Pay the Devil - Jack Higgins [45]
He lifted the child up and handed him across to the old crone as Joanna, with that inborn knowledge granted to all women, gently and expertly helped the mother and cleansed the blood from her body.
Clay stood watching her for a moment. “Obviously, this wasn’t your first time.”
Joanna looked up and shook her head. “I’m often called out to help. Will she be all right now?”
He nodded. “I think so. There’s always child-bed fever, but they seem to catch that much more readily in hospital than they do at a home confinement.”
“You certainly seemed to know what you were doing,” she said.
He grinned. “This wasn’t my first time, either.”
He was sweating and he lifted the whiskey bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. Then she was at his shoulder and crying, her arms about him, head against his chest. No words needed to be said.
He held her close, one hand gently stroking her hair, no particular feeling of joy sweeping through him, because he had known that this would happen from that first meeting—they had both known.
For a little while longer, he held her, and then he gently pushed her away, unbarred the door and stepped outside. Burke and his men were waiting for him, drawn up in a line ten yards distant from the cottage, their shotguns ready.
Several men were standing outside the pub, waiting to see what would happen, Cohan at the front of them in a soiled apron, and women hurried through the rain to chase children indoors out of harm’s way.
For a short while, no one spoke. The only sound was the quiet hiss of the rain as it splashed into the mud, and then Burke moved forward, his two men keeping pace with him.
He was obviously controlling himself with difficulty. “If you’ve finished your business in there, I’ll carry out my orders, Colonel.”
“Tell me something,” Clay said calmly. “How much do the Cooneys owe?”
A wary expression appeared at once on Burke’s face. “I can’t see how that concerns you.”
“But it does,” Clay said. “And more than you know. I intend to pay those arrears personally to Sir George this afternoon.”
Burke shook his head stubbornly. “That’s nothing to do with me. I have my orders and I intend to carry them out.”
Clay took one quick pace forward, and hit him in the mouth so hard that he skinned his knuckles, and Burke, caught off balance, staggered backward into the mud.
The two Scotsmen dropped their shotguns and moved in on Clay and he backed against the wall. His opponents, with their hard, brutal features, would obviously draw a thin line between a beating and a killing. From the look of them, once they got him down, they would finish the job with their heavy boots.
As Burke rose to his feet and moved in behind them, help came from an unexpected quarter. A shotgun echoed flatly through the rain, and they all turned to see Kevin Rogan sitting his horse a few feet away.
One of the Scotsmen made a move toward his weapon, and Kevin said, “I’ve another barrel here.” There was a hard smile on his face. “There’s nothing I like better than a good fight, but the odds are a little long at three to one.”
“You needn’t have butted in, Rogan,” Burke told him. “I’d no intention of allowing my men to spoil my pleasure.” He motioned them away quickly and turned to face Clay. “I’ll be happy to accommodate you, Colonel,” he said, and started to take off his coat.
He stripped well, great muscles rippling under his shirt and he looked completely sure of himself as he came forward. Clay had last fought with his fists as a boy of fifteen. Now, by some strange quirk of memory, the scene came back to him vividly. A wharf at Natchez on a hot July afternoon, casks booming hollowly as men unloaded a riverboat, and the circle of unfriendly faces as his opponent moved in on him.
He had lost that fight, lost it badly, which was a poor omen. He launched himself forward and Burke took a pace backward, handed him off with a stiff