by Emily Larkin
Willie raised her voice to be heard over the drumming on the roof. “You can’t go out in that!”
Lieutenant Mayhew grinned, and shrugged. “It’s a warm rain,” he said, echoing her earlier words. “I’ll be as fast as I can. Half an hour at the most.” Then he plunged out into the deluge and was gone.
Willie opened the basket. The kittens blinked up at her. Did that loud roar of rain frighten them? She thought it probably did. “Hello, sweethearts,” she said. “Come and sit with me while we wait.”
Her gown was wet, but her shawl was still mostly dry, so she wadded it up and made a bed for the kittens on her lap and settled them there. Scout mewed up at her, but Mr. Bellyrub was silent. Willie petted them and murmured reassurances, “You’re safe, I promise,” and then she drew the damp green rifleman’s jacket snugly around them all. She couldn’t hear the kittens purring over the rain, but she felt it in the palm of her hand.
Gloaming was past, full night swiftly approaching. It was difficult to make out the interior of the barn—the piles of hay, the rusty implements, the abandoned buckets—but Willie wasn’t afraid. She’d only been acquainted with Lieutenant Mayhew for a few scant hours, but she knew that if he said he’d be back within half an hour, he would be. Until then, she’d sit and enjoy the kittens on her lap and the smell of Mayhew’s jacket and the noisy, turbulent drama of the storm. It reminded her of the humid, sultry storms she’d experienced in South America—
A figure loomed out of the semi-darkness. Willie started violently and let out a squeak of alarm—and then she recognized that grinning face. It was Lieutenant Mayhew. Water streamed off him.
“Your ride is here, m’ lady,” he said, with a flourishing bow.
“But you were gone barely two minutes!”
“Met a wagon in the lane.” Mayhew crouched and helped her swiftly return the kittens to the basket. Poor Mr. Bellyrub squeaked his displeasure at this change in circumstance—or at least, Willie thought he did. She saw a flash of white teeth as his mouth opened, but couldn’t hear anything over the rain. “Driver didn’t want to stop for us,” Mayhew said. “But I persuaded him to.” He stood and held out a hand to her.
Willie climbed to her feet. Her left ankle gave a sharp twinge of protest.
Mayhew swept her up in his arms and carried her out into the storm. Warm wind gusted and warm rain poured down. When they reached the lane, a shape materialized in the gloom: a horse and wagon. Willie saw to her relief that the wagon was covered.
Mayhew lifted her over the tailboard, deposited her carefully in the wagon, and disappeared into the gloom. He was back in less than a minute with the kittens and her reticule and half boot.
Willie heard him shout something to the driver. The wagon lurched into motion, and they were off. Mayhew scrambled up into the wagon, wet and panting. “We’ll be at Twyford in a few minutes, Miss Culpepper.” She thought he was grinning, but it was too dark to be certain.
Willie felt a pang of regret. Which was absurd. How could she possibly regret arriving in Twyford, where a bath and a soft bed awaited her, and a trunk filled with dry clothes?
Willie frowned to herself, and examined her emotions.
She was relieved to be reaching Twyford—but not nearly as much as she ought to be, considering how wet and filthy she was.
It appeared that she didn’t want this misadventure to end. If her father were still alive, he’d shake his head and laugh at her.
Willie did it for him: a shake of her head, a silent inner laugh. Idiot, she told herself. Be thankful for the clean clothes and dry bed you’ll soon have.
And she was grateful for those things, she was, it was just . . .
She would miss Lieutenant Mayhew, miss his smile and his warm, brown eyes and his sense of humor and his chivalry.
Willie sighed at her foolishness, and as she sighed, she heard a crash that was louder than the storm.
The wagon halted abruptly.
“What was that?” she said, alarmed.
“I’ll find out,” Mayhew said, jumping down from the wagon.
He disappeared into the storm. Rain drummed down on the canvas overhead. Willie heard shouted voices, and then Mayhew returned. “A tree’s come down across the road.”
“Thank heavens it didn’t fall on us!”
“Indeed.” His voice was slightly grim. “It’s an old oak, too big to move and we can’t go around it. I’m going to help turn the wagon. Hold tight.”
Willie nodded, but he was already gone. After a moment, the wagon began to move slowly backwards.
It took five minutes to turn the wagon, then Mayhew scrambled up alongside her again. “Where are we going?” Willie shouted over the roar of the storm.
“Morestead,” Mayhew shouted back. “We’ll see if we can find someone to take us in for the night.”
Willie nodded, although it was too dark for him to see it.
Three minutes later the wagon was back to the ford—where it halted again. Mayhew jumped down. Willie stayed where she was, clutching her reticule and the basket, listening to the rain beat on the canvas. She heard Mayhew shout something, heard the driver reply, and then Mayhew returned. “Too deep to cross. We’ll have to stay the night in the barn.”
“The barn?” Willie stared at his dark shape in dismay. Now that a dry bed and clean clothes were impossibilities, she discovered that she did rather want them.
“I’m very sorry, Miss Culpepper.”
Willie reminded herself that she was a soldier’s daughter. “It’s not your fault, Lieutenant,” she told him, as cheerfully as she was capable of. “We’re fortunate that there is a barn for us to stay in.”
Chapter Eight
The wagon driver was as big as a bear—and as surly as one. When Mayhew asked him to unhitch his horse and ride to Twyford for help, he refused. The horse was a massive beast, with powerful hindquarters and a great deal of feathering on its lower legs. A draft horse. Mayhew eyed that broad back. “Then let me and Miss Culpepper ride to Twyford,” he said. “We’ll stable your horse there overnight and I’ll bring him back in the morning.”
“Me ’orse ain’t goin’ nowhere,” the wagon driver growled. “No while there’s trees a-blowin’ down.”
Frustration flared in Mayhew’s chest, but he held his tongue. In his experience, losing one’s temper never helped a situation. He turned his attention to Miss Culpepper: lifting her down from the wagon, carrying her into the barn, carefully setting her on a pile of hay.
“At least the roof doesn’t leak,” she said, in the buoyant tone of someone determined to make the best of things. “And we have all this hay to sleep on. We’re really very lucky!”
Water trickled down Mayhew’s cheek and dripped off his nose and chin. He wiped his face and reminded himself that they were lucky: they could be lying squashed under an oak tree right now.
He mustered a smile, because even if it was too dark for Miss Culpepper to see it, she’d hear it in his voice. “We are indeed lucky,” he agreed. “I’ve slept in worse places in my time.” And it was true; he’d slept in far worse places while on campaign.
Come to think of it, Miss Culpepper probably had, too.
He fetched the kittens, then helped the driver maneuver his wagon out of the rain as much as was possible, and then, praise be, the man produced a lantern and lit it.
The barn became almost cozy in that flickering golden light.
The wagon driver unhitched his horse and set to work rubbing the beast down with handfuls of hay. After a moment, Mayhew joined him. They worked in silence, while the rain hurled itself at the barn and the lantern cast dancing shadows. Thank God it’s summer, Mayhew thought as he rubbed his way down the horse’s hind leg. Thank God it’s warm. The night was going to be uncomfortable, but if it had been winter and they were stranded here, soaked to the bone, it wouldn’t have been merely uncomfortable, it would have been dangerous.
There was no risk of anyone freezing to death tonight. If anything, he
was almost too warm.
He glanced across at Miss Culpepper. She’d removed her bonnet and gloves, but she still wore his jacket, so perhaps she was a little cold?
She didn’t look cold. Or miserable. Or in pain. She was smiling, dimples dancing in her cheeks, her attention on something in her lap. A kitten, he guessed.
Thank God her ankle isn’t broken, Mayhew thought, and then: Thank God she’s who she is. Thank God she’s taking this all in her stride.
In fact, there were a great many things to be thankful for tonight—the most important being that the oak tree hadn’t fallen on them.
He crouched down to rub the long, wet hair that feathered the horse’s lower leg, then stood and wiped his sweaty brow. “Done?” he asked the wagon driver.
The driver grunted and turned away, heading for his wagon.
Had the man no manners at all? Mayhew huffed out a soundless laugh and tossed away his handful of hay. He crossed to Miss Culpepper and crouched. “How’s your ankle?”
She looked up at him and smiled, and despite the damp, bedraggled ringlets he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. “It doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t move it.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
Mr. Bellyrub was curled up in Miss Culpepper’s lap, his eyes half closed, an expression of blissful contentment on his tiny face. Of his sister, there was no sign.
“Where’s Scout?”
“Doing what she does best,” Miss Culpepper said. She pointed, and he spied Scout investigating one corner of the barn, where a rusted hoe and several battered buckets lay discarded. “You were right; she ought to be a reconnaissance officer. She’s absolutely fearless.”
The driver had been rummaging in the back of his wagon; now, he returned with a rough woolen blanket, which he laid over his horse’s broad back.
“Do you have another one of those?” Mayhew asked.
The man scowled at him, and produced a second blanket, which he handed over so grudgingly that Mayhew was hard put not to laugh. “Thank you,” he said, and shook it out.
The blanket smelled strongly of horse, but it was thick and warm and dry. Mayhew placed it carefully around Miss Culpepper’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” she said, and then she pointed and said, “Look.”
The wagon driver turned to look. So did Mayhew. He watched, incredulous, as Scout approached the draft horse. Her tail was high and her ears were pricked. She looked alert and inquisitive and wary. The horse saw her and pricked its ears, too, and dipped its great head for a closer look. Scout froze, every hair on her body bristling with cautious curiosity.
Their noses touched. Kitten and horse sniffed one another.
Scout stopped bristling.
The great horse nudged Scout gently, knocking her over.
Scout scrambled upright. She didn’t retreat; instead, she frisked around the horse’s front hooves, discovered the long feathering hairs, and reached out a daring paw and patted, as if those hairs were playthings.
Mayhew hastily retrieved her. The horse’s hooves were far larger than Scout was. One misstep and the kitten would be dead.
Miss Culpepper was smiling. So was the wagon driver, although he scowled and turned away as soon as Mayhew caught his eye.
Mayhew deposited Scout on Miss Culpepper’s lap. “Best keep her close. I’d hate for her to be squashed.”
Scout wanted to continuing exploring, but Miss Culpepper distracted her with a long strand of hay. Soon the kitten was leaping and pouncing. Mr. Bellyrub joined in and they had a grand game. Miss Culpepper was laughing, and Mayhew was laughing, and he was pretty certain that the kittens were laughing, too, as they dashed around in the hay.
He didn’t think the wagon driver was laughing, although he couldn’t be certain because the man had his back to them. Mayhew kept an eye on him, watching as he gave his horse two armfuls of hay, then picked up one of the discarded buckets and went outside to fill it with water.
He lowered his voice: “Miss Culpepper, I promise I won’t leave you alone with him for so much as one second.”
“I don’t think he’s dangerous,” she whispered back. “Just ill-tempered.”
That was Mayhew’s assessment, too, but he wasn’t going to take the risk.
The driver returned and set the bucket in front of his horse. Then, he clambered up into his wagon. A minute later he emerged and crossed to where Mayhew and Miss Culpepper sat. “Here,” he said brusquely, holding something out. “For the tibbies.”
Mayhew held out his hand—and received a small piece of cheese. He blinked at it, too astonished to speak.
“Thank you,” Miss Culpepper said.
The driver grunted and turned away.
Miss Culpepper’s lips twitched, as if she found the man’s complete lack of manners amusing.
Mayhew broke the cheese into crumbs and laid it down for the kittens. Mr. Bellyrub found it first, his little nose twitching. Soon both kittens were eating ravenously.
He glanced at Miss Culpepper. She was biting her lip. Her dimples were deep. She looked as if she was trying not to laugh.
“What?” Mayhew asked her.
She leaned close and said in an undertone, “He fed the animals, but not us,” and then she went into a peal of laughter.
Her laughter was contagious. Mayhew had to laugh, too, because it really was damned funny, but when he’d stopped laughing he climbed to his feet and went across to where the wagon driver was gathering a pile of hay, presumably for his bed.
“Do you have any more food?” he asked. “We’ll pay you for it.”
The man scowled, and grudgingly produced more cheese and some coarse bread.
“Thank you,” Mayhew said. “What’s your name? Mine’s Mayhew, and my companion is Miss Culpepper.”
“Williams,” the man said gruffly.
With anyone else, Mayhew would have commented that his given name was William, and Miss Culpepper’s was Willemina, and what were the odds of all three of them having variations on the same name? With this man, he didn’t bother. He simply returned to where Miss Culpepper sat and offered his spoils.
“Excellent!” she said.
They ate their meal while the wagon driver finished assembling his bed. Mayhew didn’t fail to notice that the man had chosen to sleep as far from them as was possible. Had he done that out of misanthropy? Or courtesy to Miss Culpepper?
He decided it didn’t matter what the man’s reason was. Even if the wagon driver had located his bed with Miss Culpepper’s sensibilities in mind, there was no way in Hades that he was going to leave her alone with the man for twenty seconds, let alone the twenty minutes it would take to run in to Twyford and bring a horse back—always supposing he could find his way there and back in the dark and that he could get a horse past that fallen tree.
They were only half a mile from Twyford, but they might as well be on the moon for all the likelihood they had of reaching the coaching inn tonight. His most pressing concern at this moment—his only concern—was to keep Miss Culpepper safe.
Mr. Bellyrub climbed into Miss Culpepper’s lap again. Mayhew watched her stroke the kitten. Lord, but she looked beautiful, the lantern light playing softly over her face. She looked happy, too. As happy as Mr. Bellyrub was right at this moment—which was exceedingly happy. Despite the storm, despite her wet clothing, despite her sprained ankle, despite the series of catastrophes that had befallen them today, she glowed with contentment. If she were a cat, she’d be purring right now.
She’s remarkable, Mayhew thought. Quite remarkable. And then he shook that thought out of his head. He wasn’t in this barn to make sheep’s eyes at Miss Culpepper; he was here to keep her safe. And if he could make her laugh while doing so, so much the better.
To that end, he said, in a mock-lugubrious tone, “Has it occurred to you, Miss Culpepper, that we’re doomed never to reach Twyford?”
She glanced sideways at him, still stroking Mr. Bellyrub. A dimple a
ppeared in her cheek. “Doomed?”
“Doooomed,” Mayhew repeated, drawing out the word.
Her lips twitched into a smile. “We are not doomed,” she told him. “This is merely another kitten-astrophe.”
Mayhew leaned back on one elbow in the hay and smirked. “I knew you liked that pun.”
“It’s a dreadful pun.”
“Dreadful?”
“Monstrously dreadful. Prodigiously dreadful.”
He laughed. “Please, don’t spare my feelings.”
Miss Culpepper rolled her eyes at him. He could tell from her dimples that she was struggling not to smile.
Mayhew laughed again. And then he stopped laughing. This felt dangerously like flirting, and he couldn’t flirt with Miss Culpepper. Not under circumstances like this. Not when she was injured and dependent on his protection. Only a cad would do that, and he was not a cad.
Scout climbed up on his damp knee, her claws digging into his green pantaloons. Mayhew winced and carefully detached her. He sat up again, laid some hay on his lap, and let her settle there. She turned around three times, curled up in a tight ball, and closed her eyes.
Mayhew cupped a hand over her and felt the warm vibration of her purr. He glanced at Miss Culpepper. No flirting, he reminded himself. “How’s your ankle?”
“Not bad at all.”
“Are you warm enough?”
“Yes. Are you?”
He was. Wet, but warm. He cast about for a subject. “Where else have you been, Miss Culpepper, other than South America and Constantinople and Russia?”
Her face lit up. “We were in Egypt for four years. I was only a girl, but I still remember it.”
They talked about Egypt, and briefly about South Africa, where Miss Culpepper’s mother had died of a fever, and then she told him about Kingston upon Thames, the village outside London where her aunt lived, and where she’d spent the past year.
“You don’t like it there,” Mayhew said, when she’d finished.