Chapter Seventeen #2
“The man who has a gun on me wishes you to step out of the carriage, miss,” Jamison said, “but the master would be most displeased…”
The driver’s next words were drowned out by the sound of horses and someone yelling.
The noise broke the tenseness in her limbs, which had been holding her in place.
Freya scrambled to open the door, but a bullet pierced through the side of the coach, barely missing her and lodging itself in the opposing bench seat, exactly where she had been sitting only moments earlier.
She dropped to the floor and scrunched herself into a tight knot while covering her head with her hands.
The coach rocked as Mr. Jamison also evidently sought safety. A round of bullets was exchanged, while Freya prayed that both she and the driver would survive.
Both Aaran and Beaufort fired at the man dressed all in black, who raced away from the stopped carriage. “I have the shooter!” Beaufort called as he kicked his horse and gave chase.
Meanwhile, Aaran reined in before the coach, kicked out of the stirrups, throwing his bum leg over the horse’s neck before he dropped from the saddle, landing solidly on his good leg.
“Jamison?” he called as he hobbled towards the carriage and Lady Freya.
“Fair, my lord,” Jamison called back as the driver crawled from his hiding place, but Aaran’s attention was on the carriage and reaching Lady Freya.
One of the bullets had entered the carriage.
There was a rip in the oilskin covering the compartment.
He fumbled with the lock and finally pulled the door open.
Freya pushed herself upward from the floor.
She turned her head, and Aaran Graham’s familiar form took shape as her eyes cleared.
He was still dressed in the finery he had worn to the wedding.
The piercing scowl that marked his features made the two scars on his cheek more prominent than usual. “Freya?” he rasped.
“Just rattled, my lord,” she told him as she crawled to her knees and readjusted her bonnet and gown. “Did you see who did this?” she asked as she braced herself on the bench’s seat to lift herself upward to sit.
“Only from the distance. Beaufort gave chase,” he explained as he looked to where Jamison crawled down from the seat and before he raised his face to the sky and sucked in a steadying breath.
“Thank you, God,” Lord Graham declared aloud.
When His Lordship looked down again, he reached a hand for her.
“Permit me to set you down while we regroup.”
“I am not confident my legs will support me,” she admitted. “They are weaker than I thought they would be.”
“Trust me,” Lord Graham said with a nod full of confidence. “I am capable of supporting you.”
Freya extended her hand to him, holding onto her tenuous connection to this particular man.
Lord Graham’s muscles hardened beneath her touch.
When she stood before him, he caressed the side of her neck and cupped her jaw.
“I would feel better if you had a bit more color upon your cheeks, but the Lord has been merciful today.”
Before she could respond, Mr. Jamison said from near the front of the carriage, “Pardon, my lord. Might you join me for a minute, sir?”
“Wait here,” His Lordship instructed, but before he walked away, he caressed her cheek again.
Freya watched as His Lordship joined his coachman. She remained in place until he looked back to her, making her want her share of the conversation. “What is amiss?” she asked as she joined the men.
“A rope,” Lord Graham said and attempted to block her, but Freya was faster.
“A hangman’s noose?” she whispered. “For whom? Surely not for me.” Her eyes shot to His Lordship.
“A warning, but I do not know the relevance,” Lord Graham admitted.
The sound of a horse had His Lordship shoving her behind him, but, fortunately, the rider was Lord Beaufort. “Sorry, Graham, I lost him,” Lord Beaufort explained.
“Going which way?” Lord Graham demanded.
“Back inland,” Lord Beaufort explained. “Not towards London, as I first expected, which is likely why I lost him. Crossed over the brook where it is the lowest. I finally found where he climbed to the other side, but, by then, there was no one in sight. Rock surface.”
“Was this meant only to frighten us?” Freya asked.
“Frighten me,” Lord Graham said in ominous tones.
“We should return to Thom Manor,” Lord Beaufort instructed. “All of us.”
“But…” Freya began.
“My lady,” Beaufort interrupted. “It is obvious that someone means to use you to reach Lord Graham, and, perhaps, others at Thom Manor. We must regroup and explore how best to proceed. My dear Annalise would bring down the curse of the Irish on my head if I permitted any of you to know harm on Lady Thompson’s wedding day.
Now, return to the coach. Lord Graham and I will serve as outriders. ”
Freya looked about her and shrugged her response.
“The fact that Lord Duncan’s sons believe they know what is best for everyone does not much please me, but I would not purposely bring grief to Lady Beaufort in her delicate condition.
” She walked back to the coach before turning to the three men again.
“Two days, at the most, gentlemen. I must be back in London three days from now to assure I am at home before my parents return.”
When they returned to Thom Manor, Lords Graham and Duncan, as well as the other gentlemen, minus the newly married Lord Thompson, quickly sequestered themselves in one of the sitting rooms at the back of the house. Meanwhile, the ladies cornered Freya in another room.
“I do not understand,” Freya admitted. “Why would someone wish to kill me?”
Lady Emma responded first. “You need to know the history of this last year. It all began last March when all those in the other room, except Mr. Kepper, who joined the cause later, were with Lord Duncan at the Lyon’s Den and celebrating a new appointment for Mr. Hartley, which he has since obviously refused.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon asked to speak privately to Lord Duncan, and so the others went ahead.
When Duncan exited the club sooner than his sons expected, a man who had walked through the middle of where all our husbands had paused to bid each other a good evening, pulled out a gun and shot our dear Duncan.
That man was dressed very much as Mr. Jamison and Lord Graham described the man today.
Much as was the man who shot at you and the brothers Graham upon your arrival in Kent. ”
Freya looked from one to another, and each of her new friends nodded their agreement to what Lady Emma said.
“Since that time,” Lady Emma continued, “there has been a series of unexplained incidents, involving a similarly clad man. The night Lord Orson rescued me in Covent Garden, he was pursuing a suspicious-looking man, dressed in, for lack of other words, theatre attire, including a red satin-lined cape. We later thought that man was the one who had attacked me, and he was the butler in my father’s London home.
Mr. Palmer did attempt to kill me, but we no longer think he was Lord Duncan’s shooter.
Rather, Mr. Palmer was the father of my half sister, who was killed, but again, not by the man we first assumed.
I know this sounds very convoluted, but you must understand that what we thought after each incident has changed as we learned new evidence and the attacks continued.
Obviously, my attacker could no longer be involved, for example, in today’s incident, for he is dead. ”
Before Freya could even form a question in her mind, Lady Theodora took up the tale from there.
“Later, I was kidnapped by a man who called himself Count Almano, who initially led me to believe he wished to court me. Before I could escape his manipulation, Almano captured me and took me out in the countryside, where a man dressed similarly to the one Lady Emma described meant to drown me in the rain-swollen river near the hamlet of Tottenham. My captor wore full theatre dress, only his cape was lined with white satin, not red. Alexander shot the culprit, and the unknown man fell into the river, his body taken downstream. However, his remains were never found, but a man all in black, with no cape this second time, used falsified papers to remove Count Almano from prison. Later still, Almano’s body was found on the same property as where I was being held. ”
“There must be some sort of mistake,” Freya said. “All this is connected? You think Lord Graham is in danger?”
“We did not initially believe so,” Lady Annalise said.
“Yet, we must be realistic. We thought everyone had been in error, but my story is not as dramatic as those of Emma and Theodora. Beaufort and I did not directly encounter an attack by this mysterious man, though we have come to believe Duncan’s shooter assisted in financing the man who pretended to be my uncle, in an attempt to saturate British society with fake bank notes and discredit Duncan.
If they had been successful, the United Kingdom would have been brought to its knees on multiple fronts.
We do believe this mysterious man killed the last of Jacob Moreau’s servants, to prevent everyone from knowing his true identity. ”
“Yet, you each still married your husbands?” Freya declared in disbelief. “Despite these attacks on your person.”
“I love Richard Orson with every ounce of blood streaming through my body. He saved me again and again from danger and from myself. He never abandoned me,” Lady Emma declared proudly. “He stands between me and the evils of the world, and I do the same for him.”