“How odd how what turned out?”
“The marquis being the other fellow, and the other fellow being the marquis …”
“Yes, yes …” Jimmy dismissed this and turned to his sister. “You had me worried.”
She smiled. “I took a minute to ride up on Ryker …”
“You are not supposed to do that. We don’t want anyone to know they are riding behind us. We are supposed to watch over you and Lightning and pretend that we are the whole of our party. You’ll ruin everything.”
“Oh, pooh … who would dare accost us when we have two sturdy men in the fore, and Jonas armed and ready with me riding behind Lightning?”
“Omsbury, that’s who,” Jimmy said testily. “Ryker says the man is desperate to have you and will stop at nothing. He says we are to expect anything and everything.”
“I tell you what …” Arthur stuck in suddenly. “Hungry. Indeed, very hungry—we should find a posting house and eat.”
Jimmy considered him and apparently thought this to be a reasonable request. “If I remember correctly, there is an inn not too far up
the road. We’ll stop there.”
Thus, the two men rode abreast, with Jewels hanging back to ride beside Jonas, who had the spirited stallion in tow.
*
Renkins sat at a corner table with his partner in crime at the back of the tavern. He was a tall, gaunt man who had no qualms about breaking the law for a bit of blunt, and his friend Jem had been his cohort from youth.
He took a long drink of his ale and sighed. How else was a man like himself going to survive? He wasn’t very good at being a stable hand. He didn’t like horses much and had not in all his years of trying acquired the references needed to work for an employer who would pay him a decent wage.
When Omsbury had found him in Yarmouth and suggested this plan, Renkins was well satisfied. He was already down on his luck and in desperate need of cash, and the sum Omsbury offered was enough that he would have killed man, woman, or child without compunction.
He didn’t trust anyone other than his partner Jem, and he didn’t like that Omsbury would not hand over the purse until the job was done. But he had a plan. He wouldn’t make the trade until the purse was in his hands, safe and sound.
The job would require him to disable the stallion that was headed for Derby and abduct the woman Omsbury had described to him and said would be the only woman that was riding with the stallion.
He had agreed to take the job and believed the plan he had devised was fool proof. He knew the little family with their one groom traveled the open road with the stallion, but instead of following them and trying to get at them on the road, he did something else—something he hoped would be unexpected.
He went ahead to an inn—one they would be likely to pull into shortly to rest and water their horses and get a bit of food and drink. All he had to do was be patient and wait.
It wouldn’t take much for Jem, dumb as he was, to knock the groom out with the blunt of his gun from behind and then damage the horse. While a commotion was struck, Renkins would move in and snatch the girl. Aye then, one, two, three … and all his financial problems would be solved. When next he looked out the window, he grinned wickedly. From the looks of it, his plan was about to be put into motion, for here was the unsuspecting little group entering the posting house’s wide courtyard.
*
Jewels watched Jonas put the stallion in a stall. He turned to her and nodded as he nervously touched the handle of his gun in his belt. She could see he was uneasy.
“What is it? What’s wrong, Jonas?”
“Oi don’t know—but somethin’,” the head Henshaw groom answered.
Jewels moved away from him and went to the double-wide stable door to look about. Suddenly she heard a scuffle at her back. She turned to see where the noise was coming from, and when she looked back at Jonas, she let out a rip-roaring scream, calling for Jimmy as she saw Jonas go down.
And then she saw the knife. It glinted in the rays of the sun, and she looked at the man who held it. A stranger with cold eyes. He moved towards the stallion, and his purpose was obvious to her.
Jewels jumped into action, picking up a pitchfork and rushing him like a woman crazed. “You shall not hurt that horse … you beast!”
He turned, which gave her ample opportunity to place the pitchfork where it was most needed, pressed into his chest.
“Move and this will make a bloody mess of you. I don’t know if it will kill … but the infection you will suffer afterwards, that will hurt and torture and kill … so move, let me do to you what you were about to do to my horse … let me cut you.” Jewels threatened, and no one would have doubted her resolve to carry out that threat. Jem’s eyes opened wide.
Jewels again screamed for her brother and hoped Ryker would soon be arriving at the inn. When she heard someone at her back, she pressed the pitchfork into her captive’s chest and turned to look over her shoulder, but it was too late.