to take me up, being more intent in obeying their master and seeing what the trouble was. One of them looked back as he passed me, frowned, and waved at me to return to the manor, but my friend was involved, and I couldn’t leave him alone, whatever he’d done, so I continued until I reached the main street again.

Tom and his companions stood to one side. A man lay on the road, ominously motionless. James had dismounted and stood over him. He only looked up when I approached. “I thought I told you to go inside.”

“Be quiet, James, I’m perfectly safe.” I knelt to examine the man, feeling for a pulse on his wrist.

There was none. I felt his neck at the base but nothing beat there either. He’d been badly beaten, his face and head a mass of blood, but what must have been the cause of death was the knife jutting out of his chest, a rough looking knife with a repaired hilt, not the sort of thing Tom or his companions would carry.

I looked up at James and shook my head, while Tom started forward. “It was an accident, truly.”

Tom continued to talk, seemed unable to stop the flow of words in his panic. “We wanted to teach them a lesson, that’s all, so we came to find him because everybody knows he’s a Cawnton man, and when he ran out we ran after him, then he drew his knife and…” His voice was raising in pitch, getting faster and I recognised the signs of hysteria. I slapped Tom full across his face. He stopped abruptly.

Tom stared at me, his face white. His friend Theo, who stood a little way behind him, also looked shocked and upset, as well he might with a dead man on their hands.

James took charge. “Take him over there.” Our grooms lifted the dead man and returned him to his cottage, from whence he had run so short a time before. The sooner that grisly sight was out of the way the better. We watched in silence while the two grooms carried him the short distance back to his home, with the gaping door and a white-faced woman standing by it. She watched expressionlessly, as they carried him through the door and out of sight.

“It might be best,” James said, “if we continue this indoors. Rose, I’ll take you back. You others follow on.”

They nodded and began to trudge along the road to the Manor as James remounted and held his hand down, to lift me in front of him. He set his horse to walk back. I nestled against him. My big brother, who had soothed my hurts when I was small. I needed soothing now.

I brought him up to date as best I could on the way back, and asked him to send someone to Mrs. Hoarty to make sure this had not upset her too much. He promised he would send someone and then we arrived home.

I dismounted and went straight upstairs, calling for a maid as I did so. Another gown ruined. I changed quickly and ran back downstairs, to see what developments had transpired.

I found them in the morning room; James, Martha, Tom and Theo, the latter two with glasses of brandy in their hands, presumably given them to calm them after the shock. James was speaking, but he broke off when I came in, and then we heard the front door slam and voices. Richard and Gervase, back from Exeter.

Someone must have told them for within a few minutes they both entered the morning room. Richard came directly to me. “Rose, are you hurt?”

“No, not at all. I saw the start of the brawl, and I came back for help.”

He nodded, the fine lines between nose and mouth tight with tension, and took the glass of brandy James offered him with a short word of thanks. “They told me you were in the village when some sort of incident occurred.” He took a sip. “I’d like to hear it from the beginning.”

“So would I,” agreed James. So far, Theo Livingstone had remained silent, but since Tom was showing no inclination to begin, he cleared his throat and glanced at his friend for guidance. Theo was a large man, not overburdened with brain, and I guessed Tom had instigated the affair.

Theo stared at me, as if I was the only person he recognised in the room. He was still taken with the shock. I looked at Tom, trying to reassure him as best I could without words, but he didn’t seem to see.

“I was at Peacock’s this morning,” Theo began in a low voice, “and Tom asked me to help. He told me about the gamekeeper you found the other day, and said we should damned—dashed well teach these smugglers a lesson. I didn’t think it was such a good idea, but he was in such a state I thought I should go along and try to stop it getting out of hand.”

Richard interrupted him. “Where was his father? Couldn’t you have told him?”

“His mother and father were at Fursey’s cottage, visiting the poor man’s family. He won’t like it you know, Tom,” he added, looking to where Tom sat, motionless.

Tom shook himself out of his stupor. “That’s why I chose to do it when they were out of the way.” He took his gaze away from mine, and looked around with a slightly dazed air, as though seeing the room for the first time and surprised to find himself in it. “I only wanted to teach them a lesson, to stop them trespassing on our land again. I knew all about that man, everybody did, and I thought it might serve. He saw