The command in his voice left them in no doubt the agent wasn’t a man to be taken lightly.
Phillip’s tack jingled, and hooves clopped as he turned his chestnut. “I can’t say it’s been any sort of pleasure doing business with you.” His tone acid, he added, “And it will suit me perfectly should I never again lay eyes on you.”
The agent chuckled. “We have the same wish, then. Off you go.”
The drum of hooves informed them that Phillip had obeyed and quit the scene.
Crouching behind the hedge, Nicholas and Adriana remained unmoving, all but holding their breaths. The agent waited until Phillip had gone. In the nighttime stillness, Phillip’s horse’s hoofbeats could easily be heard as he left The Drove and headed back into Sleaford.
Once the black’s hoofbeats had faded, the agent grunted. Then he edged his horse forward. “All right. Let’s see about getting you stabled for the night.”
A short interval of shifting hooves and horsey snorts suggested that the man’s horse didn’t appreciate being forced into close proximity with the massive stallion, who was, no doubt, ready to be difficult. But eventually, the agent got both horses facing the same way and set off eastward.
Nicholas exchanged a look of vindication with Adriana. They’d thought the man would go that way.
As soon as their quarry was far enough down the lane to risk it, they raced across the field for their horses.
Nicholas tossed Adriana up to her saddle, then swung up to his. They rode to where a gate allowed them access to The Drove. Dickie, having retrieved his horse, was waiting, and as quietly as they could, the three of them trotted slowly in the agent’s wake.
He was far enough ahead that he’d already turned out of The Drove and disappeared from sight before they reached the intersection.
There, they received their first surprise.
Holding the reins of his horse, but not mounted, Young Gillies was waiting in the middle of the Holdingham road, facing south toward Sleaford.
Frowning, Nicholas drew rein. “Which way did he go?”
Young Gillies nodded southward. “Bold as brass, he headed into Sleaford.”
“Really?” Adriana stared down the road, then glanced at Nicholas. “Surely going through Sleaford is taking a huge risk.”
Nicholas shrugged. “Apparently, our agent likes to live dangerously.”
“Agent?” Young Gillies turned to mount his horse. “Do we know that now?”
“I think so.” Nicholas met Adriana’s gaze. “From his tone, he didn’t know anything about The Barbarian until he set eyes on the horse in the lane.”
Dickie murmured, “It certainly seemed that way. I was watching through the hedge, and after Phillip left, the agent circled The Barbarian, staring in that wide-eyed way that says he’d had no idea what sort of horse he was picking up until then.”
Adriana urged her horse into a slow walk toward Sleaford. “Let’s see where he’s gone.”
Young Gillies brought his horse up to walk alongside Dickie’s, behind Nicholas and Adriana. “Rory, Jed, and Mike followed him into the town. One of them will be waiting to show us which road he took.”
They reached the wall surrounding Styles Place. By then, Harold and Oscar had trotted up behind them. Nicholas waved at the pair to return to the Place for the moment, then the rest of the group continued on, past the manor, in which lights still shone.
Their second surprise of the night came when, just north of the Packhorse Inn, Rory, on foot, pushed away from the wall where he’d been hidden in shadow and signaled, somewhat frantically, for them to stop.
They reined in, and Rory hurried up.
“You’ll never guess,” he whispered, “but the blackguard’s gone into the inn.”
“The Packhorse?” Dickie was incredulous.
Rory nodded. “Far as we could tell, he handed over the horses—his and The Barbarian—to be stabled for the night, then took himself into the inn.”
Nicholas stared at the inn’s archway. “Those ostlers know we’re looking for that horse. We asked them about him.”
Rory nodded earnestly. “We remembered. Jed and Mike went into the yard as soon as the gent was inside and asked the ostlers to keep seeing the horse under their hats. They were happy to. As Jed and Mike know The Barbarian, and he knows them, they stayed in the stable to make sure he’s all right and settled for the night.”
