Lips setting, Godfrey let the horses slow to a trudging walk while he calculated, then yelled in reply, “We’re closer to our destination than to Ripon, and we haven’t passed any inns or even a farmhouse along the way. Safe haven will be closer and more certain if we forge on.”
Features pinched, Wally nodded. He leapt down from his perch and strode to grip the leader’s harness and urge the beast on.
Godfrey stepped down on the other side of the curricle and went to the other horse’s head. With him and Wally out of the carriage, it was much lighter, and between them, they persuaded the horses to come up to a brisk walk.
He’d never known snow to fall so quickly; they’d barely gone a hundred yards before the curricle’s wheels started to catch, drag, and slide. Minutes later, the horses were having to lift each hoof free. Soon, Godfrey and Wally had to exert themselves to gain each forward step as well.
Heads down, they plowed on, engulfed in white and cold.
Time ceased to have meaning. Rationally, Godfrey knew they had to be nearing Hinckley Hall, but with the landscape transformed into a haze of white, he could only pray that he spotted the opening to the drive. At the rate the storm was dumping snow, the drive itself might be blocked. Worse, if the house was any distance from the road, unless they had lights blazing in every window, he would never see it.
“Oomph!”
Godfrey’s ears only just caught the sound, which emanated from the other side of the horses. He raised his head and peered through the hazy gloom. He couldn’t see Wally.
He halted the horses. Calming them, he rounded their heads and saw Wally lying facedown in the snow. Godfrey rushed to Wally’s side as he groaned and tried to push upright.
Gripping Wally’s arm, Godfrey helped the heavier man to his knees, then hauled him to his feet.
Wally staggered and ineffectually wiped snow from his chin. “Sorry, guv. Didn’t see the hole under the snow.”
“Are you all right?” Godfrey glanced at Wally’s feet.
Wally took a step, and his ankle buckled. “Bugger—I’ve wrenched it.”
Godfrey quashed his rising alarm. “Here.” He looped one arm in one of Wally’s and reached for the leader’s bridle with his free hand. “Come on. Use me as a crutch.” We have to keep moving. He bit the words back; neither he nor Wally needed reminding.
Getting the horses walking again took a degree of persuasion, and even then, the beasts would only consent to plod along. Not that it mattered; with Wally’s gait hitching with every step, it was all he and Godfrey could do to keep up.
About them, the storm showed no sign of abating. Godfrey tried not to dwell on the stories he’d heard of storms in these parts that raged for days.
Heads down, he and Wally struggled along beside the horses, each step a battle against the thickening snow, the howling wind, and the ever-deepening cold. Picking out the lane ahead grew even more difficult as the hedges disappeared beneath drifts of disorientating white.
With frigid air sawing in and out of his lungs and Wally an increasingly heavy burden dragging on his arm, Godfrey had reached the point of wondering if they would ever reach safety—rather detachedly imagining news reports of a marquess’s brother being found frozen to death beside a lane in North Yorkshire—when an odd shape standing on the bank on the other side of the road caught his eye. He halted and muscled Wally around so that the groom was leaning against the nearer horse. “Wait there.”
Ducking against the wind, Godfrey rounded the horses and staggered and scrambled up the short bank to what looked to be some sort of sign. Using his greatcoat sleeve, already crusted with frozen snow, he brushed clear the face of the board mounted between two uprights—enough to read “Hinckley Hall.”
They’d made it. Or at least, Godfrey amended, as he squinted up what he took to be the drive and saw no sign of any house, they’d reached the mouth of the drive.
He clambered and slid down, his boots sinking into snow nearly a foot deep. He trudged across and a few yards along what he thought must be the drive, confirming there was a solid surface beneath the snow.
The certainty gave him the energy to hurry back to Wally and the horses.
He found Wally almost unconscious, slumped against the leader’s side.
“Come on! Almost there.” Although Godfrey was taller than his henchman by several inches, Wally had always been significantly heavier. It took considerable effort for Godfrey to haul Wally up and around and get him and the horses moving again. They managed the turn into the drive in a shuffle, then Godfrey leaned forward and urged both horses and Wally on.
They’d gone only a few yards when the curtain of falling snow behind them parted, and a horseman as limned in snow and ice as they loomed out of the white.
Greatcoated and booted as was Godfrey, the man saw them, drew rein, and swung down from the saddle. Leading his horse, he hurried to Godfrey and Wally and, without being asked, lent Wally his shoulder, easing the drag on Godfrey. “Terrible storm,” the man offered in greeting.
Godfrey managed a nod, then peeled apart his frozen lips to say, “We’re making for Hinckley Hall.” He tipped his head toward where he thought the drive went. “I saw the sign by the road, and I’m hoping we’re on the right track.”
“You are.” The man joined Godfrey in steering Wally and the horses and curricle up the drive. “I’m heading for the Hall myself.”
The man’s horse was trotting along eagerly. The man nodded at the beast. “He knows where he’s going and that it’ll be warm and dry there.”
Thankfully, Godfrey’s pair appeared to take their cue from the newcomer and lifted their feet with greater enthusiasm.
Their expanded company forged on.
More or less following the lead of the man’s mount, they rounded a bend. Godfrey raised his head and squinted through the if-anything-thickening wind-whipped snow. Through the bare branches of intervening trees, he saw a light glimmering a hundred or so yards ahead.
“That’s it.” The man nodded toward the light. “All we have to do is make it that far, but we’ll need to stick to the drive.”
Godfrey made no reply. The icy cold had seeped through his clothes and was sinking through his skin all the way to his bones. As he drew in a harsh and labored breath, that last one hundred yards might as well have been a mile.
Standing at Hinckley Hall’s drawing room bow window, Eleanor Hinckley narrowed her eyes in an effort to pierce the impenetrable white screen obscuring the drive. Midafternoon, and the light had all but gone. Unable to make out anything at all, she sighed and reluctantly drew the curtain over the icy pane.
Swallowing her disappointment, Ellie faced the three older gentlemen gathered about the drawing room fireplace. “The blizzard’s set in. Mr. Cavanaugh must have stopped in Ripon.”
Her father, Matthew Hinckley, nodded in resignation. “Aye. Not a day for man or beast to be out braving that tempest.”
Seated to the left of her father’s bath chair, Walter Pyne grimaced. “Pity. I would have liked to make the fellow’s acquaintance. I’m curious to see what this business of being an authenticator is all about.”
“Aye, but,” Edward Morris, seated on her father’s other side, observed, “what with us likely stuck here now, courtesy of the storm, if the fellow rides from Ripon as soon as the thaw sets in, likely we’ll still be here when he arrives.”