Chapter Twenty

T amsyn and Jowan explained it all to Lord Trentwood when Jowan took her to Trentwood Manor to fetch those items of hers and Patricia's that had not yet been moved to Apple Cottage. Trentwood sent for the constable, who was the head ostler at the inn and who had already, on his own initiative, questioned many of the witnesses.

"He came in on the Launceston Road, my lord," he told Lord Trentwood. "And drove off across Bodmin Moor. He was well muffled up, and no one could give me a description, but I've sent stable lads off to the likely inns where he might have changed horses with descriptions of the team and instructions to ask about the driver."

"Good man," Lord Trentwood approved. He was, as Jowan had told her, a remarkably slothful man, but he achieved the peace in which to be slothful by choosing good lieutenants and giving them their heads.

"We will find out what we can, my lord," the ostler said. "Miss Roskilly, will you let me know when Mrs. Mayhew is well enough to give me her statement?"

It would not be tonight, Tamsyn discovered, when she returned to Apple Cottage. The doctor was present and had approved the work Mother Wilson had done so far. After Tamsyn returned, he gave Patricia a dose of laudanum before he set the two bones and bandaged the arm firmly within its splints.

Patricia was unconscious by the time he was finished. He handed the bottle to Tamsyn. "She is to have no more than two tablespoons and not more frequently than every four hours, Miss Roskilly. Otherwise, give it to her as she needs it for the pain."

Tamsyn nodded while her mind whirled with confused longing and iron determination. She would not take the laudanum. She would not.

"The bruises and the wrenched knee will mend easily enough, and I do not expect complications. The main danger is infection in one of her scrapes or cuts. Even the arm could be a problem, but the breaks are clean, and the skin is not broken. Watch for fever. Send for me if you have any concerns. Can you watch her through the night? Don't be a fool about it. If you need someone else to share the duty with you, ask. Almost any woman in the village will be willing. They are all offended she was run down by a carriage on their Main Street."

"I can manage." Tamsyn produced the words with that part of her brain that was not totally focused on the mix of opium and alcohol sitting so temptingly within a few feet of her hand. She had to stay focused on her friend, whose aura was fading, and losing even more color as the energy leaked from it through several tears.

Jowan was waiting downstairs when she went down to see the doctor out. She sent the maid up to sit with Patricia, with firm instructions to call Tamsyn if there were any changes, and sat with Jowan to have a cup of the tea he had asked the maid to order from the kitchen and a slice of the cake the cook had sent up with it.

"Do you think it was Coombe, Jowan?" she asked.

"I cannot see why," Jowan answered. "What was to be gained? They cannot have thought she was you. She is six inches taller and far more buxom."

Tamsyn wasn't sure which was worse—to think Patricia was run down on purpose because of some plot of Coombe's, or to believe it was a random attack from a stranger. For an attack it was. Patricia had been sure that the driver aimed his team and equipage directly at her.

One thing was certain. If it was Coombe, he hadn't finished. Tamsyn vowed to be very careful.

*

Tamsyn sat through the night with Patricia. Twice, she fed her another dose of laudanum, struggling not to show how much the sweet perfume of the concoction affected her. For the rest, she sat with a book or a piece of needlework, fighting the siren call of the bottle. By morning, she felt as if she had climbed a mountain or run for miles—exhausted and aching in both body and soul. But she had not taken the laudanum.

After she and the maid helped a sleepy Patricia to attend to her bodily needs and wash, Tamsyn went to bed for a few hours' sleep. It was a blessing and a relief to leave the laudanum bottle behind and guarded. Her last thought as she dropped into oblivion was that she had faced temptation and won. This time, at least.

*

A week after the accident, Patricia was fretting about still being confined to bed, but the doctor forbade her to get out of it for at least another week. "After that, you can get up, but you are not to use the arm until the splints come off," he told her. She was still taking the laudanum at night. And Tamsyn was still fighting the urge to help herself to some of it. The desire dominated her days and kept her awake at night, but she was determined not to succumb.

The investigation into the carriage and its driver had stalled—they had discovered the horses had been hired in Launceston, but the driver had been bundled against the cold and no one could describe him. The charge of horse theft had been added to the charge of assault by carriage since both vehicle and team had apparently disappeared. As far as the constable could discover, they had never emerged from Bodmin Moor.

Jowan had posted guards around the cottage for several nights, but nothing had happened. Then the local newspaper carried a snippet from the London papers about an embassy affair in Paris, where the Earl of Coombe was mentioned as one of the guests. After that, Tamsyn suggested that the men should be able to spend their nights asleep in their own homes, especially since it was raining day and night as if another flood was imminent.

Two nights later, the rain clouds cleared in the evening, and the sunset promised a fine day to come. Tamsyn went to bed wondering whether Bran and Evangeline would arrive home on the morrow. Their letter announcing that they were on their way had arrived days ago, but she was certain they must have been delayed by the weather.

She woke when someone clamped a hand over her mouth and hauled her upright by her arm. Before she was awake enough to struggle, whoever it was had her firmly grasped with an arm around her chest, her back to a hard body, both of her arms trapped inside the bedding that he'd hauled up with her.

Her heart was pounding, her stomach clenching so powerfully that she thought she would vomit, her mind screaming for Jowan, her heart plunging into a void of despair and loss.

"Light!" That was a voice she knew. Coombe. But the stench of his cologne had already warned her. Sure enough, someone set a spill to the embers of the fire and then to a candle from the mantelpiece, and she could see Paul Willard, holding the candle, and the dark outline of a man between her and the candle, whom she recognized by his shape and smell to be Coombe. Which meant the man holding her was probably Marco.

"You have put me through a lot of trouble, Tammie," Coombe said. "I am most displeased."

Anger came to rescue Tamsyn from the inertia that had kept her still. She would have spat had her mouth not been held closed, and even so, she struggled.

"I have come to collect you," he continued. "I advise you to come quietly. If you make a fuss, I shall have everyone in the house killed. You do not want to be responsible for their deaths, Tamsyn, do you? Your servants and your poor friend, who has had such a nasty accident." He finished with a giggle that told her exactly who was to blame for the accident. Where fear for herself had lost its power, fear for them held her still. For the moment.

"The drugs?" He held out a hand to Willard, who lifted the flap of a pouch he was wearing and handed Coombe an apothecary's bottle.

No! She couldn't! No drugs. Anything but that. Her heart gibbered even as the craving within her woke and yearned towards the bottle.

"I shall make it easy for you, Tammie," Coombe crooned. "Normally, you would have to earn poppy juice of this quality, but I know you must have been suffering supply shortages in this god-forsaken wilderness. No noise now! You can let her mouth go, Marco."

"No," Tamsyn said, shaking her head as soon as her mouth was free. "No drugs, Guy. I'll come quietly, but no drugs. I have had nothing since I left London. You'll kill me."

"Stupid bitch," Willard mocked. "A tart like you? No way."

"Rubbish," said Coombe. He narrowed his eyes. "What trick are you planning to pull? Take your dose, like a good girl." He tried to get the bottle between her teeth, but she shook her head and fought against the arms confining her, beyond rational thinking. Coombe swore when some of the liquid spilled. "Hold her head still," he ordered. Willard and Marco forced her head back and held her nose. Coombe forced the bottle between her lips and then held them closed on the liquid that managed to make it inside.

Now that it was too late to stop him dosing her, Tamsyn's panic subsided a little. Perhaps enough had escaped for her to survive such a huge helping of something Coombe described as quality . Or not. If Coombe was successful in taking her away, she would be better dead. No. She couldn't believe that. Jowan would come for her. Jowan would rescue her.

It was her last coherent thought, as a great cacophony of sound went up from close by. If that was angel bells, there was something wrong with them. They sounded appalling. Perhaps, after all, her recent repentance was insufficient, and this was the sound of hell.

*

When Evangeline and Bran called into Inneford House on their way home, Jowan was tempted to beg them to stay. This last week, in particular, with Tamsyn so busy nursing Patricia, he had felt very alone in the great house.

"How is Patricia?" Evangeline asked. "And Tamsyn! We almost rushed straight back after we heard about her accident. Are they still at the squire's?"

"They have moved into their new cottage," Jowan admitted. "Yours is ready too."

Tamsyn would be so pleased to see her friend back and to welcome her to the home that she'd put so much effort into preparing.

"I'll ride down with you. Let us go as far as Tamsyn's and check for lights. I know she'd want to welcome you home if she is awake."

They had just turned the corner to Apple Cottage when a great hullabaloo of sound began. The horses shied. Bran had to calm his horses, and the driver of the carriage that waited outside Apple Cottage was having a similar issue with his team.

Up on the second floor of the cottage, Patricia had her window wide open and was clanging a metal tankard against a chamber pot, while screaming for help. "Intruders! Help! Murder!"

"Evangeline, get down and run for help," Jowan commanded. The rest of the plan came to him as he spoke. "Bran, tie your reins up so the horses think they still have a driver and set your team to a trot, then jump off onto the carriage. We'll throw the driver off and then you can drive the carriage away while I wait for whomever comes out of that door."

By the time he'd got that far, Evangeline was gone, and Bran had the reins tied securely to the front rail of the cabriolet, with enough slack to let the horses keep moving. They were almost on the carriage. Jowan leaped from his horse to the driver's perch and kept going, taking the driver down the other side, trusting Bran to deal with the vehicle and team. And sure enough, both coach and cabriolet continued down the road, and his horse was following. Meanwhile, along both sides of the street, windows were opening and doors, too, as village men in nightshirts and hastily donned trousers tumbled out into the street. Many of them were carrying rifles—hunting weapons or souvenirs of the late war.

"Some of you go around the back to stop whoever comes out that way," Jowan ordered. "Patricia, what is happening?"

Patricia leaned out to call down, "Intruders. I heard a voice in Tamsyn's room. A man swearing, I think. Maybe more than one. Certainly, more than one person moving around. I shoved a chair under my door handle and came to the window to make a racket."

"You did well," Jowan told her.

A bang and a crash sounded from inside the house. Patricia looked away and leaned out again. "The chair held," she said, her voice shaky.

Silence then, for far longer than he had expected. What was happening? Were the servants safe? The two maids slept in the attics, and the cook in a room off the kitchen. If whoever it was thought to collect more hostages, the servants would be vulnerable. He should have thought to tell those covering the back door to get the cook out if they could.

Before he could send a message to that effect, the front door crashed back and three people burst out into the street, only to stand staring in shock at the absence of the carriage and the presence of a reception committee.

One he recognized as the moonlight fell on him. Coombe. Not three. Four people. Behind Coombe, another of the three was carrying a body. And not just any body—the slender form of Tamsyn, wrapped in a blanket, and limp. Jowan had a moment of screaming panic at the sight of her still form, but his rational self assured him she would be of no use to Coombe as a hostage if she was dead.

At the same moment, Coombe spoke. "We have Tammie Lind. Let us pass. Marco will slice a piece of flesh off the treacherous bitch each time anyone makes a single hostile move." The man at Coombe's side grinned and waved a knife that looked sharp enough to carry out Coombe's threat.

The other man swore and stepped back, shifting Tamsyn so her head, which had been hanging over his shoulder, was held away from his body. "Your whore just vomited again," he complained to Coombe.

They were his last words. A single shot rang out and he fell, Tamsyn with him. The neighbor on the other side of the road had been a sharpshooter in the Rifles, and he took his chance at a shot as soon as Tamsyn was no longer protecting the man's torso.

Several other men raised their weapons. Marco took a step towards Tamsyn, thought better of it, and took off at a run, and Coombe broke and ran a moment later. Several guns fired, but neither man stopped, so if any of the bullets had hit them, they had not done nearly enough damage.

Half the village took off in pursuit.

Jowan left them to it while he ran to Tamsyn. She was hurt. Unconscious. Vomiting, the villain who held her had said.

The villain lay sprawled back against the house at the top of the steps, his eyes staring, a small hole in his coat in the region of his heart explaining why. Jowan recognized him. Willard. The man who had led the previous kidnap attempt. Tamsyn had fallen mostly on top of him, but her head and shoulders dangled over the edge of the step.

At least she had not fallen headfirst onto the stone steps or the cobbles of the street. Jowan put his arms under her and lifted her just as Patricia opened the front door. Willard slumped into the house, and Patricia drew back. Jowan stepped over him and carried Tamsyn into the parlor. Her breath was broken and shallow, and when he set her down and checked her pulse, he could scarcely find it. He could smell the stink of vomit overlaying the sweet sickly stench of laudanum. Patricia was limping around the room, lighting candles from a spill as Evangeline entered, followed closely by Bran.

"How is she?" Evangeline asked, as she knelt beside Jowan.

"I don't know." Jowan grimaced. "He gave her laudanum. Didn't you say it might kill her if she had to give up again?"

Evangeline's eyes widened with alarm, but she spoke calmly. "She is still alive, and I shall do my best to keep her that way."

"She vomited," Patricia commented. "At least twice, by what that man said. That would have helped to get the poison out, would it not?"

"Yes, it would have," Evangeline agreed. "Patricia, are you not still recovering from your carriage accident? Get off your knee before you damage it further. On your way out, Jowan, send someone for the doctor."

Jowan cast a glance at the door, torn between his need to hunt down Coombe and his aversion to leaving Tamsyn.

"Tamsyn will get the best care I can give her," Evangeline assured him. "I trust you and Bran to capture that man and prevent him from hurting my friend ever again."

"I have horses," Bran said, "and you know the countryside as well as anyone in the village."

His mind made up, Jowan strode towards the door, where Tamsyn's maids and cook were standing, watching their mistress. They stepped out of his way, but he paused and turned back to Evangeline. She had not waited for him and Bran to quit the room but was unbuttoning Tamsyn's nightgown.

"She is my life," he said.

The nurse looked over her shoulder to meet his eyes. "I know. She is still alive, Jowan. Go and get that villain."

He nodded and left the room, Bran on his heels. As he stepped over Willard, who still blocked the doorway, he heard Evangeline say, presumably to the cook and the maids, "You, put some hot water on. I want warm water to bathe her. You two, fetch me towels and washcloths, and…"