He grasped Melissa’s hand and nodded to the coppice in the field twenty yards back from the track. “Let’s take cover there—the undergrowth is nicely thick—and keep watch to see who arrives.” He wasn’t interested in getting into any altercation with someone who would almost certainly come armed. More, his most urgent impulse was to ensure that she wasn’t exposed to any danger.
She readily followed him to the stile, but paused to look at their horse. “What about old Ned?”
“He’s secure and can graze on the verge. I can’t see any reason anyone would harm him.”
Accepting that, she turned to the stile, and he helped her over it, then followed. After dropping to the ground, he took her hand again, and they quickly climbed the slope to the coppice.
They rounded it and slipped between the thick regrowth until, still well within the trees, they could crouch and, sure of being concealed, peer out at the track and the forlorn-looking remains of the gig.
Melissa scanned the track, then fixed her gaze on the spot where the lane entered the small valley. “They’ll be coming from the castle, won’t they?”
“I imagine so,” Julian murmured.
They waited. The minutes ticked past, but then the sound of a horse trotting reached her ears. She glanced at Julian and saw his gaze sharpen on the farthest point of the track visible from where they were.
With the same eager tension—at last, they would learn unequivocally who the attacker was—she stared at the same spot.
A rider came into view, trotting quite quickly along.
Julian bent his head close and whispered, “That’s Mitchell.”
She watched the groom as he neared the start of the wreckage. He was a well-built man of above-average height and, judging by the way he sat the horse, a strong rider. He had dark hair cut fairly short, and his clothes were practical and nondescript, exactly what one would expect a groom to wear. She studied his face as, slowing, he looked farther along the track, then frowned at the sight of the gig’s seat sitting squarely on the ground. She turned her head slightly to whisper to Julian, “The other day, when I went to get Rosa, I didn’t see him in the stable.”
His gaze trained on Mitchell, Julian nodded. “He would have been in the woods, rigging the wire, but we can check with Hockey as to whether he knew Mitchell was gone or whether the others saw him slope off.”
Mitchell halted his horse and surveyed the scene. Far from showing any innocent surprise, much less concern, he scanned the surrounding area thoroughly, then his face setting, he pulled out a pistol from the holster in his saddle. He checked the gun, then his left hand strayed to the hunting knife on his hip, loosening it in its scabbard, then pistol in hand, he started his horse walking slowly toward the gig’s stranded seat.
When he reached the point where he could see there was no one in the seat or lying on the ground in front of it or anywhere close, he swore.
Even Melissa heard his “Damn it!”
Mitchell halted his horse, seemed to dither, then he replaced the pistol in its holster and dismounted.
They watched as he walked back along the lane, plainly searching through the debris. Eventually, he paused, then bent and picked up the two main sections of the axle.
“The bits that prove it was sawn almost through,” Julian murmured.
They watched Mitchell, apparently satisfied, walk back to his horse. He stuffed the sawn pieces into a saddlebag, then mounted again, shook his reins, and set his horse trotting on.
Julian straightened.
Melissa looked at him and saw he was almost smiling, but there was no warmth in his expression—quite the opposite. “What now?” she asked.
Julian glanced at her, then looked at where Mitchell was disappearing along the track as it wended along the valley. “I assume he thinks we’ve walked on toward the farm. It’s closer than the castle.”
He hadn’t liked the look of that pistol or the knife. As far as he was concerned, simply by turning up, even without Mitchell’s actions once he had, the groom had marked himself as a condemned man.
Mitchell passed out of sight. Julian reached for Melissa’s hand and drew her upright. “Let’s go down and fetch Ned and ride him back to the castle.” The old hunter would easily carry them both.”
Melissa followed him out of the coppice. “What if Mitchell comes back and sees Ned has gone?”
“The farm is some way on, so it’ll be a while before he returns, and I imagine he’ll think he’s missed us and we’ve come back and taken Ned—as, in fact, is the case—or that someone else has found the wreck and taken Ned back to the castle.” They started down the sloping field. “Either way, I think he—Mitchell—will return to the castle, if nothing else to learn what’s happened.”
“Until he sees us or hears that we’ve returned hale and whole, he won’t know if we’re alive or”—she gestured—“whether we tried to walk for help but collapsed in the woods, too injured to go on.”
“Exactly.” He climbed over the stile, then helped her over it, and they hurried back to Ned.
Within minutes, he’d freed Ned from the gig’s shafts, refashioned the reins, and they were perched on Ned’s broad back, Melissa sitting sideways before him, as the old hunter readily cantered for home.
