“Actually, Brant, at the moment I would kill you just for the pleasure of it.”
Those words sent a tremor of fear through her body, and Olympia chanced moving a little closer. Lady Mallam stood facing Brant, a pistol in her hand. The woman had a faint smile on her face but nothing else about her expression revealed any emotion whatsoever. What concerned Olympia, however, was how to stop what was about to happen without getting herself or Brant killed.
A tap on her back made her slowly move away from the door and look at Abel. “She is going to shoot him.”
Abel grabbed her by the arm and made her move even farther away from the door. “He will keep her talking in the hope someone comes. I feel sure in my bones that we have some time. How are you at climbing?”
“Excellent. Why?”
“There be an easy climb up the wall right and into the window right behind where that b-er-witch is standing. Can you get up there in those skirts?”
“I can but would it not be better for one of you boys to . . .” She stuttered to a halt when she saw the fear in their faces that they all fought to hide. The climb up to that window was obviously a height none of them could stomach. “I can do it. But, what do you plan to do? I do not want any of you to put yourselves at risk.”
“We will be fine. David, go find Pawl as I know he has a pistol.” He looked at Olympia. “The window, m’lady?”
She nodded and hurried away as fast as she could without alerting Lady Mallam to her presence. Abel would make a very fine soldier she thought as she ran out the door and around to the side of the house. She fleetingly noticed that the carriage they had stolen from Orion was still there and the driver was watching everything. Curiosity or a need to be certain he was paid, she supposed. Stopping beneath the window, she tied up her skirts and silently prayed no one was looking out their windows in the neighboring houses.
Looking up, she realized it was an easy climb. There was so much decorative brickwork on the side of the house that it was almost as if someone had put steps up there. Just as she began the climb she glanced around to be certain there was no one that could be a threat to her in the area. Something caught her eye near the garden wall and once she was a little farther up, she looked again and nearly gasped. A large man was sprawled on the ground just inside the garden walls and even from up where she was she could see that he was very dead. Lady Mallam was cleaning house, she decided.
Praying every step of the way, she climbed up to the window. It was not until she got there that she realized she had trusted Abel too much. She had not even asked him if it was open. To her relief it was and she suspected he had seen that as well in the brief peek he had taken into the room. Olympia told herself that she had to remember to mention those skills to Brant and perhaps one or two of her family. Abel had great potential.
Peering over the sill, she inwardly sighed with a relief so strong she had to tighten her grip on the sill. Brant was still alive. He was talking, making time for some chance of rescue just as Abel had predicted. She just wished she had asked what he expected her to do now that she was hanging on the wall of the house behind Lady Mallam.
Brant stared at his mother and read the intent to kill him in her eyes. He waited for that to hurt and found nothing. Over the past days as he had discovered more and more about the woman who had borne him, the very last of his bond to her, thin though it had been, had been cut.
“I did not come here alone, you know,” he said. “You cannot kill me and walk away. This time you will hang for your crimes, as I begin to think you should have hanged many times before.”
“I never killed anyone.”
“No, I suspect you never dirtied your own hands although not for lack of the stomach to do so. You just wished to make sure that if a body was found and all signs pointed to you, you could turn around and point the finger at someone else.”
She shrugged slightly. “Sacrifices must be made.”
“Do you truly believe all you say or do you just not care?” He thought about what she had replied when he had asked about her lover. “You have killed. You have murdered your lover. Afraid he knew too much to let him live?”
“As I said, sacrifices must be made. Now, for my own well-being, you are forcing me to kill one of my own children. You should have just stayed in the country drinking and wenching and slowly becoming just like your father. Either that or you could have done as a good son should and married the woman I had chosen for you.”
“Which is why you saw to it that Faith died.”
“She was clearly weak. I lost a lot of money when you refused to get yourself betrothed to Henriette.”