“Yes. Your name is a mouthful.”
Those thick brows shot together. “Is not. There are three syllables only.”
“It could have been two. All this time.” She should not tease him. But she’d not felt this… safe in quite some time. Despite the cushion padding littering her skirts, despite the ruts andthe fact they lumbered forward into the gathering dark to greet a collection of people she’d never met before. Despite all that, the bone-deep fear of being caught she’d lived with for the last two months had dissipated. Fog banished beneath a summer morning sun. She was no longer running. She was arriving.
“You are quite teasable,” she admitted, surprised to feel a happy half grin reshape her face. “Oh, look there. Your eyebrows have actuallymetin the middle. Become one. A great brown caterpillar.”
He tore them apart, and they shot toward his hairline, thick, dark arches over befuddled eyes. “You will fit right in at Briarcliff, I think. My sisters-in-law love to tease. My mother loves to do something like it. They will tease us about this sudden marriage.”
But would they tease her with the gentle lovingness of family or with something of a harsher edge? That sank her spirits right good.
But Alfie’s cheek was warm beneath her fingers, still round with boyhood. She cupped it, took from it a mother’s solace. “How much longer till we arrive?”
“Soon.”
The coach tilted in a wide turn as he spoke, and Alfie tilted too, groaned, and blinked to wakefulness. He sat up quickly, rubbing fists into his eyes, which he narrowed at the man sitting across from them.
Atlas leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees to let his hands hang loose between them. “Mr. Bronwen, I’ve need of two words.”
Alfie’s brows pulled low. “Two words? Which ones?”
“Any two words you desire.” Atlas leaned back once more. “Let’s have them, then.”
Looking out the window, Alfie tapped a finger against the glass then grinned. “Nose. And…day. What do you need them for?”
“Shh. I need to think now.” Atlas closed his eyes. But not for long. They soon popped open, and he said, “There was an old man with a rose. At the very tip of his nose. He sneezed all the day, especially in May, and he always ran out of clothes.”
Alfie tilted his head. “Why did he run out of clothes?”
“I can only suppose,” Atlas said, the corners of his lips turning up, “because of the outcome of sneezing all day long. Could be quite messy.” He flicked a glance at Clara as Alfie burst into laughter.
Clara groaned.
“Another!” Alfie cried. “With… with…” He looked out the window again. “Roadandsky.”
Atlas nodded, stroked his chin thoughtfully. The grin that overtook his lips this time seemed a bit… naughty, and he leaned forward, beckoned Alfie closer. Her son obliged, and Atlas whispered, perhaps slightly louder than he should, “There once was a perilous road. Where lived a very old toad. He leaped for the sky and farted out pie, that quite odd toad in the road.”
Alfie’s laughter rang like bells inside the coach. He clutched his belly as he fell over into Clara’s lap.
“My lord, I try to discourage such talk.”
Atlas chuckled. “Bah. He likely says worse where you can’t hear. Or will one day. Trust me.”
She put her chin in the air and pursed her lips, but mostly to tamp down the grin growing there. He’d made Alfie laugh, and she could not remember the last time she’d heard that precious sound. She could tolerate a bit of impolite language if it meant belly-aching happiness.
“Do it again!” Alfie cried between hiccups as he recovered. Attempted to recover.
“Your turn,” Atlas said. “Just the same rhythm I used with…arseand?—”
“Atlas!” Clara made the name sharp, successfully hid her own hiccup of laughter.
“Gone a bit too far,” he said. “Apologies.” He bowed, then turned to Alfie. “Don’t say that word, lad. How abouttreeandleg.”
Alfie’s head became a bobbing chicken pecking at feed for a moment before it slowed, and he sank into wrinkle-faced concentration.
Atlas scooted across his bench to sit directly before Clara. “That should keep him busy for a bit. We’re almost there. Just around the next curve. Look.” He pulled the frayed curtain back, and they leaned forward, shoulders touching, to peer out of the window together.
A lurch of the coach as it rounded the bend, then there, rising into the navy sky at the end of the revealed road—her destination. A dark-gray edifice loomed large on the horizon. Above it, where the navy bloomed into black, stars woke with a start, hardly sleepy at all. No lazy stretching of the limbs and giant yawns for them. They set to work immediately.
