“The horses are rightly mine.” The first man kicked at the ground, or at least Caithren thought he did. It was difficult to tell from around the corner. “We had to take them. We were low on funds with no way to get here. Can’t you get that through your thick skull? Did you want to walk? Sleep in the open and beg for our supper?”
“We could have found work.”
“Work? When hens make holy water. Should we stoop to chopping wood for a living? Baking bread? Shoeing horses?”
“Geoff—”
“Enough!”
Caithren heard the crunch of gravel beneath someone’s shuffling feet. “So. Lucas is gone. What now, Geoffrey?”
“He’ll be at the London town house, I reckon.”
Cait heard the sound of pacing. Then a prolonged silence, followed by a low whistle.
“What are you thinking?” Wat sounded wary. “I don’t care for the look in your eyes.”
“We’ll go to London.” Next came a significant pause. “And we’ll get what belongs to us.”
A chill shot through Caithren, though the night was still warm. Apparently Wat felt the same way. “You cannot mean to hurt him?”
“Whatever it takes. He’s got it coming, and you’re next in line. When you’re the earl, we’ll be sitting pretty.”
“When I’m the earl?” Cait could hear her heart pounding while Wat mulled that over. “Geoffrey,” he said slowly, “you’re not…you’re not talking…murder?”
“Maybe I am.”
They were planning to murder someone? Cait’s breath seemed stuck in her chest.
“You would kill him?” Wat squeaked.
“I don’t believe it will come to that. But it would be his fault for kicking us out. Just as it’s his fault we’re in this trouble. And his money we’ll be using to get out of it.”
Wat had nothing to say to that.
Or maybe he was shocked speechless.
“With Cainewood’s death on our hands, we’ve nothing to lose,” Geoffrey added gruffly. “Come along.”
As she listened to them mount their horses, Cait began to tremble. It wasn’t long before they rode around the corner of the mansion at a slow walk, heading straight past the front door where she hid. She scurried into a corner of the arched entry.
“I cannot do it.” Even through Cait’s fear, Wat’s whine was grating on her. It was a wonder his bloodthirsty friend hadn’t killed him.
But evidently Geoffrey chose not to listen, because he ignored the protest. “We have enough coin left to pay for a night at the inn. We’ll let everyone see us.”
“See us?”
“We’ll leave for London come morning. People will remember us here, and if we ride like the dickens, no one will believe we could have arrived there in time. We won’t be suspected of hurting our dear brother.”
“But Geoffrey…” Wat’s voice was so drawn out and plaintive, Caithren almost felt sorry for him. As they rode before her and then past, she risked inching forward to get a look at them.
Two men, both rumpled and sunburned. They spoke like quality, and looked it, too—overly proud, even if their clothes could use a washing. But they were robbing, murdering scum. English scum.
Cameron had been right about Englishmen.
“Now let’s find some girls.” As they moved down the drive, the last of Geoffrey’s words drifted back, faint but intelligible. “The last kitchen maid the housekeeper hired on before we left—she was a comely one. If she’s not visiting her mama while Lucas is gone, she must be staying in Pontefract.”
Girls. The scum were in search of girls. Caithren hugged the tops of her crossed arms in a futile attempt to stop herself from shaking.
England was as evil a place as she’d always heard. What was she doing here all alone? She should have let Mrs. Dochart accompany her out here to Scarborough’s. Or Cameron—she should have let Cameron make the journey. This certainly had been an ill-conceived undertaking.
Though she couldn’t hear another word the men said, she was still shaking when they disappeared from view, still shaking when she started the long, lonely walk back in the dark. Still shaking after she’d reclaimed her satchel, paid for a room at the inn and extra for a bath, and trudged upstairs to wash off the dust of a week’s travel.
She slipped into her plain room, shut the door and leaned back against it, a palm pressed to her racing heart. She had to get herself in hand.
Nothing—leastwise a couple of scummy Englishmen—was going to stop her from finding her brother.
NINE
JASON SLOWLY slid off Chiron, feeling stiff as a day-old corpse. It seemed the ache in his shoulder had extended to every bone in his body. He detached his portmanteau and set it on the stable’s dirt floor, then stretched toward the rough-beamed ceiling, a delicious pull of his abused muscles.
“Will you be stayin’ at the inn, sir?”
His arms dropped, and he looked down into the lined face of a gnarled old stableman. “Only long enough to eat and wash. Then I’m headed to the Scarborough estate in West Riding. I understand it’s nearby?”
“Aye, but no one’s there.” The little man’s face split in the involuntary grin of someone imparting bad news. “Scarborough shut the house and made off for London two days ago.”
Jason could barely keep himself from groaning aloud. After six days of hard riding, had he arrived only to leave again?
He forked some hay beneath Chiron’s nose. Perhaps the man was misinformed. “How come you to know this?”
The smile turned self-satisfied. “Cousin Ethel’s worked there thirty-odd years. She’s staying hereabouts while the lord is gone—likes to stop by to pass the day.” He puffed out his scrawny chest. “Servants, we know everything.”
Jason rubbed his stubbled jaw. “Then old Cuthbert is gone?”
The stableman blinked. “Old Cuthbert is dead.”
“Dead?” Dead? At the hands of his relatives, the Gothard brothers?
“A month past. He and Lady Scarborough—they died crossing the channel. Young Lucas is the new earl.” He eyed Jason up and down, then bent to unbuckle Chiron’s saddle. “Things over there be different now. Took the new earl no more ’n a week to toss his
