"How should I be less obvious, Elly?" Cassandra asked, seeing that her sister was becoming agitated. If Odette were to enter the bedchamber now, Cassandra knew she'd be shooed out, probably with a flea in her ear and an admonition that she never return.
"Very well, I'll stop complaining." Eleanor took Cassandra's hand in hers. "I doubt you should listen to me, sweetheart, when it comes to attracting a man. After all, I watched Jack from afar for over two years, hiding my feelings like some silly ninny, before I finally got up the courage to…well, that's neither here nor there. Was Courtland really angry when you kissed him?"
"I'm not sure. I think he was surprised. Oh, I know he was surprised. But then, just for an instant, you know, he seemed to…he seemed to
soften
toward me, as if he didn't really mind all that much.
That's
when he got angry!"
"Angry with himself," Eleanor concluded, nodding her head as if this made perfect sense to her. "Poor, poor Courtland. He loves you so much, and has always loved you. What a surprise it must be to him that this love has been slowly shifting from the avuncular to the…ah…never mind. Do you know what I think? I think you should ignore him, Cassandra, just for a few days. Let him think you're upset at his reaction to your kiss."
"Well, I most certainly am not
happy
about his reaction. But what good will that do?"
"I can't be sure, but I think it might make him begin to reconsider your association. The baby he helped care for hasn't been a baby for a long time. He may need, however, to be introduced to the adult Cassandra. Because they're two different people, aren't they?"
"Sometimes," Cassandra admitted, sighing, for if nothing else, she knew her own faults. "Sometimes I still act like an idiot child. Chasing after him, teasing him, driving him to distraction— all the things he's always told me I do."
"Then don't do them anymore. It's that simple. He is accustomed to reacting to the way you act— behave, that is. But, if you no longer behave as he has come to expect, then he will also have to change his own behavior and conclusions as they concern you. That only makes sense, doesn't it? It could, actually, be rather delicious to watch. While I'm stuck up here, drat it all."
Poor Eleanor. Cassandra decided she'd suffered enough. "Let me comb your hair. It's all tangled in the back, from lying against those pillows."
"Oh, I suppose so," Eleanor said, sitting up. "Jack must think I've got birds nesting in my hair at times. But aren't I keeping you from something?"
"Not a bit of it," Cassandra said, grabbing the brush from the dressing table and climbing back up on the bed, kneeling behind her sister. "I can't think of anything more enjoyable than spending time here with you."
"Which explains why you're pulling my hair out of my head— ouch!"
"Sorry," Cassandra mumbled, trying not to giggle. But she'd talked so long with Eleanor that she'd lost track of time, and Jack would be coming into the bedchamber at any moment, while Mariah kept Odette occupied checking on young William Henry's supposed putrid throat. "Oh, see how pretty you look now? Let me get you that bed jacket over there, and put it around your shoulders. I think I feel a chill."
"Cassandra," Eleanor said sternly as her sister dashed away, running back with the lace-edged bed jacket, "
what
are you doing? And don't tell me you invited everyone in here to my prison to entertain me, because I'm in no mood to be cheered by a gaggle of people who can come and go as they please while I'm stuck here like some— Jack? I thought you were all meeting over at The Last Voyage to decide who next goes out on maneuvers with the
Respite.
"
"Yes, I imagine you do think that, since that's what I told you," her husband said, smiling at Cassandra.
He'd changed his clothes since she'd last seen him, and his dark blond hair was still damp from his bath. Jack always had a rather lean yet
rugged
look about him, riding out on the Marsh daily, his skin darkly tanned, making the laugh lines around his mouth and eyes stand out in relief when he smiled. He looked dangerous, while Eleanor looked the Compleat Lady. And they loved each other very much. "Thank you, she looks beautiful. Not that you aren't always beautiful, darling, so don't go pulling a face at me. Now, are you ready to go downstairs?"
"Down— Downstairs?" Eleanor shook her head, looking incredulous. "What did you all do, lock Odette in the cellars? She won't let me leave this bed."
"What Odette doesn't know won't hurt us, or at least not until she finds out," Jack said as Cassandra pulled back the covers and helped Eleanor on with her slippers, not that her sister's feet would ever touch the floor, and then arranged her long nightgown so it covered the scars on her ankle. "At Morgan's suggestion, we're having a musical evening, and as you've been such a brave little soldier for all this time, we thought we'd include you."
He slipped his arms beneath her and she wound her hands around his neck as he lifted her from the bed, high against his chest. "Well, look at me, Cassandra, holding my entire family in my arms. Gives a man pause, I'll tell you."
"Just don't be so nervous that you trip with your family as you go down the stairs."
"My darling wife, always so trusting."
"I was only teasing, Jack, poking fun at my new weight that you couldn't have been expecting. But, to speak of being trusting, and I don't wish to appear ungrateful, not when you've all gone to so much trouble— but will Spence be singing?"
"Not if there's a merciful God," Jack said, carrying his wife toward the door, Cassandra following behind, so happy for her sister, who'd found her Jack, and who would soon, after so much heartache, have her own child to hold.
* * *
COURTLAND WALKED DOWN THE hallway toward the music room still holding a sheaf of papers filled with drawings of the first and second lines of passive defenses he and Ainsley had commissioned a few weeks earlier, all of them now in place.
Thankfully, Ainsley had at last been able to convince the women in Becket Village to leave. Except for the stubborn Becket women and some of the household staff, who refused to leave Eleanor, who could not be moved without imperiling her unborn child. They'd taken their children inland with them, out of the way of battle and safe from the defenses that now made the area dangerous even to its inhabitants. They had all gone together, but would break off for predetermined destinations in small villages scattered throughout Romney Marsh, so that no one would raise an eyebrow at an influx of over one hundred new inhabitants descending on the same place.
Becket Hall, Becket Village, were now little more than armed camps…and one musical evening meant to entertain Eleanor.
Mentally, not really needing to consult his lists, Courtland reviewed their defenses.
Deadfalls fitted out with wooden spikes and seamlessly hidden beneath the landscape were now located in the tall reeds to the East, behind the treacherous, shifting sands along the shoreline that were their own deterrent.
Protective trenches had been dug around the Western and Northern sides of Becket Village, in places more than twelve feet deep— good for burying Beales's dead hirelings once the assault was over, Spence had joked. Again, these defenses were camouflaged with grasses and shrubs, ready to snare the unwary, and too wide for most men to jump across them if they were discovered.
The shingle and sand beach and the first dozen or more feet of shallow sea in front of the village and Becket Hall itself had been studded with sharp sticks of wood tied together to make large structures that, to Courtland, looked like enormous children's playing jacks, preventing small boats from landing easily and then slowing any force trying to make its way across the beach. Only those who lived at Becket Hall knew the paths through these obstacles that wouldn't end with a foot impaled on hidden nine-inch metal spikes Jasper and Waylon had fashioned in the smithy.
Casks of black powder had been placed at strategic spots, but with the near constant November rains, there would be no possibility of keeping the fuses dry, so the explosives had been removed again just that afternoon.
Men had been assigned to the crow's nests of all three ships even as they lay at anchor, as the mostly flat land was not conducive to lookouts onshore, and they worked on twelve-hour shifts, their eyes constantly training on all four corners of the horizon. Ethan would take the
Spectre
out in the morning for three days, to cruise the coastline, on the watch for any ships that appeared too interested in this approximately one-mile-square area of the coastline.
All of which left only the front of Becket Hall apparently vulnerable to any sort of sustained assault. Purposely open to assault, if one were to be deceived by the innocuous appearance of Becket Hall, which looked like any other large, architecturally uninspired, even ugly country house.
If one didn't look too closely, that was. Because Becket Hall was anything but ordinary. The dark stone hid a multitude of gunports, two entire half floors between the ground and first floor, the second floor and the third. In fact, Becket Hall had been built as if it was a ship, complete with cannon salvaged from the
Black Ghost
and the
Silver Ghost,
and what wasn't reminiscent of a ship could be compared to a maze of false walls, passageways, secret staircases and the like.
Ainsley, a student of history and its battles, had longed for peace. But he had, when designing and ordering Becket Hall built long before planning to take his family there, prepared for war by constructing a deviously placid-looking fortress, a remnant of his two dozen or more years spent living in the dangerous islands, where no man could succeed for long without gaining himself a few dangerous enemies. And although there had been several complaints over the years about the length of the staircases that actually rose a full floor-and-a-half, and the drafts in winter caused by the gun ports that fine tapestries and paintings could not possibly fully alleviate, no one was unhappy with the house at this dangerous moment.
Ainsley had described the tactic of driving attackers toward Becket Hall as opening the wide end of a funnel, luring attackers into that wide end, and then forcing them down, down, into the smallest part of the funnel, so that they could feed out in front of Becket Hall only a few at a time. Easy targets…
"And here he is at last, the late Courtland Becket," Morgan said from her seat on one of the striped satin couches.
Courtland looked up, scanning the number of occupants of the music room, as he'd been rather staring at the floor as he walked, his mind still on all their plans, and suddenly felt he had just been forced out of the bottom of a funnel. An easy target.
"Elly? You're downstairs?" he asked, knowing his question more than begged the obvious, as his sister was reclining on another couch, a soft blanket over her legs and the almost perfect roundness of her stomach. He hadn't been to see her in several days, and felt ashamed of that fact. "I…I was going to come up and visit with you tomorrow…"
"And you'd be welcome," Eleanor told him. "But it's delightful to see you tonight, as well. You will sing for us, won't you?"
Morgan got to her feet. "Certainly he will. He and Callie will sing a duet, won't you? I've already picked the music. Right after Spencer gives us a tune, of course."
"Oh, God no," Courtland said, subsiding into a chair beside Ainsley, whose shoulders were shaking suspiciously. "Where's Cassandra?"
"She and Mariah are still upstairs, placating Odette, who just found out her chick has flown the coop," Ainsley told him. "Doesn't Eleanor look wonderful?"
"She does, yes, as long as she pretends not to notice the way Jack is hovering over her, I suppose. This is all Morgan's idea, isn't it? Although I have to admit, it's a good one. We all need to turn our minds away from Beales for a while."
Ainsley took the papers from Courtland's hand and folded them, tucked them into his jacket. "I agree. To that end, I'd like you to arrange some sort of party for the crew over in the village for Sunday afternoon. Beales has had six weeks or more to find us, and nothing has happened yet. We cannot expect everyone to continue existing with such constant tension without some sort of temporary outlet for that tension. Ollie tells me he's more than willing to sacrifice a supply of good pigskin by donating his largest pig to us to roast on the beach. Plenty of food, Courtland. The only thing we will measure out more carefully will be the ale. We can't afford to let our collective guard down that much."
"A good idea, I suppose, if it ever stops raining," Courtland said, and then his head snapped back involuntarily as Mariah and Cassandra entered the room. "My God, I told her not to— "
He quickly shut his mouth, after all, Ainsley was sitting directly beside him, but he couldn't take his eyes off Cassandra, who had changed out of the simple dress she'd worn at dinner, exchanged it for a sunny yellow watered-silk gown he felt sure had lately occupied Morgan's closet. Cassandra certainly had nothing quite so revealing in her own wardrobe, he was certain of that.
And what was that hanging around her neck and wrist, in her ears? Rubies?
