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Ethan gave a curt nod as he pulled Natalie from behind him, tucking her into his side. “Have Fulton take them to my home. I know he’ll keep them all safe.”
Rush shook his head. “You should take them.”
Ethan had not suggested that the women leave because he was attempting to escape with them. “I should fight with you.”
Natalie touched his chest. “Ethan.”
Rush gave her a wink. “Fulton isn’t married. Our wives are protected by our legal bond. Natalie is the most vulnerable because—” But his words were cut off as a loud crash filled the house.
Rush raced to the window at the end of the hall. “They’re coming!”
Natalie shivered against his side. Rush came racing back toward him. “You are to keep the women safe.” He handed Ethan two more pistols. “They’re in a room off the kitchen. It gives you a quick exit if there is a fire—”
“Fire,” Natalie cried. He held her tight, kissing her forehead.
Rush winced. “If the house is overrun, you take them to the stable and you leave with all of them. Do you know where you’ll go?”
Ethan only had to think for a moment. “I have a small estate in the north that I almost never use. Pembley in York.”
Rush jerked his chin and held out a hand. Ethan clasped it in his own, the two of them pausing for a moment in the position. It was an affirmation of their joined forces and, just in case, a goodbye.
Then Rush turned and headed back to the window, tossing it open. His voice boomed out. “There will be no mercy!”
Ethan and Natalie raced toward the back stairs and down the two flights to the basement kitchen. He stood in the doorway, pausing on the way to the room where Rush had directed him. It was nearly black, but in the moonlight, he saw through the small window next to the back door what had to be twenty men already gathered outside the kitchen door.
There would be no escaping to the stable. His heart sank as he set Natalie down. “Kitten, I need you to join the other women. You lock the door, and you don’t open it for anyone. In fact, block it with whatever you can find.”
“Ethan.” Her voice trembled with fear, but her hand was firm. “I’m not leaving you.”
He looked at her, noting the determined tilt to her chin. Had she called herself a mouse when they’d first met? She wasn’t that. Not anymore. Nor did the woman before him look like a kitten.
As she pulled a loaded pistol from the waist of his breeches, she appeared every inch a lioness.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, knowing that he should likely be calling her queen. “You take that pistol, and you keep the others safe.”
He saw the indecision in her eyes as she gripped the pistol tighter. Then she gave a nod and started down the hall.
“She knows how to use that thing?” Fulton asked, coming down the stairs toward them.
Natalie cocked back the hammer. “Of course I do. I’m from the country.”
Fulton gave her a half smile and then nodded at Ethan. “Ready?”
He watched Natalie disappear down the hall before he looked at the other man. He didn’t know Fulton well, but he knew that as a sailor and a smuggler, Fulton was used to the fight. “How likely are we to succeed?”
Fulton shrugged. “Every fight is fifty/fifty, I’d say. This one…” He craned his neck, looking out. “Sixty/forty, maybe.”
“In which direction?” Ethan asked, but Fulton had already crouched below the kitchen prep table.
“We wait until they break down the door, then we shoot them while they’re funneled in the doorway. When we run out of bullets, we start cutting them down.”
Ethan crouched next to him. “Thank Christ I gave up drinking.”
“Normally I’d agree. Never let me sailors drink before or during a storm. But right now…A dram might take the edge off.”
Ethan didn’t answer as he stared at the door, preparing to fight. He’d not want his head muddled now. He was glad he’d been exercising too. He’d need every ounce of that strength, he’d suspect, for the fight to come.
From somewhere in the front of the house another crash echoed down the corridor, which signaled the men in the back to attack.
