Becket's Last Stand. Кейси Майклс

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      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?”

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