Chapter 22 #2
The impact came a half-second before he heard the sound, the thunder of a gunshot. His hat flew off his head, and he would swear later, with the precise attention that came from extreme peril, that he heard the quiet thunk as the round hit the thick felted wool.
He recognized from his hunting days the bellow of a double barrel shotgun.
The second barrel would be loaded and primed, ready to fire.
He recognized, with the same speed of thought, that they were fortunate the shooter was using cartridges, for if he had fired lead shot, all of them would have been hit already.
“Down,” he shouted to Inez, pulling her shoulder. “Down!”
The second shot would have hit Jock, save the man did something extraordinary.
He leaned low over his second horse, caught the harness, and swung himself onto the back of the Hackney in what seemed one long, fluid move.
An instant later a knife appeared in his hand, and he cut the traces holding the horse to the cart.
A moment after that he was away at a thundering gallop, bent low over the back of the animal, moving not away from the source of the danger, but toward it.
Crouched on the bottom of the cart with her, his heart beating out of his chest, Joseph moved his hands over every inch of Inez he could reach. “Did he hit you? Are you hurt?”
Her eyes were wide, dark pools, full of fright and anger. Her fingers curled into the wool of his coat. “He could have hit you. He wanted to hit you.”
“He might have hit you.” He couldn’t follow that train of thought any further. “I have to find him. I have to end this.”
She peeked out from above the front rail of the cart. “It appears Jock has already found him.”
Another rider flew across the fields far ahead of them, mounting a slight rise in the distance.
The hard line of a shotgun crossed the man’s back, the metal catching the light.
Joseph didn’t recognize the figure, or the horse he rode, but he wouldn’t escape, not with a professional jockey closing the distance between them.
Jock had been born in a saddle, to hear him tell it, and while he won plate enough at Newmarket to earn him the title of King, his real skill had been overland racing. He would run the shooter to ground, and Joseph wanted to be there to look into the villain’s face and demand an accounting.
He scrabbled for the ribbons and handed them to Inez. The second harness hung awkwardly, but Arthur was, as most intelligent horses, keen about his own comfort. He would seek the stables with his stall and hay, and Inez would be safe.
“Aim for the oak,” Joseph told her. “Beneath it is a spring. At the spring turn due north and you will run straight into the house. Tell Thaker we need assistance. Tell him to bring all the lads.”
Her lip trembled slightly, but she nodded and took the ribbons. “Don’t let him shoot you.”
“I won’t give him time to reload.” He gave her a quick, hard kiss, then pulled himself onto the back of the trotter hooked to the back of the cart.
The shooter had been on horseback; there was another one of them about, who had been the rider of this horse.
And he was potentially in possession of a gun.
He had to end this now. Joseph didn’t ride as fast as Jock, or as efficiently, but he caught up with them when Jock had the man on the ground, hands in the air, and his gun with the action broken open over Jock’s knee.
“It were accident, gor. An accident. Didden mean to hit a body, did nus?” The man’s Cornish accent was so thick it took Joseph a moment to tease out his words.
Joseph recalled how close that first blast had come to missing Inez. How close to missing him, and his hat, somewhere in a newly sown field of soybeans, was the proof of it.
How fragile their life together was, and how much he feared that it would not stand up to hard use.
In a moment of illumination, Joseph wondered if this were Inez’s fear also, that last reservation that held her apart from him.
She had watched her parents struggle for being mismatched in the eyes of their families and their separate cultures. Did she expect the same end of them?
“Who hired you?” Joseph demanded to know.
The man’s eyes widened at the fury in Joseph’s voice. He submitted to Jock binding his hands behind him, though he winced at the indignity.
“No one, sir. Wouldn’t shoot at the lord o’ Penwellen, sir. Rotten bad luck is all it is.”
“You may say your piece to the magistrate,” Joseph said. “Jock, bring him to the house. I must see if Inez is—”
A scream rent the air then. Inez. Screaming his name, or the beginning of it. She sounded as much outraged as afraid, at least before the short syllable cut away to abrupt silence.
His blood was cold and he didn’t feel a thing as he urged the horse to a gallop, as fast as it could go.
Inez had made it to the enormous oak. She sat in the cart. She wasn’t alone.
Treen sat beside her on the bench, and as Joseph neared, he saw the pistol Treen held, the barrel shoved against her side, digging into her bodice.
Joseph’s first, ludicrous reaction was outrage. Treen was no gentleman. He had no business owning a set of dueling pistols, nor even one of them.
Joseph crashed to a halt, sawing at the reins the way he’d never treat an animal under other circumstances. Inez was unhurt, but she looked furious and frightened. Her eyes were wide and haunted.
“Joseph,” she said in a low voice, “I am sorry.”
“He is the one who shall be sorry.” Joseph confronted the other man. “Treen, we will settle this now.”
Treen offered a smile that was more like the grinning teeth of a skull. “Yes,” he said. “We will settle this.”