blue eyes twinkled with humor, a tiny smile coming to his lips in the middle of his tanned and ruddy face. “But around this part of the country, a carriage missing a wheel is considered rather a big problem.”
The stranger stepped forward, provoking Herbert and both women to start in fear. The man stopped in place, putting both hands up to show he was unarmed. “Forgive me, sir. Ladies,” he said, his smile still patiently plastered across his face. “Laurence Gillingham.”
Alicia felt her jaw drop, the man’s friendly greeting to her taking her completely by surprise. Oddly, rather than fear or offence, her first thought was embarrassment at how silly she must look with her mouth gaping like a codfish. She snapped her mouth shut, fixing a scowl on her face even as her pale cheeks reddened.
Herbert glanced back at Alicia. She shook her head, then nodded it, unclear of what she was conveying even as she tried to puzzle out what she wanted to happen. Her eyes flitted back to the strange man, this Laurence Gillingham, who was now walking in a wide circle, his gaze fixed on the carriage as if in thought.
“Hit a rock, looks like?”
“Think so, Mister…Gillingham, was it?” Herbert replied cautiously, stepping forward to examine what this Laurence was looking at. In the distance, Alicia sighted more people coming down the road, from the same direction Laurence had approached them. She was still frozen to the spot, unsure whether this was a good omen or an ill one.
