Highwayman: Ironside by Michael Arnold Page B

friendly farewell over her shoulder. Lyle needed no further encouragement and made to leave. He strode quickly over the polished tiles, footsteps echoing in the confined space. He could sense Felicity walking behind, deliberately slower, and knew she was making out that she was not associated with him. Then he heard a man’s voice, deep and authoritative. He recognised it immediately. It was Walmsley.
    Lyle cursed viciously and picked up the pace, searching for somewhere in which he might hide. There was some kind of altercation behind, raised voices, a man and a woman, and he knew Walmsley had accosted Felicity. His instinct was to double back, knock the bodyguard onto his rump for speaking to her thus, but knew he could not. He did not even glance round at them, instead reaching the end of the corridor, pushing through a small doorway, and finding himself in a room full of liveried servants. They called to one another angrily, anxiety the common vein through each voice. The room contained a large table at its centre, men and women round the outside, each in position by various work-surfaces. One woman in heavily stained apron stood like a sentinel before an imposing hearth, overseeing a pair of young lads tending the fire. Above the flames, spitting and hissing as teardrops of fat plummeted into the white-hot embers, a pig turned on a spit, its skin darkening from the heat. Lyle realised he was in the kitchens, the very heart of the house, and he recalled that the little antechamber where he had encountered Maddocks and Hippisley was on the far side. He ran now, dispensing with any show of decorum, baffled members of the house staff left slack-jawed in his path.
    He passed through to the chamber beyond, pleased to discover it empty and silent. He considered going for the little studded door that would take him into fresh air, but he knew he had to find Grumm. With a pounding heart and twisting guts, Lyle entered the main hall.
    The ball went on unhindered, ignorant to his private fear. Lyle plunged into the throng, forced to use more force than he had wanted as he cleared a path, much to the consternation of the revellers. Hands grasped at him, wanting to know why he shoved so rudely, and then he heard the word he dreaded. His name. His real name.
    The hall fell silent as one. The musicians up in the gallery ceased as though some mystical conflagration had devoured their instruments in the blink of an eye. He kept going, kept pushing his way through the bodies.
    "Lyle!" Kit Walmsley's stentorian voice ripped through the pungent air again. "Samson Lyle! You will halt, damn your eyes!"
    And then he knew it was over, for more and more masked faces were looking at him. Those strangely blank expressions examining him as though utterly dispassionate, yet behind the disguises he knew they would be far from disinterested. A few brave souls placed themselves in his path, slowing his flight, then others grasped his shoulders and arms, clawing, dragging. He felt as if he waded through molasses. A huge paw landed hard on his shoulder, wrenched him round, its match grasping at his face until the mask slid free. Silence again. Samson Lyle had been captured, the wolf run to ground. Kit Walmsley's wide, ruddy face grinned back at him as the former Roundhead tossed Lyle's mask away in disgust as though it were a lump of rancid meat. His nose was still swollen, the nostrils scarlet tinged, and his eyes were slung with heavy blue bags.
    Lyle's brain raced. The colours and scents and sounds of the evening swirling like storm-harried leaves. Christ, he thought, but it was all over. They had failed. A year of evading - taunting - the authorities had come only to this. A pathetic flash in the pan, his audacious shot at greatness fizzling to nothing, the powder dampened by arrogance.
    "I see your snout has yet to recover," Lyle said defiantly.
    Walmsley's hand fell to his sword, thick fingers snaking round the grip. The stunned revellers gasped,