4. Chapter 4- Lily #2
Reaching Blyth was the most important thing—the essential thing.
She couldn’t go back, even as she longed for a bowl of Cook’s beef stew.
Besides, if Claire’s letter was right, if William truly did have more money than Croesus, he was already planning on buying Lily new gowns.
He wouldn’t begrudge her leaving these outdated brocade dresses behind, especially since abandoning them was her only hope of escape.
Lily had to reach Blyth. She would. Beatrice would encourage her to state it as a fact, not an optional possibility.
I will reach Blyth by morning. Even if it takes me all night.
Thus bolstered by her borrowed determination, Lily set off into the night.
It had been a wise decision to change gowns; she might have frozen through if she hadn’t. Even though the landscape between Stannington and Bedlington was far easier to traverse than the previous seven miles of muck and woodland had been, it was still slow going.
She wished she knew for certain that Lord Hayes had returned to Ballam Hall. He’d turned left upon the road and stated he would double-back and return home; she’d gone up and over the road and continued east toward the coast. Their paths shouldn’t intersect.
Still, Lily carefully traversed the rolling farmland and avoided all roads, just in case Lord Hayes hadn’t followed the route he said he would.
Just in case news of the bounty upon her head had reached the villages ahead of her already.
It would be the topic of much gossip, she knew—a nobleman hunting down his former governess.
Why, the townspeople probably thought she’d made off with the silver!
Lily huffed through her nose at the thought, fog from her wry amusement hanging briefly before her in the cold air.
She plodded on for hours, skirting fields when possible and trudging up rows of whispering wheat when it wasn’t.
When she finally reached Bedlington, she scrambled up the slippery embankment and chanced the road.
She kept to the edges in case she heard hoofbeats, and considered herself lucky that she was passed only once, by a lone man driving a buggy—a country doctor, by the look of the dark leather case tucked near his feet.
Thankfully, the man’s attention was pointed in the same direction as his horse.
Whatever grim business had called him from his hearth was enough distraction to keep him from noticing Lily, who was only half hidden by some sparse shrubbery.
Thus, even with darkness keeping her movements slow, Lily arrived at the outskirts of the seaside town of Blyth just after eleven o’clock at night.
Not that she knew what time it was, precisely.
But there was a rhythm to every city that whispered the hour, even if one didn’t have a timepiece on their person.
The port town was mostly dark. Shuttered rows of silent buildings squatted in the brine-scented mist feathering in from the docks. The only sounds were the muted banging of a piano and boisterous laughter that erratically spilled from the door of a tavern further toward the water.
Lily hoped that the Cask and Crowne wasn’t a similarly rowdy establishment as she walked quickly down the center of another street.
Her stride was purposeful, as if she knew precisely where she was going, even though this was the third road she’d searched.
She’d started in the center of town and worked her way outward.
She prayed she needn’t get any closer to the docks before she found the inn.
Just as she started to despair that this was not the correct street either, there it was—a handsome stone-and-timber building seated on the corner of an intersection. The elegant signage proclaimed the place as the Cask and Crowne Inn.
Lily was grateful the establishment was of a much finer make than a dockside tavern, but the two windows facing the empty street were shuttered against the night.
While it would have been dangerous for a young single lady to enter a tavern, now Lily was forced to knock upon the door of an establishment that was obviously closed and hope someone would answer.
Lily thought of Beatrice’s determination and Claire’s practicality once more.
What—would you rather sleep in the doorway than wake the innkeeper? Claire’s voice said in her mind, with a mocking lilt.
You said you were going to make it to the Cask and Crowne before morning. Are you going to let knocking on the door stop you? Beatrice added.
Lily took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
It was much how knocking on Lord Hayes’s door had gone all those hours ago—the first knock too quiet, the next one a great thump, and the third one like a normal human being.
Lily hiccuped with the sudden urge to dissolve into hysterical laughter.
She paused for several moments, listening, then knocked again.
It’s the exhaustion, she thought. That was why she was half-snorting her amusement outside a closed inn in the dead of night. It was only after she’d knocked the third time that she noticed the chain of the bell hanging through a tiny hole in the door.
Lily winced even as she gave the chain a sharp tug. Still, she reasoned, they wouldn’t have installed a bell if they didn’t want customers to ring it.
It took four pulls of the bell interspersed with waiting before Lily heard some sort of ruckus behind the door.
“Heaven help me, if it’s the miller’s boy again—” The door was yanked open, and Lily was treated to a view of a sleepy middle-aged couple wrapped tightly in their nightrobes.
The woman was short and stout, and the man had a long face and droopy eyes that reminded Lily strongly of a donkey. Both parties blinked at each other for several moments, until Lily caught her manners.
“Begging your pardon,” she said. “Do you have any rooms available?”
The woman’s face creased into a frown even as she pointedly looked Lily up and down. “It’s late.”
Lily self-consciously smoothed her hair and was mortified to find a leaf; she plucked it out as subtly as possible. “Yes. My apologies. I’m supposed to meet someone here in the morning, you see. One of your guests? Mr. Abeer?”
“This is very untoward,” the woman snapped. She turned to her husband, the rag curls tied into her hair bobbing with the motion. “I told you we shouldn’t have let to a foreigner. Now look what we get for our trouble—strange women ringing the bell at all hours of the night.”
“Quiet, Mildred,” he hissed. “I will handle this.” He looked Lily up and down, taking in her damp and dirty hem, her eyes filling with tears. “Now, dear, are you sure you want to be calling on that man in the dark of night?”
“No luggage, neither—don’t think I didn’t notice,” Mildred sniped from behind him.
“No, sir,” Lily answered honestly. “I wouldn’t dream of waking him.”
“Not that you showed the same consideration to us,” Mildred grumbled, crossing her thick arms.
Lily focused on the man, as he was far friendlier. “I was hoping to rent a room and meet him in the morning, as we’d planned.”
“You want to rent a room?” Mildred jutted her head, her beady eyes taking Beatrice’s measure again. “And who will be joining you in said room?”
Lily was so offended at the implication that she took a half-step back, her eyes wide.
Mildred turned to her husband. “Mark my words, if you rent to her, that bell will be ringing every half hour?—”
“Stop, Mildred,” he fairly bellowed.
Mildred’s mouth pinched with shock; her eyes bugged at her husband.
“There’s no one else,” Lily hurried to say. “And I can pay. I…I lost my luggage, you see. It’s been a very difficult journey.”