“Can’t we help you with them?”
“No,” he said, gritting his teeth. Those fireworks were meant to be his surprise, his own unique stamp on the day’s festivities. Colin was going to produce the display himself, and he was going to do it well—prove to Bram he could be good for something. There wasn’t much he could seem to get right in this life, but he did have a knack for artistic destruction. What better canvas than the clear night sky?
But first, to deal with Sir Lewis Finch’s masterpiece. The cursed cannon.
He grasped a rope in both hands and rocked back on his heels, tugging with all his might. Being responsible for artillery had seemed a plum assignment, until Colin had realized just how much heavy lifting was involved. All day, he’d been hustling to and fro—taking powder to the ladies, then rolled cartridges to the armory, smuggling fireworks to Summerfield, and now carting Sir Lewis’s prototype up to the castle. Loading the thing was taking longer than he’d planned. He was racing nightfall now.
“What’s this one?” one of the twins asked.
Out of the corner of his eye, Colin saw Finn brush the straw from a noisemaker. Before he could object, the boy gave the cord a tug. The firecracker exploded with a sharp pop and a dusting of smoke.
“Cor,” Rufus said, grinning. “Try another.”
“I told you two to leave off,” Colin bit out. He stood tall—just in time to watch Dinner scuttle off with a frightened bleat. The startled lamb squeezed under the fence that bordered Summerfield’s gardens. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and frightened the damned sheep. You know how Rycliff dotes on the thing.”
“Shall we fetch him?” Finn asked.
“No, I’ll have to do it. He’ll be scared of you now.” Colin vaulted the side of the wagon. He clapped the fraying strands of hemp from his hands and wiped his perspiring brow with his sleeve.
Clambering over the fence, he entered the kitchen gardens, where the house’s vegetables and savories were grown. He watched as the lamb trotted a path between two rows of turnips and squeezed under a second fence to enter a fallow plot bounded by meadow.
“Dinner,” he called, giving chase again and entering the meadow. “Dinner, come back now.”
When he reached the center of the field, he paused to catch his breath and scan the area for telltale tufts of wool. When the lamb failed to appear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. “Dinner!”
This time, his call earned an answer. Several answers. In fact, the ground shook with the collective bestial response. He spied several large, dark forms lumbering toward him through the twilight dusk. He blinked, trying to make them out. These weren’t sheep. No, they were . . .
Cows. Large cows. Remarkably fast and menacing cows. A small herd of them, all thundering straight for him where he stood in the center of the field.
Colin took a few steps backward. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t mean you.”
The beasts didn’t listen to reason apparently. A shame, because they did have rather large ears. Or were those . . . horns?
He turned and made a mad dash for the fence.
Blighted idiot, he cursed himself as he pumped arms and legs, scrambling over the furrowed field. Corkbrained fool. What kind of imbecile entered a pasture at twilight and shouted “Dinner” at the top of his lungs?
One who hadn’t left London in a decade, that’s who.
“I hate the country,” he muttered as he ran. “I hate it. I bloody damned well hate it.”
In his hurry, he’d chosen a different route of escape than the way he’d entered the field. Rather than reaching a simple wooden stile, he ran smack up against a hedgerow. A thorny hedgerow.
“Hate it,” he said, pushing his way through the bramble and twigs. “Loathsome, miserable, reeking, wholesome farmland. Feh.”
He emerged on the other side of the hedge to find himself once again in the Summerfield gardens—the pretty bit, this time. He was scraped, but mercifully untrampled. He stood staring at the hedgerow a moment, picking bits of hawthorn from his clothing and cursing country life.
Then something odd caught his attention. A light smack on the head.
He wheeled around, batting blindly with a hand.
The next smack caught him across the face. A red burst of pain stung his already abraded cheek.
Good Lord, what was this? The Seven Plagues of Colin Sandhurst, squeezed into the space of one hour?
He raised his hands in defense, dodging the repeated blows.
“You villain,” a female voice accused. Smack. “You deceitful cur.”
Colin lowered his hands to get a proper look at his attacker. It was the middle Highwood sister. The dark-haired one. Miriam, was it? Melissa?
Whoever she was, she was hitting him. Repeatedly. With a glove.