The world became quieter as his lids drooped. A little sleep would help, but if Ester was right, how would things work if they were caught here, days away from Scotland?
Chapter Nine
Women Drivers
As they drove farther north, the wind started to pick up, blowing chilly air at Ester. While Frederica’s shawl offered some protection, Ester’s wildly inappropriate travel gown didn’t. She shivered on the seat, partly from the cold, partly from the occasional touch of her napping companion. She should’ve changed before she leaped from the window, but Bex hadn’t seen her in her pretty blue gown with the netting.
Though Ester designed dresses for Frederica and Theodosia, the gown she wore had been her mother’s choice. Mama had beautiful, elegant taste, and the gowns Ester usually sketched were for taller, bolder women.
Mama must have thought Ester was being disrespectful for missing her cake cutting, and Ester remembered how she, Ruth, and Papa had always stood near Mama when she’d cut the cakes at her parties. How hurt had she been when she’d discovered Ester had actually run away?
Bex’s hand touched hers again, and at the same time, a memory of Mama crying shot through her. The words “his hands” repeated in her skull. For that’s what Mama kept saying on the stairwell leading to their rooms above the warehouse.
Ester remembered, for she and her sister Ruth had been naughty, staring at the hardworking men below through a knot in the floor. Ester had heard the noise, strained her eyes, and had caught Mama sobbing.
Odd, Ester hadn’t thought of this memory before. Odd, she’d never asked what “his hands” meant or why those words had made Mama cry?
Another breeze felt like ice water on Ester’s legs. She should’ve changed from this dress to the frumpy burgundy one when they had stopped at the coaching inn, but she’d had that feeling of being watched. No show would be given to a voyeur or a thief.
Snort. Whistle.“Leave ’em alone.” Bex shot up straight from his sleep. His eyes were wide, almost crazed in the lantern light.
“Bex, are you all right?”
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and swiped at his mouth. For a moment, he stared at her as if he didn’t know her, as if he didn’t know himself.
“Bex, it’s me. Ester Croome. We are heading to Scotland.”
Sinking back on the seat, he covered his face with his hat. “I must confess, Miss Croome, I’ve been told that I snore a little and talk in my sleep.”
“Would it be lines of Shakespeare?”
“Clever, Miss Croome. And I remembered you and this venture to Scotland.”
“I hadn’t doubted that, but who said you snored? You’re an only child.”
“I’d rather not say.”
“Perhaps the Countess Devoors?”
He pushed his hat away and sat up again. “You read the newspaper too much.”
“Blame my mother. She collects all the papers. Every scandal caricature, she saves them. There was a funny one of you and the countess throwing a set of Wedgewood platters when you broke off your…arrangement.”
“The papers get things wrong all the time. It was one bowl, maybe a vase. No heirlooms were destroyed in our parting.”
“Why didn’t you marry her? You courted for a while. Definitely more than a day.”
He coughed, then said, “The widow wasn’t the marrying kind.”
“Then why were you with her?”
The seat lantern exposed a look on his face, brow rising over his eye, suggesting she’d asked one question too many. Ester turned back to the road, studying the couple of feet in front of them illuminated by the phaeton’s side lanterns. “Well, I don’t mind you snoring.”
“That is good. I don’t intend to sleep in separate chambers.”
She couldn’t look at him now, not when her questions could lead to such dangerous territory. “I don’t mind so much. My father snores. When we lived above the old warehouse, that hard noise meant Papa had made it home safely, that nothing had happened to him in his business dealings. Those long nights with the moon high over the Thames, I’d wait on my mat for the door to open, to hear the mumbles of my parents, then that harsh sound of his sleeping. That was safety.”
“You’ll be plenty safe with me.” He yawned big, surely pushing out all the air in his big chest. “Your father lives with danger?”
