Hope you don't mind my poking a head in here. I think the concept you've come up with is really awesome.

You could perhaps use the "opportunity to drag his feet about going back" to cover a lot of ground/give yourself an awful lot of wiggle room for being in the area actually! Perhaps the nature of just traveling and dragging one's feet could justify taking lengthy coach routes that cut through the area, and thus justify arriving at Lethevale either by way of something going wrong with transportation, or picking a remote location to linger in for a few weeks before heading elsewhere?