“Can you speak?” Jack laid him on the floor and eased away the corded noose from his bruised throat. “Who did this?” He removed the man’s cravat.
His lordship opened his bloodshot eyes and coughed, struggling for breath. “The… Frenchman…” he rasped. “Renard.”
“I’ll get him, don’t worry.”
With a gasp, Lord Caindale closed his eyes.
Jack searched for a pulse. He found a faint beat. With a curse, he rose and strode back through the mill in search of water, tucking his knife away and then cocking his pistol. The man could still have been lurking nearby. As Jack walked the length of the cavernous space, his gaze raked the shadowy corners behind the latest machinery to which the Luddites objected so violently. Nothing moved.
He’d almost reached the outer door to the river when a gunshot rang out. The ball tore through Jack’s sleeve, burning into his flesh. He dived to the floor, rolled, and came up in a crouch. Creeping forward, he viewed the mill floor from behind a wooden bench.
Silence, but for the scuffle of rats along the riverbank.
As Jack rounded the edge of a table, another shot bit a piece off the wooden post too close for comfort, sending shafts of timber flying. A piece of wood struck Jack’s cheek. He cursed under his breath andbacked away.
“Give yourself up,monsieur! You can walk out of here safely. I have no quarrel with you.”
Jack remembered Lord Caindale’s words. A voice like hoarfrost. The perfect description of the chilly rasp. He braced his back against the wood, listening. A soft shuffle, moving closer. Then an indrawn breath, a whisker away from him. Blood trickled down onto Jack’s hand, and his arm throbbed as he crawled in the opposite direction on his hands and knees. It had grown quiet, so he risked peering around the edge of the bench.
There the villain was. A lean man with dark hair. He braced against a pillar ten feet or so away, intent on reloading his pistol, his olive-skinned face in profile.
Jack leaped to his feet and ran straight at him. The man looked up, his eyes wide with shock, but before he could bring up his arm and aim his pistol, Jack knocked it out of his hands. Jack dug his own gun into the Frenchman’s narrow ribcage. “Who are you?”
Hard, brown eyes observed him. “One might ask you the same thing,monsieur.”
“I am a friend of Butterstone’s.” Jack took his measure. The brutal face of a dangerous man, his body coiled to attack. Like a cornered rat glancing left and right, he’d use everything at his disposal to escape.
“The marquess has too many friends.” He bit out the words.
“You killed him and almost killed Caindale. Why?”
“Ah, Caindale still lives,” Renard said with a contemptuous stare. “Butterstone discovered our plan to assassinate Bonaparte. Even now, after his death, discovering the truth could bring down some important people.”
“You poisoned him?”
“Nowthatyou cannot accuse me of. I never met Bonaparte.”
“Who do you work for?”
He shrugged narrow shoulders. “A powerful figure connected tothe Bourbons. It would be wise of you to resist getting involved in this affair. The matter should be dropped, left obscured from history.”
Conscious of Lord Caindale’s need for his help, Jack pocketed Renard’s gun. With a prod to the man’s torso, he gestured toward the office. “Walk.”
“What do you intend to do with me?”
“Keep quiet and move.” Jack pondered what to do with him. It would be difficult to get him back to Bascombe in London. But if he handed him over to the Manchester magistrate, this business would become public knowledge. That would be unwise.
In the office, Lord Caindale still lay stretched out on the floor, but he breathed more normally, an arm resting over his eyes.
“You’re like a cat with nine lives, Caindale.Merde, you’re hard to kill,” the Frenchman said dispassionately.
With the gun at his back, Jack nudged him into the room. “Why kill him?”
“He’s weak. Threatened to confess everything in Parliament.”
“That’s not weak,” Jack said. “It would take great courage.”
The baron removed his arm and sat up. He stared at them with bloodshot eyes. “You don’t need to worry about me, Ryder. I’m all right now,” he said, his voice a guttural bark.
