“Joe, isn’t it? Bring my team. I am leaving.”
The young man looked startled. Presumably he wasn’t accustomed to seeing visitors back here. But he touched the brim of his flat cap and said, “Yessir.”
Arthur followed him into the stable, surprising him again. His horses were in loose boxes. Joe went to lead them out.
There was a narrow wooden stair in the back corner that surely led to rooms above. The off-duty guard would be there, Arthur concluded. He hoped the man was deeply asleep.
There were four horses in the stable other than his own. Two were clearly for riding, and two were carthorses to pull the rustic wagon that sat near the wide door. As the only choice, the wagon would have to do.
Arthur walked with Joe as he led the team out to the curricle and began to harness them. The groom looked anxious. Arthur decided to push a little. “Quite an establishment Lord Simon has here,” he said.
Joe’s sidelong look and twitching shrug suggested that he wasn’t comfortable with the comment.
“Do you like working here?” Arthur asked him. He put a tinge of contempt in his tone.
The younger man did not look at him. “I just takes care of the horses. That’s all.”
“But you know what goes on inside?”
The groom finished fastening the traces. “That’s nothing to do with me!”
He was so vehement that Arthur decided to take a chance. “Girls are beaten and misused in that house.”
Horror flitted over Joe’s face. He hunched and hurried his work on the bridles and straps.
“And since you work here, you are partly to blame for that.”
“No, I ain’t!”
“Perhaps you have even heard their cries,” Arthur added. “And never lifted a finger.”
Joe’s hands dropped from the harness. He glanced fearfully up at a small window in the upper part of the stable.
Arthur noted it. That must be the guard’s quarters. The frame was empty.
“I hate it here,” Joe murmured to the earth at his feet. “But Harkon’ll beat me within an inch of my life if I open my trap. And they said if I leave they’ll hunt me down and make sure I can’t squawk. I think they’d kill me. Harkon said as how he knifed a fella once.”
“If you help me, I will see that they cannot harm you.”
Joe finally looked up. He examined Arthur as if evaluating his power to keep his promise. “Help you how?” he asked finally.
“I am taking the girls away from here. All of them.”
“Not in one curricle, you ain’t. Even hanging off the sides. And the dogs wouldn’t stand for that anyhow.”
“Precisely. You will drive them in that cart I saw within.”
The young groom looked terrified. “Harkon won’t let us do that.”
“I will ensure that he does.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but I don’t see how. Once he sees the girls…”
“We will cover them with hay.”
He took a little more convincing. But Joe really did want to leave the place, and Arthur was persuasive. At last the groom agreed.
When he’d finished harnessing Arthur’s team, they went back into the stables and quickly and quietly hooked up the cart horses and half filled the farm wagon with loose hay. All the while, the passage of time beat in Arthur’s veins.
“Follow my curricle over to those yews,” he said to Joe when they were ready. “Stop just at the end.” At the groom’s nod, he climbed into his vehicle and drove it to the spot where he’d left the others huddled by the trees.
The wagon came up behind him. “Señora Alvarez will ride with me,” said Arthur quietly to the group of women. “As when we arrived. The rest of you slip into the cart as fast as you can and cover yourselves with hay. Joe will drive it out.”
There were uneasy murmurs and doubtful looks, but no arguments. All of them could see that this was the only choice. Arthur held out his hand, and Señora Alvarez climbed up beside him. Poppy was the first to slip into the cart and burrow into the hay.
Most of the girls were in when a hulking man came striding out of the stables. Their luck had run out. The guard had awoken and spotted them. Arthur shoved the reins into the señora’s hands and leapt down to meet him. “What the hell do you think…” began the man.
Arthur surged forward and hit him with a left to the jaw, followed by a crashing right to the man’s midsection. The guard doubled over and went down, breathless but still conscious. “Joe!” called Arthur.
The groom jumped down from the wagon. “That was a right old mill there,” he said.
“Rope. Now.” Arthur stood over his groggy opponent as Joe ran for the stable and returned with a length of rope. They bound the man where he lay, dragged him into a tangle of yews, and returned to the vehicles.
“Mr. Rigby would be impressed,” said Señora Alvarez.
“I took him by surprise. Gentleman Jackson would say it was not fair play.”
This drew a snort from her. Arthur noticed that the señora had gotten out her pistol and was holding it down by her side. He did not object.
As he drove around toward the front of the house, Arthur saw smoke seeping from the back parlor windows. It seemed that Poppy’s fire had taken hold.
On the other side of the building, Joe got down to open the gate in the iron fence. The dogs showed up immediately, but they seemed mollified by the groom’s presence and merely paced the two vehicles as they had when Arthur arrived. No one came out of the house to question them.
They proceeded down the drive. The gate in the outer wall appeared around a curve. It was, of course, closed. “Ho, the gate,” called Arthur.
There was a brief delay, and then it opened a bit. The guard who had let them in came through from outside, closing the panel behind him.
“Open the gate, man,” commanded Arthur in his best sneering voice.
The guard stared. “What’s Joe doing there?”
“I have no idea. Nor do I care in the least.” It was a challenge to sound bored when you were vibrating with tension.
“He ain’t allowed out without one of us goes with him.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
For a moment, as the guard puzzled over the question, Arthur thought they might get through. But then the man frowned. “There’s somethin’ havey-cavey about this.” He started around the curricle toward the cart.