Salvation of Ignorance

Chapter 10: Familiarity With Her Circumstances

Each spatial intrusion earned a grunted release of moistened air. As consequence, the windows fogged and he was quite certain he could no longer travel by car without traumatic reflection. 

A whiny from the horses and his momentum  propelled by the motionless carriage insured as much. 

Peeling his face from the front wall, his hands rushed to his on-the-verge-of-concaving temples. 

His solitary solace was no sooner disturbed by a rap on the door, "M'lord, are you alright?" 

"I would've been better had you not stopped the carriage to ask!" 

"M'lord, someone's crossed our path!" 

Niall groaned to make up for his paralysis of thought. Then he forced the door open, taking the driver with it. Niall was not felicitous with window-peers on his pain. 

"In the future," Niall said while stepping down from the carriage, "check the status of the person you almost maimed first. You did 'almost' maim them, yes?" 

The driver emerged from his entrapment by the door to lead the way to the horses, "Yes, m'lord. The girl was staggering--." 

Niall hadn't caught the rest. Before his horse stood a crowd of onlookers. None of them concerned enough to check the victim's status in his driver's stead. The girl stood before them, clutching her hand in a familiar jacket. A familiar gentleman's jacket. 

"Miss Barrettmore?" Niall called in confusion, rather than confirmation. 

The chit did not reply. Either stupefied by what had transpired, or from practice. 

Niall took a step forward, but immediately halted. Not because she responded--because she still hadn't--but in remembrance of how she flinched during his farewell gesture those few days ago. 

Now, he wasn't entirely conflicted by the gesture. After all, they had only recently cleared the air of his egregious--but logically founded, given his lack of familiarity with her circumstances--accusation and the girl 'with an agreeable temperament' had met him with the only scowl he'd seen from her. It was simply a generality that he disliked the notion of invading the space of someone adverse to the intrusion. 

Distracted by contemplating how to instead approach her, the sound of her chattering molars resonated. Christ, she really was scared stupid. And to think he had joked about the unlikely event moments prior. 

Welcome to city life? 

"Are you going to be alright, Miss Barrettmore?" Niall inquired from a distance. "Did you hurt your hand?" 

In her continued unresponsiveness, he noticed her attention lay in a destination from across the road and not the carriage at all. Turning to see what had her attention, he found nothing significant. Confused, he waved a hand in front of her face. 

Her glossed eyes clasped onto him. "Mi-Mi...Mister Cla-Claremont? Wha-what are you doing h-here?" 

"That's Lord Claremont!" His driver called from behind and Niall instinctively shushed him. His concern resonated in her onset of amnesia. 

"'Lord'?" She inquired languorously. Then made a small gesture of her head that resembled a nod. "Ah, yes. You said s-so. I...I need to go now." 

"Well, would you like a ride?" Niall offered, considering she was clearly not in a state to refrain from entering traffic. 

"A ride?" 

"Yes, a ride," Niall latched on to her participation. "I mean, we are friends now. I almost run you over. I provide you a ride. We're two for zero on favors at this point."