Chapter Twenty-TwoPatrick responded instinctively, as I now realised he always did. He reached out to hand her aboard before the carriage stopped moving. I yelled at the horse to stop. It parped indignantly at my brusqueness and snapped itself up into its smallest shape.
‘You’ll help me?’ asked the Scottish woman, her blue eyes brimming with tears.
‘Of course we will,’ said Matilda, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. ‘Do you want to bring your tent?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s long past moving, but I’ve two children.’
‘Fetch them,’ said Patrick. ‘They can sleep in our tent tonight.’
She bobbed a frantic curtsey and hurried back to her tent. ‘Aline! Duncan!’
Two young children scrambled out and the woman pushed them up into the carriage. The girl giggled as she tumbled he
