"Intent on staying, then? Here in the village, I mean."
She wished he blinked oftener and didn't dig into her with that steady hazel gaze. It was distracting, particularly when she was trying to compose herself and sound mature. "It seems a wondrous place to begin, doesn't it?" She filled her lungs with a draw of enthusiasm, longing to start. "I don't know anyone, and they don't know me. I imagine being left mostly to myself. Just like Eloisia in the first part of the book!"
"You could do worse for a view," he smiled, and waved his hand to the stage's wide, dirty window.
They had come to the village outskirts, not that a place so small had much outskirts to come to. They passed by a few long, low-roofed gray barns joined by stone fences that warned of Gretna Green, and into a wide spot fanning out from both sides of the main stage road, and then they had arrived. Their driver rumbled out commands, and the coach slowed to a gentle sway. They passed under the watchful eyes of black-rimmed windows that peered down cheerfully from the white-cob faces of houses, their gold thatch hair set like unruly fringe atop their heads. Weathered wooden signs hung out here and there, the old sort not seen in London any more, with weathered paint over carved roosters and shields. It was rustic and perfect, exactly the place where her adventure ought to begin. She looked at Mister Field and sighed her contentment. He raised his eyebrows and looked mildly alarmed.
Did he think she was mad? Mister Lochner must by now, if he hadn't already. She didn't care. Something so grand awaited her that short of being sent to the asylum, nothing would rain on her happy day. Mister Field could think her a raving lunatic, but tomorrow morning it wouldn't matter a smidge.
They lurched to a stop in a wide, dusty half-circle made for the purpose set between a mercantile and the towering public house. Buildings lined both sides of the village's main street, rising three and four floors, narrow and shoulder to shoulder. Their white cob was clean and new, but couldn't hide an architecture William Shakespeare would have recognized. By the number of signs and posted bills advertising room and board, Amelia decided that native inhabitants might be small in number, but Gretna Green had made plenty of space for its transient population. The town might suffer a tarnished reputation in the south, in places like London, but Gretna embraced the root of its fame, unabashed. On the side of one low-pitched building, horseshoes were nailed into a heart, and everywhere shop-front adverts offered whatever a hasty young couple might desire. The village wasn't sorry about its fame, and neither was Amelia. In fact, she felt perfectly at home.