What did Celia want? For Susannah to sleep in the attic?
“She says we must leave Much Wemby.”
Another blow. “Leave?”
“She says with the diversion of the turnpike, The Swanwill lose custom and won’t be much of a coaching inn anymore.”
“So?” That was too bad for Ned and Miriam, but what did that have to do with?—
“Half my trade comes from the horses at The Swan.”
Dando was a fine farrier, ever so good with horses, had done an apprenticeship with the best farrier in the county. Susannah had paid for that apprenticeship and for Dando to take up the old forge in the village.
Dando went on, “And Celia says the village will die without the turnpike. She says we should move to Charingham.”
Charingham was a big town, miles and miles away.
“I can’t go to Charingham,” Susannah said wildly. “I can’t.”
Dando nodded. He understood. Thank God he understood, and they could stay here.
But then he said, “Because of Ned.”
“Because of— No! Why would you say that?”
Now it was Dando’s turn to pat her hand. “I remember. I remember when he broke it off with you.”
Dando had been just a little boy, and there was no chance he remembered. And there had been nothing to break, not even her heart, not really, not when she looked back at it.
Her heart had been broken later, but she’d patched it up. That was what one did. Take needle and thread and make the best out of one’s lot.
“I can’t leave because . . .” Because of the grave and Hodge and Nolly. But she couldn’t tell those things to Dando. “No one will understand me in Charingham.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she could hear how foolish they were. And Dando’s kind eyes couldn’t hide what she knew he must be thinking.
No one understands you here, either.
“You can’t stay,” he said.
Of course, there wasn’t money for her to stay. It was Dando who made the money to pay the rent on the cottage, to buy the grain to make this porridge, and he would need that money to set up a household in Charingham, to provide for Celia, for a family.
“I must . . .” She stood abruptly, bumping the table, causing a wave of porridge to splash over the edge of her bowl. “I must wish you very happy, brother. Both of you.”
Nine
“There will be danger,” her king warned on the eve of a long and treacherous journey.
The concubine stopped her stowing of her silks in his saddlebag and took his face into her hands.
“Nothing—not mercenaries, not mountains—can match the agony of being parted from you.”
—The Concubine and Her King.Unpublished MS.
Henry was off back home. It had taken some time to get away this morning, to escape Lady D'Oyly’s endless speeches about how he was a most welcome guest and now a good friend, and he must either return soon or have the family come to Bledsoe Park. Lady D'Oyly had a relation nearby—did Lord Ashthorpe know that?—and Emma had long expressed an interest in seeing Bledsoe Park.
”I have not, Mama,” Emma said. “Please let his lordship depart.”
Henry received Sir John’s sealed letter to the marchioness, made one last bow, and was finally in the carriage. The carriage was moving. The Earl of Ashthorpe was leaving Sutton Hall and the land of Tommy Treadwell.
