He had lost her.
Ellen saton the stagecoach to Bath, squeezed in among a redcoat, a young woman in a threadbare coat, a seedy-looking gentleman who reeked of alcohol, two elderly gentlemen busily discussing the politics of the day, and a woman with a basket and flyaway raven hair. She had a paisley shawl draped over her shoulders and looked familiar.
As Ellen sat next to her, the woman broke into a smile, revealing a gap between her two front teeth. "Ah, missus, we meet again!"
Ellen stared at her, perplexed.
"Henny Miller, don't ye remember? We chatted all the way from Bath to Lunnon."
So they had. It felt like decades ago.
"And where's yer little 'un?" The woman bent to look outside to see if she'd left him there. "Ye left 'im in Lunnon?"
"Oh. You mean Noni." A pain pierced Ellen's heart. She clutched her bag in her lap and looked at the woman helplessly. What on earth was she supposed to tell this woman? The truth? She was so tired of all the lies.
"E's such a right 'un, a lovely child indeed."
Ellen swallowed. "Yes."
The door opened, and another passenger squeezed in. The coach was still at the inn, but about to leave.
"Here, ye sit in me place, and I'll sit next to this lovely lady 'ere so we can chat." Henny squeezed into the seat next to Ellen and beamed at her.
"So tell me, where's yer little boy?"
Ellen stared blindly out of the window. She heard the postillion blow the horn, and the coach set in motion.
She'd left him with a cranky old man who was his true guardian, she could say. A stranger who did not want him. After she'd made the terrible mistake of leaving him with a fop of a baron who was not his guardian and had had asked her to pretend to be his wife.
Instead, she whispered wretchedly, "The child is with his guardian."
Henny looked at her sympathetically and patted her hand. "It's all well, luv. It'll work out somehow."
Ellen pulled out a handkerchief. It was Edmund's. She gave a hollow laugh and blew her nose.
"Ye love him, don't ye?” No doubt she meant Noni, which Ellen could answer in the affirmative, but Ellen's mind opened up to an entirely different possibility.
Ellen stared at her. "I-I do, actually. I love him very much. Both of them."
Then she burst into tears.
"Well, that's very good then." Henny patted her shoulder. "Then things are very simple."
"Are they?" Ellen sniffed into the handkerchief.
"Of course they are, dear. If ye love them, ye have to be with 'em."
The simple truth of that struck Ellen like a bolt of lightning.If you love them, then you have to be with them ... .She knocked on the carriage wall. "Let me out. Let me out! I have changed my mind. I need to get off."
The carriage rumbled to a halt, but it might have stopped anyway because a milkmaid led a cow across the road.
Ellen threw her arms around Henny's neck. "Thank you so much."
"Ye're welcome." Henny winked at her. "Now get 'im."
Ellen fought her way back to Charing Cross, between carriages, people, horses and all sorts of other animals, for it seemed all of London was out on the streets.
Home. She had to get home.
