Shameless (19 page)

Swallowing hard, Beth searched the shadowy darkness for the housebreaker. There he was, running flat-out toward the stairwell. Her eyes widened in disbelief. What was he thinking, to race straight toward a charging force that was both numerically superior and presumably well armed? Beth’s stomach tightened in fear and guilt. Were it not for her refusal to leave the others, he would be well on his way to safety now. He alone faced death if they were overrun. She had not realized until now that her actions were putting him so dreadfully at risk.

Please, God . . .
She sent a hasty prayer for his safety winging skyward.

“There ’e is!” a man shouted as the group burst from the stairwell in an untidy knot. “Shoot ’im! Shoot ’im!”

The sharp bang of a pistol caused them all to duck. Beth swallowed a cry. She suspected the others did, too.

Then the cave exploded into a firestorm of gunfire. Cowering behind the rock, Beth covered her head with her arms. Shouts and screams of pain and the sounds of running feet mingled with the gunfire, the whole so loud that it was almost impossible to discern any individual sound. Heart racing, occasionally peeking around the rock because she absolutely could not help herself, Beth saw dark shapes racing about and bright flashes as the pistols were fired, and little more. It was a battle of shadows veiled by night, and the fine points of it were impossible to discern.

But she was sore afraid that she knew what the outcome had to be.

Glancing compulsively over her shoulder at the water as the battle raged, she recognized something lowering about herself: if the moment were truly at hand, if it came to the point where they were to be retaken, she would save herself after all, plunging into the water and swimming for all she was worth.

I am a coward
.

But she couldn’t help it. The other prospect was too dreadful to be borne.

Silence, when it fell, was absolute. Suddenly there was nothing at all beyond the ringing in her ears.

After a moment or so of this, the women stirred restively. Beth felt the brush of nervous movement on either side even as she dared raise her head above the rock for another quick look. It was so dark. She could see nothing—nothing moving—at all. Her heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest as she strained to see through the dark.

“Wot’s ’appened?”

“Do ye see ought?”

The other women, she saw with a glance, were peering around the rocks, too.

“I can’t see anything.” Beth squinted as she searched the shadows near the stairwell. Where were their pursuers? Where was
he
? She could see no one at all, not a single solitary soul, and that was growing increasingly terrifying. “We must stay hidden, and be very quiet until we—”

A footstep crunched behind them. Gasping, head whipping toward the sound, Beth jumped like she’d been shot.

The housebreaker stood there. A tall, imposing figure in his long greatcoat, he thrust a pistol into his waistband and looked up as her gaze found him. His face was in shadow, but the savage energy she had sensed in him earlier seemed to have lessened.

Beth felt a flood of relief.

“You’re alive.” Standing, she hurried toward him. That she was glad showed in her voice and the beaming smile with which she met his narrowed gaze.

“Did you doubt I would be?” He caught her arms again, his hands warm and strong but surprisingly gentle now as they curled just above her elbows. His eyes slid over her face.

“Perhaps. Just a trifle,” she admitted, still smiling up at him. Her hands came to rest on his chest, and she absently noted the smooth texture of the waistcoat he wore, and the width of his chest in relationship to her hands. “Though I’m very glad to be wrong, of course.”

“Are you indeed?” His voice was dry.

The others reached them in a flurry of footsteps, swishing skirts and questions.

“Did they hare off, then?”

“Wot ’appened?”

“Be we saved?”

“Is there a way out?”

“What do we do now?”

“Where’d the buggers go?”

“Never tell us you’ve single-handedly slain the lot?” The tone of Beth’s question was less than serious, because she didn’t see how that could be possible. What was likely, in her opinion, was that their pursuers had fled upon encountering determined opposition.

A twist of his lips was her only reply.

“We’ve not much time.” He glanced around the group. “The gunshots will have been heard, you may be sure, and someone will come to investigate. Did one of you say you saw a boat inside the cellar?”

“I did.” The speaker was the girl with fuzzy brown ringlets in the stained white dress. “It was lying against the wall in the last chamber before we came down the stairs.”

“We must needs fetch it.” Releasing Beth, he turned away, speaking over his shoulder. “As quickly and quietly as we can. I may require your help to get it down the stairs.”

They all rushed after him. As they ran toward the stairwell, Beth spied a dark shape in the sand that hadn’t been there before, and recognized it for what it was with a quiver of dismay: a man, lying prone. Not a foot away lay another. This one was on his back. Yet another lay curled on his side, a growing dark circle spreading through the sand around his head. None of them so much as twitched a finger.

“Be they dead, d’ye think?” Mary asked, her voice low. She was at Beth’s elbow.

“I don’t know,” Beth replied.

“They look dead to me,” the apple-cheeked girl murmured from Beth’s other side.

“Cor, ’e did for ’em all,” Mary breathed, awe in her tone. “All by ’is lonesome, like.”

Glancing around, following the direction of Mary’s gaze, Beth saw that she appeared to be right. Three more bodies were scattered around the curve of the inlet. Until now, they had been hidden by the dark. That meant six motionless bodies in all lay on the beach.

Dead? If some amongst them were not, from the look of them they were close enough as to make no difference.

Beth’s breath caught in her throat. A cold little thrill of horror snaked all the way down her spine from her nape to her toes. Widened and wary, her eyes sought the housebreaker’s broad-shouldered form as he disappeared into the stairwell. She could not be sorry she
and the others were saved, of course, but it was terrible to realize he had indeed almost certainly killed six men. Plus the giant above stairs.

Seven. Single-handedly. Without apparent compunction.

What manner of man is this?

That was the appalled thought that twisted through her mind even as she and the others ran after him up the stairs.

T
HE BOAT WAS
a small open rowboat, probably intended to be occupied only by two and certainly no more than four. It was old and creaky, and looked barely seaworthy, but it had oars and it floated under all their weight, which as far as Beth was concerned was all that was required of it. Piling aboard under the housebreaker’s terse direction, they managed to cram themselves in. Pulling off his boots and greatcoat and thrusting them at Beth for safekeeping, he pushed them out and then jumped aboard himself. Now he sat in the forward seat facing them as he rowed, sopping wet from the knees down, his long legs in their black pantaloons and white stockings stretching out almost to the aft seat. The rest of them crowded together, filling the boat to overflowing, wincing at every dip of the bow and groan of the wood. They were huddled on the floor of the boat, crammed together on the aft seat, wedged in at the stern, in quarters so tight that it was almost impossible to move. The boat rode dangerously low in the water, but with the inlet as smooth as it was their progress was swift. The housebreaker worked the oars with a will. They
had almost reached the mouth of the cave when another band of men spilled out of the stairwell.

Beth heard them before she saw them. The hum of excited voices, the drumbeat of running feet, were loud enough to be audible even over the slap of the oars and the disjointed conversations and rustling movements around her. Her heart, which had been slowing down to a near-normal pace, recommenced thumping wildly. Curled in a cold puddle in the bottom of the boat beside the housebreaker’s left leg (Mary was crunched near his right leg, and his boots, standing upright, took pride of place between his knees), Beth felt him stiffen even as she cringed at the unmistakable sounds of the chase being taken up anew. With fresh fear in her eyes, she glanced back at the beach they were steadily leaving behind just in time to watch as a running clump of men burst into view.

“Hell and the devil.” The housebreaker’s muttered imprecation told her that he saw them, too. The muscles of the thigh against which she leaned tightened, and he began to row with even more vigor than before.

There were indrawn breaths and murmurs of fright and warning as the others saw the men. Beth could not tell how many there were. Only that a number of faceless pursuers were now on the beach—and had spotted the small boat scudding through the mirrorlike water toward the mouth of the cave.

One pointed. “Look at that!”

“There they go!”

“Don’t let ’em get away!”

Their shouts made her shiver.

A pistol spat toward them with a bright yellow flash. The sound exploded off the walls of the cave, the volume amplified by the enclosed space. That shot was immediately followed by another and yet a third. Beth saw a white spurt in the dark water as a ball skimmed the surface not a yard off the starboard side, and ducked, pulling the silken folds of the domino closer around her as if the garment could somehow protect her.

“Keep down!” the housebreaker roared, but they needed no warning. Huddled into a frightened mass now, holding on to each other and the boat for dear life, those at the rear sheltering under his greatcoat, which they shared, the women got as low as they could as a volley of gunfire rattled down around them. Beth could feel the tension in his muscles as he feverishly worked the single set of oars. Fear stabbed her as she realized that he could not follow his own advice and still row. Whatever he was—and she was still trying to reconcile her instinctive trust of him with the fact that he had so easily and without apparent remorse killed so many, and broken into her brother-in-law’s house for an unknown but certainly unlawful purpose besides—she did not wish him to be hurt, or killed, and sitting upright in the midst of a firestorm of bullets seemed a good way to accomplish both.

“Jenkins! Hawks! Run toward that—by God, look here, it be Loomis. And Fielding. Jesu, they’re all dead!”

They were not so distant that they could not plainly hear the cry from shore as the bodies were discovered. A plethora of shouts and curses punctuated with another burst of gunfire aimed their way had Beth burying her head against the housebreaker’s hard-muscled thigh. She was ashamed to discover that she now had her arms wrapped tight around his leg. But there was nowhere else to go, nothing else to hold on to, and the bullets whizzed by in such numbers and so close, they whined like a horde of angry insects as they passed. A spray of water as one hit particularly near splattered her averted cheek with cold droplets and made her catch her breath.

“Ah.”
The housebreaker made a quick, pained sound that stopped just short of a groan, and the rhythm of his rowing faltered. Lifting her head in the teeth of the gunfire, Beth looked up at him, wide-eyed.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing. Keep your head
down
.”

Bullets peppered the water nearby. As one sang past her ear, she flinched reflexively, but didn’t duck. If he’d been hit . . .

“Are you hurt?” Her eyes ran over him from head to toe, encompassing as much of him as she could see. Silhouetted by moonlight
as he was, his expression was difficult to read. But his eyes were narrowed. His mouth had thinned. His jaw was set. Even as she looked him over he was already rowing strongly again, the powerful muscles of his arms and shoulders working in a steady rhythm, his leg still warm and strong and firm against her. He remained his handsome, inscrutable self, and there was no damage to him that she could see. But the darkness, which, coupled with his black frock coat, waistcoat, and pantaloons kept her from seeing any real details beyond the broad outline of his person, was most concealing, so there was no way to be certain. As far as she could tell, he was unharmed, but under the circumstances that meant little. The odd little sound he had made troubled her, as did the corresponding hiccup in his rowing. His expression as their eyes met was certainly grim, but then the situation was dire and grimness was called for. And he undoubtedly blamed her for finding himself caught up in it, because she had refused to leave the others. Refused so often he hadn’t even bothered to argue about the merits of piling so many into so small a boat, as she had half expected him to do.

“I
said,
get your bloody head down.”

“And I asked if you were hurt.”

“If you wish to take a ball through the brains . . . ”

“I could just as easily be hit in the back, or the side. Besides, I feel we are now out of reach of all but the luckiest of shots.”