Chapter 32
“Wherein many things are broken, and much blood spilt.”
“There.” Lawrence felt his brother stiffen beside him, as he too saw the movement of someone closing in on the house.
“And there, look, three at least. What’s that, twelve now?”
Lawrence followed Alex’s gaze and cursed. That wasn’t militia. Which meant they wouldn’t give a damn about taking any innocent lives in their pursuit of him.
“Perhaps ...” he began, the inevitability of it sticking in his throat.
Alex snarled at him and grabbed him by the shirt, slamming him against the wall. “If you dare mention any fool notion about giving yourself up, I swear I’ll kill you myself!”
Lawrence scowled at him and pushed Alex’s hands away. “You know it’s the sensible thing to do,” he hissed back.
“I know no such thing,” Alex raged as loud as was possible, considering they were trying to keep quiet. “I have no idea if they are pirates after you, or a rival smuggling gang after me!”
Lawrence blinked, momentarily stunned. “What?”
Alex returned his attention to watching the garden, but not before giving Lawrence a look of sheer exasperation. “I told you what I’d been doing didn’t I, do you think the competition takes kindly to my dominance of the field?”
Frowning, Lawrence tried to piece the earlier conversation back together. “Yes, but ... I understood you’d been funding them. Damn it all, Alex! Do you mean to tell me you’ve actually been out, running contraband?”
“Well you needn’t take that tone with me,” Alex snapped. “As I doubt you’re in any position to throw stones!”
Lawrence closed his mouth. It was a fair point. “If that’s the case, why the devil aren’t we better protected?”
At that moment both men looked up as Albert, one of the gardeners came in carrying a box, which he opened with care to reveal an array of pistols. “You were saying?” Alex remarked as he opened a cupboard to reveal an impressive range of daggers and swords.
“That’s all well and good, but where are the men to wield them?” Lawrence asked, snatching up one of the pistols to add to his own and adding a pouch of powder and a quantity of shot. Checking the pistol was properly loaded he lodged it firmly in his belt and went to select a dagger and sword.
“Ah, you have me there.” Alex turned to him with regret as he handed him a fine sword which Lawrence hefted in appreciation, admiring the craftsmanship.
“As I was engaged in the pursuit of a target known to the militia, i.e. you, I brought The Revenge and the crew who are involved in my more legitimate legal business. Had I known how things would turn out ...” He gave a dignified shrug.
“I have, as it happens, sent word to the crew back home, but of course it will be several days before they arrive.” He nodded in reply to the look of astonishment Lawrence knew was on his face.
“I figured a run would be an appropriate means by which to keep me from under your feet once ...” He waved his hand to encompass the situation with Henri.
“Once you had come to your senses.” He frowned at Lawrence who steeled himself for what was coming next.
“You have come to your senses I take it?”
“Yes dammit! But that’s hardly a topic for conversation now is it?” Lawrence hissed, peering back out the window. He half hoped the bloody men would attack, anything to keep his brother from continuing this conversation.
“Well thank heaven for small mercies,” Alex muttered, pausing a moment before adding. “Though after seeing her last night, it really wouldn’t be a hardship if you decided you want me to take her off your hands.”
It took a moment before Lawrence’s brain caught up and he realised he was holding a gun on his own brother.
“You will forget what you saw last night,” he said, his voice cool and even.
“And you will never think of, speak about or look at her in a manner other than that of a brother, ever again. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly,” Alex replied, grinning at him, apparently unconcerned for his own well-being.
“I’m only sorry it took such a lot of effort on my part to make you realise you were in love with the woman.
Oh, and may I offer you my congratulations.
” He turned back to the window and scowled.
“Now then, let’s see what we can do about this lot, for I was rather hoping to attend a wedding, not my own funeral. ”
As if on cue, a voice called out from the gardens.
“Savage? We know yer in there. Come out quiet like an’ there won’t be no trouble. We don’ want the rest o’ them. Got no quarrel with ‘is lordship.”
Lawrence looked at his brother. “Still think they’re after you?”
Alex shook his head, frowning. “No, but if you think they’d get this far and leave rich pickings such as could be found in a house like this, then you really are a fool. If you give yourself up, they’ll just torture you in front of us until we let them in.”
Grimacing, Lawrence accepted the truth of the argument.
A crash of noise had them rushing to the other window again.
“They’re trying to break down the back door,” Alex said, his voice grim. The two men looked at each other as an echo of the same noise came from the front of the house.
“You take the front,” he instructed Lawrence who nodded and ran from the room in the direction of the sound of an axe splintering wood.
He ran through to what had been his mother’s room and opened a window as quietly as he could, before flinging back the shutter.
Lawrence had only a moment to lean out and take aim before his position was seen but the scream that followed told him his shot had struck home.
He ducked back, taking a moment to reload while curses flew at him from below.
“Savage! Yer a dead man.”
Lawrence frowned as the voice became familiar. “Brant?”
“Aye, it’s me,” the voice returned with a spiteful laugh. “I’ve been lookin’ for ye for nigh on a year, me old friend. There’s a reward for ye’ that will keep me in rum from now ‘til the end o’ my days an’ I mean to claim it.”
“Bastard,” Lawrence muttered. He’d come across Brant before.
He was more smuggler than pirate, but he would make money however it could be found, and he was well known for blackmail and stabbing men in the back.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d profited from the reward money for bringing in one of his own.
Lawrence pictured the wretch’s face, and the thick black beard that covered the scars he bore.
They said it was his best friend who’d done that, when he discovered Brant had betrayed him.
Swinging out of the window once more, Lawrence fired, throwing himself back into the room as a bullet smashed the window behind him, showering him with broken glass.
He reloaded with quick, sure movements that testified to years of practise and grabbed the other pistol.
The idea of a sick son of a bitch like Brant setting foot on the property while Henri was in the house .
.. Lawrence felt his guts turn. He couldn’t let that happen.
The smashing began again, and Lawrence took his chance.
Leaning forward he aimed true and fired both pistols.
Two men fell, one dead, the other screaming from a wound in his thigh, neither one of them Brant.
But Lawrence fell back, cursing as the fierce sting of a bullet burned against his flesh and splinters flew around him as bullets hit the window frame.
Muttering obscenities, Lawrence tore off a strip of his shirt and bound his arm.
Thank God, just a flesh wound, though the blood was hot and ran freely down his arm as he tried to tie off the makeshift bandage.
Lawrence wiped his hands clean of blood and reloaded both pistols.
He could hear gunfire from the back of the house and prayed Alex was holding his own.
The sound of axes cutting into the doors continued and though he tried to access the window again, they were taking no chances and fired upon him at the first sight of movement.
He waited until they’d discharged their weapons, hoping everyone had run out of powder, and leaned out once more, winging the bastard with the axe and throwing himself back into the room as a bullet thwacked into the wall a hair’s breadth from his head.
“Damn me, that was close,” he muttered, reloading.
Getting to his feet he ran for the landing.
The front door was thick and solid, made of good French oak but it wouldn’t hold for much longer from what he could see, and he hurried down the stairs to find a position to hold them off.
And not a moment too soon as the great door smashed to the floor, and five men ran into the house.
Taking his time, Lawrence stood his ground and fired, killing one man outright, the other crashing to the ground as a bullet tore through his upper shoulder.
Dropping the pistols, he reached for his dagger and threw it, smiling in satisfaction at the dull thwack as it hit home, killing the blood thirsty-looking devil beside Brant as it struck square in his chest. But Brant and a giant of a man with tattoos over his bald head and gold in his ears were still coming, stepping over their fallen comrades without even a glance.
Lawrence ducked down behind a dresser as two bullets hit the wood, smashing the glass-fronted windows.
“Devil take you,” he muttered. With his pistols lost he drew the sword with his right hand and reached for the dagger he’d stowed in his boot and got to his feet.
Brant grinned at him, showing a missing front tooth.
He put away his own pistol, drawing a sword and advancing on Lawrence with the bald fellow following suit.
“An’ why not settle this like gentlem’n,” he chuckled. “As it appears you are one o’ them fine fellows.” Brant sneered, and Lawrence glared at him, moving to counter the coming attack.
“What on earth leads you to believe that?” he demanded.
Only Mousy had known that the earl was his brother before he’d given himself over to The Revenge.
Whilst he knew Mousy would have told his crew once they were safe away, he didn’t understand how Brant could have come to hear of it.
He remembered, though, that the militia had been out in force when he’d set foot on land back at home, and the crawling feeling he’d been betrayed returned all over again.
“Ye got a rat aboard, huh?” Brant chuckled. “Aye, see the money yer worth dead is a sore temptation, even to a loyal man.”
“Who?” he demanded, as acid burned in his stomach. The men who had remained with him had been loyal and true, or at least he had believed they were. The idea that one of them had given him up ...
Brant shrugged. “It’s o’ no matter now, my lad. Ye’ll have no cause to worry on it in a moment or two, nor on anythin’ else neither.”
Lawrence adjusted his grip on the sword and faced the two men. Maybe Brant was right, and his time was finally up, but either way, he was taking the two of them with him.