Hector inhaled a deep breath and blew out his cheeks. “I confess you are a very good driver.”
She laughed, and it relieved the moment. “I’m sorry. My apologies for the diatribe.”
“I suppose we must each look after our own diatribes,” Hector said and unfolded the map. “Hadnall Hall is just a few miles ahead.”
Hadnall Hall was at the end of a wide, mile-long drive flanked by ancient beech trees. What was left of it. It had been one of the grander homes in the Midlands but was now a blackened, smoking ruin, an alien presence in the center of immaculately groomed lawns and flowerbeds.
“It was incendiaries that did it,” a groundsman said. “They say the bombs was meant for Birmingham or Manchester, but the Germans got lost. I think it was done deliberate.”
“Why do you say that?” Caitrin asked.
“Because Sir Basschurch hated them Nazis more than anything and wasn’t at all shy about saying so. If you ask me, I believe some spy told the Nazis where he lived, and I think it was them getting back at him. They dropped high explosives first to rip the roof off and then followed up with incendiaries to burn the place down.”
“Where did the family go?”
“They’ve all gone to live at their Mayfair house in London. But that’s not much safer, from what I hear.”
“Thank you,” Hector said and turned the car around. “We’ll head straight for Marlton.”
Heavy rain clouds grew and brought on the night faster than they expected. There was no traffic and fewer and smaller villages. Soon they were driving alone over an empty moor, still some distance from Marlton, and the map showed no villages close. Caitrin pulled over and parked under some trees at the edge of the road.
“It’s too dark to drive, and I think we should call it a day,” she said and peered up at the sky. “Because this day is over.”
“All right. I’ll take the front seat, you can take the back bedroom,” Hector said.
Caitrin cleared the back seat, pulled several sweaters and a coat from her suitcase, and curled up to sleep. “Are you all right there?”
“I am just marvelous, thank you for asking,” Hector said, paused for a long moment, and said, “Caitrin, you do appreciate it isn’t my fault, or Rupert’s. We didn’t ask to be born into our families.”
“I know that, and I don’t want to send you both down a coal mine. I just want a better balance in life for everyone, so people at the bottom don’t slide off the edge. That’s all. Good night.”
“Good night.”
“I have never slept with a lord before.”
“Nor I with a commoner.”
“Touché.”
* * *
A sound outside woke Caitrin first: a scrape of metal, followed by a man muttering. Hector woke up an instant later, but she was already gone, slipping silently out and leaving the car’s rear door ajar. He followed and found her standing at the open horse-box door, with hay scattered on the ground and two men kneeling with their hands in the air. Neither man looked as though he ate or bathed regularly.
“What we have before us is a pair of right villains,” Caitrin said in the calmest of voices. “Thieving villains.”
Hector was struck by the expressions of terror on both the men’s faces—and by the Webley-Fosbery revolver in Caitrin’s hand. He recognized it by the distinctive zigzag grooves on the cylinder. It was aimed at the men and unmoving: she and it could have been carved from a single block of granite.
“What to do? Do you think I should shoot one of these villains as an example to the other?” she said to Hector. “Or perhaps shoot both because they could be German spies. Or even worse, evil saboteurs.”
“No, we’re not German spies; we’re English villains,” the younger one squeaked.
“Speak for yourself. I’m not English, I’m Scottish,” the other one said.
“We’re British villains, then.”
“What were you doing out here?” Hector asked them. “Stealing?”
“No, no,” the older one said. “We was just looking for a warm, dry place to kip.”
“That’s it, that’s right. It’s perishing out here,” the other one said and waved a raised hand at the horse box. “I thought it would be nice and dry in there with all them hay bales.”
“Honest, missus. We wasn’t going to steal nothing.”
Caitrin continued as though she had not heard them. “And if I off just one, which one would you like me to execute?”
Hector knew his mouth was open, but he seemed to have no words. Caitrin turned away from the men and winked at him. She lowered the revolver and turned her back fully on them. “What if I do shoot them both, to be on the safe side, just in case they really are German saboteurs?”
She laughed as the men scrambled to their feet and sprinted away into the tree shadows.
“I didn’t know you were armed.”
“Now you do, and I’m sure you are too, right, Hecky?”
“Right. That’s a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver .455 caliber, six-shot,” he said, gesturing to her gun. “A rara avis. Heavy thing that hasn’t been manufactured in what, fifteen years? And complicated.”
“Complicated, just like a woman?” Caitrin engaged the safety. “Accurate, and deadly too.”
She was not smiling. He had just seen another facet of Caitrin Colline. This journey north had become an odyssey. And if he remembered his classics correctly, the first odyssey was a long and strange one too.
