Chapter 23
Arranging their defenses was a good distraction for Callie, Molly, and Sarah. Sarah’s energy was still low, but she assured the younger women that she was quite capable of rolling a tobacco barrel into invaders.
Molly’s tanned leather was easily fashioned into a pair of thigh sheaths that would safely conceal the two smallest kitchen knives. Callie felt like a dashing lady pirate when she tied the sheath to her left thigh and practiced swiftly pulling it out from under her skirts.
Sarah dryly asked her not to kill anyone with the knife because she wouldn’t want to use it in the kitchen after that. Despite the heat, Sarah was making a beef, barley, and vegetable soup that Trey liked, saying it would be strengthening. Even more strengthening would be the grandmotherly love Sarah put into it.
It was hard to ignore the noise of artillery and gunfire sounding in the east, but Callie became somewhat used to it. People really could become accustomed to anything.
Their preparations were complete by dusk. Callie and Molly settled on opposite sides of a lamp, Molly working on her rag rug and Callie altering another secondhand gown. As Callie unpicked a seam, it occurred to her that the two of them were more like sisters than mother and daughter. Being a sister seemed to carry less responsibility than being a mother.
Molly wasn’t much younger than Callie’s smallest sister back in England. Annie had been in leading strings when Callie went to Jamaica. What would she be like now?
She felt a stab of longing for her childhood home. Her father was a bully and probably her next younger sister had betrayed Callie to their father when she’d tried to elope with Richard. But by and large, she got along well with her sisters and little brother. Had they missed her? Would they even remember her after all these years?
CRASH! A thunderous blow on the door yanked Callie from her thoughts. She leaped to her feet as fear lanced through her. Another blow smashed into the door, wrenching it halfway off its hinges. This was it, the menace she’d felt approaching!
After a paralyzed moment, she remembered the pistol. But before she could even leap from her chair, a third blow shattered the door into jagged fragments and three men surged into the sitting room.
And in the lead was her brutal stepson, Henry Newell.
A triumphant sneer twisting his features, he hissed, “I’ve got you now, you bitch!”
Sarah was in the kitchen stirring her soup. She and Molly both froze, staring at Henry like rabbits hypnotized by a snake. They knew all too well what he was capable of.
Callie had thought it absurdly unlikely that her stepson would come all the way to America to find her. Yet now that he was here, there was a ghastly inevitability to this meeting. According to Matthew’s servants, Henry had been a beastly little boy, never able to admit when he was wrong or able to bear losing. He’d go to any lengths to claim that he’d won, which meant that he must hunt her down and destroy her.
Marshaling all her resources, she rose gracefully, letting the gown she was altering slide to the floor. A pity she’d moved out of reach of the table that held her pistol in order to get better light for her sewing. The table was between her and Henry, and her weapon was tucked in the shadow of the rag basket where he couldn’t see it.
Callie moved a step toward him and said with lying warmth, “Why, Henry, what a surprise to see you! Have you come to insure that your stepmother and half siblings are safe and well? I would have thought you’d have a wife and child to look after by now.”
“No wife and no child, not until I’ve dealt with you!” He yanked a pistol from under his coat and aimed it at the center of her chest. The barrel looked as large and deadly as the mouth of a cannon. “I’ve waited three damned years for this moment!”
Callie had but one thought: buy time any way she could. “How did you find me? I thought you’d have given up by now.”
“I never give up! I couldn’t believe my luck when the warehouse manager wrote a couple of months ago and mentioned that Mrs. Newell was living in Washington and might want to move into the warehouse loft if the British invaded.” He smiled with sick anticipation. “Finally, after three bloody years and having to sail through the Royal Navy. Today we spent hours in the alley while I studied the warehouse and waited to make sure the men wouldn’t be back soon. Now it’s time to administer justice.”
Clamping down on her panic, she drifted a couple of steps closer. “I don’t understand why you need justice, Henry. Your father’s final will mysteriously vanished, so you’ve inherited everything. Isn’t that enough?”
His pale eyes glittered. “You ran off with all the money in my father’s safe and four valuable slaves, not to mention my mother’s jewelry! I want everything back!”
Even a war hadn’t been enough to stop him. His hunt would have cost far more than the value of what he claimed to have lost. But Henry didn’t care about logic. She’d always sensed that he had a dark obsession with her that must be satisfied, no matter what the price. “You know your father wanted to free all four of the Adamses. He told both of us that at the same time.”
“But he was too lazy to ever get around to doing it. Since he didn’t, they belong to me and you had no legal right to free them!” he growled. “I’ve come to take them back and to settle my score with you. With the city under attack, no one will even notice what happens here.”
“What score is that?” Another step closer, keeping an eye on his men as well. They were a pair of surly brutes and they smelled like they’d just emerged from a distillery. One man was familiar and she realized it was Hoyle, the brutal overseer she’d persuaded Matthew to fire. Now she recognized that the other was a muscular but not very bright crony of Hoyle’s called Goat, which was an insult to real goats.
Keeping her voice calm, she continued, “I’ve done you no harm. The money I took from your father’s safe is far less than I would have been entitled to if I’d received my jointure. Even if you add the fair market value of the Adamses to what I took”—the very idea of a price on her friends made her want to vomit, but she swallowed and continued—“it would be far less than paying my jointure. You won, Henry. Why did you go to so much effort to track us down?”
“Not only did you take my property, but you treated my father’s whore like she was a white woman!” he raged. “Neither of you were fit to touch my mother’s skirt, yet there you were, cozening my father and plotting against me!”
“I treated your father with respect and affection, and I never plotted against you.” Another step closer. The pistol was almost within reach, but in the instant it would take her to grab it, cock, and aim, he could shoot her since his pistol was already aimed and ready to fire. Misfires weren’t uncommon, but she didn’t want to bet her life on one.
“You gave ideas to the other slaves!” he added furiously. “After you left, several of my best field hands escaped from the plantation and joined the free Maroons in the hills. You took them from me!”
“Enough of that!” Hoyle, the fired overseer, said impatiently. “You promised us girls as part of this. That black girl over there? She looks ripe for it!”
“She’s worth more as a virgin, if she is one. I can make a small fortune if I sell her in New Orleans. You can have that one, my father’s widow, after I’m done with her.” Henry waved the pistol toward Callie, then at Sarah. “The old one is a good cook and will fetch a fine price, too. Where’s the boy?”
“My brother joined the militia to fight the British,” Molly said fiercely. “He’s out of your reach!” She also inched toward the invaders, a dangerous light in her eyes.
“I shouldn’t have waited until the men left, but that blond fellow looked dangerous.” Henry swore, his brow furrowed as he considered what to do next. “The boy may be out of my reach, but the old man is a good carpenter and worth something. We wait here till they get back.” His gaze burned over Callie again. “We can amuse ourselves with the women, then ambush the men when they return. Who’s the blond man, stepmama dear? Your lover?”
“Just an old friend from England,” she said mildly. “No one you’d know.”
“So I shoot him and tie up all my slaves and leave your bodies for the warehouse manager to find.” He laughed. “Or what’s left of you.”
Goat, whose gaze had been flicking from one woman to another, swaggered toward the kitchen. “I don’t wanna wait till you’re done with the redhead. The old woman ain’t bad lookin’. I’m willin’ to give her a try while Hoyle stands guard.” Leering, he reached for Sarah.
“Don’t touch me, you swine!” Sarah flung a ladleful of boiling soup into Goat’s ugly face. He screamed and leaped back, clawing at his eyes.
While he was off balance, Sarah shoved him furiously into the nearest tobacco barrel. It lay on its side, aimed toward the door. Goat’s head hit the heavy barrel with an ugly crack, propelling it toward Hoyle.
“Watch the hell what you’re doing!” the overseer barked as he dodged back out of the path of the barrel and collided with Henry.
“You clumsy oafs!” Henry roared as he stumbled and swung around to see what was going on behind his back.
In the instant he was distracted, Callie snatched her pistol from behind the rag basket, cocked the weapon, and held it with both hands as she took grim aim.
“You wanted justice, Henry? I’ll give it to you!” In Washington she’d been unable to pull the trigger, but this time she didn’t hesitate. She squeezed the trigger slowly so her aim would be true, and fired a pistol ball into Henry’s black heart.
A deafening blast of sound and a cloud of eye-stinging smoke saturated the room when the kick of the pistol rocked her back. As blood sprayed out from the wound, she fought back her nausea. She felt sick—but not sorry.
“What . . . ?” His expression disbelieving, Henry slowly folded over, staring at her as blood gushed from his chest. With his last breath, he hissed, “Bitch . . . !”
Callie clutched the table as Henry fell, his pistol dropping from his hand. Fearing the cocked weapon might fire, she instinctively ducked back.
The weapon blasted more numbing sound and stinging smoke, and Goat shrieked. When Callie straightened, she saw blood blooming from the man’s temple. He made a strangled sound as he fell into an ungainly sprawl and spoke no more.
Callie was frantically reloading when Hoyle wrenched the pistol from her hand and threw it aside. “You bloody hellcat! You’ll pay for that!”
He grabbed her neck with both hands and dragged her toward him. Gasping for breath, she fumbled to pull her skirt up so she could reach the knife sheath on her left thigh. Molly had carefully sharpened both knives, and if she could just reach hers . . .
Molly screamed, “Let her go!” She scooped up Henry’s empty pistol and hurled it into Hoyle’s face, crunching viciously into his nose and cheeks. Then she reached for her own knife, fury in her eyes.
While Hoyle swore and clutched his nose, Callie managed to yank her knife from its sheath. She slashed at the overseer, cutting the right side of his face. He swung at her wildly, but missed her knife hand.
More by instinct than design, she ripped the knife sideways with all her strength. The razor-sharp blade sliced across his throat and released a scarlet fountain of warm blood. He was so close that it splashed over her as he collapsed.
She gagged and almost fell herself, but Molly caught her arm and kept her upright. “It’s all right now,” Molly said wildly. “It’s all right!”
From the time Goat had gone after Sarah to the death of Hoyle couldn’t have been much more than a minute.
Callie stared at the blood and bodies. The loft looked like a battlefield. She began to shake, her eyes stinging viciously from the smoke. Then she heard heavy footsteps pounding up the stairwell. Blindly she raised the knife and steeled herself to face this new threat.
“Callie!” Richard’s voice. “Callie!”
He blasted through the broken door, summed up the scene in one swift, horrified glance. “My God!”
“Henry attacked us,” Molly said starkly through her tears. “It was my thrice-damned brother.”
Richard reached Callie in half a dozen swift steps and enfolded her in his arms before she had fully realized that he was there. “Callie, are you all right?”
Her body recognized his before her mind did. She sagged into his chest and clung with biting fingers as the fear and anguish of the last minutes rushed through her. She began to sob uncontrollably.
Josh barreled through the door, older than Richard but not much slower. “Sarah, Molly!” He stopped and stared down at Henry Newell’s body. “Dear God, that brute came all the way here?”
“Grandpa!” Molly ran sobbing into his arms.
Sarah followed at a more moderate pace. Coolly she said, “That devil man came to rape and kill Miss Callista and take the rest of us back into slavery.” She reached her husband and slid an arm around his waist, leaning into his solid strength since his arms were occupied by Molly. “Miss Callista killed him and Hoyle like the swine they were,” she said with fierce satisfaction. “Fought like a tigress. Molly too.” She gestured at Goat. “Henry’s last shot killed that one and no loss.”
Josh swore with words Callie had never heard him use before. Not releasing his womenfolk, he moved forward and kicked Henry in the head. “I wish I’d been here to do the killing!”
“I wish you had, too.” Callie’s voice was so thin she could barely hear it herself. “But he waited until you and Richard were well away because it would be harder to break into the loft with you here.”
Richard smoothed her hair back with one large, gentle hand. “Come sit down, Catkin. You look ready to collapse.”
Numbly she folded limply into the nearest chair. “Where is Trey?”
Richard knelt in front of her and took hold of her hands, his gaze searching. “He’s down in the cart with Peter Carroll. Not badly injured, but weak. We were just pulling up to the warehouse door when we heard gunshots and a scream from in here. Josh and I left Peter in charge while we ran up as fast as we could.” His smile was as warm as his hands. “But you didn’t need us, Catkin. My warrior woman.”
“I was terrified,” she whispered.
“Of course you were,” he said briskly. “Any sensible person would be. A hero does what needs to be done despite being terrified. You’re a hero, Callie.”
“I don’t feel like one.”
“But you are.” His brow furrowed. “I need to go down and help bring Trey up here. Will you be all right for a few minutes?”
She summoned the remnants of her strength and resolve. “I’m fine.” She squeezed Richard’s hands, then released them. “Bring Trey up. After Sarah treats him”—she glanced at the bodies on the floor, then looked away—“we can decide what to do next.”