He blew out a breath, then forced his lungs to work and draw in another. Beneath him, Argus twitched and shifted.
Melissa had finally come close enough to see the wire. Like him, she instantly understood the implications. She looked at him and paled. “Good Lord. It’s another attack.” She halted on the other side of the wire and stared at it. “What would have happened if you’d ridden full tilt into that?” She raised her gaze to his face. “I’d wager that, knowing the path so well, normally, you would have been galloping.”
He was about to nod when thecrackof a snapping branch reached them, followed by the unmistakable thud of boots running away. The sound quickly faded.
Julian quelled an instinctive urge to give chase. He couldn’t ride through the woods themselves—the trees grew too thickly—and even if he rode hard and circled around…
He looked at Melissa. She didn’t know the ground and would fall behind. He didn’t want to leave her undefended or, potentially worse, lead her into danger. Who was to say there wasn’t more than one murderous thug lurking?
He glanced around, but the woods seemed silent, wrapped in their usual pervasive peace.
Trusting his senses, he swung down from Argus’s back. “That there was someone waiting answers the question of what would have happened had I been riding alone. At the very least, I would have fallen from the saddle.” At worst, he would have opened his throat from ear to ear. “I suspect the intention was to topple me from the saddle, and then whoever was waiting would have finished me off.”
Incredulous, Melissa stared at him, then shook her head. “I can barely believe this.”
Leading Argus, he walked under the wire and halted level with her. He held up the reins. “Hold him while I get the wire down.”
She took the reins and watched—and kept watch, scanning the woods around them—while he followed the wire back to the trees around which it was tied.
When he rounded the first, he discovered small horizontal marks cut into the trunk, each a foot higher than the one before. He crouched and confirmed that the first mark was level with the ground along the track. Straightening, he found that the wire had been held in place by a buckle-like contraption tacked into the trunk. He used his pocketknife to pry out the tack. “They’ve measured this. They’ve gone to significant lengths to get the height of the wire just right.”
Melissa’s head came around, and she stared anew.
He didn’t need to look at her to know she would follow the same deductive trail his mind had leapt along. He knew she’d reached the same conclusion when she turned her head to look at Argus.
“Argus isn’t as tall as some of the other horses.” She looked back at Julian. “That suggests someone knew how tall you sit when on his back.”
He walked out from behind the tree and wound the wire into a ball as he crossed the path to the tree used as an anchor on the other side. “That points to someone in the stable.”
She tipped her head consideringly. “Or someone who spends time within sight of the stable yard, enough to have seen you ride out often.”
He reached the other tree and studied the bole. “There are the same measuring marks on this one.” He detached the wire and pocketed the ball, then returned to the bridle path, bent, and picked up her hat. While walking to where she waited on Rosa, he dusted off the blue velvet, then tweaked the dyed ostrich feather until it stood tall once more.
On reaching Rosa’s side, he held up the hat. Melissa took it and handed him Argus’s reins. He remounted while she fiddled, reanchoring the hat. Lowering her hands, she shook her head, testing, then satisfied, picked up her reins and fixed him with a frowning look. “I suppose we’d better get on.”
He nodded, waited until she’d wheeled her mare, then followed as she rode on along the bridle path, not as quickly as they had been and with both of them openly scanning the woods to either side.
They left the cover of the woods and reached the spot where he often paused to look down at the castle. Melissa didn’t stop but slowed Rosa to a walk and, over her shoulder, declared, “I don’t like this.”
He brought Argus up to amble beside Rosa. “I don’t, either. We’re getting far too accustomed to incidents like this. They happen, we survive unscathed, look to see if we can identify the culprit, and when we can’t readily do so and something else demands our attention, we let the matter slide and, more or less, wait for the next attempt.”
“That’s too passive to suit either of us.” Her expression darkened. “It’s frustrating not to be able to deal with it—to sort out what’s happening and put a stop to it.”
He mulled over her observation for several paces. She was correct in that their essential helplessness was grating on their tempers. Not reacting in some definite fashion was growing more untenable with every attempt. “There has to be something we can do.” When she glanced at him hopefully, he caught her eye. “Let’s start by analyzing what today’s incident tells us.”
She arched her brows and looked forward. “Well, presumably whoever set up the wire—so carefully calculated to incapacitate you—didn’t know that I planned to go riding with you.”
“True. And that means whoever it was didn’t, in this case, have any insight into our discussion over the breakfast table this morning.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m fairly certain only Phelps was there at the time, and we really don’t suspect him.”
Julian grunted in agreement. “That there was someone waiting in the woods, presumably to finish me off, also suggests they thought I would be riding alone.”
“Yes, but”—Melissa looked toward the stable—“if they’d been watching the stable yard this morning, they would have seen you ride out by yourself.” She glanced at him. “You rode out ahead of me and went to the dovecotes, remember?”
Before they’d left the house, when they’d been walking along the corridor, heading for the side terrace and the stable beyond, Mrs. Phelps had come hurrying after them, wanting an urgent word with Melissa about the menus for the coming week. As Julian had intended to check on the dovecotes and she’d always found that many birds all gathered together unnerving, they’d agreed he would go on alone, and once she’d finished with Mrs. Phelps, she would ride out and meet him at the orchard before they rode on together to explore the western reaches of the Carsington estate, eventually returning via the woods.
Julian nodded. “Clearly, whoever organized that wire must have seen me ride out, but not been there to see you do the same later.” He arched a brow at her. “How long was it between me riding out and you reaching the stable yard? Do you have any idea?”
