Carla Kelly by The Ladys Companion Read Free Book Online Page B

and handed it to the coachman. “It’s just that I suspect this is your first ride on the mail coach.”
    She nodded. “You know it is. Do you have any good advice?”
    “What do you think?” he asked, a smile on his face. “Although I fear you are out of luck for this first stage of the journey, when you get back on after the first rest stop, try to get a seat facing the coachman.”
    “That’s it?” she asked after a moment watching the ostler stow her trunk on top and knot it down.
    “That’s it. Let’s get you in line, Miss Hampton.”
    She set down her tea and took the arm he offered, clutching it rather tighter than she meant to. He looked down at the pressure on his arm.
    “Steinman has another service I forgot to mention,” he said as they shuffled closer to the coach. “We let our clients know of other openings more suited to them, if some come our way. And we also don’t mind getting letters from clients, if they get lonely.”
    She didn’t have any more time than to give him a grateful smile, before the coachman was helping her inside the conveyance. Steinman leaned in after her. “One thing more: get on David Wiggins’s good side and he will be your ally. He has a most excellent side.”
    Intrigued, Susan leaned across the clergyman squashed in next to her. “Excuse me, sir. Mr. Steinman, do you know him? Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Joel Steinman only grinned and waved his empty coat sleeve at her as the coachman blew his horn to warn bystanders. Susan sat back, her elbows close into her sides, warned from further exhibition by the
harumph
of the vicar on one side of her, and the warning stare of an overfleshed woman mashed next to her. They left London as the sky lightened.
    ***
    Nightfall found Susan only just beyond Oxford, and with a huge headache. I have learned so much today, she thought as she leaned her forehead against the cool glass, smudged from a day of travel through snow three parts mud. I can jostle for a window seat with the best of them, eat standing up, and entertain three-year-olds with the oddest bits of things from my reticule. I have listened to Waterloo stories and Trafalgar stories and grievances of master and worker, and traded recipes. I know remedies for morning sickness and how to keep fleas off cats. Travel by post chaise was never this enlightening.
    She longed for her bed, ached for the comfort of a familiar mattress, and a maid to bring her a tisane. I suppose I will be fetching those for someone else, she reflected as she rubbed her temple. Oh, I wonder what a lady’s companion does?
    A nursemaid dozed beside her. Her head tilted farther and farther forward, then snapped up when the coach hit icy patches and slid sideways. I could ask her, Susan thought, then reconsidered. She would only wonder what planet I had dropped down from, that I was so ill-equipped.
    The headache was a stubborn one, and she knew it would not go away without a good night’s sleep and something to eat. Food was out, no matter how many more times the weather forced them to stop tonight. She had spent her last few pennies on tea and a hard roll at the inn before Oxford, and even that was hard to come by, with the crush of travelers. Her stomach growled, and she could only chafe at her own pride that refused to ask a penny beyond the coach fare from Lady Bushnell, or a modest loan from Joel Steinman. Her reflection in the coach window hardened. She would starve the length and breadth of England before asking Aunt Louisa or Papa for a groat.
    No, what we must do is arrive at Quilling, and I must figure out how to charm David Wiggins. Lady Bushnell had said he was one of her late husband’s regimental sergeants, and before that, her father-in-law’s sergeant, too. Susan tried to picture him in her tired brain, but all she came up with was someone old and forbidding, and used to strict obedience. Perhaps his wife is more easily worked upon, she considered. I can ask her advice on domestic