Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

“ T here’s another,” Elizabeth called, pointing towards fluttering feathers in the underbrush and thrilling a little as Stephen moved liquidly, his second gun already going off.

He was impressive as he worked, practiced at reloading and an accurate enough shot that no bird they had spotted so far had escaped his aim. She slipped from the horse and walked over to join him where he was standing under a spreading oak, the dappling light over his face as he concentrated on ramming the next shot into his first fowling piece.

He had brought two weapons, advising her that it was often safer when out hunting to have a backup in case one were to only wound an animal and need to put it out of its misery. It made sense to her. While she had never been on a hunt, one thing that Dudley had always spoken about to anyone nearby with passionate interest was the workings of guns. He had a large collection and when he was a teenager he had spent hours loading and reloading them.

The riflemen in the army can do this twice a minute he would say when questioned. Am I not better than a common soldier?

Elizabeth could remember how uneasy she had felt during those months, how it had felt to be in the woodlands around the estate and have her shoulders prickle and wonder if maybe Dudley might be out with one of his guns.

While he had never threatened her with them, something both his parents had been very serious about, she had always wondered if she would not look rather like a deer to her brother, prey to be killed with fear to be feasted on afterwards, as fulsomely as a venison dinner.

“You do this well,” she said softly to Stephen, trying to push away the increasing sense of wrongness she was feeling.

Perhaps it was because she knew that out in the forest Dudley was prowling around with only the dubious restraint of the Duke of Seymour to keep him in check. Perhaps it was the way he had been so quiet all morning, checking his weapons as the others talked, watching those around him with dark malignant eyes.

“I have had a lot of practice,” Stephen said. “Come, let us walk a little way. I am tired of riding and the horses could do with a rest.”

“Gladly,” she said, taking his arm after he secured the horses. “I have not heard nearly so many other shots from the forest. I think you shall win the wager, Your Grace.”

He smiled at her, the secret special smile he only ever seemed to send to her. It made his eyes crinkle and sparkle and her heart skipped a beat every time she saw it. While she knew that he might not feel for her the way that she felt for him, it was something between them. Something more than convenience and business and practicality. It was more and it made her hope, no matter how foolish she told herself that was.

“Of course I shall,” he said, grinning in a quick confident grin that made him look boyish and wild. She wondered what he had been like as a young man, whether he had been freer and wilder, not constrained with the trappings of dukedom keeping him serious and tired. “I have your good luck at my side and I also picked the part of the woods which has the most birds in it.”

She laughed, surprised. “ Stephen! ”

“ Elizabeth, ” he mimicked back. “What, was I supposed to let Seymour or your brother beat me?”

“Herbert might have,” she said, laughing again. “And what about the Marquess?”

“Perceval knows that all is fair in a wager,” Stephen said gaily. “And as for my dear brother, I love him with all my heart but he has not the patience or the eye for hunting in a woodland. He will have loosed his shot at anything that moves or gotten distracted by Perceval looking to gather a bunch of wild flowers for the Marchioness.”

She could picture it distinctly, Perceval exclaiming over some of the lovely blooms in the woodlands while Herbert waited impatiently, partridges sneaking away behind them. It was such a charming, such an appealing image that she didn’t notice the sudden stillness around them for a moment too long.

It was the sort of stillness of a woodland when a predator was nearby. She had been out one evening when she was very young, wandering the estate looking for bird’s nests and moths. The evening had been filled with sound, bird call and rustling and all the things she had already become so used to. But then everything stopped dead, so still and silent that she had felt the hairs on the back of her neck go up. A fox slinked from the shadows, a bird in its mouth as all other wildlife froze to avoid becoming a second dinner.

That was happening now. That was happening now and her arms were covered with goosebumps and her scalp was prickling with the sense of wrong wrong wrong wrong -

Stephen was still speaking but Elizabeth couldn’t hear him through the rushing in her ears. She turned her head and saw as if in a dream her brother standing there, a way off, his gun trained on them. He was hunting them after all and it was too late to stop him.

It happened very slowly, or perhaps very quickly. The gun bucked and she moved, moved quicker than she had ever moved in her life. She flung herself into Stephen, pushing him away and feeling a line of fire bloom over her shoulder - red and bright and horrible. She fell onto the forest floor, winded and in pain, unable to process what was happening.

Was she feeling this weak already? Why couldn’t she move?

“ Stay down ,” Stephen hissed in her ears. She felt like the world was coming in and out of focus, barely managing to process that he was pressed over her, keeping her shielded. She couldn’t get him to move, her hands were trapped under her and her tongue felt so thick in her mouth. She wanted to tell him to run to safety. She wanted to tell him not to be hurt for her, not again. She knew it was again. She knew that with a clarity that had come from a place inside her, where things were hiding.

There was no point hiding from them anymore.

He wouldn’t move. He was so heavy. She was - she was -

Stephen cursed softly as another bullet kicked up dirt just an inch from them. How Barnes was firing so quickly, he didn’t know but it felt like there had been more bullets than was possible in the last few minutes.

His hands were wet with his wife’s blood.

His hands were wet.

But he was still, he stayed still and hoped that Barnes might think he had gotten lucky with one of the stray shots. Might stop firing long enough to give him a chance to -

There was a pause. “I have a pistol aimed at your head, Westall,” Barnes called. “Get off my sister. I want her to watch as I put you down in front of her eyes. That will teach the slattern her place.”

Rage boiled underneath his skin and for a moment red floated in front of his vision, but he did not move. He could not make a mistake at this moment, he could not take a wrong step.

“Westall!” the voice was closer. “Come on, man! Are you too cowardly to face me?”

“Westall!” closer again. Stephen counted his footsteps and listened to Elizabeth breathing, shallow and weak. He did not know where she had been hit, just that she had protected him with her own body. He could not let her down now. He would not.

“Have I truly ended you at last?” the voice was close, now, but a breath away and Stephen felt the toe of a boot in his side. He rolled with it, latched around Barne’s legs and pulled him to the ground in a smooth movement that set off his final shot like a crack into the air.

It was a pistol shot and he knew that the difference in sound would have the others running towards them. He could already hear their voices, the shouts of alarm. Whatever happened next, Barnes would not kill his Elizabeth. That was enough for him.

“Curse you, you blaggard!” Barnes flung himself out from Stephen’s grasp, crawling backwards and throwing the gun from him. “I will see the end of you and your line if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Run,” Stephen said, getting up into a crouch, blood trickling from his lip. “Run like the cur you are, Barnes. I will lead a wolf hunt after you and you will see what the last thing you do is this day.”

The voices were getting louder. Barnes looked at him, hate and revulsion in his face and bolted into the woods. Stephen waited barely a moment, just long enough to see that some of the people joining him would be able to care for Elizabeth before calling to Perceval and to a few of the servants running up and taking after Barnes.

His feet pounded the loamy earth, Perceval at his side, his men at his back. It felt right. It felt the way things were always going to end, perhaps. Putting down a mad dog in his woods, culling a wolf from a pack. He could see Barnes ahead, ducking around the trees and knew that he would do anything to escape.

They ran through the woods, and then towards the fields beyond.

“What happened?” Perceval called, his voice stern and serious.

“He shot Elizabeth,” Stephen growled. He felt like an animal that had been let off its leash at last. He wanted blood, blood that was not his own dear wife’s on his hands. He wanted to tear and destroy. He wanted to kill. “You will have to be my sanity. He shall face justice, and not at my hands.”

Perceval nodded. He knew this role, they had done this before. Stephen’s rage and need for justice flared bright and cold and he could see the way to destroy a man, to burn and salt the earth. Sometimes he needed someone to hold him back, and while Perceval could not actually stop him, his old friend was a good balance for his anger.

“There he is!” one of the gamekeepers called, pointing to where Barnes was racing for a horse that had been left for him. It was so clearly planned and prepared that Stephen felt a rush of cold fury run through his blood. How long had Barnes been planning to do this? How could he sit at supper with his sister, looking her in the face and intending to murder her on the morrow?

“Faster, lads,” he said through gritted teeth. They would need to catch Barnes before he reached his horse or there would be no stopping him.

One of the groundskeepers cut to one side at a nod from him and the other went to the left while he and Perceval ran straight ahead. Barnes saw them coming and redoubled his efforts but he was tiring, clearly unused to this much activity. Perceval put on an extra burst of speed and darted in front of him, forcing him to turn and face Stephen himself, bold cruelty on his face, daring him onwards.

He was a weak man, Stephen realized. A weak, cruel, small man who hurt people for the pleasure of it. He was a cancer in their lives, in the whole of England. Perhaps if he had not had Stephen’s family to focus on he would have turned that sickness on those around him, those nearer to him. No more.

“How does it feel to watch your wife die?” Barnes asked, face twisted into a sneer. “Come on, Westall. Spill my blood. Murder me like your family have wanted to all this time.”

Stephen slowed his pace and walked up to the man, rage and vengeance in his heart. He wanted to take his throat out. He wanted to tear out his heart. He wanted to kill .

But he didn’t need Perceval to stop him.

Elizabeth would want him to do the right thing, the thing that would be best for their family. Elizabeth would want him to be bigger than her brother.

Barnes smiled at him. “I knew I’d kill her one day,” he said softly, like he was speaking a prayer.

Stephen said nothing, simply stopped in front of him and hit him hard enough in the jaw to knock him to the ground. “Secure him, take him back to the house. We will summon the authorities.”

Barnes was still calling him names, demanding that they fight as he turned away. Vengeance was for the past. Elizabeth, his Elizabeth was for the future.

Stephen started to run, feeling hope and fear war in his chest. His future had been left on the ground, bleeding. He could only hope he would not come back to find that she was dead.