I preferred to repair rather than replace at every opportunity, but… this formerly red painted scrap heap should have been given to scrap a century or so ago. Instead of a box seat for the drivers, two whiskey barrels sat where the cushions belonged. No two wheels had come from the same vehicle. The door was stolen from some other conveyance and had been belted on with leather straps. And where there should have been a glass window, there was… nothing.
Sprawled atop one of the barrels was a scrawny lad of perhaps fifteen, with a pinkish-red stocking cap covering his head and a once-white shirt half-unbuttoned on his torso. It was not undone as a fashionable choice or to make a statement. Rather, the rest of the buttons were simply absent. A green waistcoat hung open over his shoulders. His breeches fortunately had no holes I could see, and to my astonishment, his boots were nearly new—and too big and much too fine forsuch a boy. Almost certainly those hessians served as this lad’s salary for his role in this farce.
“Mr. Jack, yer carriage,” he drawled, moving to hop off the barrel.
“Too late, Alfie. He knows,” Lady Davina replied with no hint of her false masculine tone.
His brow twisted in confusion. “But ye said I was only to call ye Mr. Jack.”
Something about the lady’s sigh told me there had been a great deal of rehearsal on that subject. The knowledge tipped the absurdity of this moment from nonsensical to amusing.
“Call me whatever you like, Alfie. Alfie, this is Mr. Summers, Mr. Summers, this is Alfie.”
“Pleased to meet ye,” the boy said and thrust his hand down to me from his place on the footboard.
“Likewise,” I replied, shaking his surprisingly clean hand with an internal sigh. “Is it just you, or…”
“Nah, ole Rory is here somewhere.” He threw a thumb behind his back to indicate the missing Rory.
“Of course,” I replied with a significant look to Lady Davina. “Wouldn’t want to forget Old Rory.”
“Yer right about that! She’s the best smug—er, carriage captain this side of Slough, ole Rory is.”
“Driver, carriage driver,” Lady Davina added pathetically, her voice failing on the last word.
Alfie was either unhearing or uncaring as he returned to his barrel and dug through a crate between them and plucked out a strip of dried meat. He tore into it with a revolting kind of enthusiasm. I would wager everything in my pocket that the meat came with the boots.
I turned to her. “I take it you found these two outside the distillery?” I asked, recognizing the Bonnie Barrel Whiskey stamp on one of the barrel-seats.
The distillery had been another one of Lady Davina’s flights of fancy, an ill-conceived investment that turned out well for her—as they always did.
“Yes,” she muttered.
“Thecarriageas well?”
“Yes.”
“Please tell me we’re not traveling as far as Slough? We may have the best smuggler this side of it, but we certainly don’t have the best carriage.”
“We’re not going anywhere near Slough,” she replied slyly. I pretended not to notice her careful wording.
One of the horses sighed and flicked its ear in an irritation that perfectly matched my own. The pair of sooty Cleveland Bays before me were nearly as decrepit as the coach they were tethered to.
“That’s the last of the supplies, Mr. Jack,” came a voice from behind us.
Instead of the weathered, elderly man I expected from a name like Old Rory, I spun to find a girl—young woman, in truth—hauling a heavy trunk. She was my age, perhaps a few years younger, with a messy, dull red braid and a nose that was slightly too flat for her otherwise delicate features. Her skin was clear and clean, and her form was slender beneath the tan trousers and blue waistcoat she wore. Unlike Alfie, her clothing was neat and well cared for.
“Just Davina, Rory. He figured it out.”
“I told ye that he would,” Rory snorted as she hefted the trunk to the back of thecarriageand began to tie it down. She turned to observe me and her upper lip curled in a sneer. “Is his face always like that?”
“Yes,” Lady Davian replied for me.
I fumbled to make amends for my certainly befuddled expression. “Apologies Miss Rory. I was just expecting someone?—”
“With more impressive ballocks?”
I blinked dimly for a moment, before replying, “Well, yes. Also a bit older.”
