All she wanted in the world was to go inside the cottage and fall on its bed, but her son, it appeared, preferred to wallow in the grass.
“Oliver, other people are going to stay in those cottages!” she said, her voice hitting a higher octave than was strictly necessary for a composed Mama. “This one is ours!”
“You could take mine,” said Tommy, flashing that gold tooth with the width of her grin. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Claire cut her eyes to the other woman, winning nothing in response but a cackle.
“I’m only one lady, after all,” Tommy continued, “plenty of room for Abra and myself in this smaller one.”
“Fine. Fine!” said Claire, dropping her hands onto her knees and bending down to meet her son’s eye. “Will that get you up and into the house, Oliver?”
“Papa will come too?” Oliver demanded, a wary defiance flashing in his eyes.
“Yes! Papa will come too,” she forced herself to say through the bile that wanted to taint her words. “Get up, now.”
“Well,” said Oliver, wavering a little in clear surprise that he’d won. “All right.”
It would be fine, Claire told herself as the exhausted-looking groom moved their luggage from one stoop to the other. She’d already been sharing a house with Freddy for weeks upon weeks. This would be no different.
They would spend most of their time down at the games, anyhow. This was just a place to fall asleep, just a soft landing for the main event.
She gave a bag of coins to one of the village boys who had run up to assist in the clear hopes of a penny or two when their carriage had arrived. “Go and buy some food from the stalls for us,” she told him. “It doesn’t matter what.”
It truly didn’t. She would eat flame-charred horse just now and thank them for the privilege. It did occur to her that the boy might just run off with the coin, never to return, but she thought he seemed a canny sort of lad who might, instead, have whiffed the promise of repeat business.
Besides, he could keep a sausage or two if he wanted.
The cottage itself was exactly as charming as Silas had described, with a thatched roof and plenty of cream and wooden fixtures inside. It felt a little bit charmed, Claire thought, obviously cleaner and better maintained than a real house built the same way would likely be. As far as she knew, no one lived in these cottages for the remainder of the year.
When the food arrived, an assortment of toasted cheese, hot oysters, and roasted nuts, she ate so quickly and ravenously that she could scarce recall the taste. Oliver appeared to do thesame, almost immediately beginning to yawn and droop in the aftermath.
His fatigue, she thought privately, was a gift.
She put him down in the trundle bed in the smallest bedroom without even bathing or changing him. He would sleep in his shirtsleeves tonight and be no worse for it in the morning. She kissed his brow and thought how nice it would be if her own clothing were so simply repositioned.
When the other carriages rambled to a stop outside, she went personally to inform Freddy of the change.
She was done hiding from him. Done letting him gloat and preen and torment. She was too tired for any of it.
“Oh, Claire,” Dot had said in the aftermath of the news, which Freddy received with a detached sort of indifference that Claire suspected was from the same fatigue she herself felt. “I need to tell you something.”
“Can it wait?” Claire asked, frowning and turning to find Dot’s hand on her shoulder. “I am so very tired.”
Dot glanced at Freddy and Silas, who were grabbing their personal bags from the overhead shelves in the carriage. Freddy paused to open his bag on the foothold, tucking something inside of it.
Dot winced, turning back to Claire. “It shouldn’t, but I suppose it could.”
“Then let it wait, Dot,” Claire said with an approximation of an encouraging smile, not caring a whit what nonsense had unfolded in the trip here. How much worse could things reallyget, after all? Dot didn’t even know about the riverbank or what had happened in the foyer.
“It’s only that I gave him—”
“Later.” Claire shook her head, already turning to leave. She wanted to be back inside and locked in her own chambers before Freddy could enter the cottage. “We’ll all be better after some rest. Enjoy your night, Dot.”
Dot did not answer or otherwise make herself known.
Claire did force herself to wash, since stripping down to a shirt and sleeping was not an option for her as it was for her son. She almost drifted off in the copper tub, which was round and very deep as opposed to long, only rousing herself because the sound of conversation outside her bedroom window willed it.
She pulled the first night rail that her fingers could find in the open valise over her body and crawled onto the bed, not even bothering to pull the comforter back. She sank onto the pillows. She exhaled. And then she slept.
