A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove #1)(90)

“The new cannon?” Susanna turned to Bram, mortified. He’d given her his word he wouldn’t involve Papa in the militia. Surely he wouldn’t have lied to her.

“Yes, Susanna,” her father said. “The new cannon. It will be unveiled tomorrow, as part of the militia review.” He looked to Bram. “I do hope you’ve managed to whip those farmhands into shape? I’m counting on an impressive display, in exchange for the favors I pulled.” He tapped the letter in Bram’s hand.

“But—” Susanna shook her head. From across the room, Kate’s plinking arpeggios hammered away at the last bits of her composure. “Bram, please tell me I’m misunderstanding this somehow. Tell me you haven’t gone back on your word to me, in some underhanded ploy to regain your command.”

He lowered his voice. “It’s not like that. I can explain.”

“Tell me I can trust you,” she rushed on, emotion tweaking her voice. “Tell me you haven’t been lying to me this whole time. Tell me I haven’t made the most wretched, foolish mistake of my life, or . . . or I don’t know how—” Her voice broke.

“Susanna,” her father said sharply. “Stop embarrassing yourself. You know you’re given to overwrought emotion. Whatever silly infatuation you’ve developed, it will pass. Tomorrow isn’t about your girlish fancies, it’s about legacies—both Bramwell’s and mine. Perhaps we’ve humored you to a point, my dear. But there comes a time when men must be men. You can’t keep holding us back.”

Twenty-four

Cursed cannon.

Colin wrestled with the ropes as he hauled the cannon into the wagon. For a scale model prototype, the thing was damned heavy. The barrel was thick as his thigh, fashioned of solid brass.

He straightened. “You. Don’t touch those.” From his perch on the wagon bed, Colin waved the Bright twins away from a pyramid of straw-packed crates. “Leave those be.”

“What’s in them?” one of the boys asked.

“Fireworks for tomorrow night. Don’t touch them. Don’t even breathe on them. Took more than a week for those to arrive from Town.”

“Can’t we help you with them?”

“No,” he said, gritting his teeth. Those fireworks were meant to be his surprise, his own unique stamp on the day’s festivities. Colin was going to produce the display himself, and he was going to do it well—prove to Bram he could be good for something. There wasn’t much he could seem to get right in this life, but he did have a knack for artistic destruction. What better canvas than the clear night sky?

But first, to deal with Sir Lewis Finch’s masterpiece. The cursed cannon.

He grasped a rope in both hands and rocked back on his heels, tugging with all his might. Being responsible for artillery had seemed a plum assignment, until Colin had realized just how much heavy lifting was involved. All day, he’d been hustling to and fro—taking powder to the ladies, then rolled cartridges to the armory, smuggling fireworks to Summerfield, and now carting Sir Lewis’s prototype up to the castle. Loading the thing was taking longer than he’d planned. He was racing nightfall now.

“What’s this one?” one of the twins asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, Colin saw Finn brush the straw from a noisemaker. Before he could object, the boy gave the cord a tug. The firecracker exploded with a sharp pop and a dusting of smoke.

“Cor,” Rufus said, grinning. “Try another.”

“I told you two to leave off,” Colin bit out. He stood tall—just in time to watch Dinner scuttle off with a frightened bleat. The startled lamb squeezed under the fence that bordered Summerfield’s gardens. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and frightened the damned sheep. You know how Rycliff dotes on the thing.”

“Shall we fetch him?” Finn asked.

“No, I’ll have to do it. He’ll be scared of you now.” Colin vaulted the side of the wagon. He clapped the fraying strands of hemp from his hands and wiped his perspiring brow with his sleeve.

Clambering over the fence, he entered the kitchen gardens, where the house’s vegetables and savories were grown. He watched as the lamb trotted a path between two rows of turnips and squeezed under a second fence to enter a fallow plot bounded by meadow.

“Dinner,” he called, giving chase again and entering the meadow. “Dinner, come back now.”

When he reached the center of the field, he paused to catch his breath and scan the area for telltale tufts of wool. When the lamb failed to appear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. “Dinner!”

This time, his call earned an answer. Several answers. In fact, the ground shook with the collective bestial response. He spied several large, dark forms lumbering toward him through the twilight dusk. He blinked, trying to make them out. These weren’t sheep. No, they were . . .

Cows. Large cows. Remarkably fast and menacing cows. A small herd of them, all thundering straight for him where he stood in the center of the field.

Colin took a few steps backward. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t mean you.”

The beasts didn’t listen to reason apparently. A shame, because they did have rather large ears. Or were those . . . horns?

He turned and made a mad dash for the fence.