A Gentleman By Any Other Name (32 page)

“Rian!” Chance yelled, having also seen him. “Back off, damn it! You're only making things worse!”

The lieutenant turned, turning Alice with him, to look at Rian. Everyone was looking at Rian.

And Julia began to run.

She didn't think about the sands. She didn't think about the danger she was putting herself in. She simply ran, out onto the sands, toward Alice.

“Julia!”
Chance made to follow her, but both Courtland and Spencer grabbed him, held him back. “What in Christ's name does she think she's doing?”

But he already knew. Julia was going to offer her life in exchange for Alice's life. Chance would have done the same, but Diamond wasn't stupid enough to trade a helpless child for a grown man. But Julia? A woman? Yes, that Diamond might do, might see the advantage in doing.

The man had to die. Slowly, with Chance's hands around his neck, squeezing, his face the last sight Diamond had before he met the devil….

Julia stopped a good ten feet away from Lieutenant Diamond, the only clear thought in her head now being Ainsley's words of last night:
Calm? Far from that, my dear. The first thing a man who wishes to lead others learns, Julia, is to deceive with confidence.

Could she do it? Could she, a mere woman, deceive Lieutenant Diamond with confidence? She didn't know, couldn't know until she tried.

Alice, whose sobs had already nearly torn Julia in two, began to cry louder, so that the lieutenant tightened his hold around her neck and shoulders.

Julia's fears turned to cold, hard rage.

“Stop that, you big bully!” she commanded as if she were addressing the Hawkhurst child she'd caught out throwing rocks at a village dog. “Shame on you!”

“Shame on me? Shame on them—they send a woman to do a man's job? Miss Carruthers, you will oblige me by going back where you were.”

“Or what?” Julia wasn't even a little bit afraid anymore. Her fears for Alice had taken all her other fears away. “Or you'll shoot me, Lieutenant Diamond? But that would leave you with an empty pistol, wouldn't it. Much better you allow me to take Alice's place and you let her return to her father.”

Chance heard Julia's words carried to him on the breeze and cursed both her bravery and his impotence. “She can't do this,” he muttered as Ainsley put a reassuring hand on his back. “I can't let her do this.”

“But she is doing this,” Ainsley pointed out soothingly. “And she's right. She has a much better chance than Alice would have. She'll obey our orders without question when we see an opening and give the man fits in the meantime. What's Diamond doing now?”

Chance fought to get himself back under control—no easy feat when everything he loved in this world was in danger—and realized that Julia was speaking again.

“Hush, sweetheart, no more crying,” she was saying, crooning, to Alice. “Buttercup wouldn't want you to cry, now, would she? Buttercup would think you a silly thing indeed. Besides, you've got your
gad,
don't you? Nothing can hurt you when you've got your
gad.
Callie told you that—and Callie wouldn't lie, would she?”

Amazingly Alice stopped sobbing. “I don't want to be here anymore,” she said, her small chest heaving, her bottom lip trembling as she hiccupped a few more sobs. “I'm so scared, Julia.”

“Of course you are, darling. But you're going to come to me now, aren't you? Lieutenant Diamond is going to let you go, and you're going to come to me, and I'm going to take your place, aren't I?”

“He…he'll hurt you,” Alice said, showing a wisdom beyond her years nobody was happy to see at the moment. “I won't let him hurt you.”

Chance saw that Rian, who had retreated from the sands, had somehow made his way through the tall marsh grasses and was now no more than ten feet away from Diamond. God bless the boy! When in danger, the Beckets thought and acted as one, all their differences forgotten. “Wait until Alice is free, wait until Alice is free,” Chance chanted quietly beneath his breath, and Ainsley's grip tightened on his shoulder.

“Why do you hesitate, Lieutenant?” Julia asked when he released his tight hold on Alice's body but still kept possession of her arm. “Surely one hostage is as good as another. And Alice barely protects you, she's too small. I will make a much better shield.”

She thought she had him. She believed she had him.
Deceive with confidence.
Now all she needed was for him to let go of Alice.

And then he did.

“Go to Papa, Alice!” Julia shouted. “This way, straight past me!
Run!
”

His pistol trained on Julia now, she didn't dare hesitate more than a second or two to watch as Alice ran past her, but when she turned once more, it was not at Diamond's command but at the loud bark of a pistol shot.

A bright red flower of blood had somehow blossomed on the lieutenant's shoulder, and he had whirled toward the marsh grasses, firing toward them wildly.

Everything happened seemingly at once then: Rian's head and shoulders popping up above the grasses; the boy shouting for Julia to run; Chance grabbing her roughly, pushing her behind him, also ordering her to run.

But it was Lieutenant Diamond who ran, as they all watched.

Holding on to his injured shoulder, the panic of a man who knew he'd made a fatal blunder vivid in his eyes, he turned and ran, stumbling as he tried to escape the inevitable.

And then he stopped running, his arms pinwheeling now as he nearly lost his balance.

And he began to scream.

“Oh, my God, the sands!” Julia yelled, grabbing at Chance's arm. “The sands have him.
Do something!
”

“I am doing something, Julia,” Chance said, a muscle working in his cheek. “I'm watching.”

“No! Chance,” Julia begged, grabbing his face between her hands, “look at me. Listen to me. He'll hang. You can watch him hang if you want to. But you cannot do this. None of you. I don't care who you were, who you think you were. It doesn't matter. You're Beckets now. You fought so hard to be who you are now. All of you. Don't let this man destroy what you've gained. For your sisters. For Alice. For me! Please, Chance!”

He covered her hands with his own and felt himself drawing back from the brink. Julia was right. He'd fought too hard—they all had—to go back to the sort of violence that had brought them there. “At the end of the day, sweetings, I don't know if Diamond will thank you or not.”

Then he yelled to his brothers and the others who had now joined them on the shore to help him make up a human chain that would reach out to where the lieutenant was slowly sinking into the sands….

C
HANCE HAD TRIED
,
they'd all tried, especially as they realized that the lieutenant might be able to give them much more information about the real leader of the Red Men Gang—the head of the hydra that controlled all the new gangs up and down the coast—but Diamond, in the end, had not cooperated.

“Your hand! Give me your hand!” Chance had ordered when he knew he could go no closer without being trapped himself, but Diamond, who had stopped screaming, only smiled and shook his head.

“Why? So you can torture me into telling you what you want to know? So the Crown can hang me, put me on display? If they don't get to me first. And they would. They're everywhere, Becket, you can't stop them. I'm a dead man, no matter what, so I'll choose how I die.”

“Don't listen to him, Chance,” Julia yelled to him, even as she felt herself being dragged farther from the sands; she, along with Alice and Cassandra.

“There's nothing we can do, if he won't help.” Chance spoke quietly to Spencer and Courtland, telling them to take the women back to Becket Hall.

“And you, brother?” Courtland had asked as the two of them watched the lieutenant, who was now in the sands up to his thighs, his injured arm still bleeding profusely.

“I'll stay with Diamond. Somebody has to, Court. We have to be sure. Just get them out of here.
Now.
”

“He may change his mind. We could use any information he has,” Courtland said, handing Chance the thick rope someone had produced. “It's a hell of a death.”

“It's a hell of a life, if we pull him out of there,” Chance said, watching Diamond as the man began to move his arms across the top of the sands, as if he could push the sand out of his way. “I'm not sure which I'd choose.”

“What?” Diamond yelled from his sandy prison, not ten feet from them. “Deciding which of you is going to watch? Hoping I'll scream? Hoping I'll beg? Well, the devil with you all!”

And then, as Ainsley and the rest walked away, turning their backs on the man, Lieutenant Diamond began to sing. A sailor's song, a distinctly bawdy song. A song of defiance.

After a few moments, Chance joined in.

Julia pulled free of Ainsley's hand, and turned to look back at the sands. Saw Courtland walking toward them, shaking his head. “Madness,” he said, lifting Alice into his arms, pushing the girl's head against his shoulder. “Here. Anywhere. We live in an insane world.”

Julia's bottom lip trembled as she nodded her head, then took hold of Cassandra's hand and headed for Becket Hall, Chance's voice, and Diamond's voice, finally fading in the distance, blown away by the warm, soft sea breeze. She turned her back on death, and prayed for a better life.

Sometimes the sands were greedy. Sometimes they were agonizingly slow. It could have been minutes, it might have been hours. Chance would never be sure.

Diamond's show of bravado hadn't lasted long, and Chance had sat down on the sands, to wait, to watch, to offer, one last time, a way out.

Chance's face had been the last thing the lieutenant had seen before he disappeared beneath the shifting sands, one last curse on his lips, a curse that had ended in a scream.

And then, silence. The sun shone brightly, the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue. A fresh breeze off the Channel blew strands of Chance's hair across his tear-wet eyes. The lieutenant was gone, and the world had moved on….

For a long time after that, there was nothing but the sound of the water slapping at the shore, the cry of a few circling gulls, before Chance slowly got to his feet and walked away.

He'd be haunted now, by the memory of Diamond's terrified expression as he sank into Hell; haunted, yet not sorry the man was dead. Just one more dead man on his soul, one more hurdle for him to overcome if he was ever to be a civilized gentleman.

But he had hope now, because he had Julia.

She was waiting for him on the stairs leading up to the terrace, the wind catching at her long blond hair, the skirts of her gown. He approached slowly, searching her face for condemnation, for disappointment, for disgust.

And none of those emotions were there.

She stood proudly, her chin high, watching him as he put a booted foot on the first stone step, then began walking up toward her, the weight of the world on his shoulders, the pain of the world evident in his eyes.

“Julia…”

This was her man, the man she had chosen, the man who had chosen her. Together, they could face anything. They would be each other's sanity in this insane world and, together, they would find a place of love and safety for themselves, for their children.

Julia held out her hand to him as he continued to climb toward her, and when he took it firmly in his, they both knew they'd sealed a bond that would never be broken.

“Alice is waiting for us,” she said as they mounted the last few steps together, arm-in-arm.

Chance scrubbed at his face with his hand, feeling fresh tears on his cheeks. Cleansing tears. Freeing tears. He turned, took one last look at the innocent-looking sands, before pulling Julia closer. “Then let's not keep her waiting,” he said.

Hours later, Julia lay cradled in Chance's arms in her bedchamber, content in the aftermath of loving, that age-old reaffirmation that the world, that life, still moves on.

He kissed the top of her head, then said, “Julia. There's something I want to tell you. No, something I
need
to tell you. A long, often sad story. About the island, about Isabella and Ainsley and everything that happened there, everything that made me what I am, just as you make me what I want to be.”

Julia shifted against him, smiled up at him as Odette's words came back to her:
The day he tells you, his heart is yours for the keeping. Do you want his heart?

“I'd like that,” she said simply.