She held on tight, even as she began to cry.
Courtland eased down her skirt once more and put his arms around her, kissed her hair. "Shhh, sweetings. It's all right…it's all right."
"No…it's not. You're so good to me, and I'm so selfish…"
He disentangled himself from her embrace, smiled at her. "Oh, I don't know about that, Callie. I think, in my old age, I'm still going to look back on this moment as one of the most wonderful, and daring, of my normally boring, staid existence. However, practical man that I am at heart, I'm going to put you down for a moment, to retrieve my glove."
"I gave those gloves to you last Christmas," she said as he carefully lowered her to the ground and she bent to pick up the glove. She handed it up to him and then rebuttoned her jacket. "I didn't want Papa to pay Ollie to make them, so I swept out his store every day for a month. Did you know that?"
"We keep secrets very well at Becket Hall. No, Ollie never told me. They're doubly precious to me now. But come on, let's get moving, before Spence comes riding back to find us. He isn't really as amusing as he thinks he is, and I don't want to have to punch him in the nose."
She raised her crossed arms to him and he lifted her onto the saddle once more in one fluid motion. He kept hold of her hands, lowering them around his neck as he bent in to kiss her, a gentle kiss that nearly had her crying again.
"There was something you wanted to say to me?" she asked him as he urged Poseidon back toward the roadway.
His intense look had her toes curling in her riding boots. "I do, but it'll keep. Contrary to the evidence of what just happened, sweetings, there's a time and place for everything. For now, just promise me one thing."
Still feeling more than a little mellow, Cassandra agreed, but then quickly added, "…as long as it doesn't include waiting at the inn while the rest of you go into Dymchurch."
"No, I won't ask the impossible, Callie. You were right when you said that Beckets go toward the fight, not run from it. But, since we kept the crew in readiness back at Becket Hall, you, Rian, Billy, and Spencer and I are the only ones who've seen Edmund Beales and might recognize him. If you see Beales tonight, pretend you haven't."
"I still don't understand why, if he's at the gaol, we can't take him then— kill him then. And, no, I'm not sorry that I wish him dead, and just as quickly as possible."
"Normally, I'd agree. Better a swift end to things. But Ainsley has other plans for our old enemy. And if they work, the Beckets, here or anywhere in this world, will never have to look over their shoulders again, worried that their past will come back to destroy them."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"WHERE'S MARIAH?"
"You don't want me to answer that, Court," Spencer said, lifting a mug of homebrewed ale to his lips as the Beckets gathered around the table in the only private dining room in the small inn. "Suffice it to say, by the time my beloved wife is through bullying her way through the kitchens and taprooms of this small village, that business of the loaves and fishes will have paled in comparison. Of course, our dear Lord was not equipped with three fat purses filled with gold pieces, but we'll take our miracles any way we can find them, correct?"
"Now I wonder, Lisette," Courtland asked, smiling. "Would that be blasphemy or sacrilege our friend Spencer has just uttered— or both? In any case, if a white-hot bolt of lightning comes crashing through the ceiling in the next few moments, Spence, please have the courtesy to stand up and deflect it from the rest of us."
Courtland held out a chair for Cassandra and then sat down beside her, looking to the convent-educated Lisette, who merely shrugged in that graceful Gallic way of hers as she buttered a warm biscuit for Rian. Lisette was a beautiful young woman, all pale and golden, but at the moment she was too pale, knowing that her father was close by.
"Tell me again about this Empress," Rian said after taking a large bite from the biscuit. "Ainsley was rather vague when I saw him this afternoon and we played at how I am to deliver it to the gaol tomorrow evening. What does it look like?"
"I think it's beautiful," Cassandra said, reaching beneath the table for Courtland's hand, and squeezing it, "but it's only a stone, nothing to have caused so many deaths."
"Well, whatever it is," Rian continued, "Ainsley won't let Beales have it, not now that we know that damn thing is the real reason Beales attacked the island. Isabella was only a part of his madness. It's still difficult to believe so many people died because he thinks the stone is— what? Magical?"
"The stone is bad luck," Cassandra said, her appetite gone. "Papa says bad luck wears off, but I know I don't want to so much as touch the Empress again. How can anyone know when the bad luck is gone? I wouldn't risk it. Perhaps in a few hundred years it will have lost its curse, or whatever it is, but until then it can sit where it is, as far as I'm concerned."
There was general agreement around the table as Mariah walked into the room, dusting her hands together and looking more than a little satisfied with herself. "Everyone has been fed— including the horses and oxen— thank you very much for doubting me, husband, and in case no one else has noticed, it is almost full dark out there."
Cassandra watched as Courtland grabbed one last forkful of mutton and shoved it into his mouth even as he got to his feet. "And Chance and Kinsey are in place?"
Rian nodded. "They've been here for several hours now. Kinsey's staying with the
Respite,
but Chance has positioned himself just outside the gaol, as a part of the guard from Becket Hall."
"In that case, let's do what we came here to do, before Mariah has to feed everyone again, and allow our friends to return to their homes and families," Spencer said, also getting to his feet. "But first," he added, lifting his mug, "to success."
"To success!" they all agreed, and the drained mugs hit the tabletop all together, so that Cassandra involuntarily flinched, and realized that her nerves were not as steady as she would like Courtland and everyone else to believe.
To hide her concern, she quickly rose and led the way out of the dining room, Courtland throwing her cloak over her shoulders as Rian walked past her to open the door to the innyard.
She stepped outside and gasped at the sight that greeted her. Over two hundred people, all of them waiting quietly, solemnly, a scattering of bright, smoking torches casting strange shadows on all their faces. They hadn't looked to be so many, not piled into the wagons. Now they were very impressive indeed. And at the very front of the crowd stood Billy, still holding the noose.
"You remember the plan, friends. Our sheer force of numbers will be the road to our success," Courtland said, standing behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders. "At the most, there are a dozen soldiers assigned to the gaol. The remainder are either sleeping off their dinner at the garrison or out on patrol— looking for some of you, yes, gentlemen?"
That brought a few laughs and cheers from the assembled company, most of whom had most probably had to outrun the Waterguard at some time in their lives.
"Ah, but tonight we are upstanding citizens of Romney Marsh, set on not allowing the dangerous Black Ghost to escape justice, isn't that right? Tonight we march on the gaol, righteously indignant, demanding Marsh justice, not Dover justice, that is too often not as harsh as we would like. Transportation? No! Death! We demand death for the crime of smuggling, do we not?"
"Not so's you could tell by me, thank ya kindly!" someone called out from the back of the crowd, and everyone laughed this time.
"So much for your inspired speech, Court," Cassandra teased him, turning to look at him and his suddenly confused expression. "Perhaps we should just go? They already know what they're to do."
His expression softened and he smiled down at her. "We need Chance here, I suppose. He's much more eloquent, and I'm beginning to remember why I like to remain in the background, sweeping up after everyone else."
"You make yourself sound so dull," she scolded. "Wasn't it you who first rode out as the Black Ghost?"
"Don't remind me," he said, pulling her cloak hood up over her hair before addressing his audience once more. "He's in the cells in the cellars and there will be guards there unless they're called upstairs to deal with us. No violence, not if our numbers are sufficient to encourage the soldiers to abandon their posts. We find the key, we get him out, we surround him as he makes his way into the shadows, and it's over. Understood?"
Again, that voice from the back of the crowd: "Just a quick stoppin' off to deliver a kick or three, sir? Nothin' too fatal?"
This time Courtland laughed with the crowd, and then he raised his arm high and held it there as he turned, began the mile-long march into Dymchurch.
Cassandra fell into step beside him, Rian and Lisette, Spencer and Mariah flanking them. The Beckets, united, leading the way because, as they'd all heard Ainsley say so many times, no one should be asked to do what a Becket wouldn't do for himself. Behind them, walking ten abreast, the crowd followed, the light from the torches helping to light their way, as did the full moon.
Soon enough those torches were reflected in the windows of houses and shop windows lining the streets of Dymchurch, and the evening silence was broken only by the sound of several hundred feet, many clad in wooden clogs, striking the cobblestones.
People began opening their doors, most of them just as quickly shutting them, for to see a mob on the move had to bring back memories of the old days, when freetraders marched openly through the streets, rough, defiant, daring anyone to look at them crookedly.
Cassandra believed her heart was now beating in time with those marching feet, and she squeezed Courtland's hand tightly as they turned one last corner and began advancing directly toward the gaol house.
"Drop back now, Callie," he said. "Stay with Mariah and Lisette."
She didn't argue. She was excited. She was terrified. She was not, not at this moment, about to disobey orders.
She held out her hands to Lisette and Mariah as the men moved ahead and, arms linked together, they followed, their steps never wavering.
Rian yelled out, "You! You in the gaol! Give us Geoffrey Baskin! We've no quarrel with you! We come for Geoffrey Baskin!"
Spencer cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, "The Black Ghost! Scourge! Murderer! Bring him out! Bring him out!"
The crowd, on cue, took up the cries, repeating the demands, raising their weapon in the air as they continued to advance on the gaol house.
The pair of guards flanking the door, both of whom Cassandra recognized, leveled their rifles at the crowd. At Courtland's chest.
"Oh, God," Cassandra whispered, and just for a moment, she thought she might faint.
"Women and kiddies up front!" Billy yelled, waving the noose above his head. "Fine boys up there, what knows what's what! Not goin' to shoot women or kiddies! Come on now— step lively!"
It was unbelievable. The men all stopped and allowed the women to push past them. And the women, if it were possible, seemed more formidable than the men. They carried brooms, pitchforks, lengths of stout wood they held high in the air as they demanded entrance to the gaol house.
"I wish I had a weapon," Mariah said beside her. "My God, Callie, they're magnificent, aren't they? Come on— don't let them lead the way when it's Becket women who belong up front."
Their arms still linked at the elbows, the three women arrived once more at the very front of the crowd— the noisy, highly belligerent mob— just in time to see the heavy door close behind the two guards. Cassandra could hear a stout wooden bolt shooting home.
"
Merde,
what do we do now?" Lisette asked. "This is all a fine show, but that's a prodigiously large door."
"Pardon us, misses," someone said behind them, and they stepped to one side to see a half dozen short, brawny men holding a freshly-cut tree trunk and heading straight for the door.
"Well," Mariah said, clapping her hands as if at a party, "I guess that answers that question!"
But the battering ram wasn't necessary, because the door opened once more and there was a moment of congestion as the soldiers, all local youths who knew on which side their bread had been buttered for many a year, all bolted outside and then ran off in every direction. After all, their own mamas could be brandishing one of those pitchforks.
So they retreated— ran away like rats deserting a sinking ship, in truth— leaving the door open.
And then Chance was there, without Cassandra realizing he had been anywhere near. He leapt up onto the raised flagway, light spilling over him from inside the gaol house, a wicked-looking sword in his hand, his long, blond hair flying loose in the stiff breeze coming off the Channel. He stood on the wooden flagway as she felt certain he would look on the deck of a ship, his legs spread, one hand on his hip, his chin held high, defiant. "Men! You allow your women to fight for you? To me! Now! We're here for Marsh justice!"
