Page 93 of An Extraordinary Lord

“Yes, sir.” Instead of saluting, he placed his hand on the hilt of his sword. God only knew the kind of fighting that would be required of them before dawn.

A motion at the end of the street beyond the barricade caught his attention. A handful of men carrying torches in one hand and home-fashioned weapons of clubs and cutlasses in the other stalked toward them from out of the shadows.

“Our plan didn’t work,” Merritt muttered as the number of men swelled to over two dozen. “They didn’t head north.”

“Most of them did,” Marcus corrected. “These are likely the ones that Scepter paid to lead the riot here, still carrying out their orders like the well-trained soldiers they used to be.”

The rioters quickened their pace when they saw the barricade. They shouted at the soldiers and brandished their torches and weapons as they advanced.

Behind him, Colonel Anderson called out, “Ready, men!”

Rifles raised nearly in unison as the first row of soldiers came forward to position themselves. Their muzzles pointed over the barricade’s makeshift mound of wooden boards, crates, barrels, and anything else the soldiers had found nearby. Its purpose wasn’t to stop the rioters but simply to slow them down just long enough to shoot or bayonet them.

Marcus’s sword shot into the air. “Hold fire! Fire only on my order!” He repeated in a powerful command that brooked no question of his authority, “Onlyon my order.”

The soldiers tensed as they switched their attention from Colonel Anderson to Marcus, but they held their position, as unmoving as statues.

“I know you want to save the rioters,” Marcus said quietly to Merritt. “But my first priority, as always, is to defend Westminster.” He slid a somber glance sideways at Merritt, his arm still straight in the air. “Iwillorder the soldiers to fire if they charge the barricade.”

“Well then,” Merritt muttered. “Best not let it come to that.”

And it wouldn’t. The men were former soldiers who knew what it meant to confront the regiment standing here. They were paid rioters, not suicidal. They would certainly come closer, daring to wave their weapons in the air and threaten the soldiers, shout insults and threats, and perhaps even destroy the front of the buildings lining the street, but they wouldn’t attempt the barricades.

Yet the rioters hurried on fearlessly toward the barricade long after they should have stopped.

Merritt’s blood turned to ice as the horrifying realization struck him—they thought the soldiers wouldn’t fire on them because they’d been told they wouldn’t. They’d been assured that Liggett was in command and wouldn’t give the order for the soldiers to shoot, that they’d be allowed to climb over the barricades and march on toward Parliament and St James’s Palace unmolested.

Good God.The rioters had been set up for slaughter.

Merritt grabbed Marcus’s pistol from his side and leapt onto the barricade. He raised it into the air and fired. The crack of its report echoed off the stone buildings and stopped the stunned rioters dead in their steps.

“Stop this now!” he shouted at them. His voice was nearly as loud as the gunshot. “Go home. Liggett isn’t here. He’s been replaced by General Marcus Braddock, and you know his reputation. He will not hesitate to fire upon you if you attempt to cross the barricade. You will be killed.” He flung the spent pistol down onto the street. “No matter what you’ve been told about being allowed to pass into Westminster, it willnothappen.”

The rioters hesitated and exchanged surprised looks as they considered his words.

But then one of them shouted back, “He’s lyin’!” The man jabbed his spade into the air to punctuate his point. “Just puttin’ on a show! They wouldn’t dare shoot us.”

More cries answered in agreement, and the crowd began to move forward. They still came toward the barricades but now with less determination and certainty than before. Several of the men in the crowd hung back to let the leaders stride on.

At Merritt’s feet, the soldiers stiffened their arms as they aimed their rifles.

“Hold your fire!” Merritt yelled at the soldiers and darted to the center of the barricade to put himself directly between their guns and the rioters. As Marcus echoed the command to hold fire, Merritt drew his sword and stretched out both arms to make himself as wide a target as possible. “Does this look like a show to you?” He constantly turned between the two groups to keep watch on all of them and to keep all their attention on him. “What are you going to believe—some man who paid you to come out tonight in a mob or your own eyes?” He pointed his sword at the soldiers. “Look at them!”

The rioters stopped again, this time amid mutterings about being paid. The men demanded answers from one another now, and Merritt could clearly distinguish the men who had been paid from those who had simply been caught up in the momentum of the mob. But the mentality of violence still pulsed through them, still made their eyes glow wild, even in the dancing shadows of the torchlight.

“You were soldiers once yourselves,” Merritt called out, making his plea directly to the leaders. “You know that these men behind me will follow orders and cut you down where you stand if you dare come any closer. And for what? A handful of coins?”

“We’ve got no jobs!” one of the men yelled back. “We’re starvin’ an’ the lords in Westminster don’t give a damn about none o’ us!”

“You’re right,” Merritt countered. “They don’t give a damn about you.”

That honest reply set them muttering again with surprised and gaping expressions, as it did to the soldiers at his feet.

“They think you don’t deserve their help, that you’re nothing but a bunch of lazy, insolent bastards who’ve returned from the wars to be a blight on English society.”

Merritt didn’t have to fake his outrage. He’d felt as strongly as they had the sting of coming home to an England that he didn’t recognize and that didn’t appreciate him, that might have preferred if he’d died on the field in Belgium. Politicians knew how to handle dead soldiers—throw up a memorial and forget. What they couldn’t manage were those who had the audacity to survive.

He pointed the end of his sword at the chest of the man closest to him. “If you persist in this—if you attempt to cross the barricade and march on Westminster—then you will prove them right. Is that what you want? To give them proof that former soldiers are no better than vandals and criminals?”