A Fine Passion (Bastion Club 4)

Instead of dismissing her assertion of foul play, he’d studied her, then asked her to accompany him back to the scene. He hadn’t tried to take her arm, but had walked beside her back down the drive. He’d ordered Crabthorpe’s lads to wait at the gates until he’d finished examining the phaeton, then asked her to show him where she’d entered the lane.

Eyes narrowed, he stood beside her, looking toward the wreck. “Describe the man.”

Any other day, any other man, and she would have taken umbrage at the bald order; today, from him, she was simply glad he was paying appropriate attention. “Tallish—taller than me. About your height. Heavily built, thick arms and legs. Close-cropped hair, light-colored, could be salt-and-pepper, but I can’t be certain.”

Folding her arms, she stared down the lane, reinvoking the moment in her mind. “He was wearing a drab topcoat, well cut enough but not of the first stare. His boots were brown, good-quality but not Hoby, not Hessians. He was wearing tan driving gloves. His skin was pale, his face rather round.” She glanced at Warnefleet. “That’s all I recall.”

He nodded. “He was going around the phaeton when he heard you, halted, and looked at you.” He caught her eye. “You said he stared.”

She held his gaze for an instant, then looked back down the road. “Yes. Just stared…thinking. Considering.” She resisted the urge to rub her hands up and down her arms to dispel the remembered chill.

“And then he turned and left?”

“Yes.”

“No acknowledgment, no sign at all?”

She shook her head. “He just turned, got back in his carriage, and drove away.”

He waved her down the road, but along the verge on the opposite side. He paced beside her. “What sort of carriage?”

“Small, black—from the back that was all I could see. It might have been one of those small carriages inns have for hire.”

“You didn’t see the horses?”

“No.”

“Why do you think the black carriage ran the phaeton off the road?”

She was positive that’s what had happened, but how did she know? She drew breath. “Three things—one, the swearing I heard just before the crash. A young man’s voice, and he was swearing at someone else—not his horse or a bird or the sun. Someone. And he was frightened. Scared. I heard that, too. I wasn’t surprised to hear the crash, nor to find the wreck.”

Glancing briefly at her interrogator’s hard-edged face, features angular and austere, as aristocratic as her own, she saw he was concentrating, taking in her every word. “I hadn’t truly been listening, not until I heard him swearing, so I hadn’t heard the wheels of two carriages—truth be told, I hadn’t even registered one.” She looked ahead. “But the second reason I’m so sure the carriage driver intended the accident was the position of his carriage. It had stopped in the middle of the road, but skewed away from the phaeton, because it had been on the same side of the road as the phaeton.”

They were almost level with the wreck; she slowed. “And lastly…” She halted. Warnefleet stopped and faced her. After a moment, she met his eyes; she owed it to the injured man to report all she’d seen. “The way the carriage driver walked toward the phaeton. He was intent. Determined. He wasn’t in a dither or upset. He was intending to do harm.” She looked across the road at the wreck. “He’d already done that much—he intended to finish what he’d started.”

She waited for Warnefleet to make some disparaging remark, to tell her her imagination had run away with her. She steeled herself to defend her view—

“Where did the carriage stop?”

She blinked, then pointed to a spot some yards farther along the road. “About there.”

Jack nodded. “Wait here.”

He had few illusions about being obeyed, but at least she let him go ahead, trailing some yards behind him as he stepped onto the lane proper and walked along, studying the surface in the area she’d indicated.

A yard farther on he found what he was looking for. Crouching, he examined the shallow ruts left by the carriage’s wheels when the driver had braked. Swiveling, he glanced back at the wreck, gauging the distance and the angle of the carriage.

Rising, he circled the area where the carriage had stood, aware Boadicea was following in his footsteps, more or less literally. Eyes on the ground, he scanned as he slowly worked his way toward the phaeton. He’d ridden over this ground; she’d led the bay from the phaeton over it. He didn’t hold much hope…but then fate smiled. He crouched again, studying the single bootprint, all that was left of the unknown driver’s trail.

Boadicea’s observations had been accurate. The print was from an ordinary, leather-soled gentleman’s boot. Its size, almost as large as his own, was consistent with the description she’d given. The even imprint, with neither toe nor heel unusually deep, suggested the wearer hadn’t been in any panic. Deliberate, she’d said; deliberate it looked.

Head tilted, she’d been watching him; when he rose, she raised her brows. “What can you tell from that?”

He glanced at her, met her dark eyes. “That you’re an observant and reliable witness.”

Watching her swallow her surprise made uttering the compliment all the more worthwhile.

She recovered quickly. “So you agree that the carriage driver intended to harm—probably to murder—the young man?”