Becket's Last Stand. Кейси Майклс

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ