Chapter Eighteen
‘I need to speak to Lucas!’ he shouted, the anger in his words causing the children and the puppy to cower behind her.
Her glance took in the sword in his scabbard and the holster containing a gun.
‘Why, what on earth could be wrong-?’ she began.
‘Lillian, I have been lodging at the inn in the village in case of trouble. Tell me where Luc is, for the others are right behind me and there are many of them.’ The anguish in his tone was unmistakable though his words petered out as her husband strode into the room.
‘What the hell is happening?’
Stephen’s eyes widened with relief. ‘They are here, Luc.’
‘You’ve seen them?’
‘From the hill beyond the village! A group of six men coming this way. They will be here within a few minutes.’
Crossing the salon in three strides, Luc pulled her and the children towards the stairwell, depositing the frantic puppy into Hope’s arms.
‘Go up to our bedroom, Lilly, and lock the door. There is a gun in the drawer. Do you know how to use a gun?’
She shook her head.
‘Then pretend you do,’ he answered back, not phased at all by her ignorance. ‘If anyone comes into the room, point it at their chest and buy some time.’
‘Time,’ she parroted, the whole idea of what it was he wanted beginning to make her shake, but already he had turned away and the men she had seen in the library were priming their own weapons.
‘Come on, girls,’ she said in a tone that she prayed was reassuring. ‘We have many more Christmas decorations to make.’
When she saw her husband smile at her, the warmth in her heart warred with the whole terrible possibility that she, Lillian Davenport, had married a murderous and unrepentant stranger whose very soul was in utter and mortal danger.
Lucas took a breath as he watched his wife leave, her ridiculous comment about making Christmas decorations wringing a kind of respectful disbelief in him, the power of a woman’s ability to shield children from anything dangerous so intrinsic in feminine virtue.
Virtue!
When had virtue deserted his life? At fourteen, perhaps, when he had worked out a hard passage to America and learned things no youth should ever know. At twenty when the land he was breaking in demanded the sweat of a man twice his size and when the bank had no time for an injury that had nearly killed him? Or when Elizabeth had died in the mad dash to the midwife in Hampton while in labour with Daniel Davenport’s child?
Consulting his uncle’s watch, he checked the time. Something prosaic about that, too, he thought as he did it, given that Stuart Clairmont had long since run out of the same commodity.
The stealth of vengeance stilled him and he flipped a coin.
‘Heads I get the gateway.’
Stephen smiled. ‘Tails, you have the front door.’
When the florin showed the face of Victoria, Luc pushed open the portal and ran for it. He breathed in when no gunshots were heard, relief overcoming everything as his fingers tightened on the stock of the gun.
The beat of his heart and the sound of his breathing in the damp closeness of the day were all he could hear, save the wind in the trees on the far side of the gardens as he made his way around the pathway. The orange rosehips of the winter roses hung from their brown branch. If he came out of this he would pick them on his return and take them up to his wife. And then he promised himself he would tell her exactly who he was.
Lillian set the little girls the task of making a list of Christmas games that they would dearly like to play. She had instructed Hope to write out the rules so that they knew exactly how each game went and for Charity to make an illustration of it.
‘Will Mr Lucas be all right, Lilly?’ Charity’s voice? Perfectly formed words with a voice that was slightly husky.
Lilly dropped to her knees in front of the child, tears behind her amazement. ‘You can speak, Charity?’
‘Oh, she always could, to me.’ Hope was dismissive of such a momentous occasion. ‘But she loves you, too, and so she chose to speak. When our mother died she just stopped, but with you here just like our mama…’
Lilly’s hand went out to the little girl’s face, brushing her fingers against one pale soft cheek.
‘Thank you, Charity. Will you speak to Mr Lucas, too?’ A shy little nod confirmed that she would and Lillian took her into her arms. As a mother would cuddle a child. Her child. Her children. Lucas and her and Hope and Charity. When the little girl broke away after a moment and returned to her drawings, Lilly moved across to Lucas’s desk, surreptitiously wiping away her tears of gladness.
His drawer was full of pens and pencils and to one side she recognised the red-wax stamp of the Davenport family on a letter.
Why would he have that? She did not dare to unfurl the seal in case she could not rejoin it, but she could see Daniel’s writing on the outside. Placing the letter down, she dug deeper into the drawer and brought out a set of soldier’s medals carelessly tangled and engraved with the name of Lieutenant Lucas Clairmont from the 5th Regiment of Infantry of the New York Militia. A date stood out. 1844. Counting backwards, she determined that would have made him all of twenty-four when he had received them.
To one side of his desk on a sheet of paper she saw her cousin Daniel’s name scratched out beneath another. Elizabeth Clairmont, Lucas’s first wife. Had they known each other in America? Could this be the reason for their feud and for the letter here with the Davenport seal?
Lord! She could barely understand any of it.
Had she made love to a man who would tell her nothing of the truth of his life, his whispers of something different more questionable now as she wondered if she was a part of the same charade? No. She would not think like that. She would not talk herself into the wronged woman until she had spoken with her husband and given him at least the chance to explain it all. When the shouts of anger from beneath the window drifted upwards she told Hope and Charity to stay down on the floor and peeked most carefully out from the very corner of the window.
To see a man take a shot at Lucas from the closest of distances!
‘Damn it,’ Luc swore as the bullet mercifully missed his head by the breadth of a farthing on its edge. ‘You should have taken a body shot,’ the soldier in him chided, though the man opposite was already re-cocking his pistol and he had no more time to lose.
His own bullet went true as the large man fell and a voice sounded out across the distance of the drive.
‘If you don’t come out now, I will shoot your friend.’
Daniel Davenport’s voice, and then Stephen’s!
‘Don’t do it, Luc. He will shoot me anyway-’
Hawk’s voice was suddenly cut off. Not a shot, though. He had not heard that. The butt of a gun or the sharper bite of a sword? For Stephen’s sake he prayed for the former.
Doubling back around the house, he had a good view of Davenport standing over Stephen and was pleased to see Lillian’s cousin had absolutely no notion of him being there.
‘Ten seconds or he dies. Nine…eight…seven…’
On the count of six Luc fired, the man to the left of Davenport falling without a fight.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, re-sighting his pistol and seeking the protection of the thick bough of a yew tree.
How many more men had Davenport brought and was Stephen still alive?
Looking around for anything he could use to his advantage, he found it in the heavy swathe of a hawthorn bush less than twenty yards away. If he could reach it, the plant would allow him an excellent cover to see around the whole side of the building.
Lillian saw Lucas meant to make a run for it, meant to leave his shelter and make for a spot further out and one that would allow him to see exactly where Lord Hawkhurst was. Goodness, if he should try she knew that he would never make it, the guns of those who held Hawkhurst firing before he would get there. If that happened they would
