AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I asked the butler to confirm it. He seemed most reluctant to, but he agreed in the end. Mr Blake left shortly after breakfast this morning.”
***
Violette didn’t know how long she had spent waiting for the stagecoach to arrive at the coaching inn, but after the second small beer she had purchased at the inn went down, followed by a late luncheon, then a supper, and a darkness that crept into the sky, she was forced to realise that she had been waiting most of the day.
She moved to the edge of the coaching inn, peering out at the sky and the clouds that had gathered overhead, wishing the coach would hurry up.
Those clouds seemed thicker than before to her mind, as thick as they had been on the day of the storm, and she welcomed the idea. The world might as well cry with her now.
When the coach eventually arrived, she hurried inside it, paying her due fare and looking at the money she had left in her pocket. She had purposefully left some of her money behind in a small purse that she hoped Sherborne would find. He deserved the money and a better chance at life than she was currently able to give him.
“In you go,” the driver said, snatching the money from her hand and grazing her palm with his long nails. Shuddering at the feeling, she clambered into the coach.
Whereas before, the coach she had taken on the way to London was full of excitement and new experiences, this coach felt stale and old, cramped with so many people in the tiny space that the air inside the carriage was humid. Pressed between one particularly large merchant and the door, she barely had room to breathe, let alone move about.
The large merchant quickly went to sleep, snoring away, as did a lanky man on the other side of the coach, so that soon, the whole place was full of a cacophony of snores, prompting Violette to cover her ears with her hands for a good portion of the journey.
They travelled through the night, with the darkness falling thickly around them, and the only light to guide the horses being that of the moon that slipped between the clouds every now and then, and the one lonely lantern that the driver carried.
“Where ye off to then?” one man said from across the carriage. He’d been asking those awake in turn where each of them were heading and now turned his attention on her. He was rather scruffy looking, though the clothes were not cheap. If she were to hazard a guess, she would say he was a clerk who had fallen on hard times.
“Oxfordshire,” she said quietly.
“Aye, we’re off to Buckinghamshire, one county along,” he said with a smile and gestured to the friend at his side. “Nice clothes ye have there.” He gestured at her body. She purposefully wrapped the tailcoat tighter around her body and pulled her hat lower too. “Nice hat too. Ye must have a few bob.”
“That is my business,” she said sharply, to which he smiled and lapsed back into conversation with his friend. Yet he did not settle. Every few minutes, he kept glancing Violette’s way for the rest of the journey.
“Brunlow, Oxfordshire,” the coach driver called as the carriage came to a halt. It was her stop. She opened the carriage door and peered out. With no light in the sky, it was difficult to see where they were, but the outline of a coaching inn further up a path was just about visible. It was a short away, looking shut up for the night, with no people around and most of the windows dark.
Violette stepped down off the carriage. With dawn not yet having broken, the only light was coming from the lantern attached to the front of the coach, and the other lantern from the coaching inn. Slim orange orbs bathed the path in front of her, giving the coachman just enough light to untie her trunk. She pulled it from his grasp and started ambling toward the coaching inn up the path when there was a sound behind her.
She looked round to see the chatty man in scruffy clothes from the coach was climbing down too. She frowned, remembering what he had said about heading to the next county along. When he didn’t wander off to a bush to relieve himself but instead set his sights on her, following her, she increased her pace, trying to get to the coaching inn faster than before.
It was some distance away, meaning that she practically had to run toward the coaching inn with her trunk in tow.
“Oi! Ye,” the man called to her.
She glanced back to see he was still advancing toward her, reaching a hand into the pocket of his jacket. Remembering what he had said in the carriage, she didn’t doubt what his motives for following her were. He wanted the same thing the man in Covent Garden wanted before Sherborne had come to her aid, money. Only there was no Sherborne here to help her this time, and in this darkness, no one would come to her aid. It was too quiet.
She picked up her pace, flinging her trunk over her back, but his own footsteps had grown faster.
“Stop,” he called to her. She ignored him, but it didn’t do any good. He caught up with her and grabbed her arm, flinging her around, before pulling on her trunk and tossing it to the ground. She was nearly knocked over by the momentum of it and had to stumble on her feet to stand straight.
As she moved, she caught sight in the lantern from the quiet coaching inn what he had pulled out of his jacket. It was a knife.
“Money,” he said, beckoning his other hand toward her.
“Or?” she asked, gesturing to the knife.
“Ye can guess,” he said, wielding the knife to her. She barely had any money left and seeing as she was about to walk back to Snowspring from the coaching inn, she barely needed the cash, but it was the principle now.
“I have nothing to give you,” she said firmly, to which he scoffed, just once, then veered toward her.
“Then I will take the money,” he said, heading for her.
In a flash, Violette saw the knife in front of her face, then she remembered back to the night where she had gone to see the boxing with Lord Northrive and afterwards, he had taught her how to punch, and a few other things to help defend herself.
With the knife coming down toward her, she didn’t have much time. She snatched up the trunk again and threw it at him. In the kerfuffle to block the blow, he had to lower the hand with the knife to push the trunk away. That’s when she geared up for the punch, pulling back her elbow to wind up, then she released the blow. It landed squarely in his nose, just as Lord Northrive had told her to aim.
She heard the crack of bone beneath her hand and felt the pain shoot through her knuckles. Her assailant scurried back, crying out in pain and dropping his knife as he clutched his nose with both hands. She reached down and snatched up the knife, turning it in his direction.
“Get back to the coach. You will not find me an easy target,” she said with warning.
“What’s going on over there?” the coach driver called, having to shout because of the distance between the coach and them.
“Your passenger is coming back to you now,” she shouted to him. “Best wait. He might take a while to get there.”
Her assailant threw her one last angry glare before lolloping off and clutching his broken nose. She didn’t wait to see him clamber back into the carriage. She threw down the dagger in the undergrowth nearby, wanting nothing to do with it and dragged the trunk in through the doorway of the coaching inn.
Once the door was closed firmly behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief and allowed herself the smallest of smiles. It seemed there was at least one thing that had come out of her time posing as a man: she could defend herself very well now.
