Muriel stared at the Weasel, and then elbowed her husband. “Say something,” she hissed again.
It was too late. The coach had lurched into motion.
And the young mother’s cloak started wailing.
The reverend jerked his eyes off his Bible, a mixture of alarm and disbelief in his expression, and scowled down at her. “Good Lord, woman, what have you got there?”
“That’s my sister, Grace,” the boy said, as his mother uncovered a very small, very young infant. “She’s a baby.”
The clergyman snorted all too expressively—he obviously thought “Grace” a vastly inappropriate name—and transferred his scowl to the boy, who bravely raised his chin and held his ground unflinching.
Meanwhile, the mother was trying to soothe the baby in the limited space she had. “Shh.” She jiggled the infant. “Shh.”
“Grace is only four weeks old.” The boy’s young, clear voice dropped each word like a pebble into a still pond, sending ripples of consternation through the coach’s other occupants.
The mother, clearly all too aware of the disapproval building in the confined space, leaned closer to whisper to her son. “Hush, Edward. Don’t bother the people.” Then she shifted her arm with the infant closer to the stagecoach wall, trying to make more room for her son on her lap.
The poor woman. It was bad enough she was traveling in a snowstorm, on the public stagecoach, with a young boy and a baby only a month after giving birth. She didn’t need to feel alone and judged by everyone around her.
“Here, let me hold the baby for you,” Caro said.
The woman hesitated, clearly nervous about entrusting her precious child to a stranger.
“Don’t worry. I’ve lots of experience.”
Caro was the fifth of eleven children and the only daughter. Her poor, beleaguered mother had put her to work tending her siblings as soon as she was old enough to rock a cradle. And then when she was seventeen, she’d gone to London to work as a nursemaid—
No. She shoved those memories back into the box she’d made for them and slammed down the lid.
Baby Grace let out a thin wail, and her mother gave in.
“Thank you,” she said softly. She leaned forward, and Caro scooped the small bundle out of the crook of her arm. “Careful with her head.”
Caro nodded, wondering again what would force a new mother out into the snow just before Christmas.
Ah. The moment she felt the baby’s warm weight—the mite couldn’t be even as heavy as a tankard of ale—Caro’s hands remembered how to hold such a young child. She settled the baby against her shoulder, patting her and humming, feeling a surprising calm flow through her as she soothed little Grace back to sleep.
Women needed to band together to support one another. That’s what they did—most of the time—at the Home. Caro looked at Grace’s mother. Did she need the Home’s refuge? Caro could—
No, unfortunately she wouldn’t. Space at the Home was very limited. There wasn’t room for two separate dormitories for boys and girls. Jo had made the decision early on that they couldn’t take in mothers with sons past babyhood.
If there were only Grace, the Home’s doors would be wide open. But there was also Edward.
An uneasy silence had settled over the coach—no one wanted to be trapped in a small space with a howling infant—but once it became clear Grace was going back to sleep, everyone seemed to relax. The clergyman went back to his Bible; the Weasel and Muriel looked out the window on their side of the coach. Humphrey—perhaps afraid he’d jostle the baby awake—slid his bulk away from Caro as best he could. The young mother and her son fell into what must have been an exhausted sleep.
Caro shifted the baby slightly, patting her bottom when she whimpered. The snow was still coming down, but so far, the coach was moving along, thank God. Perhaps she would reach Marbridge in time to catch the one coach that would take her on to Little Puddledon.
And then Grace started making little snuffling, hungry noises.
Oh, blast. How could Grace’s mother nurse a baby in this cramped carriage of disapproving men? But there was no arguing with a hungry infant. Grace was going to start screaming soon unless . . .
Perhaps a trick Caro had learned tending her siblings could buy them some time.
She gave Grace the knuckle of her pinkie to suck on.
Ah. She’d forgotten how surprisingly strong and rhythmic an infant’s sucking was. The sensation made her feel . . . odd. Almost as if she wished she had a baby herself.
Nonsense! What she really wished for was a miracle, that she could keep Grace content until they got to Marb—
“Tallyho!”
The coach suddenly picked up speed amid a storm of shouting and cursing from the roof.
Oh, hell. The drunken bucks must have taken the coachman’s reins.
Caro tightened her hold on the baby.
“Humphrey!” Muriel screamed. “Make them stop.”
“Good God, woman, how am I supposed to do that? I’m stuck in here with you.”
The Weasel was swearing quite creatively, and even the reverend addressed the Lord in less than polite terms as they careened down the road.
“Wh-what’s happening, Mama?”
The young mother hugged her son. “I think the men riding on top have taken over driving the c-coach, Edward.” She tried to speak calmly, but Caro heard the slight quaver in her voice.
Muriel didn’t even try to mask her alarm. She grabbed her husband’s arm and screeched, “Lord help us, we are going to end in a ditch!”
“H-hold on to me, Edward.” The mother’s eyes, tight with desperation and entreaty, went to Caro.
“I’ve got Grace.” Caro gripped the baby as securely as she could and braced herself against the coach wall. She was not much for praying—she’d found relying on herself rather than a distant and inscrutable Deity usually served her best—but nevertheless she sent a quick, sincere entreaty to the Almighty in case He was listening.
She’d no sooner formed a mental “amen” than the coach started to slide. Everyone except Caro and, blessedly, the baby screamed. Caro was too busy trying to curl her body around Grace’s. If the coach landed on its side, it was going to be very hard to keep the baby safe.
The slide seemed to go on forever, and then finally there was a jolt, a shudder, and the coach stopped, still upright.
And then the floor dropped a foot, eliciting more screams and curses.
“What was that, Humphrey?” Muriel squeaked.
The Weasel answered instead. “Feels like the axle broke. Looks like we ain’t getting to Marbridge today.” He glanced at the clergyman and nodded at his Bible. “But at least we needn’t be afeard since the Lord is traveling with us, eh, Reverend?”
The clergyman scowled. “You are offensive, sirrah!”
“I’m cold and hungry, and now I’m stranded in the snow who knows where.” The Weasel shrugged. “I’ll probably freeze to death, so I suppose I can lodge a complaint with yer God all too soon.”
Muriel shrieked.
“Hold yer tongue,” Humphrey told the Weasel sharply.
Yes, indeed. Didn’t any of these idiots give a thought to the boy? He was looking up at his mother, eyes wide, face pale. “We’ll be all right, won’t we, Mama?”
His mother forced a tense smile and smoothed back his hair. “Aye, Edward. As long as we’re together, we’ll be all r-right.”
That was all very well, but the truth was they had to get out of this cold, particularly poor little Grace. Sitting around moaning and arguing wasn’t going to accomplish that goal. Someone needed to have a word with the coachman.
Obviously, that someone was Caro.
Caro pushed the carriage door open and looked out. The axle had indeed broken; the ground was well within reach. “I’ll be right back,” she told Grace’s mother. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep Grace warm.”
The mother, holding her son tightly and looking wan and defeated, nodded weak
ly.
Caro climbed out, pulled her cloak snugly around the baby, and approached the coachman, who was trying, along with the two bucks, to unhitch the horses. They were not having a great deal of success.
“Sir, I need a word with you, if you please.”
The coachman glanced at her and then went back to his work. “Get back inside the coach, madam. One of these men”—he glared at the miscreants who had put them in this position—“is going to ride on to the next stop and bring back help as soon as we can get a horse free.”
She eyed the blackguards. At least the accident seemed to have sobered them up. “And how long will that take?”
The coachman scowled at her. “Likely an hour or more.”
She shook her head. “Too long. It’s far too cold for the children to wait here. The baby, especially, needs to get inside by a fire immediately.”
The coachman’s brows shot up. “Baby?! Where the bloody—that is, pardon me language, madam, but . . . a baby?”
“She was under her mother’s cloak when they got on at the Crow. She’s only a few weeks old and needs to be warm by a fire immediately.”
The coachman looked annoyed—and desperate and helpless, too. “How are ye going to manage that, may I ask? These idiots can’t sprout wings and fly, ye know.”
“I know that.” What was she going to do?
She looked around at the snow-covered landscape, the fat flakes falling thickly around her. There was a break in the stone wall nearby and what appeared to be a snow-covered drive leading to a faint glow. . . .
“What’s that light over there?”
The coachman looked in the direction she was pointing. “Oh, Lord Devil must be at home. Ye don’t want to go anywhere near him.”
Lord Devil?
An odd jolt of nervous excitement shot through her, a mix of dread and eagerness akin to what she felt when she was getting ready to meet a tavern keeper for the first time in the hopes of selling him some Widow’s Brew. That must be Nick. . . .
No! What was the matter with her? She’d thought herself cured of any sort of romantic foolishness. She’d not seen Nick—if this was indeed Nick—for . . . She did a rapid calculation.
For seventeen years. She’d been thirteen, a naïve child, the last time he’d come home from school with her brother Henry. Her feelings for Nick then had been puppy love. He’d been the only one of her brothers’ friends who hadn’t ignored or teased her.
That was all this odd feeling was—a faint echo of her old hero worship.
“You mean the new Lord Oakland?”
“Aye.”
She wasn’t afraid of Nick. “Well, if he has a warm fire, I most certainly do wish to go near him. Even a devil wouldn’t turn away a tiny baby.” And certainly not the Nick she’d known.
It’s been seventeen years. People change.
Yes, they did. But Nick couldn’t have changed that much.
“I wouldn’t be so certain,” the coachman said, but she’d already turned away. There was no time to waste.
She stuck her head back into the coach briefly to address Grace’s mother. “There’s a house nearby. I’m taking Grace there and will send back help.”
The woman frowned but must have concluded that the sooner Grace got inside, the better, because she nodded. “All right. Do hurry.”
“And close the blasted door,” the clergyman snapped. “Do you want us all to freeze?”
Muriel moaned, Humphrey glared at her, and even the Weasel’s look was annoyed rather than amorous.
“Right.” Caro pushed the door closed and started through the snow toward the house.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native of Washington, DC, Sally MacKenzie still lives in suburban Maryland with her transplanted upstate New Yorker husband. She’s written federal regulations, school newsletters, auction programs, class plays, and swim league guidance, but it wasn’t until the first of her four sons headed off to college that she tried her hand at romance. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected] or by snail mail at PO Box 10466, Rockville, MD 20849.
Please visit her home in cyberspace at
www.sallymackenzie.net.
Is there life–and love-after scandal?
WHAT ALES THE EARL
The Widow’s Brew Series
Scandal does not define the “fallen” ladies of
Puddledon Manor’s Benevolent Home.
Instead, it’s a recipe for an intoxicating new future as the women combine their talents—to operate their own brewery and alehouse . . .
When Penelope Barnes arrived at the Home with her young daughter, she discovered a knack for horticulture—and for cultivating the hops needed to produce a superlative pint. She put her scandalous affair with Harry Graham firmly in the past, along with the wrenching pain she felt when he went off to war. After all, she’d always known a farmer’s daughter had no future with an earl’s son.
Now she has the pleasant memory of their passion, and she has little Harriet, for whom she would do anything—even marry a boring country vicar . . .
Harry went off to fight for the Crown unaware
that his delightful interlude with his childhood friend
had permanent consequences.
Now he’s back in England, catapulted into the title by his
brother’s untimely death. He sorely misses his former life
of unfettered adventure, so when he has reason to
explore Little Puddledon, he jumps at the chance.
But what he finds there is something—and someone—
he never knew he’d lost, and a once forbidden love
whose time has come, if only he can persuade Pen
he’s home to stay . . .
WHAT TO DO WITH A DUKE
The Spinster House Series
Welcome to the charming, fatefully named village of
Loves Bridge, where a woman destined
for spinsterhood can live a life of her own choosing—or
fall unexpectedly, madly in love . . .
Miss Isabelle Catherine Hutting would rather be
lounging in the library than circling the ballroom in
search of a husband any day. So when Cat hears that
the town’s infamous Spinster House is open for a new
resident, she jumps at the chance to put all this marriage
business behind her. But first she must make
arrangements with her prospective landlord, Marcus, the
duke of Hart—the most handsome man she’s ever seen
and the only man who’s ever impressed her in the least . . .
With her wit, independent spirit, and great beauty,
Marcus can’t help but be stirred by Cat. It’s terribly
unfortunate that he’s not looking to marry, given the
centuries-old curse that left his family with the Spinster
House to begin with. No duke shall live to see his heir’s
birth. But is there a chance the curse could be broken—
in true fairy-tale fashion—by an act of true love?
The race to Happily Ever After is about to begin . . .
BEDDING LORD NED
The Duchess of Love Series
PLEASURE IS ON HER DANCE CARD
Determined to find a husband, Miss Eleanor
“Ellie” Bowman attends a ball put on by the Duchess
of Greycliffe, fondly referred to as the Duchess of Love.
But she roundly dismisses the suitors the matchmaking
hostess has invited on her behalf.
For it’s the duchess’s dashing son Ned, Lord Edward,
who long ago captured Ellie’s heart—
and roused her desire. All it takes is a pair of
conveniently misplaced silky red bloomers
to set the handsome widower’s gaze on this unusual
girl who is clearly more than meets the eye . . .
After four years of mourning, Ne
d must find a wife.
At first glance, the birthday ball his mother has thrown
in his honor is decidedly lacking in suitable mistresses.
But he senses something unexpectedly alluring
beneath the veil of Ellie’s plain exterior—
and suddenly she’s invading his dreams
in a decidedly scandalous manner . . .
Cheers to the Duke Page 27