Camelot & Vine Read Online Free Page B

lag. I’ll be fine.”
    “Okay,” he said, sitting back.
    “And.” I had a sudden urge to tell him I’d
lost my job, my boyfriend and my hold on life. Tears welled in my
eyes.
    He saw, and waited.
    “I’m, um. Looking forward to a rest.”
    He nodded. “Shall I walk you to the
pub?”
    “No. Thanks.” I blinked back the tears. I’d
be fine.
     
    -----
     
    The six or eight streets that made up Small
Common had never been gussied up for tourists. Shadows draped
across the thatched roofs of the same stone cottages they’d been
dressing for hundreds of years. There, a shaded lane drew my eye
toward the private space behind a stone house to glimpse a bright,
blue wheelbarrow. Here, climbing pink roses framed a garden gate in
need of a fresh coat of paint. Beyond, an empty cottage awaited
care in the midst of a yard gone wild with the lack of it. I
allowed myself to imagine the cottage as mine. I would put glass in
the windows, but perhaps not paint the gate. I’d see about the
yard.
    Most of Small Common was well tended.
Attractive window boxes, overloaded with flowers, lined a row of
stone houses. Clean, cobblestone streets invited me to wander along
them. I took each turn to sweet scents and sights: a green painted
door, the steeple of an old stone church, a distant hill. The few
people I encountered nodded or said a quiet “hello.” I strolled
without aim, glad to know no one, momentarily forgetting my hunger
and imagining life in obscurity. What if that cottage were mine?
Could I live there? What did people do in Small Common? Did they
garden, read books, make art? Or just commute to someplace
else?
    At the southern edge of the village, the
street curled away from civilization out into the misty
countryside. A hand-painted sign named the route Old Wigley Road.
I’d missed Tom’s pub and would have to turn back. If I kept walking
I might find a castle, or faeries, or a handsome prince.
    A piercing neigh broke the calm.
    “You here to ride?”
    An elfish boy of about eleven leaned against
an unobtrusive, single-story structure. I must have passed the
building without noticing. It was set back from the street amid
overgrown bushes next to a gnarled apple tree, its stone walls
camouflaged green with moss. A sign hanging from a branch said,
“Livery Stable.”
    “It’s fourteen pounds fifty an hour and
that’s cheap,” the boy said. He blew a puff of air upwards, lifting
long, brown bangs from his dirty face.
    “What kind of horses do you have?”
    “All kinds.” He jerked a thumb toward a gray
mare who stuck her head out of an open window. “Lucy’s a good
horse.”
    “May I ride out that way?” I pointed to my
imaginary castle in the mist.
    “Yeah. But you have to be back in one hour
because we’re closing.”
    I assured him I wouldn’t be nearly that
long.
     
    -----
     
    As an ingénue I had learned to ride
horseback for the role of “The Blonde” in a low-budget Western that
shall remain nameless. Riding Lucy was different. The sleek,
English saddle offered fewer things to hold onto than the Western
one with its protruding horn. But though the faded blacktop of Old
Wigley Road was uneven, I soon eased into the rhythm of Lucy’s
comfortable gait. She knew the way, so I let her drive while I
enjoyed the scenery. Crumbling stone walls ambled across acres of
green, serving as fences just as they had for hundreds of years. A
ruined barn slumped alongside a new one in a field dotted with
grazing sheep. A light appeared in the window of a cottage just as
we ambled by the cozy grove in which it snuggled. The world smelled
fresh after the rain.
    How long had I been awake? My exhaustion was
so supreme I felt exalted. At last I let myself cry, softly,
allowing my shoulders to settle on my back. Being alone was safe.
Everything about the ride was relief: Lucy’s shoulders rocking
smoothly beneath my knees, the disorientation of being in a new
place, the sun’s final blink. I sensed I’d escaped