Dominic is ambushed and returns home wounded

Dominic is ambushed and returns home wounded after an attack on a snowy road turns his journey back to his wife into a fight for survival. His battered return exposes the danger of Rupert’s pursuit and gives Isobel a chance to answer violence with decisive action of her own.

Causes and Approach

Several days after Rupert accosted Isobel in the gardens of Havistock Hall, Dominic remained wary of being lulled into a false sense of security. He believed Rupert was growing more desperate in his pursuit of money. Although Dominic disliked leaving Isobel in Peter’s care, he went to question Hubert about his past contact with her, reasoning that, as her husband, he was the person who could do so. The inquiry had yielded information useful to their pursuit of Rupert, but it also meant Dominic was returning home alone.

The journey took place on a winter night. After leaving a tavern, Dominic rode through darkness as fresh snow covered the ground and another storm threatened. The village lay several miles behind him; he pulled his cloak close and urged his horse onward, eager to get home to Isobel. Lost in thoughts about their marriage, he did not see the shadows beside the road until the attack was already beginning.

The Ambush

The attack began before Dominic could react. He was pulled from his horse and struck by the men who had emerged beside and behind him. His recollection of the struggle would later remain uncertain: he remembered steel meeting steel and thought there had been at least three attackers, though he could not tell whether the same person had engaged him throughout. The violence left him badly injured, but did not prevent him from getting away.

Dominic later recalled that he had struck down two men on the back road from town and escaped a third. He also remembered someone standing apart in the shadows, watching without joining the fight. That figure’s presence widened the uncertainty around the ambush: Dominic could not identify the attackers, nor explain whether the observer had been involved in the plan. Isobel suspected Rupert, while Dominic wondered whether DeLisle might have been among the men; neither suspicion was established as fact in the account.

Return to Havistock Hall

The attack became unmistakably personal when a motionless, ragged figure was found in the hall at Havistock. Isobel recognized the superfine wool of Dominic’s cloak before she could see him clearly, then confirmed that her husband lay beneath it, alive but gravely hurt. Peter and Sebastian moved to help, while Isobel refused to be sent away: she called for the doctor and directed Manvers to check whether Dominic’s horse had returned and to bring back any bags. Her composure turned the household’s shock into action. Manvers, who had doubted that she could manage alone during her earlier flight, now saw her meet the emergency with a resolve that matched the danger.

Sebastian later found Dominic’s sword and scabbard beside the road, about half a mile away. Both were bloodied, and signs in the snow, including the bodies of men who had not escaped the fight, supported Sebastian’s belief that Dominic had faced a fierce attack. Isobel understood the assault as another move by Rupert and a warning in their ongoing conflict; the evidence established the violence of the encounter, though it did not settle who had organized it.

Consequences and Personal Cost

After Dominic was brought inside, the attack’s consequences became personal in a different way. Isobel stayed beside him, gently touching his hair and kissing an uninjured part of his face as she urged him to be strong and told him she loved him. His survival brought relief, but it did not quiet her fear: she blamed herself for his suffering and thought that, once she had recovered, she should have left him and returned to Willowbrook Hall in Oxfordshire. That was her guilt, not proof that accepting his proposal had caused the ambush.

The episode therefore makes the danger surrounding Isobel register through the cost borne by the people protecting her. Dominic had returned from questioning Hubert with information useful to the pursuit of Rupert, but the journey home exposed him to an attack whose organizers remained uncertain. In its aftermath, Isobel’s devotion and self-reproach coexist: she stays with her husband and cares for him, even as she imagines that leaving might have spared him. The ambush deepens the conflict beyond pursuit and evidence, placing the security of their marriage under the same threat that has made Rupert’s actions so dangerous.