Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [128]
‘Don’t touch him,’ I said. ‘It has nothing to do with him.’
Rancie and I were outside the circle of lamplight and, until then, I think they’d only been conscious of a second horse and person without paying us much attention. Now the light came on us.
‘I’ve seen her …’ Trumper began.
‘Her friend, the governess,’ Stephen said.
‘She’s not a governess, she’s –’
‘It doesn’t matter who she is. She’s just come from helping my sister run away.’
Trumper yelled something to a groom about running up to the house and bringing back a couple of horses. Stephen rushed towards me. I couldn’t see his face but felt the anger burning off him.
‘Are you going to kill me too?’ I said.
My hand ached for a pistol, a dagger, for anything. I turned and pulled at the stirrup leather on Rancie’s saddle, thinking that at least I might batter the stirrup iron into his eyes and blind him. He flung me against Rancie’s side, grabbed the stirrup leather away from me and before I could stop him, vaulted into the saddle and snatched the reins.
‘Take the other …’ he yelled.
I’m sure he was calling to Trumper to take the cob and come with him. He jerked sharply on the reins to turn Rancie facing down the road. She gave him more chance than he deserved. For a moment she simply stood there, surprised by the sudden weight on her back and the pain on the bars of her mouth. He cursed her, jerked at the reins again, dug his heels into her sides. Her head went up, then up and up until her front hooves were in the air and the shape of her was towering against the darkness like some horse in a legend landing from the sky, just touching the earth with the tips of her hind hooves. He was thrown off high into the air over my head, flying then falling like a shot goose, heavy and unwieldy. I felt the impact of the air as he went past and heard the snatched intake of his second last breath. Second last because, I dare say, he might have rattled a last one as he landed on his head on the hard-packed earth of the road and broke his neck more quickly and cleanly than the hangman would have done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
For another heartbeat Rancie reared up against the sky, then her front hooves came down to earth with a thud softer than the one Stephen had made when he landed. After that, total silence for a moment, then Trumper and the grooms ran to the dark figure on the ground and the light of their lamp spread round him. His neck was skewed in a way no living man’s could be. One of the grooms started swearing in a scared, meaningless stream. The smell of Rancie’s sweat was in my nostrils and Amos Legge’s voice in my ear.
‘Get up on her, miss. You weren’t here. You never saw anything.’
‘He’s dead,’ I said.
His hand rested a moment on my shoulder.
‘No great loss, I dare say. Now, up you get.’
Rancie hadn’t moved since her feet had touched down. Her quick, panicky breaths were warm against my hand. I think he must have thrown me up on her, because one moment I was on the ground and the next I was across her back, my fingers in her mane and my face against Amos Legge’s chest. He pushed me upright in the saddle and gave me the reins.
‘Go on. Wherever she takes you.’
‘But you …’
‘I’ll find you. Now go on, girl.’
He slapped a hand on Rancie’s hindquarters and she spun round.
‘Stop them! The damned horse has killed him.’
Trumper’s voice, from only a few steps away. The thought that he wanted to kill Rancie in revenge made me dig my heels into her sides and lean low on her neck. I heard a voice wild as a banshee’s yelling at her to go, go, and it was part of the fear to realise that the voice was my own. She hit full gallop in a couple of strides and was off into the darkness towards the main carriage drive. My instinct would have been for the back road, but Stephen’s body and the grooms were there.
‘Stop! Stop her!’
Trumper’s voice, behind us and to the left. No hoofbeats, so he was probably following on foot. He might be trying to cut us off as we turned on to the bridge across the ha-ha, and he wasn’t far behind. I urged Rancie