The Stolen Bride Read Free Page B

driver.
    “Just an old biddy. Taking her to Stenby. Be she all right, sir?”
    Sir Marius knocked on the bottom of the coach. “Ma’am? Do you need help?”
    There was no answer. He pushed at the coach a little to see how stable it was and then hoisted himself onto the side. There was an ominous crack but nothing drastic happened. He looked in through the window.
    “She’s unconscious, or dead.” He eased to one side and tried to open the door but the fall, or his weight, had jammed it. In the end it looked to Beth as if he tore it off its hinges by brute force. He threw it over into the hedge then swung his legs in and the coach jolted to a different angle.
    “She’s alive,” he called out. “I think it’s just a knock on the head and a few glass cuts, but she seems a frail thing. I’ll lift her. Get one of the men to take her from the top.”
    By this time the horse was disentangled and subdued. In fact, now it was out of its panic it was obviously a sorry old nag. At Beth’s call, Grigson came quickly to help. The old lady was soon hoisted out of the wreck of the coach and laid by the side of the road. She was haggard and pale and her face trickled blood from a number of cuts.
    Beth ran back to the Wraybourne carriage for some rugs and the medical chest. The dratted vehicle loomed like a mountain, the bottom of the door level with her chest. She was fumbling with the steps, trying to work out the catch when those large hands grasped her again, picked her up as if she were a doll, and placed her inside. She looked down, pleased for once to be a good head taller than he.
    “What is it you want?” he asked.
    “There are blankets and a medicine chest,” she said. “Wait there and I’ll pass them down.” She did this and then added the bottle of water from the food hamper.
    Then, of course, she had to submit to being tossed around again. Actually she was becoming strangely accustomed and there was something very safe about his strength.
    Beth pulled herself together and hurried back to the woman.
    “I don’t think there are any broken bones,” she said, after a discreet examination. “Just a bad head wound.” She gently wiped the blood away from the woman’s face and saw with relief that the cuts there were slight and none were near the eye.
    She opened the medicine chest, grateful that she had explored it before. There were tweezers, and she used them to take out a couple of slivers of glass. She then smeared some salve over the wounds and bandaged the cuts on the woman’s temple. There really didn’t seem anything else to do for the moment.
    She looked up to see the men watched her, waiting for her decision. “We had best take her to Stenby,” she said. “It was where she was going.”
    Sir Marius turned to the driver. “Who is she? Did she say?”
    “No, sir. Just asked to be taken to Stenby Castle and paid the price.”
    “Did she have any baggage?”
    The driver quickly pulled one leather bag from the boot. It was old-fashioned but of solid quality. It was securely locked.
    “I presume she has the key on her,” Sir Marius said. “If we’re taking her to the Castle, there’s no point bothering about it. The sooner she’s in a bed and the doctor called for the better.”
    He turned to pick up the woman but was stopped by the whining voice of the driver. “What’m I going to do with me rig in this state?”
    Beth looked at the coachman closely for the first time and saw the heavy wear on his clothes, the sallow, gaunt look on his face. He was already on the edge of poverty and was probably facing ruin with his livelihood gone. Her eyes met Sir Marius’s and the baronet’s lips twitched. He took out several guineas.
    “Here, man. With these you should be able to fix this or buy new. Take better care of it next time. If this lady doesn’t haul you before the magistrate for negligence, you’ll be lucky.”
    He lifted the woman easily and frowned. “She weighs even less than you,”