To my immense relief, the room was empty. I closed the door and locked it behind me. Tired now with my short night and long ride, I removed my boots and lay down on the bed.
I felt blissfully drowsy. The ride, the port and brandy I'd imbibed the night before, and the horse care combined to send me to sleep in a trice.
So hard I slept that I did not awaken until nearly ten, which, as it turned out, proved to be most unfortunate.
Once awake, I performed my usual ablutions-washed, shaved, cleaned my teeth with tooth powder, and combed my hair. I donned my regimentals, since I seemed to have left my coat in the stables. I had a vague memory of sliding it from my shoulders as I rubbed down the horse in the morning heat.
I made my way down to the dining room, hoping to scare up a servant to bring me a large feast for breakfast. And coffee. Plenty of coffee.
When I reached the dining room, I heard raised voices on the other side of the door. One was Grenville's. Odd, because he prided himself on never shouting or losing his sangfroid in public.
The other voice was…
My eyes widened in astonishment and I opened the door.
"How the hell should I know?" Grenville was saying. "You and your wife are the closest thing…" He broke off and swung around as I entered.
The man facing him was Colonel Brandon. When Brandon saw me, his expression performed a powerful transformation from astonishment to relief to disappointed dismay.
I had witnessed the identical transformation one day a few years ago when I'd returned from a mission he'd sent me on. I had been dragged, half-dead, back to camp on a makeshift litter, and when Brandon had first seen me, he'd assumed me dead. His face had betrayed triumph, guilt, remorse, and behind that, glee. And then when I'd opened my mouth and called him a bastard, his look had changed to one of horror. He had wanted me dead, and against all odds, I lived.
His look now was little different. This morning, Brandon had once again thought, for some reason, that I was permanently out of his life.
Grenville, on the other hand, gaped at me, white-faced. "Lacey! Good God."
"What the devil is the matter?" I snapped. My headache had returned.
Grenville took two strides to me, relief lighting his eyes. He clapped both hands to my shoulders, and for a moment, I thought he would embrace me.
I frowned at him. "Tell me what has happened."
His fingers clenched my shoulders, hard, once, then he stepped back, his Adam's apple moving. "We thought you had gone and died, my friend," he said lightly. "I knew it had to be a mistake."
I looked from one man to the other. "Died?"
Grenville turned and strolled to the decanter on the sideboard. His hands were shaking. "Brandon here rushed in and told me he'd found you dead in the woods. Frightened me half to death."
My gaze switched to Brandon. His face suffused with blood. "I thought it was you," he said. "He was dressed in that brown coat of yours, or so I thought. He was facedown in the brush, and obviously dead. Hair the same color as yours, too." He glared at my head as if it were to blame for this deception.
"Did it not occur to you to roll the poor man over and discover who he was?" I demanded.
Brandon looked peevish. "He is down the side of a hill. I could not get to him through the mud and the saplings without help. Looks as though he was thrown from his horse and slid there. And a stable lad told me he'd seen you go riding in the wee hours of the morning. Sounded like a damn fool thing you would do."
"I did go," I answered. "But I returned. I even rubbed down the horse and left the furniture in the middle of the tack room. Did they not reason I'd returned?"
Grenville broke in. "Apparently not. Colonel Brandon came to rouse the house. And found only me. No one else is stirring."
Brandon sneered. "At ten o'clock on a fine summer's day. I do not think much of your friends, Mr. Grenville."
Grenville held up his hand. "They are not my friends. Believe that." He drank down a measure of brandy and clicked his glass back onto the sideboard. "Well, shall we go and see to this poor gentleman?"
Brandon led us to a lane that lay near to where I had been riding that morning. The stable lad who accompanied us called it Linden Hill Lane. Tortuous and narrow, the road climbed toward a low ridge that encircled the valley. To either side of the lane, the land fell away in steep, wooded banks. Trees grew thinly here, but the underbrush was dry as tinder in the summer heat.
About a quarter of a mile along, Brandon stopped. "There."
He pointed. A body was caught halfway down the brown hill, the brush and branches broken in a path to it. He lay facedown, very still. I could see why Brandon had thought him me. He was a tall, lean man with thick dark hair and no hat and wore a brown coat, the one I had mislaid that morning.
We stood in a semicircle, staring down at him. In addition to the stable lad, Bartholomew and Matthias had accompanied us.
"If he rode a horse up here," I began, "then where is the horse? Has it returned home?"
The stable lad shook his head. "Lad" was a misleading appellation-this man looked to be about fifty. A stable lad was simply a man, of whatever age, who looked after the tack and helped the grooms care for and exercise the horses. "Unusual, that," he said. "A horse will run right back to his own stable. Knows where the grub is, don't he?"
Grenville poked at the brush with his walking stick. "Bartholomew, can you get down there?"
The energetic young footman promptly began crashing through the dried scrub toward the body. His brother followed. I came after them, using my walking stick to bear my weight.
I slid and scrambled down the two dozen or so feet between the road and the body, arriving just as Bartholomew put out a large hand and turned the body over.
Matthias whistled.
"Who is it?" Grenville called down.
I straightened. "It's Breckenridge."
Chapter Eleven
Breckenridge's eyes were open to nothing, unseeing and glassy, pupils fixed. His mouth was open as well, as though he'd been drawing a breath to shout. His face had been slashed by the dozens of branches he'd crashed through, not to mention bruised where I'd hit him the day before. His knee-high boots and buckskin breeches were likewise scarred by his descent. My coat and his gloves were in ribbons.
Bartholomew slid his huge hand beneath Breckenridge's head. "Neck's broken," he informed us.
Grenville cupped his hands around his mouth. "Can you bring him up here?"
Bartholomew stooped beneath the branches. Breckenridge was a large man, but Bartholomew was larger. He rolled the older man onto his shoulder. With his brother's help, Bartholomew began climbing back toward the road, brush crackling and breaking under his onslaught. I followed slowly.
Bartholomew laid Breckenridge out at Grenville's feet. "Must have fallen from his horse, sir," he said, dusting off his hands. "Broke his neck tumbling down the hill."
Questions spilled through my mind. Had Breckenridge truly fallen or had someone broken his neck for him and tossed him down the hill? What had Breckenridge been doing up here at all? And why dressed in my coat?
I also wondered why Brandon had suddenly turned up at Astley Close, and why he'd just happened to have been taking a walk this morning in Linden Hill Lane. I thought I knew the answer, and beneath my stunned surprise at Breckenridge's death, anger seethed.
Something caught my eye and I moved away from the others. The soft earth at the side of the lane showed two shallow furrows. They began about ten yards from where Bartholomew had dropped the body and led straight to the edge of the road where Breckenridge had gone over. The tracks were intermittent, sometimes disappearing altogether, sometimes appearing for only an inch or so.