It was ten o'clock when next they stopped. Sarah was driven to distraction between her disagreeable seatmate, a crying child, and a prim woman who eyed Sarah's clothes and spoke loudly of the free ways of the servant class these days. Sarah escaped from the coach like a shot, and breathed in the crisp air of late October like a tonic.
The yard was a buzz of activity, ostlers, horses and carriages crisscrossing in the mud. It smelled of wet earth and horses and frying ham from the inn. Sarah looked around her in a daze. She wandered toward the inn door, following the scent of ham, almost into the path of a team of horses trotting briskly toward the gate with their tilbury. She leaped back, but not in time to prevent her pelisse from being muddied as the carriage splashed through a great puddle.
"Look about you, girl!" the annoyed driver called over his shoulder. As she backed toward the safety of a stationary coach just in front of the taproom door, Sarah ran smack into the dreadful man in the mustard waistcoat.
"Oh, ho, missy," he cried and pretended to drag her to safety. "You got to watch yerself in these yards." He had her pinned against the coach. She was overwhelmed by the bulk, the stench of him. "Now you jes' let Ned 'ere take care o' you, and you'll be right as a trivet."
Sarah pushed at him, trying to catch her breath. "You have no manners, sir, to persecute me thus!" She turned from his breath. Would anyone even notice her plight in a busy coach-yard?
"Perhaps you would care to have me school him, Lady Clevancy?" a deep voice rumbled. The handle of a driving whip poked into Mr. Mustard Waistcoat's shoulder, forcing him back.
Both Sarah and her oppressor looked up to see Julien Davinoff, his many-caped driving coat splashed with mud, but looking otherwise immaculate, staring down at them. Sarah gasped and glanced with frightened eyes between her two adversaries. The man in the mustard waistcoat gave way in the face of Davinoff/s burning gaze. There was an intensity, a commitment in that stare that said the dark man observed no limitations he did not make himself.
"Beg pardon, sir," Sarah's tormentor stuttered.
"Be off with you," Davinoff almost whispered. "Or you will beg for more than pardon."
With that, Mr. Mustard Waistcoat's eyes grew wide. His mouth opened and closed once, as though searching for a reply. Then, without further ceremony, he turned and hurried back to clamber into the mail coach. Sarah watched him go in relief.
She turned to Davinoff, flushing to her ears. She seemed destined to keep meeting the man. Here she was in crumpled and stained traveling raiment, her hair no doubt awry, and looking haggard. He had found her in the lowest situation, being accosted by a churlish rogue who had seen better days. And she was coming off a common mail coach, a fact that clearly advertised her straightened circumstances. She had no deed, no record of her land grant, and no protector as she faced the man who would strip her of everything she owned. Frightened, she was angry, too, that he should look down upon her, as indeed he must. She pressed her lips together and took two breaths. There was no one to rely on but herself.
"Thank you, sir." She made it a dismissal. But as her eyes met Davinoff's, she was riveted.
They still stood in the center of the yard. The carriage behind Sarah moved on. The Mail driver came out of the taproom with his sack of letters. Activity swirled around Davinoff, but could not touch him. He was a black smear on the bright afternoon, the dark post of a sundial whose shadow picked out a single moment while all the celestial bodies turned around him. No carriage would run her over, no ostler jostle her, as long as she stayed in that shadow. For an instant, she found the prospect tempting. Her body stirred in a way she'd never wanted to feel again.
He gazed down at her, his intensity searing. The man had taken in her situation in its entirety; he thought he knew all about her. The driver called out for passengers to get aboard. Mustering her strength, Sarah turned away. She had a few surprises yet for Mr. Davinoff. The moment broke. The noise of the yard pressed in on her again.
A strong hand gripped her elbow. Her gaze jerked up. He looked grim and absolutely purposeful. "You will finish your journey with me, Lady Clevancy." It was an order.
She struggled in what she hoped was an unobtrusive manner to take her arm back. "You cannot force women into your curricle." A tiny tendril of fear circled around her spine.
"I should hope I would not have to do so." The grip on her elbow did not slacken. His vehicle gleamed black in the sun that shone through fast-moving clouds. "The Mail is impossible at this juncture and hardly the place for you in any case." He released her. "I assure you, your virtue is in no danger," he observed, looking her over. "Do you see any alternatives to hand?"
What a maddening person! She would rather he had forced her. Now she would have to humiliate herself to follow him, or race with unbecoming speed to the Mail Coach, where the driver was at this moment climbing into his seat. She hesitated. She could not bear another moment seated next to that horrible Mr. Mustard Waistcoat. But the last thing she wanted was to spend the afternoon alone in a curricle with a man who was capable of anything. Capable, but not willing. The way he had looked at her when he said her virtue was not in danger! As she flung about for alternatives she grew angrier and angrier. She did not even have enough money to stay at the inn and purchase a ticket for the next mail.
When her gaze returned to Davinoff, he was watching her calmly. "Put off the lady's trunks in Bath," he called to the driver of the mail and tossed him a coin that gleamed gold in the sun. Then he turned his back and strode off to his equipage.
"What right have you?" she gasped after him.
But Davinoff's attention was apparently fixed on an ostler who was fussing with the straps on a huge leather trunk at the back of his curricle. "You there," he boomed. "Leave that trunk alone." The ostler jumped back from the trunk with raised hands.
Sarah was outraged. As though the trunk contained priceless objects! The ostler had only tried to help. Davinoff seemed to order everyone about and think it his right to do so. Right, indeed! Oh, dear Lord. Indeed. Her deed. Her deed might be in that very trunk! If he had kept either the roll or the deed in order to alter them, would they not be in his trunk? No wonder he did not want anyone to touch it.
The Mail Coach door slammed behind her, but she had already made her choice. When Davinoff turned before getting into his curricle, and raised an eyebrow of inquiry, she stalked over and allowed him to hand her up into the seat without a word. She resolved to spend the afternoon with the devil, and find a way to search that trunk.
Davinoff climbed up beside her, took up reins and whip, and backed expertly into a position in the crowded yard where he could wheel and turn the carriage. Then he coolly whipped up the horses and tooled through the gates at a smart clip. He cleared a barouche just entering the yard with inches to spare and feathered the turn into the road to a nicety.
Sarah could not help but admire his skill. She pulled her mind back to devising a plan to get at his trunk. If only they would lose a wheel as the Beldon barouche had done. That would force a stop. It was hardly like to happen, of course. She clutched at her plain beaver hat, pulling against its ribband as it was taken by the brisk wind rising from the northwest, that wind pinking her cheeks. She stole a glance at Davinoff. Why had he taken her up? The look on his face as he guided her to the curricle made clear his reluctance. Anger filled her again. To make her practically grovel was the outside of enough! Then, she had a dreadful thought. No doubt he intended to badger her to cede him the property out of court. What a dreadful afternoon she had set herself!
For the moment he was silent as he negotiated the busy thoroughfare. The curricle seemed to fly in comparison to the Mail Coach. They met many vehicles and passed not a few, but no one passed them from behind. Her hat became more annoying as it lifted in the wind. She had no desire to sit holding it on with one hand, so she untied her ribbands and put the hat in her lap. Because her hair would be soon escaping from its knot in this breeze, without another thought for propriety she tw
isted the knot free and shook out her heavy dark locks. He might dismiss her as a mere nothing, but he no doubt didn't care a jot about whether her hair was properly tied up.
The silence dragged on. There were two coats between them, but still she thought she could feel the warmth of his shoulder as it brushed hers. A thought of begging him to abandon his plan to take Clershing flickered across her mind. She banished it with a mental shudder. The man who sat next to her so sternly would only think her more contemptible if she was stupid enough to throw herself upon a mercy he didn't have. Was he not anarchy incarnate?
As the roadway cleared a bit, he looked down at her and made as if to speak.
"If you are about to press me on the Clershing issue," she interposed, "please do not. You must talk to Mr. Lestrom. A gentleman would not take advantage of this situation."
Davinoff raised his brows, then turned to mind his horses without a word.
She should find the silence comforting. At least he wasn't questioning her about her deed. But with no conversation to distract her, Sarah could not but be conscious of the strong thighs that swelled beneath his breeches next to her or the broad shoulders under the man's driving cloak. She glimpsed the line of his jaw and the soft lobe of his ear beneath the curls of dark hair before she turned her eyes resolutely back to the road. That way lay madness. That way she could not be trusted, as she had been shown in Sienna. A flash of shame rushed over her before she turned her thoughts to her immediate problem. How could she divert Davinoff's attention from his trunk?
It was Davinoff himself who presented an opportunity. As they came out of Marborough, he looked down at her with what seemed like disgust and broke the silence. "You will allow me to ask if you have eaten at any time in the near past?"
Sarah realized she was famished. She struggled for a moment with wanting to snub him, but her stomach and the sudden flash of a plan won out. "Actually, I have not," she said stiffly.
"I will find a place to stop. The White Rose will do in West Overton."
No, Sarah thought. The White Rose wouldn't do. It was a large inn, bustling with carriages. Davinoff's curricle would be given over to the ostlers and hauled round to a busy stable for safekeeping. No chance for her search there. She needed somewhere quiet, out of the way. She would excuse herself during luncheon… Her mind raced ahead.
"Isn't the White Rose near to Beckhampton?" she asked.
"Some three miles."
Sarah took the bit between her teeth. "Then do let's go on to the village of Avebury," she said with a brightness she did not feel. "There is an inn there, not so well-to-do as the White Rose, but there are the stones, you know. My father and I were used to stop there and see them." Memory washed over her, all her fondness for her father, all the tristesse for those simpler times when she had been protected and loved and innocent. She felt her own brittle smile soften. "You could take a hamper out from the yard and directly down into the circle on warm days," she added with a sigh. "They are much older than Stonehenge, you know." She looked off toward Hackpin Hill and the Marborough Downs. "I have thought sometimes that you could feel the past welling up out of those stones, soaking the air with centuries." She caught herself and cursed her lack of self-control. Blathering on about picnics with her father. How stupid could she be? She looked up at Davinoff to find him examining her, then began to twist the ribbons of her hat.
"Actually, the stone circle at Avebury is one of my favorite places," he said, urging his grand bays to pass a slower phaeton.
Sarah was surprised. "It is?"
"Less elegant than Stonehenge, but more elemental, I have always thought."
"Exactly so." She resolved to make conversation about the stones, no matter how difficult. He must agree to stop there. "And one doesn't sacrifice a jot of the mystery," she said, casting about. "Who made them? How did they come to that farmer's field?"
"It wasn't a farmer's field back then." She thought she saw a smile flicker across his lips.
"Of course not," she replied, rushing on. "But the stones are from the downs. I have always wondered how men got them there."
"The way they moved the stones cut for the pyramids in Egypt," he said. "They rolled them on logs, back when most of this area was forested."
"I have heard that said." She imagined it for a moment, her interest caught in spite of herself. "And it doesn't spoil the mystery at all."
"Is mystery so important?" he asked, his eyes sweeping the road ahead.
"Sometimes…" She trailed off. Why couldn't she be bold and dashing like Corina? Then she would be able to get him to do whatever she wanted.
He met her eyes, and she saw speculation there. "Well, there is one mystery about the stones that now will never be solved," he said as they turned into the road to Avebury.
"What is that?"
"The secret of why they were built. No one knows anymore, or at least no one who cares to tell the world."
"Oh, but that is the one thing which is not a secret at all."
Sarah exclaimed, not quite understanding what he meant, yet determined to continue making conversation. "They were built as a connection to the unknown. We don't have to know exactly how. Perhaps they are a calendar to signal the years or the solstice. They could be a monument to some god or a place for ceremony. But in any case, they were built to serve the human need to discover order, to explain and connect. I think that is at the root of almost everything we do, mathematics and language, every religion, every science." She paused, then said suddenly, "George Upcott is a specialist in explaining." She could not think why George had come to mind precisely then.
"And who is George Upcott?" he asked.
"A friend." She hesitated. "And a proponent of the sciences. He experiments with blood transfusion at the hospital in Bath."
"Has he studied with Blundell?" Davinoff asked, his voice sharp.
"Why, yes, I believe so. That is the London doctor?"
Davinoff seemed interested indeed. "Yes. He has been doing some fascinating work. I must meet Dr. Upcott."
The tiny inn at Avebury had been built of stones broken where they stood in the circle, their pieces carted up the hill. The villagers did not break the stones now that they knew that people would come to see them, but it always seemed to Sarah a sad comment on the process of history that the glory of one civilization should be reduced to rubble to build another. She said as much to Davinoff as they dismounted. There was a single boy to walk the horses up and down, and he looked none too bright. Excellent! Davinoff ordered him to water the gorgeous beasts, and he and Sarah made their way into the coffee room for a late nuncheon.
When should she excuse herself and sneak out the back to the curricle? If Davinoff was as ravenous as she, the middle of the meal would be best. She had a moment of embarrassment when she took off her muddied pelisse and looked down at her plain brown crumpled dress, worse for two days of travel. "I look as though I spent all night on a mail coach."
"Exactly so," Davinoff returned with a remarkable lack of courtesy.
"Well, you needn't think I enjoy looking this way," she exclaimed. "You may as well know that I intended to look like a governess, to avoid attracting attention," she continued, stung into what her father would certainly have called an unbecoming retort.
"In short, a disguise?" Davinoff queried with a single lifted brow.
Sarah could not help the smile that rose to her lips. "Oh, you must find me ridiculous. I know I do." She sighed as they sat down.
"Not at all," Davinoff said with much more politesse. "And, may I ask why you were not returning with your friends to Bath?"
Sarah twitched uncomfortably. She took some fruit from the bowl on their table. "I thought I had arranged matters. I needed to be in London. Since Lady Beldon was returning home, I arranged to stay with Mrs. Nandalay." Here Sarah realized that her explanation might become tangled. "But that ended being inconvenient for her. I found myself upon the Mail."
"I see." Davinoff did not mention t
he economic straits that led one to the Mail instead of a post chaise. Now he would know she had no money for a prolonged fight over Clershing.
The landlord brought heaping trays of food as Sarah tried to stifle her growing apprehension. How could she slip away? She could say she needed to tidy herself, but not in the middle of a meal. Who would believe that? Perhaps if he was very intent on eating… But he picked lazily at the dishes presented, and seemed more intent on watching her. Not a good sign. After the meal, she told herself. She put off her coming crime with food. She made her way through a slab of steak pie, a piece of bread with butter, and part of a cold pigeon, not to mention the fruit and the sweetmeats. She could scarcely believe she was going to do something so rash or so unbecoming to a lady of quality as to search a man's trunk.
Davinoff ended his meal with an apple, which he consumed slowly as he watched her eat. When at last she pushed her plate away, he quizzed her. "Finished?"
"Veni, vidi, vici," she announced. The time drew near.
"You did conquer the landlord's repast," Davinoff agreed. "Are you a lady scholar?"
"A bluestocking?" Sarah frowned. "How unkind! My Great Aunt Cecily worried that my father was turning me into a dreadful bluestocking."
"Did he succeed?"
Sarah was taken aback. "No. I am not a scholar. Curious, perhaps. I have a smattering of facts about a variety of subjects and am learned in none." She gave a nervous laugh. It was clearly now or never. She hoped she did not look as frightened as she felt. It was a stupid gesture to search the trunk. He had destroyed the deed and the record of it, too. Her heart clenched in desperation. She must leave no stone unturned. And she would never forgive herself if she didn't take advantage of this God-given opportunity to make certain that he didn't have it with him. She rose so quickly she almost overset the chair. "If you will excuse me, I will refresh myself."
Sacrament Page 5
