‘Lead the way.’ She followed Langhorne to where he had tethered his boat, her mind revolving like the bobbin on a spinning wheel collecting the threads together. If Langhorne was involved in this, she wondered how many of the friends had been part of the plot.
‘Where did Knotte get the tent, do you think?’ she asked as Langhorne walked along the branch to get into his boat.
‘Lieutenant Crawford lent it to him. He knows Knotte sometimes sleeps out as he couldn’t afford an inn.’
‘Do you think he knows Mr Knotte was hiding Mr Barton from everyone?’
‘I doubt Crawford could keep a secret like that, but we must ask him. Mind the step.’ He handed her into the boat.
She agreed with him on that. Crawford would’ve told Cooper at the very least, but neither of them seemed interested in Wordsworth’s poetry and she believed that a genuine ignorance. It couldn’t be them patterning attacks after an autobiographical poem they’d never read. Moss? Unless he was playing the role of agent provocateur, he was theoretically trying to stop the attacks, not carry them out. That left…
Langhorne pushed off from the island and began calmly rowing. ‘Everything all right, my dear?’
‘Yes, thank you for rescuing me.’ No, it bloody wasn’t. He’d just coolly shot his friend. Either he had just killed his co-conspirator or he was the only murderer in the crew. It was always hard to believe that the beast lay beneath the veneer of civilisation, but the signs were there, weren’t they? Of the circle, Langhorne was the one who pushed the furthest in jokes and in his approaches to women. He was crude and, now she thought about it, angry. She remembered his remarks about their college days. She had thought Knotte might bear a grudge being on the lowest rung of student, but perhaps it was the one in the middle, seeing the rich swan around in their fancy robes and flaunting their privileges, that bore the greatest animus? He was the one whose father had taken the biggest drop in social prestige; Knotte by contrast was likely grateful for his chance to rise.
The dropped rifle by Knotte’s body suddenly made new sense now. Langhorne was staging it so that everything could be blamed on the man he’d put beyond speaking. She could imagine what he’d tell the rescue party on the shore– oh, the poor madman, killing his friends, trying to drown Barton; Knotte had been confused, unstable; he’d ended it all by topping himself. Case closed.
But that meant she was now a loose end as she’d witnessed the shooting. Her insides turned to ice: she was in a boat with a murderer who would not hesitate to get rid of her. She really had done it now; Jacob was going to be furious.
‘What is going on in that pretty head of yours?’ asked Langhorne. He pulled hard on the rudder, spinning them in the direction of the middle of the lake, not the bank.
As much as she wanted to give in to her terror, that would get her nowhere. Was there anything to be gained by pretending to be ignorant? Or could she brazen this out? An ignorant Dora still needed drowning; a worldly Dora, one who presented herself as knowing but hardened to murder, an ally, might stand a chance.
Dora gave him a cynical smile and prayed she was making the right choice. ‘I was merely wondering, sir, how you managed to attack them all and lay the blame on Mr Knotte?’
ChapterTwenty-Nine
Elleray
Satisfied that his brother’s pulse was steady, Jacob tucked the viscount’s hand under the cover.
‘I’ve got to go, Arthur. There’s a manhunt underway and I need to redirect it to the right person.’
‘You don’t need to fuss about me,’ grumbled Arthur. Lying in bed, his hair mussed and wearing only a nightshirt, his oldest brother looked like the boy of Jacob’s earliest memories. He should never forget that beneath the bluster of the new viscount was that stubborn Arthur who both infuriated and protected him in equal measure as they grew up. The events of the past few days had proved that they needed a new way to communicate if Arthur’s managing ways were not to break their bond. But this day was not the ideal one to thrash this out with Arthur.
‘I’m not fussing. I’m tending to your medical needs,’ Jacob said evenly.
‘I don’t need any of this,’ Arthur waved at the medicine and the bedpan.
‘My sickroom, my rules.’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘Believe me, I am not. I consider it damned inconvenient of you to play the hero today of all days and get yourself shot.’ Worry nibbled at him. The shooter had not been apprehended– Langhorne, he was almost sure of it. They had taken a wrong turn considering Luke Knotte’s odd manners as sign of his guilt; the young poet was strange, but that wasn’t a crime. What was criminal was to try to murder the person standing in the way of your desired match. If Langhorne could do that, would he stop solving other obstacles in his path with violence– friends who told him ‘no’, magistrates who stood for law and order? Jacob feared not. He should send Dora a message to stay strictly indoors and not approach the man under any circumstances.
‘I suppose I should apologise.’ The tone was pure Arthur: resentful, though it was he offering the olive branch. The sprig he was offering was a little frost-bitten.
‘Apologise for what?’
‘For not sending word to you sooner when Father was dying.’
They were going to talk about that, were they? Jacob took a seat at his brother’s bedside. ‘You…’ he was about to say ‘hurt me’ but stopped. He and his brother didn’t speak frankly to each other about feelings. It had been trained out of them. English gentlemen were little islands of self-control. ‘I thought it bad form.’
Arthur grimaced. ‘Looking back, I suppose it was. My excuse is that I wasn’t thinking clearly. There was a tidal wave of responsibilities about to crash down on me and I could not bring a stranger into the family, nor bear the thought of arguing with you as I had to turn your companion away.’
How could his brother be such a blockhead? ‘I don’t understand how you thought I would do such a thing. I care too much for Dora, and for you all, to force a meeting on such terms. That would make me a cad of the worst sort, either setting her up for humiliation or adding to everyone’s upset while our father was dying. Don’t you know me even a little, Arthur?’
His brother didn’t reply. His gaze went to the window, to the sunshine and racing clouds. In the silence, Jacob realised something about him: Arthur had made a mistake. He hadn’t intentionally been spiteful or jealous despite what feelings were rumbling away beneath his actions; he had simply panicked. Arthur, Viscount Sandys, had panicked at the thought of a confrontation with him, his younger brother! When had Jacob grown in his brother’s eyes to be such a fearsome opponent?
