Isabella leaned close to her sister, murmuring in her ear, ‘At least we need not fear who this might be. The worst has happened, after all has it not? And really, it was not so bad. Was it?’
Audrey smiled, whispering back, ‘Not at all. But Lady Allingham really is entirely awful, is she not?’
‘Utterly dreadful!’
The front door closed heavily and two sets of footsteps approached. A lone traveller then, Audrey thought, looking towards the door expectantly. Unless it was a local, as Mama had suggested. Then surely they would head towards the taproom? But no, the parlor door opened and there was the landlord once again, smiling broadly.
‘Well now,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘Reckon it’s a bad day on the road all around. And here I was, thinking that we’d have a quiet few days till the snow cleared. Seems this poor gentleman has also gone and found himself in trouble as well. None of you good people mind if he takes a mite of your fire to warm himself, now do you? Tis perishing cold out there!’
They all looked with interest at the figure that was no more than a dark shape behind the landlord’s shoulder, the lighting in the hallway being no better than anywhere else in the inn and without the benefit of candlelight. They could see that the gentleman was tall but that was the extent of it until Mr. Fumble stepped back to allow the man access and they had a clear view of the new arrival.
For a long, incredulous moment Audrey thought she might be hallucinating, that her thoughts of him, never far away, had made this moment come about. But then his dark eyes met hers and the blood seemed to turn to ice in her veins.
Kirkwood…
She vaguely heard Allingham’s exclamation of shocked surprise. There seemed to be several voices that were speaking at once but Audrey could not hear them properly thanks to the strange buzzing sound in her ears. Her eyes were fixed on Kirkwood, who seemed to somehow make the room shrink into a much smaller space. In fact, his tall figure seemed to dominate her vision. Audrey stared at him, the sum of all of her mad reflections for the past four months making her wonder if this was some crazed trick her mind was playing on her, or if her eyes were truly telling her the truth; that Kirkwood was standing in the doorway, dark eyes boring into her.
The buzzing in her ears seemed to grow louder while the room grew a great deal smaller, shrinking in on itself, edges blurring away into ever growing shadows. She felt hot and cold and then she felt nothing at all as the shadows overtook all else.
Audrey slipped quietly from the room, or it slipped away from her, everything spinning into sudden darkness as the buzzing became a clamor and the world abruptly disappeared.
And then all went still.
Darius had been pleased to see the small inn appear not an hour after the snow had stopped. It had been falling ever since he had left the hostelry he had stayed in the night before and matters had not improved as he had continued on. Indeed, the flurries had grown so thick several times that he had been hard pressed to see the road before him. When it stopped it was a welcome relief, right enough, but the afternoon had rapidly turned into evening and from there into night and for the past few hours he had been travelling in darkness. He had no desire to fumble through snowdrifts, trying to find his way through unfamiliar territory and had been looking for a place to hold up until morning. By now, he wasn’t too fussy where that might prove to be, especially as it was icy cold. Instead of the moonlight one might reasonably expect when the skies had cleared, a mist permeated the air, seeming to rise off the snow itself. After so many hours on the road, all Darius wanted was a chair, a tankard of ale and a fire to stretch his boots out towards.
The soft glow of the light that had appeared up ahead was precisely what he needed, for his horse’s sake if nothing else. As soon as he drew closer he could see it was not one of the more prestigious inns that the gentry enjoyed frequenting but he could hardly be too particular under the circumstances. He was not familiar with Somerset and, whilst he knew he was heading towards his destination, Ilchester lying but fifteen miles behind him, he still wasn’t exactly sure how far it was to the village of Milton Styles. Somehow, he doubted he would stumble across it tonight. Better to leave it until the morning, if he didn’t change his mind and turn his horse’s nose back towards London. He was on a fool’s errand but then, he was behaving very much like a fool of late. As he continued on, he had ample opportunity to reflect that this damn journey was not going to plan – indeed, what had in the past few months? – and, that he would have been far better off if he had stayed in London.
The light of the inn was the first positive thing he had seen for some time and he leaned forward to slap his big bay gelding’s neck encouragingly. ‘Things are looking up, old boy. It appears that you will have a bed for the night after all.’
Horus whickered a reply that Darius suspected might be along the lines of, ‘About time!’ Under the circumstances he could hardly blame him.
It was a decent sized place, at least and he might reasonably expect a stall for Horus for the evening. He had considered knocking to see if there was a lad to assist him with his mount but instead, had discovered the stable himself, set back from the main building and already occupied by several horses. A young giant appeared from within the gloomy interior and stared at him as if he were an apparition, astonishment writ large upon his face.
‘Good evening,’ Darius observed easily. ‘I am after a stall and some fodder for my horse for the evening. Am I in luck? I can make it worth your while.’
The giant continued to stare at him for so long that Darius was beginning to wonder if he understood what he had said. Perhaps the boy was deaf? But then comprehension flowered and he started to nod slowly. ‘Aye.’
‘He’ll need rubbing down and a nosebag of oats, if you have them,’ Darius said, eyeing the boy. ‘Will you do that for him?’
‘Aye, we got oats, right enough,’ the young giant allowed, coming forward, his enormous feet kicking up small clouds of snow with every step. In his jacket and boots he looked like an ungainly colossus but he reached out to run his hand down Horus’ nose without any noticeable hesitation, which reassured Darius that the lad was far better with horses than he was with people, as was often the way of things with lads who chose such work. ‘Allus sort it.’
Undoing several buttons on his greatcoat, Darius reached into an inner pocket and found a coin. He offered it to the boy, who stared at it blankly. ‘For your trouble.’
The boy reached out a free hand and took it, squinting at the dull glint of copper for a moment, then carefully stowed it into an inner pocket of his own before he started to lead Horus towards the stable. Darius watched him disappear into the building before turning to trudge towards the front door. He hammered on it with enthusiasm, sick of being chilled to the bone and all at once craving the warmth of a fire.
He was not in the best of tempers and it had little to do with the miserable weather. His current circumstances and the thoughts that brought him to this sorry state of affairs only compounded a growing suspicion that he had lost his wits. He had grappled with this journey for weeks, calling himself all kinds of a fool before yielding to a compulsion he did not want even wish to acknowledge, never mind give in to. Suddenly, standing before the unprepossessing door of The Drunken Maiden, the whole situation seemed utterly absurd. What the devil was he doing, running around the countryside, trying to find succor for an ailment he could not name, let alone administer to? His uncharacteristic behavior over the past months was nothing more than an aberration and it was time he got over it. He would take shelter here for the night and then tomorrow, the weather being agreeable, he would head on back to London and the life he had been unable to settle into since returning to England in August. He would write to his old school friend who was expecting him to turn up over the next few days, apologizing for his non-appearance and then it would be over.