Corydalis’s knights had carted the apprehended earl and his accomplice off to the royal capital on the down-low. From there, they would work out a suitable punishment.
In the meantime, Mr. Fisalis and I got ready to hit the road home—for real this time.
“Hold on a second! Our carriage went home without us!”
I abruptly snapped back to reality. As part of our plan to throw the earl off his guard, we’d put a decoy rider in our family carriage and sent it home to the manor ages ago. The same went for the other two cars with our luggage and attendants, of course.
All we had now was the black steed we’d switched over to, along with the few knights who had stayed behind to escort us. We had a horse, but no wagon.
“Should we call for another one? We can find some place to rest in the meantime and—”
“I don’t know about that,” I cut Mr. Fisalis off. “Sending someone on a half day’s journey just to call for a carriage would eat up a lot of time. And we can’t very well double back to the villa and ask to stay another night.”
If we went with his suggestion, the carriage wouldn’t get here until after sundown.
I mean, how are we supposed to explain why we were sneaking around running all these secret errands?! We went out of our way to settle everything quietly just to keep the incident from going public; if we spill the beans to the Argenteias, that will have all been for nothing!
“You’re right. There’s always the option to spend the night elsewhere, but I can’t imagine there are any decent inns around here. I suppose we’ll just have to head home on horseback. I’ll sprint ahead as gently as I can, I promise.”
“I don’t think ‘sprinting gently’ is a thing! But we don’t have much of a choice—let’s just do it.”
“Well, even if I take it slow, we ought to make it to Rohze before it gets dark.”
“Good. We don’t want to be out on the road in the dead of night.”
As we happened to be carrying a très expensive necklace on us at the moment, we really needed to make it home before the sun went down.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of horseback riding, but considering how dog-tired I was, I did really want to get back to the manor as soon as physically possible. I doubted that Mr. Fisalis was planning to make a mad dash down the road, anyway.
“That reminds me... Since we didn’t get to stop anywhere on the way here, we did talk about making a side trip on the way home, didn’t we?” mentioned Mr. Fisalis. “I’m afraid that’s not in the cards at this point.”
“Probably not. Maybe next time.”
“Yes—we’ll leave that for next time! You know, that’s actually a nice thought. It’s almost like we’re making plans for our next date.”
“Oh, stop it, Cercis!”
And so, we decided to make the return trip to the royal capital on horseback.
✦ ✦ ✦
It wasn’t as rough a ride as that one time Mr. Fisalis took me to clear up the whole “mistress” scandal, but I was still getting bounced up and down non-stop. He may have been taking it slower this time around, but we were still galloping ahead pretty fast.
“It’s been a while since we last rode a horse together,” I said, shouting loud enough to keep my voice from getting drowned out by the wind.
“It has. When was the last time...? Oh...”
Just thinking back on that incident had visibly dampened his spirits. To be fair, the whole thing had been a total mess, and he’d been pretty desperate to clear his name at the time.
But by now, we should be able to look back on it and laugh!
“Maybe going for a ride every once in a while isn’t so bad.”
“If you’re interested, I’d be happy to take you along on a jaunt whenever you want.”
“Thanks.”
Taking a carriage was a pretty pretentious means of transportation, and there was only so far you could travel on foot. Considering how many more places it would allow me to go, it was possible that horseback riding was the breath of fresh air I needed. Though if that was what I wanted, I really needed to build my tolerance for it first.
Back during the mistress fiasco, not only had we been going at insane speeds, but I’d had no idea what was going on in the first place. Now that I had a little more presence of mind for the ride, I noticed that I wasn’t enjoying the up-and-down motion of it so much... Maybe this just wasn’t for me? Or was it made worse by the fact that I was so tired?
I already thanked Mr. Fisalis for the offer, but it’d be a waste if I got motion sickness whenever we do go for that jaunt. Would I be better off learning how to ride a horse myself, perhaps? Could I get Rohtas to teach me the ropes? I’ll try asking when we get home.
“What’s wrong? If you’re tired, we could always stop for a break,” Mr. Fisalis piped up, concern evident in his voice. I must have lapsed into silence for too long.
“I’m fine. If anything, I’d prefer to get home sooner rather than later.”
I wanted to make it back to the manor so I could be free of this bouncy hell.
“In that case...want me to kick the speed up a notch?”
“Ugh... That’s the ultimate ‘would you rather’ question right there!”
We opted to pick up the pace a little, not stopping even once on our way home.