Chapter Thirty-Eight
The journey took every bit of two weeks, and they were perhaps the single most exhausting fourteen days of Della’s entire life.
Her constitution was weak, her bones weary, and her joints unimaginably stiff.
Still though, her spirits remained oddly high.
She had indeed left all of her melancholy behind at Westfield Manor, and she enjoyed the lively conversations and unpredictable antics of traveling with the household that had become her family.
Somehow, they’d made a game of passing along a single, lonely spoon among them.
They’d been just about to leave in their enormous parade of carriages when Mrs. Goldsmith nearly tripped over herself to run back into the house for a forgotten spoon.
It was a favorite of hers, apparently, and she had no place to put it since the trunks were all already packed.
So, she sat with it in her lap for the first day of their journey.
Gwendoline took it, placing it in Harry’s seat when they left the coaching inn the next morning.
Harry, of course, passed it on to Clara, who managed to tuck it into the side of one of Silas’s boots.
He’d felt the cold metal through his socks and nearly jumped out of his skin.
It gave Clara quite the thrill, until Silas convinced Harry to drop the spoon down the back of her gown.
It was all unbelievably silly, but it was something to pass the time.
While Della had thought the traveling monotonous and never-ending, she did enjoy how everything seemed so exciting to everyone else.
They rotated who rode in each carriage, and no matter who she was with, Della watched as they observed wide open fields of wildflowers and huge, sloping hills.
Taller trees than they’d ever seen and wildlife none of them could identify.
Harry had become obsessed with pinpointing the crest on each carriage they passed.
Silas had to be retrieved from the stables each morning, as he much preferred spending his time with the horses.
Mrs. Goldsmith always seemed to disappear into the kitchens of each coaching inn, whether she’d been invited to or not.
Gwendoline spoke fervently about the gowns everyone wore.
She wouldn’t go up to people and speak, as many others did in the common rooms at the inns, but she’d whisper about them to Della or Clara like the worst gossip on the traveling road.
Though her gossip was usually complimentary.
Gwendoline had been so inspired that Della knew she’d have them all dressed in the newest finery within weeks.
Where Gwen was shy and wouldn’t approach a soul, Clara spoke to everyone.
At the start, Della had counted the people she watched Clara converse with, but she’d abandoned the effort during a particularly crowded dinner just outside of the border of Scotland.
They’d told stories and shared laughs. There were late nights and early mornings, quick stops in the middle of nowhere to roam about and stretch their legs.
Della had never considered how an arduous journey like this, especially one that was a source of excitement for so many, could bond them together so deeply.
They’d started along this road as a band of misfits, a group of people who were less than favorable in the eyes of society.
Each had no other place in the world, and that sense of listlessness was exactly what brought them there.
Now, more than ever, they were family. Della felt that deep down in her aching bones.
As they neared Kinloss, the energy in the carriage began to stir into something exhilarating.
Della had only felt this sense of impending joy before in anticipation of one of Andrew’s letters.
Perhaps that’s what this was, then, a sign of desperately wanted correspondence.
She didn’t want to get her hopes up, though.
While she looked forward to her new life with her new family at Kinloss, she had to imagine it without him.
Even doing so, picturing her remaining days, months, and years without him by her side, set her teeth on edge.
It wasn’t right. It would never be, but she was certain that would be her reality.
Della heaved out a deep sigh as she looked out the window yet again. It seemed all she’d been able to do for days, lose her sense of time and place as she watched the world pass by.
“What is the matter?” Clara asked. She gently kicked Della’s shin with her bare foot. She’d taken to abandoning her shoes as soon as the carriage was in motion. “I know that sigh. One of your particularly unhappy ones, if I recall.”
It was just them in the carriage at the moment.
Silas sat with the coachman and Gwendoline and Mrs. Goldsmith were in the carriage behind them.
Harry rode alone in the coach that was overstuffed with their belongings.
He’d said he wanted to read, and he couldn’t do so with Clara’s constant speaking.
Clara told him reading in a moving carriage would make him ill.
Seeing the way they interacted with each other made Della almost sick with jealousy.
Oh well, she thought. She had always been ill anyway.
“I am not unhappy,” Della responded. Her thoughts and feelings were jumbled, and she didn’t think she could identify them.
Still, she could confidently say she wasn’t unhappy.
That she had no idea what she was instead mattered little.
She was sitting on the side of the carriage facing the opposite direction in which they rode.
She saw things as they passed them, looking backwards instead of up ahead. Della felt that was apt.
“You could have fooled me,” Clara said. She tucked her feet up underneath her on the carriage bench. “I mean that genuinely. You’ve seemed as pleased as the rest of us, but every so often, you get this faraway look in your eye. As if part of your heart is elsewhere and you’re trying to find it.”
Della hung her head. She’d resorted to picking at her fingernails again, and her cuticles were in a truly horrible state.
“I know that you miss him,” Clara whispered.
Della didn’t like this, being spoken to in such a gentle tone.
Not from Clara, anyway. She was a human explosion, and her speech reflected that.
That she was treating Della so delicately made her feel as emotionally fragile as she’d always been physically.
“I do,” Della admitted. There was no use in denying it.
She did miss him terribly, and she was not a strong enough actor to convince Clara otherwise.
“But I must make my peace with it. With him. I regret leaving, and perhaps I will write him again later on, but I suppose he’ll need some time.
To be hurt or angry with me or to come to a decision on what we are to be now. ”
“Some time, you say?” Clara spoke absently, her line of sight straying from Della’s face to some point out the window. She tilted her head, seemingly straining her neck to see as far forward as she possibly could. “You think he requires time to come to a decision?”
Her words were puzzling, her expression even more so. She wouldn’t meet her eyes anymore, and her lips were upturned in a strange sort of smirk. Della wasn’t sure if Clara could ever be considered devious, but she did appear so at that very moment.
“Yes.” Della nodded, thinking that Clara simply hadn’t been listening.
She hadn’t been paying attention, and that must be why she required repetition.
“I left, and while I hope how much I care about him was rather clear in my letter, I still should’ve spoken with him.
I should have stayed. He’s very thoughtful and intentional, and he’ll need his time to think about what he wants. ”
“Well.” Clara sat back in her seat, abandoning her intense study of the scenery ahead of them. She crossed her arms over her chest. “He has had ample time, with all of the traveling you’ve been doing.”
“You cannot rush these things, Clara,” Della sighed. It was one of her unhappy sighs, she realized now that Clara had pointed it out.
“Yes.” Clara hummed in agreement. Then she giggled under her breath. “I suppose these things do work out on their own time.”
“And what are you laughing about?” Della asked. The scenery they passed was different now, as if they’d entered a village. She saw homes and gardens and people. It was a wonderfully refreshing change from the sea of amorphous green they’d spent days riding through.
“Oh, nothing,” Clara answered with forced nonchalance. She reached to the floor of the carriage to retrieve her shoes. She slipped them on her feet and tucked the laces in rather than tying them. She would trip over herself once those laces slipped back out, Della knew it.
Della had absolutely no idea what was going on, but she felt that sense of anticipation spike in her heart.
It was a shower of sparkles within her ribs.
Never had she felt that particular sensation so intensely.
The carriage began to slow, and she pressed a hand against her breastbone to calm her sparking chest. It wasn’t particularly helpful, but the pressure eased the ache in the joints that held her ribcage together.
“Stay here,” Clara told her, looking at Della with wild, wide eyes. “Do not move.”
She froze, quite literally, that hand still held just below her collarbone. She lacked a certain awareness, and that warm, incandescent anticipation turned to a cold fear.
“What is the matter?” Della asked. She tried to turn her body toward the window, her mind racing with all the horrid possibilities. She thought the entire barony might be ablaze. Or someone lay dead in the road. She thought of injury and death and tragedy.
“No,” Clara said firmly. She stopped Della’s movements, not allowing her to see anything. “I tell you not to move and you immediately move.” She huffed.
The carriage stopped and Clara practically jumped out.
Della heard a commotion, and she assumed it was Harry yelling at her from two coaches back.
She only hoped she wouldn’t trip over the laces of her boots.
There was more noise, and Della couldn’t decipher it.
She couldn’t decide what to do, whether she should obey Clara’s fervent command to stay here or if she should disembark and insert herself into whatever chaos had befallen her new home.
As she was still deciding, a shadow fell over the still-open door of the carriage.
“Della,” he whispered. She barely heard him, it was so faint.
He wasn’t smiling, but his was a face she didn’t think she’d ever see again.
Della felt her own smile overtake her. Behind that smile was a rising tide of relief.
She had more questions than answers, but he was here.
She was looking at those wayward curls and a half-untied cravat.
His strong brows and those fathomless eyes.
“Andrew,” she whispered back.
He stood in the light of the sun, she still hid in the dark of the carriage. Andrew extended a hand in her direction.
Well, that was her decision made.