Through the Smoke (45 page)

“I guess you haven’t heard the news. I spoke to your cousin earlier. I no longer have a job here to protect,” he said and galloped away.

Wythe didn’t have the means to go after him, not without his own animal. So what now? What was he going to do about Cutberth? The ex-clerk was no friend of the earl’s. Or Rachel’s, either. But he would know exactly what happened as soon as Thornick and the others were discovered in the rubble.

Damn it! He couldn’t set off an explosion, not now that Cutberth had seen him with gunpowder.

He would have to find Rachel and kill her the hard way, he decided, and then bury
all
the bodies. As long as the corpses were never discovered, no one would know he had been involved.

If only he could get hold of that little whore before daybreak. Everything hinged on timing.

Dear God, his hands were shaking. He needed something to calm his nerves.

He withdrew his flask, only to find that it was empty. How could he have forgotten? He’d drunk the whole thing while waiting for Thornick, Collingood, Henderson and Greenley.

Truman urged his horse into a faster clip. It wasn’t safe to travel at a full run, not at night. But he had to find Rachel as soon as possible. There were
too many people, people like Cutberth, who blamed her instead of themselves for their recent turn of bad luck.

What if she had fallen into the hands of the sacked clerk? Or the hewers who had attacked her that day he took her from the mine?

“My lord! You go on. I will catch up when I can,” Linley called.

Truman couldn’t wait for him. He had to find the woman he loved. All the things that had once seemed so important to him were nothing in comparison to her.

“Go back,” he called. “Wait at the manse.” He had tried talking Linley into staying in the first place. His butler was too old to help with something like this. He had done enough for one night, anyway. But he’d insisted. “Two is better than one,” he’d said.

Truman appreciated the devotion, but with Rachel’s safety in jeopardy, he had to stay focused, had to act quickly.

He leaned over to avoid the tree branches that swatted at him as his horse charged down the familiar path to the colliery. Cosgrove House came up on his right. It seemed as quiet and dark as he would expect it to be so early in the morning, but he was still tempted to stop there. The memory of Wythe telling Rachel, “I could throw your body into the ocean,” kept playing in his head. If his cousin had
anything
to do with why Rachel hadn’t come home—anything at all—the forbearance Truman had shown him over the years would be gone in an instant. The promise he’d made his parents would mean nothing. Neither would the fact that Wythe had once saved his life. He was carrying his pistols and wouldn’t hesitate to use them.

It seemed to take longer than usual to reach the office, despite his breakneck speed. He was relieved when he finally charged into the clearing. But he found everything as he had seen it last night.

Except that there was a keg of gunpowder sitting out.

He got off his horse to investigate. Black powder was expensive, and it could be dangerous. It was not to be left out in the open.

The locker where they stored the gunpowder was closed but the key had been left in the lock. Another storage shed close by, this one full of tools and Davy lamps, had been broken into quite forcibly and the door stood ajar.

What had happened here? As far as he could tell, no one was about. But
someone
had been here. Who? And did the state of those storage closets and the gunpowder keg have anything to do with Rachel going missing?

He couldn’t see how. Maybe the damage had happened earlier, before he met with Cutberth. Or immediately after. Cutberth could have done it in anger.…

“Rachel?” he called.

There was no answer.

“Rachel!” Where could she be? His imagination suggested many places, but none eased his fears. “I don’t want to live without you,” he murmured. Especially now, when he’d finally allowed himself to hope, to believe, he could have her forever.

Just in case she could have gone into the mine—or been dragged there—he walked down to the pithead. But the gate was locked and all seemed quiet. Should he search the mine, despite that? He was tempted, just to be sure he had covered every possibility. If Cutberth could get the key to Rachel’s shop from Wythe’s office, he could certainly come by the key to the pithead after working in the office for so long. But searching the tunnels would take forever. The time would be better spent heading to the village so he could check on Cutberth, Thornick, Greenley and the others. He would wake the whole damn village if he had to.

He hurried back to his horse, but almost as soon as he climbed into the saddle, he heard the approach of someone else, also on horseback.

Unsure of who or what he might face, he pulled out one of the pistols he had brought from the house as Cutberth entered the clearing. “What are you doing here?”

His ex-clerk reined in a few feet away. “Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

When Truman let his pistol be seen, Cutberth stiffened. “What do you plan to do with that, m’lord?”

“Anything I have to in order to find Rachel. What have you done with her?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Nothing! I haven’t even seen her.”

“She went out looking for me and hasn’t come back.”

He lifted his hands. “I swear to you. If she is gone it has nothing to do with me. I am not here to start trouble. I was merely hoping for another word with your cousin.”

Truman squinted through the darkness, trying to ascertain his expression and decide whether he was telling the truth. “Why would you expect Wythe to be here?”

“Because this is where he was not more than half an hour ago.” He pointed at the powder keg. “He was wrestling that toward the pit.”

His cousin was the one who had gotten out the gunpowder? Surely this couldn’t be true. “What could he have wanted powder for?” Truman asked.

“That’s what I came back to find out. Something isn’t right, my lord. Thornick, Collingood, Henderson and Greenley are all missing.”

This news made Truman sick to his stomach. “Then
they’ve
got Rachel.” He couldn’t think of another explanation, but Cutberth didn’t seem convinced.

“I don’t think so. If they were planning to harm her, they could have done it when she came back to the village. It’s not as if Mrs. Tate could have stopped them. Greenley told me he stopped by there to apologize, but she wouldn’t receive him.”

Truman frowned as he looked around. Was Cutberth really searching for Wythe?

“Thornick’s wife claims he was coming here to attend a union meeting,” he said. “The other wives say the same about their husbands. But I haven’t called a meeting. And Wythe, when I saw him, was behaving strangely. He was sweating, despite the cold. And he wanted me to help him get that powder into the mine and seemed overly upset when I wouldn’t.”

“Why would he want to get powder into the mine in the middle of the night?” Truman asked.

“He wouldn’t say.”

If Cutberth could be believed, Rachel, Thornick, Collingood, Henderson, Greenley
and
Wythe had all been out tonight. Why? “He must have left,” Truman said. “All is quiet now. And the pit is locked.”

A strange expression came over Cutberth’s face. “That’s it. That’s where they’re at.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The pit wasn’t locked when I was here before.”

As soon as Wythe hauled himself out of the mine, Rachel had run to the lift, hoping to find a way out herself. But it was no use. He had made it so that she couldn’t bring the cage back down.

She had retrieved the pick, even though she knew it could do nothing to protect her from an explosion, and waited—scared and shaky—in the dark. She’d been sure she wasn’t long for this earth, couldn’t imagine how she would survive what Wythe had in store for her. She had just decided that she would rather be killed by the blast than any cave-in it might cause, that she would stand right out in the open and wait for it.

But then… there had been no explosion. She’d heard Wythe above her, cursing to himself as he climbed into the lift. He’d been upset, newly frustrated. She could tell that but nothing more. Had he changed his mind about igniting a blast?

She’d thought so. But that didn’t make her safe. A flicker of light had suggested he was bringing a lamp. At that point she’d faced a very difficult decision. Did she grab the ropes to try to stop his descent? Would she be physically capable of holding him off that way? Or did she hide to the right, hoping he would go left, where they had been before?

There weren’t many places to conceal herself on the right. That was the reason she hadn’t chosen it before. But left took her ever deeper into the bowels of the mine, meaning he could cut her off from the lift indefinitely. And now that he had a lamp, she would have no way of slipping past him unseen. The tunnels were too narrow. She would have to stay well in front of him even though
he
could travel much faster.

In the end, she had chosen to run left. Her other options were more of a gamble. She had to go with the odds, use as much time as possible. She was hoping that the miners would arrive before Wythe could find her.

If they didn’t… at least she had a weapon.

She had been trying to out-distance him ever since, had been dodging him and his bloody light. She kept praying he would choose the wrong tunnel. Although she couldn’t see the various openings, she knew there were more turns than the ones she was taking. But any noise gave her away, and she couldn’t move fast without noise. She was just thinking she should have tried to stop the lift instead when another twisted ankle brought her to her knees.

Gasping in pain, she watched the edge of his light draw closer. Heard his footsteps. Heard him say, “You are only making this harder on yourself, Rachel. I will kill you quickly if you quit running. If you don’t… heaven help you.”

He meant it. He was beyond angry. He was probably desperate, too—as desperate as she was.

If only she could figure out a way to get him to move beyond her.

But how?

Drawing a bolstering breath, she limped around the next bend and flattened herself against the wall. She was out of options. She had to swing her pick. But once she did that, there would be no second chances.

Either she would survive, or he would.

“Rachel?”

He was coming, drawing so close she dared not breathe. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she waited, and her lips moved in silent prayer.
Please… please…

Suddenly the light fell over her. She heard his excited intake of breath, saw the knife—and, feeling as vulnerable and exposed as she had ever felt in her life, swung the pick.

She caught him with a fairly solid blow, solid enough to knock the lamp out of his hands and send him reeling. And that gave her time to swing again.

It was the second blow that did the most damage. The sharp metal end lodged in his chest so deeply she couldn’t pull it out.

He seemed as surprised as she was. He stared down at himself in horror, until the pain and the realization of what she had done enraged him even more. Cursing, and swinging at her with one hand, he yanked the pick out with the other and tossed it away. Then he lunged for her.

She tried to run, but it was no use. Her sprained ankles could no longer support her weight. Terror overwhelmed her as he caught hold of her hair. And, almost immediately, his hands circled her neck.

Rachel could feel his extreme hatred as he squeezed—squeezed until she couldn’t fight anymore. Then everything went dim, as if the light he’d dropped had gone out.