Chapter 14
The marquess opened the door and stepped down. Diana followed. The six horses drawing the coach were standing, heads drooping, looking almost asleep. The coachman and groom were down studying them.
“What is it?” the marquess asked, but Diana saw that he was glancing around.
The French? All senses snapping to the alert, she too studied the countryside.
A fallow field to the right, with a church spire in the distance.
A coppice to their left which could conceal any number of enemies.
The wide road stretched ahead some distance, empty.
Behind, however, it curved, and she could not see very far.
Apart from singing birds and raucous crows, and the occasional low of cattle, there was no sound.
They were pushing on to London after the delay and so were a little late on the road. They could not expect a lot of traffic to pass by. However, the baggage coach should be right behind.
She turned back again.
Where was it?
She started to go to one of the outriders to question him, then changed her mind and leaned back into the coach to extract her pistol case from her valise.
She’d felt strange about bringing her pistols with her, loaded, on this well-guarded journey, but now she gave thanks.
She slipped them into her two pockets, then took the larger ones from the holsters by the door.
The custom-made ones he’d used in their contest. Once sure they were loaded and primed she approached the outrider.
He had his own pistols out.
“What happened to the servants’ coach?” she asked.
“Don’t know, milady,” he said, only glancing at her before returning to his vigilant surveillance of the area. “They dropped back a bit over the past mile.”
The same problem with the horses? She went to where the marquess was talking to the coachman. “Yew?” she asked.
He turned to her, taking the pistols she offered without comment. “Quite likely. The symptoms fit.”
It warmed her that he only glanced at the guns, that he trusted her to have checked them, but this situation was chilling.
Yew was a leaf that horses found tasty, but which put them into a deadly stupor. No inn would have yew near its stableyard.
“The outriders’ horses seem fine,” she said, taking one pistol out of her pocket to have it ready.
“They didn’t change in Ware.” He glanced at her. “You think we should ride them?”
“It is a thought. But it isolates us.”
“Yet I don’t relish sitting here waiting for darkness to fall.”
Indeed, in the past minutes the sun had sunk lower, turning the whole sky a burning red and lengthening the shadows of the nearby trees. The groom and coachman were hurriedly freeing the swaying horses from their harnesses, but one was already down on its knees. “Poor creatures,” Diana said.
“It’s a peaceful death, all in all. Warner,” he said to the nearest outrider, “ride to the next inn for transport. All speed.”
The man spurred off at a gallop and the marquess turned to her. “Get into the coach, Diana.”
She looked up at him. “That’s the first time you’ve used my name.”
He was scanning the countryside now. “It seemed a shame not to.”
“I’m only getting in the coach if you come with me.”
He glanced down. “You just want your wicked way with me.”
“True, but at the moment I want you safe.”
“I prefer to be out here.”
She stepped right up against him. “Then I am a limpet.”
“Don’t be foolish. Do you suppose they would hesitate to kill you if you give them no choice?”
He took danger so coolly, so she matched his tone. “It might make them pause.”
When he frowned and put out a hand on her arm, she said, “You will find it hard to remove me by force, and harder still to keep me away. So, what do I call you?”
“Master?” he asked shortly, but then added, “If you wish, you may call me Bey.”
“I wish.”
With a smile that seemed ridiculous in the situation, she returned to looking out at the eerily peaceful evening countryside. It wasn’t eerie except in being completely unthreatening. Insects buzzed among the long grass and wildflowers by the road, and everywhere birds chirped and sang.
She heard a distant cowbell, and the warning bark of a dog. Noisy crows swooped about their nests in the coppice, and somewhere nearby a skylark sang with startling purity.
She thought of the invisible village that must cluster around that church spire. People there were doubtless going about their ordinary lives, unaware of drama close at hand. A movement caught her alert eye, but it was only a rabbit hopping up onto the road ahead and scampering over.
Everything was tranquil, even the dying horses. The horses, however, could not have eaten yew by accident.
She slid around so she stood back to back with him, she looking ahead, he behind. The groom and coachman were still attending to the poor horses, but the remaining outrider sat still and watchful, pistols in hand.
Pressing against his back—Bey’s back—she regretted days of doubt and restraint. What if they died here? What a waste it would be.
Then she heard it. Hooves.
Wheels.
From the way they’d come.
She was facing the wrong way and shifted to look, flexing her fingers around the pistol.
It could just be the servants.
“It is, isn’t it?” she whispered, relaxing a little as the coach appeared around the bend, coming at a normal brisk trot.
“It would appear so. Delayed, but not suffering our problem.” He kept his pistol in hand, however, but down, against his body. Tensing again, she put hers in the concealment of her wide skirts.
“Miller,” the marquess said to the outrider, “who comes?”
Heart pounding, dry mouthed, Diana watched the slowing vehicle. She couldn’t see who sat inside, and had no way of recognizing the two men on the coach. The outrider would.
“The second coach, milord.” Then he raised his pistol. “But—”
Two flames, then explosions of sound.
The outrider cried out, fell back, tumbled off—
Diana tumbled to the earth beneath the marquess’s hand as she heard something smash into the coach behind them. Another crack and a third pistol ball ricocheted off the ground in front of them spraying dirt so they both flinched.
She had her pistol pointing forward by then and cocked. She sighted without elegance, firing at the open window of the coach. Almost simultaneously, the marquess did the same.
Someone cried out.
A moment to take breath, to haul out the other pistol, to glance around. Their coachman and groom hiding behind horses. Outrider on the ground. Dead?
The marquess fired into the coach and another cry said someone had been hit. How many were there? And how many guns? He’d fired his two. She had one shot left.
She stared at the coach window, ready to kill.
Then a movement to the side swung her attention away.
The coach’s horses were panicked, and the coachman there was having to work full out to hold them in, to try to keep the coach in place. The groom, however, half hidden by his bulk, was carefully aiming a long musket at the marquess.
At Bey.
The coachman pretty well blocked all sight of the man with the musket. Elbows on the ground, Diana sighted anyway, making herself take a precious second to steady, to find that place that Carr always directed her to. She had only one shot between now and a terrible loss.
It was a moment of eerie silence except for the thrashing harness of the frantic horses.
The assailants in the coach were either dead or wary and she couldn’t afford to think of them.
She aimed for the mouth of that musket because it was the center of her target.
Surely she’d have to hit some part of the gunman.
No more time. She squeezed the trigger, felt the kick—
The explosion deafened her. Her pistol had never made that much noise before. Then she heard screams.
She stared up at the writhing, bloody men on the coachman’s box, the coachman swaying sideways, head a mass of blood …
Then the driverless horses took off, coach racketing down the road, leaving a trail of gore in its wake.
Her ears still rang.
In the sudden, resettling silence, the marquess rolled onto his side, head propped on hand. “You are a most delightfully bloodthirsty wench,” he said. But then his expression changed, and he gathered her into his arms, there in the dirt of the road. “Ah, Diana, weep. It hurts to kill.”
She shuddered, but tears would not come. “I didn’t expect … I just wanted to stop him. I didn’t mean—”
He rocked her. “You must have put your ball down the muzzle. Then he pulled the trigger only a fraction after you.”
“It exploded.”
“Indeed.”
Though her ears had stopped ringing, Diana thought she’d hear that explosion for the rest of her life.
Were they dead by now, those two shattered men? Darkness gathered …
Oh no. She’d fainted last time she’d killed. Not again.
She pulled free, scrambled to her feet, and despite swimming head, started brushing at her ruined dress. “Clara. And your manservant. We must find them.”
“We can’t do that just yet.” He leaned in the coach and produced a flask of brandy and a small glass. He filled it and passed it to her. “Drink.”
The quick fire of the spirit made her shudder again, but seemed to clear her head. “I don’t regret,” she said fiercely.
“Nor do I.” He passed the brandy to his coachman with permission for him and the groom to drink, then he knelt by the fallen outrider.
She followed. The poor man was badly wounded in the chest, but not dead. “Do you have bandages in the coach?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. An oversight.” He was letting the grimacing man clutch his hand, and now he stroked the sweaty, livid brow. “I’ll take care of everything, Miller. Don’t worry. You did well. Everyone is safe and the villains have gone. Quite likely they are all dead …”