Always a Temptress (9 page)

Around him Harry could hear the flat crack and tinkle of broken glass. There was the report of a Brown Bess musket and the crack of a window just to his right. He saw a man sprint across the lawn. Shots were fired, but the attacker came on, launching himself through the window. Another followed close on his heels.

To Harry’s right there was a grunt and a resounding, “Oh, bugger!”

Harry turned to see Finney fall back against the screen, hand up to his neck. Smoke curled through the screen, and Harry wondered how long this wooden floor would hold. It was now or never.

“All right, then,” he said getting to his feet. “I’ve had enough. Let’s let the bastards know who they’re dealing with.”

And with his motley crew giving a ragged cheer behind him, he ran straight down into the fight.

W
ell, Harry thought as he looked around at the carnage in the great hall. One thing was for certain. Diccan had been right. Someone was after Kate, and they didn’t care in the least who got in their way. Smoke rose in lazy spirals from the charred debris that littered the hall. Ancient leaded windows lay shattered on the floor, and old Holland covers lay over the bodies of the dead.

Frank had been killed. Finney was wounded, a pad pressed to his neck as he sat against the wall while Kate’s chef, Maurice, prepared a bandage. Thrasher was bouncing around helping Mudge collect spent weapons and supplies, but Harry could see that he was camouflaging his own injury, a burn suffered on his arm when he’d tried to help Frank pull the burning tapestries down in an effort to spare the roof.

Harry had to give the little imp credit. He’d faced his fear better than half the men Harry had led. He’d make a hell of a soldier someday.

“Six killed,” Schroeder said, pinning up her straggling hair as she approached. She was soot-streaked and weary looking, her dress torn at the shoulder and Frank’s blood spattered across her skirt. She pointed to the Holland covers that masked several untidy lumps. “Two inside, the rest out.”

Harry rubbed at his neck. His chest hurt again. His eyes were burning, and his legs felt as if he were trying to walk through mortar. And Frank was dead. Frank, who had been such a good man that Harry had trusted Kate with him twice. If Harry hadn’t already made up his mind to quit this insanity, that would have done it. He had buried enough good men for a lifetime.

“Major?”

Harry nodded, as if he’d been paying attention. “Six enemy dead, you said.” The morning sun was just up, its light pouring in past the shattered glass to chase colors across the littered floor. “You sure there were at least eight, Thrasher?” he called.

The boy looked up from where he was stacking the rifles against the wall. “I counted ten. And Axman in’t ’ere.” The boy shook his sooty head. “And ’e’s not a cove what quits easy, guv.”

Harry sighed. “No. I don’t imagine he is. We need to get out of here.”

“We need to get Lady Bea,” Finney insisted.

One of Harry’s men looked up. “Frank was in charge of transportation.”

And Frank lay under a Holland cover.

“Cor luv ya,” Thrasher protested. “George ’n me’ll do f’r the carriage. Our job, innit?”

“If we still have horses. Parker,” he said, pointing to one of his men. “Go with them. Mudge, gather what we need. We have to go before our friend regroups.”

“What about ’Er Grace?” Finney asked.

Harry’s stomach dropped.
Oh, hell. Kate.

“I’ll get her,” Schroeder offered.

He shouldn’t have felt so relieved. It was his job to see to Kate. But she had become one responsibility too many.

“She’s waiting in the wine cellar,” he said, walking over to where Frank lay.

Keeping his gaze well away from Frank’s shattered face, he threw back the Holland cover and rifled through his pockets until he found the keys.

“Meet us out back,” he told Schroeder, tossing them to her.

He turned to the rest of his men. “Right,” he said, assessing them. “Get everything ready to go. I don’t think our attackers will return in broad daylight, but keep a sharp eye.”

He planned to already be seated on Beau and waiting alongside the packed carriage by the time Schroeder retrieved Kate. He didn’t even make it out of the great hall before he heard her voice echoing up from the stairs.

“…not that I don’t appreciate the company, of course. But next time, they can haunt their own nightmares.”

Mid-sentence, Kate shot into the hall like one of Whinyate’s rockets, her trajectory just as unpredictable, her fuse well lit. Harry swore he could see sparks flying from her skin. On the other hand, the lantern she carried was out.

“Do you know how cold it is down there?” she demanded, as if chastising a tardy lover. “I could have died of ague before you lot remembered me. Tell Frank for me that he’ll never be invited to Eastcourt for Christmas. In fact, none of you will.”

Harry was going to smile until he realized that she was walking right past him without once acknowledging him. She just kept pacing and rubbing her hand against her skirt, as if wiping something away that stank.

“You can stop now,” he suggested. She didn’t seem to hear.

Schroeder entered the room behind Kate and walked straight for Harry. “I’m not sure you should put her into a carriage quite yet,” she said quietly.

“Why?” He gave in and looked at Kate, who hadn’t slowed at all.

Schroeder shook her head. “Somehow the lantern went out. By the time I opened the door, she was talking to people.”

“Who?”

She frowned. “I think…dead soldiers.”

Harry’s stomach dropped. “Stay with her.”

“I tried. She’s having none of me.”

So he wasn’t going to be able to ignore Kate after all. Bloody
hell
.

“Let’s see what we can do.” Handing the rifles he’d collected off to Schroeder, he went after Kate. “Are you all right?” he asked, pacing her.

She never turned around. “I’ve decided to remodel my house in town,” she said, her voice tumbling around the cavernous space like a bright waterfall as she walked along the windows, taking a quick peek out of each. “I had enough time just now to plan the decor. Egyptian, don’t you think? I believe the craze for alligator legs died out far too soon. After all, furniture should do something besides just sit there. Let it scare cats and small children. They deserve it. Come to think of it, I can never get my family to visit. Perhaps if I got a sarcophagus or two, the infantry would badger their parents to visit their aunt Kate so they could play hide-and-seek with a mummy.” Without slowing, she shook her head. “No, that’s probably not going to work. I think my youngest niece is coming out next year. I must tell you, I find it excessively annoying to have siblings old enough to have children my age. Do you know how uncomfortable introductions are? ‘Hello, this is my nephew Percy, who held me at my christening.’ Positively archaic.”

He caught up with her just before she tripped over Frank. “Kate, stop!” he insisted, taking her arm. “You have to stop.”

She didn’t even look at him. “No, I don’t think so. I think I need to go home. I need to check on Bea. I need to shop for drapes. Gold. Maybe purple. With stripes.”

She kept trying to pull away. Grabbing the lantern from her and setting it on the floor, Harry pulled off his hacking jacket and helped her into it. She looked down and shook her head. “No, no, not brown. It makes me look sallow. Corbeau, maybe. Or bottle green. I look positively sybaritic in bottle green.”

“If you don’t stop,” he said, his voice sharp, “I’m going to kiss you. If that doesn’t work, I’ll slap you.”

She kept pulling. He could hear that funny, wheezing rasp in her breathing again.

“Kate. I’m sorry. I had to keep you safe. I didn’t mean for you to be kept in the dark.”

He felt the shudder go through her. Finally, she stopped and focused on him, although he certainly wished he could have missed it. Her eyes were bleak as death. “Really? Where did you think he’d put me? The conservatory?”

“I didn’t have a choice. If Axman Billy does work for the Lions, his attack makes it more obvious than ever that you know something.”

She actually reared back to box his ears, but he caught her wrist at the last minute. “Bad manners, old girl.”

And that got the biggest reaction of all. Full-throated laughter. “Bad
manners
? Good Christ, Harry, try for some originality. I’ve told you I’m not a traitor every way except singing it accompanied by harp. I’m finished now. I’m not talking to you. I’m not helping you find your bloody verse. I don’t care if Prinny has to live in a monastery in Crete to keep him from being assassinated. I don’t care if Parliament tumbles or the Crown Jewels are replaced with paste. I’m finished.”

“So you’d sacrifice Lady Bea because you feel insulted?” he asked, goading her farther. “You do remember she was threatened, too?”

It was a low blow; he knew it. He didn’t care. He didn’t have time to bargain with her. Even so, it didn’t make him feel any more heroic to see her face go stark white. He hated the hitch in her breath that sounded too much like a sob.

“Bastard.”

He shrugged. “If I have to be. But if this attack does anything, it should convince you that we’re not playing games. Real traitors will go to any lengths to stop you, and right now I’m the only one preventing it.”

Her head bowed. He knew she was trembling. He wanted to hold her, just like any wounded animal, to pet her until she calmed and promise her everything would be all right. If he tried, she would eviscerate him.

“I assume everyone’s all right?” she asked, her voice small.

That was the moment Harry admitted to himself that he really had been a bastard. Not for urging her on. For punishing her for something she hadn’t done. Harry had seen a lot of people dissemble in the last ten years, traitors and cowards and criminals of all stripes. He prided himself on being able to smell out a liar. But he couldn’t pretend anymore that he’d been fair. He’d let old anger interfere with his judgment.

Kate might have betrayed him ten years ago. But she wasn’t lying now. Her reactions were too raw to mistake. She truly didn’t know why the traitors were after her. She wasn’t consorting with the Lions. She was just trying to get home to her friend.

He’d been wrong. And he’d made her pay for it.

When he didn’t answer her right away, she looked up, and Harry felt even worse. Dread darkened her eyes, loss, grief, the last ghosts of terror.

“Finney was winged,” he said, clenching his hands to keep from reaching out to her. “Your chef bandaged him right after dispatching the culprit with a butcher knife. Thrasher now holds him in awe. Said it was nice to know the man wasn’t ‘nuthin’ but cheese and bad temper.’ But I would advise you to be careful. Thrasher is now completely enamored of all things sharp.”

Her eyes glistened with tears she never let fall as she turned to search for her staff. Even before she saw Finney, she was walking that way. “And Axman Billy?”

Harry had hoped they would already be on the road before she thought to ask that. “He left six of his men behind.”

She stopped hard, her head up. “You mean he got away?”

Harry sighed. “Thrasher did not recognize him among the dead.”

If possible, she went even paler. “My God. Bea. We have to go.”

“First I get you someplace safe. Then I’ll get Bea.”

She turned on him, a lioness again. “You didn’t listen to me. We go to Bea.”

“You don’t have a choice. I’m not letting him get you.”

Her eyes grew hard in a way Harry barely recognized. “Trust me when I tell you, Harry. Very little has the power to frighten me anymore. Unless you put me back in that hole, you won’t stop me.”

Harry shook his head, but he was secretly impressed. “Lord, I can’t wait to hand you off to Drake.”

It was as if he’d pulled some string. Suddenly seductress Kate was back, her eyes sultry and lazy and insolent. “So do I,” she said. “He’s far more…
amenable
.”

Harry was suddenly furious. “Stop it.”

She flinched as if he’d struck her. “Stop what?”

And then he saw it in her eyes, a flicker, no more than a flash of a pain so hard and helpless that it shook him to his core. He wished he’d never seen it, another chink in Kate’s bold facade. He didn’t want to become more entangled in Kate’s problems. He wanted to hand her off and finally be done with her. Be done with everything.

“There’s no one here to seduce,” he said.

Predictably, Kate answered with a too-bright smile and a sashay over to where her staff had gathered. “And now, Finney, you and I need to discuss who is in charge.”

And what Harry was left with, oddly, was a dawning respect for Kate’s strength.

Thank heavens, he thought, watching her stalk off, that she was probably innocent. If she threw her lot in with the Lions, Prinny would be chanting matins in Greek by Christmas.

On her way over to Finney, Kate stayed as close to the windows as she could. The sun was up; she needed to feel it on her face. She needed to sate herself on it, especially after that last inexplicable exchange with Harry. He saw too much; he got too close. And then in a heartbeat, he left. She didn’t need to survive that all over again.

She needed to stop thinking about Harry and pay attention. She needed to get control of herself. If she didn’t, Harry would, and she couldn’t tolerate that.

It was so hard, though. No thought would adhere to another. No heartbeat separated itself enough from the one before to ease the rushing panic in her chest. All she could focus on was the idea that if she stopped for a second, Bea would be lost.

Her footsteps echoed away into the gloom as she strode over to where Finney sat, shamefaced and bleeding on the floor. And there were Thrasher, Maurice, and George—singed, a bit bloody, but whole. She let go her first sigh of relief.

“By the looks of you all,” she greeted them, shrinking at the shrill tone of her voice, “I had a better time in the cellars. None of you deserves to ride in my coach looking like this.”

Looking up from where he was gathering up a pile of equipment, Thrasher flashed her a brash grin. “Cor, Y’r Graciousness. You should see t’ other blokes. Proper put ’em to bed wit’ a shovel, we did.”

“And you, George?” she asked, smiling up at him as she took his hand.

George’s smile was incandescent. “Got mine, Katie. Got mine good.”

She nodded briskly. “Excellent. I am positively blue-deviled that I had no chance to wield a gun.”

“You shoot?” Schroeder asked next to her, looking a bit taken aback.

She flashed a bright smile. “I was taught by a general’s daughter. And now, Mudge is going to add dinner cutlery to my arsenal. I am in alt.”

Her heart skidded when she saw the state of Thrasher’s sleeve. “Thrasher,” she snapped, pointing to the singed velvet of his cherished crimson-and-gold uniform. “I forbid anyone to be in my service who refuses to care for himself. Maurice, see to him.”