“You said he was dead,” Michael reminded him. “Who killed him?”
“Preston had him brought to the courtyard and shot,” the baron told him.
Charlotte let go of the bars and stepped away with tears filling her eyes.
“Why did Preston have him shot?” Michael asked him.
The baron yawned and leaned his back against the wall. “I put into Preston’s useless head the idea that deVille was a spy for you. He had to be on your side since you didn’t kill him last night after you killed everyone else who was with him.” He stopped to grin at Michael. “It doesn’t take much to sway him.”
Good to know, Michael thought. Maybe Surrey was the brains behind everything. Michael would be careful with him.
“Are you going to bring him here?” Charlotte demanded, staring at him.
“Not yet,” Michael told her in a deep, low voice she almost didn’t recognize. “There isn’t enough proof. It’s your say against his. He has a lot of influence. I don’t want him walking away.”
Surrey nodded. Charlotte let out a breath she’d been holding and turned away.
Michael knew this had to be hard for her. Was Preston that good of a liar? Had he fooled her so completely? It had to hurt. But…she wasn’t dumb. Something would have slipped eventually. Did she know? Was this an act?
“Charlotte,” he said more softly. “I’ll be fair. If you can be, too, then you can help me, yeah?
She smiled, and man if she was faking it, she was truly a viper. He remembered her mother’s words and then rejected them. Charlotte wasn’t a snake.
“Yeah,” she agreed, and then laughed at using his word. “I can be fair.”
“Michael!” came Colin’s urgent voice on his way down the stairs. “We’re under attack!”
“And now it begins,” said Surrey with a fading smile and slid down the wall to sit and close his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Michael bounded upstairs.Was it Preston, his friends?
“Who knows we’re here?” he called out to his men, surprised to see there were so many. At lease fifteen more than yesterday and ten more than the day before. Any one of them could be working for Preston. There wasn’t time to welcome or warn them. They still didn’t have enough weapons and whoever was outside seemed to have a lot.
“Everyone in town and at the manor house knows we’re here,” William told him, appearing at his side.
That meant Preston Bristol knew as well, Michael thought. He turned to find Charlotte, certain that she had been behind him a moment ago. Had she stayed behind with Surrey? Were they talking right now?
It didn’t matter. He turned to William. “The duke sent weapons—”
“In the gatehouse. Come, ’tis attached.”
He hurried with William through another door and saw more men running from the gatehouse to the small parapet to fight. Good. The men were already fighting back. Michael pushed William to move faster. When they arrived at the gatehouse, Michael found about a dozen flintlock pistols left, everything they needed to fire them, swords, arrows, axes. He grabbed another pistol and a few handfuls of bullets, or round balls. They did the same damage. He loaded two and shoved them into this belt.
William took two as well and did everything Michael did.
When they returned to the keep, Colin rushed to him and took him by the arm. “I had to subdue Lady Charlotte. She was trying to leave. She wouldn’t hear of not going out there. She said he wouldn’t shoot at her.”
“Where!” Michael almost took him by the shoulders and shook him.
“In the kitchen.”
Michael dashed forward, then realized he didn’t know where the damned kitchen was. He ran from room to room and then called out. She answered and he followed. He found her tied to a beam going up the wall to a rafter overhead.
He pulled out his knife and began to cut her loose. “Where do you think you were going?”
“Preston won’t kill me, Michael,” she insisted.
