By the time Daniel heard them coming well enough to distinguish the sound from that of the other exercising strings he was passing, it would be too late.
He wouldn’t escape them. He’d be taken up as a horse thief.
Bad enough, but he had the letter—copy or original—on him.
What odds that vital document would find its way into the hands of the puppetmaster, that nebulous man Alex was learning to respect, and more, fear?
Alex’s mount shifted restlessly. Eyes desperately scanning the heath, Alex reined it in without thought. Had no thought to spare.
What to do? What to do?
There! One chance, just one, one way forward, and no other.
If Alex was game to grasp it.
If . . .
With a vicious curse, Alex set heels to the chestnut’s sides and raced down the rise on a course that would intersect with Daniel’s at one particular spot. A place just beyond another rise, a little higher than most, that sheltered a wide dip hosting a short line of firs and pines with thick, heavy branches—one of the few effective screens on the winter heath.
Daniel’s line of travel would see him pass a little way beyond the northern end of the line of trees.
Alex reached the east side of the trees with just enough time to calm, to settle the chestnut, ease its prancing edginess. To breathe in, out, and plaster on a welcoming, expectant expression.
Daniel appeared beyond the end of the trees.
Alex hailed him and waved.
Hearing, seeing, Daniel smiled confidently and wheeled his stolen mount.
Alex waited, outwardly calm and assured, as Daniel slowed, then walked his horse nearer, eventually halting alongside the chestnut.
His knee brushing Alex’s, Daniel smiled. “I got it.”
“I know.” Lips curving in response, Alex held out an imperious, demanding hand. “I can tell by your smile.”
Daniel laughed. Reaching into his coat, he drew out the letter and laid it across Alex’s palm.
Alex flicked it open, checked. “The same as the other two—a copy.”
“Which means there’s only one more to seize. The original Carstairs must be carrying.”
“Indeed.” Folding the letter, sliding it into a pocket, Alex looked up, into Daniel’s eyes. Smiled brilliantly. “Excellent.”
Reaching up and across with one elegantly gloved hand, Alex cupped Daniel’s nape and drew his face near.
Kissed him.
Lovingly, lingeringly.
Bit Daniel’s lip lightly as the blade slid between his ribs, directly into his heart.
Alex drew back, released Daniel, left the knife where it was.
Met his eyes, the velvety brown already clouding.
Saw death sliding in to claim him.
The look on Daniel’s face, the utter shock and disbelief, pricked even Alex’s conscience.
“You’d been seen. They’re after you—can’t you hear? I couldn’t allow—”
Daniel slumped forward, over his saddle.
The roan shifted, getting nervous.
Face tightening, Alex grabbed Daniel’s hat—it had his name on the band—stuffed it into one of the chestnut’s saddlebags, gathered the big horse’s reins, then paused.
Paused.
Reaching out one gloved hand, Alex gently, for the last time, ruffled Daniel’s black hair.
Then, lips thinning, features shifting into a granite mask, Alex drew back, sharply slapped the roan’s rump, and sent the horse leaping.
The instant it sensed the odd weight in its saddle and found its reins free, it took off, heading south.
Alex drew in a quick breath, blew it out. Refocused and listened, gauging the escalating thud of the pursuing horses’ hooves; they were nearing the rise to the west.
Following impulse, Alex spurred the big chestnut on, heading north, cutting directly across the oncoming riders.
Alex cleared the trees and was fifty yards further on when the mob broke over the rise, and slowed.
Alex kept riding north unhurriedly, outwardly unconcerned.
Heard the jockeys’ voices as they circled on the rise, searching for their quarry. With luck, the trees would conceal the roan’s flight for some considerable way.
Then another voice, a deeper, more authoritative voice, joined the chorus.
I t took Demon a good minute to accept what his men were telling him. The Gentleman and his rider were indeed nowhere to be seen.
Another rider, a man wrapped in a heavy winter coat, with a fashionable hat pulled low and features protected from the wind by a muffler, was cantering along on a big chestnut just north of where they milled.
If the horse thief had gone this way . . .
“Hello!” Demon raised his voice, raised a hand in salute.
The other rider glanced back, slowed, raised a hand to show he’d heard.
“Did you see a man—dark coat, dark hat, dark hair, tanned features—riding out on a roan?”
The rider hesitated, then turned and pointed to the east of northeast. There was another rise that might have concealed the rider some way on.
“Thank you!” Demon swung The Flynn in that direction and thundered down the rise. His jockeys and their mounts followed.
The rider watched for a moment, then continued unhurriedly on.
S tone-faced, Alex rode on, listening until the thunder of hooves faded.
Soon, the silence of the wide and empty heath returned.
Alex embraced it.
After a while, thought impinged on the odd emptiness in Alex’s mind, rose up through the unexpected shock.
Survival, after all, was reserved for the fittest.
After further cogitation a plan formed. Head north for a little while longer, enough to get well and truly out of the way of any further searching, then circle around, stop at Bury long enough to alert those left there, then head on to the new house—the new cult headquarters—that M’wallah and Creighton between them had found.
Creighton might be a problem now his master was dead, but M’wallah and Alex’s guard were exceptionally good at resolving all problems Alex faced. Creighton could be left to them.
As the sun slowly rose, Alex, alone, cantered steadily on.
J ust after dawn, Demon finally halted.
They’d reached a strip of heath still crisp from the frost, and it was transparently obvious no rider had crossed it that morning.
“We’ve lost him.” Turning The Mighty Flynn, he pulled out the spyglass, and scanned all the heath that he could see.
“But how could we have?” one of the jockeys asked. “We was on his heels—well, a few minutes behind at most—and then . . . he just wasn’t there.”
Frowning, Demon thought back. Shutting the spyglass, he slipped it back into the saddle pocket. “You had him in sight until he went over the rise where you stopped—the rise where we asked the other rider?”
All the jockeys nodded.
Demon knew every dip and hollow on the heath; he’d been riding there since he was a child. He closed his eyes for a moment, envisaging . . . if that other rider had been mistaken, or . . .
Opening his eyes, he wheeled The Flynn back toward Newmarket. “Let’s head home, but we’ll spread out in a line north-south, and go at a slow canter. Yell if you see any sign.”
The horses were tiring, skittish; they needed to get back to their stable, into the warm, and be tended. The run had broken their usual routine.
Demon directed his men into a line, and they started back.
He wasn’t sure what to think. He was deep in weighing up the possibilities when Higgins, to the far south of the line, gave a hie.
“Over there! Isn’t that The Gentleman?”
Demon reined in, hauled out the spyglass, and put it to his eye.
And there was The Gentleman—with a suspicious-looking lump in the saddle. The Gentleman was well to the south, reins dragging as he lazily cropped coarse grass, then ambled on a little way,
the lifeless lump on his back swaying with his gait.
Demon drew in a breath, let it out on a sigh. Stuffing the glass back in his saddlebag, he nodded. “That’s him. Let’s go.”
As one, he and his men changed course, and closed on the wandering horse.
The Gentleman’s head came up as they neared, but then he scented his stablemates and went back to his grass. The lump on his back didn’t move.
“Hold up.” Demon waved to his jockeys to rein in a little way away. Their horses sensed the wrongness of the slumped form on The Gentleman’s back and grew yet more skittish.
At a walk, Demon approached The Gentleman. The Flynn was an old hand; he would trust completely and go wherever Demon steered him.
But, yes, that was a dead body. It looked like their horse thief had met his end.
Glancing back at the restless, high-spirited horses, Demon waved them off. “Go on to the stables. I’ll be behind you. No more training this morning. They’ve had a good run. Get them inside and rubbed down.”
The younger jockeys had paled; they nodded and went. The older ones hestitated, but then nodded and headed in.
Leaving Demon to draw closer to The Gentleman, lean down and grab the trailing reins, then edge nearer and, without any real hope, check for a pulse at the side of the man’s neck. Finding none, he bent low and peered at the dead man’s face—enough to confirm that, yes, he was their horse thief.
And judging from his hands and the tanned line at his throat, until recently he’d been somewhere sunny, like India.
Straightening in his saddle, Demon frowned at the corpse. “Who the devil are you? And what the hell’s going on?”
Seventeen
D emon led The Gentleman and his grisly burden back to the stables. It took him and two of his men to lift the man free of the saddle; they laid him out in the back of a hay cart.
Carruthers came hobbling out of the tack room, where he’d been imbibing medicinal brandy. He looked down at the man, nodded. “That’s him. Cheeky, vicious sod. Not so cheeky now. Looks like retribution caught up with him pretty quick.” He glanced at Demon. “Any idea who did it?”
Demon thought of the other rider they’d seen, but could anyone slide a dagger through a man’s heart, and within minutes appear so unconcerned? He shook his head. “No idea. But he was out of our sight for a good while. No saying who he might have met up with.”
“Strange-looking dagger, that.” Carruthers eyed the hilt that protruded from the man’s chest.
“It’s ivory.” Demon bent and looked more closely at it, and any doubt this man was involved with the Black Cobra vanished. The hilt was the same as the daggers that had put paid to first Larkins, then Ferrar, whom they’d originally thought was the Black Cobra.
The sound of riders approaching, followed by a shout, “Ho! Cynster!” had Demon straightening, then striding quickly out of the front doors to the area before the stable.
Logan dismounted as Demon appeared. For the first time in days, Logan grinned.
Demon’s gaze reached him and his old friend’s face lit. “Logan Monteith! Sorry— Major Monteith. You are definitely a sight for sore eyes—even if you’re half covered in . . . what? Soot? ”
“We escaped a fire, and a few other inconveniences, hence our sorry sartorial state. But I hear you’ve grown sober.” Logan offered his hand, and it was crushed in Demon’s long-fingered grip.
“Not a bit of it!” Demon thumped him on the back and wrung his hand. “As I heard it, it’s you who’ve been getting serious these past months—and into serious danger, too.”
“Sadly, that’s true. Apropos of which . . .” Releasing Demon, Logan turned to the other three, who by now had dismounted and stood watching them with varying degrees of humorous understanding. “Allow me to present Captain Linnet Trevission, captain of the Esperance , out of Guernsey.”
Linnet gave Demon her hand. “A pleasure, sir.”
Grasping her fingers, Demon bowed gracefully. “The pleasure is all mine.” Straightening, he eyed Linnet’s breeches. “I warn you, my wife, Flick, will be after your tailor’s direction.”
Brows faintly arching, Linnet inclined her head, and Logan continued the introductions.
Although Demon hadn’t met Charles or Deverell before, he knew of their mission.
“So,” Logan asked, “what’s been going on?”
“You’ve heard Delborough’s through safe and sound, but sacrificed his scroll-holder in a trap we hoped might capture Ferrar, but his man, Larkins, got caught instead, and then Ferrar killed him and got clean away?”
When Logan nodded, Demon went on, “Yesterday, Hamilton came up from Chelmsford via Sudbury. The fiends had set up an ambush outside Sudbury, but we were there in force, too, and Miss Ensworth, who’s traveling with Hamilton, managed to leave the scroll-holder and tempt Ferrar to take it, which he did. While my cousins and I dealt with the cultists at the ambush site, others”—Demon nodded at Charles and Deverell—“Wolverstone and some of your erstwhile colleagues, followed Ferrar, hoping to find his lair, but then he was murdered in the old abbey ruins at Bury St. Edmunds, and all that was found was his body.”
“Ferrar’s dead ?” Logan’s face, and that of the others, showed their shock.
Grimly Demon nodded. “As of yesterday afternoon.” Shrewd blue eyes surveyed them. “I know you were expected in today from Bedford—dare I assume the reason you’re here now, so bright and early and in such sartorial straits, is because you were chasing a man, tallish, black hair, black coat, a gentleman at first glance?”
“You’ve seen him?” Logan asked.
“He’s dead, too.” Demon tipped his head toward the stable. “Come and take a look.”
Demon led them to the cart. Logan stood at the cart’s foot, Linnet by his side, and looked down at the man they’d last seen riding out of the alley in Bedford.
Charles examined the dagger, the wound. “This happened recently.”
“Less than an hour ago.” Demon told them all he knew of the man’s actions to the point where he’d found him slumped dead in his saddle.
He sent a stable lad to fetch the man’s horse. While they waited, he asked, “Incidentally, how did you know to come here? Did you actually track him this far?”
Logan shook his head. “I tracked him out of Bedford, and we got sightings on this side of Cambridge, but we lost him approaching Newmarket. But when we rode into the town, it was buzzing with the news that someone had dared steal a horse from your stable. That seemed too great a coincidence—we know these people appropriate goods, horses, anything they need, as they wish. People in town pointed out the way here.”
Demon waved at the black horse the stable lad led up. “The blighter left this one when he took ours.”
Logan, Deverell, and Charles studied the horse; they all nodded. “That’s the one he was riding at Bedford,” Deverell said.
“So he was riding this way,” Charles said, “not because he was fleeing us, because he thought he’d left us soon to be dead in Bedford, but for some other reason.”
“Presumably to deliver the letter he took from us to someone.” Deverell eyed the body. “He hasn’t still got it, has he?”
“Inside coat pocket,” Linnet said. “That’s where he put it.”
Deverell touched the man’s coat, then eased it open enough to feel inside while leaving the dagger in place. “Nothing there.” He patted the man’s other pockets. “Or elsewhere. It’s gone.”
Logan frowned. “I think we can assume that whoever he delivered the letter to rewarded him with that dagger.”
“We were chasing him at the time.” Demon shrugged. “He might have been killed for the same reason Larkins, and presumably Ferrar, were—sacrificed because they’d been seen, and could, almost certainly would, be taken up at some point.”
“And questioned.” Charles nodded. “That makes sense.”
Linnet glanced at Logan. “Do you recognize him?”
Eyes locke
d on the man’s face, Logan grimaced. “He looks vaguely familiar. I might have seen him in Bombay—we were there for five months. He might have been a friend of Ferrar’s. If he is, Gareth or Del would have a better chance of placing him.”
Demon nodded decisively. “We’d best get his body to Elveden, then. There’s a washroom if you’d like to tend to your accumulated wounds and wash off the worst of the smoke streaks while I get the horses put to, then we can ride on together.”
I t was midmorning when the five of them rode up to the sprawling Jacobean manor house hidden away in its extensive park; they’d ridden ahead, leaving the wagon carrying the body to follow as fast as it could. Crisped by the recent frost, snow still lay in pockets beneath the trees; Demon had mentioned there’d been a heavy fall a few days before.
Emerging from the forest into the graveled forecourt, Linnet studied the rambling house with its many gables and haphazard wings, and sensed it was ancient; an aura of permanence, of long-established peace, seemed to emanate from it. Courtesy of the dull day, lamps were lit inside; through the many paned windows, the interior of the house seemed to glow with warmth and welcome.
A warmth and welcome that came tumbling out to greet them. Phoebe and Penny were already in residence; they must have been sitting in a window somewhere, for they came rushing out to embrace their husbands, disregarding residual smoke streaks and bloodstains to exclaim over various scratches and gashes, then they whirled on Linnet and embraced her, then Logan, too.
A slender yet statuesque blond, assured and serene, had followed the two ladies outside. She proved to be Minerva, the great Wolverstone’s duchess.
Introduced, Linnet would have curtsied, but Minerva prevented it, clasping both Linnet’s hands instead and smiling warmly. “Welcome to Elveden, Linnet—we tend not to stand on ceremony here, so please call me Minerva. The other ladies will be delighted to meet you. And please don’t hesitate to ask if there’s anything I can arrange to make your stay more comfortable.” She glanced back into the house as many footsteps approached. “Ah—here comes the other side of the coin.”
A small army of men appeared on the front steps, led by a man Linnet instantly identified as Wolverstone. He was tallish, although not the tallest there, black-haired and lean-cheeked, with a certain predatory cast to his austere Norman features. Power hung about him like an invisible mantle, yet it was the look he exchanged with Minerva, one of male resignation overlaying an infinitely deep pool of affection, that settled it.