Page 65 of The Cornish Mermaid

With no further ado, the three of them climbed into the carriage, and James clicked to the horses as they set off out of the inn yard. The chase was on again.

“Where do you think Kit will be at the moment?” Morvoren asked Sam, as the horses, still the faithful four they’d brought from Ormonde, clattered out of Yeovil.

He rubbed his chin. “The mail coach will have reached Exeter last night, but he’ll have had to stay the night there. The coach to Penzance goes back in the mornings, so passengers heading west have to wait for it.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “He should be boarding in just over an hour.”

He frowned. “It’ll be back in Penzance this evening, but unfortunately, I can’t see us catching up with him as yet. We won’t reach Penzance today, no matter how many times we change horses.” He patted Morvoren’s hand with his large, suntanned one. “But I wouldn’t worry yourself too much. If, as you said, they dealt with a consignment only about ten days ago, then another won’t be coming yet. I’ve heard that free traders like to land their cargo in the darkness of a moonless night. We’re heading for a full moon right now, so our journey isn’t as urgent as you think.”

His frown deepened. “But today we’re going to have to pay for a few changes of horses. These won’t last more than fifty miles after doing that and more yesterday. Unfortunately, it’s more than their jobs are worth for the ostlers to give us the fast mail horses. They belong exclusively to the mail coach service. We’ll be left with the dregs from the livery yard. And they won’t be fast at all.”

Ysella, who’d been looking out of the window, turned her head. “Will we have to leave our horses in some jobbing livery yard?” Her voice rose in panic. “Mama will be furious if we do that. You know how fussy she is about her horses, Sam.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “I hadn’t thought that having to pay for changes of horses would mean we’d leave ours at the mercy of some unscrupulous yard owner who might loan them out to any dreadful person who happens by.”

Sam took her hand in his free one. “Don’t worry yourself, Miss Ysella. I’ll be telling whoever we leave them with that they belong to Viscount Ormonde and are not to be loaned out but returned to us when we pass this way again, hopefully in company with Kit himself. And I’ll pay them well for taking care of them properly. Your mother will not be accusing you of abandoning them.”

Ysella gazed up into his eyes and smiled her sweetest smile. “You are clever, Sam. You think of the smallest things while I just charge headlong into them without considering the problems I might encounter.”

How unusually perceptive she was being.

Sam’s eyes, full of hunger, drank her in, but she didn’t appear to notice. Instead, she retrieved her hand and peered out of the window. “But I’m sure we can catch him if we try.”

They might well have done, if they’d been able to maintain the speed they were travelling at. However, someone somewhere had it in for them. Late in the day, with the sun sinking into the west and the road just beginning to climb onto the heather-covered heights of Bodmin Moor, the carriage gave an enormous lurch and toppled to one side. Ysella and Morvoren were thrown into a corner, both ending up in Sam’s strong arms. It could definitely be said that they’d stopped.

James and John reacted quickly. They jumped down and, while John reassured the frightened horses, who at this point were no longer theirs but just rented nags, James hurried to the door on the upside of the coach and threw it open. Between them, Sam and James managed to help Ysella and Morvoren out onto the narrow, grassy verge. They stood in a row, surveying the damage to their vehicle in silence.

The right back wheel had come off and the back corner of the carriage had collapsed to one side. Morvoren glanced over her shoulder at the westering sun. It would be dark soon and they were nowhere near any kind of habitation.

She turned to Sam. “Can it be mended?”

He shook his head. “Not without help. See, the axle has broken. We’re going to need a blacksmith and a carpenter.”

She bit her lip, and Ysella gave a little mewl of frustration. Just when they might have been catching up with Kit, especially if they’d kept going all night. If she hadn’t been keen to maintain her image as a sweet Regency lady, Morvoren would have sworn like a trooper. She did it in her head instead and held her tongue.

“What shall we do?” Ysella asked, shivering a little despite the warmth of the evening. “This all looks very remote.” She peered down the road, if you could dignify it with that name. The amount of potholes in it qualified it in Morvoren’s mind as only a track. “Might there be highwaymen out here? Cutthroats?” She shivered again. This girl had read too many romance novels. “Vagabonds?” She moved closer to Sam, as though doing so might add protection. Well, he did have two pistols in his possession.

“How far back to the last village we passed through?” Sam asked James, who was uncoupling the horses with John’s help. At least the nags hadn’t panicked when it happened. Not that they looked as though anything would disturb their somnolent natures. To prove the point, they were standing with their heads down as the two servants sorted out their tangled harnesses.

“Too far, Mr. Beaumont,” James said. “But I do b’lieve there’s an inn up here on the high moors. If we follow this road, then we’ll reach it by sunset, if we’re lucky.”

Sam sighed. “We’ll have to walk.” He turned to John. “You stay here and guard the carriage, and we’ll send back workmen from the inn to try and mend the wheel. We’ll take the horses with us. There are bound to be stables at the inn.”

Morvoren held up a hand. “We won’t need to walk. We can ride the horses.”

Sam shook his head. “We don’t have any saddles.”

She shook her head back. “What do we need them for? Have you never ridden bareback as a child?” She approached the likeliest looking beast, a chestnut—they were very mismatched for a team. “I’ll have this one. Take off his heavy collar and fashion me something short enough for reins. I’ll need a leg up.”

The looks of shock on Sam, James and John’s faces matched to perfection. “A lady can’t ride bareback on a horse,” Sam said, and James nodded vigorously, both of them a product of their time. John studied his feet, his ears puce.

“Of course a lady can,” Morvoren snapped. “Doesn’t she have legs? Now sort these horses out, and we’ll get on them. We’ll be at the inn a lot faster if we ride than if we walk.”

Ysella leaned closer to Morvoren as James, galvanized by her firm voice, began to hurriedly divest the horses he was holding of their surplus harness. “I’ve never ridden bareback,” she whispered. “Is it not slippery?”

Morvoren put her mouth to Ysella’s ear. “If you can ride astride, you can ride bareback. It’s just a question of balance. You’ll be fine. And these are very quiet horses with nice broad backs. It’ll be easy.”

Sam looked as though he’d have liked to have protested at Morvoren’s suggestion, but luckily, he could probably also see the sense in it and the danger of lingering on an isolated patch of moorland with two gently-bred young ladies. Soon, all four horses wore just their blinkered bridles to which rope reins had been attached.

Morvoren stood beside her chestnut and lifted her left leg. “Leg up, please?”

How diffident Sam was at touching a girl’s leg. Morvoren would have laughed if their mission hadn’t been so urgent. He touched her as though she were made of glass, or might burn his fingers.