Free A Christmas Gone Perfectly Wrong: A Blackshear Family novella (B 0.5) by Cecilia Grant

travels.
    Inspiration sprouted like an obstinate weed.
    “Very well; perhaps some other one of these travelers will be going toward Welney, and will agree to convey me. You may ask your man to take down my trunk.” She angled her body toward the inn door and set her shoulders back to look poised for walking.
    “That worked once, Miss Sharp. It won’t work a second time.” His voice spelled out intransigence, but his pupils had flared sufficiently to give the lie to his stone-like calm.
    Or so she hoped. With a sensation very much like what one must feel when stepping off a pier, she propelled herself toward the door.
    He moved like lightning, which was perhaps a little piratical after all, surging up off the bench and seizing her elbow. “For the love of—have you no sense at all?” The grip of his fingers told her everything about his anger, frustration, and disappointment in her. “Your father did you a grave disservice, bringing you up to believe in the benevolence of strangers. But he doesn’t deserve to see some terrible fate befall you because you trusted in the wrong place and got into the wrong carriage. And I don’t deserve to have to travel to Mosscroft and break that news to him, when he believed you were making this journey under my care.”
    “Precisely. Under your care.” She spoke as dispassionately as she could, to sound the more reasonable in contrast to his show of temper. “He permitted me to travel with you because he knew I would be perfectly safe. I don’t know why you find it so difficult to have the same faith in your—”
    “Not another word. Please. Not another perfectly, not another travel, not another the. ” He held up the hand that wasn’t grasping her elbow, palm out to halt her speaking. For two silent, frozen seconds there was no telling what he would do. Then he jerked his head toward the carriage. “Go and get in. You can use the distance to Welney to work out how you’re going to explain arriving at this party in the carriage of an unrelated man, without a chaperone or even a maid. Don’t expect me to offer so much as a syllable in your exoneration.” He dropped his hold on her elbow, turned on his heel, and went with long strides to talk to his driver, not sparing her another glance.
    She’d carried her point. She’d been right and he’d been wrong. She’d succeeded in doing a Christmas kindness for her maid, and in a matter of miles she’d be safely arrived at Hatfield Hall, untroubled henceforward by Mr. Blackshear’s dark looks. By any measure, it was a victory.
    She picked up her skirts and made her way across the inn-yard to the carriage, an ache gathering in the pit of her stomach for no good reason on earth.

“Does that bird sound ill to you?” For the fifth or sixth time since leaving Downham Market, Andrew looked over his shoulder. The thing rode in a crate, covered by a cloth meant to keep it, one surmised, from being alarmed by the passing scenery. Periodically it emitted sounds.
    “Don’t know enough to venture a guess.” John Coachman kept his eyes on the horses. “Might just be talking to himself to pass the time. Whatever it is, he’s been doing it the whole of the journey. First team didn’t care for it, I can tell you. This pair don’t seem to mind.”
    Well, that was somewhat reassuring, to know the bird had been making these utterances all along. He’d bought a penny’s worth of beef at the posting inn and poked it into the crate while waiting for Miss Sharp to return. It would be too bad if his well-meant action had resulted in making the creature sick.
    What it wouldn’t be, though, was surprising, given the general trend of his actions and their outcomes on this trip.
    He sighed and pulled his scarf higher round his chin. Self-disgust chilled him from the inside out. Why hadn’t he delivered Miss Sharp back to her home, as he’d threatened—indeed, promised—to do? A man of truer principle would have swallowed the loss of