Sovay Read Online Free PDF Page B

wonder!’ He brandished his staff at them. ‘I’ll find out if you are, you can wager upon it, and I’ll see the two of you hang alongside ’em. See if I don’t! You’ll not get a thing from me.’
    He turned to Sovay, his small eyes filled with malice. She walked Brady up to him and pointed her gun inches from his head.
    ‘All the better reason to shoot you then,’ she breathed down to him. At the click of the hammer, oily drops of sweat broke from the coarse pores of his face.
    ‘I carry nothing of value.’
    ‘What is in the wallet?’
    ‘Documents, merely. They have no worth!’
    ‘I’ll take it anyway.’
    ‘No, you won’t!’ He brandished his staff as if to strike her arm as she reached out towards him.
    ‘Drop it!’ Gabriel commanded. ‘Or I will blow your head off!’
    The stick clattered to the floor as the man stared into the wide mouth of the blunderbuss.
    ‘Give me the wallet,’ Sovay reached down for it. The runner showed every reluctance but a cocked pistol could be very persuasive. He handed the wallet over. It weighed surprisingly heavy.
    ‘The rest of you,’ Gabriel turned his gun on the cowering passengers, ‘hand over your valuables. Do not try our patience further or we will kill you all.’
    Sovay threw down her saddlebag and the terrified travellers hastened to comply.
    Sovay collected the bulging bag and Gabriel trained his gun on the runner.
    ‘Hand me the staff,’ he shouted down at him. ‘Quick about it!’
    The man was unwilling to obey, but valued his head. Gabriel took the stick from his hand and used it to urge his horse away. Sovay followed, spurring Brady to a gallop, crouching low over his neck in case the guard decided to let off another shot or two. They did not slacken their speed until they reached the margin of the forest.
    Gabriel unscrewed the brass handle of the hollow staff and read the paper rolled up within it.
    ‘The fellow was a tipstaff. This is a warrant for your father’s arrest.’
    ‘Give it to me!’ Sovay took it from him and prepared to gallop for the house.
    ‘Wait!’ Gabriel took hold of Brady’s bridle. ‘I find this action you’re taking hasty, Miss Sovay, very hasty. Not to say downright foolish. Posing as a highwayman could get you hanged!’
    ‘Then you would hang alongside me.’
    ‘I could not let you act alone.’
    ‘At any account, how could they prove it? A female highwayman? Who’d believe it?’
    She laughed and spurred her horse, her face flushed with such recklessness that Gabriel’s fear for her deepened.
    They were on the track for home when a boy darted into their path. He did not look at Sovay, thinking her a stranger. She had removed her mask, but still wore her scarf high, as if to keep the dust from her nose and mouth.
    ‘Mr Gabriel! Come quick! There’s men coming up the drive to the house.’
    ‘Men? What men?’
    ‘I dunno,’ the boy shrugged. ‘They ain’t troopers, nothing like that, but some of ’em got uniforms. They got poles and pikes and say they’re for King and Country. They’re shouting that Master’s under arrest and they’re here to see justice done. Sir Royston’s at the head of ’em.’ His young brow wrinkled. ‘Your father’s up the far cornfields. We been searching for Miss Sovay and she’s nowhere to be found, so your ma says to find you!’
    ‘How many are there?’ Sovay asked, forgetting her disguise.
    The boy looked up at her, curious, head cocked on one side, as though the stranger was suddenly familiar, then he shook his head.
    ‘Dunno rightly,’ he answered, ‘but a goodly few.’
    ‘All right, Jack.’ Gabriel reached in his pocket for a penny. ‘Find as many men as you can. Tell them to meet me in the yard.’
    The barefoot boy scampered off, clutching the coin tight in his hand.
    ‘We’ll take the guns from the gunroom and any other weapons we can muster,’ Gabriel said to Sovay. ‘You stay inside. I’ll gather the men in front of the house.’
    ‘I