“Sir Hugo knows about Meldrew, Charlie. He received Hetty’s letter and immediately sent a rider out to find us. We rounded up the men and came straight here, but didn’t arrive until last night. Sir Hugo has stayed in London to round up more men and notify the upper echelons in authority. He promised he would be a day behind us. Even with any unforeseen delays, he should be with us the day after tomorrow,” Joshua reasoned. “All we have to do is keep everyone out of Meldrew’s clutches until then.”
“We will have a shoot-out with anyone who bloody well tries to take any of us,” Marcus said as he patted his gun. He took a moment to dig into his saddle bag and tugged out another gun, which he passed to Charlie. “In case of emergencies.”
“That’s all very well and good,” Charlie argued as he took it off him with a nod. “But Hetty isn’t out of Meldrew’s clutches. Nor is Mabel for that matter. Both of them are still in that bloody town. Her red hair is beautiful, but it is like a bloody beacon. Meldrew will look out for her because she is not too hard to miss, is she? Not only that but she is my wife, and Simon’s sister.”
Barnaby sighed and thought of the red-headed beauty who had looked petrified yet so determined, and could understand Charlie’s determination to get her back. If he was in Charlie’s situation, he too would fret and panic until he got a woman like that back into his arms.
“Why in the hell did you let her do it?” Charlie demanded from nobody in particular. “You know that she is distinctive. She wasn’t even in disguise.”
“She said that you would see her in the crowd. She was supposed to give you assurance,” Joshua warned.
“She did make sure I saw her, but if I noticed her, then so could Meldrew,” Charlie reasoned.
“Hetty volunteered for it. We argued with her but, in the end, she made it clear that she wasn’t going to stay behind at the house and fret. Nor could we move her to a s
afe house against her wishes. We needed everyone in town to help get you and Simon out. She couldn’t exactly stay at the mill by herself, now could she?” Barnaby reasoned.
“She was quite argumentative,” Joshua added. “Mabel, her friend, said that a woman’s scream would be more distinctive, and would worry the crowd a bit more. She was right.”
“I have never seen any crowd panic like that.” Barnaby shook his head in disbelief. “It’s pure bloody genius really.”
Joshua threw Charlie a somewhat mischievous look. “The pouches worked well.”
Charlie was starting to feel as though he had been living in a different country over the last few days and lifted his brows at Joshua.
“Pouches?” He demanded querulously.
“She carried two pouches full of pig’s blood. When she held them tightly they burst, and spilled blood into her pocket. It leaked through her dress. She started to scream that she had been stabbed. The more she clutched her side, the more the blood leaked through her dress, the more convincing she became. Mabel started to shout that there was a killer on the loose,” Joshua explained.
“Pandemonium reigned,” Barnaby added with a proud grin. “She did us proud. It went better than we expected.”
Charlie gave him a dark look. “I hope so. It is bad enough that she risked her life for us. I will be damned if I will sit back if our situations are reversed, and she ends up condemned for taking part in helping us escape.”
He studied the fine tremors that lingered in his hands, and clenched his fists to hold them steady.
“It was bloody risky. What if Meldrew’s men catch her?” Simon asked.
“She won’t be strip searched, now will she? She could say that she had no idea where the blood came from. She was going to make sure that the pouches were disposed of so she wouldn’t be caught with them. There is nothing to prove that she did anything. Even Meldrew couldn’t condemn an innocent woman just for being related to a prisoner. The public wouldn’t stand for it,” Barnaby reasoned.
“Sir Hugo would get her out, if Meldrew gets hold of her,” Joshua added firmly at the doubtful look on Charlie’s face. “She will be fine. She is really rather resilient, isn’t she?”
Barnaby glanced at Charlie. “She reminds me of some of our colleagues’ wives.”
“I still can’t believe she did this,” Charlie declared with a shake of his head.
In that moment, his stomach gave up the fight and he leaned over to one side of the horse, and promptly lost his condemned breakfast. Minutes later, he sat upright again and threw a rueful look at his colleagues.
“We will go back for them,” Barnaby declared firmly. “But you get to stay behind. Once you are safely hidden, we will go back and fetch her. If she hasn’t turned up at the mill, we will look for her in town. Meldrew knows what you look like, but he hasn’t got a clue about us.”
“We could tell Meldrew that we are in town to watch the hangings,” Joshua announced. “If the bastard challenges us, he has a fight on his hands.” He took a moment to glance at his watch and mentally calculated where the women should be by now. “They are in disguise now anyway, so Meldrew isn’t likely to be a problem to them anymore.”
He glanced at Charlie but knew from the look that lingered in his eyes that he wasn’t convinced, and wouldn’t be until Hetty was with him.
Charlie bit back a sigh of impatience. Although he knew that his colleagues had everything covered, his mind whirled in a confused kaleidoscope of emotions, thoughts, doubts and fears. He wished he could settle on one particular feeling and work on it but, all he could think about right now was that Hetty was back in that town, with his arch-enemy within spitting distance.
“You should have set fire to the gallows,” Charlie snarled.
It was bad enough that he had been put through his recent trauma. To think of someone as beautiful and innocent as Hetty going through something like that tortured him.