“With whom have you spoken?” Archibald bellowed, advancing with his finger raised. “I’ve every right to return to this castle whenever I please, and I have an obligation to deliver it when you’ve abandoned it to penury and neglect.
“Why, you weren’t even here to bury your own brother. Meanwhile,mysons, Simon and Nigel, traveled to Yorkshire in the spitting rain to properly mourn at Felix’s sad little service. You might as well know that my boys so admired Caldera that they plan to return with their families.”
“No,”Cassin spat out, “they will not.” His voice held loosely controlled fury. He was barely holding on. His uncle’s family wouldnotcolonize his castle.
“But what can you mean,no?” Archibald laughed. “And just how do you intend to keep us out? You’ve no intention of remaining here; if you did, you would have said as much.” Archibald rounded on him, still wagging his finger. “It’s back to the islands for you, isn’t it? Deuced hard to regulate who comes and goes from one’s castle when one finds himself an ocean away.” More laughter. “Especially a remote castle like this one, populated with little more than unprotected females.
“And,” Archibald went on, pointing suddenly at Willow, “you’ve brought a new one to add to the pile, I see. Someone else to starve on your bloody principles.”
To her credit, Willow did not blanch. She crossed her hands over her chest and tilted her head calmly to the side. She looked arrogant and bored.
Nicely done,Cassin thought, feeding off her coolness. Archibald craned and shuffled, trying to better scowl at her, but Cassin stepped between them and crossed his arms over his chest. “My wife may be referred to as the Countess of Cassin, sir, or not at all.”
“Better get to breeding on that one,” Archibald scoffed, now totally unhinged. “Difficult to get an heir when you reside on a deserted island and your lady wife lives in Yorkshire. And now with Felix gone . . . ”
Cassin glanced at Willow again. Her face had gone white. He would’ve struck his uncle, but the older man was trying to provoke him, and violence would prove his bloody point.
“And now with Felix gone,”Archibald repeated, his pink face brightening, “I feel even less beholden to edicts from you and evictions from my own boyhood home.”
“Careful, Uncle,” Cassin said tightly. “Do you threaten me?”
“Hardly. Where’s the need? You spend most of your time on ships prone to sink, among island savages, and jungles crawling with disease. What need have I to threaten? You’ll meet your own demise before long.”
Cassin heard his mother’s resumed sobbing, and he gritted his teeth. His uncle had it all wrong, but he knew explaining would cause him to sound like he made excuses.
“Let it be known,” shouted Archibald, spinning in a half circle, “that all of us arewell aware”—he pointed to everyone in the room—“of the very simple arithmetic. I am butone lone manaway from full ownership of Caldera.Nextin line to inherit. And after me, my boys. You are that lone man,my lord.So decree and mandate all you like. Meddle with my affairs in London. Order the magistrate to pass a bloody law that I shall not visit the very castle into which I was born. Ban the tenants from mining the coal that their families have mined for generations. And then take yourself off to the wilds of godforsaken wherever-it-is, and we’ll all watch and see if you don’t . . . come . . . back.”
He finished the speech with a dulltap, tap, tapon Cassin’s chest, and then he turned on his high-heeled boots and stumped away, clomping through the great hall and up a staircase to the guest tower. He did not look back.
Cassin drew a deep, calming breath. He ran a hand over his brow, through his hair, and down his neck.
Think, think, think, he ordered himself. His brain must get around the grief of Felix and the rage at Archibald and control the situation.
Blowing out a puff of air, he turned to face his weeping mother, his wide-eyed sisters, and sad, unflappable Ruth. And then, dear God, Willow, still starkly white, her beautiful face lined with worry.
“No one panic,” he said calmly, reaching for the closest sister, Marietta, and pulling her to his side. The other girls fell like blocks against him. “We’ve informed Archibald of his thwarted plans for any new mines, and no one should be surprised by the result. I’m sorry you had to witness his lunatic rages and threats, but I am too weary to forcibly remove him—yet. That moment will come, never fear. If you’ll remember, we have always known this to be his way—Father used to joke about it, in fact. He’ll be toppled far more easily if he’s puffed himself up, drunk on his own perceived power.”
He took another breath. “In the meantime, rest assured that you are quite safe—all of you—and I will not leave Yorkshire until he is gone for good. After that, I’m afraid he is correct. I must go back.”
The women raised a collective cry of protest.
“You know me well enough,” Cassin said, “to know that I must finish what I have started. But I will put measures in place to keep Archibald and his familyout.
“Despite that,” he went on, “you are all strong and self-sufficient, regardless of how low you may feel at the moment. And you live in a bloody castle. You are surrounded by tenants who would give their lives to protect you.”
They sniffed and wiped their eyes. A few of them nodded. Cassin smiled. “I cannot say the tenants feel the same way about me at the moment, but their devotion and loyalty to you is unceasing. You are safe, and you should be gratified to know that we are all on our way to being very rich, indeed. Richer than small-scale merchants of coal, to be certain. Archibald may paint my business in Barbadoes as a foolhardy lark, but I assure you that my friends and I are accomplishing all we set out to do. Everyone here will be provided for in the manner befitting an earl and his family. The girls shall have seasons in London, if they desire, and this castle shall be our home for as long as we desire.”
The end of his speech was met with silence, and he squeezed his sisters more tightly. “We are Caulders, after all. Proud, resourceful, courageous. And takers of great risks. Let us carry on in a manner that would make Father and Felix proud.”
This was met with first a snicker, and then a laugh, and then full-on laughter. Felix had been acerbic and cynical, an academic through and through. He would have had little time or care about family pride or enduring spirits. He would have endured Cassin’s attempt with a raised brow, a sarcastic comment, and an expeditious retreat.
When their laughter turned, inevitably, to tears, Cassin disentangled himself from his sisters and left them to comfort each other, for better or for worse. He sought out Willow’s gaze and gestured to the vestibule.
“Are you alright?” he asked, when she met him near the door.
“Me? Oh. Yes. Your family is lovely, Cassin. I’m so sorry for what we have discovered. Your brother . . . . ”
Cassin nodded. He wanted desperately to grab her up and bury his face in her hair, but time was suddenly, urgently, of the essence. If he intended to make good on his promises to his family, to arrange protection for them, to save the whole bloody place from his uncle’s crazed threats, he would have to think cunningly and move quickly.
