What a Hero Dares (12 page)

Max had grown up around these stones, never understanding them, but definitely learning the area. “This way,” he said, even as he pressed his heels into the stallion’s flanks.

And they were off again, pounding through the undergrowth of wind-stunted bushes and long, waving grasses that all but obscured the narrow path he remembered. Only turning inland again when they were a good half-mile from the stone jetty.

“We’ll work our way back, but only halfway, and then we go on foot,” he told her.

“On our bellies, if we have to. So much for the woman not being a Cooper. Not simply wet wood, but a signal, alerting somebody that someone was on the beach.” She took off the green shako hat, now hanging by a single pin anyway, and angrily tossed it to the ground before twisting her long blond hair into at least the semblance of a knot after it had been blown about in the wind. “Poor doddering old thing? She’s probably halfway to Dover by now, damn it.”

“And with one side of the cave left standing open,” Max reminded her. “There’s not a whacking great lot of good luck between us at the moment, is there? But maybe that’s about to change. Caught your breath?”

“I never lost it,” she said, grinning in her old, mischievous way. “You? I suppose you need a moment?”

Max shook his head in dawning amazement. “God, I’ve missed this. The sparring, the way our brains seemed always to work together, almost as if we were the same person. But we’re getting it back, aren’t we, it’s beginning to come back.”

“It had
all
better come back very quickly, if we’re to keep our heads.” Her smile faded only slightly. “We’ll only know that answer once we’ve had a success. Lead the way, Max, before whoever’s going to show up arrives, sees we’re gone, and slips away.”

Halfway back to the ruined fort, riding through the trees above the cliff edge, they dismounted, traveling the rest of the way on foot. Careful to stay hidden in the underbrush, they were both fairly well covered in burrs, their hands cut by more than a few thorns, by the time they were back in sight of the stone jetty, and the cottages they would not be able to see unless they left the cover of the greenery behind.

“Remember that old Irish song?” he asked quietly.

“You’ll have to do better than that, I’m afraid,” she answered, grimacing as she pulled burrs from her once-again tangled hair.

She cared about her comfort, but little about her appearance, which only made her more lovely in his eyes. Her beauty came to her naturally, dressed in silk gowns or covered in burrs.

“The sad one, about the doomed Irish soldier.”

“And better than that. They’re all sad, and half of them concern dead soldiers,” she pointed out, still whispering, as they both knew the constantly shifting breeze could send their voices anywhere.

“True. How’s this? ‘You take the high road, and I’ll take—’”

“‘The low road,’ and I’ll be inside the old woman’s cottage a’for ye manage that second opening through the rocks. Good enough.”

“May I say again how good it is to be—”

But she was already moving, pausing only just before leaving the cover of the brush to listen for the sound of approaching hoof beats, then making a dash for the path leading down to the cottage...all while Max, using handholds remembered from his youth, navigated his way down the steep, rocky incline and jumped the last ten or so feet to the ground.

He didn’t have the time to examine the standing stones to see evidence Simon had told him about, recent repairs made to some of them, probably by the Society. Instead, he went straight to the spot he hoped paralleled the opening on the other side of the manmade cave, to begin his search for the so-called door.

He’d been counting steadily inside his head since Zoé had left him, and was soon to approach three hundred, an uncomfortably high number considering their limit was five hundred, when his fingers at last located the concealed handholds. He knelt down and used his hands to push away much of the shingle so that the door would open more easily, pulled it free just far enough to slip inside, leaving behind an excavation hopefully barely noticeable from the outside.

His pistols were in his hands and cocked by the time he reached the other end of the tunnel and he could push that door open more fully, just enough to peek his head through it to see how Zoé was managing. And whether or not they had company.

He was in time to observe Zoé leaving the protection of the third cottage, quickly taking cover once more beneath the fourth and last, the one with heavy smoke still rising from its chimney, high into the sky. Because all the cottages had been built to sit on thick wooden stilts, he could see her boots as she left the third cottage and made her way around to the far side of the fourth, stopping only when she reached the end, and was able to peek around the corner to see the front steps. Now, other than avoiding being seen as she’d raced down the path to the cover of the first cottage, came the dangerous part.

She was going to enter the cottage, confront the woman if she was still inside, threaten her into silence.

“Careful,” he coached her quietly, having at last stopped his mental count. “I’m in place, you know I am. You trust me. You know I’ve got your ba— What in hell?”

He’d just seen the skirt of his sister’s green riding habit fall to the ground.

Max only had time to think
God Almighty,
not say it, before Zoé was all but vaulting over the weathered wood railing of the step in her borrowed white linen pantaloons. She quickly regained her footing, and smashed one booted foot against the cottage door. “Smart door, it knew better than to put up a fight,” he said, watching as Zoé, stiletto drawn, disappeared into the cottage. If the woman had remained inside, she wouldn’t be screaming any warnings, not with Zoé in control.

Now, they’d wait. Five minutes, an hour, however long it took. Because that smoke had to have alerted someone, summoned someone.

As they waited, he noticed that the smoke leaving the chimney had changed color, was now mostly white, billows and billows of white smoke, and then slowed to little more than a few wisps. Zoé had put the fire out, and the smoke was more steam now, having had water dumped all over it.

Then he heard the sound of metal-rimmed wheels on the shingle, his position inside the cave confusing the sound, so that it could be coming from any direction. Yet there was only one logical one: the same way he and Zoé had taken the horses. Whoever was approaching was somehow driving through the maze and around the end of the jetty, an impossible feat at high tide, but reasonable now.

Signaling Zoé with the birdcall was out of the question; there was no way he could predict where the breeze would carry the sound, and next to no chance it would make it all the way to the cottage in any case. But she’d be watching, and would probably have their first clear look at whoever and whatever was coming.

Max dared to push the stone door wider and looked to his right, to see the head of an old mule in the traces of what was quickly evident was a farm wagon, a bent, cloaked figure on the bench seat.

Who attacks with a mule-drawn wagon?

“Nobody,” Max said, answering his own question. He stepped out onto the shingle, uncocking the pistols and shoving them back into his waistband. Besides, he’d recognized the wagon, was certain he knew the man holding the traces.

“Angus!” He continued walking, completely leaving the handy retreat of the cave, waving toward the cottage to signal Zoé that everything was fine. “
Angus!
It’s Max. I’m right here!”

Zoé exited the cottage, retrieved the riding skirt, and headed across the shingle beach at a near-trot, wearing nothing but the top half of the riding habit, his sister’s white cotton knickers, and her own knee-high boots. He could smell the smoke on her by the time she was no less than fifty yards away, and read her expression, as well, the one that told him she wasn’t a happy woman.

“Who’s that in the wagon? Obviously you know him. That stupid old woman in the cottage was damn near dead when I arrived, with the smoke coming back down the chimney at her. She’s fine, but I smell as if I’ve been turning on a spit the last quarter hour. I want my leathers back, Max, even if you insist I wear something over them. As it is, hopping over that railing, I must have a dozen splinters in my— Never mind. Let’s go catch up with your friend, as he’s clearly having second thoughts.”

And that he was. Angus was frantically attempting to turn the mule, but the animal was having none of it.

“You probably frightened him. I know you scared the hell out of me. Put on your skirt,” Max said as he took off toward the wagon.

“
You
try vaulting over a railing in a skirt,” she called after him.

He didn’t bother going to the mule’s head, as the animal appeared half asleep, but went straight to Angus and reached up to set the wagon brake. “Angus. I thought you were gone. The last I heard, you were berating my grandmother at Liam’s funeral. My condolences on your grandson’s death, but no rational man would blame Trixie. Is that who I’m looking at now, Angus? A rational man?”

Angus Cooper was eighty if he was a day, and as Trixie had told them, grew up with their grandfather: laborer, employee, yet friend. A stonemason, as well— just the sort of occupation that would be called on to fashion pillars, simple statues...stone altars.

There was a time the man had used his skill to carve soapstone soldiers for the Redgrave boys to reenact ancient battles. Such as Culloden, where those loyal to the Royal Stuarts had fought for the last time. So many pieces, at last tumbling into place.

Angus looked down at Max with rheumy eyes, his nose oversize and red-tipped, quite nearly resembling the strawberries from the picnic basket. Max knew the man was old, but now he looked more dead than alive, a man with no expression, no heart left to him...only the remnants of a grieving soul.

“So you’ve heard. You know. They took Liam, Master Max,” he said without preamble. “They took my grandson. They filled his sweet, simple head with lies and sent him off to die. I tried to tell myself he died for a reason. But there is no good reason. Just jealousy, and hate and greed. So much greed.”

Max was struck by another wave of nostalgia, followed by one of pity. “We were always so complete here, all of us. Generation after generation, living and growing together, just as Redgrave Manor continued to grow. Until only a short while ago, my siblings and I had never heard of the Society. We never knew, Angus. We never suspected.”

“Your grandmother knew.” The old man blew his nose into an already-filthy red handkerchief. “It didn’t take her long to figure out the rest, either, did it? Stood right up to me at Liam’s grave, the way she’s always done when she had something to say. I had to get away from her before I fell bawling at her feet, telling her everything.”

“Angus, I’m sorry about Liam. So very sorry. But is he why you hoped to meet with one of us? To help us understand what’s going on now?”

The old man didn’t acknowledge the question. His mind was clearly somewhere else.

“You call this place Redgrave Manor, the seat of the earls of Saltwood, and nothing more. But there are many who believe all this is as much ours as yours, when you count in the blood spilled, the backs broken from years of labor. The babes put in our young girls’ bellies. Redgrave? Cooper? How do they know the difference? How do you hold down the Redgrave blood so that the Cooper blood can muck out the stalls and harvest the crops and serve at table, blink in the sparkle of the diamonds around the old girl’s neck, and then say thankee for a basket at Christmas or candle stubs and cast-off clothes? Tell me that, Master Max. Tell me how to explain that to the fierce Redgrave blood pumping hot in Cooper veins. When we were promised so much, time and time again, and twice denied.”

Zoé, who had crept up quietly, slipped her hand into Max’s, and squeezed it. “Ah, Max, not only we French can mount a revolution.”

Max shifted uncomfortably where he stood, thinking of the many bastards his grandfather and father must have sired on Cooper women—willing and unwilling Cooper women. “We always knew there’d been...incidents. With Charles, with Barry. But any of that stopped when our father died. Gideon told us our grandmother offered a handsome purse to those who might feel uncomfortable living on Red—remaining here—once Barry was dead, so that they could relocate elsewhere. I know not everyone chose to go, but how many did, Coopers, and others? God, Angus, how many were there? Is what’s coming to be a fight between brothers, cousins?”

“Sisters?” Zoé offered quietly, and Max immediately thought of the woman.

Angus must have heard her question. “That one! She’s the cause of it all. Stirring the witch’s pot, saying what many wanted to hear. Her evil, filthy ways. She’ll take us all to hell with her in the end, I know that now. Liam. My Liam...”

“You’ve met her? You know her?” Max put his hand on Angus’s knee. “Tell us. Tell me, Angus. Who is she? Where do I find her? Where do I find the Frenchman? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To tell us, to help us put a stop to whatever madness is going on before it’s too late.”

The old man looked down at the hand on his knee, and then straight at Max. Watching him, it was as if Angus was coming back to life, out of a dream. A nightmare. “What are you asking me, Master Max? I couldn’t stay after Liam died. I couldn’t go, where would I go? With the others, the ones who’d killed Liam? I brought my things and myself here, to live out my days in one of the cottages. I didn’t think her ladyship would mind. We were friends once. Like she says, we have a
history
between us. There was a time we joined together to rid the...”

But Max had stopped listening. “Sonofabitch! Zoé, head for the cave. Now!” Max yelled, and she wheeled and ran off without questioning him. Then he reached up to grab Angus by the arm and haul him down from the wagon seat.

Only he was too late. The old man was staring dumbly at the arrow protruding from the center of his chest. A second later his eyes rolled back in his head and his body fell backward into the wagon.