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Waiting out front was Martin’s little gig carriage, a two-seater with a single horse and no covering. The village children had tied frayed ribbons and wildflowers to the seat rails. Behind it was a farmer’s cart, piled up with her packed belongings for her to move into Martin’s house. She marched up to it, wrestling one of the smaller trunks of clothing out of its pile. She carried it the few steps to the gig, tossing it over the tailboard.
She heard Mr. Graves call her name as she shoved her trunk into a secure spot, and when satisfied, marched around its side. She put a foot on the mounting step, and climbed into the box seat. She was taking up the reins when Mr. Graves reached the carriage’s side.
“What is this?” he said, monosyllabic as ever, looking from her, to the carriage, to the reins in her hands.
“Is it not apparent?” she answered in a snap, mostly because she didn’t have a clear idea of what she was doing. She looked frantically from him to the reins in her hands. She didn’t have a clue how to drive, or steer, or even stop.
But she’d seen how coachmen spurred horses into moving.
She clenched her teeth together, and flicked the reins as hard as she could.
In the back of her mind, Diane knew she was supposed to yell, ‘Hyah!’, but at that moment all she could really manage was “AHHHHHH!”
The yelling quite preoccupied her, she barely registered Mr. Graves hefting himself into the carriage as it took off at an alarming speed down the gravel drive, until he was pushing her over in the box seat and making a grab for reins.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
“Look out for that tree!” he shouted back, grabbing a hand over the pair of hers to steer, moving their trajectory indeed away from crushing the foliage in front of the church, pulling onto the dirt road and only trampling a few flowers in the process.
Still, despite his help, she insisted, “Let go!”
The efforts of yanking her hands away out from under his, all their yelling only spurred on and confused the horse, veering them all over the road. Another buggy pulled off the road entirely to avoid them.
“Alright, alright! Stop steering all over the place!” Liam exclaimed, his grip tight to hold her hands in one steady spot. She stopped pulling and slowly, he released her hands. He made a show of holding his hands in the air, touching nothing. “We should stop.”
“No, I don't like that. If we stop moving, I’m just going to think about how idiotic this all is, I'll cry and I’ll just faint again!”
If it had only been her to leave, there would have been gossip, but it could at least have been survivable gossip. With Liam accompanying her, what it must have looked like to everyone back at the church, the best man and the bride running off with a stolen carriage!
She looked at him sharply, reprimand in her eyes. “Why did you have to get in? You should have stayed at the church with everybody else!”
“And let you run off by yourself?” he snapped back at her, dark brown eyes burning bright, smoldering coals against the cool spring morning.
She stared back at him. Never before had she seen such emotion cross his face, desperation and concern breaking through his mask of stoicism.
She looked away, unsure what to say to him in response. He very easily could have let her run away. He didn’t need to bring her brandy or follow her out of the church, he didn’t need to do anything but be Martin’s best man.
So why had he done any of those things?
Her heart was pounding so furiously from all the excitement and near-death escapes they’d manage to fit in their short drive. She wasn’t sure how her heart hadn’t given out half a mile back, or how it had become somewhat easier to look at Liam after sharing all that terror.
For several long moments, neither of them said anything. They passed a couple fields without a word, though every little rock or rut of dirt their wheels rolled over seemed to knock their shoulders or hips together in the crammed box seat. Diane didn’t dare scoot over to keep from touching him, for fear of falling out of the gig.
“He’s following us,” Liam said at last, interrupting the silence after a few miles.
“What? Who? Martin? My uncle?”
Diane tried to turn in the seat to get a look behind them, pulling the reins as she did, the carriage suddenly veering off the road into the much bumpier grass.
“Eyes on the road!” Liam hissed, grabbing her wrists and pulling them the other way to correct their path.
For several moments, they didn’t speak again. Diane contemplated how she had always hated how bumpy the roads were, but it was practically smooth compared to the grassy hill they’d detoured onto.
“The goat,” Liam clarified at last in their stony silence. “He’s following us.”
“The fainting goat?”
“Was that actually a fainting goat?” he asked, releasing her wrists to drape an arm over the back of the carriage, and watch the alleged goat. “It’s the white one from the front of the church.”
