“Wait!” Minerva called. “Come back!”
Mrs. Fontley’s head poked out the window. “And subject my children to such reprehensible characters? I will not.” As the coach trundled away at a clip, they heard her shouting, “You are not good people!”
Minerva turned to him, stunned and breathless. “What can she mean? Surely it wasn’t the fact that you punched that man last night.”
“Couldn’t be. I can’t think what we did to change their opinion, unless . . .” His stomach rolled.
“Unless what?”
“Unless they somehow heard us. Last night.”
She paled. “Oh, sweet heaven.” Her lip folded under her teeth. “But how could they have . . . ?”
“They couldn’t have.”
“No, they couldn’t have, unless they were right next door. Unless . . .” Her gaze met his, wide and horrified. “Unless they were the ones we heard.”
Colin blew out a slow breath. He turned his head and stared after the coach. “Well. Good for them. Well done, Mr. Fontley.”
Minerva didn’t share his amusement.
“Oh God.” She sat down on her one remaining trunk and dropped her head in her hands. “They must think us scheming charlatans. They know every word we said was false. Ceylon, the lepers, the stupid beetle bite. They know we’re liars.”
He ducked his head and scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s hope that’s what they concluded.”
She looked up at him. “What else would they think? That we weren’t lying? That we really are brother and—” He watched the look of abject revulsion creep across her face. “No. No.”
“Don’t worry,” he said hastily. “I’m sure they concluded the first.”
“Ugh.” She shuddered violently. “I think I’ll be sick.”
“There’s no need for that, pet. We know the truth.”
“Do we?”
He felt the barb in her remark. Neither of them knew exactly what they were to each other, after last night.
But that conversation would need to wait. For the first time, Colin noticed how many people around the area were watching them. The look in their eyes wasn’t friendly. As he turned casually to face the inn, the door slammed. He heard a latch scrape shut.
Renting a fresh horse was apparently out of the question. And he didn’t suppose any of these villagers would be offering them a ride.
“I should have known it was a bad idea,” she whimpered. “I should have known I’d pay for it somehow. Whenever you touch me, I end up humiliated.”
He cleared his throat and drew near to Minerva. “We’d best leave this place. As soon as possible. Whatever the Fontleys concluded about us, it seems they shared those conclusions with everyone here.”
“But where will we go? How will get there?” She gestured after the long-gone carriage. Despair weakened her voice. “They took all my clothes, all my things.”
He crouched before her. “You still have your purse?”
She nodded.
“And you still have Francine. You’re sitting on her.”
She nodded again. “My scientific findings are in this one, too.”
“Then those are the most important things. Everything else is replaceable. We’ll just walk to the next town up the road, and from there we’ll start anew. All right?”
She sniffed. “All right.”
He helped her to her feet, then stared at her trunk, considering how best to carry the thing. On his shoulder?
She clutched one handle with her gloved hand and lifted. “I’ll take this side, and you take the other. It will be faster this way.”
His sense of chivalry rebelled, but she was right. Carrying the thing between them was really the best way.
“Now, then,” he said, as they walked down the road that led out of town, carrying a giant lizard’s footprint. “Let’s have a smile. We’ll be back underway in no time.”
It took hours.
The next town couldn’t be far, Minerva had reasoned. A few miles at most. But Francine hampered their progress. They kept stopping to rest, to change sides, to readjust the weight. And though Minerva kept telling herself the low shadow of cottages and a church would surely appear over the next rise, or just around the next bend in the road . . .
They walked for hours. Nothing.
Coaches and carriages passed them regularly. But either they were full to capacity or they’d been warned in the previous town to avoid a pair of charlatans walking north. Even if one of the coaches had slowed, it wouldn’t have helped. Colin wouldn’t ride in one. No, they had to walk for miles, hoping to find some village where she could find space in a carriage and he could rent a fresh horse. Who knew how far that would be?
The sun was high overhead, and she was growing faint. They’d never even eaten breakfast. Fatigue and hunger conspired within her, whispering to each other in irritable voices. Thirst thickened her tongue.
She drew to an abrupt halt by the side of the road. “That’s it. I won’t go any farther.”