Chapter 20 #2
Her maunderings nearly made her miss her opportunity.
Gale excused himself and left, saying he needed to attend to a small matter, and she might wish to freshen herself before the solicitor arrived.
He was out the door before Lucasta could find the most freezing way to remind him that, having been borne off without her knowledge and against her will, she was quite lacking in even the barest of necessities.
The maid came to remove the covers and dropped a tray, creating a ruckus.
The enormous footman stepped away from the sideboard to lend his aid, and Lucasta lost full moments as she sat there, contemplating her confinement.
Her foundlings needed her. Cici needed her.
Her friends would be worried sick, and Jem…
Her heart clenched. Jem didn’t need her. But she, in some way she couldn’t yet define, needed him.
Even if she meant nothing to him, he had roused her heart to love and longings for things she had never thought possible for poor, plain Lucasta Lithwick. Like Pygmalion, he had shaped her, and his love had brought her alive. She wanted to tell him that before they parted for good.
Gathering her shattered wits, she rose, stepped quickly toward the door that opened to the gardens, and slipped out of it.
She was still wearing the silk slippers she’d chosen for Clara Bellwether’s party, and she lacked a wrap.
From somewhere a maid had produced a day gown, a simple open robe and a zone to wrap about her bodice, along with a cap to cover her hair.
Lucasta wondered who the previous owner of the clothing had been, and why Gale should have a woman’s frock in the current fashion to hand in one of his homes.
Now she cursed the vanity of that unknown woman who had insisted on a tight bodice and voluminous skirts, which tripped her as she rushed down the garden path.
Where, where could she go?
Stables. Gale had brought her in a carriage, and a carriage meant horses.
She could take a horse and ride away—she didn’t know where.
Anywhere. Safety. Jem. No, Jem wasn’t safety.
But she could at the least find her way back to the Pevensey house where, if they too meant to trap her into marriage, they at least had not reached the point of holding her prisoner to achieve it.
She stumbled her way to the stables, bruising her feet on the uneven ground and clutching her neckerchief about her to ward off the chill.
Then she stood frozen in the hay-strewn corridor of the dim building, blinking at the enormous animals that poked their heads over the half door of their stalls.
They were terrifying. She hadn’t done more than glance at the horses when she approached the carriage the evening before, but they were enormous in size, their backs taller than her shoulder.
How was she supposed to get herself atop one of these towering creatures?
How was she meant to control it when she did?
And what if the huge beast threw and crushed her, or worse yet, tried to eat her?
A boy with a grimy cap and the sleeves of his shirt rolled up to his elbows emerged from one of the stalls with a bucket in hand, then paused to gape at her.
“Miss?”
“I need a horse.” Lucasta eyed the one closest to her. The gigantic animal, its black eye large and dark, eyed her haughtily in return.
“Ter ride, or to ’itch to th’carriage?”
Lucasta gulped. “To ride.”
The boy looked her up and down and appeared as unimpressed by her as was the animal he’d been tending. “Dun ’ave a proper lady’s saddle, miss.”
She heard a shout from the direction of the house. Her escape had been discovered.
“I don’t require a saddle,” Lucasta said. “Only—how am I to get up there, please?”
The boy gestured toward the door she’d entered through. “Mounting block, miss, but you don’t mean to ride ole Heller bareback?”
Lucasta squeezed her eyes shut and said a quick prayer for strength. “I mean to ride him any way I must. Hurry!”
The boy led the horse out of his stall by his halter rope. “You ’as to wait, miss, so’s I kin get a proper bridle on ’im,” the boy said, clearly skeptical of Lucasta’s abilities.
It seemed that riding a horse was far more complicated, and far more dangerous, than Lucasta had ever imagined.
Oh, for a sedan chair, or a good pair of walking boots!
But did she set out on foot, she’d be overtaken in a moment by Frotheringale or one of his buffoons, and she had little doubt that all of them knew how to ride.
“Quickly!” she gasped.
The boy held the animal by its head as Lucasta mounted the block and faced the broad, muscular back.
It was covered with short dark hair and smelled feral.
Gritting her teeth, Lucasta clambered, after many efforts and in the most ungraceful manner possible, atop its enormous back.
The animal shifted and, stifling a shriek, she threw herself prone along the length of its back, clutching at the mane to hold herself atop it.
“All right! Let go!” she called to the boy.
“The bridle, miss!” he replied, astonished. “And I’m sure you want a saddle, then?”
A trio of men appeared on the path to the stable, running toward them. “Let go!” Lucasta shrieked. One of her flailing heels dug into the animal’s side.
The horse leapt forward with a power and speed Lucasta had never imagined possible.
She swallowed a scream of pure fear as her whole body jolted.
She squeezed her eyes shut again, but when she started sliding, she had to open them and clamp her legs on either side of the horse, uncaring of who saw her petticoats.
The jounce of the horse’s gallop jarred her teeth.
The trio of men fell back as the horse hurtled toward them, and a flare of triumph and relief soared through Lucasta as she shot by. She was free. She would ride to the nearest house she could find, call out for aid, find some way to transport herself back to London and safety and Jem and—
“Hi, Heller,” Gale called. “Whoa, boy! Whoa, Heller.”
One of the footmen flung himself into the horse’s path, and the animal reared.
Lucasta scrabbled for purchase as the world went vertical.
There followed an extraordinary weightless sensation, a feeling of being completely untethered, and an astonishing euphoria that washed through her even as her body froze end to end with fear.
She slammed into the ground, her head bouncing off the gravel, and the air left her lungs. A great weight fell onto her chest. She couldn’t breathe.
She was going to die here, die in this driveway, without ever hearing her foundlings perform, without ever telling Jem how much she loved him.
Dimly, as through water, her cousin’s face appeared above her. “Lucasta!” he exclaimed. “You could have killed yourself!”
I did, she tried croaking, but only her mouth moved, not her lungs. She tried sucking in air.
“Here now, that’s a high price for your freedom,” he scolded, bending toward her.
It isn’t, Lucasta wanted to say. Miss Gregoire’s girls fought until there was nothing left in them.
Then Gale bent to lift her from the ground, and she realized that she was not numb after all.
A pain she had never felt plowed through her body like a burning comet, and Lucasta Lithwick, who had never been delicate in her life, fainted in her cousin’s arms.