With quick efficiency, Bran had the back door open and was hauling himself inside, expertly checking Radish over for injury.
“I could’ve told ye for a tuppence that contraption wouldn’t be making it all the way to Surrey.” Mr. Scunt pulled his pipe from his pocket. “Beasts of the field were meant to travel on their four feet, the way the good Lord intended.”
“Thank you, Mr. Scunt.” Artemis willed the driver to please stop talking.
Bran had a thunderstorm darkening his brow as he led Radish from the caravan. “Mr. Scunt,” he began in a voice Artemis had never heard from him. It was firm and direct andcommanding. This was his soldier’s voice. A not-unpleasant shiver traced through her. “How far away is the next coaching inn?”
Mr. Scunt’s face scrunched in assessment. “About three or so miles, give or take three or so miles.”
Annoyance flashed behind Bran’s eyes. “Here is what you will do. You will ride the team there and speak to the smithy. Get him out here to repair the caravan so we can continue first thing in the morning.”
Mr. Scunt gave a smile that would have been apologetic, if it had held even the faintest sliver of remorse. He puffed thrice on his pipe, then said, “Ah, but there ye see, the dark is creeping through the air just now. If I know Ben Scully—and I’ve had a few tangles with him over the years—he’ll be coming here in his own good time, which will be on the other side of this night.”
Bran didn’t miss a beat. “Tell him there will be ten pounds in it for him, but only if the caravan is ready for transport by eight o’clock in the morning.”
Now, it was Mr. Scunt who wasn’t missing a beat. “And for the messenger?”
“One pound,” said Bran. He’d been expecting the question. “Not a penny more.”
Mr. Scunt’s smile broadened as he set about readying the team for departure with the energy of a man thirty years younger.
Bran’s gaze shifted and pinned Artemis in place. No mistaking the annoyance in those golden depths—and the determination, too. Here was a man who took the task at hand and saw it through to completion. Bran must have been incredibly skilled at soldiering.
“And you?” he asked, the question directed square at her.
Not too far away, Mr. Scunt had climbed onto the lead horse’s back. “Fare thee well, fellow travelers!”
The team of horses lurched into motion, and he was off.
Which left the two of them, a pair of horses, and a broken-down caravan—and that unanswered question.
“What about me?” The smile she turned on him had been known to disarm even her fiercest opponents.
He stood utterly unmoved.
Well, he lifted a single eyebrow.
“Shouldn’t you be moving along, too?”
Her smile didn’t slip a hair. “Are you planning to walk Radish the three to six miles to the coaching inn?”
“Aye,” he said, in the slow, deliberate manner of one who knew he was being led into a trap but hadn’t yet identified what the snare was.
Objectively, she was being infuriating.
She understood that.
But she couldn’t seem to stop, as he was, at last, speaking to her in vocabulary that extended beyond grunts and snorts.
She shifted her weight and slid from Pixie’s back.
The deep trench of Bran’s brow was likely to give him a megrim.
“I shall walk, too,” she said, delivering herfait accompli.
“Artemis—”
She glanced all around, as if she were only now noticing her surroundings. “The sun is, indeed, making its way toward the horizon. Since our walk will take somewhere around one to three hours, we should start moving.”
