Chapter 4
567 Words
Chapter Four
Oliver tumbled headfirst into the street, right in the path of the post-chaise. He fell heavily—rolled—one of the leaders stepped on him, and then the horses passed over him in a clatter of iron-shod hooves and loud jangle of harnesses, and the bulk of the carriage blotted everything out.
Oliver curled up into as small a ball as he could, aware of huge wheels scything past. Something brushed his wrist, plucking at his cuff—and then it was over.
He uncurled himself and scrambled for the pavement on hands and knees, dimly aware of shouts and cries of alarm.
Oliver didn’t try to stand. He stayed on his hands and knees for a moment, gulping for breath. There was thunder in his ears. The thunder of hooves and carriage wheels, the thunder of his heartbeat.
Voices jabbered at him. It took a moment for the words to make sense. “Sir? Are you all right, sir?”
Oliver lurched upright, staggered, and caught his balance. “I’m fine,” he said. “Fine.” But he wasn’t; he was shaking, and he couldn’t quite seem to catch his breath.
He looked for the post-chaise. It had halted some yards ahead, the horses snorting and tossing their heads, the postilions white-faced, craning their necks to look back, probably fearing they’d killed him.
They very nearly had killed him.
Half a dozen people were clustered around him, wide-eyed and excited. He didn’t recognize any of them. “Did you see who pushed me?” Oliver asked.
His audience gaped at him. “Push you?” said a man who looked like a lawyer’s clerk. “Ain’t no one ’as pushed you.”
Oliver knew damned well that someone had pushed him. “Did you see anyone running away?”
The little crowd began to melt into the shadows, people stepping back, turning from him, moving off into the dark. Did they think he was going to accuse one of them of trying to kill him?
One man didn’t turn away. A crossing-sweeper. He held out an object. “Your ’at, guv’nor.”
Oliver’s hat didn’t look like a hat anymore. It had almost been cut in two by the carriage wheels.
He took it and turned it slowly over in his hands. It could have been his arm crushed this flat. It could have been his neck.
He looked around, scanning the street, scanning the shadows. His audience was gone. The post-chaise was gone. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. No one loitering. No one watching.
The crossing-sweeper was still waiting, no doubt hoping for a penny in exchange for the ruined hat.
“Did you see what happened?” Oliver asked. “Did you see the person who pushed me?”
“I din’ see nothin’, sir.”
Oliver looked down at the hat again, and then at his cuff, where he’d felt the carriage wheels pluck at him. The buttons were gone, either crushed or shorn off.
If he’d fallen one inch closer to the wheels his hand would have shared that fate.
The skin between his shoulder blades tightened in a shiver. What had just happened had been no mean-spirited prank; it had been someone trying to kill him.
Oliver looked around again. Piccadilly stretched in either direction. Torches and lamps burned brightly—and shadows gathered in the spaces in between.
No one seemed to be watching him from those shadows . . . but that didn’t mean that his attacker wasn’t still nearby.
Oliver’s house on Berkeley Square was two minutes away, but he didn’t feel like making that walk alone.
He dug a guinea from his pocket and held it out to the crossing-sweeper. “Will you walk with me to Berkeley Square? I’m feeling unsteady on my pins.”
It wasn’t a lie, he did feel unsteady, and worse than that, he felt a little afraid.
- Writer
