The wordplacemade Patience cringe; she peeked at Newell’s face, his pain and frustration plain for the world to see. She wanted to reassure him that she needed him here, but no words came to mind that sounded right. He’d prefer and deserved only the truth.
“You want to go with them,” she said at last.
“A man needs to make a contribution,” he replied without looking at her. “Sitting to the side when there’s need…”
“You aren’t!”
He peered down at her then, his expression a mask of sorrow, rain clinging to his eyelashes. “The other night, coming here, I had to get out and lead the horses in. I made it to the turn in the road, and my damn—excuse the expression, ma’am—dratted false foot stuck in the muck. I went down and Jamie Heyworth had to bring us the rest of the way. I’d be no use to them out there.”
“But we aren’t on the side. They’ll bring the survivors here and Mrs. Brewster is already stretched to the limit. I can’t do my part unless you help with the boys.”
He gave a shuddering breath and nodded. “I can keep your troops in order, that’s something. You best hurry inside.”
He limped away before she could respond or risk giving him unwanted sympathy.
Beside her, Mallet spoke. “The stubborn fool didn’t mention the superhuman effort it took him to get us this far the other night. Our business in Brussels is urgent, as you can guess, and he pushed himself and his horses harder than we imagined possible, until we ran into darkness and the flooded roads. He walked that team at least a mile.” He shook his head. “I fear I’m no help with the younger ones, but I promised Peter we’d work on his Latin later—at least until I’m able to get to my transport.”
CHAPTER7
The next hours ran together, streams of worry, fear, and work, blurring into one wide river of exhaustion. Patience hurried between the kitchen, the public rooms, and the older wings of the inn, soothing the wounded, stretching their supply of blankets, spreading clean straw on the floor, serving soup, shoring up sagging window frames, stopping leaks…
She worked alongside the inn staff, and even some generous guests, to care for the flood of shipwreck victims. Lady Stanton was notably helpful, but seemed particularly concerned about a group of French-speaking refugees.
When Mrs. Brewster, whom Patience had ever known as one of Fenwick on Sea’s bulwarks of strength, seemed ready to drop by dark, Patience volunteered to sit up that night in the old wing full of recently arrived refugees. She had no time to check on her boys, but she trusted Zach Newell to keep them safe and out of mischief.
Staring into the dark through the interminable night, she pondered that trust. The man carried himself with confidence and even grace when his leg didn’t pain him. Tall, slim, and graceful, he still conveyed a kind of strength, the sort that comes from within, the sort a person can rely on to be there when you need him, the sort she wanted to lean into. She instinctively gave him her trust.
But what do you really know about him, Patience?
The mystery of Zachary Newell filled the night between helping refugees with personal needs and worrying the roof might leak. Over their one dinner, he’d let her babble at length about the Academy and how she started it, but had spoken little of himself. He spoke of the army but she couldn’t tell if he regretted leaving it. He implied that he worked for an uncle, and struck her as a contented sort of person, but did he want to drive coaches his whole life?
Is he happy? Is the coaching world all he knows or wants to do? Surely not— What kind of coachman fills a trunk with books for his travels?
His care for Norb over Millie’s plight, and gentle patience with Froggy—so far behind in his reading—impressed themselves on her. He had Stump’s respect too, no small thing.
Perhaps he ought to be a teacher—or a father…
Sitting on the floor and leaning against the sickroom wall, she nodded off on that thought and awoke with a start when one of the maids, sent by Mrs. Brewster, came to relieve her just before dawn. She trod off to her room, knowing she ought to check on the boys, relieved she didn’t have to.
Zach will have taken good care of them. She smiled as she drifted off. Sometime in the night Sergeant Newell had become Zach, at least in her private thoughts. When she finally got to her little pallet to sleep, she vowed to herself she would check on her boys the next morning before she was drawn back into the inn and its refugees.
* * *
Ducking under the overhang, Zach leaned one hand against the frame of the loose box stall closest to the stairs to the grooms’ loft where he slept. The wind had slowed, but thick rain clouds still covered any hope of moonlight, making inspection difficult. He peered into the gloom and cocked one ear to the inside, listening for sounds of fretful boys or incipient trouble. He heard none.
Eyes adjusting to the dark, he could just make out lumps under blankets, enabling him to take silent rollcall. He counted and counted again. There should be five boys sleeping, with Peter upstairs. He counted six. He leaned in further, and found the faint whiff of dog, narrowing his gaze to the more oddly shaped mound that seemed to shift with his movement. Millie and the pups slept with the boys. Miss Patience wouldn’t approve, but if that was the most wayward behavior these lads got up to, Zach did. He went to bed smiling.
He rose Monday morning with a lift in his heart. From the sound of the wind on the shutters—or lack of it—the storm had weakened even further overnight. He anticipated a day with his squad of bright lads, one with no boredom and little time to fret over his own tedious life. Even his leg felt better; going without prosthesis since the previous afternoon let the inflammation from the other night mend itself. He strapped the dratted thing in place under his trousers and headed down the stairs. One or two of the grooms had already risen, but Peter slept soundly on his cot.
The scene he encountered in the stableyard upended all his expectation. Patience Abney, fisted hands on her hips, engaged in a heated argument with Ryman, the head groom, while some of the boys milled around her in a soft drizzle, half dressed. Millie whined in the door to the sleeping stall with her puppies at her feet. From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the grooms leading Algernon from his tie stall, and alarms went off in his head.
Stump spied Zach and headed for him at a run, the rest of the pack on his heels. “Good thing you’re here, Sergeant Newell!”
“What are you lot doing out here undressed? And, Walter, why didn’t you fetch me when the lads woke up, as ordered?”
“No time, Sergeant. Miss Patience woke us up when she came to look in on us and found Norb gone,” Walter said.
Zach’s heart froze. “Gone?”
