Page 164 of The Pirate Queen

“Oh, I have considered many charges,” Bingham says. “But murder seems the easiest to prove.”

Donal laughs at the absurdity. “I have murdered no one.”

“You have, in fact. Every man in this room has witnessed it.”

He can feel it, the shift in the air, a discomfort that settles over him like a freezing mist. Gooseflesh rises across the back of his neck. Donal stands slowly, crosses his arms over his chest. He catches Nora’s gaze and nods subtly toward the door, instructing her to leave. She shakes her head no.

“What are you talking about?” Donal asks.

“Let me think.” Bingham taps his chin with one pale, slender finger. He turns to the soldier who has been relieved of his blade. “You’ll do nicely.”

Then, faster than Donal can understand, Bingham takes the dagger and drives it into his own soldier’s chest. Hilt deep. Through the heart. Blood spreads hard and fast across his shirt, blooming like a poppy, a terrifying red. The soldier looks at Bingham with confusion. Then he blinks hard and grabs at the knife with fluttering hands. Donal can see the blood leaching out in time to the slowing beats of his heart.

Nora stifles a cry and scrambles backward so quickly that her chair falls over.

Bingham’s men shout and draw back as their fellow drops to his knees, panting hard.

“It is such a shame,” Bingham says, his voice ringing loud in Donal’s ears, “that you would kill one of Her Majesty’s servants before my very eyes. Before so many witnesses.” He pulls the sword from his soldier’s hand and throws it to the floor with a clatter. “And him unarmed, at that. It is an egregious sin.”

“You dirty shite,” Donal growls. “You fecking bastard.”

Bingham turns to his men. “You all saw this man kill your friend.”

A statement, not a question.

There is a pause.

Uncertainty.

The other soldiers look at one another with dismay and disgust. Then those glances slide over Bingham as they weigh their options. One by one they nod.

“Aye, sir,” one says, then the rest follow suit.

“Then arrest Donal O’Malley for murder,” Bingham orders.

Donal looks to Nora. He drinks in her face. He memorizes the sight of her. Then orders, “Go.”

“I will not.”

“Go!”

“I do not run,” she tells him.

“Please?”

“Who else is there to witness this but me?” Nora whispers. She reaches out a hand to set her palm against his face, but Donal is jerked away from her by two of Bingham’s soldiers before he can receive her touch.

He is almost seventy, not as strong as he once was. His resistance is futile, and when he hits the stone floor, he feels his nose crack, feels the warm pool of blood dribbling over his lips.

Bingham kneels beside him and whispers, “I did promise her once that I would hang every one of you.”

Sir Richard Bingham marches on Rockfleet Castle at dusk. There are one hundred men at his back and two English carracks in the bay. Years, it has taken years to hem O’Malley in, to clip her wings and shrink her world. He cannot count the number of letters he has sent to the Privy Council begging for a fleet of his own, arguing that, without one, they could never truly crush O’Malley’s influence. And here she is, the redheaded banshee standing in her doorway as though she is queen of this foul fiefdom.

“I do not grant you permission to march through these lands,” she says when she comes out to the rocky shoreline to meet him.

Tibbot is at her side, all flashing eyes and young bravado. Bingham watches the young man flex his fingers, grind his teeth, barely constraining his rage. O’Malley has remade herself unnervingly well in this one. The boy is indeed his mother’s son.

“Where is it?” he asks.