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Nine Coaches Waiting

This novel is a romantic fantasy set in the Tang Dynasty, featuring a young woman's journey to find her lost love amidst a backdrop of mystical occurrences and ancient Chinese folklore. more

Author

Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart

Mary Stewart, a British novelist, was born on September 17, 1916, and passed away on May 9, 2014. Known for her suspense, historical, and romance novels, her works have enjoyed great popularity among readers. more

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“It came to me suddenly that this was how I would always remember him, someone standing alone, apart from the others even of his own family. And, I think for the first time, I began to see him as he really was – not any more as a projection of my young romantic longings, not any more as Prince Charming, the handsome sophisticate, the tiger I thought I preferred … This was Raoul, who had been a quiet lonely little boy in a house that was ‘not a house for children’, an unhappy adolescent brought up in the shadow of a megalomaniac father, a young man fighting bitterly to save his small inheritance from ruin … wild, perhaps, hard, perhaps, plunging off the beaten track more than once … but always alone. Wrapped up in my loneliness and danger I hadn’t even seen that his need was the same as my own. He and I had hoed the same row, and he for a more bitter harvest.”

Nine Coaches Waiting
Author:Mary Stewart
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“It was odd that I hadn’t really noticed till now what a beautiful evening it was. The street lamps glowed like ripe oranges among the bare boughs. Below in the wet street their globes glimmered down and down, to drown in their own reflections. He hangs in shades the orange bright, like golden lamps … and on the pavements there were piles of oranges, too, real ones, spilled there in prodigal piles with aubergines and green and scarlet peppers. The open door of a wine-shop glittered like Aladdin’s cave with bottles from floor to roof, shelf on shelf of ruby and amber and purple, the rich heart of a hundred sun-drenched harvests. From a brightly-lit workmen’s café nearby came music, the sound of voices loud in argument, and the smell of new bread. The last lamp drowned its golden moon in the road ahead. The last house vanished and we were running between hedgeless fields. To the right a pale sky still showed clear under the western rim of the rain-clouds, and against it the bare trees that staked the road stood out black and sheer. The leaves of an ilex cut the half-light like knives. A willow streamed in the wind like a woman’s hair. The road lifted itself ahead, mackerel-silver under its bending poplars. The blue hour, the lovely hour … Then the hills were round us, and it was dark.”

Nine Coaches Waiting
Author:Mary Stewart
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“She laughed. ‘My dear Carlo, compliments even now aren’t quite so rare that I don’t recognise them, believe me. Thank you, Miss Martin, that was sweet of you.’ Her eyes as she smiled at me were friendly, almost warm, and for the first time since I had met her I saw charm in her – not the easy charm of the vivid personality, but the real and irresistible charm that reaches out halfway to meet you, assuring you that you are wanted and liked. And heaven knew I needed that assurance … I was very ready to meet any gesture, however slight, with the response of affection. Perhaps at last … But even as I smiled back at her it happened again. The warmth drained away as if wine had seeped from a crack and left the glass empty, a cool and misted shell, reflecting nothing. She turned away to pick up her embroidery.”

Nine Coaches Waiting
Author:Mary Stewart
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“It was as if the past, till then so longed-after, so lived-over, had slipped off my shoulders like a burden. The future was still hidden, somewhere in the lights that made a yellow blur in the sky beyond the end of the dark street. Here between the two I waited, and for the first time saw both clearly. ...I had made myself a stranger in England, not only bereaved, but miserably dépaysée, drifting with no clear aim, resenting the life I had been thrust into with such tragic brutality; I had refused to adapt myself to it and make myself a place there, behaving like the spoilt child who, because he cannot have the best cake, refuses to eat at all. I had waited for life to offer itself back to me on the old terms. Well, it wasn’t going to. Because of my childhood I had rejected what England had for me, and now the Paris of my childhood had rejected me. Here, too, I had been dispossessed. And if I was ever to have a place, in whatever country – well, nobody ever wanted you anyway unless you damned well made them. And that was what I would have to do. I had my chance in front of me now...”

Nine Coaches Waiting
Author:Mary Stewart
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