Lover At Last(213)

“Mayhap I shall just call—”

She cut him off. “The keys. Thank you.”

As she put out her hand, she leveled her eyes on the butler’s and kept her stare in place, making the demand as graciously but as firmly as she could. Funny, there was a time, before the pregnancy, when she would have caved and given in to the doggen’s discomfort. No longer. She was getting quite used to standing up for herself, her young, and her young’s sire, thank you very much.

Going through the hell of nearly losing that which she wanted so badly had redefined her in ways she was still getting in touch with.

“The keys,” she repeated.

“Yes, of course. Right away.” Fritz scurried over to the built-in desk in the rear of the kitchen. “Here they are.”

As he came back and presented them with a tense smile, she put her hand on his shoulder, even though no doubt that would fluster him more—and, in fact, did. “Worry not. I shan’t go far.”

“Have you your phone?”

“Yes, indeed.” She took it out of the central pocket of her pullover fleece. “See?”

After waving a good-bye, she went out into the dining room and nodded at the staff who were already setting up for Last Meal. Crossing through the foyer, she found herself walking faster as she approached the vestibule.

And then she was free of the house entirely.

Outside, standing on the front steps, her deep breath of frosty air was a benediction, and as she looked up at the starry night sky, she felt a burst of energy.

Much as she wanted to leap off the front steps, however, she was cautious going down them, and also careful striding across the courtyard. As she rounded the fountain, she hit the button on the key fob, and the lights of that gigantic black car winked at her.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, let her please not wreck the thing.

Getting in behind the wheel, she had to move the seat back, because clearly the butler had been the last one to drive the vehicle. And then, as she put the key fob in the cup holder and hit the start button, she had a moment’s pause.

Especially as the engine flared and settled into a purr.

Was she really doing this? What if…

Stopping that spiral, she flicked the right-hand toggle upward and looked to the screen on the dashboard, making sure there was nothing close behind her.

“This is going to be fine,” she told herself.

She eased off the brake, and the car smoothly moved back, which was good. Unfortunately, it went in the opposite direction than she wanted and she had to wrench the wheel over.

“Shoot.”

Some to’ing and fro’ing happened next, with her piloting the car into a series of stop-and-gos that eventually had the circular hood ornament pointed at the road that went down the mountain.

One last glance at the mansion and she was off at a snail’s pace, descending the hill, keeping to the right as she’d been taught. All around, the landscape was blurry, thanks to the mhis, and she was ready to get rid of that. Visibility was something she was desperate for.

When she got to the main road, she went left, coordinating the turn of the wheel and the acceleration so that she pulled out with some semblance of order. And then, surprise, surprise, it was smooth sailing: The Mercedes, she believed it was called, was so steady and sure that it was nearly like sitting in a chair, and watching a movie of the landscape going by.

Of course, she was going only five miles an hour.

The dial went up to one hundred and sixty.

Silly humans and their speed. Then again, if that was the only way one could travel, she could see the value of haste.

With every mile she went, she gathered confidence. Using the dashboard screen’s map to orient herself, she stayed very far from downtown and the highways, and even the suburban parts of the city. Farmland was good—lots of room to pull over and not a lot of people, although from time to time a car would come out of the night, its headlights flaring and passing on her left.

It was a while before she realized where she was going. And when she did, she told herself to turn around.

She did not.

In fact, she was surprised to discover that she knew where she was going at all: Her memory should have dimmed since the fall, the passage of the intervening days, but even more so, events, obscuring the location she was seeking. There was no such buffering. Even the awkwardness of being in a car and having to be restricted to roads didn’t mitigate what she saw in her mind’s eye…or where her recollections were taking her.

She found the meadow she sought many miles away from the compound.

Pulling over at the field’s base, she stared up at the gradual ascent. The great maple was precisely where it had been, its stout main trunk and smaller arterial branches bare of the leaves that had once offered a colorful canopy.