Instead he blew her a kiss as he ripped apart the silk draperies, tore the window latch from its anchoring hook, and recklessly flung the sashes open.
He was a street away by the time the constables broke into the bedroom and assured themselves that the hysterical countess had not been murderously assaulted like poor Jenny. He was another street away before he broke his run and cautiously looked back the way he’d come to confirm that he was not yet discovered.
For an hour Rhys Delmar wandered about trying to decide the best way to get himself out of the predicament he was in. At the end of that hour he was no closer to a solution. Long past noon, none had occurred to him, not until the cry of a news vendor on the street called out his name.
“ ’Orrible murder!” the thin grimy waif shouted, waving his papers high so that no passerby would be tempted to overlook him. “Frenchman sought!”
Rhys grabbed a paper, paying the boy with the only coin in his pocket. He read the account of what had befallen him that morning, including his accuser’s damning statement, and the countess’s contradiction of Lucien’s confirmation that he had been asleep at the time Jenny was stabbed outside the countess’s house. He was alleged to have fooled the servant, stabbed the woman, climbed in the window, slipped into the bed and pretended to be asleep when the servant had come for him.
Swearing, he flung the paper to the paving stones. No one had bothered to question the absurdity of his wanting Jenny dead. Sweet, loving Jenny who had been his mother’s companion since the day he’d been born. Alone, afraid to lift his head lest he be recognized he slunk into the space between two buildings.
He wanted to find Alain and explain to him what had happened. He wanted to find the person who had killed Jenny. But not now. Now he had to leave England or he’d find nothing but the certainly of the gallows. He could do neither Jenny nor Alain any good by swinging from a rope.
He would come back, once he’d made some sense of what had happened, once he had the means to defend himself. He’d write to Alain as soon as it seemed safe to do so.
In the meantime, still confounded by it all, Rhys shoved his hands into his pockets, empty except for the worn leather sheath and Zack Gamble’s marks from the night before. What a time to find himself short of funds. Every constable in the city would be out scouring the streets for him. He had to get away soon. For an escape he needed money.
Lost in his troubled thoughts he had changed his direction without being aware of it. When he glanced up and saw where his steps had taken him, a dim ray of hope shone in his mind. Getting money might prove the least of his worries.
***
Lemuel Snead, the landlord who discovered the cold body of Zachary Gamble, also found the locked cash-box beneath a letter addressed to one Rhys Delmar. The letter he tossed aside; Snead neither read nor wrote. The cashbox caught his eyes. He was an honest man but a curious one. As it was to be his place to see to the disposal of his guest’s remains, his conscience took no offense at prying the lock off the box belonging to Zack Gamble.
His good character did not withstand the force of what he found within, money, gold and notes, enough to equal what he profited in a decade, maybe two, operating a tavern and letting out rooms to travelers.
He glanced about, then gave his sudden decision no more thought. He deserved it, he told himself, just compensation for the shock of coming unsuspecting upon a dead man. The American’s bill had been paid in full but there were expenses yet to come. He would order a suitable box for the burial, even a headstone. No—a wooden cross would do. He scarcely knew the man after all.
But the money, he deserved it, no doubt of that, he reiterated as he stuffed his pockets with the loot. Door open behind him, Snead cast open a window and tossed the splintered cashbox onto the pile of refuse festering behind the tavern. He had not yet covered the departed Zachary Gamble when he was surprised at his work of sorting through the American’s clothing.
“Dieu m’en garde! Monsieur Gamble!” Rhys swore as he saw the stiff, lifeless body of Zachary Gamble stretched upon the narrow bed in his room.
Rhys was only marginally conscious of Snead, who in his shock at being discovered dropped the woolen frock coat he’d been holding.
“I found him so just now,” Snead explained, a trace of his conscience exerting itself. “Died in his sleep, it seems.”
But Rhys did not hear what the man said. He was thinking that he was surrounded by death this day, Jenny’s, the American’s, the inevitably of his own if he did not get away from London. He turned to Snead face drawn, voice rasping as he spoke. “He was to have something for me,” he ventured.
“Your name, sir?”
“Delmar,” Rhys offered cautiously, hoping the man had not had time to read the day’s news. “Rhys Delmar.”
Snead was too nervous to be suspicious of anyone but himself. He remembered the letter that had been with the cashbox and quickly handed it to the Frenchman. “This be it?” he asked.
Seeing his name scrawled upon the paper, Rhys hurriedly broke the sealing wax loose and tore into it, hoping it contained the name of the agent Zack had mentioned. It did not. Instead he found documents of passage inside, confirmation that a cabin aboard the vessel Lady Jane awaited Zachary Gamble at tomorrow’s sailing. The rest was a note, cryptic, badly written, a suggestion that Rhys Delmar sail aboard the Lady Jane, journey to Arizona and look up Theodor Gamble if he wished to redeem the shares he held. It was Zachary Gamble’s last act of defiance to a brother he both loved and hated.
“Mon Dieu!” Rhys swore softly as he added the documents to those already in his pocket. Snead recoiled, thinking he heard a threat from the Frenchman. “He owed me money,” he said to Snead.
It was not to Snead’s credit that he adapted quickly to dishonesty. “He owes me, too,” the landlord lied boldly. “If you be a friend of his perhaps you’ll be assuming his burial costs.”
“That I will not,” Rhys said, seeing his best means of escape from hostile London as dead as Zachary Gamble. Regretting the offering of his name to Snead he spun on his heels, not noticing in his retreat the scrap of paper that floated from his pocket.
He approached the street with care, looking left and right, pulling the brim of his hat low on his forehead. He was aware that much of his apprehension to cross the street stemmed from fear. It was unlikely that any of the constables on duty at those streets would recognize him. Surely none would purposely look for him at the tavern where Monsieur Gamble had taken rooms.
With that thought at the forefront of his mind he was stopped in midstride by the unanticipated low-voiced calling of his name.
“Monsieur Rhys.” The voice came from behind him. “Walk on,” the man said. “Only listen.”
“Lucien,” Rhys whispered. “Do you know me so well?”
“Oui,” Lucien admitted and in fact he did. Rhys Delmar was as much friend as master. Guessing the thoughts of a friend in trouble was not so difficult. “It was a clear deduction that you would claim your money from Monsieur Gamble, as you left the countess’s apartment without a farthing.”
“He cheated me,” Rhys told him. “He managed to die before he paid his marks.”
“Tant pis!” Lucien exclaimed. “The countess has claimed the sum you left in her house. And she has cast me out. What more can befall us?”
“I cannot ask you to share this, Lucien,” Rhys told his servant as they found a deserted spot behind a shop. “If the authorities have released you go your own way.”
“You might have done that when you came upon me robbed and beaten nigh to death in Paris. You did not,” Lucien reminded as he faced the young man who had befriended and cared for him when he was at his worst, the man who had given him work when his previous master had said he had no use for a crippled servant. “And now,” Lucien said, brooking no refusal. “Where we go, we go together.”
“Have you any money?”
“Enough to buy our way out of London,” Lucien replied. “And I hav
e your belongings. The countess was anxious to be rid of them.”
“And I am anxious to forget the countess,” Rhys said abruptly. Her betrayal had been salt in a fresh wound. “Be discreet,” he said. “Book a passage, for yourself only, on the Lady Jane. She sails tomorrow.”
“And you?”
“Taken care of. I will be on board.”
“Until then luck be with you,” Lucien said as he took his leave.
Rhys watched Lucien limp away, wishing the man had said good luck. He’d had his fill of the other kind.
Chapter 5
The driver’s blood-curdling yell produced one of equal volume from an ordinarily imperturbable Lucien Bourget.
“On the floor!” the shotgun messenger shouted to the passengers. The deafening report of his rifle, the sound of bullets whizzing past the uncovered windows of the coach, the unmistakable whump, whump of slugs lodging in wood made the order unnecessary.
Rhys shoved Justine Blalock, the pretty young lady who shared the Concord coach’s spartan interior, to semi-safety in the lower part of the compartment, with Lucien. The cramped space would not accommodate another. The best Rhys could do to remove himself as a target was to attempt to flatten himself on the short stretch of the leather-covered bench above the crouching pair. The driver had whipped the team to a bone-juggling pace. Rhys could not hope to stay put long. By bracing his feet solidly against one side wall of the bouncing coach, and firmly gripping the swaying loop of cord that held back the hide curtains, he managed to avoid tumbling onto the heads of Lucien and Justine until the brakes locked and the coach skittered to a rocking halt.
“Ruby’s hit!” the driver shouted.
Upside down in the laps of Justine and Lucien, Rhys apologized to the lady as he hurriedly righted himself, and courteously helped Justine get her crushed straw bonnet out of her face. A moment later, with a protesting Justine clutching his sleeve, he flung open the coach door, almost hitting the snorting nose of a skittish horse prancing alongside the waylaid Gamble Line stage.
“Hold it! Don’t git out ’til I tell you,” shouted the rider. He held a cocked pistol in his outstretched arm, and wore a bandana mask. He reined his nervous horse to a standstill. Dark, anxious eyes assayed Rhys Delmar, noting his expensive clothes. “Be a shame to mess up that purty suit.”
The bandit confronting Rhys had two partners. Their faces were also obscured by colored kerchiefs tied tight across the jaws. One spurred his horse nearer the driver’s box and aimed his gun at the man’s head. The shotgun man, one Strong Bill Ash because of his size, had felt the stock of his rifle explode in his grip when it was hit by a bullet. Strong Bill held his bloody, useless hands in the air.
“Throw down that Wells Fargo box,” demanded the man taking aim, unquestionably the one in charge.
“Git it yourself,” the driver bellowed at him. “Lemme down to see about Ruby.” Tom Cribbet’s worried eyes went to one of the lead horses as he tied down the reins. The animal, a sturdy roan mare, stood trembling in the traces as she bled heavily from a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” the bandit growled, slowly redirecting his weapon. While the driver sat, mouth wide open, momentarily frozen in disbelief, the man leveled his gun at the mare’s head and fired. The animal wheezed once, stumbled, then fell to the ground dead.
The act was too much for the driver. With a whoop of rage he recklessly launched himself from the seat. Before the bandit could aim and fire, the driver’s shoulder hit, knocking him from the saddle and carrying both men to the ground. Knotted together they landed in the hardscrabble beneath the thrashing legs of the saddle horse. For a minute or two the pair struggled, but the driver was at a disadvantage having landed hard beneath the weight of his adversary. The bandit, barely scathed, had not lost his gun in the fall. He got an elbow free, then the whole of his arm. Using his weapon like a club, he struck the brave driver in the center of his sun-browned forehead, splitting the toughened skin, knocking Tom Cribbet unconscious.
Justine Blalock had held on when she saw the horse shot, but the sight of the unconscious driver was unbearable. She screamed, a long piercing wail of terror. It ended only when the bandit who had been unseated lurched to his feet and ordered Rhys to step down from the coach. With the mounted bandit’s gun trained on him, Rhys had no sensible choice but to comply. With his back against the coach, and the steel barrel of one gun almost at his skull, he stood as still as he was told.
The man on foot grabbed Justine’s arm and snatched her out of the coach. She screamed again, louder and longer and shriller than before.
“Shut up!” the man told her. “Shut up or I’ll—”
He didn’t need to continue. Justine choked off her scream and found her voice. “My daddy will hang you for this,” she cried, attempting to jerk her arm free of the bandit’s clamplike hold.
The man jerked her against his chest. “Your daddy and what army, little girl?”
“He won’t need an army!” Justine spat back. “He’s sheriff in Wishbone. He’ll hunt you—”
The man slung her arm free and pushed her with such force that her back struck the wheel rim painfully hard. Justine cried out.
Cursing, the bandit kept his gun pointed at her. “Who is he?”
“My daddy is Sheriff Len Blalock,” she said proudly, righting her misshapen bonnet.
“Shit!” The bandit backed away, grappling for his horse’s reins. Finding them, he led the animal close and mounted. “Git going,” he said to his partners.
“The strong box—” the third man began uncertainly, his voice and eyes years younger than either of the other’s.
“Forget it.” Tugging on the reins he backed his horse a dozen paces then whirled the animal around and galloped off into the cover of scrub and rock near the road.
One bandit spurred his horse and followed immediately. The third, the one who had held his gun to Rhys’s head, was slow to follow. He was slow enough that when he urged his mount to a gallop, Rhys had already scooped a fist-sized rock from the ground and hurled it at the man. The hollow sound of it striking the base of the bandit’s neck brought a gasp from Justine. The stunned rider hit the ground hard. His horse whinnied and loped off without him.
“I will be damned!” said Strong Bill as he tied strips of his handkerchief around his injured hands. He wouldn’t have given two bits’ worth of credence to his French passenger if he hadn’t seen what he did. Usually his kind, those overly refined gents who came West in their high-class clothes, dropped in a dead faint the first time they faced a threat.
“Boyhood games.” Rhys shrugged. “I regret it was not the other one I hit.”
Justine, breathing hard, laid a hand on Rhys’s arm and felt the powerful muscle beneath his sleeve. “You are remarkably brave,” she said softly.
“No, mademoiselle, if anyone is brave it is you.” Rhys took her hand and held it a moment. “Lucien,” he said. “See what aid you can give that man.”
“I’ll help,” Justine offered as Lucien retrieved a canteen from the driver’s box.
With Justine’s assistance Lucien worked to revive the downed driver while Rhys bound the prostrate bandit. When the driver was clearheaded enough to stand and walk, Rhys helped unharness Ruby from the traces. He saw a tear streak the driver’s stoic face, and a sob shake the rangy torso. All the while Rhys Delmar wondered what refuge he was likely to find in this brutal, spare land that seemed made of nothing but cactus and sand and trouble.
He was in an advanced state of indignation when the coach rolled into Wishbone with an injured driver and messenger, short one horse and carrying a complaining bandit strapped to the luggage rack. The harrowing experience on the poorly protected stage capped the impossibility of convincing the Gamble Line’s agent in Phoenix that Rhys Delmar owned almost half the company.
“Take it up with Teddy,” the burly, short-tempered agent had told him. “But right here, right now, if you want passage on the Gamble
Line stage to Wishbone you’ll pay for a ticket and so will your ‘manservant.’”
Rhys had been forced to borrow the cost of the two passages from Lucien, in addition to the money for transportation from the port of Boston across the American continent.
Teddy. Zachary Gamble’s brother, he supposed, returning his thoughts to the present. Teddy. Some vulgar corruption of Theodor. Teddy Gamble, who ran the stage line badly if Rhys’s trip had been typical. Passengers had to furnish their own refreshments and provisions or eat the plain fare dished out by the poor cooks at the way stations. From Strong Bill’s words he learned this was not the first attack the line had suffered. Why had Theodor not hired more guards, hired mounted riders to accompany the stage? Teddy. Probably no brighter than his brother Zack Gamble.
Rhys climbed out of the coach. As his feet hit the powder-dry street of Wishbone he noticed that his best shoes were caked with dust. His good silk cravat was now a bandage around Cribbet’s head. His finest bowler hat was no longer in the coach—it had been lost in the confusion of the holdup. And somewhere along the line his most expensive custom-tailored suit had sustained an irreparable rip in the sleeve.
“Look at this ruin, Lucien.” Rhys brushed a cloud of dust from his shoulders, then gave up when he saw he was only rearranging the embedded dirt. He stomped his feet to clean his shoes but found the dust there stubborn as dried flour dough. “I am undone by this Gamble Stage Line,” he grumbled to the servant. “I tell you, Lucien, this damnable land and this company need civilizing.”
“I could not agree more, monsieur,” Lucien said as he helped Justine Blalock out of the coach. The attack had nearly been his undoing. All along the route from Missouri he had expected an attack of Indians, vicious savages with scalping knives and deadly arrows. That of the bandits came close to fulfilling his dire expectations.
Devil Moon Page 4