No one had come out and made a comment about Jack to his face like that before.
Then again, Beckett hadn’t been handed such a clear marker of favour before.
If Jack had tried it on, giving Beckett one of his own horses to ride to save him from catching the stagecoach like any other servant, Beckett would have refused.
But this sign of favour came from Marl, and Beckett had caused enough upset with the butler for a lifetime, thanks.
Things had changed.
Beckett was ready for it.
Hungry for it.
CHAPTER 21
BECKETT
You could get to Sevennis from Avendene in two days if you changed horses at every posting house, and a little under that if the moon was on your side and you chanced it on the dark roads, as Jack had done to reach Arden.
It was a lot slower in crap weather when you were riding one horse, and that horse had to be dried, stabled, fed, and rested overnight.
Beckett didn’t mind. He appreciated the opportunity to think.
He also appreciated Tib knowing his own way and not needing any input from Beckett beyond the initial giddy-up, since Beckett’s thoughts were very much not on the road.
They were fixed at all times on one of three things—Jack, Arden, and Jack-and-Arden-and-him.
Maybe now and then thoughts of the future that Marl had hinted at crept in.
Estate manager. He sat up taller in the saddle, shoulders back.
Him, an estate manager.
He’d never have aimed that high himself. Thought shooting for butler was chancing it a bit, to be honest.
Estate manager, though?
Yeah. He’d do a great job of it.
After the first day of riding, Beckett’s muscles were screaming. He had to use the mounting block in the inn’s yard the next morning. Couldn’t get his wobbly thighs to cooperate.
The second day was a trudge.
It was shitting down with rain, making Beckett more than grateful for his long coat, which covered him from neck to ankles. Thick mud sucked noisily at Tib’s big hooves, and he was splashed with it well over his hocks and nigh up to the girth.
Beckett turned up his collar, pulled his battered old tricorn hat low, and hunkered in for the slog.
Bright thoughts of an exciting future were harder to conjure when the sky was the colour of pewter and the branches of the trees lining the road were black and dripping.
The clouds didn’t let up, neither did the rain, and in the end Beckett called it done a good two hours before dusk.
The visibility was so bad it may as well have been night anyway, and Beckett was more than ready to be out of the saddle and in the dry.
As he had the night before, Beckett took care of Tib himself rather than leaving him to one of the ostlers. He gave the horse a thorough rubdown, followed by two of Narin’s apples, a fresh bucket of water and a manger full of hay. Tib leaned against him affectionately when Beckett finished up with a quick bit of fuss. “Youarea good lad, aren’t you, eh?” he said.
Tib huffed in soft agreement.
Beckett left him dozing in his stall, sat and drank a couple of pints in the taproom along with two helpings of stew, and took himself up to bed early. He could be sociable when the need arose. On the whole, though, he preferred his own company.
