She stepped back, admiring her handiwork. “There. That will suffice for the time being, I think. We should get moving.”
“Wait.” With his good hand, Mr Beaumont reached into his pocket for his handkerchief, drew it out and proffered it to her. “Here. For your head.”
She debated arguing, but decided against it, and gingerly pressed the soft cotton against the point of pain on her head. Blood soaked through the material, watered down by the melting snow.
“I will take the gun for now,” he said, picking up the pistol where she had deposited it, and tucking it into an internal coat pocket. “I at least have the capacity to carry it without alarming anyone we encounter.”
Under any other circumstances, she would have been adamantly against Mr Beaumont taking possession of the pistol, but she saw the logic in it. And she didn’t strictly know if it was loaded; it had served its purpose.
“I want it back,” she said.
“Fine. Can you walk?”
“Yes.” She didn’t know if it was true, but there was little else she could do. With her head, and with the lack of saddle or bridle, she fancied riding would prove risky.
Mr Beaumont strode to where the reins still held the horses in place, and drawing a penknife from his pocket, he slashed through their bindings. “Here,” he said, thrusting one set of reins into her hands. “I’ll take the others. Follow me.”
They began their miserable journey. All too soon, her feet felt like blocks of ice, and although Mr Beaumont was walkingahead, striding through the snow and breaking a path, the hem of her skirts soon became damp and encrusted. Ice bloomed on her lashes, turning them heavy with every blink. The tips of her fingers turned white.
Frostbite had not come to Dalston often, but she knew of it. The blackened extremities, nerves dead. Incurable. How would she provide for Isabella if she did not have her hands? It seemed an impossibility. Yet even her panic felt muted under the frozen weight of the world.
Behind her, the horse she led trudged with patient misery.
After what felt like hours—or perhaps even days—Mr Beaumont came to a stop ahead of her. “I spy a light,” he yelled, pointing ahead. Emily squinted, but the snow was too thick to make out much of anything at all. He abandoned the horses and approached her, his face terribly pale, the tips of his hair white with frost and settled snow.
“A farm?” she asked.
His gaze flicked to her temple, then back down to her face. “Most likely. I don’t know who lives and runs there, but I expect we will have to shelter as husband and wife.”
“Not sister and brother?” she asked, already knowing it was fruitless.
“Such a story won’t hold under close examination. We look and sound too dissimilar. The inn was one thing because we were two patrons out of many, but someone’s home is a different story.” He plunged a hand into his pocket once more and pressed something into her hand. When she uncurled her fingers, it was to see a ring. She glanced at Oliver, but he was already turning away.
“I can’t wear this,” she said. Her tongue felt too thick. “Oliver. I can’t wear the ring you were going to give my sister.”
“If you want them to welcome us, then you must.”
She watched him stumble back to the head of his horses, fumbling for the reins with his good arm. Although she was in enough discomfort to classify as physical pain, he was in more so. They needed rest and refuge.
And he was right: under close examination, they could not pass as brother and sister. Their colourings were entirely different, and their accents; he had been born in the south of England and she the north. All the governesses in the world—and she’d only had two—would have been unable to banish the slight cadence to her words. He was quite obviously a man of fashion; her dresses were many years out of date and heavily patched.
They did not look like they belonged together in any capacity. But certainly not as siblings born equal.
With clumsy fingers, she slid the ring on her third finger and returned to trudging through the snow towards the lights. They gleamed, golden and warm, between the driving snow, and it seemed to her weary eyes like a haven.
Please say this is an inn. If there were an inn, they might have the chance to hire a room, or even rooms. Perhaps hire a carriage to take them back to Dalston as soon as the snow cleared.
What would Isabella be thinking about her absence? She ought to have left a note, but she had not thought she would be gone at all. All she’d intended to do was threaten him and return to bed.
She had the oddest, overwrought temptation to weep.
Finally, they reached a small track leading off the road that widened into a courtyard. There were what appeared to be barns to one side, and a large stone house on the other. Not an inn—decidedly not. But it was shelter, and she would accept anything under any terms to escape the ferocity of the snow.
Ahead of her, Mr Beaumont dropped the reins of his horses and reached for her arm, dragging her close to him. “Knock,” he advised her, voice ragged with exhaustion.
She raised her fist to do just that, but the door swung open of its own accord, and a plump-faced woman stared at them both with utter astonishment.
“Mercy me,” she said, glancing between them both, and Emily felt a burst of relief that they were, at least, within the bounds of England. “What a pair of sorry-looking folk.”
