Sitwell arrived to announce the cold collation laid out in the dining room for the gentry, and the kitchen for everyone else. The others drifted out. She waited, knowing Gervase wouldn’t leave the room without her…. What she hadn’t counted on was his ex-commander’s irritating insight.
Dalziel didn’t leave either. When all the others had gone, he stood by the desk with Gervase—both of them with their gazes trained on her.
Patiently waiting to escort her to the dining room.
Lips thinning, she walked back up the room toward them. If Dalziel thought to, by his presence, prevent her input into their plans, he would need to think again.
It was his dark gaze she held in the instant she halted before the desk, then she turned and met Gervase’s amber eyes across the map. “I’ll be in the boats going to the cove, too.”
Gervase’s eyes, his face, hardened. “No. You need to stay here.”
She raised both brows, her gaze steady on his. “You don’t rule me.” She flicked a glance at Dalziel. “And neither do you.” She looked again at Gervase. “If I ask Abel to take me, he will. He can’t afford to antagonize me, and all in all, I don’t think he’ll think my request unreasonable—” Gervase opened his mouth to protest—she silenced him with an upraised hand and a tight smile. “Once he hears my reasons.”
Lips compressed, Gervase studied her. He flicked a glance at Dalziel, standing silent and still a pace to her right, then looked back at her and asked, “What reasons?”
She inwardly smiled, knowing her battle won, but she allowed nothing beyond calm certainty to color her tone. “Let’s consider your plan for rescuing Edmond. You’ll have the boats ease close, but remain far enough back so they aren’t sighted by those on the beach. One boat will slide in close to the point itself, where the water’s shallower, and you and Dalziel will go over the side and wade to shore—unlikely any men at the center of the beach will see you at night. You’ll be well out of the range of any flares. While Dalziel goes after the traitor, you”—with her head she indicated Gervase—“will find and release Edmond—we assume he’s restrained in some way, but it will be too dangerous to leave him trussed up while a fight rages about him.”
She paused, and cocked a brow at Gervase. “Have I guessed all that correctly?”
Grim-faced, he nodded.
“Very well. To continue, Charles, remaining with the boats, will give you two however many minutes to—what’s the phrase?—achieve your objectives? Then he’ll bring the boats in and a fight will erupt all along the beach. During that fight, your specific task will be to protect Edmond. You’ll order him to stay behind you, and stand guard as it were over him.” She held Gervase’s eyes. “That’s what you’re planning to do, isn’t it?”
His eyes cut to Dalziel before he met her gaze. “That’s the gist of it.”
Neither could see where she was leading them, what hole in their plans she’d discovered and was about to point out. She could sense unease coming from both of them.
She smiled, not smugly but—she couldn’t help it—a touch patronizingly. “While you’re defending him, who will be restraining Edmond?”
Gervase frowned. “I’ll order him to stay back. He’ll—”
“Listen?” Incredulity oozed from the word. “Please remember you’re talking about a fourteen-year-old boy—no, let me rephrase that more accurately—a fourteen-year-old male Gascoigne—who after being seized by a villain and his rough-and-ready henchmen finds himself in the thick of a pitched battle between the forces of good and evil, on a beach, with smugglers on his side, swords and knives flashing in the dead of night.” Her voice had risen slightly, her diction hard and precise; she pinned Gervase, then turned to subject Dalziel to her gaze. “Do you seriously imagine he’ll meekly stand back, watch, and not join in?”
They stared at her, speechless. Unable to answer, because she was right.
Satisfied, she drove home her point. “The instant he sees anyone he knows threatened, he’ll dash in to help. Armed or not.” She paused, then added, “Regardless of any injunction or prohibition you think to make, however forcefully.”
Silence fell. Gervase’s expression was stony, his eyes flat agate, impossible to read.
“Will he listen to you?” The quiet question came from Dalziel.
She met his eyes. And smiled thinly. “Oh, yes. You may be absolutely certain he’ll listen to me. And obey me. He’s been doing that for all of his life, and he knows there are instances when obedience is not negotiable. He’ll do as I say.”
From the corner of her eye she saw Gervase’s lips twist, but when she faced him his expression was as unrelentingly impassive as ever. How, in light of that, she knew he was to the bone opposed to her going onto the beach she couldn’t say, but she was. His opinion reached her clearly, without the need for words.
Dalziel turned; he walked a few paces away from her. “When you’re on the beach, you’ll need to be able to defend yourself—and Edmond, at least to some degree.”
He turned back, and she saw he now held two light swords; she looked up and confirmed they were the pair usually crossed over the mantelpiece. Gervase must have taken them down—one for Dalziel, one for himself.
Both swords were unsheathed. Dalziel hefted them lightly in his hands—then tossed one, hilt first, to Madeline.
She reacted without thinking, deftly plucking it out of the air, her fingers and hand sliding with familiar ease into the hilt.
It was Dalziel who blinked.
But then he waved her away from the desk with the sword he held. “For instance, what are you going to do if…”
He swung at her, not with force but with the transparent intention of disarming her. Habit again came to her aid; she whipped her blade up and blocked.