Thea nodded. “Every afternoon in the garden he will be alone.”
“Then Mr. Noonan must have laid down plans to deploy servants and grooms to hide,” he mused. “He must have them trickle into the garden hours earlier so as not to alarm our man, should he be watching.”
“Would he not be listening in the house?”
Liam offered her a grim look. “If I were this fellow, I would spend a few days watching the garden, observing if Lord Willowdale were truly alone and whether or not anyone was there with him, despite his orders.”
Thea bit her lip. “So he might sense the trap?”
“Perhaps. But he will also be learning the garden, where is the best location to attack from, a vantage point to shoot from, that sort of thing.”
“Now you make him sound calm and intelligent, not desperate and dumb.”
Liam chuckled. “As I said, it is what I would do.”
Taking her hand from his, Thea cradled her injured arm, suppressing a shiver. “You know, he could find a hiding spot and just shoot Freddie.”
Liam shook his head. “Not with any accuracy, Thea. There are too many trees, shrubs, and hedges in the way. He would have to be high up in order to do that, and a blunderbuss is a short range weapon at best. He cannot shoot your brother unless he is right on top of him.”
“Once he steps into the open, the men in hiding will pounce?”
“That is the plan, my love.”
“Then how –”
At that moment, the thunder of hooves caught Thea’s attention. Liam instantly seized her right arm and hustled her out of the stand of trees, urging her toward the house. “Get inside, Thea,” he ordered, keeping his body between her and the noise of a galloping horse.
“It does not sound like it is approaching,” Thea said, hesitating.
She froze, her blood growing cold when the light breeze brought to them the sound of a man screaming. “What in God’s name is that?” she whispered, her heart pounding.
Liam yanked the pistol from his belt. “I do not know.”
Thea heard words in the distant wails and screams under the pounding of hooves in the night. Her flesh broke out into goose pimples as she thought of a ghost or spirit out there in the hills, a demon perhaps, a succubus coming to feed off living blood. The screams mixed with wild laughter, the sound of insanity, of desperate longing.
Chapter 24
He spurred his horse until the blood flowed, screaming his grief, his insanity, his desperation. Tears wet his face, half blinding him even as he laughed with wild joy, shrieking to the gods of darkness, of the night. “I will have what is mine,” he shrieked, shouting to the listening stars. “He will not keep it from me.”
The horse scrambled up the nearest hill as its rider reined it in so sharply the beast was forced to rear. His black cloak swung about him as his mount dropped to four legs again, blowing hard. He gazed down into the shallow valley, at the lights in the great house. “You cannot hide it from me,” he whispered, his voice shrill. “I will kill you first.”
Screaming wild laughter, knowing yet another fit of his insanity took hold of him, he kicked his horse down the far side of the hill. The beast stumbled in its exhaustion, nearly throwing him headlong from the saddle. Great sobs of anguish wracked his chest and closed his throat as he wept, still spurring his spent mount onward.
“Willowdale,” he shouted, laughing and crying and screaming. “Willowdale, I come for what is mine. Mine!”
Spinning his horse in circles, curbing the animal in sharply while still spurring for all he was worth, he raced on, observing the lights in the great house to his right as he reined in once more. “It should have been mine,” he screeched, the force of his voice scraping his throat raw. “It will be mine, mine!”
As before, the fit left him. He halted his lathered mount, his hand on the pommel of his saddle, almost as exhausted as his steed. “Mine,” he muttered. “I will have my due, Willowdale. And I will kill you.”
Spurring his horse into a canter, he jumped a stone wall that divided the Willowdale pastures, frightening a flock of sheep into scattering. He armed sweat and tears from his face as he rode, glancing back over his shoulder until the lights vanished in the distance. “Mine.”
Chapter 25
For the third day in a row, Freddie sat in the garden on a bench near a marble fountain that splashed water rhythmically into a wide round pool. The sound did indeed relax him even as Thea said it would, and he suspected he might maintain this practice even after this murdering villain was caught. As often as he read, he watched the play of the water, scenting its freshness as well as the roses on the light breeze.
Stretching, he yawned, feeling his spine pop, and he glanced surreptitiously around the garden. Though he could not see them, he knew his footmen and grooms, three of each, squatted hidden in the hedgerows. Though they were not armed with pistols, they did carry cudgels and bludgeons to knock the assassin, if he came, out cold. Freddie needed the man alive for questioning, to find out who was behind the desire to kill him and Thea.
To disable the killer’s ability to simply shoot him from across the garden, he sat amid sheltering trees and shrubs. He could be easily seen from the windows in the northeast corner of the house, rooms that were currently vacant. The place had been carefully selected by Charles Noonan, the watching guards could see him through the leafy branches, and Charles himself sat concealed near the door from the house.
