Ghost of Christmas Past Read Online Free Page B

back of the house
to see who else turned up, or left.
    As soon
as the carriage rolled out of sight, Rupert and Marcus left their
hiding place and disappeared into the shadows. They crept silently
around the outskirts of the village toward the back of the house
Guerin had disappeared into where they met with Jacob and
Harry.
    “ Any sign of the three?” Harry asked. Everyone shook their
heads.
    “ The coachman was too heavily disguised and cannot be
discounted as one of them,” Rupert whispered.
    “ I think that Dubois is in there but only caught a fleeting
glance so cannot be sure. There is at least one other person in the
house, apart from Guerin,” Jacob replied with a scowl.
    “ I was too far away and he was too well covered to see much.
Did anyone get a good view of the driver?”
    “ Nope, but I think that he is too well covered to be just
hired for the journey,” Joshua sighed.
    “ Do we know where Guerin went? If he met anyone?”
    Everyone
shook their heads.
    Rupert
bit back a curse of frustration and shuddered as a cold blast of
air snuck up his back. He hated the country. At least by the sea
there were things to look at and it wasn’t as barren as mile upon
mile of rolling hillside. He couldn’t understand why anyone would
want to live in such an out of the way village as this one. There
must only have been two hundred people in residence and they were
at least five miles away from the nearest main road; it was a
ridiculous little place designed for hardship rather than
convenience.
    “ We will keep watch and see if the coachman comes back on
foot, or if Guerin goes out again,” Harry mumbled around a
yawn.
    “ We will get some sleep while we can and take over from you at
dawn,” Rupert whispered. He didn’t relish his colleagues their turn
on watch. It was difficult to know which was worse, having to stand
outside throughout the night, or having to leave a nice warm bed at
the inn so they could head out into the cold to stand in the dark.
Either way they would all end up shivering, miserable and hungry by
morning.
    The inn
was silent by the time Rupert and Luke made their way upstairs. The
darkened corridor was lit by a solitary candle that rested on a
small table against the wall. Unfortunately, its feeble flame did
little to light the long hallway but neither of them were all that
bothered by the shadows. In deference to the other patrons in the
hostelry who were asleep by now, neither man made a noise as they
headed toward their rooms. Rupert lifted a hand to wave his
colleague goodnight and had only just opened the door when a sudden
flurry of movement to his left was immediately accompanied by
several loud thumps from behind him.
    He heard
Luke’s grunts and turned to watch two assailants ambush his
colleague in the corridor. He moved forward to lend a hand but was
immediately accosted himself by the two thugs who burst out of his
room behind him and lunged at him with big, beefy fists.
    He
ducked his head to avoid a wildly swinging fist and grunted under
the weight of the unseen second man who threw one beefy arm around
his shoulders. The heavy pressure on his back was impossible to
fight and there was little Rupert could do except claw at the arm
across his throat in an attempt to get the man to loosen his hold
so that he could breathe. As the seconds ticked by he struggled to
draw breath and the outer edges of his vision began to blur, but
not enough so that he was rendered blind to his assailant’s
accomplice.
    As soon
as the man drew close, Rupert used the weight of the thug behind
him as leverage and lifted both boots off the ground. He landed a
well-placed kick squarely in his middle of the charging man’s
forehead and watched as his head snapped back with a dull crunch
and he fell to the floor without a murmur.
    Pleased
that at least one man was down, Rupert turned his attention to the
attacker whose hold he couldn’t break. Rupert was tall, heavily
built and strong, but even he was