The carriage was beginning to be buffeted by the wind, and she could hear Tim yelling encouragement to the horses.
“Are horses frightened by the elements?” she asked.
“I would imagine that all animals have an instinctive need to feel safe. Anything different might be perceived as being frightening.”
She nodded, distracted by another crash of thunder.
“Do you really care about Alano, or is that your way of avoiding the storm?”
“I am not afraid of storms,” she said. “I deal quite well with any natural occurrence.” She frowned at him intently.
“Do you?”
The horses whinnied, and she closed her eyes, trying to ignore the fact that Florie was holding on to her arm with a talonlike grip.
“I met Alano in France. I was fourteen at the time. He rescued me from a situation I couldn’t hope to escape on my own.” His glance seemed to encompass the past. “He became a mentor to a very angry young man. Now he’s my second-in-command, if you will.”
“Like a majordomo?”
“More a friend,” he said.
Thunder shook the carriage, followed instantaneously by the flash of lightning. Florie screamed, then immediately clamped both hands over her mouth. If Sarah hadn’t been discomfited by the storm before, she was now.
Douglas squeezed her hand reassuringly, his attention on the landscape.
“It’s not long now,” he said, pointing with his free hand. “That’s our destination.”
She peered through the rain. “We’re at Kilmarin?”
“We are,” he said.
Sarah was not given to listening to portents or believing in omens. However, there was something about the stormy afternoon that scratched at her nerves. The rain fell in sheets, threatening to wash the carriage away as it climbed the hill leading to Kilmarin. She could hear Tim shouting to the horses. The carriagetrembled in the force of the wind as Sarah tried to ease Florie’s fears while appearing outwardly calm herself.
A quarter hour passed—a bad quarter hour in which Sarah was certain they were going to be washed away. Florie was still given to excited outbursts every few minutes, and Douglas glanced over at Sarah often enough with a concerned look in his eyes to let her know that she hadn’t been quite successful at hiding her own anxiety.
“We’ll be there in no time at all,” he said.
She only nodded.
Through the rain-sheened window, she couldn’t see much of Kilmarin. What she could see amazed her. Had Douglas felt the same upon viewing Chavensworth?
She’d always considered Chavensworth a magnificent estate, almost preening when people mentioned it in London gatherings. But from the glimpse of her mother’s childhood home, she was quite certain that Chavensworth was much smaller in size.
The road on which they were traveling seem to wind around the mountain. When she mentioned as much to Douglas, he only nodded. Some moments later, he spoke.
“I imagine it was constructed that way for defense,” he said. “Remember, Kilmarin was built seven hundred years ago.”
“Chavensworth is quite old as well,” she said, feeling an absurd desire need to defend her own home.
He only smiled faintly, his attention on the road.
She preferred to ignore their upward climb, as well as the fact that the higher they traveled, the narrower the road seemed. Another way of Kilmarin defendingitself? At least she faced the side of the mountain, and not the cliff. She wasn’t exceptionally fond of heights, especially in a storm of this magnitude.
A gust of wind pushed eagerly against the carriage, and the vehicle shivered in response. Perhaps they would be thrown off the road entirely, to plunge down the side of the mountain. Her compassionate errand would end in the deaths of four people.
She closed her eyes, patting Florie’s hand reassuringly even as she wished her maid would simply hush.
A bolt of lightning struck too close for comfort, and her eyes flew open to meet Douglas’s gaze.
