Back Roads to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #6): A Novel (10 page)

“Yes . . . yes; I understand,” Allison managed to stammer, digging for a few coins and pressing them into his hand. “We dinna . . . didn’t know. Is there no place one can apply for a special license—”

“Na, na,” the man said, kindly enough, putting away the coins, folding up the printed ceremony, and beginning to turn away. The two witnesses, with long-suffering faces—they’d
apparently been through this before—disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, and as mysteriously.

Left alone at the side of the anvil, Allison and Stephen gaped wordlessly at one another.

Finally, dazed and stumbling, they turned and made their way from the dim interior of the smithy to the yard. Here people from the stagecoach were milling around; there was shouting back and forth as the horses were exchanged, as various pieces of baggage were shifted, as people prepared to climb aboard and move farther into Scotland. And life went on normally, for some people.

The sun had come out, the wind was gone, and the snow was melting; the yard was a churned-up sea of snow and mud. Allison and Stephen, standing ankle deep in the wet mass and watching the activity with unseeing eyes, gave no thought to their feet.

“What will we do?” It was Stephen who asked, who looked to Allison for some answer to their predicament. And it was a serious one.

Allison, usually so decisive, had been stunned into silence, into immobility. Her mind, usually so quick, so resourceful, seemed as muddy as the ground.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she whispered through stiff lips, lips that, as they loosened, began to quiver, her teeth to chatter. “Well,
think
,” the thin figure at her side urged.

His voice seemed to break the spell. Allison looked up at Stephen, noting with sudden contempt how he was standing there like a scarecrow, limp and lifeless. Her sympathy for the white-faced, stricken-eyed, helpless youth faded. “What do
you
think we should do?” she blazed, driven by the despair and dismay she was feeling.

Stephen gaped, startled at the question, at the responsibility thrust upon him.

“How should I know?” he managed, gulping.

“Do
something!
” she demanded, stamping her thinly clad foot into the wet snow and being rewarded by an icy surge into her shoe, which she neither cared about nor felt.

But Stephen, rather than shouldering the dilemma and finding a solution, looked as though his main desire in life at the moment was to flee the premises never having heard the name Gretna Green, never having seen the historic anvil or, perhaps, the girl at his side.

“Well,” he said slowly, helplessly, “I don’t—”

“Oh, hush!” a distraught and disillusioned Allison ordered, near to tears and shaking with anger, disappointment, and uncertainty. In her eyes, Stephen’s classic beauty was disappearing as his face settled into lugubrious lines.

“Now see here,” he offered feebly.

And then, defensively, he said the words that once and for all ruined himself in the eyes of his chosen love: “This was all your idea, you know.”

It was a definitive moment. Allison’s eyes grew wide. For a moment she was shocked into silence. The portent of his words, his meaning, finally reached her.

Those who knew her best would have been dumbfounded at the maturity of her reaction, the control in her voice. Expecting a quick and contemptuous lashing out, they would have applauded the brief and taut response.

When she could trust herself to speak, she said, “I’ve given it some thought and come to a good conclusion, I believe, since you don’t have one. I think it would be well if you boarded the stagecoach, Stephen, and proceeded to Edinburgh. Perhaps Mr. McCloud will take you under his wing; he may have some clerical work you can do in the export business he told us about.” It was a subject that had helped fill the long hours of the journey.

Before Stephen’s mouth could open and he could utter another word, good or bad, Allison added, “I’ll talk to him,” and she hurried to the side of the Scotsman who, with his wife, had been watching, highly curious, the small drama being played out before them.

“Mr. McCloud,” Allison said rapidly, reaching his side, “is it possible that Stephen—his name is Stephen Lusk—could go on with you?”

“Go on?” the man asked, taken aback.

Allison was at her best. She dared not fail; Stephen’s future, perhaps his life, hinged on her. Having led him, willy-nilly, into this disaster—as he had so humiliatingly pointed out—it was up to her to get him out.

“Yes,” she said, her face flushing prettily and her eyes damp with emotion, an emotion not lost on Mr. McCloud. “You see, I’m going back. But it would be a dreadful decision for him to do so. I’m sure you understand.

“It would be such a . . . a boon if you could take him on to Edinburgh with you, put him to work. Could you, Mr. McCloud?” Allison’s gray eyes pleaded. Mr. McCloud had to feel he was her champion, the solution to her problems.

“He’s educated, Mr. McCloud,” Allison added persuasively. “I know he could be an asset to your business.” If she had laid aside, once and for all, her dream that Stephen’s education would make a way for him in her father’s business, it was not apparent as she outlined Stephen’s abilities now.

Before Mr. McCloud could utter the refusal that could be read in his face, Allison opened her bag and withdrew the purse—her grandmama’s contributions—and held it out.

“Would this help?” she murmured, hefting the coins in her hand, bringing a gleam to the Scotsman’s eyes. “This would pay his way and keep him until he could become a help and an asset.
Please
, Mr. McCloud!”

In spite of himself, Crispus McCloud’s hand was reaching for the coins Allison was jangling before him. “Weel . . .” he said, and Allison caught the change of tone, the assent, perhaps grudging assent, in his voice.

“Oh, thank you! You won’t be sorry. I’ll see to that.”

And Mr. McCloud, sharp businessman, who knew and recognized a kindred spirit, believed her.

“A’ reet, then, lassie,” he said, pocketing the money. “But what’ll ye do?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Allison—without a farthing to her name—reassured him with more confidence than she felt. “I’ll be all right. I’ll go home, of course.”

For the single, unemployed, untrained girl of the day, there was no choice. Allison knew it and bowed to the inevitable. Mr. McCloud knew it and agreed.

“Weel, guid luck to ye then, lassie,” he called after Allison as she sped through the muck back to Stephen.

“Mr. McCloud has work for you, Stephen,” she said brightly. “Think of that! He’s waiting for you over there now, ready to get back into the coach. You just have time to join them; they’re about to take off.”

“I’ll not,” he said stubbornly. “I’ll not go to Edinburgh. I’ll not work for that man. Why,” he asked crossly, “didn’t you give
me
that money, Allison? I could have gone on myself; the money would have kept me very nicely—”

Allison heard him with disbelief. How little she had known him, after all. She shook her head sadly as, for a moment, she had the distinct feeling that her young love, her first love, crumpled and fell soundlessly into the broken earth at her feet.

Still, she spoke with common sense. “He’s a good man, Stephen, with a good business. And just think of it—you’ll be working at a profession—”

“I’ll not,” Stephen repeated, unmoved from his refusal. “Nothing will change my mind—”

“You might like to know, Stephen,” Allison interrupted quietly but tensely, “that those are my father’s horses about to turn in at the gate. That’s my father’s carriage, that’s my father’s coachman driving, and that’s Buckle—the real Buckle—sitting there beside him. I don’t know who’s inside—”

Like a bolt of lightning or as though shot from a cannon, with no word of farewell, Stephen Lusk’s cold feet took him across the churned-up yard, thrusting past anyone in his path, to the open door of the stagecoach. He barely touched the step as he dove into the dark interior and disappeared.

S
itting down on a bench in the smithy yard, Allison, calm and collected to all appearances but with heightened color and quickened heartbeat, reached into her bag for the Balmoral boots. Seemingly intent on changing her wet shoes, her attention was given—from the corner of an eye—to the two coaches, one leaving the yard, the other entering.

Hurryhurryhurry!
she was pleading soundlessly to the public conveyance bearing Stephen away, and
Hide, Stephen, hide!

Finding Stephen gone and determining he had fled by means of the stagecoach, would her father insist on pursuing him? It seemed likely to Allison, for Quincy would be filled with rage, intent on pouring it out upon the helpless and hapless male creature who had the effrontery to bring disgrace upon the name and house of Middleton. Frightened though she was, she determined to forestall any such action on her father’s part by causing a delay by any means possible. Every minute would count as the public coach made its way northward, and so Allison dawdled, careless, unconcerned, or so it seemed.

Poor, weak Stephen—Allison couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry with him and, admitting she was largely responsible for the present fiasco, even felt a little pity for him. But in some ways Stephen was better off than she was, Allison thought with a shiver as the heavy, ornate coach bucketed into the yard and the coachman pulled the horses to a walk and then a halt. Stephen was well away and safely out of the reach of retribution; Stephen, if he stayed with Mr. McCloud, would be set up with work, perhaps a career much better for him than becoming a shopkeeper like his father.

While she—

Better by far not to think what her fate might be. Perhaps bread and water for a season; perhaps—heavens!—a beating. Certainly disgrace.

But to cringe, to grovel, even to snivel, was not in Allison’s makeup. Though her insides felt like pudding, her chin, her quaking chin, was up. Her expression, she hoped, was serene, perhaps even a little haughty. To the servants, certainly haughty. To her father, when he stepped from the carriage—

It was not Quincy who stepped from the carriage.

Allison was calmly removing her soaked slippers and putting on the despised boots when the coach pulled up alongside (if her father disapproved of the public display of her feet, one more infraction couldn’t make much difference to the punishment awaiting her). Jenks, family coachman, hauled on the reins, and the hostler from the inn came hurrying. Although Allison refused to look up, giving her attention to her present occupation, she knew Buckle, sitting beside Jenks, was looking down at her.

Slowly she finished tying the laces, casually she raised her eyes. “Why, hello, Buckle,” she said pleasantly. “Hello, Jenks.”

Jenks, gruff Jenks—always gentle with Allison and Sarah, saddling their ponies, teaching them to ride—was expressionless, his attention focused on the horses’ ears. Buckle had a grim look on his rather priggish face. He had been long-suffering with her across the years, perhaps at times even
entertained by her exploits. His reaction now caused Allison’s heart to squeeze—it was, obviously, a reflection of her family’s disapproval. What she had done went beyond the unacceptable to the intolerable.

“Good day to you, Miss,” Buckle said politely, his eyes moving on, searching the yard and the few people there, obviously looking for Stephen.

Finally, unable to delay the moment any longer, Allison lowered her gaze, with dread eyeing the door of the coach. It opened, and she held her breath. But the foot that was thrust out, reaching for the step, was a female foot, conservatively shod, a large, no-nonsense sort of appendage to a sturdy limb—Mrs. Buckle’s foot, Mrs. Buckle’s limb.

Mrs. Buckle. It was the worst possible scenario. Allison, prepared to face her father, get the harsh words over, the recriminations, the wrath, and then hearing and facing whatever punishment her father had in mind for her, would have to suffer the pangs of uncertainty all the way home. What’s more, she would have to refrain from any discussion of what she had just been through, for one simply didn’t talk about these things with the help. Other than polite conversation, it would be a silent trip. Yet with Mrs. Buckle’s unspoken disapproval between them, the hours would be fraught with tension.

“Well, Miss,” Mrs. Buckle said after she had picked her way over the ground to Allison’s side, “this is a fine state of affairs, if I may say so.”

Rather than contempt, such as servants were apt to show when “quality” or well-bred people slipped from their pedestals, there was sorrow, perhaps it was pity, in the housekeeper’s eyes. It shook Allison more than a sneer might have done. Truly she had failed to count the cost of her impetuous escapade.

Like a small child, she whispered, “My father?”

“Is at home. Waiting. Get your things together, Miss Allison. As soon as the horses are changed, we’ll head back.”

Like a small child, Allison packed away the soggy shoes, stood, fastened her cloak more securely, and stepped meekly
toward the coach. Mrs. Buckle picked up the bag—which she probably recognized as having come from the attic at Middleton Grange—and followed. Jenks swung down, opened the boot, and stored the bag, still avoiding meeting Allison’s eyes, turned, and mounted his seat again.