“Never.”
“What do you plan to do about Mortimer?” she asked, glancing between the two men.
Archie lifted a brow as he turned to Mr. North. “Any suggestions?”
“Leave him there for now, My Lord,” Mr. North replied easily. “We may find a way to mislead Hill by feeding this fellow false information.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps if we were to send grooms in all directions as though we ourselves are searching for her, we may give Hill the impression that Miss Hill is not here, and that you have ordered her found and brought to you.”
“And then if Barrett thinks I am not here, he will pack up and move on?” Cornelia shook her head. “He will not. Such an action will only serve to make him more persistent.”
“I didn’t say the plan was perfect,” Mr. North admitted.
“Even so,” Archie said, “I agree that we should permit this hunchback to continue watching. We may have a use for him.”
“As he only watches at night,” Mr. North went on, “it would seem he is simply waiting for Miss Hill to appear so he can report her presence to Barrett. And I agree with her, My Lord, I feel trouble brewing in my bones.”
“I do, too.” Archie paced away from her and Mr. North, his head down, almost vanishing in the deep shadows and almost unseen even to her keen night vision. “I can do little except be as well prepared for it as possible.”
“And that should include not going hunting with the Earl of Whitstone,” Mr. North stated. “Is he not due to arrive on the morrow for just such an excursion?”
“He is. But I cannot be rude and tell him the trip is off.”
“Archie, you must.”
Pacing back, Archie shook his head. “I also must maintain the illusion of normalcy, Cornelia, Latham. I do not see what Barrett or this mystery buyer can do while Richard and I are out on horseback with a small army of footmen with us.”
Cornelia recalled the Earl of Whitstone’s cold words at Archie’s bedside while he slept, knowing Archie should be told that his good friend did not regard him as highly as Archie thought of him. She also knew Effie was right – it was between Archie and the Earl. The uneasiness in her gut did not relent, however.
“Please call it off,” she begged.
“No,” Archie said, his tone firm. “There is no harm in Richard, even if he is a social snob, and I cannot be rude. You may study in the library as you wished to, or you may have books brought to your bed so you may both rest and study. But I will go hunting with Richard in the morning. Latham, please see to the details.”
* * *
With Cornelia’s fears and Latham’s worries echoing in his head, Archie swung into his chestnut’s saddle as Richard looked on from his tall, nearly white, stallion. “You appear to be moving a bit stiffly, old chap,” he observed. “Are you certain you are ready to ride hard this day?”
“Of course,” Archie replied. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
“Excellent. Shall we?”
Archie’s master of the hounds and his assistants went ahead, taking the hounds toward the east as Archie reined in next to Richard. “My gamekeeper reported seeing several stags out that way,” he said as the pair walked their mounts in their wake.
Richard smirked. “I look forward to the beast’s head as my trophy.”
“Unless I shoot him,” Archie replied with a laugh. “Winner takes all.”
“And that will be me, old chap.”
With the small army of footmen keeping pace, Archie and Richard chatted and laughed, swapping boasts and jests back and forth as the hounds sought for a scent of the stags Isaac had reported to him. “That circus is still in the area,” Richard commented as they rode. “Alas, however, the pale wench is still not available for me to examine.”
“A pity.”
“Yes, indeed. I had hopes of gazing upon her uniqueness, and perhaps inquire as to her parentage.”
“Her parents? Why?”
Richard gazed at him as though Archie had asked a question he should very well know the answer to. “Why, to know if they were of normal coloring, of course, old chap. Perhaps one of them shared her condition, and thus passed it to her. Imagine if she were bred to a male of her color – would she then give birth to a similar child? Or would the offspring be of what we consider a normal hue?”
“’Bred to?’” Archie could not conceal the outrage and disgust in his voice. “She is not some animal you can force into a breeding program, Richard.”
“Did I offend you again? My, how I do seem to manage that rather often of late. Of course I can, old chap. Peasants were created to serve us, and what better way for this creature to serve us than to become an experiment into what causes her unique color?”
“I suppose you are doing the same with your mount?” Archie snapped.
“Why, yes, indeed.” Richard glanced down at the white stallion with a critical eye. “I am breeding him to variously colored mares in order to discern what combination might result in a foal of his pure whiteness. Thus far, out of a dozen mares, I have acquired one foal of his distinction.”
“You don’t do that with people. It’s flat wrong.”
“Pray explain that to our former colonies across the sea, old chap,” Richard replied with an arched look. “Are they not breeding better slaves over there? Bigger and better field workers?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Archie retorted hotly. “And keeping slaves is wrong, and one day that practice will end.”
“I sincerely doubt that. Are not our peasants equally our slaves? Made to work for the upper classes?”
“They also have the freedom to move on should they wish to,” Archie replied dryly. “They remain on my estates knowing they are well treated and have full bellies. How many of yours run away and leave you?”
“Too many to count. Thus I have instilled a law on my property that any serf caught running away will be brought back in chains and whipped.”
Archie shook his head. “That practice vanished many generations ago. People are entitled to their freedom.”
“Of course. The freedom to work hard and pay my rents and taxes.”
Deciding it was useless to continue to argue with Richard’s stubborn belief that the lower classes were little more than the sheep and cattle he raised for his benefit, Archie tried to change the subject. “Are you still planning to invade the ton in London in search of a suitable heiress?”
“Indeed, I am, old chap.” Richard offered him a quick smile. “I plan to leave in ten days time. Come with me. Before you grow so old that no young beauty will wish to take you for a husband no matter what your title is.”
“I think not. I prefer a bride that will want me no matter what my age or rank in life is.”
Richard eyed him sidelong. “Now you speak nonsense. You really should grow up, Archie. We of the upper class do not marry for love. You know this. We must make an arrangement with a family of wealth and privilege that benefits both families, beget heirs. Love is for the foolish who read those tawdry novels.”
“Perhaps I am a hopeless romantic, then.”
“You are a hopeless something, old chap.”
The sudden baying of the hounds announced they had picked up the scent of what Archie hoped was a stag. At his signal, the master of hounds released the dogs to the chase, and the furry mass of brown and white bodies bolted across the moors. Kicking his chestnut, Archie followed after, with Richard spurring his white horse at his side.
Laughing wildly, Archie whooped as his fiery mount leaped stone walls with the agility of the stag himself, while Richard who was mercilessly flogging his stallion was a length behind. The wave of hounds crested a hill, then poured like a river down the other side and turned to the north. As Archie and Richard topped the same hill, they both saw in the distance the fleeing deer with the immense rack of antlers.
“He is magnificent,” Richard shouted, pulling his blunderbuss from its scabbard.
&nbs
p; Though they were clearly not in range of their quarry, Archie pulled his own rifle, holding it in his right hand as his left hand on the reins guided the gelding on the trail behind the hounds. “They’ll have it cornered at any moment,” he called, his dark red hair whipped across his eyes from the wind of his passage.
Galloping hard up the next rise, the hounds’ baying ringing across the moors, Archie set his heels to his mount to an even greater pace down the far side. A short distance away, to his utter shock, two men popped up from behind a wall that bordered Archie’s pastures from one another, rifles aimed at him. The men fired.
Reining in hard, Archie felt his mount’s rear quarters slide under him as the chestnut fought to both obey the bit and the gravity that sought to pull him down the hill. Behind him, Richard yelled out curses, hauling on his own stallion’s mouth, wheeling the beast and almost bringing the horse into a tumble down the hillside. Dust and heather burst up into a cloud as both mounts scrambled to gallop back up the slope.
“What the hell?” Archie yelled as more shots struck the ground in front of his mount’s hooves.
“Who in the devil is shooting at us?” Richard snapped, spinning his stallion around once it became clear they were out of range of the rifles. “Do you recognize those blokes?”
Archie, reining his chestnut into a trampling halt, turned to face the men just as they ducked back down behind the wall. He had expected to recognize Felix and Maurice, but the men he saw were not Hill’s hired killers. “No.”
The hounds baying had vanished with distance, and behind them, the footmen and dog handlers ran across the moors to catch up to them. “They’re on your lands, Archie,” Richard growled, glaring at his host. “They must have some sort of grudge against you.”
Thinking of Barrett Hill, Archie replied, “I have no idea who.”
Then he eyed Richard. “Perhaps you have enemies that want you dead, Richard. They followed you here.”
“Hardly.” Richard gazed in the direction the two men had vanished into, still scowling darkly. “No one wants to kill me. And they were ahead of us, how could someone have followed me here, then know ahead of time where we would go?”
“I don’t know.”
Thinking the men had fled, Archie nudged his chestnut down the hill, still following the trail the hunting dogs and their prey had gone. Instantly, the men popped back up again, and fired their rifles. Archie whipped his own blunderbuss to his shoulder and shot back, forcing the men to duck back down.
“A damn hunting expedition turned into a gunfight,” he said bitterly, riding back up to rein in beside Richard. Turning in his saddle, he pulled his ammunition pouch and powder from his saddlebags and reloaded as Richard continued to scowl darkly.
“No stag is worth being shot for,” he grumbled, glaring in the direction the men hid. “This is your fault, Archie.”
“Mine?” Archie eyed him sidelong as he hung the ammunition pouch on his pommel. “You think I planned this?”
“You permit highwaymen and robbers to infest your lands. If you didn’t permit your peasants so much freedom, things like this wouldn’t happen.”
Growling low in his throat, Archie lifted his hand toward Richard. “My tenants don’t have arms to shoot at people. And for all I know, you are the intended target of those men, not I.”
“Rubbish.” Richard shoved his rifle back into its scabbard. “I think I’ll leave you to deal with those miscreants, old chap. I’m going home.”
Reining his stallion around, Richard set his spurs to silky white hide, and galloped down the hill. Watching him go, Archie observed how he forced his footmen and dog handlers to the side in order to avoid being run down. Richard continued on, riding hard until he vanished into a small plume of dust. Glancing once more toward the men in hiding, Archie felt defeat, knowing he could not charge into their faces with a single blunderbuss and expect to survive.
Feeling as though he had little choice but to throw the fight to the men in hiding, he trotted away to meet his servants. Cursing under his breath, he reined in as he joined them, listening to their questions as to who or what caused the shots. “Two men on the other side of the hill,” he said tersely. “Shooting at us. The hounds are gone.”
“I can get them back, My Lord,” Harry, his hounds’ master, replied, confidently.
Lifting the small horn hung over his shoulder, he blew several long clear notes on it. “They’ll catch up to us, My Lord,” he said. “If you want to head back.”
“Yes,” Archie said, glancing over his shoulder, expecting the two men to have crested the hill and aimed their rifles down at them. “Whoever they are, I won’t risk your lives by chasing after them. Walk together as a group and keep your eyes sharp. They may try to get around us and start shooting again.”
The men with the rifles apparently did not, for Archie saw no sign of them, nor did anyone shoot at them. Riding amid his servants, Archie kept his own weapon ready to aim and fire should the highwaymen follow after them with evil intentions. The hounds returned, galloping across the moors in answer to their summons, leaping about the master and his assistants with happy dog grins and wagging tails.
“Who do you think those men were, My Lord?” a footman, striding at Archie’s stirrup, asked.
“I wish I knew,” Archie honestly replied. “Highwaymen just don’t shoot at local lords on a hunt. They waylay travelers for their jewelry or coin. This makes no sense at all.”
“No, it does not,” Harry agreed from his other side. “It sounds as though they wished to merely scare you off, My Lord. They did not truly intend to kill you.”
Archie stared down at him. “Scare us? For what purpose?”
“That I do not know. But I do know that if they truly wanted you dead, they’d have let you ride closer until you were almost on top of them before shooting. You had no idea they were there, right, My Lord?”
Archie studied the house and stables along with the myriad of out buildings growing closer as they neared home. “No. I did not. And you’re quite right. They fired before we were halfway down the hill, and we rode out of range within moments. There is nothing out there save pastures and fields. What could they have been protecting? What did they not want us to see?”
Chapter 17
Sipping his beloved brandy in a chair outside his tent, Baron Barrett Hill watched his people go about their business among the tents, caring for the animals, eating their meals, gossiping about their bettors. Though they had been open for business for two days, the customers had been slim. The local villagers had already been by to see the sights, and they were not close enough to another to gain the visitors Barrett hoped for.
Under normal circumstances, Barrett would never have set up in an empty place along the King’s highway as he had. In the middle of virtually nowhere, he had but a few travelers to pay his fees to be entertained for a few hours. He dared not move on, however. Not until Cornelia was either in his hands, or those of her buyer.
Mortimer stood near his chair, flicking his deep-set eyes between the workers and his master. “You expect me to watch Rochester again tonight?” he asked, his voice petulant.
“Yes, of course. Cornelia has to be there. She will show herself eventually.”
“If she was there, I’d have seen her.” Mortimer scowled darkly. “If she’s hiding in their barns, she has to come out to forage for food. I am telling you, she is not there.”
“She has to be,” Barrett insisted. “She could not have found anyplace else to hide.”
“I’ll wager one of these farmers took her in,” Mortimer groused. “Or she was picked up along the highway and is in Scotland by now.”
Barrett glowered. “No one would help her any more than they would help you.”
“She is comely enough,” Mortimer snapped. “She might have received help if she promised her benefactor certain favors.”
That had not occurred to Barrett. Sweat bloomed on his brow. “She is far too virtuous for that.”
“Or desperate enough to offer herself in exchange for sanctuary.”
“No, no.” Barrett shook her head. “She is at Rochester’s. I just know it.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Bite your tongue, you twisted freak, or I’ll have you flogged. You dare speak thus of your lord and master?”
Mortimer sneered. “You are no lord, despite your pretensions to such a title. I can leave here anytime I choose.”
“And go where? A London workhouse? That’s all you’re good for.”
“I have prospects.” Mortimer examined his fingernails. “You are not the only possibility for employment in the kingdom.”
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