A Lark In The Bushel

Chapter 9 - "Oh, I do hope she stays"

Kitty vaguely remembered waking up in a strange bed, she struggled to fully open her heavy eyelids, to fight through the fog in her brain to reach full consciousness. It was a while before she felt awake enough in her mind to start waking up her body, which felt heavier and more detached than usual. The signals her brain sent to her limbs seemed to take much longer to arrive and the corresponding movements were slower and more laboured than she remembered them being yesterday. She tried to sit up in bed, struggling to support herself with one good arm, glancing down at the bandages around her painful arm, the drugs were beginning to wear off and an intense throbbing was forcibly making itself known to her. It pushed it's way through the fog, the confusion and sleepiness in her brain to shout at her,giving her no other option than to acknowledge, and recall the events of the previous night.

Kitty winced in pain but was determined not to cry out, she was alive, she thought happily. She had fallen off a horse in the dead of night and survived. That was a positive. She had been riding a horse, in the dead of night – that had been fun, another positive.

More details of the previous night were crawling back into her consciousness as she concentrated on recalling as much as she was able to. She remembered not being able to sleep and sneaking from the room she shared with her sister to go down to the stables, her mind was still not functioning at full capacity but a cursory glance around the room told her this was not the one she was in last night. There was only one bed for a start, a faint but unmistakably masculine scent of ginger and sandalwood hung in the air. This alone was not conclusive proof – but added to the sight of men's clothes slung over the back of a chair, a shaving razor on the edge of the sink, she was confident of the details that were slotting into place. Kitty decided she didn't much care for this train of thought, she was too tired and sore to care where she was right now. She was safe, comfortable, warm, fed and her pain had been medicated enough for the moment. That would do for now.

She lay down again,shuffling into a comfortable position and stared at the ceiling,waiting for sleep to reclaim her. While she waited, she recalled entering the stables last night, the excitement of sneaking around where and when she shouldn't be, the anticipation of seeing the horses, the shock she received from a shadowy figuring appearing suddenly down the corridor. The relief that washed over her was palpable at realising the figure was Richard. The confident swagger of the innkeeper's boy approached her and they talked, they shared their love of horses as they stood in the darkened stables that night. It felt they held a whispered conversation, with unheard shouts filling the air around them as if shadows, all the things they wished to say but felt as though they were unable to, they'd only just met each other after all.

Her opinion of him changed in those moments, from the over-confident young man who had burst in to the inn the previous evening, brandishing a dead chicken and showing off for the regular customers, who were clearly familiar with his show of bravado. But everything was different in the dark. Now at night, when they had both been discovered somewhere they shouldn't have been, stealing moments to spend around the horses and without his audience to encourage him, Kitty found Richard to be a perfectly polite and amiable man.

Kitty smiled at the recollection of his suggestion of a ride, the way his face lit up in the dark at the excitement, she was swept along with the tide of his enthusiasm – of course she would love to ride out. She could not refuse his offer, the opportunity to ride - and at night none the less. The thought of danger didn't stay long her mind, she felt safe with him. Kitty felt as though she had come to know this man well in the short time they had to converse, she trusted him, it was the instinctive trust based on his instant likeability. She could not listen to the voice in her head that warned her of the danger of riding in the night, of strange places, of being caught. She saw only the potential that whispered in this night, this one opportunity she had been presented with. Too perfect to pass up on.