She hoisted his arm. “Come.”
“Go without me!”
“No. Please.” Awareness sharpened everything. The light swimming in the corner of her eye, the dark figures racing toward her, the cold stickiness of the footman’s blood on her hands.
Then a rock struck her shoulder. She ducked overtop the servant, whimpering, as a second belted her spine.Tom, please.He was not coming. She knew that.
Two bony hands grabbed her shoulders and reeled her into a tree. Her hair snagged in the bark as she sank to the ground.
They peered over her, both of them, and the swinging lantern light ousted the shadows.
One was tall. Deathly thin. Dark-circled eyes and ragged layers of mismatched clothes.
The other was young. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, with dented cheeks and a turkey-feathered hat. “Kill her,” he spat. “Hurry up.”
The other grabbed another rock from his pouch. “W–w–wants her alive n–now, ’member?” With a growling noise, he cocked back his fist—
A gunshot blasted behind them, and her hands moved over her face. She moaned as the boy’s sharp fingers snatched her arm and dragged her from the tree.
“Someone’s here,” he gasped.
Curses.
Fire catching the treetops.
“Get the girl and let’s get—”
“N–no time. Run.” He said something else, something muffled about not going to Bodmin Jail for the likes of thirty guineas, before the boy released his hold. They darted through the trees, disappearing before she’d made it to her wobbly feet.
“Sir.” She didn’t even know the footman’s name. She stumbled to him, dropped down to her knees, and unfastened the brass row of buttons. Her fingers shook. “Are you well?”
“My gun,” he rasped.
She glanced at his bloody hand. He still held the weapon. Why had he not fired?
He grimaced in shame, lips losing color. “Never had to kill anyone before, Miss Foxcroft.”
“They are gone now. This may hurt.” She extracted his injured arm from the sleeve of his coat, then ripped fabric away from the wound. The white of a snapped bone protruded through the flesh of his lower arm. “I need to get this wrapped until we get to Penrose and Dr. Bagot can—”
“Move over.”
Meg whirled, muscles coiling for action, but the man emerging from the bushes didn’t point his gun. Indeed, he did not even look at her.
“Stay away from him,” Meg spat.
He knelt next to the footman anyway, and with deft and wrinkled fingers, straightened the broken arm and pressed the bone back in alignment. “Rip off a portion of your petticoat. I’ll need it to secure this break.”
Meg hesitated.
The footman’s eyes rolled back and his head fell sideways in unconsciousness.
“Hurry up, girl. Now.”
She did as he said, knees shaking, and watched the white-haired man wind the bandage with as much efficiency as Dr. Bagot.
“Who are you?”
Still, he did not glance up at her. He moved to the footman’s leg and probed. Several seconds passed before he grumbled under his breath, “I’m your uncle.”
