“Beckman?” Sara’s voice sounded from the barn door. “Is everything all right?”
“So much for my lectures about staying on the porch. In here, Sara, and you needn’t worry. Allie is merely having a midnight chat with her uncle.”
“Hullo, Mama.” Allie’s grin dimmed. “Hullo, Aunt. Is Mr. North coming too?”
“I’m here.” North emerged from the shadows. “Though I believe I’ll be seeking my bed.”
“Not so fast.”
Five adults and one child turned to survey the figures coming down the ladder from the hayloft. The going was difficult, because each man was clambering down while trying to keep a double-barreled pistol trained on the assemblage.
“Tobias?” Polly spoke for the group, her voice laden with incredulity. “Timothy?”
“Hold yer tongue, Miss High and Mighty,” Tobias spat. “We’ll just be taking the girl here. Set her down, mate, and back away from her.”
“Not on your miserable, craven, cowardly lives.” Beck turned so Allie was shielded by the sheer bulk of his body. “Murder me before these women and this child if you like, but I’m twice your size, and I take a lot of killing.”
“As do I,” North echoed, smiling evilly.
“And then there’s the girl’s uncle,” Tremaine chimed in, “who has years of neglecting her circumstances to atone for.”
“There’s three of ’em,” Timothy noted, apparently for the first time.
“We got four shots atween us, Tim,” Tobias said. “They’ll not do a thing.”
From the corner of Beck’s eye, he saw Boo-boo regarding the scene with sleepy puzzlement.
“A stray dog could kidnap the child more effectively than you two,” Beck scoffed, catching North’s eye. North nodded ever so slightly and shifted his position.
“Where are you going?” Tobias waved his pistol between North and Beck.
“I’ve seen enough of this farce,” North began in his most scathing tones. “You two are the most imbecilic, ridiculous…”
“Boo-boo!” Beck literally threw Allie into North’s arms. “Treat! Boo-boo, treat!”
The dog started baying and jumping around, Tremaine grabbed the women and hustled them from the barn on North’s heels, and Beck put himself between the twins and those they had held at gunpoint.
“Make the dog shut up, Toby!” Tim fired his gun at Boo-boo, who thought the noise was great fun indeed, barking louder than ever, until Tim discharged his second bullet in desperation, then pitched the gun at the dog.
Beck wrenched Tobias’s gun from his hand and cocked the hammer.
“Both of you hold still.” Hearing Beck’s voice, Boo-boo fell silent as well, tilting his head as if to ask why the game had been suspended.
“The dog is still hungry enough to snack on whatever’s to hand.” Beck picked up Tim’s spent weapon without taking his eyes off the twins. “As much as I’d like to let him have at you, for your own safety, get in the empty stall.”
Tim eyed the dog. “Do as he says, Tobe. That beast didn’t like us none when we brung him here.”
“Hush, you!” Tobias hissed. “We never seen that damned dog. Never.”
“You were seen with the dog in the village,” Beck improvised. “Your boots, doubtless, will match the prints found near our burned smokehouse. You will not be able to account for yourselves on the days when trouble befell us here, and I’m sure, if I ask around on the docks in Portsmouth long enough, I’ll find somebody who sold you a black rat snake, traded you for it, or lost it to you in a card game.”
“Tobe…” Tim was already in the stall. “He knows about that snake. I told you the snake was a bad…”
“Shut up!”
“In the stall, Tobias,” Beck said. “Now. My finger itches worse with each moment I consider the harm you did a helpless old woman’s property, much less the scare you put into the ladies who never did you any wrong.”
Tobias was inspired, perhaps by the absolutely genuine menace in Beck’s voice, to join his brother in the stall. “You never paid us our wages,” Tobias sneered. “Your hands ain’t clean.”
“Your wages were left at the posting inn,” Beck said, closing both the top and bottom halves of the stall door and bolting them. “If you owed a prior balance there, you might have taken it up with the innkeeper. What, no witty riposte, gentlemen? You disappoint me, as does my own unwillingness to murder you outright. Be warned, I will shoot you should you give me the slightest provocation. The very slightest.”
He left them with that to think about, detailed Jeff and Angus to watch the prisoners, and headed for the house. On the back porch he paused, gazing up at the starry night and wishing he could take more than a few minutes before joining the others inside.
Because with this problem solved, he had no excuse for tarrying here at Three Springs. Tremaine was no threat, no matter what Sara thought, and Tobias and Timothy were at least on their way to the Antipodes.
And Sara had a letter from her parents, likely inviting her to raise Allie at home in St. Albans.
The sense of turning his sights on home, and being both relieved and disappointed to do so, was familiar to Beck. Before it swamped him, he forced himself to open the back door. Sara alone waited for him at the kitchen table, a tea tray sitting before her.
“Where is everybody?”
“North said something about needing decent attire when he calls on the magistrate in the middle of the night. Tremaine offered to accompany him,” Sara replied. “Polly took Allie to wash her feet off, and then they were headed for bed as well.”
“And you?”
Sara shuddered minutely. “I want to know what you’ve done with those two, and I want to know what Allie was doing out in the barn with Tremaine. She was told…”
“And you were told,” Beck interrupted gently and poured a cup of tea. He added cream and sugar, stirred, then wrapped both of Sara’s hands around the cup. “Drink.”
While she complied, he fixed his own cup.
“Tobias and Timothy are locked in a stall under guard, and no, it’s not one they could climb out of, assuming they’re bright enough to look up while considering escape. Jeff and Angus have a loaded pistol between them to encourage cooperation in the prisoners.”
Sara’s shoulders slumped. “Thank God.”
“You were worried for them?”
“For you.” She glared at her teacup. “I was worried for you. You argued with them and wouldn’t let go of Allie, and then we were running, and I heard a gun go off… North said to stay at the house, then told us you’d confined those two at gunpoint, and if he hadn’t…”
“And I said to stay on the porch,” Beck reminded her. “But your worry flatters me. As for what Allie and Tremaine were doing in the barn, Sara, you’d best ask them. He showed her some mementos gathered by her father, though, and she was all set to ask him more questions about Reynard.”
Sara nodded, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Of course, his trump card, the deceased papa, to whom he was never close, but Allie wouldn’t know that.”
“He answered honestly,” Beck said, and it occurred to him to wonder why Sara wasn’t with her daughter when the child’s welfare had been so overtly threatened. No doubt she wanted to give Polly time with the child, because… because…
The answer landed in his head like exploding ordinance.
“What would you have me say, Beckman?” Sara rose. “I will never trust the man. While I know that isn’t fair—it isn’t even rational, God knows—I can’t change it, either.”
“Will you ever trust me?”
Her answer was a long, pained silence.
“I see.” Beck got to his feet, feeling decades older than when he’d stolen into Sara’s bed. “Very well, then. But, Sara?”