Matthew realized she was setting him free of her own affection for Samson Lash—who had likely rescued Elizabeth Mulloy from the madhouse because he purely and simply desired a companion—for while she was living she could not have allowed violence to be done to Lash by Matthew or Julian, and thus she was not only torn into two people but torn by two purposes.

Her ship was sailing.

“Rest,” he told her, but she was already gone.

He tried to take from her hand the dagger but he found he was unable to open her fingers. He decided to leave it with her, because in her own way she had been an Albion of sorts, fighting a battle she could never win, but doing enough to make a difference for someone, somewhere, and they would probably never know it.

When Matthew staggered back into the front room with the pistol he had retrieved in his hand, Julian looked at his bloodied form—the polar bear coat soaked on the front with it—and the bullet gash across his cheek and brief expressions of both sickness and relief passed across his face.

“I couldn’t leave here to help you,” he said, “but she said she would.”

Matthew just nodded. He saw the Autreys huddled on the floor together, and he wondered how they could ever see the world again in the same light as before.

Julian peered out the window and quickly drew his head back. He asked, “Is she—”

“Dead,” Matthew said.

At once Firebaugh rushed toward the broken glass and screamed, “Lash! They’ve killed Elizabeth! Do you hear? They’ve—”

Julian put him down again with a kick to the groin, after which the doctor crawled off to a corner sobbing in pain.

“Who was it?” Julian asked.

“Krakowski. And Lioness. I shot her. She’s out in the back somewhere.”

Julian grunted. He brought up a wry smile that his eyes did not share. “Well, that just leaves us with—”

Something on fire came flying through the spiderwebbed window and shattered the rest of it to pieces. A wine bottle with a flaming cotton wick broke on the stones of the floor; there was no explosion, but the whale oil spilled in a small brown wave rippling with blue fire. Almost immediately following that one came another bottle through the other window, breaking on the floor and throwing the burning oil in all directions.

Julian had seen a figure darting in through the barn’s heavy smoke to throw the second bottle—a large figure, Lash it looked to be—but there was no time to aim and no use in wasting a shot. When the third bottle came in through the window it broke on the sill and the flaming oil splattered a curtain, burning shilling-sized holes into it.