Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“’Twas a buck snort,” Fines replied, stroking a hand over the head of the nearest hound. “Daylight’s coming, we’re on the game trail, and the deer are leaving the fields for the safety of the woods. We’re on their patch, and they’re letting us know it.”
“That was no damned deer,” Huffnagel said, slewing around. “It came from that direction.” He pointed up the slope and stumped away from the trail. “I know what I heard. Bring the hounds and find the scent.”
Thank the heavenly intercessors for the vagaries of natural acoustics. Fines came along, the hounds nosing the ground as they trailed after him.
Hope had again taken hold of me, hope that daylight would come, Huffnagel would go, and reinforcements would arrive—except that if my reinforcements followed orders, they would assemble at the Retreat’s gate, or on its front drive, and not be combing the woods.
One of the beagles paused to lift his leg on the base of the tree below me. Then the wretched beast began sniffing in earnest.
“Drat you, dog,” Huffnagel bellowed. “Come!”
The dog put his front paws on the tree and let out a howl.
“I said, come!”
“Smells a squirrel,” Fines muttered. “Fine hound you got there, milord. Treeing squirrels.”
Huffnagel made his way to the base of the tree and held up his lantern. The sky was growing light, and between the lamplight and the inchoate dawn, the ground at the base of the tree was visible.
“Squirrels don’t leave tracks like this.”
The baron knelt awkwardly. “I see the outline of a man’s foot, Fines, clear as day. Blumenthal ensures they give up their footwear first thing.”
I made myself as small as I could and held very, very still. I had once hidden in a reedbed for hours while a French patrol had lounged not three yards away, enjoying a noon meal, napping, smoking, relieving themselves into the pond inches from where I lay.
Those soldiers had been ordered to reconnoiter a specified piece of terrain. I’d known that if I remained immobile long enough, I’d survive the encounter, and so would they. Lord Huffnagel would not oblige me by toddling on his way when the breakfast hour arrived.
Ever so cautiously, I withdrew my set of lock picks.
“I cannot imagine a peer of the realm climbing a tree in the dark,” Huffnagel said, glancing around speculatively, “but this beagle has detected something out of place.”
“A bleedin’ squirrel, I’m telling ya.”
“He’s better trained than that.”
The beagle was joined by his companion, who dutifully sniffed the same roots and the same patch of the trunk and then also stretched up on his back legs and woofed in my direction.
I lobbed the picks up the slope, hoping for much greater distance than I achieved. The picks were caught by an upper bough on a stately pine about ten yards off and descended to earth by ricocheting several times off lower branches and landing on an upthrust boulder with a hard smack.
Huffnagel glowered at Fines. “That was not a squirrel.”
The beagles gamboled toward where the picks had fallen, yipping and yodeling and getting the hounds stirred up. I descended from my tree as quickly and as quietly as I could and pelted for all I was worth toward the road.
Dantry stayed put, for which I commended him.
The trees were thinning, the light growing with each yard of progress when I heard the dogs baying in earnest. I was not only the quarry they’d been asked to track, I was fleeing. Every instinct they possessed demanded they stop my flight.
“For God’s sake, after him! That’s Caldicott!”
Huffnagel was thrashing down the slope behind me, the beagles were gaining ground stride by stride, and yet, I ran on. The road up ahead was deserted, not a creature stirring in the thin gray mist, other than the hellhounds at my heels.
And they set up a racket fit to wake the dead, which might well be what saved my life.
I reached the end of the trees, and as Dantry had warned me, I still had to cover a downslope thick with heather and bracken before I reached the road.
From the place where the path crossed the road to the edge of Dovecote land might have been as little as a third of a mile, though the dogs would be upon me well before that.
“Stop!” Huffnagel bellowed. “Stop in the king’s name!”
To my shock, the blast of a gunshot sounded behind me an instant before a ball whizzed past my shoulder. Bloody experience had me refusing the urge to look back, to waste an instant assessing exactly how closely my doom followed.
I pushed on, my heart thundering against my ribs, a sense of triumph leavening my terror. Dantry was safe. Dantry had followed orders. Dantry would live to tell Miss Weatherby of his love for her.
“For the last time, stop in the king’s name or prepare to meet your Maker!”
The thought that Hyperia would be widowed before she became a bride spurred me to a final desperate burst of speed just as a second shot nearly clipped my ear.
At first, I thought my heartbeat had acquired the volume of thunder, then I realized two riders were galloping around the bend from the direction of the Dovecote.
A blast of return fire blazed red against the gray light of dawn.
My salvation rode aside, and one of the pair had discharged a pistol over my head.
“Stand down, Huffnagel,” Hyperia bellowed. “You’ll swing for it if you don’t.” She and Miss Weatherby drew their steeds to prancing, snorting halts. Miss Weatherby kept her pistol— double-barreled, I was delighted to note—aimed at the approaching baron.
Fines hung back, all four canines apparently content to do the same. They sat, panting hard, clearly mystified at this peculiar version of chasing squirrels.
“Put that thing away before you hurt somebody,” Huffnagel snapped, breathing heavily. His own pistol—also double-barreled—remained in his hand.
“Miss Weatherby has a shot left,” I said. “You are out of ammunition, Huffnagel, and entirely out of excuses. Is it policy at the Retreat to brandish and discharge firearms when a guest decides to take some air?”
“Where is Dantry?” Miss Weatherby asked, waving her pistol.
Huffnagel considered the lady, sent a scowling glance back at Fines, and then raked me with an equally disgusted inspection. “I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, but you do,” I said. “You were seen in the vicinity of Little Middleton the night Dantry went missing. Your horse and the uneven gait that your version of horsemanship has caused the beast were specifically remarked. Dantry asked you to allow him a short stay at the Retreat for investigative purposes, and you used that request to kidnap a peer.”
“Claude.” Miss Weatherby waved at a figure emerging from the trees, the gun still in her hand. “He had better be hale and whole, my lord, or you will learn the dubious pleasure of life in a Bath chair, assuming you aren’t transported or hanged for your mischief.”
“The earl came with me willingly. His word against mine. He has no case against me, and Dantry himself will say the same.”
Dantry passed the dogs with a nod to Fines and continued down the hill. He still had his blanket cape and both of his makeshift boots. His hair was disheveled, two days’ growth of beard darkened his cheeks, and he’d clearly missed some meals.
“Ladies.” He bowed with incongruous grace when he reached the road.
“A pleasure to see you. A profound, timely, and much appreciated pleasure. Contrary to Lord Huffnagel’s deceitful representations, I assure you, I was held at the Retreat much against my will.
I propose to return the favor by confining him to the Dovecote’s stoutest cellar.
Miss Weatherby, might you please keep that lovely pistol trained on him? ”
“Directly on his black heart,” she replied sweetly. “Sir Clive and Her Grace approach.”
Two more riders, one with a rifle case secured to his saddle, cantered around the bend and halted their horses next to Hyperia’s mount.
“The ladies have all in hand,” I said, feeling grubby, grateful, and exhausted. “We’ll need to summon a magistrate from beyond the parish.”
“What we need,” Her Grace said, “is to see you and Lord Dantry into some proper attire and fed a decent breakfast. I’m sure there’s a tale of derring-do and high crimes to be told, but that can wait until the basic courtesies have been observed.”
Hiding in trees, scrabbling through darkness, running flat out in a futile attempt to elude fit canines… Derring-do hadn’t much to recommend it.
Sir Clive took the long gun from its case.
“Huffnagel, this is birdshot. It won’t kill you.
It will make a bloody mess of your arrogant backside and cause a great deal of pain for weeks to come, assuming you can avoid infection.
A blast of shot will figure well down on your list of troubles, though firing it at you would gratify me and present company exceedingly.
Avoid stumbling, lest my old eyes instead see an attempt to escape. ”
Huffnagel trudged along the lane, Sir Clive at his back, the gun pointed at the prisoner, who for once had no jollity or genial wisdom to add to the occasion.
Hyperia dismounted and hugged me soundly while Dantry and Miss Weatherby gazed at each other, grinning fatuously.
“I’m going to cry,” Miss Weatherby said, uncocking her pistol. “I am about to make a complete cake of myself.”
Dantry took the pistol from her and gathered up the horse’s reins. “If you make a cake of yourself, I will make a pudding of myself. The Retreat is awful, Dulcie. You were right. It was awful, and I had to see that firsthand.”
They went sniffling and smiling on their way, while I stood in the middle of the road, holding on to Hyperia for dear life and trying not to shiver.
“That was a very near thing, my dear. I am eternally in your debt.” My feet were freezing, my heel throbbed, my throat was raw, and my head was pounding, but my heart was soaring.
“I told you I would come, Julian. I will not leave you to suffer the fate of the damned while I have breath in my body.”
The horse stomped a foot. I drew back but kept hold of Hyperia’s hand. “You disobeyed orders, Miss West. My reinforcements were to be assembled on the drive.” Where the whole staff of the Retreat would see that an audience was at hand.
“Sir Clive and the duchess were on watch by the gate, but Miss Weatherby and I thought somebody should be guarding the postern path as well. Sheldon volunteered that Huffnagel frequently rode through the pines, though there’s no proper bridle path leading to the village that way.
We were still debating tactics when the dogs began baying in earnest.”
I would hear that sound in my nightmares. “Thank goodness you decided to investigate.”
“Miss Weatherby is very handy with that gun. Huffnagel has had a closer call than he knows.”
I did not give a bowl of cold porridge for Lord Huffnagel in the moment. “Will you marry me?”
She squeezed my hand. “I believe we’ve already come to that agreement.”
“I mean, will you marry me directly? Now? This week? I have the special license at the Hall, and if we are to continue with these investigations, I would like to know you enjoy the protection of my name and means when I go haring off to wreck my feet and dodge bullets. Huffnagel must truly be unbalanced to shoot at an unarmed man like that.”
“And we thought Fletcher was the problem.”
“Fletcher was likely approached by Huffnagel about a scheme to enable the longed-for enclosure and to ensure that Huffnagel’s mines can continue to produce at a profit.”
She turned with me, and we walked along the road, hand in hand, the horse trailing behind us. I was barefoot and weak with cold, exertion, and relief. I purely clung to her hand, dignity be damned.
“The baron owns mines?” she asked.
“I had protracted opportunities to consider evidence in the small hours of the night, Perry. I suspect Huffnagel is pockets to let. His late wife—a Welsh mining heiress—likely included mines among her dower assets, but very few mines can produce profitably for decades on end. Huffnagel’s property is going shabby about the edges, his staff are taking advantage of their employer—a sure sign of late wages—and he’s been unable to find himself another heiress.
If he wants to continue to squeeze coal from the ground at a profit, he needs to stifle Dantry’s reforming tendencies even more than Fletcher needs his enclosure. ”
“And Dantry made it easy for Huffnagel, asking for an overnight tour of the Retreat.”
“Fletcher will make it easy for us,” I countered as the hedge delineating the Dovecote’s park came into view.
“He will doubtless sign an affidavit swearing that Huffnagel approached him about a wild kidnapping scheme to be undertaken for a sum, intended to allow Fletcher to introduce his enclosure act in Dantry’s absence. ”
“You think Fletcher would turn on Huffnagel that way?”
“Alphonse will support the notion.” I had given this aspect of the situation a lot of thought as well, particularly while Fines and his darling had been enjoying their interminable frolic in the stairwell.
“You will explain your reasoning?”
“In detail, but first, by order of the duchess, I am to have a bath, a change of clothes, and a meal. I propose that we assemble in the Dovecote’s family parlor for a late breakfast when I am more presentable.”
Hyperia shaded her eyes to admire the Dovecote’s impressive facade as the sunrise began in earnest. “What a shame you cannot borrow Lord Dantry’s valet to assist with your bath. I fear that good man will be busy putting the earl to rights. You might have to make do with alternative measures.”
“Perry, you can bathe me from head to foot with frilly French soap of your choosing, but please say you will marry me.”
“I will marry you as soon as may be, Julian. When you go haring off on your various quests, I want you to know that you have any and every protection a wife can afford her spouse, including pistols, swords, fisticuffs, and social ruin turned on your detractors.”
“Point taken. Within the week, then.”
Hyperia was merciful in victory, choosing a brisk lavender soap for my ablutions, and thoroughly scrambling my wits with a few searing kisses before peeling me down to my shirt-sleeves and breeches.
By that point, a cold plunge might have assisted with the recovery of my dignity.
In Hyperia’s absence, I made do with warm water and milled soap.
By the time I joined the assembled in the breakfast parlor, I had a rough idea how I’d explain the tangled mess Huffnagel had almost made of the Arbuthnot family’s happiness.