‘What of the old Smith barn?’ the other yelled. ‘The hay is in and the walls are sturdy.’
‘Where is it?’ Taris Wellingham sounded tired, the gash on his head still seeping and new worry filled her.
‘Five minutes on from here is a path to the left marked with a white stone. Turn there and wait for help. We will send it when we can.’
When we can? The very thought had Bea’s ire running.
‘I cannot…’
But the others were gone, spurred on by the wind and by need and by the thick white blankets of snow.
‘It’s our only chance,’ Taris shouted, a peal of thunder underlining his reason. The next flash of lightning had her horse rearing up and though she managed to remain seated, the jolt worsened the ache of her lip. Tears pooled in her eyes, scalding hot down her cheeks, the only warmth in the frozen waste of the world.
‘I’m sorry.’ She saw him looking, his expression so unchanged she knew instantly that he was one of those men who loathed histrionics.
‘Look for the pathway, Mrs Bassingstoke. We just need to find the damn barn.’
Prickly. High-handed. Disdainful.
Dashing her tears away with the wet velvet of her cloak, she hated the fact that she had shown any man such weakness. Again.
The path was nowhere. No stone to mark it, no indent where feet might have travelled, no telltale breakage in the hedges to form a track or furrows in the road where carts might have often travelled.
‘Are you looking?’
Lord, this was the fifth time he had asked her that very question and she was running out of patience. She wondered why he had dismounted and was leading his steed, his feet almost in the left-hand ditch on the road. Feeling with his feet. For what? What did he search for? Why did he not just ride, fast in the direction they had been shown?
She knew the answer even as she mulled it over. It was past five minutes and if they had missed the trail…?
Suddenly an avenue of trees loomed up.
‘Here! It is here!’
He turned into the wind and waited.
‘Where? What do you see?’
‘Trees. In a row. Ten yards to the left.’
The stone was where the travellers had said it would be, but covered in snow it was barely visible, a marker that blended in with its background, alerting no one to the trail it guarded.
When Taris Wellingham’s feet came against it she saw the way he leant over, brushing the snow from the top in a strangely guarded motion, the tips of his fingers purple with the extreme and bitter cold. The stillness in him was dramatic, caught against the blowing trees and the moving landscape and the billowing swirls of his cloak. A man frozen in just this second of time, the hard planes of his face angled to the heavens as though in prayer.
Thank the Lord they had found the barn, Taris thought, and squinted against the cold, trying to see the vestige of a pathway, his eyes watering with the effort.
Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke’s teeth behind him chattered with an alarming loudness, though she had not spoken to him for the last few moments.
‘Are you able to make it to the barn?’ he asked, the concern in his voice mounting.
‘O…of c…c…course I c…c…can.’
‘If you need any help…?’
‘I sh…shan’t.’ Tears were close.
‘Are you always so prickly, Mrs Bassingstoke?’ Anger was easier to deal with than distress and with experience Taris had come to the realisation that a bit of annoyance gave women strength.
But this one was different, her silence punctuated now with sniffs, hidden he supposed by the muffled sound behind the thick velvet of her cloak.
A woman at the very end of her tether and who could blame her? She had not sat in the coach expecting others to save her or bemoaned the cold or the accident. She had not complained about the deceased passenger or made a fuss when she had had to vacate her seat to allow the driver some space. No, this woman was a lady who had risen to each difficulty with the fortitude of one well able to cope. Until now. Until an end was in sight, a warm barn with the hope of safety.
He had seen such things before in the war years in Europe, when soldiers after a battle had simply gone to pieces, the fact that they had remained unscathed whilst so many others had perished around them pushing them over the edge.
A place where Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke seemed to have reached.
He wished he could have scanned her face for a clue as to her state of well-being, but with only the near-silent sniffles he had little to go on.
How much further to go, he wondered, the snow deepening in the trail with every passing step, though an eddy in the wind against his face told him that a building must be near, the breeze passing over an edifice and rising.
His own awareness of the proximity of objects kicked in too, his cursed lack of sight honing other senses. Placing his hand against the solidness of wood, he thanked God for their deliverance and reached out for the bridle of his companion’s horse.
‘I will help you down.’
‘Th…thank y…you.’
Her hand came to his shoulder as he lifted his arms, fitting them around a waist that was worryingly thin. When he had her down she held on to him still, her fingers entwined in the cloth of his cape.
‘I c…can’t feel my f…feet,’ she explained when he tilted his head in question.
‘Then I’ll carry you.’ Hoisting her against him, he walked a few paces around the edge of the building, finding it open on the southern side, the horses following them in.
The smell of hay and silage was strong and another smell too. Chickens, he thought, listening for the tell-tale sound of scratching. Perhaps there might be eggs or grain here.
Taris liked the feeling of Beatrice-Maude’s breath against his collarbone, the warm shallowness of it a caress that surprised him. How old was this lady? When her hand rested against the smoothness of his skin, he felt a band of gold on the third finger of her left hand.
Worry engulfed him. Would her husband be mad with worry somewhere?
‘I c…can s…see that th…there are bl…blankets in the f…far corner, I th…think. Perhaps we c…could w…warm ourselves.’
Which corner? In the gloom of his vision Taris could detect nothing save the walls enclosing this space. Another thought heartened him. Perhaps if he let her down she might lead him to them.
When her feet touched the dirt floor Beatrice winced, the numbness now replaced by a pins-and-needles pain that made contact with anything unbearable. She could never in her whole life remember feeling this cold, the sheer pain of it seeping into her bones and making her heavy and sluggish. She almost crawled to the corner, glad to finally be off her feet; removing her boots, she burrowed into the warmth of a scratchy grey horse blanket.
But her clothes were wet and stiff and the cold that she thought might disappear suddenly increased with the change in circumstance.
Taris Wellingham at her side was peeling off his cloak, and the wet steamy shirt he had on followed it.
She looked away, her breath indrawn by the tone of muscle, the shaped contours attesting to the fact that he must spend much of his life out of doors.
‘Take your cloak off too,’ he said as he jumped under her blanket and heaped his cloak on top.
‘Wh…what are you d…doing?’ Panic lent a screeching sound to the query.
‘One