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“Do as he says, Kitty.” Eliza forced her voice to stay even.
Samuel pointed to the stairs. “Listen to your sister.”
Undeterred, Kitty lifted her chin. “You don’t frighten me. I’m staying with my sister.”
Nathaniel’s resonating voice billowed in the heated room, his pleading eyes pinned on Kitty. “Kitty, please I don’t want you hurt.”
“Nathaniel, I—”
“Quiet!” Samuel moved toward Eliza, hostility dripping from his stare as he walked. “You told him to come. Somehow you told him!” Samuel spat when he spoke keeping only a few feet between them.
“Samuel, I promise I didn’t tell him to come here—”
“Silence!” Samuel bellowed, the veins in his head and neck bulging.
Thomas pushed Eliza behind him, gripping his pistol at his side.
“Your quarrel is with me, Samuel,” Thomas said. “Don’t release your anger of defeat on Eliza just because she refuses to be with a man like you.”
“A man like me?”
Samuel’s mouth coiled and he swiped his pistol from his side, pointing it at Thomas’s chest. Thomas and Nathaniel stepped back and swung their weapons at Samuel the same instant.
“No!” Eliza screamed and tried to move in front of Thomas, but his solid arm kept her back.
“Drop your weapons now! Kick them to me!” Samuel demanded.
No one moved.
“There’s nothing to stop me from shooting you if you kill him,” Nathaniel said, widening his stance. “I’m not afraid to hang.”
“But are you afraid to bleed?”
In one swift movement Samuel pivoted. Thomas lurched forward, gun extended. Both Kitty and Eliza screamed as the sound of three pistols exploded with an earsplitting crack. Nathaniel hit the ground shouting and clawing at his shoulder, but Thomas and Samuel stood motionless. Eliza almost collapsed.
Thomas kept his eyes on Samuel, but his voice was directed at Eliza. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” Eliza’s heart slammed against her ribs.
“Nathaniel!” Kitty bolted for him as he writhed on the floor, scooting his way to the fireplace, leaving a dark smear of blood as he went.
Samuel yanked Kitty back, but she jerked her arm from his grip. “Let go of me!” Dashing to Nathaniel’s side, she spoke quiet as she attended to his wound.
With the one round used, Samuel tossed his useless weapon on the ground. “I warned you. Both of you!” he yelled, slinging his sword from his side and waving it in front of Thomas as he stalked closer. “Eliza needs me to care for her. She needs someone to think for her, Thomas, not force her to think for herself.”
Thomas wrenched his neck to look behind his shoulder at Eliza, and spoke so calm it was as if nothing terrifying had happened. “Help Kitty with Nathaniel. Samuel and I will put an end to this.”
As much as her muscles willed her to stay next to Thomas, she obeyed, leaving her heart behind her.
Nathaniel sat against the wall next to the fireplace. He probed his own wound and gritted his teeth as he searched for the musket ball. Kitty stared at him, her own face so warped with worry it was as if she experienced the pain with him. Blood gushed from the dark hole in his flesh and Eliza breathed through her lips to keep from vomiting.
“What do you need me to do?” Eliza asked.
She tried to focus on the task in front of her but her peripheral vision strained for any glimpse of what was happening behind her.
“Stoke the fire,” Nathaniel said, his face pale but his eyes steady.
“What?” She couldn’t have heard right.
