Creed said, ‘The people of Polgelly have no choice. The laws have changed.’

‘Yes, I have heard. We may be taken without benefit of warrant, may we not, and sent to London for our trials? More reason not to kill me now,’ said Jack, his hands still at his sides as he came closer, ‘when you could leave that pleasure to the executioner, while you stand by the gallows and enjoy the entertainment.’ Without turning his head he repeated, ‘Go, Eva.’

‘She stays,’ said the constable. ‘For if you claim to know the law, then you will also know that trials do have need of evidence, and she can yet supply that.’

Jack said, ‘Eva cannot testify.’

‘You think I am a fool?’ Creed was dismissive. ‘She can speak.’

‘She can. But not against my brother. Or against myself, in fact, if that would so reveal my brother’s crimes.’

Jack knew. I saw it in the faint curve of his mouth before he dropped the bombshell with the satisfaction of a small boy who liked watching things explode. ‘For if you know the law,’ he said, ‘then you will know no judge will have a woman as a witness at the trial of her husband.’

Creed stood thunderstruck. ‘Her husband!’

‘Ay, that was my own reaction, I’ll confess, when Danny told me, but the vicar did assure me it was true, and for my part I now can see it was a good match wisely made.’ The glance Jack sent my way held reassurance, but beneath it was full knowledge of the danger we were in. ‘So you see,’ he finished off, ‘she’ll be no use to you.’

The constable’s cold eyes had taken on a colder purpose. ‘Oh, I disagree,’ he said. ‘I can imagine quite a few ways that I might use Mrs Butler, and I’ll keep your brother well informed of all of them while he does rot in Newgate.’

He turned his head to leer at me, and that brief shift of focus was the chance Jack had been waiting for. Arm’s length now from the constable, he closed the distance in a final surge of motion, one hand reaching for possession of the pistol.

It was over in an instant.

With the gun’s report still ringing in my disbelieving ears I watched Jack stagger back and fall, and felt a sudden stinging in my eyes that wasn’t from the burning whiteness of the smoke.

‘No,’ I whispered, blinking back the pricking blur of tears.

I’d saved him, hadn’t I? I’d made a choice and changed things so this wouldn’t have to happen, so he wouldn’t have to die.

But he was dead. There was no question of it.

‘No!’

I must have spoken that more strongly, for the constable glanced up and with a twisting of his mouth turned back and spat once with contempt on Jack’s unmoving body. ‘Now,’ he said, preparing to reload his pistol as he’d done before, ‘we’ve but to wait for your brave husband, have we not? I must admit I did have some misgivings as to whether he would truly hold your life so dear that he’d agree to let me take him prisoner. A mistress, after all, is but a mistress. But a wife …’ His tone was confident and mocking at the same time, and it struck some switch inside me that I hadn’t known I had.

I didn’t afterwards remember when I moved, or how, but in the next breath I was somehow there in front of Creed and Daniel’s dagger was no longer in my hand.

He dropped the pistol with a clatter to the weeping stone and raised one hand to grasp the dagger’s handle in his turn. It looked so strangely out of place there, stuck hilt-deep into the centre of his chest.

His face was angry as he yanked the short blade out and tossed it clattering aside, and looking at the rush of bright red blood that followed seemed to make him even angrier, because he raised his head and started cursing me …

The words froze on his lips.

I saw the change in his expression, saw the darkness of his glare give way to fear, and heard the horror in the word he whispered: ‘Witch!’

He was already fading as his legs gave way beneath him and he dropped hard to his knees, this man who had so often fed upon the fear of others rattling out his final breath with terror in his eyes. And then he fell and his grey shadow tumbled down and thinned to nothingness.

Jack’s body faded, too, and all the dimness of the cave around me shuddered once and melted into the back passage of Trelowarth House, and I was standing ready to walk through the kitchen door.

Except I couldn’t move.

The night had sent me back too traumatised. I couldn’t seem to manage the transition, I could only stand there trembling with the tear stains on my bruised and swelling cheek, wrapped in the rough coat of a dead man that weighed heavily upon my shaking shoulders.

I’m not sure I ever would have found the will or strength to move if I had not heard footsteps clipping with a cheerful and familiar beat across the kitchen floor, though even when the heavy door swung inwards and Claire stood there in amazement at the sight of me, I couldn’t think of anything to do but fling myself into her arms and cling there weeping like a child who’d just awakened from a nightmare.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Shock does strange things to the mind.

My senses telescoped to focus on a few small random details while the rest of what was going on I only grasped in fragments. Which was why I knew that Claire had seven buttons on her shirt but didn’t know how we’d come halfway up the steep back stairs.

I heard somebody entering the kitchen and Mark’s voice below us called me, ‘Eva?’