'Did you see him fall?' I asked him.
'No. I told you, I found him on the ground. I thought… ' He stopped. Grenville and I both watched him. He reddened. 'Very well. I followed you when you rode out that morning. But I lost you in the dark and there was a mist. Later I walked the same route I thought I had seen you take. And I found Breckenridge. I thought it was you, fallen from your horse.' His brow furrowed. 'Good God. So you were right after all? Someone killed him?'
'But who?' Grenville asked, studying Spencer. 'Eggleston?'
'No, I do not- '
A sharp crack sounded in the summer air and shards of brick from the top of the wall suddenly stung my face.
'Good lord,' Grenville said.
Brandon and I were already on the ground. I reached up, grabbed Grenville's coattails, and dragged him down to the mud.
Brandon sat up, his back flat to the wall. 'Where did the shot come from?' he whispered. 'The house or the woods?'
'Devil if I know,' I hissed back. 'Too quick.'
'The house, I think,' Grenville said. We looked at him. 'The direction of the gouge the bullet made in the wall,' he explained.
Another crack, and another pistol ball winged off the wall and whizzed over our heads. 'Definitely from the house,' Brandon muttered.
'My coachman and Bartholomew are still in front,' Grenville said. 'They could sneak into the house while he's firing at us.'
'And be shot for their pains,' I said sharply. 'Both of them are in there.'
Laughter sounded over our heads, from the open casement windows that overlooked the garden.
'Do we lie here the rest of the day?' Grenville asked. His usually pristine cravat was caked with black mud. 'Or try to get in there and disarm them?'
'If there are two of them,' Brandon said, 'both shooting, or one reloads while the other fires, we could be here a long time.'
'At least until dark,' I said. I leveraged myself up to sit next to him, keeping my head well below the lip of the wall. Kenneth Spencer's outstretched arm nearly touched my boot. 'We can slip away then. They won't be able to see well enough to aim.'
Grenville gave me a sour look. 'They could always hit us by chance.'
'Or…' Brandon looked at me. 'Do you remember the ridge near Rolica?'
I knew what he was thinking. Eight years ago, at the beginning of the Peninsular campaign, he and I had been trapped together on a path we had been reconnoitering. Our horses had been frightened away and we were cut off from our troop by a gunman who kept us pinned in a small niche in the rocks. We had lain there together, tense and certain we would not live the day, while bullet after bullet struck the rocks inches from where we huddled. Shards of rock had stung my face; Brandon's cheeks had run with blood.
We had escaped by sheer daring and not a little foolhardiness. I knew what he had in mind. It would still be foolhardy.
Running footsteps sounded suddenly on the brick path. 'Sir? Are you all right?'
I sat up in alarm. It was Bartholomew, running to see if his master needed assistance.
'Go back!' Grenville shouted.
We heard the explosion of the pistol, heard Bartholomew cry out, heard the sickening crash of his large body falling to the brick path.
'Damn it!' Grenville sprang from his hiding place, his face and suit black with mold. He took three steps toward his fallen footman before another shot sent him scrambling back to the safety of the wall.
I risked a look. Bartholomew lolled on the dusty bricks between us and the house. He held his shoulder with his large hand, his glove crimson with blood. Grenville cursed in fury.
Brandon glanced at me. 'We will have to risk it,' he said in a low voice. 'If the lad is hit again…'
'It was a stupid idea the first time,' I said. 'And I cannot run as fast as I used to.'
'Neither can I,' he shot back.
'What idea?' Grenville panted.
'He can only shoot one of us,' Brandon said. 'If we go in three different directions at once, we may get away. He cannot watch all sides.'
I was perfectly certain that he could. When Brandon and I had agreed, on that ridge, to split and run, so that one of us at least would have a chance, we had each been willing to sacrifice our life so that the other could live. The ruse had succeeded, and we'd both survived. But Brandon had missed being shot in the head by a fraction of an inch.
He was asking for that same kind of sacrifice now. I saw in his light blue eyes that he was willing to take the chance that the gunman would hit him. It does not matter what happens to me, his expression seemed to say, as long as we get the bastard.
I remembered, dimly, why I had once admired him.
'All right,' Grenville said. 'Better than lying here.'
Brandon nodded once. 'Best to wait until he fires again. He'll need a moment to take up the next weapon.'
'Unless he's got a double-barreled pistol,' Grenville said.
'He does not,' Brandon replied. 'The sound is wrong.'
I nodded agreement.
We whispered our plan. Grenville hissed a protest, but Brandon replied, 'I am stronger. I can carry your footman, you cannot.'
Grenville looked back and forth between us, then nodded glumly. 'How do we draw his fire? Stick our heads over the wall?'
Brandon gave him a brief smile. 'That is one way.'
As it turned out, we needed to do nothing. Laughter sounded once more, then a pistol shot, then Bartholomew cried out in renewed agony.
We stared at one another in stunned horror, then Brandon hissed, 'Now!'
We dove from hiding. Brandon ran toward Bartholomew, I around to the right of the house, Grenville toward the woods.
The gunman decided to shoot at me. I slammed myself around the corner of the house, pressing myself against the climbing roses. Thorns pierced my coat and skin.
Breathing hard, I risked a look back. Brandon had seized Bartholomew under the arms and was dragging him toward the front of the house. I hurried around the other side to help him.
My shoulder blades prickled as Brandon and I carried the footman between us past the front windows and through the gate. Bartholomew was still alive, though his face was white, his breathing shallow, and blood stained his scarlet livery still darker red.
The coach had moved a little way down the road. The coachman had halted there, holding the frightened horses, not daring to leave them. Grenville came panting up, reaching the carriage the same time we did.
I wrenched open the door of the coach, and we slid Bartholomew in. Grenville climbed in beside him. When Brandon and I hung back, he stared down at us incredulously. 'Come along, gentlemen. We will go for the magistrate.'
I shook my head. 'They might run, and we might never find them again.'
Brandon said nothing. Grenville looked at Bartholomew, who lay groaning and bleeding on the luxurious cushions, then at us, waiting on the ground.
With a grunt, he swung down again. 'Three against two is better odds. But at least, let us go armed.'
He opened a cabinet under the seat and pulled out two boxes that each held two pistols and bullets and powder horns. He took two pistols himself and handed the other two to me and Brandon. We loaded and primed them, and then filled our pockets with extra balls and powder.
Grenville sent the carriage off with a curt directive to his coachman to find a constable and a surgeon. He joined us, his anger palpable.
