Virginia Henley by Seduced Page B

until dawn, he vowed.
    He was about to emerge from the shrubbery when he heard a heavy step crunch on gravel. A man with an oil lamp was coming from the stables. He watched him go to the back of the house toward the servants’ wing. It was the same man who had been cleaning the carriage yesterday.
    Suddenly a brilliant idea came to him, and his mouth curved into a self-satisfied smile. He made his way to the carriage house adjacent to the stables and slipped quietly inside. Bernard saw with satisfaction that there were no windows through which he could be observed and quickly lit a lamp. There was a toolbox on a shelf, from which he selected a mallet. He went to the rear of the carriage and hammered the lockpin from the hub of the tall carriage wheel and slipped it into his pocket.
    How simple an act. He need do nothing more. The carriage would have to travel a few miles before the nut would loosen and fall, then the large wooden wheel would fly off, likely overturning the vehicle. The beauty of it was, there was no possible way they could connect him with a carriage accident.
    His business in Stoke was completed for the present and Bernard could hear the siren call of London. To be precise, the voice of Angela Brown from the stage of the Olympic Theater.
    * * *
    Anthony Lamb had been withdrawn since he learned of his father’s death two weeks past. He felt guilty that he had not been in Ceylon to take some of the business responsibilities from his father’s shoulders or to console his mother in her loss. Anthony was frustrated that soon he would be seventeen and had never set foot out of England.
    He was a little bitter that his parents had never sent for him to come to Ceylon and decided that, as soon as he came of age in just over a year, he would make the voyage. He wouldn’t say anything to Antonia, but when this Adam Savage fellow arrived, he’d pick his brains and learn all he could about the Indies. Once he began to make plans for the future, he felt decidedly better.
    Antonia was happy to see her brother had taken pains with his toilet this morning. He wore dove-gray riding breeches and a jacket of blue superfine. She saw that he was wearing a new tiewig and doubted he would go to so much trouble for his usual morning ride.
    “I thought I’d ride over and speak to the tenants this morning. They will have heard about father by this time, and I think I should reassure them that I won’t be making any changes now that they are my tenant farmers.”
    Antonia nodded and hid a smile. They had two farms on their land and both tenant farmers had pretty daughters, hence the new tiewig. “There’s a wonderful breeze today, I’ll probably go sailing.”
    He grinned at her and she was relieved that he looked like his old self.
    “I don’t suppose I could talk you into staying in the Medway?”
    “No fear! What’s the point in living on the coast if you don’t sail in the sea? You are not hinting that I’m not as fine a sailor as you, are you Tony?”
    “Oh, Lord, now you’ll take my words as a challenge! Just be careful? You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
    As Antonia was changing her clothes for sailing, sheglanced out of her bedchamber window to see Anthony take off as if he were riding in a race. Wasn’t it just like him to urge her to caution, then risk his own neck riding hell for leather! He was a superb horseman and she watched with pleasure as he soared over the hedge that took him from the park into the meadow. He made the jump cleanly, but then something happened and rider and horse separated company. She saw that the horse was behaving like a wild thing and that Tony had not gotten up from his fall.
    Antonia ran down the stairs and called to Roz, who was in the breakfast room. “Tony’s come a cropper. Get Mr. Burke!” She picked up her skirts, ran out through the garden, across the small park, and climbed through the hedge into the field.
    Her twin lay still and pale as death upon the