Chapter Thirty-Four
At first Rynn thought the faint orange glow lighting up Dead Man’s Hole heralded sunrise. Her heart lurched. The tide—where
was the tide?
Then she realized that water wasn’t rolling in. That the sand she was sitting on was dry. That she’d apparently dozed off with her back against the curved stone
wall, and Alfie, beside her, was either still unconscious or heavily asleep, judging by his breathing. That everyone was asleep.
That it was cold. That the blanket she shared with Mrs. Frampton was mostly wrapped around Mrs. Frampton now.
“Mam?” It was Alfie, drowsily calling for his mother. His voice was weak. Seeking human contact, his hand found her leg.
Relief that he was no longer unconscious was tempered by the knowledge that the painkiller she had administered would soon
be wearing off and she had nothing to give him in its place. All the medicine and medical supplies had been left behind in
the house.
“It’s Lady Thomas. Rynn.” Keeping her voice low so as not to wake the others, she shifted positions, kneeling beside him.
His pulse was elevated, but his fever had gone, she found with a quick check. She pulled the two blankets he was cocooned
in more closely around him. “You were shot, but you’re going to be all right.”
“The Tans. I remember.” This evidence that he was coherent was reassuring. There was a pause as, she thought, he looked around. Even with the orange glow—what was that?—the cave was pitch-dark. “Where are we? Where’s Jack?”
“We’re in a cave, hiding from the Tans. Jack went to fetch your uncle.”
“Owen’s coming?” She could feel his body, which had tensed as he began to take stock of their surroundings, physically relax.
“Good.”
After a moment the steady rhythm of his breathing convinced her that he was once again asleep.
The orange glow was brighter. She’d never been inside Dead Man’s Hole at dawn. But she didn’t think the sunrise could cause
that.
Scrambling to her feet, she hurried to the fissure and looked out, carefully, while remaining inside.
The orange glow lit up the beach, which she was glad to see was still some way from being covered by the incoming tide. Beyond
the beach, beyond the first frothy layers of booming surf, all of which, like the air itself, were tinted orange, the night
remained black. Despite drifts of orange haze partially obscuring her view of it, the moon was visible overhead, having moved
several degrees west since they’d taken refuge in the cave but still having a way to go before it reached the horizon. Some
hours had clearly passed, but dawn was not at hand.
The orange glow owed nothing to sunrise.
A brisk wind blew in from the sea. It smelled, as it always did, of fish and salt. But there was an acrid note to it, a jarring
difference–
Smoke. What she smelled was smoke.
The orange glow came from a fire. A big one. Big enough to light up the sky. And the cliff. And the beach.
It burned somewhere overhead. Which could only mean on the flat land at the top of the cliffs.
The barn? The shed? Neither would burn so bright.
Horror seized her as she came to a terrible realization: Ballyshannon Court itself must be on fire.
Oh, no. Her stomach pitted.
Her first instinct—to run out onto the beach and fly up the path—she quashed. At this point, if the house was on fire, there
was nothing she could do. What she had to concentrate on was saving herself and those in her charge.
The Tans—where were they?
Fear made her heart beat faster as she looked up and down the beach. It was impossible to see anything beyond the orange glow.
That left large swaths of sand and surf that were utterly, completely dark.
Listening hard, she could hear nothing over the roar of the waves. No crackling of flames. No shouts.
The thought that the Tans might even now be hunting for them along the beach sent shivers down her spine.
Jack. Had he made it to the hotel? Had he found Owen?
She cast a long, searching look out at the bay. What was out there was, simply, the dark. If a boat was coming their way,
she couldn’t see it.
If Jack hadn’t made it through, if Owen didn’t come, what was the alternative plan? With the tide coming in, the cliffs at
their back, and most of them not able to move fast, if at all, she was afraid of getting trapped on the beach. Should they
try going back up the path? Given the array of injuries, the climb itself would be almost impossibly arduous. And there was
no way to know if the Tans were still up there, watching the house burn.
Waiting for them to appear.
The Tans could be anywhere.
With no warning at all, several men walked out of the night into the orange light, dark silhouettes striding with purpose toward Dead Man’s Hole, toward her. She could clearly see the rifles they carried. Rynn’s heart almost stopped. It was all she could do not to cry out. Instead,
she clamped her lips together and shrank back, quickly, praying they hadn’t seen.
Then something about the man in the lead, about his height and the breadth of his shoulders and the way he moved, registered.
She took a chance, stepped up to the entrance, looked again.
By then he was only a few strides away.
“Owen,” she said. And exhaled on the most overwhelming wave of relief.
Six men, three currachs. The boats were beached just beyond the orange glow. The cave was evacuated in a matter of minutes.
Scooping Alfie up in his arms like a baby—“You’ve worried your mam” was how Owen greeted him, to which Alfie sheepishly replied,
“Sorry”—Owen carried him to the first boat, deposited him unceremoniously inside, dropped his coat around Rynn’s shoulders
as she climbed in next to Alfie, supervised the loading of the other boats and then took one set of oars. A man he addressed
as Whelan, who clearly worked for him, pushed them out, jumped in and took the other set. Jack was the remaining passenger
in their boat, while the rest were loaded into the other two.
As Owen rowed, Rynn got a glimpse of a pistol in a holster on his right hip. That, coupled with the rifle that now lay across
his lap, brought home to her as nothing else had how much danger they were in.
It was clear from Owen’s lack of conversation, the uncompromising set of his mouth and the very way he rowed, that he wasn’t happy with at least one of his passengers.
She had a feeling it was more like two. Or maybe all three of them, because after all, Jack, before acting the hero and saving Alfie, had been involved in whatever Alfie had been doing, too.
Once out of the crashing surf, the bay was relatively smooth. With no one saying anything, the only sounds were the rush of
the waves and the slap of the oars hitting the water. She sat in the bottom of the boat facing Owen, with her back against
the middle seat and Alfie, in his blankets, curled up in front of her with his head on her lap. From that position, Rynn could
see just the tips of the shooting flames at the heart of the orange glow. Then they crested a wave, and she could spot the
roof. It was fully engulfed, with fire dancing along the ridgelines and consuming dormers and chimneys. Flames leaped out
of the small windows on the third floor where her room had been when she’d lived there as a nurse. Cascades of orange sparks
shot skyward, then rained down like confetti. Plumes of black smoke obscured the stars.
The knot in her stomach grew so big it felt like a lead cannonball.
“By morning there’ll be nothing left. It’ll be burned to the ground.” It was the first thing Owen had said to her, uttered
in a clipped tone that, to her, reeked of suppressed anger. He’d been watching her look back at the house, she’d seen as she
glanced his way. It was too dark to read his expression, but she didn’t have to.
She knew him.
“Why would they do that? We were already gone. They must have known that. And it was so beautiful.” She had nothing but good
memories of the time she’d spent there. And Thomas—Thomas had loved it. Watching the house burn felt almost like mourning
him all over again.
“It was a reprisal. And a way to warn anyone else who might be thinking about going against them.”
Then they were far enough out that she could see not the whole of the house, but most of it.
Huddled in Owen’s coat with an arm flung across Alfie’s chest to keep him as steady as possible as the currach sliced through
the waves, Rynn watched with a lump in her throat as Ballyshannon Court burned.
By the time they reached the beach in front of the Great Northern Hotel, all she could see of the fire was the distant orange
glow against the sky. Because it was nearing 4:00 a.m.—Owen checked his watch—the area was deserted. The hotel itself was
dark except for a pair of lighted windows that marked the lobby.
Moonlight illuminated the beach, the dock with its many boats, the great lawn that sloped down from the hotel. Rynn glanced
around nervously as she stepped out of the currach. She didn’t think the Tans could possibly know where they’d gone, but the
night had already brought enough shocks that even the shadows seemed threatening.
“They’re being taken to a safe house for what’s left of the night,” Owen said of Mrs. Frampton and Cyril and Jack and the
others in answer to Rynn’s question as they were loaded into two of the three waiting cars. As he spoke, he was putting Alfie,
who was awake now and starting to grit his teeth against the pain, into the rear of the Vauxhall, where he curled up on the
back seat. Sliding out of Owen’s coat, Rynn folded it and tucked it under Alfie’s head to act as a pillow, then slid into
the front seat to give him room. Owen got behind the wheel and glanced at her.
“You’ll get cold,” he said.
“I won’t.” Rynn shook her head. “What now?”