Chapter 7
The carriage was of a good size, but its leather was cracked, and an odor of beer and pickled herring hung in the air. The glass windows had rolled leather shades rather than the silk curtains of Lady Vetry’s traveling coach.
Clara climbed up to stand on the seat, steadying herself as it rocked out of the gate. Then she banged on the trapdoor in the ceiling. It shoved open.
“Is the castle near Glasgow?”
She heard the coachman snort even over the noise of a London street. “The castle’s in the Highlands. Past Inverness.”
Inverness? She’d never heard of it. “We’re stopping for luncheon!”
she shouted.
“No, we ain’t! You have a basket there with meat pies and other vittles.”
“I’ll buy your meal.”
The trap slammed shut, but Clara had the impression that she’d won that round. She pushed the trap open once again. “What’s your name?”
“Cobbledick.”
Cobbledick? This time she closed the trap rather than snicker while he might hear her. The coach sped up; presumably they’d turned into St. John Street, which turned into the North Road leading to Scotland.
Clara sat down before she fell over, suddenly realizing that her mother’s letter had been left behind with Hortense. She didn’t even have her great-aunt’s address.
If her employers in the castle fired her, she wouldn’t have anywhere to go.
She was alone.
After a pulse of fear, she took a deep breath. It was fine—and anyway, she might have found herself on her own whether she went to her great-aunt’s or not. Lady Vetry didn’t seem to have considered that an estranged, aged great-aunt may well be dead.
It was Clara’s very first adventure, and she refused to return home. She was lucky enough to have the dowry her father left her, and she simply had to keep reassuring herself that she could use her money to buy a castle. A very small castle.
To have an adventure, one had to risk everything. That was true in every novel she’d read, including the ones featuring evil fiends and malicious fairies.
With that thought, she slipped off her boots, took out her book, and wadded up her cloak to serve as a pillow.
Melliora, the heroine of Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Inquiry, went through far worse travails than traveling to Scotland on her own. The poor woman suffered through endless adventures, as when an evil rival invaded her bedroom and seduced her true love, Count D’Elmont—who thought he was bedding Melliora, of course.
Clara opened to the first page with a satisfied sigh. Was there anything better than reading a beloved novel for the eighth time? Or perhaps it was the fifteenth. Who cared how many times she had read it?
As the coach rumbled on, she munched happily on apples she found in the basket, forcing herself to concentrate by reading aloud every time Prince George and his grasping fingers came to mind.
Around noon, the carriage turned into a courtyard. Clara had no idea where they were—and she didn’t care, either. When the coachman opened the door, she handed him a farthing, which was surely more than his daily wage.
“Mr. Cobbledick, I’ll thank you to request a private room where I can relax for an hour or two, along with a warm meal for the two of us.”
He blinked, and she thought he was about to refuse. But then his fingers closed around the farthing, and he stamped away, returning a few minutes later to toss the mounting block at her feet.
Clara took his hand and stepped down. She refused to be so chicken-hearted as to fear adventure when it presented itself. All the same, if there was one thing she’d learned from Melliora’s many calamities—for example, when she was kidnapped from the convent where she’d taken refuge—it was that every heroine needed a protector.
Novelists introduced tall men with flashing, dark eyes, but one had to take what one could get, and all she had was an irascible coachman with an unusual mustache.
“You will join me for luncheon,”
she informed Mr. Cobbledick.
He scowled but followed her into a private parlor lit with a good fire. Clara took off her cloak, washed her hands at the basin, and sat down before the table. “I’ve never been anywhere without a maid in attendance.”
The coachman’s frown deepened.
“My maid didn’t care to travel in a hired coach,”
she said. “So I’m relying on you, Mr. Cobbledick, to keep me safe.”
“I’ve never heard of a housekeeper with a personal maid. It sounds as if you’re a proper lady,”
he said, standing uneasily in the middle of the room.
“I am,”
Clara said. “Or rather, I was. Now I’m a housekeeper.”
“I would never have laid hands on you.”
“It’s fine that you tossed me into the carriage,”
Clara reassured him. “Adventures always begin in a most astonishing way.”
He was twirling one side of his mustache, perhaps in a sign of nerves. “I can’t eat with the likes of you.”
“Yes, you can,”
she said, smiling at the innkeeper’s wife, who appeared with a heavy tray.
“Now you’re out of that cloak, I do see that you’re no servant.”
His eyes skated away from her bosom, even though her traveling dress was quite modest. Finally he agreed to sit down, but stayed on the far side of the room.
“I’m sorry that I delayed your departure.”
“I had to sleep on the box,”
the coachman said, jerking his head toward his carriage in the courtyard. “To make sure that me equipage wasn’t stolen. Several of us Scotsmen go back and forth to London, but none of us like to stay in the city. Terrible reek of coal smoke. I can’t abide it.”
“Do you have a wife and children?”
Clara asked as she took a hearty serving of stew, a small meat pie, a chicken leg, and some boiled spinach. “Come and get a plate of food. I can’t eat all this by myself.”
“Aye, I do.”
He came forward with as much enthusiasm as a man threatened with being hung, drawn, and quartered.
It took a good half hour, but she discovered that Mr. Cobbledick was a widower who’d had two wives and been graced with two girls, the youngest of whom was Clara’s age and had taken her first position as an upstairs maid in Inverness.
He spent his time going back and forth to London and had been irritable when she arrived because “Mrs. Potts”
was supposed to join him the day before.
“It took me longer to prepare for the journey than I thought,”
Clara said, crossing her fingers under the table.
“What of your husband? What’d he think of your moving to the Highlands?”
Mr. Cobbledick clearly smelled a rat.
Clara’s shudder came from the heart. “I had to flee, Mr. Cobbledick. That’s the truth of it. I couldn’t be treated like that any longer.”
She put her fork down, feeling suddenly sick.
“Ach, I’ve heard that about English men,”
the coachman said with a ferocious scowl. “You’ll be safe in the Highlands, lassie. A true Scotsman would never raise his hand to a woman.”
Clara managed a shaky smile. “I’ve heard that your Highlands are filled with fairies who’ll lure a person under a mound, and they find on return that the world’s aged a century or two.”
“Pshaw!”
he snorted. “You sound like me grandmother. I’ve lived in the Highlands all me life, and I ain’t met a single fairy, giant, nor a demon, either. Those are tales spun by those who fell asleep at their post, I’d say. Had to explain themselves, so they talk of fairies and the like.”
“You must be tired after such an uncomfortable night,”
Clara said sympathetically. “Do you want to take a nap before we leave? When we travel to Bath, our coachman always has a nap around midday. I know it’s not easy sitting on the box, with the dust kicking up in one’s face from all the traffic.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Cobbledick pounced on that. “You had a carriage. And now you’re to be a housekeeper?”
“It was my mother’s.”
That didn’t make things better, and finally the truth tumbled out.
“You’re fleeing the future king of England?”
Mr. Cobbledick’s eyes were wide. “I wouldn’t put it past an Englishman, but I would have thought better of them that wear ermine, if you see what I mean.”
“It’s more that I’m fleeing the scandal. No gentleman would want to marry me now, and my mother washed her hands of me.”
He started ferociously twirling his mustache. “I’ve never thought much of the English,”
he said gruffly.
“It’s not her fault,”
Clara said. “I have been a terrible disappointment.”
Mr. Cobbledick shook his head. “My sainted wife—”
“Which one?”
“Both of ’em. I am lucky that they were wonderful mothers. Be that as it may, now you’re trying to be a housekeeper?”
“I like to sew, and I was taught how to run a household.”
“Knowing the work and doing the work are two different things,”
he objected.
“Actually, I did learn how to do a few things. I know how to make potted mackerel,”
Clara countered. “Also orange fritters and Spanish onions. I know what a banister brush is and how to revive a carpet with oxgall. I can use a pudding boiler, darn a sheet, and keep a linen press. I’ve seen a wringing machine. How hard can it be to turn the crank?”
“Hard,”
Mr. Cobbledick said. “Mighty hard. Why did these people hire an Englishwoman from London rather than a good Scotswoman?”
Clara shrugged. “Perhaps the mistress of the castle is English and married a Scotsman. Now she’s widowed and lonely for someone from her homeland. I can read to her.”
“You have too much imagination for your own good,”
the coachman muttered.
“Have you tried this excellent ale? It’s one of the best I’ve had,”
Clara said.
In truth, it was the only ale she’d had, since people didn’t offer young ladies the beverage, but she definitely liked it.
After two tankards, Mr. Cobbledick cheered up, and they came to an agreement.
He would keep her safe and stop the coach two or three times each day, including once for luncheon and a nap. Every night he would find her a safe room at a decent inn, order a hot bath, and assign Fred, the postillion, to sleep outside her door.
“You and I will get along together very well,”
Clara said, smiling at him.
His mouth twitched into something like a smile, which felt like a triumph.