Brandon led the way back to the house. It felt natural to follow him as I had for many years, across India, Portugal and Spain, and into France. At one time, I would have followed him to hell itself. Too much had passed between us since then, but somehow, as I kept my gaze on his broad back while we moved stealthily against the blank wall of the house, I felt a glimmer of the old bond the two of us had so thoroughly pulled apart.
We abandoned the idea of entry through the front door. We could go only single-file through the tiny hall, and anyone on the gallery could pick us off one at a time. Brandon forced open one of the downstairs windows and entered that way. While he made plenty of noise doing so, Grenville and I crept in through the cellar door we found on the left side of the house, then up through a cool deserted kitchen and back stairs to the ground floor.
Silence met us. I peered into the staircase room and spied Brandon on the other side, waiting in the shadows. We had agreed to try to disarm the two upstairs or, barring that, to at least pin them down here until the constable arrived.
One of them stepped out onto the gallery, a pistol in either thick hand, an affable smile on his face, just as I remembered from the boxing match at Lady Mary's.
'Evening, Captain,' Jack Sharp said cheerfully. He peered into the gathering shadows in the hall, then upended his pistols against his shoulders. 'Thought I'd frightened you off.'
I said nothing. When I'd read his name on the paper James Denis had handed me, many things had fallen into place. In Kent, I had reasoned that only a very strong man could have broken Breckenridge's neck. A very strong man had been on hand, the pugilist Jack Sharp. I had dismissed him at the time because he had been laid out by the farm lad, as Bartholomew had told us, but that entire scene had likely been a farce. Jack Sharp, probably instructed by Eggleston, had simply taken a fall, making certain to show a great deal of blood on the way down.
'I won't shoot you, sirs,' Jack Sharp called down. 'Not my manner, not at all.'
We remained in place, and silent. I believed Sharp-he probably preferred hand-to-hand combat, a bout in which the strongest and most skilled would win. But Eggleston waited up there, and I imagined he would shoot anything that moved.
'Stalemate, then, gentlemen?' Jack said. He spoke no differently than he had in the garden at Astley Close, cheerful, friendly. He was a mate you would join at the local tavern. 'Well, well, if you will not come up, I will come down.'
'No!' Eggleston's voice rang out.
Jack kept grinning at us. 'Now, now. I'll leave my shooters here.' He leaned down and dropped both pistols to the floor. They clanked heavily against the boards. 'They are honorable gentlemen. We'll just have us a chat, me dears, won't we?'
He was spoiling for a fight. He wanted to fight the three of us at once, to see what he could do. It was a challenge to him, a game. I saw no remorse in him for Kenneth Spencer's death, nor for Breckenridge's.
He was wrong if he thought I would not shoot an unarmed man. I would shoot him even if Grenville and Brandon were too punctilious to; I'd shoot to bring him down until the constable came to put him in chains.
Eggleston stepped into the light. His face was white, his blue child's eyes protruding. 'Lacey, you interfering bastard, go away!'
Jack grinned. He turned and pattered along the gallery to his lover and kissed him on the mouth. Then, his manner still oozing friendliness, he turned back and started down the stairs.
'Go away, all of you!' Eggleston shouted desperately.
Jack kept plodding toward us. Brandon came forward to meet him, pistol ready, despite my signaling for him to stay back. If he got in my way, I could not fire at Sharp.
Behind me Grenville quivered with rage. 'If we rush the bastard-
'
'Eggleston will shoot us,' I said. 'And Sharp probably has a knife up his sleeve.'
Brandon reached him. 'I am arresting you, sir,' he said to Sharp in stentorian tones. 'For the deaths of Colonel Roehampton Westin, Lord Breckenridge, and Mr. Kenneth Spencer.'
Brandon carried power in his voice. So he had sounded in the days when he'd commanded an unruly band of cavalry troops and kept them all alive. For a moment Jack Sharp gazed at him in astonished apprehension, the face of a clever pickpocket who'd at last been nicked. Then he moved.
Everything happened very fast. Ringing footsteps sounded without, and a man burst through the door. John Spencer.
Before I could be startled at his sudden appearance, or wonder that he'd followed us here, he ran at Jack Sharp, howling murder, his face a mask of rage and grief.
A blade flashed in Sharp's hand. Brandon grabbed Spencer, stopping him just before he reached Sharp. Eggleston aimed his pistol at the both of them.
I saw this in a split second before I was racing up the stairs to Eggleston. Sharp pain flashed through my leg, then went numb. I hurled myself at Eggleston, even as he fired.
The shot went wide. The ball struck the chain of the heavy iron chandelier, shattering the links. Below, Brandon hurled Spencer out of the way, just as the iron wheel of the chandelier crashed down.
Eggleston screamed. Grenville, swearing hard, ran forward. John Spencer, panting, turned back in horror.
Brandon lay facedown beneath the chandelier, the arc of iron pinning him. The legs of Jack Sharp protruded from the other side of the massive thing, and he lay still beneath it, his face a mass of blood.
Eggleston screamed again. He came at me, fists waving. I ducked a blow and punched him full in the face. He went down, crying and cursing. I hit him again, and he collapsed to his hands and knees to the smooth floorboards.
I wrested the pistol from him, searched his pockets for any other weapon, then seized him by the collar and marched him down the stairs. The numbness in my leg wore off on a sudden, and the pain returned with head- spinning fervor.
'Lacey,' Grenville said. He was crouching by the fallen chandelier, his hand on Brandon's shoulder.
I dropped Eggleston to the floor. He folded up into a ball and wept.
'Sharp is dead,' Grenville told me.
'Brandon,' I said hoarsely.
'Still alive. But this damn thing is heavy. I fear that…'
He did not finish the thought, and I did not want him to. The iron wheel lay across Brandon's lower back. The chandelier could have crushed his legs, or the organs in his body. I might be facing Louisa tonight, explaining why I had killed her husband.
John Spencer, still breathing hard, took hold of one side of the chandelier. I, too, locked my grip around the cold iron wheel, my hands shaking. Brandon lay utterly still.
Spencer and I strained to lift the thing. While we held the chandelier raised, faces reddening, Grenville grabbed Brandon under the arms and dragged him from beneath.
We rolled the chandelier away, exposing Jack Sharp's crushed and dead body. Eggleston cried out and crawled to him.
Grenville had turned Brandon over onto his back. I sat down on the floor and gently lifted Brandon's head to my lap.
His breathing was ragged and shallow. I gently slapped his face, his beard stubble scraping my fingers. 'Brandon, old man,' I said. 'Wake up, damn you.'
He did not move. His face was pasty white, and gray lined his mouth.
'Do not dare to die on me. Louisa will never forgive me.' I patted his face again. 'You know what she will say. 'Could you not take care of my husband any better than that, Gabriel?' And then she will look at me. You know how she does.'
I kept babbling. Stupid, stupid- It had been just like him, to try to save Spencer at the expense of himself. Never risk yourself unnecessarily, he had once told me. But when it is necessary-by God, go out fighting, and make every blow count. Make your sacrifice mean something.
He had brought down a killer and saved Spencer's life and mine and Grenville's.
Grenville's muddy buff boots, buckles coated with grime, stopped next to me. His leg bent, and his knee in fine lawn breeches touched the board floor. He held a pewter cup of strong-smelling spirits. 'Help me make him
