ruthless—
and acting in a way that makes me realize that the past belongs in the past, never out in the sun again. And I'm angry with myself for being so stupidly angry, for not realizing sooner that no matter who we are now, we were once not so…not so
nice.
"
"Callie, it wasn't all like that. Yes, Ainsley was a privateer, but sanctioned and approved by the Crown. And look at how he cared for all of us. If it hadn't been for your father, I— "
"No! Don't say anything! I'm not asking you to defend him. He doesn't need defending. He's a good man. I know that, and I love him very much. Last night didn't change that."
"Then maybe you might want to go tell him that," Courtland said, reaching for her. "Knowing him as I do, he's probably wondering what you thought about actions he had no choice but to take last night."
"No, not yet. I need
you
to understand." She held up her hands, keeping him at a distance. "I…I want it
Over,
Court. Poor Papa. He wants so much to be good. And you, Court. I understand now, why you're so careful, why you're happiest when…when everything is quiet, peaceful. I want that, too. I want us to be able to be together without worrying about what Edmund Beales might do next. About whatever was done in the past coming back to destroy who we are today."
He pulled her against him and let her cry.
At last he took hold of her shoulders and gently put some distance between them. "If I promise to go back to being upstanding and dull and boring and…stodgy, will you stop crying?"
"And practical," she added, wiping at her face with the edge of her cloak. "I watched Chance when he was
performing
at the gaol, and as he captained the
Spectre.
And I thought, isn't he magnificent? And I thought, oh, I'm so glad Court isn't like that. It's not that I don't love Chance, that I don't love Papa. I love them with all of my heart. But they're…" she summoned a small smile. "Well, they're
exhausting.
"
Courtland bit back a laugh at the rather astonished look on Cassandra's face, for she seemed to have learned something about herself that she hadn't previously known. "I think, sweetheart, you're attempting to tell me that the reason you're…drawn to me is because I'm boring."
Her bottom lip began to quiver again, but this time she laughed. "Why, Courtland Becket, I think you're right. And I'm not drawn to you. I love you."
Courtland stopped once again, turned her to face him. "You shouldn't have said that."
She looked up at him, blinked.
"I wanted to speak to Ainsley first, ask his permission. I think I have it, but I wanted to ask him, formally, and then propose to you in some romantic way while telling you that I love you with my entire heart and soul."
Cassandra pressed her fingertips to her mouth, smiled. "I…I think this is a very romantic way. Save for that bandage, which makes you look just a little bit silly. Say it again."
He shook his head, wondering what had kept him from saying the words before this moment. Hell's bells, he'd taken her to his bed. Granted, that act didn't equate love, not for a large population of the world, but he wasn't the rest of the world. "When we fired the broadsides, I held my breath until I could see the
Respite
was undamaged. God, I was shooting at the ship that held my world, Callie. I never want to be put in a position like that again. I love you," he ended, lowering his mouth to hers until his lips were only a whisper from hers. "I will love you forever."
He held her close as they shared what somehow seemed to be their first kiss, filled with a sweetness that hurt his heart, which threatened to unman him. She was his. So precious to him…and now his equal, his woman, his love…
"We have to go inside now," he murmured against her hair as she clung to him, the two of them more than a little breathless. "Like you, sweetings, I wish this was over, but we both know it isn't. I want you to go upstairs, get some rest, while I speak to Ainsley."
"I know. Papa told me Edmund Beales will most likely come here, perhaps even today."
"We'll talk about that, yes," Courtland said, lifting her hand to his lips. "But first we'll speak of something much more important. Once we're at sea, I believe your papa may be able to marry us. Would you like that, or do you want to wait until we're in Hampton Roads, and you can gather bride clothes and— "
Cassandra gave a small cry and wrapped her arms around his neck, placed a swift, hard kiss on his mouth. "Does that answer your question?"
"Yes, I suppose it does," Courtland said, believing he might just be grinning like the village idiot. He took her hand again as they mounted the stone steps to the terrace.
His hand on the latch of one of the French doors leading into the drawing room, he kissed her once more, and then asked her to please check on Eleanor and the baby before going to her own chamber to get some rest.
She started into the drawing room as he pulled open the door and stood back, bowing grandly to her as he gestured that she should precede him. She dropped into a small curtsey and then smiled at him over her shoulder as she stepped into the room. "As your wife, it's my understanding that I'm to obey you, but as only your affianced bride, I think I'm first going down to the kitchens to find Bumble and something to fill my—
No!
"
Courtland reached for her but she was snatched away from the opening before he could get his hand on her arm.
In a single beat of his heart, he knew.
Beales.
Court slammed the door and bolted for the balustrade, vaulting over it, his left ankle collapsing beneath him as he landed hard on the mix of sand and shingle a good fifteen feet below the terrace.
Ignoring the pain, he pushed himself up, scrabbled and staggered toward the secret opening hidden among the stones of the foundation of the house. Pushed on the correct stone, even as he heard boot heels hitting the stone steps, pursuing him.
In a moment, he was inside Becket Hall, in the windowless storeroom adjoining Odette's Voodoo retreat, the doorway closed and once more invisible to anyone who didn't know its location.
Above him was his family; everything and everyone he loved.
Cassandra.
"Think! Don't wonder how. Just know it's happening," he ordered himself in a fierce whisper as he felt his way through the deep piles of belongings stored there before they would be loaded onto the
Isabella,
the
Respite.
He found the wall and moved along it, searching for the door to Odette's secret altar room.
Disoriented by the complete darkness that didn't become much lighter even as his eyes began to adjust to it, it took him precious minutes to work his way around the large, oddly shaped room and find the hidden door. Precious minutes he wasted searching rather than thinking about how in hell he, probably the only man in Becket Hall without a pistol pointed at him, was going to make a difference.
His hand closed over the recessed ring that was the latch for this side of yet another hidden door, the one Cassandra had disappeared through, laughing, teasing, that night so many lifetimes ago, to change out of her gown. He pushed it open, moved into another dark room save for the few candles burning on Odette's Voodoo altar.
He had gotten somewhere. He had gotten nowhere.
Cassandra.
"Stop it! Don't react, don't imagine—
think!
"
"Better to arm yourself, and follow me," Jacko said, striking a match against a stone candleholder on the altar and holding it up so that Courtland could see his face. "You and me, boyo, and one old, dyin' woman who refuses to lie down like she should. Unless we can make our way unseen to the cannon floors where our men have no notion of what's goin' on, we're all they've got."
"Jacko— thank God." Now Courtland could see better, enough to see that Odette was sitting in her ancient rocker, twisting her hands in her lap. "How…how did Beales get this far?"
Odette set the chair to rocking. "Loringa…stronger than me now…stronger than me. The bad
loa.
Hid her from me…"
Jacko rolled his eyes, snorted. Jacko had never put much stock in Odette's powers. "Trickery, boyo, plain and simple." He lit another fat candle and handed it to Courtland. "Now let's see what all we can find in that storeroom to arm ourselves."
As they went through the piles and piles of belongings, pulling out knives, swords, a few pistols and some shot, Jacko explained what had happened.
There were only six men stationed on each of the two cannon floors, one group watching the Channel, the other with their eyes on the land approach to Becket Hall. The remaining men had all gone for their women and children, scattered throughout a few of the local villages, in preparation for boarding the
Isabella
and leaving Romney Marsh for good, confident that Ainsley and the rest would return shortly after dawn.
That left Bumble and Edythe in the kitchens, Odette in her bed, Sheila Whiting sitting with Eleanor, a young girl from the village in the nursery with Spencer's children, Onatah tending young Jack, and Jack himself working away in Ainsley's study, doing who knew what in preparation for Ainsley's return.
"And me," Jacko said, strapping a cutlass to his ample waist. "I was over to The Last Voyage, and makin' my way back along the beach when I spied the wagon comin' up the drive just like it belonged here. Odette was sittin' right up there on the seat, wavin' to the windows while whoever was drivin' the thing kept his head down. Stopped me, it did. Odette? What in blazin' hell was she doin', out and about, sick as she is?"
By the time Jacko's rum-dulled brain had realized what was happening, it was too late, the wagon had passed beyond the point where any number of can-nonballs could reach them, driving straight up to the front door.
"Probably knocked on the door and then walked right in, her and everyone hidden in the wagon," Jacko said, shaking his head. "Only black face for all the Marsh, probably, and lookin' so much like Odette? Our men just watched, seein' nothin' to bother them. Edythe, I'm thinkin', opened the door and let her in, and the others followed.
Beales.
Nothin' else for me to do but come in here, figure what to do next."
"Loringa destroys, that's all she knows to do," Odette said from the doorway, swaying slightly as she braced her thin frame against the doorjamb. "I leave this room and she'll know I'm here. It's taking the good
loa
and all I have to keep her away this long. Help them. Hurry."
CHAPTER TWENTY
CASSANDRA SAT VERY still on one of the pair of couches pushed back against the wall by their dozen or more captors, Lisette beside her. They held hands as Mariah was escorted out of the drawing room at pistol-point, to be taken upstairs to Eleanor's bedchamber.
Mariah hadn't wanted to go, but then Edmund Beales had asked whose two "darling little children" had been located in the third floor nursery and removed to Eleanor's bedchamber, to be with the invalid and the infant being minded by the fierce-looking old harridan with the braid.
Mariah ran toward the hallway then, pausing only a moment to look back at Spencer, who sat cross-legged on the floor with his hands tied behind him. Rian laid sprawled beside him, cradled in Jasper's strong arms, still unconscious from the blow he'd taken when Beales had casually swung the hilt of his pistol at the head of the man who had dared to burn down his French estate.
Although his leg was strapped between two pieces of the splintered mizzenmast and he was far from being able to do much more than curse in his frustration, Chance's wrists were also bound as he lay slumped on another couch.
Only Ainsley remained free, standing in front of the fireplace, beneath the portrait of his dead wife.
Jack was nowhere to be seen. Nor were Jacko or Odette. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Cassandra didn't want to think about that at the moment.
The French doors opened and three heavily-armed men reentered the drawing room, the lead one shaking his head as he looked to Beales. "Ran off into the weeds somewhere. We made a full circuit of the house, but we couldn't find him. Didn't chance looking in the village, seeing how you said you wanted to be in and out of here without a fuss. Didn't figure on so much company, did you, Cap'n?"
Cassandra bit her bottom lip between her teeth to keep from smiling. Courtland had escaped them. The crews from the
Respite
and the
Spectre
were only a quarter mile away in the village. There was still hope.
"Another way of saying you are, as always, a bloody coward, Thibaud. And lazy," Edmund Beales purred as he sat in her papa's favorite chair that he'd had placed in the very center of the room, as if he was a king holding court. "Thank you so much. Geoff? By my reckoning we have no more than, oh, a half hour or so before we could be disturbed. I believe it's time we were finished with this, don't you?"
"As long as you draw breath, Edmund, this won't be finished," Ainsley said in much the same tone he might use to offer a guest a glass of wine.
Beales smiled, and Cassandra had to avert her eyes, for he was the embodiment of evil in any case, but even more so when he smiled. "I had so hoped to watch from a convenient balcony as you were hanged in chains. It angers me that I'll be denied that particular delight. But," he added, shrugging, "as long as you're dead, I imagine I can deal with my disappointment. Now, the Empress. Where is she?"
