Chapter 30 #4
Frozen in a protective posture over her brother, Merry found her voice enough to breathe the word “Granville.” Holding a pistol, he stood twenty feet above them on a heavy shelf of ice that led backward into a black void.
The ice around him took the lamplight in an arc of carnelian glimmers; wolfish shadows danced with subtle violence across his mien.
A Corinthian’s unfitted driving coat with many capes gave him the illusion of being overpoweringly tall.
Merry heard Raven’s pistol thud into the sand. A slight twist of her head showed her that Raven was looking apologetically at Devon.
“I ought to have hit her over the head,” he said regretfully. “Sorry.”
Devon had lounged back against the retaining wall. “Take my word on it, it wouldn’t have served. No good ever came from hitting her on the head. Myself, I’ve eschewed the practice. Merry pet, is the gentleman at your knee someone we ought to be interested in?”
“It’s my brother, Carl.” She turned fully to him, finding something infinitely sustaining in the pensive golden gaze.
Whatever fears she had nourished that his hatred for Granville would lead him to act rashly were quieted.
Whatever his thoughts, his surface was relaxed to the tips of his fingers.
Anxiously she said, “You’ll say, I suppose, that I should have trusted you. ”
The warmth of his smile brought flutters to her heart. He said, “No, I won’t scold, sweetheart. But maybe you could explain what we’re all doing here?”
“Enjoying a respite from the heat,” Granville murmured. “The handsome youth on the floor fell into my hands some little time ago. As for the other two, at last night’s ball I came to your oh-so-charming bride—”
“Spouting melodrama,” Merry finished for him with a mocking glare worthy of Rand Morgan himself.
And she held that glare without a flinch, even while Granville brought his hand higher and made his aim on her heart exact.
She felt no trace of fear for herself; Granville would have had to be a madman to squeeze that trigger and destroy his insurance.
Raven, who was watching, however, felt as if the frigid air had penetrated to his bones. He was glad Merry couldn’t see Devon’s face. If she had, it would certainly have shattered her faith in Devon’s objective calm.
Granville’s heavy shoulders seemed to relax.
“A solid departure from what she was in New York. Rand Morgan, I suppose, deserves the honors. One wishes he’d alter his curriculum with females.
Do you know, when I left her last night in the garden, there was never any question in my mind that I’d be followed.
All that remained to be seen was just which of Morgan’s pretty-boy pirates she sent after me.
My only task was to move neither so quickly nor so slowly that anyone would suspect I knew.
In the general run of things, of course, I come and go through a more private entrance.
Mind you, I hadn’t planned on having the honor of your companionship also, St. Cyr. It changes my ideas, I think.”
“If your new idea includes killing us all”—Devon’s tone was unrevealing—“it has a hitch that I should probably explain. I followed Merry into London when I heard she’d left, and met her carriage on its way home.
The coachman said she was with Cathcart.
She was not. The next step was obviously to question Cat, who was visiting Morgan, but on the way to the inn we chanced into one of Morgan’s men coming for Morgan at a gallop.
Last night after Raven—as you say, one of Rand’s boy pirates—began asking some pointed questions about you, Morgan felt it would be safer to have him watched also.
” A groan from Raven. “The point, my dear, is that I came ahead while Cathcart and Rand’s hireling have gone to fetch Morgan to this spot.
If you think Morgan will let you live after you kill me, I’d strongly advise you to do it. ”
Granville had absorbed a hiss of air. His exhalation made a swirling mist of breath vapor play over the flesh of his mouth and nose. “Run back to Morgan, then. You chose him years ago, when you might have had me. My feelings for you—”
“Have always been anathema to me, even before your men killed Leonie. Don’t force these children to listen to you profess them.” Devon’s tone was no longer mild. “Stay awake and you’ll see how far I’d go to protect them.”
“Oh, no, let’s have no heroics,” Granville said.
He was beginning to respire quickly. “Leave me and take the boy with you. I’ll keep the girl and her brother.
Collateral, shall we say? And if you make me a settlement I like the looks of, I may let you have them back intact. You know I mean my words. Get out.”
In a stream of motion that began as a blur, Merry saw Devon’s hand fly for his pocket as though to extract a weapon.
The barrel of Granville’s pistol took a rapid mark and roared, the report shatteringly loud.
Blue flame and a wisp of spent smoke trembled in the raw air as a staccato of ear-splitting cracks rent the enormous vault from floor to ceiling.
The icy plain under Granville seemed to bubble, and he fell and began to slide as the packing of straw and sawdust began to shower from the ledge.
A shifting chasm yawned under him, swallowing him.
Harsh fingers grabbed Merry, and she was half running, half being dragged across the sand.
At the wall she hesitated, crying out, until she saw that Raven had her brother on his shoulder, and then they were scrambling up the stairs, Devon yanking her with him much faster than she would have ever believed it was possible to move.
Like the crash of a hundred thunderclaps the shattering avalanche of hurtling ice wrenched the great warehouse with earthquakelike shocks.
Only an arm’s length behind them the retaining wall bulged as though it were only matting and then burst, ton on ton of ice exploding over its collapsing fabric.
Rocketing chips and icy zephyrs foamed at their heels, and the stair swayed like a half liquid.
They were met and pulled up the last quarter of the way by Morgan’s men.
It wasn’t until Merry was standing outside in the startling daylight of the dockyard that she realized Granville’s final bullet had struck home.
With blood saturating his immaculate shirtfront Devon gave her a smile of friendly whimsy and said, “You bring the fresh strawberries, love, and I’ll get the sugar.
We’ll make ice cream to last till Easter.
” He seemed surprised when Morgan gently took his shoulders and said, “Easy, lad” because he really had no idea how unsteady he looked.
He might have spoken again, in protest perhaps, but instead he closed his lips and fainted into his half brother’s arms.