Chapter Sixteen #2
“Or her servant,” Solomon added. He turned, facing along the canal bank toward Channing, and Constance heard it too—the clip-cop of a horse’s hooves.
In the distance a small, gig-shaped vehicle drawn by a single pony came into view along the canal side.
A flash of red, from a scarf or a waistcoat, caught her attention, distracting her from some other half-glimpsed movement in the woods.
“Is that David?” Constance asked, just before a loud crack split the air, and Solomon fell at her feet, blood oozing across his forehead.
*
David had borrowed the inn’s gig along with their fat little pony. He was looking for inspiration for fresh sketches that he could later turn into oil paintings.
He was also giving himself the option of calling on Adelaide Jenkins.
He had been told there were two paths up to her house from the canal and had driven past the first to give himself time.
Besides, the second was apparently through a forest and gave him opportunity to pretend to be lost—if he was prepared to stoop so low.
He didn’t think he was. But neither did he want to be another Percy-like pest.
David’s passages with women had not been respectable, except for those who tended to mother him.
From others, he had learned to guard his coin, and expected nothing except shame—so much so that he had been celibate for years.
The brain fever had hardly helped, of course, but even as he had begun to find his feet in London and Paris, and recognized the beauty of what Solomon had found with Constance, he had known that such contentment was not for him.
He hadn’t much cared. Except that Adelaide Jenkins made him care, without even trying. And how sick was that, when her past was entwined with Solomon’s? No, he had to stay away…
As if he had conjured them from his thoughts, he saw Constance and Solomon emerge from the wood and come to a halt, talking and looking about them. He tickled the pony with the ribbons.
“Giddy up, you lazy old…equine. Make it a trot!”
Reluctantly, the pony obliged, and the gig bowled along the canal road twice as fast. Something moved in the density of the trees, attracting his attention. Something flashed, like a blink of sun, and then a sharp crack sounded and Solomon fell to the ground.
The pony whinnied with distress and sped up. Someone shouted, a cry of pitiful loss and anguish. Constance… No, it was a man’s voice. It was David’s.
He swallowed it down and somehow forced the pony to halt. He threw himself to the ground. Constance didn’t even look at him. She was on her knees beside Solomon, her face white, her eyes wild. Yet still she was looking for a pulse in his wrist, his neck.
“Solomon. Solomon, don’t you dare, not now. Wake up, damn you…” She let out a sound between a gasp and a sob.
David seemed to have frozen, staring at the brother he had lost for twenty years. Only as he seemed to be losing him again, permanently, did he begin to realize all it had meant to have found him. He sank to his knees.
Constance seized his hand. “He’s alive, David. He’s alive. Help me…”
Alive… David got to his feet, hauling Solomon into his arms. It seemed he was still strong enough to carry him as far as the gig.
“Dare Hall is nearest,” Constance said. “I’ll lead the pony around.”
There was no room in the gig for another adult, or so David thought, but Constance simply squashed in, kneeling on the floor, holding Solomon as still as she could, a handkerchief pressed to his temple, while the pony trotted back to the main path to Dare Hall, almost as though it sensed the urgency.
They barely spoke during the short journey, each of them lost in their own nightmare.
Eventually, David said, “Someone shot him. From the woods.”
Constance spared him a glance, but only one. “Was it from the woods?” she asked, only half distracted.
“I saw someone move. Something flashed. Is he…?”
“He’s breathing. He’s still bleeding.” Her voice shook. “I don’t know enough. We need a doctor.”
As they clattered up the path to the hall, Adelaide and two maids spilled out onto the front steps.
“What is it?” Adelaide called breathlessly, hurrying toward them. “What happened?”
Only then did David realize he had to be in charge. Solomon was injured and his brother’s wife was in pieces. The pony halted without instruction and David jumped down, hurrying around to the other side of the gig.
“He’s been shot,” he said briskly. “Could you send for a doctor urgently? And we need somewhere to see to his wound.”
He was aware of her eyes widening in shock and couldn’t understand why that pleased him until he remembered that Adelaide was a suspect in Percy Harvey’s murder.
He thrust it to the back of his mind for later, hefting Solomon over his shoulder as gently as he could, and striding after the silent Adelaide into the house.
“Water, clean cloths, bandages,” he told the open-mouthed maid. “Quickly.”
“To the back parlor,” Adelaide called after her. “And tell Nelson to fetch Dr. Owens immediately.”
She threw open a door on her right, a comfortable room that would normally catch the sun, although it was cloudy now. A fire burned cheerily in the grate.
David laid his brother on a long, wide sofa, while Constance fussed with pillows beneath his head.
“Who shot him?” Adelaide demanded, staring down at David’s wounded brother.
Solomon’s eyes were still closed, drying blood streaked across his face, with a mess of gore at his temple that Constance’s blood-soaked handkerchief could do little to allay. David gave her his.
“We don’t know,” he told Adelaide. “They shot from the wood.”