Marian's Christmas Wish (28 page)

“It seems to me that we are being followed.”

Alistair laughed. “Now, who would ever follow us?” he
asked. “You cannot be serious.”

The coachman tugged at his cap. “All the same, sir, I
think I’ll try a back road, and just see if I am right. I know several in the
area, and they are only a small distance from the main road. We’ll not lose any
time.”

They started off. Marian wrapped her cloak about her
and lay down on the seat. Alistair looked around him with some interest,
occasionally glancing back where they had come. After a short while on the back
road, he prodded Marian with his boot.

“Awake?”

Marian opened her eyes. “I am now,” she said pointedly.

“Mare, I think there may be something to what the
coachman said,” he stated almost casually. “I see three horsemen through the
trees. They don’t move any closer to us, but they are following.”

She sat up in a hurry and looked where he pointed. “Surely
not,” she whispered as if the horsemen could hear her. “Why would anyone do
that?”

Alistair was silent a long moment. “You know, Marian,”
he said slowly, “I think it is the crest on the door. Someone knows this is
Lord Ingraham’s carriage.”

Marian shivered as a prickle of fear teased the length
of her backbone. “Don’t you think we would be better-off on the main road,
where there are other travelers?”

“My thought precisely,” he said, and opened the coach
door, leaning out. “Coachman! Get us back to the main road, and be fast about
it!”

“Right, sir. I see a turning place just ahead.”

They slowed and stopped. Marian peeked out the window
and
saw the
horsemen. One, two, three, she counted through the trees. “Oh, I don’t like
this,” she said in a tiny voice.

“No more do I,” her brother agreed. “I think that Lord
Ingraham has more enemies than even he knows about.”

“Oh, God,” Marian gasped, “and look at you in his
clothes.” She stared at her brother, dressed so impeccably in Ingraham’s
overcoat and hat. She stared out the window again at the riders and then sagged
back against the cushions, her eyes wide with terror.

Alistair shook her. “You know who they are?”

She nodded. “Reginald Calne. And he swore only last
night to kill Lord Ingraham.” She looked down at the floor, unable to bear the
horror in Alistair’s eyes. “And me, too, if I spoke.”

“And here we sit in his carriage.” Alistair glanced
down at Lord Ingraham’s clothes and slowly removed the beaver hat. “I do
believe the Wynswich luck has run out. Mare.” He started to take off the
overcoat and then reconsidered. He stared at his sister for the briefest
moment, as if measuring her very spirit and soul. He grabbed her hand. “Marian,
sit down on the floor,” he said quietly.

It was a voice of authority she had never heard from
her little brother before. Without a word, she slid to the floor.

“Lie flat and put your hands over your head, there’s a
good old thing,” he said, and crouched beside her as a pistol ball shattered
the window on the side of the coach where he had been sitting only seconds before.
The glass rained down on them in a brittle shower. Marian watched as Alistair
coolly grabbed a hunk of glass. “Give me that handkerchief.”

She handed him Lord Ingraham’s handkerchief. He wrapped
it about the end of the shard and handed it to her. “Sir Reginald means to part
my hair,” he whispered grimly as he clung to Marian. “But I’m damned if he’ll
touch you.”

Shouting to his horses, the coachman attempted to turn
around in the narrow lane, left muddy by the melting snow. The horses panted
and struggled, and the wheels wedged themselves in deeper.

With an oath of his own, the footman leapt from the box
to free the wheels. As he struggled around to the back wheel, another shot
split the air, and he fell without a sound, facedown in the mud.

“Coachman, get down, and be very fast about it,” said a
familiar voice through the trees.

Without a word, the coachman swung himself from the box
and edged toward the coach door, his hands raised high above his head.

“Coachman, damn you for this,” Alistair said in a voice
Marian had never heard before. “You’re endangering an innocent woman.”

Reginald Calne rode onto the lane, a pistol in his
hand. He spoke in French to the rider beside him, who dismounted. Another
gesture, and the Frenchman pinioned the coachman’s arms behind his back. Calne
grinned and nodded, as he kissed his hand to the coachman. “Night, night, sleep
tight!”

Without a word, and with only a fleeting backward
glance at Lord Ingraham’s carriage, the coachman was dragged farther into the
woods. In another moment, a single shot rang out.

Alistair let out the breath he had been holding. “God,
Marian, this man is ruthless.”

“I know,” she said through dry lips. “Alistair, he will
do worse to me.”

Alistair squeezed her arm. “Not if I can help it,
sister.” He stretched out next to Marian and whispered in her ear. “I’m going
to open the door and step out.”

“No, Alistair,” she whispered.

“And when I do, I’ll close it behind me,” he continued.
“Now, hush! As soon as I do that, you open the other door, slide out, and start
running. The carriage will be between you and them. Run into that field. There
is a fence, and it may be too muddy for them to jump it. You’re not far from
the main road. Run and wave your arms about. Lord knows I never could catch you
when you had a head start.”

“Alistair, no,” she pleaded.

“Mare, I—”

“Lord Ingraham, do come out,” Sir Reginald called. “I
have something particular to say to you.”

“Very well, Reg,” Alistair called in a creditable
imitation of Lord Ingraham’s Wiltshire drawl. He rose to his knees and looked
down at his sister. “‘Marian. I never told you this, but I love you. I’m sorry
I wasn’t a better brother.”

Marian grabbed his hand and kissed it, resting her
cheek for a moment against his arm. She took off her cloak, grasped the window
glass, and edged for the door.

“Oh, do come on, Gilbert.” Sir Reginald said. “See,
now, I have dismounted. I really do want to look at you eye to eye, anyway.”

“Ready?” whispered Alistair.

Marian nodded.

Her brother took a deep breath and opened the door,
kicking down the step and standing on it, but not descending. His broad
shoulders covered the door window, blocking Sir Reginald’s view of the
interior.

“You’re not —” Calne began.

“No,” interrupted Alistair, “but I will do.”

Marian opened the door and slid onto the road. She
looked at the fence only yards away, deciding whether to go over or under. She
started to run, gathering her skirts about her, holding them high above the mud
so they would not drag her down. She slid down the little swale at the road’s
edge and was under the fence before the Frenchman still on horseback shouted
and spurred his horse toward the fence.

As she ran, floundering through the mud and into the
snow that still deepened the meadow, Marian heard one shot. ‘‘Damn you,
Reginald Calne.” she cried, and glanced over her shoulder. The sight made her
redouble her efforts.

The Frenchman had attempted the fence. His horse lay
screaming, this side of it, forelegs twisted at an impossible angle. The other
Frenchman crawled through the fence, shouting at her. Above it all, she heard
Sir Reginald’s laughter. It started on a high pitched note and seemed to rise
up a madman’s musical scale.

“Marian Wynswich.” he called. “Oh, Marian!” He threw
himself at the fence and was running toward her across the muddy meadow,
skimming low across the ground in his black cloak like a bird of prey.

I will not look back. I will not look back, she told
herself over and over as she ran toward the highway. She expected at any moment
to feel a knife come to rest between her shoulder blades, but then she knew he
would never do that. Sir Reginald Calne would punish her especially. She closed
her eyes for an instant, wondering if Alistair still suffered.

Her breath came in gasps as she looked toward the road.
It seemed to come up so slowly, as if she ran toward it on enormous legs, in
the middle of a nightmare. As she watched the road and struggled through the
field, she saw a coach.

It was a mail coach, large and lumbering. “Thank you,
God,” she gasped, and started to wave her arm. She ran through a herd of dairy
cows grazing in the muddy winter grass, hoping that they would slow down Sir
Reginald, or at least attract the attention of the coach driver. She ran on,
her lungs burning, her side shooting out pains.

Another moment, and the fence stretched before her.
Without a second’s hesitation. Marian slid underneath it, scrambled to her feet
again, and ran shrieking into the road. A crofter, pitchfork in hand, stood
before his barn on the distant side of the road. He seemed frozen there,
staring at her. Her heart sank as she knew she would never reach him before Sir
Reginald was upon her. She cast her whole attention on the mail coach.

“Help me,” she screamed as Reginald gained the high
road and grabbed the back of her dress.

Her face streaked with tears, she tugged against him.
He grabbed her leg, digging in with his fingernails, and she remembered the
broken glass in her pocket. She wrenched it out and dragged it down his arm, even
as it cut into her palm. She raked it over his arm again and again, her breath
coming in animal gasps, until he let go, screaming unspeakable obscenities at
her.

Blood streaming from her hand, Marian leapt to her feet
again and saw the crofter running toward her now, waving his arms.

“No, you don’t,” Sir Reginald shouted, and lunged for
her again.

Too exhausted to scream, Marian dodged him and limped
down the highway toward the mail coach, which to her eye was coming faster now,
even as the driver whipped the team and shouted to them.

As she staggered along the highway, her bloody hand
clasped to her aching side, Sir Reginald made another lunge at her legs and
pulled her to her knees. As she struggled under his weight, he grabbed her hair
in a painful handful and jerked her neck back. She looked up to see his other
hand high above his head, the knife in it open. She closed her eyes.

The mail coach careened by. Marian heard the sound of
wheels jamming and the shouts of the passengers inside. She waited for the
knife to fall.

And waited.

Marian crouched lower on the highway and watched the
coach skid across the highway as the brakes locked. She lay there another
moment before she realized that Reginald no longer held her hair. She raised up
slowly, cautiously, and looked about her, the glass still clutched in her
dripping hand.

Sir Reginald Calne was gone. Marian looked back at the
fence. The Frenchman was pinned there by the crofter. She raised herself to her
knees, gasped, and fell back again.

Sir Reginald lay under the wheels, his head wrapped
about in the coachman’s whip. His hand still opened and closed convulsively
around his knife. He mouthed something to her and tried to inch himself forward.

Marian stared in horrified fascination, and her fingers
went to her mouth.

The coachman jumped down and ran to her. She threw
herself into his arms, sobbing and trying to bury her face in his greatcoat.
The man put a meaty hand over her head and covered her eyes as Sir Reginald
shivered and drifted sideways like a crab and died.

“Little lady, are you all right?”

Startled, Marian opened her eyes. She clutched at the
overcoat and stared up into the coachman’s face. Her face broke into a smile,
even as the tears streamed down her muddy cheeks. “Jeremy Towser?” she asked,
her voice doubtful. “Jeremy?”

“The same.” He waggled his finger at her even as he
held her close. “I told you there were rough numbers in this world, miss.” He
looked down at her. “And why aren’t ye in Bath with your mother and long-lost
brother? And where is that other one?”

Marian started then, tearing herself from his grasp. “Alistair,”
she screamed, and started running toward the fence again.

Towser grabbed her and held her tight. “Wait a minute,
miss! You’re in no condition—”