All his attention snapped to focus upon her. Merry ceased struggling, staring at her in amazement.
“You don’t know where it is!” Merry whispered, astounded. “You can’t. She wouldn’t have told you. She thought you were pathetic.”
“She didn’t tell me. I discovered it by myself.”
“You’re lying.” This from Callum.
“Do you want to take that chance? Can you take that chance?” Kate asked.
“All right. Where is it?”
“Not until Merry leaves the room.”
He snorted derisively.
“Listen to me, Mr. Lamont. What do I stand to gain by lying to you? I know you will insist I go with you; you’d be a fool not to take me. I know that if you discover I have lied to you, you will kill me. Would I be willing to trade my life for hers—a murderess and liar—if I wasn’t absolutely certain where the treasure was?”
He was silent, studying her intently.
“Maybe she does know,” Merry breathed. She started laughing suddenly, a choked sound of hysteria. “You canny little black-haired cat! All the while you knew. Is it not rich, Callum? Is it not grand?”
“Shut up and let me think.”
“Let her go, Mr. Lamont. We’ll be off a minute later, and I’ll show you where the treasure is. I’ll even get you the map if you’d like. You can come with me. Only let her go first.”
Whether he’d forgotten his broken heart or decided he could address the problem of Merry later, Kate would never know. He released Merry’s hair and slammed his palm into the center of her back, sending her careening across the room. “Get out of here, before I change my mind!”
Merry needed no further encouragement. She stumbled past Kate without looking at her, wrenched the door open, and darted out, slamming it behind her.
She will send help, Kate thought. She will find the butler, and aid will be here in a few minutes.
“She won’t send help, you know.” He must have read her mind, for he was coming toward her, an expression of pity on his dark visage. “She had Grace Murdoch killed, and you know it, and she doesn’t want anyone else finding out. So right now she’s hiding in her room, hoping against hope that as soon as I have the treasure, I’ll kill you, and no one will ever know what she did.”
The sick thrill settling in her belly told Kate he spoke the truth. There would be no aid from Merry Benny. “And will you?” she asked.
“Not if I see that gold.”
She swallowed. Callum had moved between her and the door. She didn’t have a single possible weapon within reach. There was no escape through another door. Even if someone heard her shout, they could not stop Lamont from killing her before they arrived.
The situation was hopeless.
She turned away from him and closed her eyes. How much time did she have left to live? A few minutes? She thought of Kit, of the last sight she’d had of him astride Doran, his long legs in their scarred leather boots, the wind whipping his plaid from his broad shoulders, his hair gleaming red-gold beneath the morning sun. She thought of the last words they’d spoken, of her pride, of asking him to find a reason she shouldn’t stay with the marquis.
The door crashed open behind her, and she wheeled around.
He looked terrible, a human sacrifice that had walked off the altar, battered and broken but still somehow alive. Blood drenched the left side of his face and stained the collar of the ragged jacket that was all he wore over his naked chest. A dirty strip of cloth bound the fingers of his right hand together, but in his left he held the heavy claymore.
“I’ve thought of a reason,” Kit MacNeill said.
TWENTY-SIX
SOME SITUATIONS IN WHICH BRUTE FORCE HAS MERIT
RELIEF SWEPT THROUGH KIT like pure, cold water. She wasn’t hurt and now she wouldn’t be.
“MacNeill.” Callum snorted in disbelief. “By God, man, I don’t know whether you’re more dead or alive.”
“Shall we find out?” Kit asked. The damn blade was too heavy; the tip kept dropping on him. His head spun, the floor bucked, and it occurred to him that he might die. Yet even as the thought formed, a smile took it, for he’d thought he’d been dead a hundred times in his short life. Death didn’t frighten him. “Go, Kate.”
He didn’t look at her, just moved past her into the center of the room, eyeing Lamont. He wasn’t a man to underestimate his foe, and Lamont had been taught by a master, Ramsey Munro.
Kit didn’t have any great arts as a fencer. His weapon had always been the heavy claymore, his style, to meet resistance with strength, not finesse. The image of Ramsey Munro came alive in his memory, elegant and thin and moving like black silk at midnight. Aye. Ram knew the rapier. But this was no time to indulge in memories. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts and focus.
“ ‘Kate,’ is it?” The rapier slid from Callum’s belt. “Well, I’m afraid Kate has to stay. She knows where the treasure is, or so she says.
“So you’ll stay, Kate. Because I might just leave your lover here alive enough so that you might staunch his wounds and save the rest of him. But if you go, I promise I’ll have sliced him open in so many places, he’ll bleed to death in ten minutes.”
Kit saw her hesitation. “He knows that if you stay, my attention will be divided.”
“And if you leave, he’ll die for certain.”
“Kate, he wouldn’t let you tend me,” he said desperately. “He’d make you watch until you told him where the damned treasure was. I’d die anyway, and afterward he’d kill you, too.”
“I don’t know where it is.”
“What?” roared Callum, spinning to face her, and Kit realized in horror and grim admiration that she’d deliberately provoked him in order to give Kit a second’s advantage.
He took it.
Gathering the last of his strength, he lunged forward, swinging the heavy claymore like an ax. But blood loss and pain slowed him. The claymore felt like an anvil, unwieldy and thick. Callum ducked, avoiding the blade and lunging forward, the flashing tip of the blade stabbing at Kit’s face, going for his eyes.
Reflexively, Kit backed away, and Callum pressed forward. A step, two, a third in quick succession, and they were past Kate. Kit’s back hit the damned door, and he held his blade up like a shield, desperately parrying the thin needle that pierced and pricked with so little effort.
Callum was no Ramsey Munro, but he knew the strengths of his weapon and he knew how to use it. Kit prayed he did not know its weaknesses. Callum slashed and dropped back, delighted by the thin red line he left on Kit’s belly, his lips curled in an excited smile. Another feint, another slice, and another gash opened on Kit’s forearm.
His vision sparkled at the edges and his ribs screamed in agony with each twist that took him just out of the lethal distance of Callum’s flickering rapier. His shoulders felt unhinged, acid eating at the joints, his wrists rubbery. The claymore rose, each second heavier, unsteadily meeting the flurry of blows and feints Callum delivered.
He staggered beneath the onslaught, barely cognizant of the bite of steel each time it tasted his flesh, knowing it was only a matter of time. All he wanted now was to win free of the door so that Kate could flee. But he could barely mount a defense, let alone carry the battle to the other side of the room.
How many minutes since he’d entered? Three? Four? So. “Run. For my sake, run now, Kate!”
Suddenly a vase came hurtling from the side of the room, catching Callum between shoulder and neck, staggering him sideways but not felling him. Kit leapt forward, but Callum had already caught Kate’s arm as she reached for the vase’s twin. He whirled around, viciously jerking her against him, pinning her arms and using her body as a shield. He dragged her forward as he advanced, the rapier’s point in front.
There was nothing Kit could do. He could only wait—
“What the hell are you waiting for, Kit?” Ramsey laughed scornfully, his rapier making delicate figure-eights in the air. The image came from out of nowhere, crystal clear and acid brilliant. Blood loss was making him see things. Ram’s elegant eyebrow rose sardonically as he whispered, “Are you going to just stand there and wait for me to impale you?”
And suddenly Kit knew what he had to do. Slowly, he let the tip of his blade fall toward the floor, held his other hand open and down at his side in a universal gesture of defeat.
“No!” Kate cried.
Callum put his lips very close to her ear. “All these tears for a filthy Scottish soldier. I doubt he’s worth it, m’dear.”
“At least there’ll be tears for me,” Kit said, waiting and watching his words penetrate the haze of victory Callum was tasting. “Which is more than Merry will give you. Was that her and Watters I saw as I—”
With a roar of pain, Callum shoved Kate aside and jumped forward, plunging straight ahead. Kit stepped directly into the rapier’s path. The tip sank into his shoulder, and with a savage sound, Kit drove forward.
And now Callum understood. Desperately he clutched the embedded sword’s hilt, trying to yank it free of its human sheath. He could not, not before Kit grabbed his neckcloth, jerking his throat down hard against the claymore’s sharp edge.
“Wait!” Lamont sputtered, terror filling his face. “I saved your life!”
“And I already spared yours once,” Kit answered, his voice cold. “We’re even.”
“If you kill me, you’ll never know who betrayed—”
A pistol report exploded by Kit’s ear, and Callum’s chest bloomed red around a gaping red hole. He crumpled to the ground, his deadweight pulling the rapier free of Kit’s shoulder. In the doorway, Merry Benny dropped the still-smoking pistol and fled, having made certain Callum Lamont wouldn’t be seeking revenge.
Kit staggered and fell. Kate dropped to her knees beside him and cupped his face, frantic to read life in his eyes. But he couldn’t see; he could barely feel.
“Kit! You stay with me! You promised you would do anything I asked. Anything!” She was sobbing and he could feel her body shaking and he hurt, but dear God, it was glorious to hurt, because pain meant life and life meant Kate.
“Please, Lord…” Her voice broke and she dragged in a ragged, angry breath, glaring at him. “You have to stay with me, Christian MacNeill! Do you hear me!? Promise me!”
She needed his word and he would give it. “Aye, ma’am. As you will.”
She stumbled to her feet and fled for help.
Twenty miles north of Clyth, a few hours later on the same day that Christian MacNeill fought for his life, a capricious wind snickered along a desolate shoreline and swung behind a monolithic boulder that shielded a tiny crest of beach. There it plucked anxiously at the sleeve of a sodden gown. Its owner was beyond caring, her pretty face perpetually arrested in an expression of surprise. A few tresses of pale hair drifted in the swirling water. In only a matter of minutes, she would be submerged.
On a shelf of rock projecting above the beach, Captain Watters quieted his anxious steed as he stared down at the forlorn scene below. With a small, disgruntled sigh he removed the white wig from his head and was Captain Watters no more.
He had failed. MacNeill lived. Kate Blackburn, whose father had saved everyone from that hellish place, was alive, and the scene he had so carefully, so artfully arranged to destroy them both had fallen apart.
It would be so much easier if he could just bring himself to murder them one by one. A chance meeting in an alleyway, a bit of poison in their ale. But the same fissure that split them, saved them. They were scattered like the chaff before the wind. He reached into his pocket and idly withdrew a slender penknife, thumbing the mechanism’s trigger until the blade sprang free. He regarded the shiny blade thoughtfully.
If one died, how soon could he locate the next? Before that next victim had heard of his erstwhile companion’s death and became suspicious and put himself on guard?
The man astride the horse knew there was yet some connection between them. If one died, the others would hear about it. He couldn’t safely reside in England, in London amongst the ton where he belonged, until they were all dead. They were the only ones who could reveal his treachery and ruin the culmination of long years of plotting and planning.
He turned his hand over and looked down at his bare palm, scored over with a thousand little scars. Years ago, he had learned that pain helped a man focus. He set the tip of the penknife against his thumb and pressed, feeling the bright stab of pain as the blade severed delicate nerve endings. At once he felt his anxiety loosen.
There would be other opportunities. Though he would have to be more careful now. Pure hubris had led him into the melodramatic episode with the rat at the old castle ruin. Still, it had been worth it to see the anguish of frustration and rage on MacNeill’s face as he forced himself to flee to St. Bride’s with the girl.
He should feel no undue alarm. He felt no undue alarm. Why, he doubted whether they would ever realize that he had been the one that had bribed Katherine Blackburn’s maid into abandoning her. As for the rose that had found its way to MacNeill’s hand and sent him on his precipitous flight to Scotland, when they discovered that neither of Kate Blackburn’s sisters had sent it, who would they suspect?
It would be unwise to target MacNeill again so soon. He would be on guard. No. He must turn his attention to the others. One by one, everyone who knew, or suspected, his true identity must be eliminated. He had no doubt he would succeed. The blood dripped from his thumb onto the rock below. With a start he realized that the tip was still implanted in his flesh. Idly, he withdrew it and wiped his thumb on his saddle blanket. Then he returned his attention to the dead girl on the beach.
Already the surf washed over her knees and lifted one limp arm, buoying it gently, so that she seemed to be beckoning playfully to some unseen companion. Waves licked at her ears and bathed her face and finally swept over her chest, picking Merry Benny up in watery arms and carrying her gently out to sea.
High above, the man piously sketched the sign of the cross before turning his horse’s head south.