Tight Laced (6 page)

Then, she turned to the duke. “What happened to your horse?”

“Colic. I’m afraid it’s bad. He’ll need to stay and recover for a bit. I’ll fetch him by-and-by.”

Lacilia remembered then, the terrible disaster, and she’d yet to address it. “Your Grace, I heard about the explosion in Blantyre. I am so very sorry.”

The duke looked away, and Lacy noticed his fists were clenched. “Yes, well, I must hurry home. As you can imagine.”

The wind picked up again, gusting through the trees, sending dervishes of leaves whirling in the air. The storm was on its way. “It does look as though some things are stacked against you.”

The groom returned, his fat arms full with wool rugs. He wiped the horses down, but he was rough in his handling, and the horses began to prance nervously.

“Your father? Is he about?”

“Taken ill, m’lady.”

“Another one of those ‘stacked against me’ matters,” chimed the duke.

Lady Lacilia looked skyward. Glanced again at the nostril flaring of the horses. She reached out and grabbed her cloak from the duke’s grip and flung it over her shoulders. “Come on then, I’ll get you there. We need to hurry if we’re to beat the weather.”

“M’lady,” gasped the groom. “I have it from Her Ladyship, I must deliver the duke to Cockermouth me-self.”

Lacy was already climbing into the coachman’s seat. “I will handle my stepmother when I return. Fact of the matter is, you cannot drive this team. You’ll have the horses broken legged and the carriage in splinters with the first rumble of thunder.”

The groom continued to protest as the duke climbed aboard. He turned to Lacy as she slapped the reins on the horses’ backside. “I have the feeling that we will both be answering to Her Ladyship, and it won’t be a simple matter.”

Fat Roland was still waving his arms and shouting at the phaeton as it rode down the path, and off of the Highcastle estate.

Oh hush-a-bye, my little baby Hush, my little baby, hush

Oh hush-a-bye, my little baby

My own little baby will go to sleep

Darling, of the people of the great world

They spilt your blood yesterday

They put your head on an oaken post

A little way from your corpse

I breathlessly climbed the great mountain

I climbed and I descended

I would put the hair of my head under your feet

And the skin of my two hands.

~ English translation of a Gaelic lullaby, circa 1570

T
RUTH BE TOLD
, Duke Darlington felt a fool. Here he sat, benext to an esteemed young lady who was navigating a team through the ruts and downed branches of the countryside, and all he could do was fold his hands in his lap, check his pocket watch from time to time, and hope no party of note spied this odd arrangement.

His self-abuse interlude of the night before weighed heavily upon him. As did word of the mine disaster. But most pressing of all was the bargain he’d just made to wed a girl he found – well, to be honest – repulsive. He sighed.

She turned her head to him. “Worry not, Duke, we should make Cockermouth before the rains.”

He wasn’t sure what to make of the lass. She’d thought him a common rogue last evening, and then he consoled her, and he swore she cozied up to him, and now she was consoling him. But why? And what of her return trip?

“I must apologize, Lady Lacilia. I don’t know what got into my head, putting you out like this. I cannot allow you to ride back unaccompanied. I’ll send my man back with you, and I’ll act as my own coachman from Cockermouth to Blantyre.”

“As you wish, though it’s quite unnecessary. I’m no stranger to these roads.”

After a moment, Darlington attempted a new line of persuasion. “Would your father be pleased to see you take such risks?”

Without looking his way, she responded, “Lord Bloomsbury is dead. He cannot opine on the matter.”

She was a stubborn lass, this one.

“Duke, I heard of the catastrophe. Two-hundred dead, maybe more? What will happen to those poor families whose men are now gone? And winter coming.”

Darlington’s stomach felt her words like a cannonball of iron. “I will do everything in my power to see they are taken care of. Every last wife and child.”

“And marrying my sister is part of that bargain, yes?”

“So, you heard.”

“Oh, yes. Sarah Jane came flying into my quarters last evening. As you can imagine, she was quite excited.”

Another cannonball to the gut.

“It’s not the worst thing in the world, is it? An arranged marriage?” Lacilia enquired.

Darlington sighed. “My sisters have all had husbands chosen. I’m the holdout.”

The lady shook her head. “A romantic, then? You fancy a princess from the exotic isles? Or perhaps a Habsburg daughter. I hear Franz Joseph’s littlest girl, Marie Valerie, will come of age in a few years. She’s very pretty.”

“Pretty. Right.”

“Is that important to you, Duke?”

Darlington felt, again, like he’d been punched. Was this a trick? Did Lady Bloomsbury send this girl as part of a ruse, to ensure he would follow through on his bargain? He grit his teeth. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?”

Lacilia glanced quickly at him before steering the team around a downed tree. The first few splatters of rain stung their faces; the wind had not abated. “Sarah Jane is not easy on the eyes. There is no hiding that. But she
is
my sister, and I won’t have her hurt.”

Darlington was affronted. “Lady Lacilia, what sort of man do you take me for? I am not a cruel man. Ask my sisters.”

“Oh? And what might they say? ‘Our little brother enjoys the company of women. All women.’”

“And what is wrong with that?”

“Only disease, heartache and bastards.”

“I am discreet. And, as I’ve said, a gentleman.”

They rode on. An odd crack of thunder and a lightning strike in the pewter cloud upset the horses, and Lacy began to sing softly, which calmed the beasts immediately:

“Oh hush-a-bye, my little baby Hush, my little baby, hush

Oh hush-a-bye, my little baby

My own little baby will go to sleep

Though I am without a flock of sheep

And the others all have sheep

Though I am without a flock of sheep

You, little baby, can go to sleep

Darling, of the people of the great world

They spilt your blood yesterday

They put your head on an oaken post

A little way from your corpse

I breathlessly climbed the great mountain

I climbed and I descended

I would put the hair of my head under your feet

And the skin of my two hands.”

Darlington’s heart fairly melted at the sound of Lacilia’s lilting, sweet voice. That she chose a Gaelic lullaby, one sung to him by his own mother, soothed him immeasurably.

Still, he had to wonder. “How would a London-born lass as yourself know
Beloved Gregor
?”

Lacilia did not answer right away. She seemed lost in thought. At last she offered, “My mother is,
was
, from the North.”

“You don’t say?”

“I do. Say. In fact. My father, obviously, married for love. At least the first time.”

The rain began to pound. Darlington took off his outer coat and draped it over Lacilia’s cloak.

“So much for beating the rain,” she called out over the splatter of weather.

The sleet-like drops slapped the open carriage. The red clay of the road was slickening, and one of the horses stumbled, his haunches slipping underneath his body.

“Whoa, there Gracie,” said Lacilia, expertly slackening, then steadying the reins.

She knew just what to do. Never had Darlington been in the company of such a competent teamster. It was as if she shared a secret language with the hoofed beasts. The way she anticipated their missteps, their fears.

Her ease at rein, her intelligence, her kindness, the collection of qualities – virtues, really – that piled upon her person left Darlington dry in the mouth. Too delicious for the spoken word.

And, that figure.

Even under the coat, the cape, her free-flowing pre-Raphaelite atrocity, he envisaged her naked form.

And, oh, how lovely.

How very, very lovely.

The rain pelted. The roads were as slippery as tallow. They were littered with debris from the aberrant wind. After the fourth time her horses tripped, slid, or stumbled, Lacy had to admit, they might be better off waiting out the rain.

“I believe there’s an inn a kilometer or so away,” she said, as she guided the rig to a crude shelter erected for the purpose of holding sheep overnight. There they sat, partially covered, barely protected from the weather. Steam rose up off the horses’ backs.

Darlington’s face grew grim, though he tried to hide his disappointment.

“Perhaps we should push on to the accommodation? There might be a man for hire …”

“A man?” Lacy felt provoked. Had she not just negotiated their carriage through near-impossible conditions? Not being able to contain herself, she asked that very question.

“As well you have, My Good Lady.”

“I invite you to engage a more competent coachman, if you can find one, my duke.”

He said nothing to this. And it occurred to her, that the man was out of his element. These roads foreign to him. Playing back her tone of voice in her head, she felt the need to apologize. But one needed to be careful in these circumstances. One mustn’t ruffle the feathers of the cocksure.

She offered a roundabout apology. “At home, I imagine you have an entire omnibus at your avail. This phaeton must seem so … so …
countrified
.”

“On the contrary, My Lady. I am not comfortable being squired about. I prefer the saddle.”

“Please call me
Lacilia
. We are beyond titles. You are to be my brother-in-law, after all.”

With the reminder, the duke’s frown returned full force. “I would say this week has been trying for us both, m’la—Lacilia.”

Lacy poked her head out from under the crude canopy of evergreen branches. “And it doesn’t look as though our fortune will reverse any time soon.”

They sat in silence for a bit, the showers waxing and waning, the road becoming less and less passable. The duke checked his pocket watch now and again, and finally Lacy had to opine. “It won’t matter in the long run, will it? If you’re delayed by a day or so on your return to Blantyre? Forgive my callowness, but the miners shan’t get any more dead.”

Darlington looked up from his watch. “Have you known colliers, Lacilia? Have you met a one?”

Lacilia shook her head.

“It’s back-breaking work in horrible conditions. Imagine being shut out of the light for fourteen hours, the wet, black sludge burrowed in every bit of your skin. Your nose. Your mouth. Your eyes.”

“It sounds dreadful. And cold.”

“Cold? Oh, no. The mine makes hell seem temperate. The gasses, the friction, digging into the very core of the earth. Years ago, before the laws changed, men would send their wives and children underground so they could keep digging whilst the less able-bodied family members hauled the coal up the shaft. They’d work at night, wearing nothing but a light sheath, sometimes bloomers, the heat nearly scalding hot in summer.”