Mr Harrison,’ the coachman called back.
Before Ned could enquire any further, a small party of masked men led by a rider on horseback emerged from the thick woods to the left.
‘Nay, don’t reach for yer blunderbuss,’ their mounted leader cautioned John Coachman. ‘If’n we’d wished to kill ye, ye’d be dead. Our quarrel’s not with you, but with that fine gent cowering inside.’
Raising his pistol, the man fired, blasting a hole through the centre of the crested door. The ball whizzed past Ned’s knees and buried itself into the opposite door panel. ‘That’s for the vote and General Ludd. Death to mill owners and tyrants!’
‘Aye, hurrah for General Ludd and death to tyrants!’ his companions cheered, waving their arms in the air.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ned saw one of the band raise his pistol and sight it. Not sure whether the man meant to target him or the unarmed servants sitting exposed on the box, Ned quickly levelled his own weapon and fired.
The gunman cried out and grabbed his shoulder, dropping his pistol, which discharged as it hit the ground, sending a stray ball whining into the cluster of men. While the leader’s horse reared in panic, the group scattered.
Controlling his mount, the leader rode over to his injured follower, steadying him before he could fall. Looking back over his shoulder at Ned, he snarled, ‘You’ll pay for this!’
‘Not if you swing for it first,’ Ned retorted as the leader signalled another of the group to pull along the injured man, then trotted after his followers back into the thick greenery from which they’d emerged.
While the sounds of their passage through the woods receded, Ned tossed down his empty pistol and jumped out of the coach. ‘Harrison, how badly are you hurt?’
He looked up to see the valet clutching his left wrist, grimacing as the coachman inspected it. ‘Grazed only, Sir Edward,’ he replied through gritted teeth.
‘Lost a bit of blood, but the ball didn’t penetrate the bone,’ the coachman announced. ‘Bless me, Sir Edward, I be powerful sorry! Caught me napping, me old musket too far away even to grab afore they halted us. What’s the world coming to, when honest folk can’t travel a country road without being set upon? ‘Tis a blessing they left you yer purse without murdering us all!’
‘They weren’t after my purse,’ Ned replied, leaning into the coach to retrieve a flask of brandy and hand it up to Harrison. ‘Drink,’ he instructed the valet, who had gone white about the lips and looked definitely unsteady. ‘It will ease the burn and help settle your head.’
The groom, who’d succeeded in quieting Ned’s frightened horse, ran up. ‘Sure enough they would’a robbed us, Sir Edward, if’n you hadn’t scared them off.’
Ned shook his head. ‘There were five of them, by my count, and probably they had more weapons. They must know I would have handed over whatever they asked for to prevent further bloodshed. Besides, they were cheering for “General Ludd”.’
‘General Ludd?’ Harrison repeated. ‘You mean … they were Luddites? I thought all that nonsense ceased after the arrests and hangings in 1814.’
‘There’s been a revival of frame-breaking attacks since Waterloo. We’re not so far from Nottingham, which has always been in the thick of it,’ Ned replied, frowning.
‘Thugs and vermin is what I call ‘em,’ the coachman pronounced. ‘Should be hung or transported, the lot of ‘em. As I expect they will be, once you report this to the nearest magistrate!’
‘Whoever they were, I believe they’ve got safely away,’ Ned said. ‘Richard—’ he turned to the groom ‘—help Harrison to that fallen log.’ He gestured towards the wood’s edge. ‘You and John walk the horses while he recovers himself before we must jostle him the rest of the way to Blenhem Hill.’
After a token protest that he was all right, the valet let himself be assisted to the ground, where he walked on wobbly legs to sit on the mossy tree trunk. Leaving the man sipping at the brandy flask, Ned paced the road, pondering what to do next.
Though he’d heard of the unrest and Nicky had specifically mentioned it, Ned had never truly expected to encounter any difficulties. Indignation over the unprovoked attack and the injury to his valet prompted him to proceed directly, as John Coachman advised, to the local magistrate. But was that the wisest course of action?
His agreement with Nicky was so recent that no one at Blenhem Hill or the surrounding area knew he’d acquired the property. He was neither expected, nor would anyone recognise him when he arrived. Indeed, even Nicky’s former manager didn’t know about him, for he carried Nicky’s note of introduction to Mr Martin in his pocket.
During their discussions he had focused on the agricultural problems at Blenhem. With the shock of the attack to prompt his memory, he now recalled that Nicky also owned a controlling interest in one of the local cotton mills.
Had the Englemere crest been recognised when they stopped at the inn in Kirkwell? It seemed rather a stretch of coincidence to presume the attack on a carriage belonging to the nobleman known to own both the cotton mill at Dutchfield and the estate at Blenhem Hill, occurring on the seldom-travelled road leading to that property, could be just the random act of local hooligans. Especially given the slogans being shouted by the perpetrators.
Last summer, a renewed series of Luddite uprisings had swept through East Anglia. The mob had smashed frames in a mill at Loughborough and though this time none of the proprietors had been killed, Ned vividly recalled that two owners had been murdered in a previous wave of violence.
Even if the attack hadn’t targeted Nicky personally, the fact that such a move had been made against a crested coach indicated that, at a minimum, a strong sense of disaffection prevailed in the area. If the people around Blenhem Hill were suffering and desperate, as Martin had indicated, the attackers might well be local men. Having Ned ride in demanding justice of the magistrate and threatening transportation to the perpetrators—perhaps sons and husbands, brothers and sweethearts of his own tenants—would hardly gain him the confidence and co-operation he needed to restore prosperity to Blenhem.
Or discover the true purpose behind the attack.
A course of action occurred to him, expeditious if unprecedented. Mr Martin and the staff at Blenhem Hill were not expecting Sir Edward Austin Greaves; however, they would be anticipating the arrival of a new estate agent.
Though an agent might be the younger son of gentry, as a working man rather than an owner there was less of a difference in station between him and the tenants on his estate. Such a man would be more likely to inspire trust and elicit candid opinions about Blenhem—and any agitation in the neighbourhood—than an unknown new owner of aristocratic birth. No matter how sympathetic or friendly a face Ned presented to them, simple ‘Mr Greaves’ would probably be able to learn a good deal more about these people and their circumstances than the more elevated ‘Sir Edward’.
He would do it, he decided. An estate agent having little need for a valet, he’d send Harrison home to Kent to recover and John Coachman and the groom back to Nicky with a report of what had happened.
The decision made, an ironic amusement tempered his anger and frustration. This ‘challenge’ was turning out to be even more interesting than he’d anticipated.
An hour later,
