Chapter 2

R ain slanted down against the carriage window with such force, in such blinding sheets, it was a wonder the panes hadn’t shattered, long before now.

The unrelenting deluge and remorseless wind battering the conveyance could only portend death or a certain other doom.

Which, given the journey Miss Livian Lovelace currently made, proved hopeful. Not, however, when considering, she currently journeyed to meet her future husband.

“Or, find a future husband,” she muttered under her breath. For, that would be the most accurate way to describe her current circumstances.

After all, the sole reason for her even attending a dreaded ton house party was so that Livian could meet a gentleman to marry. All the lords who’d be in attendance were aware of the purpose of the gathering.

And whether Livian liked it or not, for better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death did part them, she’d be bound to a powerful peer.

Until death did part them.

Shivering, she rubbed her trembling hands together hard. Or maybe it won’t even come to that , she morbidly reminded herself.

Given the way the plodding conveyance jolted and swayed from left to right and bounced violently in deep holes and puddles, Livian’s surviving the trip remained anywhere from dubious to doubtful to unlikely—to impossible.

A jagged, streak of lightning ripped across the night sky.

This particular strike hit so close, the slow-moving carriage rumbled.

Heart racing, Livian jumped.

Squinting hard to catch sight of anything outside and failing, Livian pressed her forehead against the chilled windowpane.

In no world where this storm existed could a person make heads or tails of where one traveled.

That included her brother-in-law Malcom’s reliable but young driver, Mr. Bennett Driver.

Suddenly, the carriage veered to a hard left.

Screaming, Livian went flying across the bench.

“Oomph.” She hit the wall with such force it sucked the gasp of pain from her lungs. Tears stung her eyes.

Heart racing, she scrambled to seat herself. Before she could catch a hold of the underside of the bench to keep herself upright, the conveyance, skidded to the right.

Livian slammed hard against the other side.

“Bloody hell,” she rasped, through the pain.

“…Bloody h…” The wind swallowed the rest of Mr. Dryver’s curse.

Livian’s heart pounded, and fear turned over in her belly.

Since the Duchess of Argyll agreed to help Livian secure a match, Livian had spent all her days pining for the love match she’d given up on and the impending, cold, unfeeling union she’d have to make. All the nights where sleep eluded her, she’d stare overhead and lamented a fate worse than death.

Perhaps death by violent carriage accident was to be the hefty price paid for Livian having ever dared make that analogy.

The carriage hit an enormous trench that knocked Livian’s grip on the bench loose. The moment the barouche came out of the cavity, it sent her flying some several inches from her seat.

When she landed, her buttocks caught not the plush, red velvet, upholstered padding, but the wood at the very edge of the bench.

Silver pinpricks of pain dotted her vision. and an anguished moan slipped out.

Livian gripped tighter for dear life.

As the coach rocked and swayed, so too did the red velvet curtains. That luxuriant fabric fluttered open and shut and gave a glimpse of nothing more than the rain which had gone sideways.

Craaaack.

Unblinking, Livian stared wide-eyed at the fissure that’d formed in the window beside her. “This is not good,” she whispered.

As though he’d heard her from atop his box outside, Mr. Dryver raised his voice lough enough to make himself heard over the raging tempest. “Hailllll, Miss Love…ce…Looking for…stop for the…”

She only picked up on every other one or two of his words.

She clutched the seat until her fingers hurt. Her sister Verity warned her not to go.

She tried to swallow but her throat apparently lost its previously reflexive ability to do so.

“You were r-right, Verity,” she said, between chattering teeth.

Even as the two carriages were being loaded and Verity prepared to climb inside one of them, Verity and her beloved husband, Malcom, looked on with worry. She’d wrung her hands together and urged Livian to remain behind. She’d warned the weather was too treacherous to set out in.

The thick, ominous storm clouds overhead portended what’d eventually come to be.

Her sister had known.

Older sisters always knew.

The echo of Verity’s voice whispered around her mind. “…It can always be worse…”

“It usually is,” Livian mumbled.

“…Livvie…”

Sighing, Livian played the game she and Verity always had over the years, only this time, alone.

Livian did a glance about. How could it be worse? How? So many ways, which one to choose— first . “The carriage hasn’t crashed or broken.”

“…Good, Livvie…”

“ Yet ,” Livian added, effectively but not intentionally drowning out Verity’s always more positive outlook.

The carriage sped on ahead at a dizzying rate. Whimpering, she summoned among Verity’s many assurances over the years.

“We always hope, and in all things, it is better to hope than to despair…”

“It can always be worse…”

Livian took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s not…snow?” she ventured, with a hesitancy that tipped her statement up into the form of a question.

If it had been snow, she stood to freeze to death.

She troubled her lower lip. Except one could die from a freezing rain. She’d come close enough several times, to know.

Not helpful. Not helpful.

She brightened. “The window didn’t break !”

That moment, an enormous ball of hail struck the fractured pane; it exploded in a sea of shards and splintered glass raining all over Livian and the carriage floor and benches.

Rain streamed inside, pummeling her face, stinging her eyes, but washing her free of those sharp remnants.

“ That is helpful,” she said, rivulets of water streaming into her mouth.

Livian’s shoulders shook wildly with amusement. For if she didn’t laugh, she’d cry and never stop.

“It could always be worse,” she reminded herself, needing to hear the sound of her own voice so she could forget she was alone on the road.

The ride that seemingly went on forever, ended as abruptly as it started.

And not in any way that was smooth or natural.

Livian’s carriage came to such a sudden stop, this time, she went flying across the opposite side of the carriage.

Her head slammed against the gilded wood, and she collapsed onto the floor, dazed.

Well, that game is ended. Aside from dying , this was absolutely as bad as it got.

“Or you hope,” she muttered, and promptly regretted having spoken as her skull throbbed in response.

The door exploded open, blasting rain and ice inside.

Livian gasped. Highwaymen . She’d forgotten the peril of highwaymen on these roads.

Except, a soaked Mr. Dryver stood ringing his drenched hat the same way Verity had wrung her hands when Livian boarded the same conveyance.

“Lightning struck, Miss Lovelace.” His booming voice matched even the greatest round of thunder that’d followed them these days. “I…” He paused and furrowed his wet brow. “Wot are ye doing on the floor, miss?”

“Oh, I’m just inspecting the interior of the earl’s conveyance.”

He cocked his head. “Really, miss? Now doesn’t seem the best—”

“Mr. Dryver,” she gently redirected him. “I’m taking it we’ve arrived?” she ventured hopefully.

The young man shook his head. “No.”

Her stomach fell. “No?”

“As I was saying, a branch split and it’s fallen across the road. Smaller piece here,” he loudly explained, pointing a finger to some unidentifiable place outside the carriage confines. “And a bigger one, behind us. Closed off the road it has.”

Closed off the road?

Livian closed her eyes.

Bloody hell.

Squeezing past Mr. Dryver, Livian jumped down.

“Miss Lovelace!” he cried out.

The young driver caught her by the arm, the same moment her boots sank several inches deep into gluey, black, mud.

All the while she attempted to jerk her left boot free and move it forward, Mr. Dryver wailed. “His Lordship will ’ave me head ’e will. Ye cannae be out ’ere.”

With a satisfying splat, Livian managed to pull free and trudge herself right out of the ditch of racing waters the Old Roman Road had become.

Mr. Dryver followed close. “What are ye doin’, miss?” His speech dissolved more into the cockney he’d carried into the earl’s employ from the days he’d been on the street.

“I’m inspecting the situation,” she called, squinting past the rain running in rivulets down her eyes.

Ignoring the young man’s protestations, she managed to open her eyes enough.

Her heart sank. Good Christ , and hers was a prayer.

“The smaller branch ?” she cried.

Mr. Dryver reached her side. “Aye.

The smaller branch happened to be four, nearly five meters wide and inconveniently blocked their forward path.

“The big branch is behind us, miss,” her driver informed.

As if to add further salt to already gaping wounds, a harsh gust of wind whipped Livian’s bonnet backward. She spun quick, only to watch the wicker article Verity’s son had given Livian for her recent birthday, go flying several feet down the lane, before it got tangled in the larger branch.

The larger branch.

A giggle built in her chest and climbed higher and higher until it burst from her in an enormous, snorting laugh.

Poor Mr. Dryver cast a worried eye over Livian, looking at her like she’d cracked.

And if there’d ever been a moment to crack, this was decidedly the one.

“Mr. Dryver,” she said through her panicky amusement. “That is no branch but the better part of a tree.” She measured the object in question with her eyes. “A yew tree some ten meters in height and near that in diameter.”

“Aye, an old tree, it is.” The driver angled his head, and then gave his wet brow a scratch. “I’d wager hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand years old.”

Considering their discussion over the felled yew tree, Livian suspected both she and poor Mr. Dryver were both gone mad.

“It’s not all bad, miss.”

“Oh?” Livian attempted to wrestle her foot free. “I am hard-pressed to say how it could possibly be any worse,” she said dryly.

Mr. Dryver gestured to the front and back of the carriage. “The wrong time, by a fraction of a second, miss, and neither of us would be here discussing the yew t-tree.”

“It could always be worse,” Livian mouthed that reminder, this time believing it.

The voice of her old nursemaid, Bertha, whispered in her mind.

“ Remember, me girl. Trees are sanctuaries. If you know how to speak to them, you must also listen and learn the truth from them, too…”

“What is the tree trying to tell me?” she whispered.

“Miss L-Lovelace?”

The driver’s worried query cut through her musings the very same time the driving wind and rain broke past her previous panic and terror.

“Never mind, Mr. Dryver.” Livian swept her gaze over the countryside. “M-Miss Billy and Mr. Giles?” she asked after the carriage that’d departed ahead of them.

“Can’t say, miss. I suspect given the previous tracks and the lead they had on us at the last stop, and the point at which the skies opened up—”

Livian stopped paying attention somewhere around Mr. Dryver’s next ‘ and’ .

Undoubtedly, if she could reverse course, she would do so.

The universe, the Lord, Mother Nature, all were hollering in her head to go back to her family; that rushing off without their knowing to marry a man she didn’t even know, would bring only the greatest of regrets.

“…so I’d venture, they’ve probably gone on far enough ahead to have found a coaching inn,” Mr. Dryver was saying. “O- Or , d-depending on the trajectory of the storm, they could have missed it e-entirely.” He tipped his head back and peered through narrowly slitted eyes at the passing rain clouds. “…h-hard to see…”

Mr. Dryver’s teeth had begun to rattle with the same intensity as Livian’s, but he continued prattling on. “B-b-but there,” he pointed up at the sky, “I-I’d say th-they may have b-been f-fortunate enough to d-dodge.”

Livian gave thanks for that measure. It was bad enough poor Mr. Dryver was going to perish on this journey Livian had dragged them on.

It could always be worse…

Hugging her arms around her middle, Livian braced against the pummeling rains. “W-We are stranded th-then.”

They’d not survive. Not in a carriage that, if the waters continued to rise, was swept away.

“The f-fortunate th-thing, miss?” he bellowed into the wind. “Th-There’s an i-inn n-not far from here.”

Livian closed her eyes and sent prayers skyward.

After all, failing to heed her big sister’s warnings and dying for it, would be the ultimate “I-told-you-so” she’d face when reunited with Verity behind those golden gates.

It could always be worse.

“How far, Mr. Dryver?”

“P-Perhaps a m-mile or so.”

It could always be better , too.

On a sigh, Livian opened her eyes and looked to the young driver. “Which way then, Mr. Dryver?”

He pointed north.

Very well. They’d walk, then.

Yanking her heavy, muddied, hems from the sodden Earth, Livian trudged over to the carriage, and climbed inside.

“B-Best i-idea,” Mr. Dryver called in, as he reached up to shut the panel. “G-Get out of the e-elements, miss.”

Get out of the elements? Wind and rain continued hammering through the broken window.

A laugh nearly escaped Livian, before she noted the seriousness in the optimistic servant’s eyes.

Before he could close her in what would certainly become her black lacquer casket if she stayed, Livian grabbed her valise and handed it through the opening.

After Mr. Dryver took the floral embroidered bag in hand, Livian jumped down. The servant gawked at her. Steadying her footing, she managed to tug her foot free of the sludge with greater ease than before.

“Thank you, M-Mr. Dryver,” she said, relieving the slack-jawed young man of her bag.

He dropped a low, respectful bow, and headed over to free the horses.

While he set to work, Livian, satchel in hand, started north. The weight of her skirts would stall her, and Mr. Dryver would easily overtake any progress she made.

Thunder rumbled.

“M-Miss Lovelace!” the servant cried out.

There came the slap and splash of Mr. Dryver’s boots flying through the sodden ground. “Wot are ye doin’?” he begged when he’d caught up. “Ye can’t be doing that.”

“J-Just what am I d-doing?” she managed her first real amusement of the day.

“W-Walking!” he exclaimed. “In th-this weather. Y-ye’ll c-catch your d-death. At that, c-carrying your own bag.”

“M-Mr. Dryver, be it you and I both, or me alone, if we remain h-here, it is highly doubtful we’ll s-survive,” she calmly explained. “Y-You have a r-responsibility to your team of horses.”

He dug in. “Ladies don’t carry their own things.”

Perhaps. But she wasn’t a lady. Given the way her brother-in-law, the Earl of Maxwell, and Livan’s sister, Verity, pampered her, one would never know.

“They most certainly do,” she gently said. “My sister, the countess does so every day.” Granted Verity did because she knew how ridiculous it was to not do things for herself.

The young man cocked his head.

All the while the storm raged around them.

“Mr. Dryver,” she called loudly enough to make herself heard over the increasingly violent and loud winds. “Either we remain here, in the middle of a storm chopping down the wood needed to build an arc so we might survive this deluge, standing here debating what ladies do and not do and get knocked to death by falling debris, get swept away. Or , I carry my own b-bag and begin walking wh-while you see to the h-horses.”

Mr. Dryver doffed his hopelessly drenched hat and scratched it over his head with a puzzled brow. “Can’t go about building an arc, miss. Don’t have the necessary equipment or manpower.”

Not for the first time, torn between laughing or crying, Livian briefly closed her eyes and prayed for patience. “I’m jesting, but among my s-suggested options which makes the most sense?”

“The…latter one?” Like one who thought he’d been handed a puzzle, the driver’s voice tipped up into a question.

“The latter one.”

An eternity later, Livian and Mr. Dryver and two horses, close to freezing, made it to the brightly-lit inn.

The chimney sent voluminous smoke pouring as if in welcome.

“We-we’ve done it, Mr. Dryver,” she said between tears.

“S-sure ’ave ye did, Miss Lovelace.”

As the driver went off to care for the horses, Livian let herself in the boisterous, cheer-filled, and more importantly warm inn.

Yes, her sister was correct: one’s situation could always be worse.

This particular night had just become a good deal better.