“H’yah!” I yelled. The horses took off like a shot.
Well, to my lightheaded perceptions, it felt like a shot. Jonathan Harriman clutched at the edge of the seat with both hands as if it felt like one to him, too, although I think that had more to do with being petrified by a crazy woman driver than with the speed of the horses.
“Smile, bucko,” I told him. “You’re supposed to be having fun.”
“What makes you think so?” He looked grim.
“Because you’re getting out of here. Nobody is going to stop us now.” I brought the horses around in a tight turn, straightened them out and aimed them at the gate. They broke into a fast trot.
The sentry at the second gate, the gate we had to pass before we would gain our freedom, stepped into the path. Rather than checking the horses, I shook the reins over their backs in encouragement.
“Smile, Jonathan Harriman—as if your life depends on it.”
While I don’t know if he smiled, he plastered an expression that showed his teeth onto his face and pointed the result toward the guard.
“Look, look,” I called out gaily. “Samuel Coachman is teaching me to drive.”
I ignored the hand the red-coated guard held up, palm out, in the familiar gesture a traffic cop makes when he wants you to stop. Instead, I sawed at the reins, to which the horses responded with an erratic zigzag.
“Samuel,” I cried, the panic in my voice real as, in outward appearance, I tried to thrust the reins into the hands of my coachman.
“Here. Make them stop. I don’t know how.” Jonathan wasn’t quite able to gather the lines, and between us, we managed to slap the horses several times on the back. They quickened in response. “Look out,” I yelled to the sentry, just as he stepped back, dropped to one knee and lifted his musket to his shoulder.
“What are you two doing up there?” Caleb roared from inside the coach, just as if he were a law-abiding citizen with two unruly children.
He showed himself for a second in the coach’s window. “Stop this carriage instantly, I say.”
The guard caught a glimpse of Caleb’s bright uniform, perhaps enough to see the insignia of his rank. Certainly he heard the authority in Caleb’s voice. He lowered his gun in indecision just as we zipped past.
Close. That had been too close.
Jonathan twisted in his seat for a look back. He flashed a quick smile at me when he turned around again. I believe it was the first time I’d seen him truly smile. The resemblance between the two cousins became positively uncanny.
“How are we doing?” I asked in the face of that taut smile.
“Not too bad,” he said. “Don’t slow down. Just keep moving. I think there’s a conference going on at the guardhouse, and I saw a couple of soldiers bringing up riding horses. I’m very much afraid they may smell a rat. They don’t like people leaving the prison without an inspection. Sooner or later they’re going to be coming after us.”
“H’yah,” I yelled again at the horses. This seemed to be their magic word.
Keep them moving, Jonathan had said. So I did.
We picked Sergeant O'Malley up at the bottom of the hill. Caught him on the fly, because we didn’t come to a full stop. The wheels were stilling rolling when I once more urged the horses on.
Chapter 20
“Where’s the cap’n?” O'Malley asked as soon as he climbed aboard and took a closer look at the man wearing the coachman costume. He relieved me of the reins without so much as a by-your-leave. “Eh, missus, where’d you learn to drive?”
I only answered the first question, since I hadn’t, in fact, learned to drive at all. “He’s inside, Sergeant O'Malley. He’s sick, you know, and in a lot of pain—even if he has been doing a pretty good job of hiding it.”
“I knew, all right,” O’Malley grumbled. “I tol’ him’n’ tol’ him he needed to see the sawbones, but do you think he’d be listenin’ to his own sergeant? ‘Sure,’ he says to me, that night on the battlefield, ‘and they’d be takin’ me leg off, slick as skinnin’ a cat. I’d druther be dead,’
he says. ‘You clean it up, O’Malley, you ’n’ Henry.’
“So me ’n’ Henry, we did our best. I says to Henry, “I don’t know if I got everythin’,” what with the night bein’ so black I couldn’t see my own feet, let alone what we was doin’ We thought for a while, betwixt us, that we’d killed him. He went so white he like to glowed in the dark, ’n’ then he passed out and all.
“Next mornin’ he couldn’t get up ’n’ Ole Hooky hisself come by
’n’ asked for him. The cap’n said he’d be up ’n’ at ’em in no time and the general just laughed at him. Sent him home, he did—to England.
Sent me ’n’ Henry along with him, so’s to make sure he got here all right.”
“Henry? And just who is Henry?” I asked, fascinated by this tale while being rather surprised by O’Malley’s verbosity. He’d barely peeped a word earlier.
“You don’t know Henry, missus?” The sergeant acted as if I ought to know Henry.
I shook my head, thinking that here was someone else Caleb had failed to mention. Perhaps he didn’t know Henry either.
“Well, he’s the cap’n’s batman, a’ course,” O'Malley said. He picked the whip out of the pocket, snapping the thongs over the grays’
backs. I saw the lash did not touch their hides.
“Where did you learn to drive a team?” I asked, only instead of being facetious like O’Malley when he said the same words to me, my question was a compliment. For some reason, I was a little surprised to find an Irish soldier with a masterful touch as a teamster, although I don’t know why I should have been.
“Cap’n taught me.”
“Ah.” I might have known. “I guess you could say he taught me, too.”
O'Malley sent me a startled look. “He never,” he said emphatically.
From this statement, I gathered my performance had been less than impressive. Oh, well. There were other, more important things to be considered than O'Malley’s cut at my horsemanship. And I might as well ask the sergeant to satisfy my curiosity about all the stuff Caleb had neglected to tell me.
“Will I be meeting this Henry any time soon?” I asked.
On the heels of this question, we wheeled into the village of Princeton. Sergeant O'Malley checked the team long enough to dodge a small boy who ran across the road in front of us, then sped us on our way again.
“Sure, missus, don’t you ’n’ the Captain ever talk? He said he were goin’ to tell you yesterday.” He cracked the whip over the horses again, and our pace stepped up a notch. “Henry’s over to the coast.”
We’d been doing other things yesterday, when he got back from Dartmoor. Not that I was about to speak of them to Sergeant O'Malley.
Nor to Jonathan Harriman, who listened to this account with justifiably anxious interest.
“I assume it is Henry who has procured passage on a ship for me,”
he said. “My cousin told me it’s all arranged. All we have to do is get there in time to catch the tide.”
“Righto,” O'Malley said. “If we can.”
“What do you mean by that?” Jon asked. Worry caused a tracery of lines to crinkle his forehead. He already had deep crow’s feet radiating from the corners of his eyes, probably caused by his staring into sunlight reflected off the sea when he was aboard his ship.
O’Malley shot the other man a glance. “I’m not sayin’ if the militia come after us. I’m sayin’ when the militia come. It’s a matter of time, sor. Only a matter of time.”
Jonathan glanced over his shoulder, then turned backed and said,
“Well, I’m free now and I’m going to stay free. They’ll never take me back to that hellhole, I swear to you.”
“Did you see anyone following us?” O’Malley was probably right about it being only a matter of time. I just didn’t want to believe they’d be on to us this soon.
“Not yet.” Far from relaxed
in the first place, Jonathan tensed even more at this reminder of the danger in which he stood.
“Best to be ready, just in case,” O’Malley said, from the wisdom of a soldier’s experience.
I sighed. “You sound like my father. He always says to watch your back trail, so your past doesn’t take you by surprise.”
“Your father an officer, missus?” O’Malley could appreciate this advice.
“Er…no. Just smart—and experienced. I’m sure he’d agree with you, Sergeant O’Malley. I’m certain he’d be telling us to tally our resources and maintain our vigilance.”
“Don’t cost nothin’ ’cept a moment’s time,” O’Malley said.
“You can say that again,” I said. “Jonathan, I hope you know how to shoot better than you know how to drive a team of horses.” I looked at Sergeant O'Malley. “Fortunately, I do.”
“Well, missus,” O'Malley winked at me. “If not, you can try talking them to death if they catch up with us.”
“I tried to do that once already,” I said. “It didn’t work.” I found myself quite liking Ethan Delaney’s sergeant, although he was a fine one to complain about talking. In my opinion, he was capable of doing plenty of that himself once he got started.
“What do you propose I use for a weapon?” Jonathan held out his empty hands.
“There’s a gun right beside your knee, Jonathan. Why don’t you take a look and make sure the charge is fresh?” I pointed to the blunderbuss, almost obscured in the scabbard at the end of the seat.
He may have been reluctant to monkey with the horses. I noticed no such reluctance in his handling of the blunderbuss. He showed perfect competence in that. I saw what looked like an anticipatory grin playing around the corners of his mouth. If the time came he needed to fire the gun, I knew he wouldn’t hesitate.
Ethan had said we mustn’t shoot anyone—that we all served the queen—and perhaps, even in his altered state, that directive still held true for him. Not for Jon, however, and not for me. And from the unadulterated joy Sergeant O'Malley seemed to be taking from these doings, I gathered that criteria wasn’t of first importance to him either.
Of course, being Irish may have had something to do with that.
I bent down and rummaged under the seat, feeling for the set of dueling pistols the queen had given Caleb. In the end, I nearly folded myself in half looking for them. They weren’t there.
I felt as defenseless as a doll without arms.
This time, I managed to stifle the language that wanted to escape from my mouth. These men probably already held the opinion I was not quite the lady Ethan Delaney deserved—there was no point in confirming that assessment. “O'Malley, do you know where Captain Delaney put his pistols? The ones the queen gave him?”
The sergeant tooled the carriage around a bend in the road, narrowly missing a farmer with six sheep and a black dog taking their share out of the middle of the road. Stricken by a sinking feeling of helplessness, I’d almost forgotten I’d asked a question until he finally answered.
“Didn’t know the queen gave him any pistols at all, missus.”
“Well, she did. And the last time I saw them they were under this seat.”
Wait, though. Was that right? Or did I have a washed out dream of seeing Caleb get out of bed that first night, after we’d made love and I drowsed, blissful as a pampered kitten. I’d been more than half asleep. I know Caleb had tossed restlessly for a while, hurting too much to stay still for long. At the time, I thought I’d only dreamed of watching him clean the pistol I’d fired at the highwaymen. I decided now maybe it was a true memory. He had whiled away the long hours of the night with that task when sleep escaped him.
He would have put them in his bag when he finished, because when he rode to Dartmoor on the saddle horse yesterday, he’d only carried his smaller pocket gun concealed inside his jacket. In that case, the pistols must be in the boot.
“Pull up here,” I demanded, just as we swirled around a granite outcropping. “I have to get those pistols.”
“Missus,” Sergeant O'Malley protested, even as he sawed on the reins. The carriage jounced in the ruts as he pulled on the brake, and I heard a thud from inside the vehicle, followed by a faint moan.
O'Malley’s and my eyes met with a shared look of dismay. “The cap’n…” he said.
“Damn it,” I said. “Someone should’ve stayed with him. We all know he’s too sick to be left alone.” Me most of all. And if Jon Harriman hadn’t been such a wuss, afraid to drive a team of horses, I would have been inside the carriage with him. Should have been with him. “Jesus H. Christ! He might have died while we’re out here chitter-chatting like a bunch of old hens.”
Never, my heart told me, even as I struggled off the driver’s seat. I would’ve known.
Still, there’s nothing like a surge of adrenalin to add impetus to one’s athletic ability. Although I didn’t realize it until later, I must have done the equivalent of a standing broad jump when I leapt from the carriage seat to the ground. Not bad for an out-of-shape gunsmith, especially one wearing a dress. I didn’t even wait for the carriage to come to a complete stop.
And I only bruised one knee when I landed.
From the ground, I heard Caleb making enough noise groaning and cursing that I figured my heart had been right. He wasn’t dying just this moment. I ran to the back of the carriage. Jerking Caleb’s duffel out of the boot was the work of a moment.
“Make it fast, Miss Winthrop.” Jonathan Harriman’s tension grew more pressing by the moment. I saw one of his legs convulse in a spasmodic dance of anxiety. “We’ve got to catch that tide. Hurry.”
“I am hurrying,” I snapped. “Go—go, go.” Even as I fumbled open the recalcitrant coach door, O'Malley was lashing the whip over the horses. I sort fell inside as the carriage wrenched into motion, missing Caleb’s leg by inches.
He lay slack, his face pinched with pain. He was panting like an overheated dog on a hot day and his lips moved as he whispered, or maybe more accurately, whimpered a whole string of cuss words.
“What’s going on in here?” I demanded, just as if I didn’t see the effort he was making to recover himself.
He’d had his leg stretched out and propped on the opposite seat.
The noise we’d heard had been his booted foot dropping from the seat onto the carriage floor. Or so he told me when he found breath to speak.
“Lord God,” he said, his face still ashen. “I thought I was going to pass out for a minute. This leg hurts to beat hell. I’m sorry I yelled, Belle. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I crouched down beside him on the seat and put my hand on his forehead. “Damn! Your fever has risen again, too—big time. I sure wish we had some aspirin.”
“Aspirin?” He sounded as if he’d never heard the word before, and I felt my innards give a sudden lurch.
Belle. He’d called me Belle. Only now did the name register on my consciousness. And if I appeared as Belle to him, then in his own mind he must be Ethan. Having him yell from the pain didn’t dismay me.
Having him revert to Ethan did. I feared the infection stealing Ethan’s health was going to bury Caleb in the not-to-far distant future. Unless I was able to find help for him very soon. His leg had swollen again, ballooning against the seams of his trousers. It looked as though my rough surgery yesterday, far from helping him, may actually have made his leg worse.
Caleb had stocked the carriage with a stone water bottle this morning before we left the inn. The bottle was still half full. I wetted a handkerchief with some of it and dabbed at Caleb’s forehead. The little town of Tavistock passed by in a flash while I held the bottle to his lips and encouraged him to drink the last three or four mouthfuls.
He licked the last drops from his dry lips, lay back with his head resting in my lap, and within seconds had dropped into a deep slumber.
Sleep is good for him, I thought, and caressed his temples soothingly while I watched the scenery through the t
iny square of window. This lasted perhaps an hour until his stillness frightened me. When I could stand the fear no longer, I bent over him and put my ear close to his mouth. To my vast relief, I felt the soft touch of his breath. Lord knows I heard nothing over the rattle of the coach.
“Caleb,” I whispered after a while. His sleep didn’t seem natural to me. “Caleb, wake up. You can rest later.”
He was so still, his head heavy on my legs, that my thighs had gone numb. “Don’t you give up on me now.” He didn’t as much as flutter an eyelid, let alone stir. “We’ll soon be home.”
He roused at the sound of that word, blinking the sleep his eyes.
“Hmm? Did you say home?” He managed to push himself up without my help and I went slack, a smidgen of my fear easing. He peered out the window with his eyes half closed, as if the light hurt his eyes.
“Sounds good to me. The sooner, the better.”
“You’re so right. This is getting to be the world’s biggest drag.”
What an understatement. I couldn’t wait to get Jonathan Harriman, all safe and sound, aboard a ship bound for America. I’d have Caleb out of here in a flash, my conscience clear. I was almost certain Ethan’s and Annabelle’s hearts wouldn’t break, either, when they saw the last of us.
Caleb yawned. His head bobbled as the coach swayed, knocking his temple against a strut on the side of the carriage. Far from causing him to go faint again, I thought he perked up. “Where are we? How far have we come?” He took a deep breath and, with a visible effort, seemed to throw off the mantle of weakness dragging at him. He drew out his watch and checked the time.
“O'Malley,” he yelled, stronger than I’d have thought possible only moments ago. He poked his head out the window and pitched his voice to be heard over our rattling advance. “Where are we?”
I heard O'Malley call down to Caleb, “’Bout halfway, sor.”
In The Service Of The Queen (The Gunsmith Book 1) Page 25