The Heiress - Lynsay Sands [108]
“All right?” Richard asked with concern as he followed him out.
Daniel ground his teeth together, but nodded and started toward the overturned carriage.
“What is it?”
Daniel heard his mother call that question from the carriage the women were riding in, but left Richard to answer. “An accident. We are checking it out.”
The carriage lay on its side, two wheels broken. Daniel eyed the crest on the back as he approached, able to just make it out in the gray light cast by the moon, but he didn’t recognize it and continued around to the front end. He spotted the body on the side of the lane as he neared the front wheels and immediately moved toward it with Robert and Richard following.
“The driver?” Richard suggested as the three men circled the body.
Daniel considered the man’s livery and nodded grimly.
Robert knelt beside the body and examined him briefly, before announcing, “He’s dead.”
“He must have been thrown in the accident,” Richard suggested.
Robert shook his head. He was still kneeling, but was now examining his own hands, rubbing his thumb and forefingers together. “Blood,” he announced and tugged up the back of the man’s coat, revealing what even in that light looked a messy wound. The driver’s back was a mass of small bloody holes.
“Looks like the work of a blunderbuss,” Richard said with a grimace.
Robert let the coat drop back and straightened. “Highwaymen?”
“This is Danvers’s carriage.”
Daniel turned sharply toward the back of the carriage as Lisa made that announcement. The three women were gathered there examining the crest, and Christiana now nodded in agreement. “I recognize the crest too.”
Cursing, Daniel turned and moved toward the front of the carriage, but Richard moved past him and quickly climbed up on top of the upraised carriage before he could do so himself.
“Empty,” Richard announced a heartbeat later as he knelt to peer into the cab interior.
“Then where are Suzette and her father?” Lady Woodrow asked with a frown.
“They could be walking,” Lisa suggested.
Daniel glanced to the dark form of the driver. It seemed doubtful to him that Danvers would shoot his own driver, which would suggest they had been attacked by outsiders, highwaymen or bandits. Swallowing the worry that thought instilled in him, Daniel said, “Spread out and search the area. If we don’t find anything, we’ll continue on and hope to find them walking further along the way.”
Everyone spread out at once, searching the immediate area, and even widening the search to the edge of the woods on both sides of the lane. Much to Daniel’s relief, other than a spent blunderbuss and the dead horses, they didn’t come up with anything else.
“What now?” his mother asked as they congregated together after ending the search.
“Now we travel forward but more slowly,” Daniel decided, when everyone peered to him for answers. “I want everyone watching out the windows in case they are walking through the trees rather than along the side of the road. If we don’t come across them by the time we reach the next inn we’ll regroup and decide what to do then.”
“Off the road! Quickly, quickly!” Jeremy snapped, giving Suzette a push toward the trees that nearly knocked her down.
Managing to keep her feet under her, she followed her father off the road and across the grass into the trees. Lord Madison continued walking until he came to an area with thick brush that offered cover, and then dropped to his haunches to duck behind it without Jeremy’s ordering him to. Suzette wasn’t surprised. They’d already done this twice before when carriages had approached. At this rate it was going to take a very long time to get to Gretna Green. Not that she cared. She had no desire to go anywhere with the man.
Under normal circumstances, Jeremy would probably be waving down the carriages for a ride to the next inn where he could rent a hack to finish the journey. However, he could hardly do that when he was holding them at pistol point, which made her wonder how he planned