Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Louisa sat on the seat of the cart in a rumpled cotton dress, her uncombed hair tucked under her bonnet, her face hastily washed that morning from the bucket of ice-cold water that Robert had drawn up from the well in the inn's courtyard. How she longed for a bath, a change of linen, and fresh stockings!

A cup of hot chocolate. A piece of toast with soft egg. Her warm, comfortable bed. Her bookshelf! The list of things she missed kept growing.

She'd woken up that morning wrapped in more blankets and shawls than she could remember. She thought she'd pulled only one woollen blanket and a shawl over her shoulder when she went to sleep; but she'd woken up with three tucked tightly about her, in addition to her shawl folded into a small pillow placed under her head. Had he obtained more blankets and covered her? If he had, she did not recall when during the night he had done so. She reluctantly admitted that it was inexplicably thoughtful of him .

The initial sense of excitement and adventure of the journey had worn off. The last few nights had been the same—a makeshift bed in the field, the meadow or under a tree. Robert at a safe distance, tending to the fire. Her entire body was stiff, her shoulders tense, and her back ached. As hard and uncomfortable as her bedstead was on the ground, and cumbersome as the journey on the lumbering cart was, she was never cold or hungry. That was due to Robert. He was always able to obtain sustenance for them, wherever they were. He'd brought pasties and pies, mugs of tea and ale, and once, even several slices of apple cake that the innkeeper's wife had just baked. Otherwise, he treated her with wariness, as if expecting her to collapse any moment and beg him to take her home.

But as tempting as it was to cry and throw a tantrum, Louisa stubbornly refused to do so. She'd long since made up her mind to show him that she was no useless china doll, as he'd so contemptuously called her.

They had been travelling for several days. It had been painfully slow, the roads were bad, and she was exhausted to the bone, but fortunately the weather had cooperated, and it hadn't rained. The rolling hills alternated between meadows and farming fields. Under normal circumstances she might have enjoyed it, but she felt as if she'd been caught in a never-ending dream.

"How far d'you want to go?" he asked her once.

"Until we arrive," she'd replied.

"Where exactly?"

"Anywhere," she'd answered cryptically.

Southwest, she kept telling him. But when they'd reached Salisbury, she'd paused for longer than usual, staring at the wooden signposts at the crossroads. This particular crossroad felt heavily symbolic for her life. Should she pursue the path west, towards Dorset, back into the past? Back into chapters of her life she'd long since closed? Or should she shrug it all off and venture north instead—towards Bath, perhaps, and then further north to Wales, or Scotland, even—to explore new paths and see new places? It would seem more fitting with her new life. Yet she felt a strange pull, a yearning to follow the road west. But what would await her there? What if she dug up old ghosts and scratched at the scabs that covered old scars? What if?

She wiped her perspiring hands on her skirt.

Robert leaned against the cart and chewed on a long leaf of grass. Seeing her indecision, he took the leaf from his mouth and threw it away.

"Let's go that way." He pointed to the road in the direction of Dorchester.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Why not? It's as good a road as any. It looks solid and safe. Shall we, then?"

In response, Louisa climbed back on the cart, and Robert set it in motion.

During their journey, she'd been thinking deeply, reviewing her entire life, especially the last seven Seasons. Her hundred rejected suitors. Her father's choleric, volatile behaviour, which she couldn't understand. And then her own behaviour, which she understood even less.

As if respecting her reluctance to speak, Robert had never pressed her to converse with him—they had travelled in silence most of the time—until now. Today, he seemed unusually talkative.

"I was wondering whether you had a particular destination in mind," he said, "and if so, would you care to share where we're going? Because wherever that is, I'd rather we arrived sooner than later. This journey is becoming somewhat tedious, wouldn't you agree?"

To this, Louisa had no response.

"She still doesn't want to talk, apparently," Robert continued in a persistent monologue. "One supposes one can count oneself fortunate to have a wife who is as taciturn as a sphinx, not as chatty as a magpie. There is one thing that keeps me curious, however. Why me?"

She looked up briefly. She understood immediately what he meant, and she supposed he deserved an answer. "Why not you?"

He frowned. "Surely that cannot be your answer. Surely, it is anything but natural for a lady of Quality like you to choose one like me to marry. You could've found some rum duke to marry, some nob or nabob with well-lined pockets. Some titled toff with a manor. Don't you think I have a right to know why you chose someone as me?"

She shrugged. "They bore me."

"They bore you," he echoed in disbelief. "In all earnestness? That is your answer?"

She shrugged.

"You turned down suitor after suitor after suitor, mocking them, humiliating them, because they bore you? "

"Why not?"

The sudden flare of fury in his eyes took her aback. But perhaps she had imagined it, as he quickly hooded his gaze and looked at her as placidly as ever.

He shrugged. "So, it is true what they say."

"What, pray, do they say?" She drew herself up proudly. Truth be told, she did not really want him to answer. After all, she'd read the gossip sheets.

"That you're as proud as a goddess and colder than a glacier. A heart of ice. Hence, the Ice Damsel."

This was not new to her, but it still stung. She would not comment on it with more than a derisive smile playing about her lips.

"Hundreds of suitors, rejected on a whim. Princes, dukes, and earls. Wellington himself, I heard. Tsar Alexander when he was here last month. I suppose he doesn't count because he flirts with all the ladies, they say. But they all bore you." There was a stern glint in his eyes. "You'd reject the king personally if he were to propose. Mind you, not that I'd blame you," he added hastily, "him being mad as Bedlam and all."

"That's an exaggeration. Not hundreds of suitors, but merely one hundred." She pleated the soft fabric of her dress with her fingers.

He barked an incredulous laugh. "Merely one hundred! Jove's beard."

"Wellington and the Tsar are both married. As is King George. I fail to see how I could have possibly accepted a suit from them if they had offered. Which, I emphatically insist, they did not. And no prince has ever proposed." She thought for a moment before adding, "At least I don't think so." She thought a moment longer. "Not that I can remember." She chewed on her bottom lip. Who knows, maybe a prince had proposed, and it had slipped her mind. Hadn't there been that German aristocrat? Tall, blond, in uniform. He might have been a prince. Or he could also have been some other military man. The truth was that the faces of all her suitors had melted to a single mass of unidentifiable features, like wax figures left out in the sun too long, indistinct and lacking in any memorable character.

"I didn't meet a single man who interested me. Not even one who was different. For me, such men are, undoubtedly, a bore."

"Is that why you humiliated them the way you did?"

She shrugged again, refusing to comment.

"Did you enjoy it?" His eyes pierced hers. "Did you obtain some perverse sense of power from putting them into their place?"

She threw her hair back. "Of course. They asked for it."

"They wanted to woo you, and you say, ‘they asked for it'?" he scoffed.

She whirled around to him with a hiss. "Yes, they did. What do you know? And how dare you judge me for something you don't understand, will never understand? I fail to see why you find it so preposterous that a lady turns down her suitors because she doesn't want them. She has a right to do so, regardless of her motivation. These men, they're all alike. They're impossible to keep apart. They look the same, dress the same, behave the same, and their motivation is, undoubtedly, the same. Many even bear the same name. Whether it's Lord Lexington or Lord Whatsington, they're all after one thing only: my fortune." She threw him a speaking look. "Including yourself, if I might add."

Not one of them had really cared about her, about who she was, or what her desires, dreams and intentions were. Not one of them had asked, ever. No one had wanted to truly get to know her. She must be remarkably unlovable to attract so many suitors, and none of them, not a single one, had ever expressed the slightest curiosity about her person. She'd never admitted it to herself, but the thought hurt deeply.

He scratched the back of his neck. "Well, if you put it like that…"

"Indeed."

"And yet you'd rather spend the rest of your life with a humble costermonger. Sleeping on the hard ground and eating poor man's bread. Because he's the only one who doesn't bore you."

It was true. Robert was many things: rumpled, grimy and unshaven, ill-smelling, a boor and probably illiterate to boot, but he certainly wasn't boring.

"You'd rather give yourself a life sentence of living in poverty than in boredom," he mused aloud. "That boggles the mind. It really is quite something." He continued to shake his head in disbelief.

That was certainly one way of putting it.

"Or," he continued, just when she thought they'd ended the conversation, turning to her with a level, knowing gaze. "Or this could all be about something else entirely."

"I am fairly agog to learn what conclusion you reach next."

"This could all just be an excellent way to punish your father."

She sat up as if she'd been stung.

He snapped his fingers, then pointed his index finger at her. "That's it, isn't it? Except why you would punish yourself to a lifelong sentence of poverty just to get back at your father, is a bit beyond me. But"—he shrugged—"what do I know about the intricate workings of the female mind?"

She stared at him, speechless that he had been able to place his finger exactly on her open wound. Was she that transparent?

And was what he said true? That this was all about her punishing her father?

She licked her dry lips.

"I'm right, aren't I?" he pressed.

"Possibly. What matters most to me is that I made this decision on my own. I chose you as my husband. Not my father. Not society. Consider yourself the lucky winner."

"So, you did. You chose me, and I am indeed a blastedly lucky man." Once more that mocking look. He was infuriating! "This journey hasn't been easy. You have certainly been heroic so far. Let us see how you fare in your new surroundings once reality sets in, Damsel."

"Reality? What do you mean?"

"The reality of a hungry belly. Of hardship, scarcity, and hard labour. But you need not be daunted." He flashed his white teeth at her. "For we have each other, do we not? Shouldn't that suffice?" He put an arm about her shoulder and squeezed.

Queasy, she shook his arm off and moved aside, then clung to the seat to keep from falling off.

His voice was deep as he chuckled.

That look, it confused her. It made her blush. Angry at him, but even more at herself, she pulled herself up and lifted her chin.

That made him smile even more.

She couldn't help the feeling that he was doing this on purpose. To rattle her.

Her cheeks burned.

He smirked. "Hiyup," he told the donkey, lifting the ribbons.

As they travelled along the road, the landscape became increasingly familiar with its gentle slopes and vales, and excitement gripped her when they crossed the River Frome. A little further south, and they would reach it: the town she'd had in mind.

The town of her childhood.

At a crossroads, Robert pulled the cart to a halt. He turned to her as if he had made up his mind.

"Louisa," he said suddenly, "this has gone on long enough. Let's end this."

"We're almost there," she replied. "Look. Piddleton's at the bottom of the hill, over there. Let's find a cottage. Somewhere on the edge of town, but not too isolated, either. Maybe up by the mill."

He huffed a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. "So, you can play house? Are you certain you want this?"

"Well, we have to stay somewhere, don't we? Let's rent a cottage. Like this one." She pointed to a lovely stone cottage with a straw-thatched roof by the wayside. "This one would be perfect."

He stared at it with a frown. Then he looked at her. "It's not the manor you're used to."

"I know. I'm no fool. We can't afford a manor. I want this one."

"Very well," he murmured. "If that's what she wants."

She waited by the cart with the donkey tethered beside her while he made enquiries about the town. The town was quaint and picturesque, its streets lined with charming, whitewashed thatched cottages. Oh, how familiar they were, the narrow, cobbled streets that wound their way to the heart of the town at the central square, where a Norman-style church stood next to the stone vicarage. How was it possible that nothing about this place had changed?

The rhythmic clang of the blacksmith's hammer echoed through the streets, and the enticing aroma of bread fresh from the baker's oven filled the air.

Memories overwhelmed her.

A rush of hot tears shot into her eyes.

She looked up, expecting to see Will's awkward figure hurtling around the corner, his footsteps slapping the cobblestone, his long, unruly hair tucked into a cap, loaves of freshly baked bread under his arms. She heard his bright, cheerful voice calling out as clearly as if he were here now. "Lulu, wait for me! Race you to the old mill, whoever loses is a lazy mule!" And as a punishment, the loser would have to be the mule and carry the winner piggyback all the way home. Louisa usually won, for she'd had long legs and was an astonishingly fast runner. Will, who was a head smaller than her but sturdy and strong, had had to carry her on his back all the way back and up the hill to Meryfell Hall like a sack of flour.

It was time to face the truth, time to face the ghosts of the past.

She'd come here for him, hadn't she?

She'd made Robert drive all the way to Dorset—because of Will.

Before Louisa was aware of what she was doing, her feet moved of their own accord in the direction of the bakery. She came to a stop when Robert interrupted her reverie as he emerged from the vicarage. "Alas, the cottage you had your heart set on is currently not available, and the landlord is absent. But we're in luck. The vicar says there's a small cottage just beyond the town's edge, atop yonder hill that we can rent. Shall we have a look?" He paused. "Louisa?"

She hastily brushed away her tears and managed a nod. "Yes, let's have a look."

"Are you certain?" He looked at her steadily .

Now that she was here, she suddenly knew with crystal clarity what she wanted.

She wanted to live in that cottage and have the kind of simple life she would have had if her fate had been different. She wanted to see what life would have been like … if she had married Will.

"Yes," she heard herself reply. "I am certain."