The Royal Mail coaches took us as far as Llangollen, changing horses and speeding away as we were left staring up at hills carpeted with thick forests. Buildings were few and far between, all in the shadow of the ruins of a once large building clinging to the tallest peak. Dark and ominous, it stood in a bleak reminder of whatever had felled it. I shifted closer to Kitty, unsettled by the feelings of stepping into one of my books. None of them ever ended well for people like us, after all.
Llangollen’s coaching inn was nothing ornate, but seemed respectable enough. A room there would no doubt be beyond the few coins I had left in the bottom of my purse, so it was all I could do to hope that the ladies Charlotte had spoken of would be kind enough to let us stay, at least for one night. I quashed every fear I had of them slamming the door in ourface and channelled the anxious energy bouncing around inside me into something useful. The boy who had helped turn over the horses had walked them around behind the inn and, before I could stop myself, I hurried after him with Kitty in tow.
“Excuse me,” I called as soon as I saw him across the yard, brushing down one of the horses. “Do you know this town well?”
The ostler raised one eyebrow in surprise at the sight of two young women who had both forgotten to pack a hairbrush and were in desperate need of a good night’s sleep, but he didn’t stop what he was doing.
“You could say that, miss. Lived here my whole life.”
The rhythmic sweep of the currycomb across the horse’s back was an accompaniment to the lilt of his accent, a strong Welsh tone that I’d never heard so prominently before. I should have expected it, but the notion of how far we’d truly travelled struck me silent long enough for the ostler to clear his throat.
“Can I help you with something?”
Silently pleading he wasn’t going to ask for money in exchange for information, I nodded.
“Do you know of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby?” I asked.
It didn’t take a verbal response to convey his answer. Both his eyebrows raised this time as he looked between Kitty and me, sceptical and appraising. I tried my best to give nothing away, glad I had not given in to the urge to hold Kitty’s hand.Clenching my jaw and squaring my shoulders, I stared back at him, daring him to accuse us of something. Thankfully he seemed to think better of it.
“Aye, I know of them,” he said.
“We don’t have any money.” Kitty stepped up beside me. “We can’t pay you. We just… have come a long way.”
Every word of it was honest, but it was still a risk to say it. She wasn’t admitting to anything, but the unspoken truth was sitting just underneath each word. We could still deny it all, but we weren’t hiding like perhaps we should have been. I could guess where Kitty’s courage came from, because I felt it, too. No one knew us here. We weren’t a Darcy and a Bennet to this boy; we were just two wayward girls out of their depth.
The ostler took too long to consider his options, still brushing out the horse’s coat as he looked at us the way I looked at a chessboard. Deciding we would be best off seeking help elsewhere, I turned and grabbed Kitty’s arm, ready to hurry both of us away before he could form too accurate a mental picture and get us into trouble.
“Wait,” he called before we could get more than a few feet. “You go off walking ling-di-long, and you’ll end up at the castle before you find Plas Newydd.”
I ignored the first of the expressions I didn’t understand in favour of the second.
“Before we find where?” I asked, unable to keep the excitement out of my voice.
With a long-suffering sigh, the ostler finally put down the comb and stepped away from the horse with a soft patto the side of its neck. He ushered us to the road the coach had travelled and pointed out the route we needed to take to get where we wanted to go. Plas Newydd, home of the Ladies of Llangollen. Once we’d repeated the directions back to him and he seemed happy he wasn’t sending us off to go missing in the Welsh countryside, he nodded approvingly.
“Don’t get lost,” he ordered. “And tell Sioned that Llew sends his regards.”
Not wanting to test the limits of his patience, I didn’t ask who Sioned was. Instead Kitty and I both thanked him as effusively as we were able, but Llew seemed more interested in returning to the horses than in listening to what we had to say. He waved us off with a faraway goodbye and headed back into the yard, leaving just Kitty and me and the road ahead. From his directions, it wasn’t far. I turned to her, my smile shaky but genuine.
“Shall we?” I asked.
She laced her fingers with mine, and we took the first step together.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Plas Newydd was like no house I’d ever seen before. It sat beyond an ornate and immaculately maintained garden, clearly someone’s pride and joy, and rose up into a large white-brick cottage. Dark wooden panels adorned the walls, the kind of carvings more suited for the interior of a church than a house in rural Wales. The stained-glass panels fitted into the windows did little to assuage the grandeur.
It was almost enough to inspire me to turn around and ask Llew how long we’d have to wait for the next postal coach out of town, but we had gotten this far. I needed to see how the story ended. There was still a chance for a happy ending, and I wasn’t willing to sacrifice it until I had tried my very best to hunt it out.
“Ready?” Kitty asked.
“I think so,” I whispered back, half afraid we were already being watched from the other side of those elaborate windows.
We wove our way down the garden paths until we reached the front door. Kitty went to pull her hand away from mine, but I held firm. If there was one doorstep we could grace hand in hand, it was this one, and I wanted to take the opportunity while we could. Our entire future was reliant on being honest about who we were and why we were there. With my other hand, I reached up and rapped the door knocker against a door that matched the rest of the ecclesiastical woodwork.
My heart sat in my mouth as we waited for a response, leaving no room for words. I gripped Kitty’s hand so tightly I felt the strain in my fingers, but I couldn’t let go. She was too important.
Eventually, the door swung open to reveal a short woman with her hair tucked up into a white cap. A faded apron covered a much-mended dress. This was Sioned—I didn’t need to wait to be told. The resemblance to the young ostler was clear.
