Chapter Eleven #3
The count snarled. “See, she is here after all! The missing princess of Zindaria, as I claimed all along. I demand you call off this rabid dog and hand her and the boy over to me.” This rabid dog being Gabriel, whose only reaction was to press the tip of the sword a little harder against the count’s throat.
Callie fixed her gaze on Count Anton, smoothed her dress with shaking hands, straightened her mother’s tiara, and glided slowly down the remaining stairs. Nobody said a word. All eyes were on Callie.
She reached the bottom of the stairs and moved toward the count. She ignored the sword at his throat and addressed him in her most regal manner. “Count Anton, how dare you burst into this house, shouting and bullying children.”
His lips moved in a soundless sneer and she poked him in the chest with her finger, hard. “You are a mannerless oaf and I am ashamed to acknowledge you as a son of Zindar. And how dare you inform others that I am missing. Do I look missing to you?”
“He told me Captain Renfrew had stolen you and your son away,” Sir Walter said.
Callie didn’t turn her head. “Did. He. Indeed?” she said, emphasizing each word with a poke of her finger.
“Nobody stole me or my son. Things have come to a pretty pass in Zindaria when a woman cannot take her son to visit the country of her birth—I was born in England—” she added for the magistrate’s benefit, “without an oaf like you telling the world I’ve been stolen.
” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And as for the way you treated my friend Miss Tibthorpe, and my son’s friend, Jim—not to mention the way you turned a naked blade on your own crown prince—I’ve half a mind to ask Mr. Renfrew to lend me his blade so I can run you through here and now. ”
“Er, Your Highness, that’s not allowed in England,” the magistrate said nervously. “Summary executions are illegal—there must be due process, a properly conducted trial, and so on. Captain Renfrew, you know it.”
“I am the princess’s to command,” Gabriel responded.
The count paled and jerked his head as Gabriel promptly passed the handle of the blade to Callie without removing it from his throat.
A trickle of blood ran down the count’s throat. Callie watched fascinated. She hadn’t moved at all, he’d done it to himself.
She stared down the long blade at her enemy. With one thrust she could stop the threat on her son forever. Her muscles tensed. She stared, mesmerized, along the gleaming silver blade. In the count’s throat, a pulse throbbed.
It would be so easy. One thrust and her troubles would be over.
But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He was a man, a human being. He had Rupert’s eyes. He was Rupert’s cousin, her son’s closest male relative. She would gladly see him dead, but she could not be the one to do it, not in cold blood.
He read it in her eyes and sneered. “You’re a coward, like your weakling son.”
“There’s not a cowardly bone in either of them.” Gabriel placed his hand over hers and took the sword back. “But she’s no cold-blooded killer.”
He paused, then added silkily, “I, on the other hand, after eight years at war, am.”
“Princess, Captain Renfrew, don’t do this,” Sir Walter begged. “It would be murder, cold-blooded murder.”
Mr. Renfrew looked at Callie. “For you, I’d do anything. Just say the word.” His eyes were very blue and very steady.
Callie closed her eyes briefly, then reluctantly shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“By Jove, what’s this? A reception committee?
” A tall man wearing buckskins, an elegantly cut, though dusty coat and high, black boots strolled through the open door and tossed his curly-brimmed beaver hat on the hall table.
He raised a quizzing glass and inspected the collection of people standing in the hall.
The glass hovered on Callie’s tiara for a moment, then moved on.
Having finished his inspection, he smiled faintly and said, “If you’re going to skewer that fellow, Gabe, get a move on. I’ve ridden all the way from Aldershot and I’ve got a devil of a thirst.”
“Well said, Rafe.” A second gentleman, better-looking but less elegant than the first, followed.
Pulling off his leather gloves, he, too, glanced at the frozen tableau and said with a frown, “But not in front of the ladies and children, Gabe, there’s a good fellow.
Bad ton to murder people in front of ladies and children.
” He bowed gracefully to Callie and Tibby.
“Yes, a little consideration, brother mine,” a third man declared.
“Take the fellow outside to skewer him and save Mrs. Barrow’s nice clean floor.
” He met Mrs. Barrow’s eye and winked. This must be Harry, Callie thought dimly.
He was the image of Gabriel, tall, dark, and broad-shouldered, only his hair was dark brown instead of almost black and his eyes were gray.
He looked from his brother to Callie and back again.
His eyes flickered to her tiara and one brow rose faintly.
“Go ahead, Mr. Gabe, don’t mind me,” called Mrs. Barrow. “I’d be delighted to mop up that villain’s blood. And I wouldn’t mind watching, neither. In fact I’d downright enjoy it!”
“Me, too,” said Jim. “Bloody stinking—” Mrs. Barrow muffled him with her hand.
Gabriel looked at the count’s stiff countenance and turned his head toward Callie. “Last chance.”
She shook her head. “Let him go.”
He lowered the sword and jerked his head. “Right, get out.”
“I have the right to—”
“Just get out man! Don’t make it any worse than you already have,” the squire told the count, shoving him bodily toward the door.
“You haven’t heard the last of this,” Count Anton muttered.
The squire grabbed him by the arm and pulled him outside, saying, “Bad enough to have clouted that ragamuffin brat, but to draw steel on a child, and that child your own crown prince! I’m shocked, Count, shocked!
There’s something devilish havey cavey about you and no mistake! ”
Outside Callie saw the count’s men waiting in an oddly still group.
Then she saw Barrow standing nearby, with a silver pistol in each hand trained on the waiting men. Callie recognized those pistols.
“I’ll just see them off the premises,” Gabriel told her, and he followed Sir Walter and the count outside.
“Shall we?” said the elegant man called Rafe, and without waiting he strolled outside, followed by his friends. Callie noticed they each had produced pistols as well.
Gabriel drew the magistrate aside and spoke to him for a minute or two. Sir Walter turned, stared at the count severely, then nodded.
As Callie watched the count and his men disappear from sight, her knees suddenly gave out and she plonked down on the stairs.
When Gabriel returned he said immediately, “Are you all right?”
Callie looked up at him. Was she all right? Yes, more than all right—she felt wonderful. Just a bit shaky, for some odd reason. She looked up at the man who’d offered to kill her enemy for her and asked him, “Do you have any brandy?”
“Yes.”
“Then could I have a large glass, immediately.”
“I’ll have one, too,” declared the man called Rafe.
“And me,” said his friend.
Laughing, Gabriel held out a hand. “Come along then, I think we all deserve a drink.”
Nicky took her other hand. “We showed Count Anton, Mama, didn’t we?”
“We did, my darling. We all did.” She could not get out of her mind the way Gabriel had looked at her when he’d said, For you, I’d do anything. Just say the word.
They retired to the octagonal room, where drinks were poured and everyone joined in relating the events of the morning for those who hadn’t been present.
When Gabriel related the part about how Tibby had reprimanded the count for reading other people’s letters, the room exploded with masculine laughter. Tibby, usually withdrawn and uncomfortable in the presence of men, laughed and blushed happily as Gabriel proposed a toast to the two heroines.
Callie could still not look at him. Something had happened there at the foot of the stairs that she wasn’t quite sure of and didn’t know how to deal with. She needed to think about it, and with his eyes on her she couldn’t think at all.
“But tell me, Princess.” Tall, elegant Rafe Ramsey turned to Callie. “Do you always wear that tiara?”
Callie’s hands flew up to the tiara. She’d forgotten she was wearing it. She smiled sheepishly, feeling rather foolish. “No, I know it looks silly. It’s just…It was my mother’s…I wore it to make me feel brave.”
She half expected them to laugh, but instead, Rafe Ramsey simply nodded. “I wondered if that was it.”
“Like a uniform,” Luke Ripton added. “Or a flag.”
Their acceptance surprised her. They’d all been soldiers. She would have thought that soldiers would be scornful of such stratagems.
And then she remembered the sword. “Where did you get that sword?” she asked Nicky. She turned to the others and explained. “One minute he was clutching a black walking stick and the next he was charging down the stairs with a sword in his hand.”
“The sword was in the stick,” Nicky told her. “I twisted the handle and suddenly it came off in my hand and there was a sword inside the stick.”
“Great-Aunt Gert’s sword stick,” Gabriel and Harry said at the same time.
Callie’s jaw dropped. “Your great-aunt carried a sword stick?”
Gabriel gave a reminiscent smile. “Never went anywhere without it. She was a most redoubtable old lady. As far as I know she never actually used the blade on anyone, but the stick put paid to a highwayman, once. The fellow was a bit cocky, imagining he was dealing with a frail old lady, until the frail old lady whacked him hard over the head and knocked him cold.”
Everyone laughed. He lifted his glass. “To Great-Aunt Gert and her trusty sword stick.” They all drank.
“Are we still going to London, Mama?” Nicky asked as they drained their glasses.
Callie glanced quickly at Gabriel.