But the short-barreled, stocky muzzle loader was designed to do maximum damage at minimum range. The heavy shot blew a chunk out of one of the corner stones of the end house. The running figure veered out of sight.
“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, and ran on.
He heard the creak of saddle leather, the clatter of hooves on cobbles. Bursting around the corner onto Davies Street, he saw the flick of a horse’s tail disappearing into the night.
He expelled a long, frustrated breath. “Son of a bitch.”
Fist tightening around the stock of the empty blunderbuss, he swung back toward Brook Street. He was passing a house halfway down the block when he saw the gleam of a metal gun barrel lying near the service door at the base of the house’s area steps. Running lightly down to the darkened service area, he picked up the long, elegant rifle abandoned by his would-be assassin.
Sebastian stood in the doorway of his best guest bedchamber, his gaze on the small, dark-haired boy sleeping beneath the covers. “How bad is it?”
Paul Gibson collected his instruments in his bag and straightened. “Barring any serious infection, he should be fine. I was able to extract the bullet from his shoulder without doing serious damage to either bone or sinew. I suspect he fainted from shock as much as anything. He was certainly hollering lust ily enough while I was trying to sew him up. I’ve dressed the wound with some basilicum powder, and given him a couple drops of laudanum to help him sleep.”
Sebastian kept his gaze on the boy’s pale face. “That bullet was meant for me.”
Gibson clapped Sebastian on the shoulder. “Come. I could use a drink and so could you. The boy’ll be fine.”
“So who do you think it was?” said Gibson, lounging in one of the leather chairs in Sebastian’s library. “Obadiah?”
“Perhaps.” Sebastian splashed generous measures of brandy into two glasses and handed one to his friend. “Perhaps not. I keep thinking of Reverend Earnshaw, hanging in his own vestment locker like a side of beef.”
“What’s to say that wasn’t Obadiah’s work, as well?”
“It’s certainly possible.” Picking up the rifle, Sebastian held it out. “Ever see a butcher carry a weapon like this?”
“What the devil is it?” asked Gibson, studying the rifle’s strange screw mechanism.
“It’s a Ferguson breech-loading rifle.”
“A breech-loading rifle?”
Sebastian nodded. “The problem with rifles has always been that they’re so damn slow to load. That, plus they can’t be fitted with bayonets.” He turned the screw handle to open the breech. “This mechanism got around both those problems. I’ve heard it said that a man who knows what he’s doing can fire six rounds a minute and hit a target up to two hundred yards away with this gun.”
“Six rounds a minute? You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”
Sebastian pointed to the clogged screw mechanism. “The problem is, the breech threads have a nasty habit of clogging up around the third shot. It’s one of the reasons the Army never adopted the Ferguson. They’re quite rare.”
Gibson ran a hand over the weapon’s well-oiled stock. “I suppose Obadiah could have lifted it from some dead officer in the field and brought it back from the Peninsula with him.”
“He could have,” said Sebastian, going to stand beside the window overlooking the darkened street.
Gibson cleared his throat. “Is it wise, do you think, to expose yourself at the window in that way?”
Sebastian swung to face him. “What would you have me do? Hide in the house?”
“No. But . . . just draw the drapes, would you?”
Sebastian drained his glass with a laugh and stepped away from the window. “Did you get a chance to look at Earnshaw’s body?”
Gibson shook his head. “The constable from Tanfield Hill was still drinking a tankard of ale in my kitchen when your footman arrived with news that Tom had been shot. I’ll start on your Reverend first thing in the morning.”
Sebastian went to pour himself another drink. “I’ll be surprised if his body has much to tell us.”
“The Constable said something about a stab wound?”
“That’s what it looked like.”
Gibson finished his own brandy in one long pull. “Just like Sir Nigel Prescott.”
“Yes. Only this one wasn’t stabbed in the back.” Sebastian raised the carafe of brandy in a silent inquiry.
“No more for me, thanks,” said the surgeon, pushing to his feet. “You’ll be riding out to Tanfield Hill again in the morning?”
“Yes.”
Gibson nodded. He turned toward the door, then paused to look back and say, “Just be careful, Devlin.”
Chapter 27
SUNDAY, 12 JULY 1812
The next morning dawned heavily overcast and blustery, with an unseasonably chill north wind that whistled in the chimneys and sent trash scuttling down the city streets.
Before leaving the house, Sebastian checked on Tom and found the boy sitting up in bed, pink-cheeked and cranky.
“ ’Tain’t nothin’ but a scratch,” he said. “If’n Morey’ll let me ’ave me breeches—”
Sebastian touched the boy’s forehead and found him hot. “You’re not going anywhere, and that’s an order.”
“But the grays don’t like Giles—”
“I’m not taking the curricle. I’ll be riding out to Tanfield Hill on Leila. Alone.” Sebastian had no intention of getting another groom shot. “And you are staying in bed until Gibson says otherwise.”
“But—”
“No buts.” It was said in the officer’s voice that had once quelled the rebellious murmurings of a battle-hardened regiment.
Tom flushed scarlet and hung his head. “Aye, my lord.”
Beneath the sullen, wind-tossed sky, the village of Tanfield Hill lay unnaturally quiet and somber. As Sebastian trotted his Arab up the high street, a woman with a dark shawl drawn over her head threw him a quick, anxious glance, her hand tightening its grip on the child beside her. Sebastian supposed having two clerics murdered in your church in less than a week might tend to make the locals nervous.
He found the Dog and Duck nestled in a curve of the millstream, just beyond the churchyard. A plain-fronted, two-story brick building dating back to the early eighteenth century, it had a cobbled rear courtyard sheltered on two sides by the attached livery and carriage house.
“Aye,” said Jeb Cooper, happy to talk while he worked rubbing down the Arab just inside the livery’s wide doors. “Time was, I was groom to Sir Nigel Prescott himself.” A slim, wiry man somewhere in his late forties or fifties, just below average height, the ostler had a head of thick, short gray curls and a bony face shadowed by several days’ growth of beard.
“I ain’t surprised to hear he was lyin’ dead all these years,” said the ostler. “I figured somethin’ bad musta happened to him, when they found Lady Jane.”
Sebastian frowned, not understanding. “Lady Jane?”
“Sir Nigel’s mare. Dapple gray, with four white stockings. The sweetest-goin’ thing you ever did see. Trained her hisself, he did.”
Sebastian propped his shoulders against the whitewashed wall, his arms crossed at his chest. “The mare was found running loose on the heath the next day?”
“That’s right. The next mornin’.”
“Did you think at the time Sir Nigel might have been set upon by highwaymen?”
The ostler looked at Sebastian over the mare’s back. “Me? Nah. I never believed it for a minute.”