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Thankfully, Sayers stepped out of the door without a backward look and was swiftly followed by the ever dutiful Gutteridge. Chadwick paused beside the door and turned back to glare at him.
“Speak of this to nobody. You are lucky the boss is in a benevolent mood. People who have failed him like this have normally met their end by now,” he warned him.
“It wasn’t my fault,” the courier protested. “I didn’t take the blasted jewels.”
Chadwick paused. “I hope you haven’t,” he warned.
The courier remained silent and watched Chadwick leave. He couldn’t have said anything, even if Chadwick had waited around long enough to listen, which he didn’t. On legs that trembled, the courier waited for several moments more to give them time to get away.
Once silence had settled around him, and sleep had started to make its demands known, he carefully snuffed out the candle, and hurried out of the door.
It was wonderful to be outside again. The crisp night air was like nectar to his beleaguered lungs. Smothering his cough, he tugged the hood of his cloak up and hunched his shoulders against the night-time chill. The breath that would have fogged out before him disappeared into the thin folds of his meagre cloak. While it served its purposes well, unfortunately, it also muffled the sounds of his surroundings.
It took him a while to realise that someone was nearby. His eyes remained locked on the barely visible path beneath his feet, but his ears listened for the sound of footsteps he knew for definite were coming from behind him. If it hadn’t been for a few larger branches he had to step over, he would never have noticed the additional crackle of twigs being broken beneath heavy weight several feet away.
His heart began to pound. His
stomach churned with worry. The darkness seemed to close in on him and surround him in thickening menace. He began to pick his way through the trees as fast as he dared but had to be careful not to stray too far from the path.
His first thought was that it might be the two men who had followed him all the way from Framley Meadows, but he didn’t want to stop to find out. It could be Chadwick. That thought made him shiver and lengthen his stride.
It was obvious that he couldn’t now take a direct route home, so instead he took several circuitous detours. Each time he stopped to look back, the faint crack of twigs warned him that his stalker wasn’t far behind. Although he had yet to see anybody, he couldn’t forget the fact that he had just failed in one of Sayers’ tasks. The man didn’t like mistakes, and those who usually failed him didn’t live to tell anyone about their failures. He just couldn’t afford to be one of Sayers’ victims. Not now.
The courier continued to walk for a good hour until, eventually, he stopped to catch his breath. How long he stood at the base of a tree and listened to the woodland sounds he had no idea, but an age of utter silence passed before he felt confident enough to continue home. When he did resume his journey, although nothing untoward happened, he continued his detour until the first tendrils of dawn began to poke over the horizon.
“God, I am exhausted,” he murmured, eyeing his house up ahead with a sigh of relief.
He hated the abode. It wasn’t the place he would be in if he had the choice, but at least it was warm and relatively dry, and somewhere he could finally get some sleep.
With that in mind, he hurried home.
CHAPTER ONE
“Oh no,” Jessica sighed as she watched her brother, Ben, saunter across the garden without a care in the world. It wasn’t him she dreaded the sight of, it was the brace of freshly caught pheasant he had draped over one shoulder. Her anger stirred.
“Hello, sis,” Ben grinned as he stalked into the kitchen.
She waited for him to close the door behind him then began her tirade.
“You do know what the magistrate will do to you if you get caught with those,” Jess bit out through teeth clenched with fury.
The need to yank the birds off him and take them into the woods for burial was so fierce that she had to tighten her grip on the laundry in her hands.
Ben’s grin vanished. His gaze turned defiant.
“They haven’t caught me yet,” he replied carelessly. “Do you know how much we would have to pay for just one of these birds?”
“But we are going to pay a far higher price if you end up behind bars,” she snapped. “For God’s sakes, Ben, what do you think you are doing? At some point, the gamekeeper is going to see you, or realise that several of his birds are missing.” She threw him a dour look. “He won’t have far to look for the culprit if he starts to search for his missing birds, will he?”
“Just keep hiding the feathers and there will be no reason for him to suspect us,” Ben reasoned. He disappeared into the scullery to hang the birds before she could chastise him some more.
She quickly folded the rest of the washing and waited for him to reappear. When it became clear that he didn’t intend to, she went after him. It was terrifying just having the wretched things in the house. If the magistrate wanted to search the homes in the area and found them, it wouldn’t be just Ben who was carted off to gaol. She would have to go too because she was essentially an accomplice.
“Heaven knows what that makes the guests,” she grumbled.
She dropped the basket of laundry onto the floor and pushed open the scullery door.
“We need this food, you know we do,” Ben began as soon as she appeared in the doorway. “The guests pay us rent and expect a certain standard of food that we, dear sister, cannot provide on their rent alone. You know that.”
