Beales looked wild now, panicked, as he ran back into the room, charging at Ainsley, waving the pistol near his face. "I said, shut your mouth!"
"But it didn't work out that way, did it? I'm here. My crew is here instead of in Dymchurch, and obviously now summoned from the village by one of my pesky family— one of the
menagerie
you so despise, always despised. A man is loyal to himself and no one else. Isn't that your credo, Edmund? I was too soft, too shortsighted, wanting only to return to England with my family, live a quiet life. I had no
ambition
beyond providing well for my family. But that was all right. You had enough ambition for both of us. You helped to make me a very rich man. You'd just never intended that I'd keep any of it, that I'd leave you."
"Papa…please…" Cassandra whispered as Beales turned his pistol on Ainsley. "Just let him leave. Let him go."
"Yes, why don't we do that. Splendid idea, Callie. We'll let him go."
"Court!" Cassandra half got to her feet, but Lisette pulled her back down as Courtland stepped into the doorway.
He was alone.
Courtland held up the small leather bag, tossed it into the air, caught it again. "Well, now— look what I found."
Beales kept his right arm outstretched, pointing the pistol at Ainsley's head. He smiled, and Cassandra flinched. "Another of your misbegotten whelps, Geoff? Seems he at least knows who is in charge here."
Courtland walked fully into the room. "Yes, I do know who's in charge here, actually.
I am.
" He tossed the bag in the air once more, caught it this time in both hands, as if he'd almost dropped it. "Deceptively heavy," he said, smiling. "And yet, so I'm told, fragile. But you know, I am feeling this almost overpowering urge to throw it at the wall behind me. As a matter of fact— I think I will."
"No!"
Becket men crashed in through the three sets of French doors. Others ran in behind Courtland, aiming their pistols at Beales's men, who dropped their own pistols and raised their hands so quickly that Cassandra actually believed she could see some terrible amusement in their quick capitulation.
Which left Edmund Beales, his loaded pistol, and Ainsley Becket standing beneath the portrait of Isabella.
"Put down the weapon, Beales," Courtland commanded. "You're beaten."
"No! I'm
not
beaten. I'll never be beaten! Tell your men to put down their weapons, or he dies. I'm leaving, and Geoff, you're coming with me. He comes with me, as far as I decide to take him. Saddle two horses and have them brought around to the front of the house. Disobey, and he dies now.
Do you hear me!
"
"Well, now, what
do
have we here?"
All heads turned toward the hallway as Ethan Tanner, Earl of Aylesford, accompanied by an equally travel-dusty Valentine Clement, Earl of Brede, looked in from the doorway.
"I really couldn't say for certain," Valentine said, pushing his windblown hair away from his face, "but we may have interrupted a small party? Our ladies will be considerably vexed to have missed it, following along in the coach the way they are. Shame, that."
Ethan, the epitome of the London peer, resplendent in his London clothes, dusty as they were, smiled at Valentine. "Still, how can we ask this man to stay until they arrive? He really does seem in a hurry to be away, doesn't he?" He turned back to Beales, bowed. "I believe you asked for a horse, sir. I am delighted to oblige. My very own Alejandro is just outside, saddled, still fairly fresh, and at your service. You'll know him at once— magnificent beast if I do say so myself. White as a cloud, swift as the wind. Valentine, Courtland? Let's all stand back, shall we, give our departing guest a clear path to the door?"
"Take my mount, Ainsley," Valentine said, "with my compliments."
"I'll return shortly," Ainsley said as he walked ahead of Beales, the pistol pointed at his back.
Beales actually laughed. "Of course he will. You! The Empress— now!"
Courtland tossed the pouch at him and Beales snatched it from the air.
Once they were clear of the foyer, Cassandra and Lisette ran to the front windows to watch the fun.
Because Alejandro was a very singular horse, a magnificent Andalusian given to Ethan and trained to do the most marvelous tricks. Cassandra had seen him bow on command, paw the ground as he counted to ten…and one most fascinating defiance of gravity wherein he actually leapt a good five feet straight up into the air from a standing start, all four hooves leaving the ground.
Her papa was slowly backing down the outside stairs now, Beales behind him, using him as a human shield, the pistol pushed into Ainsley's back.
Ethan, hands raised and empty, followed, speaking, most probably helpfully offering to untie the two horses from the wrought-iron posts at the edge of the drive. Everyone else remained inside Becket Hall, watching from the door, the windows.
Beales smiled as he settled himself in the Andalusian's saddle, still with his pistol trained on Ainsley. He said something, and her papa shrugged, then mounted Valentine's horse, as if he was indifferent to being forced to accompany Beales in his escape.
Becket Hall men had quickly cut the ropes holding Rian, Spencer and Jasper. Courtland joined Cassandra at one of the windows, his hands on her shoulders.
No one had resisted. No one said a word now.
Beales had to think that he'd won, yet again.
It is when you believe yourself invulnerable that you are most vulnerable.
The horses turned, started off down the drive, and Lisette squeezed Cassandra's hand a moment before Ethan's raised voice carried across the wind coming in off the Channel: "Alejandro—
courbette!
"
"Oh my, I forgot that one!" Cassandra said, watching avidly.
Alejandro immediately stopped, reared upright, pawing at the air, then proceeded to actually
jump
in place four times on his hind legs before gently, gracefully, lowering his front hooves to the ground once more.
Edmund Beales, however, was no longer on the stallion's back….
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EDMUND BEALES, KNOWN TO his gaolers and the court as Geoffrey Baskin, the infamous Black Ghost who had been the scourge of the Waterguard for too many years, was hanged in chains at Dover Castle the day before Christmas. Only Billy, still wearing a black armband in memory of his friend Jacko, attended the execution. He wanted to be sure the man was dead.
Because Ethan and Valentine had ridden back to Becket Hall as quickly as possible after receiving a pardon for Geoffrey Baskin, pirate, but they hadn't procured one for Geoffrey Baskin, smuggler.
The trial had been quick, for the Black Ghost was a wily fellow, and had already escaped Dymchurch Gaol in an attack that had left the good Lieutenant Tapner dead. There had been no pardon for that murder, either.
Ethan and Valentine had been sad to have to turn in the man they'd fought so hard for in London, but they, as good citizens, could not condone the murder of the Lieutenant. They'd driven "Geoffrey Baskin" directly to Dover and presented him to the Honorable Frances Roberts, who had quickly seen the advantage to himself in accepting the prisoner without doubting his identity.
Both Mr. Roberts and Sir Horatio Lewis both had attended the execution. The Reverend Thomas Carstairs had said a prayer for the condemned's immortal soul as the trapdoor was dropped.
Sadly, all three men, in oddly coincidental separate coach accidents on their way back to their homes, perished. But, then, traveling Romney Marsh could be treacherous in the wintertime.
Beales had remained mute throughout his brief incarceration and trial, his silken tongue silent.
Billy still kept it, pickled, in a jar beneath his bed.
* * *
THEY'D FOUND ODETTE and Loringa in the conservatory that had been Jacko's pride for so many years, his long hours devoted to the nurturing and growing of beauty the aberration that had made the ferocious Jacko human.
There was no outward sign of the intense struggle that had taken place there. Not a flower or plant had been disturbed. The orchids that had arrived only that fall from South America were still lined up smartly in their pots. Three small lemon trees were blooming, and the air was warm and heady with the smell of dozens of varieties of roses. Pots of tulip bulbs were being forced on a table in one corner. A palm tree, like those on the island, pushed up toward the thirty-foot high glass ceiling.
A place of beauty, a haven of peace. Living, growing, unquestioning friends, companions to a man who could then possibly forget, for a moment, who he was, who he'd been, what he'd done…
The women sat in facing chairs, Odette's thin, wasted body clad in her funereal black, the woman who had once been her mirror image dressed much more colorfully, her features looking younger, if not as peaceful.
Their hands were still clasped on the arms of the chairs. Their posture was alike, and remarkably straight. Neither woman had a mark or cut on her body. They simply sat there, their eyes open, staring.
They were both dead.
And the world was balanced again….
* * *
"CHANCE, SIT DOWN! I don't trust those things," Julia Becket ordered as she entered the drawing room, carrying a plate of cookies plump with raisins. She was quickly surrounded by children all clamoring for one of their own as she reminded them that it was time they were all up in the nursery.
"Court made them for me," Chance said, already sitting down once more and placing the crutches on the floor beside him. "You can't believe he would endanger his own brother by handing him inferior worksmanship."
"Well, you never know," Courtland said, winking at Cassandra, who sat close beside him. She'd been close beside him for the past several weeks, not that he was about to complain about that fact. "And it isn't as if I've been keeping score, you understand, but I think I still owe you at least one good thumping. It's just like you to break your leg to avoid that thumping."
"Don't," Chance warned him. "You remember what happened the last time we fought. It's too damn cold tonight to have Julia dumping a bucket of water over our heads."
"I heard that," Julia said, retying Alice's bow.
"I didn't," Lisette said from her own seat next to Rian. "They had an actual fistfight? And you threw water on them— like they were cats?"
Rian lifted his wife's hand to his lips before helping her to her feet. "Come upstairs with me, sweetheart, and I'll tell you all about it. Our Chance and Court have a long history of tugging at each other. Chance is still probably attempting to figure out some way to save Court's skin, so they'll be even again."
Cassandra squeezed Courtland's hand, as mention of what had happened— had nearly happened— in this room only a few short weeks ago still had the power to give her nightmares. He'd held her close every night, ready to wake her, soothe her, if she began to stir or cry out in her sleep.
Even the Yule log burning merrily in the fireplace, the holly branches Morgan had tucked into every conceivable corner, couldn't as yet quite rid the drawing room of the memory of that horrible day. It was, he thought, good that neither Elly nor Jack had seen what had occurred in this room, keeping their memories free to enjoy their home. As it was, they'd already moved into Ainsley's bedchamber, Eleanor's bedchamber remaining vacant since the day Jacko had died there.
Courtland had nightmares of his own, all of them centered around that moment on the terrace, when Cassandra had looked at him in sudden horror, and then been snatched away. If he had broken his ankle in the leap from the terrace, if he hadn't been able to reach the secret portal before Beales's men caught up with him, if Jacko hadn't been there to tell him what had happened, if he'd taken too long to execute his plan, if Cassandra hadn't still been alive when he'd figuratively rolled the dice and carried the Empress into the drawing room…
Spencer picked up young William, still munching on his cookie, and lifted him up and over his head, settling the giggling child on his shoulders. "Good night, all, and Happy Christmas yet again. It's difficult to believe that we'll be leaving in the morning. I probably should help Mariah finish packing up whatever's left in our rooms that's not too large to fit in any of our cases."
"Sail off before Fanny gets here," Cassandra warned him, "and she'll just swim out after us. Valentine promised they'd be here as soon as he could tear them away from his sister's house party. Knowing Fanny, they'll drive all the night through, if necessary."
"Callie, sweetheart, are you sure you've packed up everything you want to take with us?" Courtland asked her as Spencer's words seemed to have everyone getting to their feet, bustling off to do whatever they felt still needed to be done.
"Yes, I'm fine," she said, laughing as Morgan and Ethan, each of them chasing one of their rambunctious young twins, somehow managed to herd them toward the foyer. "Jasper carried down most of my cases this afternoon."
