A Tall Dark Stranger by Joan Smith Page A

for another hour.
    “Not another body!” Cook cried when I went pelting in at the kitchen door.
    “No, money!” I said, and stopped to catch my breath before continuing on upstairs.
    “What money?” Cook called after me.
    “Government money—stolen. In the shepherd’s hut,” I called back, heading for the stairs.
    Aunt Talbot was in the morning room, working on her new petticoat, when I ran in. We had debased her morals to the extent that she was sewing a half-inch of eyelet embroidery around the hem.
    “What on earth happened to you, Amy?” She took one look at me and leaped from her chair. “Did someone attack you? Not Renshaw?”
    “No, no one,” I said, and blurted out my story between gulps for air.
    “I’ll send John Groom for McAdam,” Auntie said when I had finished.
    “Tell him to take Sandfly. Lollie won’t mind.”
    Sandfly is Lollie’s mount, a goer if ever there was one. The groom would be in Chilton Abbas in ten minutes. Meanwhile I was worried about Lollie being alone in the hut with so much money.
    “I’m taking a gun and going back,” I said.
    “You’ll do no such thing. That place isn’t safe for a lady. Send George with a gun.”
    “I’ll go with him,” I insisted. She didn’t try to stop me. In fact, she would have liked to come with us, but having decreed it was no place for a lady, she was too proud to back down.
    George got Lollie’s shotgun and we headed out the back door at a trot. Cook, Betty, and Inez stared as if they were watching a stage play, then ran out the back door behind us to watch our flight.
    “This’ll put Inez in another tizzy,” George said, smiling complacently. He was sweet on Inez and enjoyed playing the hero in front of her. He brandished the gun menacingly as we went.
    The meadow was only a thousand yards behind the house, but it seemed at least a mile that day. When the shepherd’s hut came into view across the water, I saw no sign of Lollie and forced myself to run faster. But as we drew closer, I took George’s elbow, bringing him to a halt.
    “Lollie said he’d hide if anyone came. He must have seen someone coming. We’d best proceed cautiously, George. The thief might be in the hut.”
    We tiptoed forward, hiding behind bushes and peering at the hut. We waited, but when no one came out, we crouched down and inched closer, closer. When we got to the end of the bushes, George stood up and aimed the gun.
    “Come out with your hands up,” he called. “I’ve got a gun.”
    I watched the hut with my heart hammering in my throat. Who would come out of the doorway? Would it be my hero, Maitland, revealed as a common thief? Would it be Mr. Renshaw and/or Beau Sommers? Or would it be a stranger? I hoped it would be a stranger, the man Maitland’s game warden had seen talking to Lord Harry.
    It was no one. No one came out. George went closer, calling as he went. I went along behind him, using his broad back as a cover in case of bullets. When nothing happened, I called, “Lollie! It’s only me. Where are you?”
    It was George who spotted him. Lollie had been dragged through the doorway of the hut. He lay on his back on the floor, unconscious. My first fear was that he was dead, but when I examined him, I saw that he was still warm and breathing. There was no trace of a knife mark or a bullet wound, no rope around his neck. He didn’t even have a welt on his head as far as I could see, or a black eye.
    “Someone bashed him, looks like,” George said.
    We carefully dragged Lollie into the daylight to get a better look at him. George kept the gun raised, looking all around, while I checked the back of Lollie’s head. I found a lump the size of a plum. Eventually Lollie opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times,
    “Amy?” he said weakly and in a confused tone.
    “It’s all right, Lollie. We’re here. Who hit you?”
    “They got the money,” he said, and tried to sit up.
    “Did you see who—”
    He was looking less confused and