Bea was relieved in a sense to be away from the carriage and doing something, the wait almost worse in the extreme cold than this concerted push of energy, though her heartbeat rose with the fear of being swirled away by the wind and lost into greyness.
As if he could read her mind his hand reached out and clamped across her own, pulling her with him towards the horses, who were decidedly jumpy.
His fingers skimmed across the head of the big grey nearest to him, and down the side to the leather trace, hardened by ice.
‘You take this one.’
He held his hand out as a step, and she quickly mounted, abandoning propriety to ride astride. Gathering the reins in tight, she stepped the horse away from the tree. Her hat was a godsend, the wide brim gathering flakes and giving her some respite from the storm. She watched as Taris Wellingham gained his seat and turned the horse towards her, his cloak once again in place and the hat of the younger man jammed in a strange manner down across his ears.
‘We’ll ride south.’
Away from the direction they had come, which was a sensible choice given the lack of any buildings seen for miles.
Please, God, let there be a house or a barn or travellers who knew the way well. Please, please let us find a warm and safe place and men who could rescue the others. Her litany to an everpresent and omnipotent deity turned over and over, the echoes of other unanswered prayers she had offered up over the years slightly disturbing.
No, she should not think such thoughts, for only grateful vassals of the Lord would be listened to. Had not Frankwell told her that? Squinting her eyes against the driving snow, she lay low across the horse, the warmth of its skin giving her some respite from the cold and she kept her mind very carefully blank.
Quarter of an hour later she knew she could go no further. Everything was numb. Taris Wellingham on the horse beside her looked a lot less uncomfortable, though she knew him to have on fewer clothes than she did. A man used to the elements and its excesses, she supposed. A man who strode through his life with the certainty that only came with innate self-assurance. So unlike her!
When the shapes of two travellers on horses loomed out of the swirling whiteness she could barely believe them to be real.
‘There…in front of us…’ she shouted, pointing at them and amazed that Taris Wellingham had as not yet reacted to the sighting. The shout of the newcomers was heard and they waited in silence as the men came abreast.
‘The coach from Colchester is late. We have been sent to find it. Are you some of that party?’
‘We are, but it is a good fifteen minutes back,’ Taris shouted. ‘The wheel sheared away…’
‘And the passengers?’
‘One dead and two more lie inside with the driver, who is badly injured.’
The other man swore.
‘Fifteen minutes back, you say. We will have to take them over to Bob Winter’s place for the night, then, but that’s another twenty or so minutes from here and you look as if you may not be able to stand the journey.’
‘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