In the Brief Eternal Silence (43 page)

Tyler would not be expecting him to be out so
soon.

He moved from his uncharacteristically weary
stance and as he walked on down the steps, there was nothing left
in his demeanor to suggest that he had been affected at all.

He turned right and started down the long
line of coaches facing him, most of them abandoned for now as the
coachmen had left their posts to pop in to nearby pubs, secure in
the knowledge that their employers would be preoccupied for some
time to come. The light from the intermittent street lamps
flickered across his face and his fine wine coat made a very nice
target from the darkness surrounding him.

St. James heard a loud crack! and felt pain
in the side of his chest and arm, as though stung by hornets, and
was knocked off balance from the force of it. He let himself fall,
but controlled it to the degree that he landed between the two
coaches he had been passing, and he rolled into a crouch, his hand
flying to beneath his coat for a pistol that was not there. The
horses he had disturbed by his sudden dive beneath their noses
tossed their heads and backed up a few steps, and then as they must
have smelled blood coming from him, neighed loudly.

“Damnation!” St. James whispered to them.
“Put out a bloody billet why don't you two nags?” but his left hand
moved to soothe them as he peered into the alley that lay beyond.
He winced at the movement, but he did not look down to see how
badly he was injured.

He moved along the off-side of the horses and
into the shadow of the coach they were harnessed to, then to the
back corner of it. He crouched and using the wheel as cover,
glanced into the dark mouth of the mew that ran between the
building that housed Almacks and its neighbor to the left of it. A
conveyance came at great speed toward him from down the street, and
he crouched down lower into the shadow and turned his head to see
if this were some new peril. But it was Tyler, driving his horses
hard with one hand and resting one of his lordship's pistols on his
knee with the other. St. James jumped to the side of the horses as
they came up beside him, grabbed the near one's bridle, and slowed
it to a stop beside the coach he was using as cover.

And very nearly got shot for his troubles by
a nervous Tyler.

That man, made a bit more nervous by the fact
that he had nearly shot who he had been coming to aid, jumped down
and St. James gave him a crooked grin, his eyes bright and hard,
but he said nothing. He held out his hand which Tyler filled. “The
other?” Tyler whispered, but St. James shook his head. Then he
darted from behind the coach, leaving Tyler behind, and back onto
the sidewalk to the corner of Almacks, the pistol held loose but
ready at his side as he half crouched against the brick of the wall
and glanced into the blackness of the mew that ran along the side
of the building. Utter darkness met his eyes. Without any apparent
hesitation, he slid around the corner and made his way into the
deepest of shadows. There he crouched for a moment, letting his
eyes adjust to this new lack of light even as they were in constant
motion. His piercing gaze pounced upon and marked several
obstacles. A low row of barrels that had not yet been stored. A
wagon resting empty and unhitched to one side, leaving but a narrow
pathway around it in the narrowness between the two buildings. And
in direct line across from him another barrel sitting upright and
alone at the corner of the opposite building. St. James moved
toward it, paused as he noticed the roll marks in the dirt of the
alley. Then at the barrel itself, scuff marks where someone had
righted it, and footprints throughout it all, all alike, indicating
but one person. He knelt behind the barrel, saw that someone had a
clear view of the sidewalk he had just been strolling down, and as
he did so, he smelled freshly discharged gunpowder coming from the
wood. He lifted a hand, ran it along the edge of the barrel's top,
brought it up to peer at it. Then he cursed

for his hand was covered with his own
blood.

But he had no time for that now.

A fresh flurry of horse hooves came not from
the street but from

the dark mew at his back, and he sank down
into shadow once again, lifted his pistol and trained it on the
narrow space between the abandoned wagon and the brick side of the
building. A small horse came through it with a smallish figure on
its back. St. James waited until the hard riding horseman was
nearly upon him before rising, spooking the horse into nearly
unseating its rider.

“M'lord!” Steven gasped as he controlled the
cob purchased for him that day. “He's headed east toward the
river.”

“Riding?”

“On foot!”

St. James grasped the lad and pulled him down
from the skittish horse. “Well done! Find Tyler. Tell him to drive
the carriage as you have said.” With a single leap, he jumped into
the ratty saddle that they had tacked the sad little horse with. He
winced as his chest gave a fresh reminder of his injury, and then
he turned the cob and headed it back through the small gap of the
mew. He cantered through the main thoroughfare on the other end of
the alley, rode south on it for a few yards and then turned into
another shadowy mew that pointed toward the river. The cob was no
Behemoth, nor even a Gold-Leaf-Lying-in-the-Sun, but with his
assailant still presumably upon foot, St. James expected to come
across him quickly. Especially when he would have taken little
notice to the dirty urchin of a boy riding a sorry nag of a horse
who had come across him. He should have no knowledge that he had
been spotted, his direction noted, and that his intended victim was
fast riding him down.

It was not until a third alley that St. James
caught site of his quarry. He was running, but did not seem
panicked in any way, indicating that he must believe himself safely
away. Whether he was confident that he had done the duke enough
grievous harm to insure his death, St. James could not guess, but
his mouth tightened into furious grimace as he thought that if he
did not find out soon precisely what his injury was, the man may
very well have achieved his objective.

At the sound of horse hooves bearing down
upon him with alarming quickness, the man turned. In the dim light,
St. James saw a great deal of fearful astonishment on his face as
he must have recognized that red velvet coat. But then he had no
chance for any other expression or words, for St. James kicked the
cob, commanding without question his supreme effort, which the cob
gave to him as if a wolf had snapped at his heels. St. James with
unrelenting direction on his reins ran the cob into the man, and
over him.

There was a cry of fear and then pain. The
cob squealed and managed a little leap to avoid the man fallen
beneath him. St. James abandoned the saddle, landed awkwardly,
turned swiftly, and as the man rolled groaning onto his back his
first sight was of two gold buckled shoes, one on either side of
his head. The mouth of a pistol barrel pointed down at his
face.

The cob skittered around in a small circle at
the loss of its rider, nickered and then stood trembling. The man
stared up and St. James stared down. A large drop of blood ran down
the barrel of the gun, hesitated, and then dripped onto the man's
forehead. It ran down his temple and into his ear.

“Your weapon?” St. James asked. “Where is
it?”

The man blinked. There was not much light but
St. James could see that he was older than himself and extremely
dirty. His hair was graying and his face was a great deal scarred.
One eyelid kept twitching, but whether that was from some old
injury or an indication of his distress at the situation he was in,
St. James could not have said. Neither did he care. The assailant
licked his lips and after a false start managed to say, “'Neath me
coat.”

The coat, so many rags, lay open for want of
quite a few buttons and a butt of a pistol was just discernible at
the man's waist. “Remove it,” St. James commanded, “slowly and
carefully and hand it to me.”

The man's hand did not seem to want to work.
It shook as it moved with infinite caution to his waistband beneath
his coat. “Inch it out,” St. James told him.

The man inched it out, his eyes locked with
the duke's, the pistol St. James held a great exclamation point
between their gazes. “Take it by the barrel,” St. James
instructed.

The man's hand fumbled, grabbed the barrel.
With slow caution he brought the gun, a two barreled affair, in a
stiff-armed arc up to in front of St. James' waist. St. James
reached out and took it with his free right hand. Then St. James
cocked the second hammer on it and pointed it down into the man's
face.

The man looked up into the two pistol barrels
trained on him. “I—It is all a mistake. . . milord!” he
panicked.

“A very grave mistake on your part,” St.
James agreed.

“T'wasn't me that tried to kill you.”

“I have in my hand your pistol with one
chamber already empty. From the amount of powder I feel on it, I
would say it has been fired within the past few minutes.”

“What—what do you want me to do?” the man
asked in desperation.

St. James moved back two steps, both guns
still pointed on the man. “Get up!”

The man rolled, sat up, his eyes never
leaving the duke nor his weapons. “Aye. I know when I'm beat,” he
said.

“Stand up,” St. James commanded, and he
stepped back again, but this time he reeled and it was only the
wall behind him that saved him from falling. “Slowly.”

The man stood up as slowly as he sat up the
moment before. “I am not your enemy, milord,” he persuaded. “I have
no desire to see you dead. I am only a poor man trying to feed my
children.”

“Good. Then you have no care if I discover
who has put you about this business.”

“I—I do not know who is behind this.”

St. James leaned hard against the wall and
although the pistol he had taken from the man that was in his right
hand was aimed at his assailant steadily, the left one was shaking.
“How were you contacted?”

The man was silent, and St. James prodded him
by saying, “I am growing rather tired from my loss of blood and as
I have already squeezed the trigger and the only thing that keeps a
bullet from entering your heart is my thumb on the hammer, I should
not take overlong about this.”

“By the same way as before, milord,” the man
strangled out.

“Before?”

“Aye, when it was t'other duke, the duke
before you, out in Lincolnshire.”

St. James' eyes flared into unholy fire. “You
were involved in that?”

“I didn't mean to be, milord!” the man
babbled. “I thought it to only be a robbery. I had kids to feed
then, too, you know.”

“You must have a great many children,” St.
James observed.

“How were you contacted then? How were you
contacted now?”

But the man seemed more intent upon pleading
his case than providing information. “Never did I do it again,
'tween then and this day. That night turned me right off of
t'business, milord. But then I gets this message sayin' if I's
wished to keep that in t'past, I had best get t'one that shoulda
been done that night and wasn't in t'coach. What was I t'do, I ask
you?”

“Who sent you the message? Talk, man—”

But St. James' words were cut off by the
sudden sound of carriage wheels and horses' hooves coming at a high
speed into the mouth of the mew. St. James held his weapons on his
quarry, but his attention shifted at this new distraction, and the
man took the only chance he was likely to get.

He jumped to the side, snagged the cob that
had stayed near, and put the smallish horse between he and St.
James and with a yell, threatened it into a run with him beside it.
St. James lurched from the wall, staggered as he did so.

The carriage horses were reined in at the
sight of the fleeing man and the cob running toward them. St. James
saw that it was Tyler at the reins, standing and pulling his
pistol. Steven was up beside him. Before anyone could divine his
intention or call out, the boy stood and dived forward off the
carriage and onto the half crouched, running man. “Damn ya, lad!”
Tyler shouted down into the darkness. The man and the boy struggled
in the shadow of the carriage and it could not be seen who was who
or even what was happening.

The cob reacted badly to the flying figure
that had half landed on him before taking down the assailant. He
reared back, startling the carriage horses. The carriage lurched
forward. St. James found himself on one side of it and Steven and
the man on the other. “Damn it, damn it, damn it!” He reeled to the
head of the horses that Tyler reined in, steadying himself by
leaning against the near one's neck. His hands held both pistols,
thumbs still on the hammers of each. Blood stained the chest and
side of his coat, and his left arm was drenched with it.

Tyler was making desperate attempt to control
the horses, and at the same time trying to aim the pistol left in
his care at the man, but he did not dare squeeze off a shot for
fear of hitting Steven. The noise was chaotic and echoed against
the walls of the buildings on either side of them. Nervous
whickering, St. James cursing, Tyler damning the horses and Steven
in equal measure, and the panting and scuffling from the man and
the boy mixed with their cries of determination and pain.

“Damnation!” St. James said as the carriage
horse he leaned upon spooked and half reared in the shafts. At the
same time he glimpsed the two shadowed figures rolling on the
ground and the cob giving an ill-tempered kick that went over their
heads by inches. The cob's kick landed on the near carriage horse's
hindquarters and it squealed and jumped forward. St. James was
knocked to the ground. He fought the blackness in his vision. His
left hand, now beyond endurance, loosed the hammer and his dueling
pistol went off with what a boom that echoed endlessly in the
narrow mew. Then he lost the gun and he had no time to wonder if he
had shot himself, someone else, or if the bullet had only bit into
the ground. He rolled as the horses, now out of their minds with
fear, bolted forward. Tyler had ducked instinctively at the sound
of the shot and now he was nearly toppled from the driver's seat.
St. James rolled again and was just missed by the front carriage
wheel. He clawed at the ground with his fast weakening left hand,
his right still holding the confiscated gun, his one remaining
weapon. By some miracle, his thumb still held the hammer at the
ready.