Allison Lane Read Online Free PDF Page A

with him over Whitfield’s demands, but he’d volunteered to accompany him to Cumberland and provide moral support.
    Randolph absently fingered his card case as a gust of wind shook the carriage.
    Sedge’s presence had made the journey bearable despite frequent delays.  In fact, it was the only thing keeping him sane.  He couldn’t remember a wetter year.  Even the turnpikes were muddy morasses, and side roads like this one were nearly impassable.  The one-week trip had already stretched into two.  He never wanted to see another raindrop.  Or another mud-filled ditch.  Or another ramshackle inn with poor service and worse food.  Even the best room last night had offered poorer accommodations than his stable boys enjoyed at home.
    Every new delay and every fresh discomfort had increased his trepidation.  What if Whitfield or his father suffered a relapse while he was out of touch?  Could he ever forgive himself if he was unavailable when needed?
    But those were fears he carried with him wherever he went.  It was the new ones that bothered him now.  Whitfield’s insistence had raised a premonition of disaster that he had firmly ignored.  But it lurked in a corner of his mind, prodding him each day and bursting into fresh dread when he had awakened this morning to the realization that it was the Ides of March.
    He snorted at himself.  Shakespeare aside, this day was no less propitious than any other.  It was only the ceaseless rain that played on his nerves – and an aggravating suspicion that Whitfield had been less than forthright.
    “What do you think happened to the baggage coach?” asked Sedge, abandoning his own perusal of the soggy countryside.  They were climbing a gorse-covered ridge that afforded no protection from the wind, and they’d already squeezed past one mud flow that nearly closed the road.  There was no way of knowing if worse lay ahead.
    He shrugged.  “Perhaps they passed us.”  The suggestion was unlikely, of course, though he wanted to believe it.  “They wouldn’t have expected to find us at the Swan and Garter.  That was the worst inn yet.”
    “Too true.  There wasn’t even a wench to warm my bed.”  Sedge laughed at the expression on Randolph’s face.  “I do love to make you blush.  But you need not chastise me.  I wouldn’t have trusted anyone in that place anyway.”
    “Nor I.”  He sighed.  “I hope the baggage coach was not cut off by that bridge problem.” 
    It was the first time either of them had uttered the fear they had shared since breakfast.  A harness strap on the baggage coach had broken while changing horses the day before.  That sort of repair usually took less than an hour, so Randolph had continued on, knowing their valets would catch up by evening.  But they had not.
    At breakfast, they had learned that a bridge had collapsed the previous afternoon – a bridge they had crossed after leaving the baggage coach.  It was unlikely that anyone had been on it when floodwaters swept it away.  But this corner of Cumberland was so inaccessible that negotiating the detour would take days, even if the weather cooperated.
    “At least we have a change of clothing with us,” said Sedge, ever the optimist.
    “Any idea which trunks are in the boot?”  Rather than strap trunks onto the roof, they had split them between the boots of both coaches, again because of the weather.  He hadn’t bothered unloading them last night.  A small valise holding his razor and a fresh cravat had been all he’d needed.
    Sedge shook his head.
    “The way my luck has been running lately, mine will hold nothing but evening coats,” muttered Randolph, returning his gaze to the window.
    “Or boots.”  Sedge grinned.  “Or a dozen shirts but no cravats.”
    “Waistcoats and handkerchiefs.”
    “Court dress and night caps.”
    “Why would I pack court dress for a trip to Cumberland?”
    “Books, then.  You take those everywhere.”  He shuddered