A Heart's Treasure (16 page)

Summer looked up at him with large, rounded eyes as she shifted the weapon in her hands, the better to handle it. “Please don’t be gone long,” she said in a near-whisper.

“I won’t.”

Xavier’s presence was swiftly lost to the shadows.

“I wish he’d had a lamp to take with him,” Genevieve murmured.

“I wish there were two. One for Xavier, and one for us,” Summer said. As the others muttered their avid agreement, Summer slipped an arm around Genevieve’s waist. They pulled close, shivering together as she tried to share Xavier’s coat with Genevieve.

The darkness pressed on them, and Penelope and Laura likewise moved together. When the foursome spoke, it was in short, quiet sentences, and that only occasionally. Time stretched out, matching their nerves.

Some kind of chittering animal call made them all jump and cry out, then fall very still and listen pensively for it to come again. Summer pulled back the hammer, careful to point the pistol away from her compatriots, but Genevieve saw that her hand shook.

A rustling sound, loud in the stillness, reached their ears, and the ladies pressed back into the hedge with little indrawn gasps, and Summer leveled the quaking pistol in the direction of the sound. Laura caught Penelope’s hands in her own as they peered through the dark at an approaching figure. It lifted its arm—and Penelope was the first to relax. “It’s Xavier,” she said on a hiccupy sigh.

The other ladies let out their breath as one, and Summer lowered the pistol.

“I’ve found something,” Xavier belatedly thought to call to them. “It’s not a proper cave, just a length of overhanging dirt bank, but I think it will provide more shelter than these hedges. About a hundred feet that way,” he pointed behind him.

“But if we leave the road, how will we be found by any rescuers?” his sister asked.

He came nearer to take up Penelope’s hand. “By God, your hand is cold, Nellie,” he said with a frown before going on. “But, not to worry, we’ll leave them a note. There are paper and graphite pencils in the panel pockets of the carriage.”

The note was affixed by way of lifting one of the glass windows so that the paper’s edge was caught, the note then stirring in the night breeze in a noticeable fashion. As Xavier did this, Genevieve and Penelope went through the few bags he’d dragged free for them, and extracted two more shawls, one of Indian muslin and one of silk. “None of us saw a need to pack wool or jersey, that’s a certainty,” Penelope observed wistfully.

“Nor thought to be traveling at night,” Genevieve agreed.

“Xavier, please take back your coat.” Summer had already shrugged it off.

He shook his head and grabbed the last of the coach rugs. “This will do for me.”

Summer gave him a nod, and by drawing the coat again over her shoulders didn’t waste his gallantry.

He restored the bags to the coach, and led a train of ladies through the dark to what was exactly as he’d named it: a dirt bank in the middle of a field. Still, it was taller than his head, with enough depth to let them call it shelter, and did create a windbreak. The ladies arranged themselves, huddled, watching with eyes that had adjusted as much as they ever would to the dark, as Xavier worked. He gathered twigs and grasses, and before too very long he’d created a spark from his pocket flint, and then a small fire.

“It won’t last long,” he warned them. “Even if I pull up our unknowing host’s green crops, they’ll not burn well, nor long. If only we were near a wood.”

“There’s that one,” Penelope pointed to a blacker smudge in the dark distance. “Perhaps it would be worth the walk…?”

“Too far,” Xavier asserted again, rubbing his arms to increase the circulation in them. “Your fire would be quite out before I ever returned, and no doubt our rescuers arrived by then. It shouldn’t be too much longer a wait,” he said, smiling at them reassuringly as he pulled the rug over his shoulders.

Xavier continued to nurse the little fire, gathering what fuel he could, but its heat didn’t keep up with its smoke. The women had tried to sit for awhile, but with no spare rugs to block the earthen chill, soon took to standing again. Despite the smoke stinging their eyes, the group crowded around the inadequate fire, the ladies mindful of their skirts and of sparks, but the night’s chill was creepingly overtaking both the fire’s worth and their spirits. Clouds obscured the moon fully now, leaving them with only the light of the struggling fire, and there was a suspicious moist scent on the wind that none of them dared name. Xavier looked up at the cloud-thick arc of night sky, and ran a hand over his lower face, and Genevieve perceived he knew what she knew: rain was imminent.

Summer rocked back and forth under her coverings, but she denied that she was cold. Just as Genevieve reached for her shawl, meaning to surrender it to the fair-haired girl who couldn’t quite hide the chattering of her teeth, Xavier moved to her side.

“Here then,” he said gently, opening the lap rug like two wings. “We must share, Lady Summer, else we’ll both take an ague before morning.” He reached to envelope Summer with his blanketed arms, her back to his front. The lap robe’s two ends overlapped before them with not much to spare—robbing Genevieve of a chance of crowding in and making it a threesome. She watched as Summer settled back into his chest, at first shivering more, but soon giving into the warmth their mutual shelter generated. She noted how the blonde head fit nicely, as though quite meant to fit there, under Xavier’s chin.

Genevieve turned her eyes away, regretting that the night’s dark wasn’t deep enough to miss observing the little scene enacted before her. Curiously, it wasn’t Xavier’s consideration that twisted something in her belly, it was his gentleness as he cradled Summer.

Which brought forth a gentle feeling of her own, a stirring of admiration: how gallant Xavier was. He saw to their comforts before he saw to his own. He tried to reassure them all. He’d found them this shelter, where other “gentlemen” would not have thought to try…

Still, it was
Summer
who was cradled in his arms.

Genevieve huddled and shivered under her shawls, and was glad he couldn’t much see her face in the night, because it was undoubtedly red with the wrong kind of warmth.

Chapter 11

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

—Shakespeare,

Macbeth

“Damnation!” Xavier swore not quite under his breath.

None of the ladies chided him, although they were all so close they could scarcely miss the exclamation. If the truth were told, each echoed his sentiment exactly as the rain poured down on their bonneted heads.

Despite a bounty of mixed feelings, Genevieve reached up with her one free hand, almost losing her shawl in the process, to use the side of her hand to wipe the large drop of rain from the bridge of Xavier’s nose. The course of the large droplet, from his forehead down his nose, had finally been one too many and had caused him to utter his oath aloud.

“You’re soaked through,” she said miserably.

“The price I pay for refusing to don my hat earlier today,” he spoke, not bothering to try and sound at all cheerful. The hat had been taken away with Kenneth and the second coach.

Summer had again attempted to return his jacket to him, but he’d refused it once more. Summer no longer shivered, but it was because Xavier was taking the worst of the rain for her.

“It’s not going to let up, is it?” Laura sniffled.

Xavier sighed. “I fear it won’t be soon, ladies. I’d hoped it was a passing squall, but it seems the pattern for the night,” he amended, and then he made a sudden decision. “We’re beyond wet. We must have a drier place. It’s back to the coach, ladies.”

“Is it safe?” Genevieve’s question was small, half carried away by wind and rain.

“I’ll stand guard. At least the rain will keep any other carriages from coursing the road too swiftly, I pray.”

Summer sneezed, and that seemed a signal for them to begin. Xavier dropped his arms, settling his soaked lap robe over her head and shoulders, for whatever good the sodden fabric might do to protect her, even as he cried, “Right then. On our way.”

Laura squealed as the full force of the rain dashed at her, but she led the way as they all fast-walked back the way they’d come, trying to watch for tangling roots or grasping branches. Genevieve was belatedly glad she’d left off her stockings and would have some kind of dry footwear, however inadequate, awaiting her in the carriage.

It didn’t take them long to arrive at the tilted carriage, but if any part of them hadn’t been soaked and chilled, it was now. Their penciled note was stuck flat to the windowpane, unreadable in the dark. Laura pulled open the coach door as soon as she touched the handle, and despite the upward slant, scampered inside at once. Xavier stepped forward, placing his hands on his sister’s waist, lifting Penelope upward even as she gripped the sides of the opening and pulled up. As soon as she was inside, Summer was lifted up by the waist as well, sodden lap robe and all.

There was a commotion in the carriage’s interior as the three ladies vied for handles or grips, so that Genevieve was forced to wait in the rain for several long beats before Laura called, “Oh, hurry! We must get that door closed.”

There were hands, large hands, at Genevieve’s waist, waiting to assist her upward.

She slowly turned her head, the rain slanting down into her face, causing her to blink as she gazed up at the dark head above her own, at the barely visible face of the man who possessed those large hands. His hair was even more inky black than the night, hanging around his face in unruly waves. His eye patch was a dark oval on his face, and his shirtsleeves were plastered to the skin of his arms.

He must have noted that she’d gone still under his touch, and brought his vision down to meet hers. Genevieve forgot to listen to the assorted “oofs” and “ughhs” coming from inside the carriage, forgot that the two of them were cold and wet and miserable. His gray eye looked at her as if she’d asked a question, and she shivered beneath his hands because some part of her wished to hear what he would say.

His lips parted as they stood thus, still and unspeaking in the rain.

“Xavier!” Penelope’s sharp tone came from the carriage. “The door! Please.”

His head pivoted at the sound, and his shoulders jerked back as though someone had poked him with a particularly sharp stick to the shoulder blades. “Of course,” he murmured. His hands started to pull away, but then remembered their task, tightening again on her waist as he prepared to lift Genevieve to the tilted step.

“Come inside with us,” she blurted out.

He shook his head. “I would never forgive myself if something should happen.”

“It’s so wet—”

“Go on, Genny,” he urged softy, making a motion with his chin in the direction of the door. “I’ll be just fine.”

He’d robbed her of breath, calling her by that pet name. She couldn’t help herself; another shiver ran through her, a shiver assuredly felt by those encircling hands, and she found her mind spinning to think that it might not be the cold and wet that caused this latest shudder. She reached with strengthless arms for the door frame, and tried to pull herself up as he lifted her and said, “Out of the rain then.” Thanks to his strength, she found herself inside the carriage, standing stooped and trying not to slide back out the door, which was promptly closed behind her, plunging them into a deeper darkness. She scrambled to the open seat next to Summer, grasping a leather strap to help hold herself up from utterly squashing the other lady.

Laura, on the bottom of the tilt like Summer, was wringing out all their garments, and Summer belatedly joined her. Genevieve abandoned the idea of finding her stockings, they’d only get drenched by the water puddling beneath them all, if they weren’t already. “Summer,” Genevieve said into the blackness.

“Yes?” Summer answered.

“The lap robe. You may keep his coat, but I think Xavier ought to have the lap robe. It will not keep him dry, but it might help to keep him warm.”

“Oh, assuredly,” Summer cried at once, untangling the rug from where she half sat on it. Genevieve leaned forward, placing her foot for balance while she pulled the handle to the door. With a struggle, the little door swung outward, striking Xavier on the elbow so that he turned at once.

“Cover yourself,” Genevieve cried through the rainfall, thrusting the lap robe at him.

“Thank you!” he shouted back, taking the offering in his hands and draping it around his shoulders at once, grimacing at the cold touch of the fabric. He went to pull it up over his head, but Genevieve cried, “Wait,” and dragged the silk shawl from her shoulders. “Take this. Put it over your head, and the lap robe over that. Papa always tells us you’ll stay warmer out-of-doors if you keep your head as warm as you can.”

“Your papa is right,” he said, and she saw a grateful smile flash at her through the gloom. She waited until he’d donned the shawl, ignoring Laura’s pointed comment that the rain was slanting in, only then reaching for the door handle. Just as she pulled it shut, she caught a glimpse of Xavier securing the lap robe firmly around himself as he leaned back against the carriage, only a portion of his face now visible in the cowl-like overhang of the covering, as he took advantage of whatever shelter the tilted vehicle provided.

She sighed, some part of her annoyed at him for refusing to come within—they could have made room for him—and part of her glad for the dimness inside the carriage, that none may see the appreciation no doubt shining from her eyes.

* * *

Silence had invaded the interior of the carriage. The ladies had stopped shivering, but were not exactly drowsing, for who could sleep aslant and half crushed, or while struggling not to crush the one below, yet all of them startled as though wakened when there was a rap on the door. Genevieve moved first, reaching for the handle just as the door was pulled open, letting in fresh, cold, wet air anew. The ladies mewled in protest.

Xavier stood there, still encased in the lap robe except for where he’d put out his hand. “They’ve come,” he said. “We’ve the second carriage back, so you ladies may proceed on to our inn for the evening.”