What Remains of Heaven

Chapter 26

With a startled cry, Tom started up, half spinning around in the seat.

“Bloody hell.” Grabbing the boy, Sebastian dragged him off the exposed high perch and into the inadequate shadows cast by the delicate carriage.

The rifle crackled again. Heads tossing, the chestnuts whinnied in terror, their hooves clattering on the cobbles as they sidled nervously. Sebastian was hideously conscious of the boy’s head lolling against his shoulder, could feel the slick wetness of blood on his hands. “Tom,” he whispered. “Tom!”

The boy let out a low moan, just as the gun boomed once more. Sebastian caught his breath. A third shot?

He scanned the dark, empty street before them, his eyes narrowing as he spotted the shadow of a man crouched in the area steps of a house some three doors down.

“Morey!” Sebastian bellowed.

Sebastian’s front door crashed open, spilling a flood of golden light down the steps. The majordomo charged out, blunderbuss in hand. “Where are they?” demanded the former gunnery sergeant. “I’ll get ’em, Captain.”

Sebastian yanked the majordomo down into the shadows and snatched the blunderbuss. “Here. Take care of the boy.”

Already, Sebastian could hear the sound of running feet, disappearing fast. “Bloody hell.”

Pushing up, he sprinted down the darkened street, blunderbuss in hand. A good three-quarters of a block ahead of him, a cloaked figure with a hat pulled low darted toward the corner.

“Watch!” bellowed Sebastian. “Watch, I say!” As the figure reached the corner, Sebastian paused to raise Morey’s blunderbuss and fire.

But the short-barreled, stocky muzzle loader was designed to do maximum damage at minimum range. The heavy shot blew a chunk out of one of the corner stones of the end house. The running figure veered out of sight.

“Bloody hell,” swore Sebastian, and ran on.

He heard the creak of saddle leather, the clatter of hooves on cobbles. Bursting around the corner onto Davies Street, he saw the flick of a horse’s tail disappearing into the night.

He expelled a long, frustrated breath. “Son of a bitch.”

Fist tightening around the stock of the empty blunderbuss, he swung back toward Brook Street. He was passing a house halfway down the block when he saw the gleam of a metal gun barrel lying near the service door at the base of the house’s area steps. Running lightly down to the darkened service area, he picked up the long, elegant rifle abandoned by his would-be assassin.

Sebastian stood in the doorway of his best guest bedchamber, his gaze on the small, dark-haired boy sleeping beneath the covers. “How bad is it?”

Paul Gibson collected his instruments in his bag and straightened. “Barring any serious infection, he should be fine. I was able to extract the bullet from his shoulder without doing serious damage to either bone or sinew. I suspect he fainted from shock as much as anything. He was certainly hollering lust ily enough while I was trying to sew him up. I’ve dressed the wound with some basilicum powder, and given him a couple drops of laudanum to help him sleep.”

Sebastian kept his gaze on the boy’s pale face. “That bullet was meant for me.”

Gibson clapped Sebastian on the shoulder. “Come. I could use a drink and so could you. The boy’ll be fine.”

“So who do you think it was?” said Gibson, lounging in one of the leather chairs in Sebastian’s library. “Obadiah?”

“Perhaps.” Sebastian splashed generous measures of brandy into two glasses and handed one to his friend. “Perhaps not. I keep thinking of Reverend Earnshaw, hanging in his own vestment locker like a side of beef.”

“What’s to say that wasn’t Obadiah’s work, as well?”

“It’s certainly possible.” Picking up the rifle, Sebastian held it out. “Ever see a butcher carry a weapon like this?”

“What the devil is it?” asked Gibson, studying the rifle’s strange screw mechanism.

“It’s a Ferguson breech-loading rifle.”

“A breech-loading rifle?”

Sebastian nodded. “The problem with rifles has always been that they’re so damn slow to load. That, plus they can’t be fitted with bayonets.” He turned the screw handle to open the breech. “This mechanism got around both those problems. I’ve heard it said that a man who knows what he’s doing can fire six rounds a minute and hit a target up to two hundred yards away with this gun.”

“Six rounds a minute? You’re lucky you weren’t killed.”

Sebastian pointed to the clogged screw mechanism. “The problem is, the breech threads have a nasty habit of clogging up around the third shot. It’s one of the reasons the Army never adopted the Ferguson. They’re quite rare.”

Gibson ran a hand over the weapon’s well-oiled stock. “I suppose Obadiah could have lifted it from some dead officer in the field and brought it back from the Peninsula with him.”

“He could have,” said Sebastian, going to stand beside the window overlooking the darkened street.

Gibson cleared his throat. “Is it wise, do you think, to expose yourself at the window in that way?”

Sebastian swung to face him. “What would you have me do? Hide in the house?”

“No. But . . . just draw the drapes, would you?”

Sebastian drained his glass with a laugh and stepped away from the window. “Did you get a chance to look at Earnshaw’s body?”

Gibson shook his head. “The constable from Tanfield Hill was still drinking a tankard of ale in my kitchen when your footman arrived with news that Tom had been shot. I’ll start on your Reverend first thing in the morning.”

Sebastian went to pour himself another drink. “I’ll be surprised if his body has much to tell us.”

“The Constable said something about a stab wound?”

“That’s what it looked like.”

Gibson finished his own brandy in one long pull. “Just like Sir Nigel Prescott.”

“Yes. Only this one wasn’t stabbed in the back.” Sebastian raised the carafe of brandy in a silent inquiry.

“No more for me, thanks,” said the surgeon, pushing to his feet. “You’ll be riding out to Tanfield Hill again in the morning?”

“Yes.”

Gibson nodded. He turned toward the door, then paused to look back and say, “Just be careful, Devlin.”