“How many?” Liam asked, trying to ignore the heat that washed through his body.

“I counted twenty men and two coaches.”

“Any idea which way they came from?”

“The village…I think.”

Which meant the magistrate was already aware of the strangers and would summon the guards. Not that they would arrive in time to do anything but bury the dead.

“Should I tell my father?” the youth asked.

Liam hesitated a moment, then shook his head. “Ride to the Old Place. Warn them. If we’re attacked here, they’ll be next.”

“Yes, sir.” The youth applied his heels, and his horse galloped off in the direction of the bridge that crossed Willow’s Brook.

Liam turned to Sloane. “Have the bucket of wood brought out. And send one of the footmen to find the gamekeeper and tell him he’s needed at the house—and tell him to come armed.”

“Yes, Baron.”

As Sloane hurried into the house to relay orders, Liam saw Flint, his stable master, striding toward him, the man’s face flushed with anger.

“Saddle as many horses as you can,” Liam said as soon as Flint got close enough to hear him. “Get the horses hitched to the farm wagon as well. Make sure one of the grooms stays with the wagon to drive it.”

If his servants had to run, they had a better chance to escape on horseback and reach the Old Place than they would on foot. Most of his footmen could sit a horse, even if none of them rode well. Each one could take a maid up behind him. The older servants and the young ones could go in the wagon.

Flint didn’t stop and return to the stable to follow orders. Instead, he kept coming toward Liam, finally stopping when there was a man’s length between them. His hands were clenched, and the look on his face was close to hatred.

“This is your doing,” Flint said harshly. “The baron wouldn’t have put us in danger this way.”

“I am the baron.”

“You’ve got the title, but you’re not half the man your father was. You never will be. You’re nothing but a witch’s brat that she tricked the baron into believing was his.”

Liam stared at Flint, who had been, and always would be, his father’s man. The urge to strike Flint for the slurs against his mother was strong, but the heat beneath his skin was getting more intense, warning him that he’d unthinkingly drawn too much power from the branch of fire and he couldn’t be sure, if he raised his hand now, that he could control what he’d summoned.

“Get off my land,” Liam said quietly, fiercely. “I don’t want you near my family. I don’t want you near my people. Get out.”