The dapple-grey horse seemed to be enjoying the attentive brushing of the fair-haired young woman. He had been restless in a foreign stable surrounded by foreign stable hands until the return of normalcy: Ellany smoothing his coat down with a coarse brush after a hard day’s ride.
The young woman, however, was feeling anything but soothed and was attempting to distract herself into calmness with the methodical process. She was rather embarrassed over how she had lost her patience with the three young women of Trestlebridge. Behind the body of her horse, she tried to hide the flush of her temper, which still remained on her cheeks as evidence. Try as she might, she seemed unable to reassure the women of her good intentions as well as the good will of the Bree-folk who had loaded her wagon with supplies to help the suffering town. The women seemed to think that they were searching for gratitude and looking down on the folk of Trestlebridge as charity cases. In their eyes, Ellany’s wagon, filled with her neighbors’ and her own household’s belongings, was a gesture of self-indulgence and self-gratification. It was too much for Ellany to hear Miss Nettie and the other two, whom she heard called Miss Bee and Miss Tilly, attributing false motivations to all the Bree folk who had generously sent up their hard-earned supplies, and her anger flared on their behalf. She was about to say words she would have regretted had it not been for Corrben intervening on her behalf and diverting the women’s hard gazes away from her. He already seemed to have a measure of their trust and got along better with them.
Unbeknownst to her, over the few days, as she collected donations and rode her wagon up, she had been growing hopes that her wagon would bring relief and smiles to the townsfolk. Instead, disappointment surfaced with the shock of the welcome that was so incongruent with how she had imagined being accepted into Trestlebridge. According to Miss Charlotte, her mother always enjoyed visiting the town because they had always been a welcoming and grounded people. Though they were a smaller town than Bree, they did not lack heart or strength.
Yet, when Miss Nettie asked her if she wasn’t sure she’d be asking for some compensation in return later on, Ellany realized that the women were not being intentionally unkind. At first, she had been affronted by the suggestion. Who would try to scavenge coin from people who were suffering so greatly and had so little? But she remembered years of warnings from her father as they rode their wagon together on the roads extending east and west of Bree. He warned her of people who meant harm. He warned her of people who sought to gain from others’ misfortunes. He warned her of still others who wore the guise of honesty and trustworthiness to do even worse than the first two. Under the protection of her father and the guards he paid, she had been fortunate to never cross paths with such men, but perhaps Miss Nettie and these women had experienced such things.
Thistle, the dapple-grey horse, craned his neck to look at Ellany as she let out a long sigh, simultaneously releasing the disappointment that had been brewing since the reception of her harsh welcome to Trestlebridge. As much as she would have liked to think everyone adored her mother at first sight – for that is how she liked to think of her late mother – she knew that Cara Litwell must have earned the respect and good will of the Trestlebridge people through careful cultivation of her relationships and extensions of trust every time she visited the small town. So, too, would Ellany have to work towards friendship with the folk of this town before she ever saw eager eyes alight and quick grins spread across the faces here.
