The crowd was obviously shaken. Mrs. Bailey had pushed her way to the front. “Are you all right, my lord?”
“I am fine,” Nev said curtly. “Mrs. Spratt, are you injured?”
Helen looked subdued. “No. I didn’t mean to spook the animal.”
“No. You only meant to make me think you would shoot me in the face if I stood in your way. This has gone far enough. Go home, all of you, before you do something you will really be hanged for.”
“She could be hanged just for firing at you, my lord,” Aaron said with a spark of his old defiance. “What have we got to lose now?”
Nev raised his eyebrows. “I don’t plan to tell anyone about this. Least of all Sir Jasper, when he comes to read the Riot Act. Go home. Bring in the harvest. The money from the corn will pay for lawyers for your men. I swear I will do everything I can to help them.”
“And if you can’t save them?”
“Then I can’t. They broke the law. They knew the risks. I’m sorry. But if I can’t help them, then you certainly cannot.”
“And that is supposed to comfort us,” Aaron said with quiet bitterness. “That there is nothing we can do. That we are not real men, that we’re helpless to protect our families. The law is wrong. They were hungry.”
Nev ’s heart clenched. “I know.” Then he had an idea. A compromise. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, Penelope had said. “I know it has been hard for you at Loweston. For all of you. My wife and I are trying to make things better. Perhaps you would like to select one or two among yourselves to be…delegates. To come speak to us and our steward once a week. To tell us what you need.”
Murmurs began in the crowd. Nev thought they sounded considering. And Helen Spratt looked completely nonplussed-as well she might, since if a similar arrangement existed anywhere in England, Nev had certainly never heard of it. “You-you’d do that?”
Nev wondered if he would regret this. But it seemed fair. “We can’t promise to follow all your suggestions. Money will be tight, especially in the coming year. But we’ll listen and do our best.”
“Will you get rid of Tom Kedge?” someone shouted from the crowd.
The tension eased out of Nev so abruptly he found himself laughing, a little shakily. Louisa’s elopement had one good consequence after all. “That I can promise you!”
That simply, it was over. He could feel it. There would be negotiations and perhaps a few more protestations of good faith to be made, but there would be no blood. Weak with relief, he was already planning the conversation he would have with Penelope upon his return, when rapid hoofbeats came clearly from the direction of the house.
The crowd froze, staring in the direction of the sound. Nev hoped to God it wasn’t Sir Jasper. But when the horse came into view, and he recognized Thirkell in his most reckless hell-for-leather gallop, the shock of fear that went through him was worse than had an entire band of yeomen been riding down on his people. He could think of no reason for Thirkell to have left both their families that was not of the direst.
The horse drew closer. Nev ran to meet him.
Thirkell dismounted, gasping for breath. “Lady Bedlow-your wife-she’s run off somewhere. I can’t find her.”
Nev stared, unable to take it in. Penelope was missing; she was somewhere on these unfamiliar grounds, laced with traps to catch poachers. Where could she have gone? Why would she have gone?
Then there was a gunshot, somewhere to the east and close. Nev took off running, not waiting to see who followed him.
He crested a hill, and his blood froze; the crumpled figure of a woman lay on the path skirting the Greygloss woods. He could not quite be ashamed of his relief when he recognized Agnes Cusher’s faded gown and blonde hair. Someone raced past him, and he realized that he was followed-by the entire crowd. Thirkell caught up with him, panting.
“Aggie!” cried the man who had passed him. “Aggie!” He fell to his knees and turned her gently over, revealing a blood-soaked bodice that, thank God, still rose and fell. “She’s breathing,” Aaron said in relief as Nev reached them.
Agnes’s eyes drifted open. “He shot me…Bastard looked right at me and shot me.”
“Who?” Nev asked, crouching on her other side. “Who would do such a thing?”
“Sir Jasper. He made me bring her here. Don’t blame Josie, please-”
Nev knew he ought to speak gently to a woman in pain, but he found himself saying fiercely, “Who? Bring who here?”
“Lady Bedlow. She ran into the forest. He ran after her. Know it sounds crazy.”
Nev remembered that vicious gleam in Sir Jasper’s eyes when he looked at Penelope. It did not sound crazy at all. “Which way?”
“Toward Loweston.” Her hand fluttered. “Sorry-”
Nev didn’t wait to hear it. He stood. “I’m going after her.”
He tried to think how he would even begin to search for Penelope in Sir Jasper’s woods, filled with traps for poachers that only Sir Jasper knew-then his thoughts caught up with themselves. Traps for poachers. There were men here to whom Greygloss land was not as unfamiliar as it was to Nev. In his mind the most reckless compromise he had ever made sprang into life. He turned to the crowd. “Sir Jasper has my wife somewhere on these grounds. Some of you know Greygloss better than I do. Please, come with me and help me save her!”
“Why should we risk our necks for your wife?” someone shouted, and although he was shushed by several voices, the crowd still waited for Nev ’s answer.
Nev fought down his rage and his terror, fought down the urge to shout at them that Penelope was worth a hundred of them and he would make them help. That could not serve Penelope now. He didn’t think about what he was about to promise them. “Because if you do I will personally see those men freed from jail. Your families for mine. Do we have a bargain?”
“What about Aggie?” Aaron asked.
“Take her home. I’ll pay for the doctor. Who’s coming with me?”
Aaron reached for Agnes, but she flinched away. “Go with his lordship.”
“Aggie, you’re hurt, I can’t leave you!”
A tear leaked out of the corner of her eye. “All my fault. If I’d married you, Josie would never have had to take to poaching-”
“Aggie, please,” Aaron said, almost begging, “let me take you to a doctor!”
Nev ’s mind was filled with a hundred terrifying images of Penelope afraid, of Penelope in pain. The one thing he did not allow himself to think was that it might already be too late. “I don’t have time for this. I’m going.”
Aaron didn’t look up. “You won’t get far without help.”
“Someone else will take me to a doctor,” Agnes told him. “You have to save Lady Bedlow.”
Aaron bowed his head. Then he picked Agnes up as gently as if she were a porcelain vase neither of them could ever afford and carried her to one of the other men. “Take care of her.” Then he turned to the mob and roared, “Let’s get this bastard! Who’s with me?”
The mob roared back.
Nev ’s vision blurred. “Wonderful. Thirkell, go to the Loweston side and start a search there in case she got through.”
“Of course,” Thirkell said, dependable as always.
“Thirkell-” Nev put a hand on his arm. “If I don’t come back-tell Percy to take good care of Loweston. And wish him and Louisa joy for me.”
Thirkell didn’t protest or try to make a comforting speech. He just nodded and got back on his still-winded horse, spurring her on toward the Grange.
Nev turned and saw that Aaron was organizing a contingent of men, most of them armed. “Give me a gun,” he said.
“No,” Aaron said, and continued on.
“I wasn’t asking.”
Aaron looked at him and laughed. “These aren’t nice, reliable weapons like yours, my lord. These guns belong to these men, and they know just how far to the left they fire and how hard they jump. You’d have trouble hitting the broad side of a barn. Have you got a knife?”