Luggage? Somehow Adam had imagined a quick run across country, horses changed at every post station, racing in a single direction only to turn and race in another. That plan allowed no place for luggage.
Suddenly he realized how difficult the task the duke had set him would be. The duke expected him to escort Emmeline on an extended trip to nowhere in particular. Even his sisters with their limited wardrobes would need a great deal for such a trip. They would need luggage. Luggage meant a coach, coachmen, postboys, and a lady’s maid or two. Then their caravan would lurch across the countryside, until Lord Colin caught up with them . . . on foot.
He rubbed his temple. They would be following no timetable. They merely needed not to be found. But where to go?
The plan grew more complicated with each conversation.
“If her ladyship owns a carriage without any estate markings, I suppose we could carry luggage,” Adam conceded.
Outside the window, in the chapel yard, the guests moved en masse toward the dining hall. Though the day was bright, the guests still hugged their coats tightly around their bodies. But Emmeline, waiting for him in the forest, had no shelter. He needed to move her to a safe, warm spot, and soon. At least he’d made sure that she had a heavy wrap.
Once the guests were in the dining hall, he could slip away.
“Many of the guests will be leaving tomorrow between eight and ten” Jeffreys removed a heavy bag from the cabinet. “By noon, the roads should be clear of them.”
“What of the duke and his party?”
“He rises early.” Jeffreys set the bag on the desk between them. “We anticipate he and his family will be gone by sunrise. Lady Fairbourne has already returned to the duke’s London house with Lord Walgrave.”
Adam noted the information. If only he’d fallen in love with Lady Fairbourne when her aunt encouraged him to do so, Em and Lord Colin would have happily married. The thought made him shudder. He’d objected to the alliance with Lady Fairbourne on the same grounds that he objected to one with Em: they came from different classes and different worlds.
“After the duke’s party leaves, we could remove a coach from the carriage yard.”
“Her ladyship will prefer to ride.” Jeffreys motioned at the valise. “There’s enough coin here to purchase whatever you may need on the road.”
Adam raised an eyebrow, having just been convinced to take a carriage. “We can hardly risk someone seeing her or her horse. No, a carriage will be best, and, as you suggested, it allows her to take a trunk or two . . . and Bess.”
Jeffreys raised an eyebrow, but looking at Bess, he nodded. “Lady Emmeline won’t like being away from Bess for too long.”
All the guests were in the dining hall, their conversation a low hum. Below, near the stables, two stableboys unloaded bags of grain. The estate was returning to its normal rhythm, even before the wedding guests were gone. Suddenly he realized how he could spirit Emmeline and her luggage away.
“Jeffreys, I know how we can make this work.”
Chapter Eight
Emmeline was cold and tired of waiting. She’d walked a dozen slow circles around the altar stone, and she’d examined the oak’s giant trunk in careful detail. She’d even amused herself by singing the tune that her mother claimed called the faeries into the human world.
Neither faeries nor Adam appeared.
She started another circle. At the house, she’d thought only of escape, to go somewhere, anywhere that would keep her from marrying a man she loved both too much and not enough.
For the last hour, she’d considered where she might go. Until Colin had brought up a wedding trip, she’d never thought of herself as a traveler, despite all the books she’d read of other places and peoples. For years after the accident she’d refused to travel in any carriage, and later, she would only travel distances that allowed her to go and return before nightfall. Broad daylight or ride horseback—that’s what she needed to avoid the nightmares, though with Bess beside her she recovered more quickly.
Colin, knowing her fears and knowing she’d left Bess behind, would feel compelled to try to find her. That would require hiding—at least until his men, or the duke’s, grew careless. That would add weeks, perhaps months, to her journey. The thought of being away from her estate for so long made her queasy. She breathed in deeply, hoping to settle the tension in her stomach.
Would Adam even agree to so long a journey?
She could travel to her father, as she and Colin had planned. But without Colin to urge her on, she was strangely reticent to do so. She had only two memories of her father. In one, he picked her up and swung her round and round giggling, until she was dizzy with excitement. In the other, he stood, weeping, beside her bed after the accident, repeating the word broken. The word left a viscous blood-red stain on her memory. Then he’d left. She’d tried to call him back, but the laudanum made her tongue feel thick. She’d never seen her father again.
Though her grandfather had been intent on keeping her memories of her mother and sisters alive, he would never tell her anything of his son-in-law. If she asked, he would pat her on the head, saying in a dark burlap voice, “Not now, Emmie, not now.” As a child, she’d realized what her grandfather and the servants weren’t saying: her father had left because of her, because she should have died with the others.
Her grandfather, Lionel Morley, was the one who demanded she walk again, no matter how painful it was to try. She could still hear the boom of his voice—bursting on her consciousness in fifteen shades of red and brown—as he bellowed the first doctor, the one who recommended amputation, out of the room. She’d never seen voices before the accident, and her grandfather had assured her it was only an effect of the laudanum. But when she’d stopped taking the drug, her ability to see voices in patterns and colors had remained.
To care for her body, her grandfather had hired a local woman—a witch, the servants had whispered—while he read everything available on rehabilitating limbs. He’d even brought doctors from Switzerland to advise him. But in the end, her treatment was her grandfather’s own and the witch’s.
She never told anyone the word she’d heard her father say as he left her. But, through her pain, she determined—with her grandfather’s help—to be everything that broken wasn’t. In teaching herself to walk again, she’d taught herself to be resilient, determined, and, more importantly, compassionate to those who, like her, weren’t quite whole. Blind, deaf, mute, limbless, or simply poor, no beggar or traveler ever left her village hungry. Her kitchen and her hearth, everyone knew, were open to all.
But if a father couldn’t love his wounded child, would he welcome her now, with a walking stick and lame dog? Would her successes at managing the estate be enough? Or would he look at her and call her broken again?
In the forest behind her, a branch snapped. She flattened herself against the trunk of the oak to hide. But when she heard the chatter of an angry squirrel, she began her circuit again. It was colder now than before, and she pulled the shawl closer.
Surely Adam would come to her soon.
At least she hadn’t left her estate. If he did abandon her, she could return to the house. With the help of Jeffreys and Maggie, she could hide there until Colin came to his senses and married Lucy. Sam would ensure that the estate crops were planted and that the last of Bess’s pups were trained, but she’d be no better than a prisoner, unable to leave her hiding place while the world turned around her.
No, Adam would come. No matter how much he appeared to dislike her, once he’d made her a promise, he had never broken his word. The unicorn proved that. He would come.
The harsh trill of a blackbird