Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [129]
As we rounded the curve of the drive a great white shape appeared out of the darkness. I recognised it as marble Europa and her bull at the end of the bridge, so unless Rancie and I were to follow Trumper into the ha-ha, it was time for caution. I drew on the reins to bring her back to a trot, gently I hoped, but she stopped so suddenly that only another handful of mane saved me from going off over her shoulder. Voice shaking, fearing that Trumper would clamber out of the ha-ha and catch up with us, I begged her to go on. Then I saw what was stopping her. There was something blocking the bridge. It looked like a carriage of some description, and my first thought was that it had been put there to bar our way, though how anybody could have acted so quickly I didn’t know. Rancie and I froze a few paces from the bridge.
‘Oh Lord, he’s coming after us.’
A woman’s moan of fear came from the carriage. It sounded like Mrs Martley. While I was trying to puzzle it out, another voice from somewhere in the dark behind me.
‘Liberty – is that you?’
Daniel’s voice.
‘I’m here,’ I said.
‘Thank the gods. Where were you? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
He came up beside us, caught me as I slid down and started hustling me towards the carriage. Rancie’s reins were still in my hand.
‘They’ll blame her. She must come with us,’ I said. ‘And we must wait for Amos Legge.’
‘Legge will look after himself.’
He took the reins from me and tied them to the back of the carriage. I let him guide me, hoping he was right. The sheer relief of finding him took away what was left of my strength. He bundled me into the carriage, next to Mrs Martley, who kept wanting to know what was happening and getting no answer. There was a man sitting opposite her, slumped and silent – presumably the tenor who had been so insistent on getting back to Windsor. The carriage started moving. I looked back at Mandeville Hall, fearful that the doors to the terrace would open and Sir Herbert come rushing out. The doors stayed closed, but all the downstairs windows were blazing with light and incredibly the sounds of a galop drifted out over the park.
‘They’re still dancing,’ I said.
‘Last dance in the second set,’ said Daniel, part of his mind automatically with the music even now.
So Celia had left home and Stephen had died in less time than it took to skip through half a dozen dances. A scared groom was probably waiting at the back door to find some way of passing the news along a chain of footmen. When we came to the lodge at the bottom of the drive the great gates were open in case of latecomers to the ball, so we drove straight through. For the next few miles I kept looking back towards Mandeville Hall until its brightly lit windows diminished to candle glimmers, then to nothing.
I think Daniel must have told the driver to keep to the back roads in case anybody tried to follow us, because by the time the sky started to grow light we were lurching at walking pace along a rutted lane between hedges. Our carriage was an old and smelly landau drawn by two mis-matched horses, the best the tenor’s bribery could procure from the stables. Rancie was pacing along behind like a quiet pony rather than an aristocrat with the blood of Derby winners in her veins. Next to me, Mrs Martley slept with her head against the leather hood and her mouth open. The tenor sitting opposite was a human pyramid of capes and shawls, topped by a pair of eyes filled with misery at what the dawn air might be doing to his voice. Neither was in a condition to care about the story I’d told Daniel as we went along. All the time he’d kept hold of my hand.
‘Child, I’d have given anything in the world to