Fletcher and Cobbins listened to his footsteps retreat, heard the door to the cells groan open, then shut again.

When silence returned, Fletcher glanced at Cobbins. “That’s one scary bugger.”

Cobbins nodded and sank back on the bunk. “Don’t know about you, but I’m glad we won’t be meeting him again.”

The man who Fletcher and Cobbins knew as McKinsey was very glad he’d decided to use an alias.

After speaking with the magistrate, who, while he might not be able to place him, had recognized his true station well enough to readily acquiesce to his request that his hirelings be released without charge, McKinsey returned to “reward” the constables, then recruit them in searching for his missing package, and arrange for Fletcher and Cobbins to be held until evening before being released.

By then he would be on his way, whichever way that was.

Mounted on his favorite chestnut gelding, he rode back up the highway to Gretna Green, and the Nutberry Moss Inn. The constables, vocal cords loosened by the largesse he’d distributed, had volunteered that the older woman they’d assumed to be one of Fletcher and Cobbins’s accomplices had fled back over the border into England the previous evening; they hadn’t bothered giving further chase. Of the girl, however, they’d had no sign.

That the girl must have fled, either alone or, more likely and very possibly worse, in the company of some bounder passing himself off as a solicitor’s clerk, preyed on his mind. That definitely wasn’t how his plan was supposed to have played out.

But he’d long ago learned the need to flow with fate, to take whatever clouts she sent him and survive. Manage and make the best of things had long been his creed.

In this case, that meant learning where the girl had gone, then following her and rescuing her. Getting his plan back on track and making restitution in whatever way he could, to her at least. Her family would be something else again, but that was too far in the future for him to worry about now.

First, find the girl. Second, get rid of the bounder.

Drawing rein in the Nutberry Moss forecourt, he smiled easily at the young lad who came running to take his horse. He dismounted and handed over the reins. “I’ll be maybe an hour, no more. Just walk him a little, then rest him.”

Eyes round with awe, the lad tugged his forelock, and reverently led Hercules away. The big gelding had come by the name through having to carry the weight of him on his back.

He walked into the inn. Fletcher and Cobbins would have been surprised to witness the persona he deployed with the innkeeper. He didn’t need to frighten the man, so he didn’t.

“Timms?” The innkeeper consulted his register. “Aye, m’ lord. He came in later on the day your men arrived.”

“And when did he leave?”

The innkeeper scratched his ear. “Can’t rightly say that he has left, m’lord. His bags and clothes are gone, the girls tell me — all his personal things — but his writing desk is still there, and his trap and his horse are still in the stable. He didn’t say anything to me about moving on just yet — said his wound was still playing up. He’s paid up for another two nights.”

“I see.” He thought, then said, “Fletcher and Cobbins will be released later today — they’ll be back to claim their luggage.” He withdrew a sealed packet from his inside pocket. “I told them I’d leave this for them — if you could make sure they receive it?” The innkeeper nodded and took the packet, stowing it under the counter. “In the meantime, however, if I could see their rooms — the two Fletcher hired, and if I could just look into Timms’s room. No harm if there’s nothing personal in there.”

“Indeed not, m’lord. The room the women used was number one, at the end of the corridor to the left. Fletcher and Cobbins were in room five, that’s just by the top of the stairs, and Timms was in room eight — end of the corridor to the right.”

He smiled. “Thank you. I’ll just have a look around — I won’t trouble you further.”

“No trouble at all, m’lord. Just call if you want anything.”

He climbed the stairs and checked the women’s room first. There was nothing left, no belongings of any kind, not even hairpins on the dressing table. Presumably the girl had at least had time to pack, then.

Moving to Fletcher and Cobbins’s room, he noted their bags had been left in the wardrobe. Passing on to Timms’s room, he stuck his head in, saw, as he’d been told, that the wardrobe, gaping open, was empty. Other than an ancient traveling writing desk on the side table by the bed, there was no sign of any belongings anywhere.

Crossing to the writing desk, he raised the lid. A few sheets of yellowing parchment, an assortment of old nibs and pens, and a small bottle of ink nestled inside. None of the sheets bore any helpful name or address, or, indeed, any mark at all. There was nothing to suggest any of the implements had been used in years; even the piece of blotting paper was blank. Releasing the lid, he raked the room one last time, then walked out.

Stepping into the corridor, he pulled the door shut — and looked consideringly at the narrow servants’ stair in the shadows at the corridor’s end. When he’d called at the inn earlier, the innkeeper had related the sequence of events that had culminated in Fletcher and Cobbins’s arrests. The two women had remained in the parlor, as far as anyone had known. Only much later, when one of the serving girls had thought to look in, surprised that the women hadn’t rung for afternoon tea, had their absence been discovered.

The parlor door had been open when he’d come in. Assuming the two women had been inside when the constables had arrived, they would have heard, quite possibly seen, all that had transpired. Martha, certainly, had seen the implications. That explained her rapid and effective flight. And, of course, Martha had left the girl to fend for herself. But if Timms was behind the scheme of the candlesticks, then where had he been? Neither the innkeeper nor his staff had sighted him after breakfast that day.

Looking back down the corridor all the way to the women’s room, he felt sure Timms had been there, in his room, playing least in sight while the constables had removed Fletcher and Cobbins. Then. . he looked again at the stair. If it led to where he thought it did. .

He went silently down it.

As he’d suspected, the stair debouched into a tiny hall between the kitchen and the inn’s back door. He wasn’t easily overlooked, yet even he managed to slip past the open doorway of the kitchen and slide out of the back door without being seen.

“So that’s how Timms got in and out without being seen by the innkeeper or anyone else.”

Stepping off the single step outside the back door, he looked across the inn’s stable yard, which was at the side of the inn, on the west, rather than at the rear. If Timms had taken the girl and come out this way. . why hadn’t he taken his trap and driven off?

He walked across the yard and into the stable. The young lad, the stableman, and two helpers were all gathered about a stall admiring Hercules. The lad saw him and jumped to attention. “Do you want him, then, m’lord?”

He smiled. “No, not just yet.” He let his smile flow on to the stableman. “I wanted to take a look at Mr. Timms’s trap.”

The stableman was happy to oblige.

While answering eager questions about Hercules’ pedigree, he examined the trap; it was indeed as rickety as Cobbins had made out. As for the nag that went with it. . if Timms and the girl had taken to the road in the trap, they would have been caught by the constables, who, he’d been told, had ridden out along all the roads in an attempt to capture Fletcher and Cobbins’s accomplices.

He’d told Fletcher and Cobbins that he would attend to the matter of the girl himself, but he’d seen no reason not to make use of the constables. He’d used the same story he’d given Fletcher to explain the girl’s captivity, and had enlisted the aid of the police in keeping watch on the roads and taking the girl up if they happened to find her.

Thus far, all reports from the riders who had, he’d been assured, been sent out along all the major roads leading out of Gretna Green had been negative. No one had sighted the girl, and the constables had a fair description.

He was learning to respect Timms’s intelligence.

Thanking the stableman, saying he’d be back for Hercules in a few minutes, he walked out of the stable and paused, looking back at the inn.

Then he turned and surveyed the land around about. Flat fields. With his height, he could even see a glimmer of light off the firth a mile or so south.

If Timms had been clever enough to have foreseen the danger in using the trap, then he would also have realized that if they’d walked away across the fields in almost any direction they would have been easily spotted from the inn, if not from the ground floor, then certainly from the upper floor.

In any direction but one.

Turning back, he viewed the stable, with its high roof above the hayloft. It effectively blocked the view of the fields directly behind it.

He walked around the stable, to the short stretch of grass at the rear.

To the stile that gave access into the field beyond.

He was a highlander born and bred; he could track most things over rocky ground.

Tracking a man and a woman over soft, damp earth was insultingly easy.

But the boot print he found by the stile bothered him. He stared at it for a time before he realized why. Then he stamped his own boot print close by and compared the two.