Kasey Michaels - Becket's Last Stand

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.”