Chapter Thirty-Six
“It’s not Antony.”
Alexandra froze when she heard those words. Her heart paused for a second, and then began to beat in double-time. The stillness of the moment before was gone, ripped away by Kevin Black.
“Get inside,” Aidan ordered her.
“You can’t face all those men on your own!” Alexandra objected.
“Woman, I said get inside!” he fired back, his tone and expression brooking no argument. He softened a little when he looked at her. “Please,” he added.
Alexandra hesitated, then nodded. She squeezed Aidan’s arm, and then she turned away, slipping into the house. She closed the door behind her, and shut her eyes for a moment.
She’d been a girl of seventeen when the war started and a woman of twenty-one when it ended, and it had never come close to the city.
She had sewn and volunteered and raised money, and afterward she had walked out over the grass at Gettysburg once it had come back green, and she had believed that meant she understood the thing.
She had been wrong. She had seen women on rail platforms clutching men in blue, and she had pitied them, and not once in four years had she known what it cost to be the one who turned away.
She put a hand to her chest, trying to stop the aching, ripping sensation. She took a deep breath, then another, close to hysterics. It was like drowning.
And then the children were there, halfway down the stairs, staring at her in alarm.
Danny had Bella by the hand, and Gary was clutching to his pants leg.
They were waiting for her. She shoved everything inside of her down to her toes, refusing to let it overwhelm her when she had others depending on her.
“All right,” she said crisply. “Everyone get upstairs, now.”
“No,” a voice said weakly from the top of the stairs. “That’s wrong.”
Alexandra darted forward and peered upward. Lisa, still in her nightrail but with a shawl thrown over her shoulders, was standing. She held her walking stick in one hand and clutched the banister with the other, her old workbag hooked over her wrist.
“Aunt, you shouldn’t be up,” Alexandra chastised.
“Like blazes I shouldn’t,” Lisa retorted. “If you tuck us all upstairs, we’ll be like chickens locked in a coop with a fox. We’ll have nowhere to go.”
“What do you suggest?” Alexandra asked.
Lisa came down the stairs gingerly. “There’s another house on the property,” she said. “Mr. Byrne says it’s the original house. There’s a stone cellar under it. We get in there, and we shut the door tight.”
Alexandra bounced on her feet, considering. A glance out the window told her they didn’t have long to decide—Black and his men were nearly at the lane.
“What if they spot us?” she asked.
Lisa paused, reached into the workbag, and withdrew a revolver. “Then we protect our children as needed.”
“Where in the world did you get that?” Alexandra demanded.
Lisa gave her a feral grin. “Let’s just call it a souvenir from the war.”
“Fine,” Alexandra said, ushering the children down the stairs. “Everyone move quickly, out the back door. Stay quiet, and stay together. Bella, you hold your brother’s hand. You too, Gary. Danny, I’m counting on you to look after them.”
Danny nodded grimly, taking his siblings by their hands and leading them to the back door. Alexandra took Lisa by the arm. They hustled through the house to the kitchen door. They all paused there, Danny cracking the door open just enough to peer through.
“I don’t see anyone,” he reported.
“All right,” Alexandra said, tightening her grip on her aunt. “Make straight for the cabin. Don’t look at anything else,” she instructed.
Please, let this work, she prayed, and together, they all plunged out the door.
Though Alexandra had told the children to keep their eyes ahead of them, she couldn’t stop herself from looking to the front of the house. The riders had turned onto the lane and were making straight for the house. Her steps slowed, and Lisa pulled her along.
“Don’t,” Lisa said simply.
Alexandra pressed her mouth into a grim line and herded the children in front of her.
The cabin wasn’t far away, nestled between a pair of sparse pines that curved over the roof protectively.
Lisa was breathing hard next to her, coughing and stumbling along, but her face was determined.
Every step of it was coming out of her, and Alexandra knew it.
Whatever her aunt had left after the fever, she was spending here, on a family that wasn’t hers, and there would be no getting it back.
The men had just reached the front of the house by the time Alexandra and the children gained the shade of the trees.
The angle was awkward, but she could just see Aidan come down off the porch, rifle to his shoulder as Kevin Black pulled his horse up in front of him.
The other riders stayed back a pace, their horses anxious and milling.
“There’s so many of them,” Alexandra murmured. She released Lisa’s arm. “Danny, you take her and get yourselves down in the cellar,” she commanded.
Lisa let her go, but passed the revolver over to Alexandra. “Take this,” she said. “You might need it.”
Alexandra looked down dubiously at the gun, then back to her aunt.
“Pull the hammer back with your thumb,” Lisa said. “Then squeeze. And you’ll have to pull it back again for every shot after, or it won’t do a thing for you.”
The gun felt heavier in Alexandra’s hand at the realization that she might have to shoot someone. She swallowed down a wave of bile and nodded.
“Don’t! Don’t go!” Bella cried, breaking free from Danny and latching onto Alexandra’s legs.
“Bella, I will be back, I promise,” she said, kneeling and taking the girl’s face in her hands. “But right now, I have to go and protect our home. I need you to stay here and keep everyone’s spirits up. Do you think you can do that? Maybe you can tell them a story.”
Bella, her lower lip poking out and tears in her eyes, nodded. She sniffled, but she went back to her siblings. Alexandra gave them what she hoped was a confident smile, and dashed back toward the house.
By the time she reached it, her legs and lungs were both burning. She had never been built for running, but fear and anger spurred her on in equal measure.
I’ve worked too long and too hard to make this my home to let some grasping bully take it from me, she fumed to herself.
She was near the house, hidden behind some scrub and discarded barrels, but still too far to hear what was being said.
She heard Aidan’s voice rise, and Kevin Black laughed in response.
He pulled his jacket aside as if showing Aidan something, but Alexandra couldn’t tell what from where she crouched.
Aidan’s gun wavered, and then he lowered it. Black laughed again, leaning forward in his saddle as he said something to Aidan. When he sat back up, his face was smug.
And then all hell broke loose.
The riders dispersed quickly, galloping in every direction, whooping and hollering.
Aidan didn’t move from his spot, glaring at Black.
Dust billowed everywhere, and through it, Alexandra could hear wood splintering and glass breaking.
She waved her hand in front of her face, trying to clear the air.
Some of the riders had gone to the barn, and within moments, flames were licking at the roof. Despite the warm evening, Alexandra went cold and motionless. Fire moved fast in country this dry. It would take everything it touched.
The horses, still in the front pasture, went wild-eyed at the smell of smoke, running here and there, neighing and snorting, kicking up even more dust and noise.
Someone to her left broke one of the windows of the house, threw something through it, and rode away laughing.
Alexandra could only watch as smoke quickly began to pour out from the same window.
Any attempts to quell the fire once it grabbed hold of the dry wood of the house would be in vain, especially on her own.
Cyprus was still hitched where Aidan had left him at the porch rail, hauling back against the leather with his ears flat to his skull.
All the while, Black stayed on his horse, gloating down at Aidan.
She could just make them out through the dust, two points of stillness in all that motion.
She watched Aidan lay his rifle down on the ground, methodical, strangely calm.
Alexandra stared. Smoke and dust stung her eyes, but she didn’t dare to blink.
Aidan walked up to Black’s horse, his face blank.
He looked up at Black, and without any warning, he grabbed him by the arm, the shoulder, anything, and heaved him off the horse.
Black landed with a dull thud in the dirt, and Aidan was on him in an instant, his collar in his fist and his other fist pulled back.
Alexandra couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen someone punch someone else before.
It was a horrible, fascinating sight, the sound of flesh hitting flesh lost in the chaos surrounding them.
Aidan’s fist connected neatly with Black’s face, making his head snap back.
Alexandra felt a kind of triumph and hoped that Aidan would do it again.
He was readying to do just that when, from nowhere, one of the gang members rode by and struck Aidan with the butt of a rifle. Aidan went down immediately, and Black rolled him off, scrambling to his feet.
Aidan wasn’t ready to give in just yet, and he pulled himself to his feet, unsteady at first. Alexandra held her gun close, ready to step in if needed, but certain that Aidan would tie Black into knots if given half a chance.
What she hadn’t counted on was the gang.
Their skirmish had caught the attention of Black’s men; a few of them pressed in closer, dismounting.
Aidan lunged for Black again, but Black was quicker.
Fast as a snake, he’d withdrawn a knife from the back of his belt and slashed forward.
Aidan stumbled back, his hand pressed to his ribs.
Two other gang members grabbed him by the arms, holding him still and forcing him to his knees. Black, his nose bleeding, stepped closer, turning the knife around in his hands. It glinted in the dying sunlight, silver and clean in a world of dirt and dust and smoke.
He pushed Aidan’s head back and said something to him. Alexandra couldn’t hear the words, but she could see the expression on Black’s face. And then Alexandra understood, terribly and completely:
Black was going to kill Aidan.