The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (19 page)

He paused then, at last, and the familiar supercilious came over his features once more. “Why such squeamishness, sweetheart?” he drawled. “Your beloved Greeks and Romans worshipped bloodshed. They flayed their captives alive. Wiled away their afternoons watching gladiators hack one another to bits.”

“I’m well aware. But it’s a rather different prospect to imagine actually doing such things myself.”

“Funny how that works,” he said, and his eyes were almost cruel. “The messy difference between reading and real life.”

Real life
, indeed. His body so close beside hers, his long thigh muscles nearly brushing against her legs, was all too real. Every nerve in her body prickled.

It was Sebastian who scanned the street now, and though she still saw not a single soul, he suddenly grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her into a rapid pace uphill.

“There’s something you should know about Victoire,” he said, and his tone was darker than ever. “She had reason to want Sarah dead, beyond just the possession of that book. You know Sarah broke French ciphers, several of them.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, one of them revealed an entire cadre of French spies in Madrid. Mawbry led a team who surrounded them at night, and shot them all in a back alleyway. Not time even for confession.”

“And?”

“And Victoire’s father and two older brothers were among that lot.”

She nearly stumbled on the cobblestones. But she wasn’t going to let that little piece of news frighten her. “Good,” she said, lifting her chin. “Then we both have a personal stake in this.”

“
Not
good.” His eyes as they glanced over at her were unusually bright, and not with humor. “It means she doesn’t just want to kill you, she wants to
hurt
you.”

“I can’t see how that makes any difference.”

“You’ll know the difference if she gets her hands on you, believe me.”

“I don’t care. Not if I also have a chance at hurting her.”

At that, Sebastian grunted irritably, and gripped her elbow once more, pulling her off into a tight alleyway between two houses. She nearly slammed into him as he stopped dead, towering over her and glaring down at her with a look harsh as acid.

“Listen to me, Rachel,” he said. “Even if we succeed, this mission won’t give you what you want. Nothing can bring your sister back, you know that. And, trust me, revenge is nowhere near as satisfying a dish as most people imagine. I’ve dispatched the killers of fellow agents before, and it does little to ease the anger one feels.”

She stared down at the damp stones beneath their feet. He was trying to
discourage
her again. Why
now
, for God’s sake? When they’d come this far?

His hands settled hard on her shoulders. “Captain Whitmore is still in port. We can turn around right now. You can get back on the
Calliope
. You can still return to England.”

Without him, he meant.

Without avenging Sarah.

Everything inside her went cold and flat and heavy as mud. “
No
.”

“Rachel, do you
understand
, truly, what happens from here on in?” Though she wasn’t looking at him, she could tell his head had lowered enough for his eyes to be level with hers. He wanted her to look at him, she could feel it in the way his hands tightened on her arms. “It’s kill or be killed, and even if you succeed, you’ll get nothing from it, nothing at all. There’s no peace. Every minute you live from now on, you’ll live in fear. Do you understand that?”

“I understand. I don’t care.”

“Well, I wish you’d go home.” His voice was a low growl. “You should go home.”

“I don’t have a home, remember?”

He paused. “You can go somewhere safe. Places can be arranged, for those the government wishes to protect. There are
options
. Things are worse here than I thought they’d be. Much worse.”

“Isn’t it a bit late to be having this conversation?”

“Not yet. Not quite. But once the army withdraws, and those ships are gone, it will be.”

She gave him a skewering glance. “You don’t think I
can
do this.”

“Oh, you’re wrong about that—I know you can.” His brow contracted, as if he were in sudden pain. “That doesn’t mean I want you to.”

Her heart lurched now, seemed to slide dangerously in a direction she did not wish for it to go. She wanted him to stop talking to her like this, stop looking at her like this, stop gripping her shoulders as if he actually cared what happened to her.

It wasn’t fair of him. She’d been charging ahead these past few days, deliberately not letting herself think. Thinking was . . .
grief
and
hurt. And loneliness
. Thinking was more terrifying than any of the dangers he could warn her of.

“Why shouldn’t I risk everything for this?” she asked. “What else is there for me?”

“You must have liked Rookshead well enough.” His mouth looked hard again, tight. The frost was back in his eyes. “You stayed there while your great aunts lived. You didn’t run away.”

A sharp ache stabbed through her chest. “How could I run away? After Sarah left, how could I?”

“What do you mean? Of course you could. Surely there was nothing left for you there.” His expression became stone. “Unless—unless it was that pretty tutor of yours, that Mr. Rapson, you couldn’t leave.”

“What? No! You don’t—” She shook her head quickly, feeling an old desperation course through her. “If I’d left, how could Sarah ever have found me again? If I went anywhere else, she couldn’t have found me. If she ever came looking. I’d never—” She broke off again, and all the muscles of her face pulled together, and she felt the humiliating rise of tears.

Sebastian’s palms squeezed her shoulders even harder than before. “
Rachel
.” His voice rasped, low and dark; she couldn’t have named the emotion in it. It could have been anger. Frustration, maybe. Or pity. So hard to tell with him.

“Don’t you understand?” she said. “When Sarah first ran away, I should have followed her then. I should have run right out that door after her, and made my life with her.”

He looked horrified. “Surely not. Not that life.”

“I
should
have! Come what may! But I wasn’t brave enough. I stood there just long enough to think about consequences—and then it was too late. And I’ve lived with the regret every day since.” She scrubbed fiercely at her eyes with the sides of her hands. “So this danger you’re warning me about is no sacrifice at all. There’s nothing left in my life to sacrifice. If safety means misery, what’s the point in being safe?”

Sebastian drew a deep breath, and stared at her quietly as long seconds ticked by, until she thought he wouldn’t say anything more. But then he heaved the breath out again. “Living in regret,” he said. “I see. Perhaps we understand each other better than I thought.”

She blinked back at him. What did he mean by that?

The air hung heavy between them for a seeming eternity. The weight of it grew until she felt sure something would crack.

And then something did: before either of them could say another word, a heavy
boom
split the quiet of the day.

The stones beneath their feet shuddered.

Immediately, the shouts of men echoed from every quarter, and five Marines in scarlet coats came thundering down the street, pounding on doors and bellowing up towards the windows of the houses alongside them.

“Every man to his post!” they cried. “Shift arse, you luggards! The French guns are on us!”

Sebastian grabbed Rachel’s arm and began to run with her pell-mell down the street, as men in uniform, and men yanking on their uniforms, came spilling out of every doorway.

Another boom, followed closely by a third, shook the town.

Within moments, the air was a storm of sound, and thick with the choking tang of gunpowder. A building not far behind them splintered, spraying wood and fragments of rock. Men screamed in the distance.

“Move!” Sebastian urged again and again, as he shifted them right and left, twice reversing direction, and pulling her back into doorways according to some method of divination she had no means to decipher. But always he seemed to draw her away from places that soon after exploded with light and shrieking noise.

The terror of the attack on the
Calliope
returned, though at least now they stood on solid ground—and Sebastian’s hand was warm and firm in hers.

“Quickly, now,” he called as they came to the mouth of an alley that gave out onto a larger square. “On my mark, one, two—
go
!” And they sprinted together out through the square, with Sebastian yelling, “Faster! They’ll have that gun reloaded in just a few more seconds.” She had no idea which gun he was talking about—it seemed like a dozen different guns were firing—but she pressed her feet to move like the wind.

They made it across the square, but her strength was almost gone; aching pain sliced at her muscles. She was going to fall.

A shrill, screaming noise filled the air behind them, like a gigantic insect going into a dive, plunging straight for their backs.

Sebastian grabbed her up with the arm he had around her, pelted towards the nearest building, then threw them both down into the dirt of the little street that ran outside the building, his body a broad shield over hers.

Something deafening exploded nearby, and the windows of the nearest house burst loudly into shards. Fragments sprinkled around them like hail.

Chapter Eleven

In the quiet moments before the next blast, Sebastian sprang back to his feet, lifting Rachel with him, and set them both sprinting again.

A few yards ahead, the buildings of this street backed into the rise of a steep hill. And, thankfully, the road continued beyond the buildings in a deep bend cut out of the hillside, fortified by a massive stone wall.

The wall looked Roman, the survivor of more than a millennium of wars. That bulwark would shelter them from shells until they were out of range of French guns, and could reach their horses and the road out of town.

They’d cut this far too close.

Damn it, his job was to keep her safe.

Safe
. A ridiculous word, of course, given what he was drawing her into. The British army was retreating, and he was taking her to Vigo, where Victoire de Laurent lay coiled in her nest of French vipers.

If the French took her, she’d be unable to give them what they’d be trying to get out of her. She knew nothing of the book Sal had, whatever content it held that made the French so eager to kill her.

And he knew what Victoire’s people would do to her then.

Images of Sal flooded his mind—her eyes flashing to his, in panic. Her white hands pressed hard against the sapphire gleam of her gown, with the dark stain spreading behind it. The cruel fingers in his hair, lifting his head so he could watch, so he was forced to watch.

His heart pounded, concussive as the cannon fire.

Glancing down at Rachel, he saw no sign that she’d been hurt, no limping, no cuts or bruises. Just that familiar fixed, fierce look on her face as she struggled to keep pace with him.

In a haze, he got her to the place where their horses were stabled, lifted her in front of him on Fortress’ saddle, and led Mountain by a rope attached to his bridle.

The sounds of battle echoed behind them to the east—British muskets giving a hard answer to the great French guns—and he took them out of Corunna along the westward sea-cliff, galloping for the woods that skirted the main road south. It was still far more exposed than he’d have liked.

As they moved, he became dimly aware that his shoulder burned. Shards of something sharp had bitten their way through his coat and shirt and into his skin. Fragments of that blown-out window, no doubt. But he wouldn’t stop to deal with it until they were well clear of the outskirts of town.

His focus was on Rachel. Tucked neatly between his thighs, she seemed to have curled in on herself, quiet and still. She held her torso stiff against the arm he wrapped around her, refusing to settle back against him. Though perhaps that had as much to do with her discomfort with the saddle as with him.

His thoughts weren’t what they usually would have been with a beautiful woman in front of him on horseback. Well, part of his brain certainly was mapping out the lush contours of her bottom as she rocked against his legs, thinking about ways he might find himself inside her, as quickly as possible.

But the far greater part of his brain was concerned with her body in far different way: its fragility, its slenderness, the beating heart within, the soft barrier of skin so vulnerable to the sharp edges of the world.

He knew how easily, how quickly that barrier could be breached.

Lord
. Currents of hot and cold sluiced from his scalp down to his knees.