“Tomorrow, Callie. I’ll take you riding tomorrow. I think we both could benefit from a few hours away from Becket Hall.”

“Thank you, Court.” She stepped up on tiptoe and daringly placed a quick kiss on his mouth. But when she went to step away from him his arms closed more tightly around her and he lowered his face to hers, sealing their mouths together.

Cassandra closed her eyes as the strangest feeling rippled through her body, and then raised her arms to hold them around his neck as he showed her that the kiss she’d given him had been far from what a real kiss should be. She felt the tip of his tongue against her lips as he seemed to want her mouth open, and she complied, because saying no to anything Court had ever wanted from her was beyond her power.

“Callie,” he whispered against her lips, withdrawing slightly, and then taking her mouth so completely that she could only sigh, and hold on to him for dear life. This was where she wanted to be. In his arms.

This was where she was destined to be. In his life.

Praise for Kasey Michaels

A Reckless Beauty “A Reckless Beauty [is] a cannon shot. Drama by the boatload, danger around every corner, and heart-wrenching emotion await readers.” —A Romance Review

A Most Unsuitable Groom “From the first page to the last this continuation of the Beckets of Romney Marsh saga is a well-crafted novel. Emotional intensity, simmering sexual tension, characters you care about and political intrigue – plus touches of humour and a poignant love story – all come together in this hugely entertaining keeper.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Dangerous Debutante “Her characters shine as she brings in fascinating details of the era, engaging plot twists and plenty of sensuality.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Shall We Dance? “Brimming with historical details and characters ranging from royalty to spies, greedy servants to a jealous woman, this tale is told with panache and wit.” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

The Butler Did It “Michaels’ ingenious sense of humour reaches new heights as she brings marvellous characters and a too-funny-for-words story to life. (…) What fun, what pleasure, what a read!” —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

USA TODAY bestselling author Kasey Michaels is the author of more than ninety books. She has earned three starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, and has been awarded the RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America, the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, the Waldenbooks and BookRak awards, and several other commendations for her writing excellence in both contemporary and historical novels. There are more than eight million copies of her books in print around the world. Kasey resides in Pennsylvania with her family, where she is always at work on her next book.

Becket’s Last Stand
Kasey Michaels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my editor, Melissa Jeglinski,

for all her invaluable input, hard work,

friendship and support during two frantic

years of living almost daily with The Beckets of Romney Marsh. Couldn’t have done it without you, babe!

PROLOGUE

1798 An unnamed island near Haiti

IT WAS THE HEIGHT of summer, hot, crushingly hot, difficult-to-breathe hot. But behind the thick walls of the two-story house set among the towering shrubs, nestled among the swaying palms, the air was relatively cool in the large bedchamber. And that air was sweet with the smell of Isabella’s perfume.

Courtland sat cross-legged on the wide-planked floor, holding the young Cassandra in front of him, encouraging her to stand on her chubby little legs. But the child wasn’t cooperating. She was much too enthralled with the idea of pulling off Courtland’s nose, giggling as she reached for him.

“She’s too young to stand,” Odette the Voodoo woman warned him as she brushed Isabella’s long, dark curls. “Her legs will bow like Billy’s and she’ll roll when she walks, with you to blame for it all.”

Isabella laughed, a sound like the sweetest music, as she leaned closer to the large mirror, slipping sapphire bobs into her ears. “Oh, stop teasing our poor Court, Odette,” she said, “that’s not true. My sweet baby would never roll when she walks. She will glide, like an angel, and she will float in the dance in this London Geoff promises us, the belle of every ball. We will all be so grand, won’t we?”

And then she swiveled on the small padded chair and smiled at Courtland, blew both him and the infant Cassandra a kiss.

Courtland felt his heart skip a beat and knew hot color was creeping up into his cheeks, for he loved the beautiful Isabella with every fiber of his thirteen-year- old being. He didn’t know that, of course, because love had never been a part of his life before coming to the island. He only knew he lived for her, would die for her. He lived for Cassandra, and would gladly die for her, too, because she was a part of Isabella, a part of his savior, Geoffrey Baskin.

Cassandra went to her hands and knees, her favored form of locomotion, and crawled onto Courtland’s lap, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and within moments was asleep in the afternoon heat. He could pick her up, take her to her cot in the dressing room, but it felt so good to hold the small, trusting body that he leaned his back against the wall and contented himself watching Odette brush Isabella’s hair…and thinking of the past, of the day he’d first arrived on the island.

The day had begun as usual, with his seven- year-old self being roughly kicked awake by the boot of the man who insisted Courtland call him Papa. But would a father kick a son, make him sleep with the huge, bad-tempered dogs that were allowed to roam free in the shop at night, fight them for the food that was always too little and often too spoiled to eat? Courtland couldn’t be sure, but he didn’t think a father should treat his son that way.

The other thing that was usual about the morning was that his papa was drunk. Mean drunk, nasty drunk. And Courtland was sick, having eaten some of the meat that the dogs had left for him, and the vile-smelling vomit on the floor beside him was his own. He didn’t want to wake up, he didn’t want to clean up his mess. He just wanted to sleep. Sleep forever.

But his papa kicked him again, hard, and began yelling about the dogs, something about the dogs. Something about the damn miserable dogs being dead and they’d been worth twice what the boy was, the useless little bastard.

That’s when Courtland had heard the worst sound, that of his father’s whip being untied from his belt, the braided leather with its several small ends, each tipped with a small lead ball, snapping hard against the floor an inch from his head. He would have cried out, but he’d learned not to do that. He’d learned not to talk at all, not to ever make a sound. It was safer that way. He could almost be invisible, if he didn’t talk. Sometimes. Not this morning.

He tried to scramble to his feet, but he was too slow, had moved too late. The whip snaked out again, this time catching him hard across the back, cutting deep into his young skin in at least a half-dozen places. Again. And again. Over and over, until Courtland thought he might die, like the dogs.

But then the blows stopped, and his father cursed, and Courtland heard another man speaking. Quietly, firmly. He dared to lift his head, and saw a tall, dark- haired man dressed in fine black clothes, holding tight to his father’s wrist, looking down into his face.

“Billy, take the boy outside. Mind his back as you carry him,” the man said as he squeezed harder, and the whip slipped to the floor. “And Jacko, my friend, man the door, if you would, please. This lump of offal and I have something to discuss, and need our privacy.”

Courtland had felt himself being picked up, oh so gently, and carried out of the shop, into the morning sun. The man holding him crooned to him, told him he was all right, that the Cap’n would take care of him, that nobody would hurt him, not ever again. That he’d be “just like the other one, most like, God help us all.”

But Courtland hadn’t really been listening, because the whip had cracked again, only this time not against his back. He heard his father yell, curse. Again, the crack of the whip. His father yelled again, but this time he didn’t curse. He had begun to plead, to beg. “Stop! Stop! You can have him—but I’ll be paid!”

The whip cracked again, three times in quick succession, and Courtland listened for his father’s voice, but it never came. He looked to the door, to the huge, smiling man who stood there, blocking it, and waited for his father to walk out, holding the whip, coming for him once again.

When the door opened, however, it was the tall man who emerged, hesitating only to throw the whip back into the dimness of the shop. He walked over to the man named Billy and held out his arms, so that Courtland felt himself being transferred.

“Hello, son,” the man said quietly. “I’m Geoffrey Baskin, and you’ll come live with me, if you want. No one will beat you ever again, I promise. What’s your name?”

Courtland remained silent, which is how he came to be Courtland, named for a sailor on one of Geoffrey Baskin’s ships who had perished of a fever a few months earlier, and he remained silent for nearly six years, until Geoffrey had brought home an angel named Isabella, whose smile and sweet ways had eventually coaxed him into speaking once more.

His very first word spoken on the island had been Callie, a gruff, rasping mispronunciation of Isabella’s and Geoff’s newborn daughter, Cassandra, who would never be called Cassie again, at Isabella’s order.

There were other children now, all of them brought to the island by Geoffrey Baskin. Chance, who had already been in residence when Courtland arrived. A newborn infant, Morgan, was brought back from another trip to Haiti. Three years later a half dozen more children, survivors of an attack on a church on another island. Finally, a wild young hothead named Spencer.

Courtland didn’t mix with the other children very often. He didn’t speak, and they seemed to think that was funny. He stayed by himself, watching, always watching, always waiting for the first sick singing of the whip before it bit into his back. But it never came.

Isabella. She had arrived instead. An angel as beautiful as his rescuer, Geoffrey Baskin, was handsome. And after years of cautious watching, the young Courtland was ready to give his trust, his heart.

“Dreaming again, Missy Isabella,” Odette said, pointing now at Courtland with the hairbrush. “Boy’s like a puppy.”

Courtland flushed once more and got to his feet, careful to hold Cassandra close as he turned his back, walked over to the open doors that led out onto the veranda that faced the sea.

“Court? Do you see him yet?” Isabella asked, getting to her feet, shaking out the full skirts of her grass-green gown. “I’m so anxious, aren’t I? He promised they’d be back before dinner tonight. And then no more grand adventures for my Geoff, not without me by his side as we all sail to our new home. Imagine it, Court. Nearly three hundred of us, all sailing off together, leaving this island behind, a whole new world opening up ahead of us. But still no sign of Geoff?”

Courtland squinted, concentrating on the horizon, the place where brilliant blue-green water met a cloudless blue sky. “No, ma’am, I don’t see them. Not yet.”

She came to stand beside him, not all that much taller than he, and kissed the soft brown curls on her sleeping daughter’s head. “Are you anxious to sail to England, Courtland? Will you miss our small paradise?”

“Papa Geoff says it’s time to go. Time to be respectable and safe.”

“Being a privateer is respectable, Court,” Isabella told him. “Just not respectable enough for my silly husband. He teases that he prefers cold and damp England to our warmth and sun here, and that we will, too. We shall soon see if he’s right, won’t we?”

Courtland nodded, then looked at the expanse of vibrant greenery and chalk-white sand that led to the water, the horseshoe of land surrounding the natural harbor filled with small houses belonging to the crews of the two ships owned by Geoffrey Baskin. Everywhere was bustling activity as the women added to the small mountains of belongings soon to be loaded on the ships. Transporting three hundred people across the wide ocean was no minor undertaking, but they would be ready to sail within the week.

His gaze singled out Spencer wrestling with Isaac and Rian, two of the boys their Papa Geoff had rescued from the destroyed church. And there was young Fanny, wearing the striped dress cut from extra material from Isabella’s new gown; her hair so blond it was nearly white, daring the small wavelets in her bare feet; charging, retreating. He couldn’t hear her laughter, not up here, but he knew she was laughing, for Fanny was a happy child, her memory of her mother’s death in that same church fading as she grew.

He watched as Fanny began to jump up and down, pointing out to sea, and he followed her direction with his eyes, caught sight of sails flashing in the sunlight as they came around the northernmost part of the island, into the natural harbor. He sighed in relief, knowing Papa Geoff’s last adventure as a privateer was now over, that he would be safe. Yes, Courtland supposed he was happy to be leaving here, no longer being forced to worry for his Papa Geoff, his savior, each time the two ships sailed out of the harbor.

“They’re back,” he said, his breath catching in his throat. “Just as they said they would be.”

Isabella kept her hand on his shoulder, also peering out to sea. But then her fingers dug deeper into Courtland’s shoulder. “No, that’s not Geoff. Three ships, Courtland, see? Three ships, not our two.”

Courtland looked at Isabella, saw the worry in her beautiful eyes, and then looked toward the ships once more. What was wrong? No, they weren’t their ships, the Black Ghost and the Silver Ghost. But he did recognize them now; they were the ships of Papa Geoff’s privateering partner, Edmund Beales.

“It’s all right,” he told Isabella. “It’s only Beales.”

But wasn’t he supposed to be with Geoffrey and Chance and Jacko and Billy and the others? Where were the Black Ghost and the Silver Ghost? Why only Beales’s three ships? Something was wrong, wasn’t it?

Rian, leaving Issac sprawled on the ground, seemed to already know that, for he was running toward Fanny, scooping her up into his arms, and heading for the main house with Spencer, the two of them shouting, although Courtland could not make out what they were saying. Isaac watched them go, laughing, and then turned to wave to the approaching long boats, already lowered into the clear, calm waters.

It was then that Courtland realized something, knew what Rian and Spencer had seen. It was the ship that lay parallel to the beach. Its gun ports were open, the small cannon being run out. “Ma’am!”

Isabella must have seen it, too. She raced across the veranda, pressed her body against the railing. “Run! Into the trees! Hide! Run, everyone! Run!”

Odette was with them now, her black face nearly gray as she wrung her hands together, as they all watched the longboats being pulled, one by one, up onto the beach. “Betrayal. Beales wants more than his share. I did not see this. Why did I not see this? Sweet Virgin, Missy Isabella, you have to go. You have to go now!”

But Isabella was still shouting, waving her arms in the air, pleading with everyone who had raced out of their small houses and into the sandy clearing to run, run into the trees, to hide themselves.

Courtland stood very still, holding the sleeping Cassandra, refusing to believe what was happening. He flinched at the first gunshot, squeezing Cassandra’s small body so tightly that she woke, began to cry. Odette took the child from him and hurried back into the bedchamber.

He joined Isabella on the veranda as more gunshots rang out, to see Edmund Beales standing on the beach now, legs spread, hands on hips, looking across the expanse of sand, up at the veranda.

Another man in black. But although tall, although handsome, he was not Geoffrey Baskin, could never be more than he was, a pale-skinned man with a too- thin face and a mass of black curls, a man who wore leather close against his skin even in this heat, like an animal, Courtland had always thought. Beales was smiling now, and Courtland realized that, for all that he’d seen in his short span of years, he’d never before seen true evil. Not until this moment.

Then one of the ships opened fire from the harbor, and a cannonball hit high in the palm trees to the left of the house, severing one so that its top crashed to the ground.

Children cried, called for their mothers. But the mothers, the old men, the young boys, most all of them were running toward the attackers now, armed with pistols of their own, with metal-tipped pikes, with swords whose deadly blades caught the sunlight.

“Isabella!”

“Oh, sweet Jesus protect us,” Isabella said at Beales’s shout.

“Isabella! You’re mine now! Isabella! Geoff is dead! You’re mine. Everything is mine!”

Isabella swayed where she stood and Odette roughly pushed Cassandra, now wrapped tightly in a blanket, into Courtland’s arms as she caught her mistress close against her. “He lies. I did not see this, but I would have seen the Cap’n’s death. I would have known that in my heart. She kept me from seeing the treachery, my own wicked twin. I am so sorry! Come with me now. Into the trees, to the cave. Now, Missy Isabella! For your husband, your child—now!”

Isabella held tightly to the wooden railing for a few moments longer, even as the wives of her husband’s crews were put upon by Beales’s men, and the older crew, crippled and maimed and gray of hair, fell or were subdued, one by one.

At last she turned away, grabbing Courtland’s arm and pulling him back from the open windows. “Take Cassandra, Courtland. Take her and follow Odette. Go with the others, to the cave, just as Papa Geoff has always talked about if we were attacked, remember? Take her now!”

“And you,” Courtland said, pleaded. “You’ll come, too.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t want you, he wants me. If I go with you, he won’t stop until he finds us all. I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll talk to him, reason with him until Geoff comes to save us. But take Cassandra for me, keep her safe for us. Never leave her, Courtland, not for a moment, not until Geoff returns.”

“No! I won’t leave you! You can’t make me leave you!”

She slapped him. Isabella, the gentle one, the always smiling, laughing one. The one he loved above all others. Slapped him.

“Do what I say! You have to live, Courtland. For your Callie, you have to live. You are her protector! Never leave her, not ever! Promise me!”

Courtland nodded, unable to speak, and Isabella put her arms around him, pulling him and her child close, kissing both their foreheads.

She looked at Odette, who only nodded, and then turned away, stepped back onto the veranda, to stand there, her hands on the railing, daring Edmund Beales to do his worst. “I am here, Edmund. Stop this, and we’ll talk! I’ll give you what you want— just stop your men, now!”

Odette tugged on Courtland’s arm, pulling him out of the bedchamber, through one of the bedrooms across the wide hallway, onto the veranda there, the wooden stairs that led down the rear of the house. Once on the ground, they ran into the trees, meeting up with one of the other women, Edythe, who carried young Morgan, and they all pressed on together into previously forbidden territory for the children, the sounds of cannon fire, of gunshot, of unholy screams, chasing at their heels.

“They didn’t stop,” Courtland said, looking to Odette. “He didn’t listen to her. I’ve got to go back, help her.”

“You are a child, and you’ve got to do what she said for you to do,” Odette told him, her large brown eyes filled with tears. “If you love her, you’ll do as she said. It is all we can do. You know the way? Guide us.”

Reluctantly, Courtland led the others deeper into the trees, avoiding the deadfalls Geoffrey Baskin had shown him, the deceptively normal-looking ground that hid deep pits lined with dozens of pointed wooden spikes. On and on they ran, twisting and turning through a path known only to those who had been trained to recognize the signs, until at last they reached the cave.

Some were already there. Spencer, Rian, Fanny, three dozen or more women and even more children sitting wide-eyed and silent in the damp and dark. No more came, not as the screams continued to reach them, as night fell, as some of the young ones began to cry for their mothers, for their empty bellies.

The hours stretched out into an eternity.

At last Courtland could take no more. He reluctantly relinquished Cassandra, whom he’d been holding still for hours and hours, and gave her over to Odette.

He walked slowly, not to avoid the deadfalls, but because he didn’t want to see what he felt sure he would see.

The sun was just rising as he stepped out of the trees, skirting the side of the big house, walking onto the beginnings of the wide beach. The wide, red beach. Buzzing with flies; littered with broken, gutted bodies. Women, children, babies. Animals. They all lay on the sand. They hung from trees. Bodies, pieces of bodies.

The three ships were gone.

Young Isaac was among the dead. Isaac, and so many others who had survived the raid on the church, just to die here. Geoffrey Baskin had saved them, taken them in as his own—for this? Why? Why?

Courtland went to his knees beside Isaac, pressed a hand to the boy’s chest, hoping for a heartbeat, but only came away with blood on his hands. Everywhere he went, every body he knelt beside, he touched, said a prayer for before moving on to the next, and then the next…

The silence rang in his ears like the sound of the whip whistling above his head, ready to sting, to cut. Even the exotic birds in the trees were silent.

At last he turned toward the huge house, his shoulders squaring as he prepared himself for whatever he might face inside those white walls. It was then that he saw the words, written high and wide on the wood. Written in blood.

You lose. No mercy, no quarter. Until it’s mine.

He began to run, not knowing if he should be praying to find Isabella, or to hope that Edmund Beales had taken her with him, because then she’d still be alive.

The most fervent of his prayers weren’t to be answered, for the first thing he saw when entering the high foyer ringed by the main staircase was the body of Isabella Baskin lying on the stone floor. She looked to be asleep, except that her eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the chandelier hanging twenty feet above her head.

Courtland went to his knees beside her, still hoping she was alive, sliding his hands beneath her, trying to lift her up. But her head fell back, her neck broken, and he looked up at the second floor balcony. Had she fallen? Had she been picked up, thrown over the railing? And why? Why?

He left her then, knowing he had to return to the cave, to Cassandra, to Odette and the others. What if Beales hadn’t been lying? What if Geoffrey Baskin was dead, what if both the Black Ghost and the Silver Ghost were at the bottom of the sea? What then?

He couldn’t cry, had no time to mourn. This was not the time for tears.

He was, he knew, the oldest male left alive on the island, possibly the only man left alive at all. He had a responsibility.

They all looked to him when he entered the cave, questions in their eyes.

He gathered up the sleeping Callie once more, the blood on his hands smearing the infant’s white lawn gown. “I saw her. No one and nothing lives. No one and nothing.”

Odette sank to her knees and began keening like a wild animal in pain. All around the cave, women and children screamed, cried, their voices careening, echoing, off the high dark walls.

“I will be the one who tells him,” Courtland said, making what was probably the longest speech of his young life. But then, he wasn’t a child, never had been probably, and never would be, not after this day. “He needs to see his daughter. The rest of you stay here, wait for someone to come for you.”

With the sleeping Cassandra in his arms, once more he made his way to the large white house, to the beach. Flies buzzed everywhere now, but still no birds sang.

He’d have to get Spencer and Rian and the other young boys before the sun grew too hot, form a burial party. So many bodies…

He looked to the horizon, and his heart lurched in his chest when he saw two ships, Geoffrey Baskin’s ships, limping toward the harbor, masts without their topmost bits, sail ripped and shredded, flapping loose in the stiff breeze.

Slowly, he made his way across the beach, around the bodies of the dead, Cassandra now awake and laughing in his arms, and walked down the last few yards of the hard-packed sand nearest the shore, into the gently lapping clear blue-green water until it reached his knees.

The small wavelets caressed his shins, and each one spoke to him in Isabella’s voice. Over and over and over again:

You are her protector. Never leave her, not ever. Promise me.

Courtland listened carefully to Isabella’s plea, to Cassandra’s happy gurgles, as he waited. Stoic. Refusing to feel.

He remained there, not moving, not reacting, as the boats were hastily lowered. As men jumped from the ships, frantically swimming toward the shore. As they waded through the shallow surf, and then began to run. As they shouted out the names of those they loved, their wives, their children, and no one answered.

He only began to shiver, to cry, as his Papa Geoff splashed toward him through the surf, slowly shaking his head, wordlessly begging Courtland not to tell him of the destruction Edmund Beales had wrought in their small paradise, the death he’d brought with him…

Romney Marsh 1815

CHAPTER ONE

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Courtland Becket said something unlovely under his breath as the hammer came down hard on the side of his thumb rather than the small brad he was tapping into place.

“Cassandra, how many times have I asked you not to sneak into my workshop without knocking?”

“Dozens, I suppose,” she said, hopping up onto the workbench, her slipper-clad feet crossed at the ankle and swinging back and forth tantalizingly close to Courtland’s face as he sat on his work stool. “You know I don’t listen when you bluster.”

“I do not bluster,” he said, tapping the brad home and then inspecting the finished project that had occupied him for most of the morning. “There. Done. What do you think?”

Cassandra leaned forward and took the thing from him, held it up in front of her. “Very fine workmanship, Mr. Becket, as always. You do exemplary work. What is it?”

He took the thing back, prepared to show her. “It’s for Rian, to help him on with his boots. Look—these two hooks go into the loops at the top of either side of his boot. The hooks are connected to this handle. Rian positions his foot in the boot as best he can, and then attaches the hooks, then pulls. He’ll still probably have to stamp his feet entirely into the boots, but this should help him a lot.”

“Amazing. Let me try it. To see if it really works, I mean,” Cassandra said, hopping down from the workbench.

“You aren’t wearing boots,” Courtland pointed out, as he’d been doing his best to keep his gaze averted from her slim, shapely ankles as she had deliberately goaded him by dangling them in his face.

“Yes, but there’s a boot over here. Rian’s? Of course it is, so you could test your brilliance.” She slipped out of her right shoe and grabbed the boot. “So, pretending I only have the one arm and hand, I simply step into the boot as far as I can, and then—oh, pooh, it went on by itself. I didn’t realize Rian had such large feet. And the top comes up past my knees. How on earth do you men walk in these things?”

Courtland sat back on the stool, smiling as Cassandra comically clomped around his workshop in the boot, her skirts pulled up, her tawny curls bobbing as she stepped, limped, stepped again.

She knew what she was doing, of course. She was bedeviling him again. On purpose. With full deliberation and malice aforethought.

And he was watching her, entranced, again. Unable to help himself. Wondering how long it would be before he had to leave Becket Hall forever, or else break her heart.

“Enough, Cassandra. Why did you come down here?”

She boosted herself back up onto the workbench and lifted her right leg toward him, wordlessly telling him to remove the boot for her. Which would expose her bare leg all the way to her knee.

He’d rather chew the last of the metal brads in the pocket of his leather apron.

“Papa wants to see you in his study,” she told him, lowering her leg, at which time Rian’s boot simply slid off her foot and onto the floor. “Hand me up my slipper, if you please, you big spoilsport.”

Courtland bent down, retrieved her slipper, and raised himself up in time to see her bare foot extended, her leg uncovered to her knee as she held up her hem once more. “Cassandra, for the love of God…”

She smiled down at him as he took hold of her bare ankle and pushed the slipper onto her foot. “There, that wasn’t so painful, was it? Honestly, Court, anyone would think you’ve never seen a female ankle before.”

“And if I say I have, that would mean you’d then quiz me about whose ankle it was that I’ve seen, so I’m not going to say it,” Courtland said, getting to his feet as he untied his apron and laid it on the workbench. “Who else will be there?”

“Where?” she asked him, grinning like the minx she was. Her mission in life, for today, forever, seemed to be to do her best to drive him mad, send him screaming into the Channel to drown himself, just to be away from her. The temptation of her.

“Never mind, I was a fool to ask. I’ll find out soon enough.”

Cassandra hopped down from the workbench again, chasing after him as his long strides took him out of the basement workshop and toward the stairs leading up to the first floor of Becket Hall. “Spencer, and Rian, and Jack. Jacko, of course. Oh, and Chance.”

Courtland turned around, causing Cassandra to bump into him. She looked up at him, smiling, and he could smell the sweet jasmine in her hair. “Chance? When did he get back?”

“I didn’t mention that? Honestly, Courtland, if you didn’t spend half your time moldering down here in the cellars, you’d know more. Chance and Julia and the children arrived at least an hour ago. He may have news on Edmund Beales.”

“I do not molder.”

“I suppose moldering is in the eye of the beholder, then,” Cassandra said, dancing past him and up the steps, leaving Courtland to follow after her. He always seemed to be following after her, even while trying to tell himself that she’d become too old for him to consider her his personal responsibility…and old enough to know that her grown-up self caused him problems he refused to face.

As a child, she had tagged behind him everywhere, and he’d been flattered, delighted. She’d taken her first real steps to him. She’d run to him when she fell, scraped her knee. As her papa, now known to the small world of Romney Marsh as Ainsley Becket, hid in his study, turned away from the world in his grief, it had been Courtland who had sat Cassandra on his knee, taught her sums and her letters, read her stories, held her hand when the storms raged in off the Channel.

He’d tied her sashes when they came undone, taught her how to fly a kite, sat her on her first pony, held her above the waves when, as all Beckets had to do, she learned to swim.

He’d instructed her to stay away from the shifting sands that ran along the shore to the east of Becket Hall. He’d shielded her from the teasing of her older siblings, explained to her that her papa did indeed love her, very much, even if sometimes he was too sad to look at the child who, day by day, more closely resembled her dead mother.

And that had all been fine.

When Cassandra was two. When she was five, ten. But at fourteen? Yes, that’s when it had all begun to change, slowly at first, without him really noticing what was happening.

She still followed after him everywhere he went. But now it was to tease him, to goad him, to dare him. Look at me, Courtland. Look, I’m growing up. What will you do with me now?

She was his sister, damn it!

No. Not his sister. Never his sister.

He knew who he was. He knew who she was. She was the daughter of the house, Ainsley’s child. He was the mongrel, the boy who had slept and eaten with the dogs, the boy who had been an object of pity, brought home because what else was to be done with him?

He owed Geoffrey Baskin—Ainsley Becket—his life. His loyalty.

Ainsley Becket owed him nothing, least of all Isabella’s daughter.

Courtland shook his head, disgusted with that part of himself that refused to accept what had to be, and bounded up the stone steps to the main floor of the large house, turned and headed for Ainsley’s study. He needed to concentrate on Edmund Beales, the monster so long thought dead, but the same man Rian had gone head-to-head with only a little more than a month ago, in France.

Beales had come out of that encounter wounded, but not defeated, not dead. And now he knew that Ainsley, his old partner Geoffrey Baskin, also still lived.

A reckoning was coming, and coming soon, and the tension inside Becket Hall was fast becoming unbearable.

All of the Beckets had gathered in Romney Marsh a month ago, to talk, to plan, to prepare for that final reckoning, discuss the many ways Edmund Beales might come at them. When, and where. Would he chose sudden violence, or stealth?

It had been a large gathering, all eight Beckets and their wives and husbands, a menagerie of children.

Morgan, now the Countess of Aylesford, and her husband Ethan, their young twins, Geoffrey and Isabella.

Chance and his wife Julia, bringing with them their three children.

Fanny—good God help them all, now the Countess of Brede—and Valentine, the most long- suffering and piteously besotted fellow in creation.

They’d joined Eleanor and her husband, Jack Eastwood, who resided at Becket Hall along with Spencer and his wife Mariah, and their two children.

And Rian. Rian and his new bride, Lisette. Edmund Beales’s daughter.

God. Lisette’s introduction to the family had caused some tense moments, and still did, unfortunately, especially with Jacko, Ainsley’s second-in-command during the years in the islands.

But they were all together again, all of Ainsley’s eight “acquired” children who had survived the attack on the island; his seven hostages to fortune, and the child of his beloved Isabella.

Almost eighteen years after that last day, that terrible, unforgettable day, they had rebuilt, grown, possibly even healed.

The ships, the Black Ghost and the Silver Ghost had been dismantled once they’d reached what would be called Becket Hall, the boards used to construct Becket Village, housing the survivors of the attack on land, the betrayal at sea.

Life, often painful, had moved on…only to have Edmund Beales resurface, bringing danger to all of them.

Courtland had never asked Ainsley about the warning Beales had written in the blood of his victims: You lose. No mercy, no quarter. Until it’s mine. He didn’t think it was his place, especially when Ainsley had been so cruelly hurt, outwardly strong for his crew, for the survivors, but dead inside for too many long years.

No one had asked when they’d all first come together again last month. But perhaps it was time. Time to know what it was that Edmund Beales had wanted and could not find, the reason behind the tortured bodies, the eventual massacre.

Until it’s mine.

They had all thought Beales wanted Isabella, but it would seem that the man had coveted more than his friend’s wife. What? What had the man wanted? What might he still want?

Courtland stood outside the closed door to the study, certain it would be he who would finally be the one to ask that question.

CASSANDRA ENTERED THE drawing room to see Julia sitting with Mariah, the two with their heads together, speaking quietly.

“Secrets?” she asked, sitting down beside Julia. “Don’t tell me one of you is breeding again. I’m too young to be an aunt so many times over.”

Mariah colored beneath her flame-red hair, and dipped her head. “You weren’t supposed to guess. We all have enough on our plates with Elly at the moment, with…with everything else that’s going on. The men need to feel free to concentrate on finding Beales, putting an end to this long nightmare.”

Cassandra hid her surprise at having guessed correctly, for she’d just been, she thought, speaking nonsense. “Elly’s fine, Mariah, isn’t she? And the baby won’t be arriving for another month or more. I don’t know how she stands it, being confined to her bed this way.”

“Elly can’t stand it,” Mariah said, smiling. “But Odette is, by and large, a powerful force, more powerful than any one of us. And she seems to have gotten Elly and the baby this far, so it’s impossible not to listen to her.”

“I’ll agree with that,” Julia said, smoothing down her skirts. She wasn’t a beautiful woman, but she had presence, Cassandra had always thought. Presence, and a keen, sharp-eyed intelligence. Chance adored her. “I still hang this ridiculous gad around my neck when we travel, much as I know it’s all superstitious nonsense. An alligator’s tooth, if that’s truly what it is? Nonsense, I keep telling myself. But I wouldn’t be without it.”

“She gave one to Lisette, you know,” Cassandra told them quietly. “To protect her from her papa’s evil, the evil of Odette’s twin, this horrible Loringa Rian saw in France. I think she should have given her a second one, to protect her from Jacko.”

“He’s still being so nasty?” Julia asked, frowning. “Chance and I noticed it when we were here last month, but we’d hoped Ainsley convinced Jacko to come to his senses. After all, Lisette isn’t responsible for her father’s…actions.”

“Jacko’s not the only one,” Cassandra said, grabbing the dish of sugared treats from the table between the couches and placing it in her lap. She’d lost what Odette called her baby fat last year, but it wasn’t because she had given up her love of sweet things. “Lisette won’t walk over to Becket Village without Rian or Jasper going with her. Jasper is so huge, nobody will even look at him, even though he’s really the kindest creature in nature, according to Lisette. I think…I think Rian and Lisette are going to have to leave Becket Hall when this is all over. Lisette, just by being here, opens old wounds for some people, even though none of it, what happened, what might happen next, is her fault. After all, she saved Rian’s life. That should mean something to our own people, shouldn’t it?”

Mariah and Julia exchanged glances Cassandra couldn’t interpret. “What does Ainsley say?” Mari¬ ah asked.

Cassandra shrugged, popped another piece of the chewy candy into her mouth. “He doesn’t say anything. You know Papa. He just sort of looks at people, and they know he doesn’t approve. So no one will do anything terrible. But Lisette feels the dislike, she has to, poor thing. And you’ll be leaving, too, won’t you, Mariah? Once this is over?”

Mariah smiled. “Lining us all up like ducks, Callie? Why?”

Cassandra didn’t realize she was being so obvious. “No reason. I know Elly would never leave Becket Hall, not of her own volition, and Jack seems happy with that. But Papa?” She shook her head. “He had another letter from Mrs. Warren last week, you know.”

Once again Mariah and Julia exchanged glances, this time smiling at each other. “Marianna Warren? Really?” Mariah commented. “They only met the one time, and that was years ago. So they keep up a correspondence? I didn’t know.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course you do. Spence writes to her ship captain—Abraham, is it? And that’s where you and Spence will be going, I already know that, I guess. This place known as Hampton Roads. Papa has several maps of the area. They’ve been arriving from America for years. And…and he’s purchased land there, a huge parcel along the water. For his ships, you know? He doesn’t think I know that part, but I do.”

She waited for her sisters-in-law to react, which didn’t take long.

“Ainsley’s thinking of leaving Becket Hall? Leaving Romney Marsh?” Julia shook her head, looking astonished. “He won’t even travel to London. He goes nowhere.”

“Fearing arrest for piracy so long ago in the islands, no thanks to Edmund Beales,” Mariah said, and then sighed. “Ah, but once Beales is gone? Any real chance of trouble from that quarter would be gone with it, and Ainsley would be free to go anywhere without fear of exposing all of us to the same charge. But he’d go to America? Not London? I never imagined, and I doubt Spence has, either. My goodness. Delightful to think we’d be living close by, but still shocking.”

“How do you feel about that, Callie?” Julia asked her. “Chance and I would never leave England. I know, because we’ve discussed it. We want our children to grow up here. Are you asking to come live with us rather than relocating to America? Because you’re most definitely welcome, unless you want to live with Fanny and Valentine, or stay here with Elly and Jack and—oh.” She sat back on the couch, grinned at Mariah. “It’s Court, isn’t it? You’re lining up all your ducks, but you don’t know where Court fits in that line, do you? And you think we know?”

Cassandra put down the candy dish and twined her fingers together in her lap. “I don’t think he’ll stay here, that’s all. Becket Hall doesn’t need so many masters, or it won’t once we’re free to travel anywhere. Jack and Elly love this house, love Romney Marsh, and Papa would want someone to live here in any case. Fanny’s settled, Chance and Morgan are settled. Rian and Lisette will go somewhere else, they really have no choice, do they? You and Spence are already planning your own move to Hampton Roads.”

“Which, counting to eight on my fingers, leaves Court, and you,” Mariah said, nodding her head. “Oh where or where will you go? I imagine Ainsley assumes you’ll go where he goes. But will Court be equally happy to go there, as well? Especially when offered the opportunity to at last rid himself of his shadow?”

“I’m not his shadow!” Cassandra said, knowing that wasn’t true.

“Ah, Callie,” Julia said, leaning over to kiss Cassandra’s cheek. “You’ve been nowhere but here. You know so little of life, of men. And you’re young, too young to be thinking of marriage to anyone.”

Cassandra looked above the fireplace, at the portrait of her mother. “Mama wasn’t any older than me when she married Papa. He was at least a dozen years her senior. I know, because Court told me.”

“And now we’ll tell you something you already know,” Julia added quietly. “Court sees you as his sister. Perhaps, some day, he’ll change his mind, see what the rest of us see. But not now. There’s too much going on now, with Beales out there somewhere. This isn’t…this isn’t a happy time. Truly the wrong time.”

“But it has to be now, Julia, don’t you see?” Cassandra explained tightly. “Edmund Beales will be gone soon, out of our lives, and everyone will scatter to the four winds, I just know it. We won’t all be held here anymore, in this limbo Odette calls our lives all these years. If Papa leaves—if Court and I end up on opposite sides of the ocean before he admits to himself that he can’t live without me? What will I do? Whatever will I do?”

Morgan’s voice came at them from the doorway. “Oh, alas. Alas and alack! What will I do? Whatever will I do? Poor Court, poor me!” She crossed the room in her usual graceful, long-legged strides, a raven-haired beauty of lush proportions, and then plopped herself down next to Julia. “Callie, I never thought you were such a dolt. You want him, then you go get him, that’s what you do.”

“That’s what you’d do, Morgan. Oh, wait, that’s what you did, isn’t it? Poor Ethan is still trying to figure out what happened,” Julia said, laughing.

“I crossed an ocean to get to Spence,” Mariah said. “Of course, I mostly wanted to box his ears for him, but that’s neither here nor there, is it?”

“The whys don’t matter,” Morgan said, rubbing her hands together, clearly eager to enter into a conspiracy. “It’s the how we’re concerned with, if Callie really wants to bring Court to heel.”

“Yes, how? I’ve tried almost everything, and he still refuses to think of me as anything but a baby,” Cassandra asked, leaning forward on the couch.

“True, true. And you’re all grown-up now, aren’t you? We just need Court to finally accept that delightful change. This might take some serious thinking, although I am already entertaining one possible idea, and it will take our minds off this tense waiting, waiting for Beales to show himself,” Morgan said, reaching for the depleted sugar treats in the candy dish. “Ladies? Can we please entertain suggestions from the floor? You start, Julia. I’ll leave my idea for last.”

“And, knowing you, Morgan, that’s probably a good thing,” Julia said, looking at Mariah and winking. “It will at least delay, if not spare our blushes.”

Cassandra looked to the other women, one by one. “You think I could do that?” she asked, her heart pounding.

“Do what?” Morgan asked innocently, popping a sugar treat into her mouth.

“Seduce him, of course. That is what you’re suggesting, isn’t it?” Cassandra asked, and then waited while Mariah slapped Morgan’s back, to help dislodge the candy stuck in her throat.

“Ah,” Julia said, sighing theatrically. “Our little girl is all grown-up now, isn’t she? This should help divert our minds from worries over Edmund Beales.”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOUR PARDON, SIR? Sir Horatio Lewis and Mr. Francis Roberts to see you, sir.”

Edmund Beales did not look up from the papers on his desk, aware that the men were standing just inside the door, but perversely refusing to acknowledge that fact. “Thank you, Walters. Please keep them waiting. A half hour should be sufficient to depress their any remaining pretensions.”

“Uh…um…sir? That is, they’re…here.”

Beales smiled, swiveling on his chair to look at the two men who, although they were not standing there, hats in hand like supplicants, were in fact only minus the hats. Their joint demeanor was that of inferiors come begging…most probably for their miserable, pathetic small lives.

“How utterly tactless of me. Gentlemen, do come in.” Beales did not rise from behind his desk. Nor did he offer his hand other than to wave rather languidly in the direction of the two deliberately placed uncomfortable chairs facing the massive desk that had once graced one of Bonaparte’s many residences. Not that the man had much need of such a glorious piece of furniture now, freezing his skinny shanks on the rocks of Saint Helena.

He’d had the desk shipped to his new mansion in Portland Square, along with other treasures he’d collected over the past two decades, leaving behind in Paris the few pieces “collected” during his privateering days he had deemed impressive enough to keep. He hadn’t been much interested in collecting chairs, or rugs, or other furnishings all those years ago, the way Geoff had been. An oversight, one he regretted now, but there was nothing that couldn’t be corrected with ample infusions of money, of which he had more than a sufficient amount.

Still, the Emperor Napoleon’s desk? That was rather a coup. Perhaps he should have a brass plaque attached to it, so that all could know of his prize. Ah, but that would be the old Edmund Beales, and spoke too much of flash and dash. Today he was a solid citizen, sober and earnest and… “Oh, for the love of heaven, gentlemen, sit down. I’m not going to bite.”

Sir Horatio was the first to speak, but not until he had squirmed uncomfortably in his chair, as if doing his best to avoid a tack someone had placed there to poke at his enormous backside. “We, um, we didn’t know you’d be returning, Mr. Beatty. Your departure two years ago—is it two years now?— well, it was rather precipitous, wasn’t it? And…and so soon after poor Rowley disappeared. His house burning down like that, his dear wife fleeing to the country, seemingly to bury herself there, as yet to return to society.”

“This cheers you?”

“Rowley disappearing?” Mr. Roberts asked rather incredulously, and then winced, as if sorry he had spoken, drawn attention to himself. “Not that we don’t know where he went to, not with Horatio here working at the Admiralty. Died just a few weeks ago, you know. Hanged himself in his cell, poor bastard.”

“Hell of an end for a man with so much ambition,” Sir Horatio said, touching his hand to his neck cloth.

Beales nodded, assuming a woebegone expression. “Yes, yes, shall we all drink a toast to the memory of the dear Earl of Chelfham, who destroyed a most profitable enterprise for us all with his stupidity and greed. Who is to say if the ending of the war wouldn’t have been different if the Red Men Gang had been able to keep up its guinea runs these past years. Not being able to pay his soldiers was not the greatest of our friend Bonaparte’s problems, but it certainly had an impact. Although we’ve all learned a valuable lesson, haven’t we, gentlemen?”

“Not to back the wrong horse,” Mr. Roberts said, and then once again bit his lips together, as if regretting his words.

“Yes, that, as well,” Beales agreed, smiling thinly. “But I was referring to Lord Chelfham’s belief that he could hoodwink me, try to steal from me. From me, gentlemen—can you imagine? I only regret being unable to get to him sooner, ease the pain of his incarceration and his guilt over his betrayal of the rest of us. But when at last the opportunity presented itself, I made certain it was a stout rope. Do you think he was grateful for the time, effort, and considerable expense I incurred having someone insinuated into his lordship’s plush prison? I’ve wondered about that, or if he still thought his pitiful life worth living. And yet, I feel I owe the man something for the services he did render me in the past, which is why you are here. Gentlemen? Some wine?”

“I’ll get us some,” Mr. Roberts volunteered, jumping up from his chair to play at servant. “Over there, yes?” he asked, pointing to the lavish drinks table set up in one corner of the large study.

“Ah, Francis,” Beales purred, placing a few small dark green leaves between his teeth and cheek. “Still the master of the obvious, I see. None for me, thank you. I long ago found my own way to paradise.”

Beales chewed on the coca leaves, releasing their invigorating, mind-expanding juices as he watched Francis Roberts pull the lead crystal stopper from the decanter and then fill two glasses, spilling only a few drops in his nervousness. Once the gentlemen had been served and Roberts was back in his chair, a careful, two- handed grip on the fragile glass, he said, “And so, delighted as I am to see you both again, I’m afraid this meeting of ours is not purely social. There is—”

“Mr. Beatty?” Sir Horatio cut in, raising his hand like some slow-witted student unable to understand the simplicity of two plus two. “You don’t mean to take up where, well, where we left off when our smuggling enterprise was so sadly compromised? With Bonaparte gone for good now, there really is no reason, unless you wish to begin trading in brandy and silks and such, rather than gold guineas.”

“No, no, never return to the same well once it has gone dry, Sir Horatio,” Beales agreed, inwardly wishing to wring the idiot’s fat neck for daring to interrupt him. Ah, well, he wouldn’t need the man much longer. “I am sufficiently well situated, for the moment, monetarily, and can only hope the same for you both. I do, as I’ve already alluded to, have this one small, niggling problem standing between me and a happy existence here in London.”

Francis Roberts must have seen this as his cue, for he sat forward on his chair, his hands gripping the wooden arm rails. “Whatever you need, Mr. Beatty, sir, consider it already done.”

Fools rush in, Beales thought, blessing the gods for peopling the earth with so very many of them ripe for the picking.

“Why, thank you, Francis. That’s so kind in you. I’m quite touched, truly. Almost as if I don’t hold both the rather large mortgages on your estate. And you, Horatio? Are you likewise amenable?”

“Oh, yes, yes indeed. Anything I can do to be of service, as always.”

Beales watched as the man flushed uncomfortably. No need to mention the sword of Damocles he held over Sir Horatio’s head. After all, whose business was it if a man wished to keep his lover in a picturesque cottage near Bath? Even if that lover of such long- standing is one’s own nephew—a young man also in the employ of the so-discreet Edmund Beales?

Knowledge. Power. Knowledge was power. And Edmund Beales did so appreciate both.

“Very well,” Beales said after the silence in the room had grown, at least for his two visitors, decidedly tense. “First, for reasons my own, I am, for the nonce, no longer Nathanial Beatty. Erase, if you please, that name from your memories. In fact, erase me from your memories. Both for only a small space of time, but until I give you permission, you do not know me, have never met me. Understood?”

Francis Roberts actually began to smile, as if just given a gift from above, but quickly covered his mouth and coughed into his fist. Obviously not quite as stupid as he looked, Beales thought. He might keep him.

“Then what will we call you?”

Beales looked at Sir Horatio from beneath heavy eyelids. Him he most definitely would not keep. The man was a stepping stone into the rarefied society of Mayfair, as were all the others, but his usefulness would end soon.

“You will not call me anything, Horatio, for you will not know me,” Beales explained as he would to a child. “You will see me on the street and nod your head in passing as you would to any gentleman you encounter, but that is all. Are we understanding each other now, or shall I write it down for you, have you memorize it and then recite to me tomorrow, so I can be certain you have taken such complex information into your brainbox, hmm?”

“No, sir,” Sir Horatio said, looking into his empty wineglass as if wishing it full again.

“Very well. Now, if we may proceed with my crisis of conscience?” Beales picked up a piece of paper from his desk, turned it about and slid it across the surface toward Roberts, the smarter of the two men, if it was possible to differentiate between Dumb and Obtuse.

Roberts picked up the paper, read aloud, “‘Geoffrey Baskin, captain, the Black Ghost, now known by the name Becket and residing somewhere in Romney Marsh, most probably near the Channel. Jacko, no surname known, captain, the Silver Ghost, probably also somewhere in Romney Marsh—’”

“Yes, yes, I know what’s written on the page, thank you, Francis,” Beales said, waving away the man’s words. “Now, let me tell you their crimes, shall I? Because these men must be located, gentlemen, and brought to justice for the crimes of piracy and murder against the Crown. Found, tried, convicted and hanged…within the month, if possible. Can you do this?”

“Piracy? Where?” Sir Horatio asked, frowning. “Smuggling, God knows, and even some ship wreckers still operating in Cornwall. But piracy? Not in these waters.”

“Indeed, no. Francis holds the paper containing all of the pertinent information. We’re speaking of a time before the turn of the century, gentlemen, in the waters somewhere off Haiti, and a convoy of several ships from three nations, joined together to protect each other in dangerous waters. The French and Spanish ships are of no account to us, of course, but the English ship that was, sadly, sent to the bottom carried not only property of the Crown and its captain and crew, but also the Sixth Earl of Chelfham—yes, gentlemen, the older brother of our dear departed friend Rowley— along with his lady wife and young daughter. Monstrous, just monstrous, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Rowley’s older brother?” Sir Horatio looked to Francis Roberts. “That’s how Rowley came into his title, remember? His brother was lost at sea? Damn and blast, murdered by pirates? Did you know that?”

Roberts shook his head, his gaze still concentrated on the paper in his shaking hand. “This was all so long ago. There’s…there’s proof?”

“All you might ever need,” Beales said, steepling his fingers in front of his chin. “A letter, dictated on his deathbed by one of Baskin’s outraged crew and witnessed by none other than our mutual friend Rowley himself. In fact, we may also have living evidence, much to my own astonishment, as Rowley tearfully informed my, um, my agent before his untimely suicide, that his brother’s child—the young daughter?—may still survive. My only possible conclusion is that she was either roughly abused by these horrible men at the time of the attack and then murdered, or that she remains a captive of Baskin’s all these years later, possibly living the life of a servant, poor thing. Name of Eleanor, I believe Rowley told my agent. I had dismissed the information at the time, thinking Rowley needlessly sentimental as he looked death in the face, but have since come to believe him most wholeheartedly. If you can locate her, this would help to prove our case against Baskin, yes?”

“A crime against humanity!” Sir Horatio exclaimed, his eyes gone wide. “I assure you, Mr. Beatty—that is, I assure you, sir, that I will bring the full concentration of my post to bear, to locate and prosecute these two monsters, and to rescue the wronged Lady Eleanor, if she survives.”

“Romney Marsh,” Francis Roberts said quietly. “Brings them to Dover Castle once we find them, and into my jurisdiction. That’s why you summoned— that is, happy to be of service, sir, as always. It will be a quick trial, with this Baskin and his cohort and anyone else we might find hanged in chains. You have my word on that, sir. The horror, sir. That poor child!”

“Yes, yes, a horrific tragedy, truly. And, for all of his treachery, which had to be punished, you can see why I feel I cannot be happy until these men who committed crimes against Rowley’s family—and the Crown, gentlemen, lest we forget that—are brought to the bar of justice. Before Christmas, if you please, gentlemen. You will keep me apprised of any and all developments, most especially Baskin’s location once you ascertain that, of course. Only then will I believe dear Rowley rests in peace.” Beales stood up, signaling that the meeting was over.

Once the two men were gone, Beales sat back in his chair, smiling for the first time in weeks. Ah, to see Geoff and whoever else was left alive from the old days brought to justice. What a wonderful thought. And it would be the Crown, and his hired apes, that would do the deed, all without Beales being forced to dirty his own hands. After all, why keep a dog and then bark yourself? Let his minions scuttle about, locate Geoff and the others. For his part, he would be content to visit Geoff in his cell, and make a bargain. The Empress for the lives of his now totally unprotected women.

Not that he was prepared to keep any such bargain. Why should he, once he had the Empress? The old days wouldn’t be entirely gone until every last person who could place him in the islands was also gone— breed, seed, and generation.

Beales took a small key from his pocket and used it to open a box he’d taken from a bottom drawer of Bonaparte’s desk.

He sorted through the dozens of dossiers he’d been collecting for many years, at last deciding on one in particular. Yes, the dear Reverend, and a man so generously opening his house to young orphan girls, leading them to God via nightly lessons on their knees in his bedchamber. Highly placed in the church. A fairly impressive if long-winded speaker able to rouse his audience to do his bidding. Located on the fringe of Romney Marsh, he was close enough to summon at a moment’s notice to raise the rabble against Geoff, demand a rash of executions.

After all, what was life without a little entertaining theater?

Beales continued to sort through the papers, smiling over several sheets blank save for the shaky (forgivable, as the man had been under considerable duress at the time) signature of Rowley Maddox, Earl of Chelfham, scrawled at the bottom. If necessary, Rowley might need to witness a few more deathbed confessions before Geoff was measured for the chains he’d hang in at Dover Castle.

So many dossiers, he’d soon need a larger box to keep them in. And perhaps he should organize them, as well. Alphabetically? he thought, reaching into his pocket for a few more coca leaves. By name? Or by vice?

By vice, definitely.

“To know a man’s virtues has its uses,” Beales ruminated, closing and locking the box once more. “But to know his vices is to provide the key to every door…”

He rubbed at his chest, his wound healed but still plaguing him from time to time, as Lisette had managed to nick his lung with the point of the scissors she’d used to attack him. Her own papa. He looked forward to seeing her again.

Ah, but mostly he longed to see Geoff, his old friend and partner. He longed to see him defeated, despondent, his family dead, his crew to be hanged alongside him in chains.

And the Empress, once thought lost to him? His, his alone at last, as she was meant to be.

Revenge truly was a dish best served cold. …

CHAPTER THREE

CASSANDRA SAT BUNDLED up in her heavy blue cloak on the bottom step of the stone stairs leading from the west side of the terrace, watching the large group practicing their maneuvers on the brown shingle beach. It would rain soon, as it always did in November, but they would keep on marching, their rifles on their shoulders, unheeding of the weather.

Sergeant-Major Hart’s shouts could be heard above the cries of interested gulls and the waves crashing with more than usual vigor against the beach, proof of a storm somewhere in the Channel.

Clovis Meecham marched alongside the ranks of men and women, also barking orders and, as always, a few skipping children who could not resist the fun tagging along behind him, all of them looking what they were; old men from the days on the island, young boys, mothers and even grandmothers, men more used to striding a deck at sea than parading on dry land.

But her papa had told her that the villagers wanted to keep busy, preparing themselves for possible attack.

In the harbor, the sloops, the Respite and Chance’s own Spectre, as well as the new frigate her papa had ordered were all fitted out to sail at any moment; casks of fresh water replaced weekly, extra sail stowed away, food and munitions crowding every compartment.

Becket Hall was prepared for attack, for a siege. The ships were ready in case an assault came by sea. Everyone had a single bag packed and lined up in the secret storeroom just behind her, the one accessible via several concealed inner passages her papa had designed into Becket Hall, and that led directly out onto the beach.

Plans. Plans, and more plans, all because Edmund Beales still lived. The man who had murdered her mother and so many others still walked the earth.

Nearly eighteen years of hiding, of watching over their backs, of never feeling quite safe.

It was enough to challenge one’s faith in a merciful God.

“Don’t gnaw on your thumb like that, Cassandra.”

She looked up to see Courtland walking toward her, appearing as if from nowhere, because he’d been checking the storeroom again, and had exited Becket Hall via the door that, when closed, blended completely with the dark stones.

“I’m not gnawing, Court,” she said, wishing he hadn’t caught her out indulging in the nervous habit that even she had thought she’d left behind years ago. “I was…I was thinking. I was thinking how unfair life is, to keep knocking some people down, again and again, while others sail through all of their years, unknowing, unscathed.”

“Oh, my. That is profound. But life is life, Cassandra, and each of us gets rained on a time or two, one way or another. Which, speaking of rain, is going to happen to you soon, if you don’t go inside before the storm makes land.”

“I know, but I want to stay here a while longer. I like the feel of the wind before the rain. And the sea smells so…wild.”

“Then I’ll sit with you a moment, if you don’t mind. All that awaits me inside are more lists to be checked, and rechecked, to be sure we haven’t forgotten anything.” He sat down beside her, folding the edges of his dark brown woolen cloak over his knees, and Cassandra looked at him, sitting so close beside her, yet with his gaze heading out to sea, his thoughts probably there, as well.

Jack Eastwood was handsome. Her papa and her brothers Chance and Spencer were handsome; Rian could actually be called pretty, even with his left arm mostly gone.

But Courtland was different.

He wasn’t as tall as the others, his build more solid. He wore his light brown, loosely waving hair long, almost to his shoulders, and he’d taken to covering the bottom half of his face with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. To annoy her, or at least that’s what he said.

Spence called him a plodder, Chance laughed and said Courtland did things slowly because he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Rian teased that Courtland had been born an old man, with no adventure in him.

And her papa said he could think of no one he would trust more to keep a cool head in a crisis.

Cassandra supposed Courtland was all of those things. Solid. Solemn. Careful. Dependable.

Did no one else notice the sparkle in his blue eyes? Did no one else see the passion in the man, tightly held in check at all times, and yet begging to be set free, to soar?

She remembered how it was to be held safe in his arms. Her protector, her knight in shining armor.

Besides, he was adorable.

“I hate the way it feels, being here, constantly on guard, waiting for the second shoe to drop,” Cassandra told him, to break the silence. “This is my home, Court. Why does it feel like an armed camp?”

He pulled his gaze away from the horizon and smiled at her, and her heart did that familiar small flip in her breast. “We’ve always been an armed camp, Cassandra. We’ve just never been so obvious about it before, that’s all. Are you afraid?”

She shook her head. “Not as long as you’re here, no. You’d never let anything bad happen to me.”

His smile faded. “Cassandra, you sound like some vacant-headed miss in a fairy tale. We all protect each other, that’s our way. But I need you to be afraid, just a little bit. I need you to depend on yourself, in case I’m not here.”

She placed a hand on his forearm. “But where would you be, if not here? Are you going to London? I know Chance is going there again, Julia told me, to search for Beales, but you won’t go, will you?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ll stay here. But there are times when I’m assigned to the ships, and if an attack were to come while I’m at sea on the Respite, I need to know that you will obey Ainsley, do exactly what is expected of you, even if that means boarding the frigate and heading to America. No hesitation, Cassandra, no arguing. I need to know that.”

Cassandra pushed her tongue forward, to moisten her suddenly dry lips. “But you’d come for me in America. Just as soon as you could?”

He looked away from her. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Once this is over, once Beales is out of our lives, I might decide to travel the Continent for a while, or possibly look for an estate of my own. I’ve been reading quite a bit about farming. A useless enterprise here on the Marsh, but there are some interesting things being done in crop rotation elsewhere in Kent.”

“Is that so?” Cassandra said, then bit her lip.

“I know, I’m boring you to flinders, aren’t I? Which means I don’t suppose you’d like to hear about an American inventor I’ve read about for some time now. There’s talk of a submersible boat he might consider testing somewhere here in England, and— Cassandra, stop looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you, Court?” she asked him blinking furiously, as tears were daring to sting at the backs of her eyes. “Am I perhaps looking at you like a woman who realizes that the man she loves would rather sink to the bottom of the sea in a submersible boat than be with her?”

“Cassandra, please don’t say things you can’t possibly mean, not—what in bloody blazes did you do to your hair!”

She’d been so angry with him that she hadn’t realized that her hood had fallen back in her agitation, and she quickly raised her hands to her head, attempting to hide the surprise she’d planned to spring on him at the dinner table, when there’d be others there to deflect his anger. “Nothing. I did nothing to my hair.”

“You cut it,” he said accusingly as she tried, without success, to pull the hood back over her hair. “How could you have—why did you do that?”

“We didn’t cut it, Court. For pity’s sake, all we did was put it up, see?” She turned her back to him and began pulling out pins, letting them fall to the ground as she pulled and tugged at her annoying curls until they tangled around her fingers, tumbled down past her shoulders, all her childish ringlets blowing crazily in the breeze from the Channel.

“Thank God,” he said, reaching out to touch a thick ringlet that had fallen directly between her eyes.

“Yes, yes, thank God,” Cassandra said, pushing the lock of hair behind her ear, not that it did much good, for her hair was so fine, even though she had masses of it, that it just fell into her face once more, it and several others. “You say that because you don’t have to brush it, Court. There are days I wish I could be sheared, like one of the sheep. I hate my hair. I loathe it. It…it makes me look like a baby.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and then shook his head. “Someday you’ll change your mind about that, Cassandra. Probably the first day you step into Society and the gentlemen trip over themselves, rushing to your side.”

“I don’t want gentlemen tripping over themselves, Court. Why do people think I should want that? Morgan says she’ll give me a Season, and then amuse herself by turning away the undeserving, vetting all those who propose marriage to me, and even have Ethan place bets at his club as to who first will compose an ode to my stupid, upturned nose.”

Courtland smiled. “Your nose isn’t stupid, Cassandra. It’s delightful, and fits your face very nicely. Although I believe I’d rather Julia introduces you to Society. Morgan would probably help you fall into scrapes every second day.”

“It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going into Society, joining a gaggle of simpering little girls on the lookout for an advantageous marriage. Papa will go to America, I’m daily more certain of that, and I will have no choice but to go with him, the unmarried daughter, the spinster. And all because you, Courtland Becket, are the biggest fool in nature.”

“Because you love me,” he said, pulling the hood up over her hair, tucking her curls away from her face. “Cassandra, you have no idea what that word even means. You’re too young.”

It was an old argument, and she had no new answers.

“My mama knew she loved Papa when she was no older than I am now. A year from now, she was a mother. I’m not a child anymore, Court, except to you.”

“You’re a child as long as you act like a child, Cassandra,” he told her, putting his hands on his thighs, as if preparing to stand, walk away from her.

But not this time. This time she wouldn’t let him dismiss her so easily. As Morgan had told her just the other night, it was time she took the initiative.

“Is this the action of a child?” she asked, grabbing on to the edges of his cloak and pulling herself toward him.

Before he could react, push her away, she aimed her mouth at his, sealing herself against him with more enthusiasm than finesse, for it was her first kiss.

She felt a shock, a shiver, run through them both. Hers delicious. His, probably more one of surprise, hopefully not disgust.

She let go of his cloak and flung her arms around his neck, holding him close, grinding her lips against his, goading him into reacting, daring him to remain his stoic, quiet, immovable self.

For a moment, she felt his mouth soften.

For a moment, she felt his arms raising up, as if longing to clasp her close, hold her against him.

For a moment.

And then he pushed her away and stood up, looking down at her in that stern, solemn way he had, that fruitless display of being So Grown-Up when she was Such A Child.

“Cassandra…” he began, and then sighed. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“But I did do it,” she told him, getting to her feet. “And you liked it, I know you did.”

“No, sweetheart, I didn’t. I know we’re not brother and sister, we’re not bound by blood. But that still doesn’t make it right. You’re Ainsley’s daughter, a man I owe my respect, my admiration, and definitely my life. It would not be fair to him, or to you, to deny you the world that’s out there because of some wrongheaded idea you’ve got that you and I are destined to be together. And I’m too old for you, in any case. Years too old.”

“Papa was nearly as old as you are now when he married my mother. We have a life to live, Court, and you’re wasting it, being so stubborn.”

He smiled, seemed to relax somewhat in his skin. “Is that supposed to be in the way of a proposal, Cassandra? If so, I think the wrong person is speaking here. And this person is not speaking of proposals.”

“Only because that person is thick as a plank!” Cassandra said, losing her temper. “Just you wait, Courtland Becket. One day you will go down on both knees, begging for me to love you, and I will snap my fingers—like this!—and laugh in your aged face.”

She turned on her heel and lifted her skirts as she ran up the steps, chased by his voice. “And don’t put up your hair again!”

Tears were stinging at Cassandra’s eyes by the time she threw open the French doors to the drawing room and burst inside, intent on crossing the room and heading up to her bedchamber, to have herself a good cry, probably, or to curse Courtland in private.

“Callie? Where are rushing in from, sweetheart?”

Cassandra stopped, wiped at her eyes. “Nowhere, Papa,” she said. “It’s…it’s coming on to rain.”

He folded the newspaper he’d been holding in front of him and motioned for her to join him on the couch. “It’s difficult to find a moment not crowded by so many other people, isn’t it? Let’s take advantage of this one, shall we?”

She nodded, untying her cloak and folding it over the back of a chair, pretending not to notice when her father looked at her hair, that was as wild as the wind could make it. “Is there something you wanted to discuss with me, Papa?”

“Must there be something in particular to discuss?” he asked her as she sat down beside him, kissed her cheek.

Cassandra believed her father to be the most handsome man in creation, and had no doubt her mother had taken one look at him and fallen desperately, totally in love. Even now, with silver working its way into his coal-black hair, he had the look of a prince, perhaps even a king. Tall, slim, straight.

She looked at the portrait of her mother, life size, hanging above the large fireplace, and wished, not for the first time, that her father had posed with her, so that she could just once see them together as they were on the island, young, wonderfully in love, and so very, very happy.

“Mama was so beautiful,” she said, sighing. “Do you still miss her?”

“Every day,” he said, also looking at the portrait. “You’re so very like her, you know.”

Cassandra shook her head, having heard this before, but never believing it to be true. Posed in a gorgeous, full-skirted striped dress of vibrant hues, her ebony hair hanging in ringlets past her shoulders, eyes such a vibrant green, her mother had been glorious, so alive, Cassandra had often, as a child, felt certain she would jump down from the painting at any moment to give her daughter a hug. “I’m small, like she was, but she was so colorful and I’m so…so bland.”

Ainsley Becket laughed, rubbing at her curls. “I can think of many ways to describe you, pet, but bland would never be one of them. You’ve got your mother’s features and curls, but my mother’s more honeyed coloring. And she was also a beautiful woman. I look at you, Cassandra, and see the women I love. I thank God every day for you.”

Cassandra blinked furiously, fighting back tears once more as she leaned her cheek against Ainsley’s shoulder and he put his arm around her. “You never told me that, before, Papa. About your mother. Was it sad, leaving her to go to sea?”

Ainsley was quiet for some moments, and Cassandra believed he was thinking about what he would say to her next, how he would say it.

“Cassandra, I’m not proud of my past, and offer no excuses for what I’ve done, for there are none. But I know you’re old enough to hear this story now,” he said at last. “My family made its living smuggling from the shores near Deal, until my father was caught and hanged at Dover Castle and my older brother and I escaped on the first ship leaving port, a ship heading for Haiti, although we had no idea where we were going. Haiti? We’d never even heard the word. We could have been sailing to the moon, but we had no choice. It was either the ship or the hangman, or at the very least, transportation. I was thirteen, my brother four years older. We didn’t even have time to say goodbye to my mother, and by the time I was in a position to write to her—once I’d learned to write— it was to discover that she’d died mere weeks after we’d sailed.”

Cassandra sat up straight, amazed at one part of the story. “You have a brother? You never told me that, Papa.”

“Will and I sailed with some fairly unlovely men for several years, learning our craft, until he was killed during an assault on a Spanish ship. The captain gave me my share and Will’s, and I combined that with everything we’d saved over the years, bought my own small sloop, a true wreck of a ship,” he said, smiling at some private memory.

“How old were you then, Papa?”

“All of twenty. And rather full of myself, I suppose. I managed to hire a crew, and had some small successes as a pirate. Very small successes. A year later Jacko and I met over exchanged fists in a wharf-side pub, he explained Letters of Marque to me, and we became licensed privateers. I was, hopefully, on my way to respectability and, eventually, a return home, to England. From the very beginning, my objective was to return home.”

“Until Edmund Beales betrayed you, tricked you into attacking Eleanor’s ship and becoming a pirate again,” Cassandra said, sighing. “There isn’t a conversation that doesn’t lead back to Edmund Beales, is there? Not for so many years.” She looked up at the portrait once more, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “He took so much from you, Papa, from all of us. I hate him!”

Ainsley took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at her cheeks. “Don’t hate him, Cassandra. Be aware of him, be alert to danger, prepare yourself as we are all doing, but don’t waste your time hating the man.”

“Lisette says he’s a monster.”

“As his daughter, that’s quite a damning indictment of the man. But, yes, Edmund Beales is a monster. One of his own making. But he’s also brilliant, as I learned to my great sorrow when he engineered his betrayal of us so many years ago. We can’t underestimate him. Which brings me to something I’ve been considering for some weeks now. Until this is over, until Edmund strikes at us and is defeated, I want to send you, all of the women, to Chance’s Coventry estate.”

Cassandra shook her head, sending her curls falling into her face. “No! No, Papa, don’t do that. Please don’t do that. Lisette should go, probably, as she should never have to see her father again. But I can’t leave you, and I know Morgan would never agree, or Mariah or Fanny. Oh, and Elly! Papa, she can’t leave. Not with the baby coming in another month.”

“I agree. Odette and Eleanor will have to remain here.”

“But, Papa, if Elly stays, why should the rest of us go? Elly will want us here with her, I’m sure. And how could any of us be so far away, not knowing what’s happening here at Becket Hall? No. I won’t go. I won’t, Papa.”

“I lost your mother…”

“I’m not my mother, Papa. I’m me, Cassandra. And we know he’s going to strike at us this time. We’re prepared, we’re ready.”

“Are we?” Ainsley asked, as if posing the question to himself. “Edmund excels at treachery, and we’re preparing for a frontal assault. A battle, a war. I’ve agreed to all that we’re doing, but I’m not certain any of it means anything.”

“Then we can stay?” Cassandra asked, pushing her question as her father looked up at the portrait of her mother. “If you really don’t believe he’s going to attack us, there’s no reason for us to go, is there?”

“Oh, he’s going to attack, Cassandra,” Ainsley told her, looking at her, his usually bright eyes unaccustomedly dull. “Soon. I only wish I knew how.”

“It doesn’t matter how,” Cassandra said bracingly, leaning against his shoulder once more, praying her father had now given up the idea of sending her away from Becket Hall, away from Courtland. “You’ll defeat him. There can be no possible other ending.”

CHAPTER FOUR

COURTLAND WALKED ALONG the shore with his head down, the brim of his hat shielding him from the wind, his unquiet thoughts occupying all of his attention.

She’d kissed him.

Christ Almighty, she’d kissed him!

He hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t suspected she’d ever do anything like that.

And the hair? She’d looked so grown-up. Not prim, definitely, but not the child he was used to seeing, doing his best to dismiss as a perennial pest, God bless her, believing herself in love, when she was too young to know love. Wasn’t she?

Eighteen. Cassandra was eighteen.

He was, he thought but couldn’t know for certain, thirty-one.

Ridiculous! Unacceptable!

God. She’d kissed him.

Worse, he had almost kissed her back, almost put his arms around her, drawn her closer against his body.

Taught her how to kiss.

Which, he knew, would be disastrous, if her inexperienced, almost clumsy attempt had been enough to send him reeling like some raw youth.

He stopped, bent to pick up a few stones, held them in one hand as he began tossing them, one by one, into the sea. He threw hard, launching the stones as if they were his thoughts, his damning, betraying thoughts.

And then he hesitated, his arm drawn back, as something Cassandra had said to him danced lightly in his brain. We thought. That’s what she’d said, wasn’t it? The idea to put up her hair hadn’t been hers alone. We.

“Damn it!” he said, throwing the stone past the third line of waves making their way toward the beach. His shoulder hurt, he’d thrown so hard, and he dropped the rest of the stones, began walking parallel to the water once more.

This is what happened when all the Becket women gathered in one place. Trouble. Mischief. Deviltry.

And he knew who the ringleader had to be. Morgan. The woman was a mother now, a countess. You’d think she would have curbed her deviltry at least a little bit, become more sober, circumspect. Then again, look at whom she’d married. Ethan was almost as bad as she was. If their twins grew up to be half as troublesome as the two of them, it would be only simple justice.

Courtland turned to his left, making his way across the beach and into the main street of Becket Village, home to the crews of the Black Ghost and the Silver Ghost, those who had survived the massacre, and paused, as he always did, to look at the mermaid masthead carved so many years ago by Pike, the ship’s carpenter, and set deep into the sand, looking out at the sea they’d all forsaken.

Pike had been dead these past five or more years, a victim of the Red Men Gang, and the reason Court¬ land had first donned the black mask and cloak of the Black Ghost and ridden out to protect the local smugglers, little knowing that the Red Men Gang had been headed by Edmund Beales.

Life was so odd, and it seemed to travel in circles, as Ainsley was prone to say, each one drawn smaller than the last, until the past and present collided.

Courtland mounted the wooden flagway, heading for The Last Voyage, the one place Cassandra could not follow, and the pint or two of ale he felt necessary at the moment, hesitating only when he heard hoofbeats coming toward him through the misty dusk.

“Chance,” he said, waiting until his brother dismounted from his large stallion, Jacamel, and stepped up on the flagway. “You’re alone?”

“Rian and Ethan are somewhere behind me,” Chance said, lifting his hat and pushing back his nearly shoulder-length blond hair that had escaped the ribbon he used to secure it at his nape. “Our brother handles the new mare well, but Ethan insists the two still have to get to know each other better, especially since Rian’s learning how to direct Miranda only with his knees.”

“Leaving his hand free to hold a sword or pistol,” Courtland said, nodding his head. “If anyone can do it, Rian can. Although I question his choice of name for the mare. Miranda?”

“Lisette chose it. If she’d told him to call the damned horse Mud Fence, he would have done it. She holds quite a bit of power over our youngest brother,” Chance said as they entered the tavern. “I don’t know that I like that.”

“Because she’s Beales’s daughter? She proved her loyalty, Chance. Hell, she tried to kill the man.”

“Granted. But she also helped keep Rian in France for months after he could have returned to us, with us believing him dead all that time. She only had her epiphany about her father when he killed that servant who tried to help her, or so she says. We have no proof the man is dead.”

Courtland lifted the two mugs Ivan poured for them and carried them to a table in the corner. “I believe her,” he said before taking a long drink from the mug. “And so do you. What else bothers you about Lisette?”

Chance smiled, toasted Courtland with his own mug. “I’m that transparent? Rian told me that, once this mess is over, he and Lisette will go to New Orleans, to claim land and money left to her by her grandfather. That makes two now, you know, with Spence and Mariah heading for Hampton Roads. I’ve never considered myself particularly sentimental, but I find I dislike the idea of having two of my brothers on the other side of the ocean.”

“Not just Rian and Spence,” Courtland said, looking into his mug. “Ainsley has purchased property in Hampton Roads. A boat-building company he acquired at no small price. He’ll be leaving us, too, taking Cassandra with him.”

“Ha, that is a piece of news I already knew, thanks to Julia, although I won’t believe he’ll leave here until he actually sails away,” Chance said, and then smiled. “But if he does, you’ll go, as well. According to my wife, Callie wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Cassandra has nothing to say about where I go, what I do.”

Now Chance grinned. “Oh, brother mine, you’re as thick as you ever were. Maybe I should have knocked you down more often. But I suppose, as your brother, I should warn you—the ladies are plotting your demise. Julia says it is to keep their minds away from thoughts of Beales, but I think they’re using our old enemy as an excuse to cause mischief.”

Courtland lifted his hand, and Ivan brought him a fresh mug. “I already figured that out, earlier. Cassandra put her hair up today. She looked ridiculous.”

“Did she now? You know, I’ve always thought she’d grow up to be a pale imitation of Isabella, but she hasn’t. She’s her own person, and even though she’s my sister, I can say with a clear conscience that she is a very lovely young woman. If we were to take her to London for a Season, she’d have half the eligible gentlemen clogging up my drawing room every day. Maybe all of them.”

“And that’s where she belongs,” Courtland declared hotly, wishing he didn’t sound so angry. “Not here, not with me. Fanny was the same way with Rian, believing herself in love with him, until she met Valentine. Proximity. That’s all it is, but Cassandra refuses to believe me when I tell her so.”

“Which you do, daily,” Chance pointed out, accepting a second mug from Ivan. “You know, our Alice is only ten now, but females, I believe, are females. And do you know what I’ve learned from my daughter? The more I tell her she shouldn’t have something, the more she wants it.”

“Meaning?”

Chance shrugged. “Meaning, brother mine, that maybe it’s time you stopped protesting so much. Give Callie a small taste of your attention—and not the doting uncle, brother, father, whatever you think you are, but the man. Once you stop treating her like a child, perhaps she’ll stop acting like one, and leave you alone.”

“Do you hear yourself? What you’re suggesting? I can’t do that. My God, man, she’s Ainsley’s daughter.”

“I’m aware of who she is. I can remember Isabella. God, she was beautiful. Inside and out. I was mad for her at seventeen, and so were you, following her like a puppy hoping for a treat. That’s probably how Callie sees you. I don’t know why, you’re such a stodgy old nag, but she truly believes herself in love with you.”

“Who’s in love with whom?” Rian Becket said, pulling out a chair and sitting himself down even as Ivan brought him a mug of ale. Even mussed, coated with road dust, he had the look of a young Greek god. “Tell me everything, and don’t leave out any of the juicy bits. Quick, before Ethan comes in to tell you how I fell off Miranda and bruised my pride.”

“You fell off a horse?” Courtland looked at his brother, visually checking for injuries. “You’ve never fallen off a horse. Rian, maybe you’re pushing too hard.”

“And there she goes—Mama Courtland, believing herself in charge of everyone,” Chance said, lifting his mug. “Rian lost an arm, not his wits. He’ll master the horse, just give him time. And a few falls, if that’s what’s needed.”

“Thank you, Chance,” Rian said, grinning at Courtland. “Now, who’s in love with whom? And note my use of whom, which I think reflects very well on Ainsley’s incessant lessons over the years.”

“Callie thinks she’s in love with Court here,” Chance supplied quickly.

“Pfft! And here I thought you were going to tell me something that isn’t already abundantly clear to everyone, and has been since the little hellion entered her teenage years.”

“You know,” Courtland said sourly, “I came here to drink alone. I should have known better.”

“Never drink alone, Court,” Rian warned him. “Not when we’re here, more than ready to increase your misery. Did you know the ladies have been giving Callie lessons in how to seduce you? Lisette told me last night. Her contribution, by the way, was to tell Callie to toss any maidenly shyness to the four winds. I blush to think what else she said, and didn’t repeat to me. When it comes to love, women hold all the cards, and we men can only pretend to have any say in the matter. Hullo again, Ethan. What kept you?”

“Your Miranda seems to have picked up a stone,” the Earl of Aylesford said, seating himself. Having ridden the same roads as Rian and Chance, Ethan looked as if he’d just finished a long session with his valet; nattily dressed, every blond hair sleekly brushed back from his finely-boned face. A man could look at him and see a well-dressed, amiable fool of fashion—and that man would very, very wrong. “I walked her up to Jasper at the smithy. I’d like to say he met me halfway, carried Miranda on his back the rest of the way, but none of you is probably deep enough in your cups yet to believe me.”

“Don’t think my giant couldn’t do it, if pressed,” Rian said, grinning. “Have I told you how he carried both Lisette and me out of that burning house, running with us both as if we were no heavier than feathers?”

“Twice,” Courtland said.

“Three times, at the least,” Chance added. “Although I still chuckle over the cannon, I’ll give you that.”

“No matter what, he’s quite a find,” Ethan said. “And I’d trust any of my horseflesh to him. In fact, I’ve already considered stealing him away from Waylon, who promised to break my head if I so much as tried.”

“The day may come when Jasper does take you up on the offer to be part of your horse farm, Ethan,” Court¬ land said, trying to keep the men concentrated on any subject other than him and Cassandra. “Once everyone feels free to leave Romney Marsh, much of this village may cease to exist, having served its purpose.”

It was a valiant try, but Chance must have seen through it, for he said, “Court is all a-twitter because Callie might be sailing off to Hampton Roads with Ainsley, leaving him to molder here, dying of a broken heart.”

“Oh, for the love of God—” Courtland got to his feet, pushing back his chair with some force. “When did I become an object of amusement to you all? This isn’t funny. I think Cassandra may be out to…to seduce me.”

“I think so, too,” Chance said, and looked to Rian. “You?”

“Oh, yes, definitely,” Rian said, smiling up at Courtland. “Shall we have a drink to the shameless little minx?”

“Spence and I discussed just this subject last night,” Ethan told them, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand—an earl in name, but not one who worried overmuch about his manners when out of sight of the society he wished to have believe him a fool. “We’re considering placing bets as to the timing of the thing, actually. We’ve tentatively settled on fifty pounds to the winner. Court? I give you two weeks before you succumb. Spence says a full month, but we all know he’s never right about anything. At least I hope so.”

“Three weeks, and we each ante up fifty pounds for the winner,” Chance said, holding out his hand. “Rian?”

“Chance took my guess,” he said, winking at his brother. “Very well, fifteen days. I could say thirteen, but our dear brother is made of sterner stuff. Aren’t you, Court?”

Courtland sat down again, with a thump. “Aren’t any of you the least bit concerned that Cassandra is, in all but blood, my sister?”

They all looked to one another and answered almost as one.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Callie doesn’t seem to be put off by it—or that ridiculous beard.”

“I can’t speak for myself, having only married into the family,” Ethan said, “but Morgan seems to think you and Callie are fated. And my wife, I warn you, is not averse to helping Dame Fate along, when she thinks it appropriate.”

“I know what it is,” Chance said when Courtland glowered at them, one after the other. “You think Ainsley wouldn’t approve. God, Court, the man thinks the sun rises and sets on you. You really should be embarrassed.”

“He thinks the sun rises and sets on all of us,” Courtland said, feeling his cheeks growing hot, for Ainsley’s approval was all he’d ever wanted out of life, ever since the day the man had saved that life. “We’ve all been very, very lucky to have him.”

“Even when he thinks we should all leave him before Edmund Beales makes his move, get as far from him as possible. Save ourselves.” Chance balled his hands into fists. “Sometimes I just want to knock him down.”

“He’s a father, Chance,” Ethan said quietly. “Just as you and I are fathers. What would you do if you believed having your children with you needlessly exposed them to danger?”

“You make a valid point, Ethan, considering that I’m sending Julia and the children back to Coventry once we reach London,” Chance said. “But I was seventeen the day I stood on the deck of the Silver Ghost as we sailed out of that damn mist and into the middle of a half dozen ships to our two, because Beales and his three ships had slipped away during the night, leaving us to be slaughtered. I was seventeen when I walked onto the beach to see it stained red with the blood of old men, women and small children. I’m going nowhere. My place is right here, and Julia understands that.”

Courtland closed his eyes, Chance’s words bringing back memories he fought away every day, and Isabella’s words to him. You are her protector. Never leave her, not ever. Promise me.

“We all belong here,” Rian said quietly. “Courtland? You won’t leave, we all know that. Callie most especially. You’re her rock, you know. Her rock and, God help you, her target.”

“You just want to win the bet,” he complained, lifting his mug to attract Ivan’s attention. “And now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to sit here and get myself very, very drunk. Does anyone care to join me?”

Chance laughed again. “Are you kidding? We’re all married, Court. Falling into a bottle is for the free and unfettered, that don’t have to answer to a wife. Enjoy yourself, this may be the last time you’ll be able to toss up your accounts in your chamber pot without abjectly apologizing between retches.”

“You’re all wrong. All of you. If none of you care for Cassandra’s happiness, I do. And that happiness doesn’t lie with a man like me.”

“A man like him. As if he has two heads, or something, and not a brain between them.” Ethan chuckled softly as he lifted his mug. “A toast, gentlemen. To Courtland Becket, one poor, deluded bastard.”

“Hear! Hear!” they all agreed, clinking their mugs together, and Courtland sank low on his spine in the wooden chair, believing the entire world, save him, gone mad.

CHAPTER FIVE

“DOMINOS?”

Eleanor Eastwood looked levelly at Cassandra, saying nothing, although her dark eyes spoke volumes.

“All right then, not dominos,” Cassandra said, knowing that look. “Chess? I’ll even magnanimously allow you to beat me.”

“I always beat you, Callie,” Eleanor reminded her. “And, before you ask, I don’t wish to play Hearts, I don’t care to read another book, hem another gown for the baby, have another slice of cake, nor will I ask you to plait my hair. What I want to do, Callie, is to scream. Loud and long.”

Poor Eleanor, confined to her bed all summer and now into the fall and winter, as well. She looked so small in the huge bed, except for the swell of her belly beneath the covers. Eleanor was, as they all said, their lady. Small-boned, regal, fragilely beautiful, but possessing a will of iron that had no one in confusion as to who was in charge of Becket Hall. That their grande dame should be hidden away upstairs, unable to quietly ride herd on all of them had to be endlessly frustrating to her.

Cassandra attempted to stifle her smile, but it was no use. Her sister was the most sensible, calm, collected person in the universe, and seeing her so agitated was almost amusing. “Oh, you sad thing. You won’t be locked up in here for much longer, will you?”

Eleanor pleated the covers with one hand as she looked up at the cut velvet canopy over her bed. “One moment more will be too much longer, Callie. Would you like to know how many roses are in this canopy? Six hundred and forty-three. And I loathe and detest every single one of them.” She sighed. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being such a sad complainer, aren’t I?”

“If someone put me to bed for—what is it now, seven months?—I would be much more than a sad complainer. I would be carted off to Bedlam, that madhouse in London.”

“Bethlehem Hospital, yes,” Eleanor said, smiling at last. “And I shouldn’t be anything but happy that this baby is still where he or she belongs, waiting patiently to grow and be born. Odette swears it’s a boy, you know. I’m at the point where I don’t care what it is, as long as it’s healthy, and arrives before Christmas. Now, tell me what’s going on downstairs The entire place is a shambles, I just know it is.”

Cassandra shook her head. “Jack and Odette would have my head. You’re not to do anything save to lie here and think pleasant thoughts, remember?”

“Easier said than done, I’m afraid. And, since I’ll worry anyway, why don’t you tell me what’s going on concerning that terrible man?”

“Courtland?” Cassandra said with a grin.

Eleanor picked up a small pillow and tossed it at her sister. “We’ll get to him in a moment. You know who I mean.”

“I can’t tell you anything about Edmund Beales because nobody knows anything about him other than that he’s out there somewhere, looking for us as desperately as we’re looking for him. You know that Chance and Julia and the children left this morning for London, don’t you?”

“They came to say goodbye, yes. And Alice gave me a drawing she’d made of Odette, Lord love her. It’s a good thing Odette can’t really turn little girls into toads. Only Chance is staying in London, however, sending Julia and the children on to Coventry with their London servants and some others to watch them until this is over. You, I understand, were supposed to have gone with them.”

“Papa relented,” Cassandra told her, quietly glorying in her victory. “He realizes I’m a woman now, and capable of making my own decisions.”

Eleanor pushed herself up against the raft of pillows behind her. “I imagine that’s why you’re considering Court a terrible man right now. He wasn’t happy for you to remain?”

Cassandra shrugged as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “He hasn’t said. Actually, he’s not speaking to me at the moment, which is fine with me, for I’m not speaking to him. He told me to never put up my hair again. Who is he to tell me how to wear my hair?”

“Yes, indeed, who is he? As if his opinion matters a jot to you one way or the other. After all, you don’t care a snap for him, correct?”

Cassandra allowed her body to list over to one side until she was lying on the covers, her head on Eleanor’s knees. “He drives me insane.”

“That seems only fitting, as turnabout is fair play,” Eleanor teased, stroking Cassandra’s tumbling curls. “Morgan and Mariah were in here earlier, visiting, and looking extremely guilty and altogether too pleased with themselves. What have our conspirators advised you to do now?”

“You know?” Cassandra sat up, pushed her hair out of her face. “Morgan said not to tell you because you’re so…poor spirited, and would probably ring a peal over all our heads.”

“Poor spirited? Is that what she calls being sensible?” Eleanor said, reaching for her cooling cup of tea. “Although, to Morgan, anyone a step below the rank of hellion is too boring to contemplate. Are you all so certain I disapprove?”

“You don’t? Really?” Cassandra allowed her shoulders to relax. And then she made a confession she hadn’t shared with Morgan or the others, because it was all just too embarrassing. “I kissed him two days ago,” she said, watching Eleanor’s face closely for her reaction.

“Is that so? My, and Morgan suggested this course of action?”

“Well, no…not directly. She just said—they all said—that Court has to stop seeing me as a child. So I…I just…”

“Ambushed him?” Eleanor suggested, handing Cassandra the empty teacup. “What did you do, jump out from behind a statue and hang yourself around his shoulders like a limpet?”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Cassandra said quietly. “Almost, but not quite. We were sitting on the steps below the terrace and I just…I just turned to him and, well, launched myself at him, I suppose you’d say. It was very impulsive, not well thought out at all. But the entire thing seemed perfectly logical at the time.”

“Oh, I’m sure it did, after Morgan filled your head with nonsense. Cassandra, that probably wasn’t a good idea. You know what a stickler for propriety Courtland can be. You’ll have to be less obvious. Launching yourself is not being less obvious. Next time, you might want to find a way to make him think the kiss was his idea.”

Cassandra’s eyes went wide for a moment. “You’re giving me advice?”

“Why shouldn’t I? It would seem everyone else has, yes? And this is a baby I’m carrying, and we all know how babies are made. You and Fanny may have called me Saint Eleanor a time or two behind my back when I tried to school you in proper deportment, but I am a woman, you know. And, speaking of Fanny, please tell me she didn’t give you advice.”

“Well, Fanny didn’t say too much, as she and Valentine were in a hurry to get back to their estate. Something about a small fire in the kitchens, or something. A messenger arrived yesterday evening with the news, and they left this morning soon after Chance and Julia. But you know that, too, don’t you? Nobody hid that from you?”

“Yes, I’m allowed that sort of information, since Brede Manor didn’t burn to the ground, thank goodness. It’s probably better to have Fanny and Valentine gone, in any case, if things become, well, complicated. No one will know Fanny is a Becket, and Valentine shouldn’t be involved in anything that could end in violence. He has his place in Society to consider, his Earldom.”

“Not to hear him talk about how much he’d like to be the one who personally puts a ball between Beales’s eyes,” Cassandra said, sighing. “All of them, all the men. It’s all they talk about. Like little boys. They really want to see it come to a fight, Beales sailing into the harbor, his cannon run out, ready to deliver a broadside, or riding across the Marsh with one hundred well-armed men behind him, set to attack us. Do men never tire of war?”

“Are you including Court in this group of bloodthirsty avengers, Cassandra? I would have counted on him to be more subdued.”

“I suppose he is. He seems more interested in protecting us than in destroying Beales. He and Papa closet themselves together every morning, going over their plans as if something changed during the previous night.”

“And what are their plans? To defend Becket Hall, that is?”

Cassandra shook her head. “Oh, no, I’m not going to be tricked into telling you things Jack says you’re not to know.”

“But I feel so helpless, lying here. I’ve rolled enough bandages to wrap every other man here from head-to-toe if the occasion arises, and I’ve been over and over our list of supplies, until I could tell you precisely how many sacks of flour we have stored away, how many dozens of candles. Anyone would think we were Troy, about to come under siege. And all with me stuck here, unable to help. It’s so frustrating!”

“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.