Borrowed Vows (19 page)

Talbot’s eyes widened with dread. “I... I’ll see you have the money, Mr. Pendle,” he said quickly.

“Good.”

Kathryn knew the short confrontation was at an end, and she drew hastily away. She felt sorry for Mr. Talbot for falling foul of the odious banker, especially when she saw how wretchedly he hurried away toward the city. But then the incident left her thoughts because the crowd gave an excited stir as the water level in the lock neared that of the river. A few moments later everyone surged forward as the gates began to open.

She was carried with the crowds, and would have been dragged perilously close to the edge of the deep lock if someone’s arm hadn’t moved protectively around her waist from behind.

“Have a care, for it wouldn’t do for one Lady Marchwood to sink just as the other set sail,” Dane said.

She turned with a glad smile. He was superbly turned out for the occasion, in a dark blue coat and cream trousers. A gold pin was fixed in his starched neckcloth, and his top hat worn tipped back a little on his thick black hair, but if she hoped to see a smile mirrored on his lips, she was disappointed. He was cold and remote, and released her the moment he’d drawn her to safety.

Dismay swung over her. Something had happened in the few hours since she’d left him, and he was angry and distrustful again. But what had gone wrong? She knew the confrontation over Thomas hadn’t taken place yet, so what was it? Clearly, Rosalind had done something, but for some reason the truth was shut from her. Her intuition didn’t come to her aid, and she’d never felt more at a disadvantage than she did now.

Their eyes met and she tried to smile. “Dane, I—”

But he interrupted sarcastically. “Ah, she smiles lovingly. Well, madam, you’re wasting your time. I imagine you thought me very much the gull this morning when I believed your tale about having to reply to an urgent message from the ubiquitous Mrs. Fowler. What was it you said? The lady wished to know if you required bows or frills on your new night robe?”

Kathryn’s mind raced. “Er, yes, that’s right,” she said.

“Dear God, I could almost believe you. Well, unfortunately for you, my dear, I’ve just encountered Mrs. Fowler. Interestingly, she tells me she has no orders from you at present; indeed, she’s quite concerned you might not have been satisfied with the ball gown. So much for night robe bows and frills.”

More dismay lanced through her, and in that moment she hated Rosalind. “Please, Dane—”

“Have done with all this play-acting, Rosalind, because I’ve had enough of it. I wish to God I hadn’t confided in you this morning, but I did. Now I can only trust you have sufficient regard for our son not to betray my trust.”

“You wrong me, Dane,” she whispered, her voice lost in the roar of the crowd as the stern of the
Lady Marchwood
slid out on to the Severn.

“I concede we must speak of this, but later, when we’re more private,” he said coolly. Then he inclined his head and walked away.

There were tears in her eyes as she watched him go. The chain of events had begun in earnest; she could feel the links slipping inexorably through her fingers, as if dragged by some unseen force. It wouldn’t be long now before he was faced with undeniable evidence of Rosalind’s adulterous affair.

She tried to blink the tears away as he crossed the narrow footway along the top of the closed lock gates that now separated the lock channel from the dock basin, and then walked the few yards to join the men with the Marchwood cannons.

“Rosalind?”

She whirled about in alarm as Thomas addressed her suddenly.

Chapter Twenty

Thomas removed his top hat, and the breeze ruffled his brown hair. He wore a kingfisher coat and white trousers, and there was ardent warmth in his brown eyes as he smiled at her. “I thought I’d never find you when you left the dais and I lost you in the crowd.”

“Please leave me alone, Thomas,” was what she said, but what she really wanted to say was “Go away! Don’t come near me if you value your life!”

His smile faded, and he looked guardedly around. “What is it? Are you expecting Dane to return at any moment? I thought he was to fire the cannon salute.”

“I... I just don’t want to speak to you,” she said lamely, her haunted gaze moving toward the cannons. To her relief, Dane was intent upon the firing. “Please go away, Thomas,” she begged, realizing again that she was doing the exact opposite of what the real Rosalind would be doing right now, just as Rosalind was probably doing the opposite to Kathryn Vansomeren in the future. They weren’t just trading places, they were changing situations in each other’s times as well.

He caught her arm as she tried to walk away. “You can’t do this, Rosalind. You sent word you wished to see me here today. I thought that meant everything was right between us again.”

What exactly had Rosalind written? She tried to gain an insight, but the blank in her knowledge remained in place, and there was still no flash of intuition to help her either. Panic touched her then, and all she could think of was getting away from him. She tried to pull free without attracting any attention. “Please let me go, Thomas,” she begged.

But he held her tightly. “What hold has Dane over you?”

“Hold? There’s nothing, Thomas, I just want to stay with him. I realize now that he’s the one I love. Let me go, please.”

“I don’t believe you love him!”

To her dismay she saw they had attracted some attention. “Please, Thomas, people are looking!”

“Then let us go somewhere less public.”

Oh, why didn’t he save himself by just walking away and forgetting all about her? She looked pleadingly at him. “Why won’t you just accept that I wish our intimacy to end?”

“Why? Because you’re carrying my child, that’s why, and unless you come somewhere private now so we may talk, so help me I’ll make a far worse scene than this! The timber yard would seem to offer the necessary shelter from prying eyes. I’ll expect you to join me there presently.” He walked away, not going directly to the yard, but taking a circuitous route.

She knew she had no choice but to do as he demanded. She waited a few minutes, and then began to walk toward the yard. The first cannon salute boomed out and the crowds roared as the
Lady Marchwood
cast off her ropes and began to move on the river current. All eyes were upon the schooner as Kathryn slipped unnoticed into the yard.

Thomas came swiftly to meet her. “What’s going on, Rosalind? Why do you say one thing one day, and another the next?”

“I didn’t set out to hurt you, Thomas, but you must believe me when I say I love Dane after all.”

“But in your note you swore undying love for
me
!” he cried, his eyes bright with confusion and disbelief. “If you didn’t mean to hurt me, you nevertheless managed it very well! What’s more, you continue to do it. Only hours ago you sent a message promising me your undying love; now you insist you love Dane again. You did the same last night at the ball.”

“Forgive me,” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the cheers of the crowds outside.

“Forgive you? Rosalind, I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you! And with our child. We belong together, and nothing you say now will convince me you don’t feel the same.”

Before she realized what was in his mind, he’d taken her in his arms to kiss her passionately on the lips. He held her so tightly she couldn’t even struggle.

Then Dane’s icy voice spoke from the entrance to the yard. “So this is your notion of faithfulness, is it, madam?”

Thomas released her and whipped around defensively. “Dane!”

“In the days of our childhood you may have been at liberty to address me familiarly, but those days are long since past, Denham,” Dane replied.

At last Kathryn summoned the courage to face him. “Dane, this isn’t what it seems,” she whispered, but she saw unforgiveness in the bleak gray of his eyes.

“No, of course it isn’t, you’re merely discussing the price of timber,” he replied contemptuously.

“Please believe me!” she cried, taking a halting step toward him.

“I want nothing more of harlots, madam.” His manner was arctic.

Thomas leapt to her defense. “Take that foul insult back, Marchwood!” He lunged forward, but Dane stepped aside.

Impulsion carried Thomas stumbling out of the yard into full view of the crowds beyond. There was an audible stir as he lost his balance and fell sprawling on the dusty cobbles. Immediately he scrambled to his feet again to fling himself back at Dane.

Kathryn screamed. “No! Please, no!”

Her cries seemed to pierce the air, and a great silence fell as everyone forgot the scene on the river to watch the fight instead. Exclamations rippled through the onlookers as Dane caught Thomas a ferocious blow on the chin, causing him to stagger as if about to lose consciousness. But then he recovered, and soon forced Dane to trade blow for blow.

The inevitability of it all rendered Kathryn silent. She felt as if she were watching everything in slow motion. When Thomas went down finally, Dane would issue the challenge, and then there would only be the duel itself left. Tears marked her cheeks as the crowd formed a semicircle around the two men and began to cheer and urge them on. The brief but bloody struggle ended when a brutal uppercut sent Thomas sprawling for the last time.

Kathryn pressed her hands to her mouth as he lay dazed for a moment before hauling himself up to an elbow to wipe the blood from the corner of his mouth. He looked up at Dane. “I demand satisfaction for this, Marchwood! I will defend Rosalind’s honor against your insults!”

There were gasps, and Rosalind stared at him.
Thomas
issued the challenge? She’d always assumed it was Dane.

Dane’s eyes were like ice. “I’ll meet you wherever you choose, Denham, but know this, I’m not concerned with my wife’s nonexistent honor, more with my own, which has been gravely affronted by her infidelity.”

Jeremiah Pendle suddenly pushed to the front of the crowd. “No! I beg of you, Sir Dane. It will be an unequal contest, for Thomas is not a marksman!”

“He was the one who threw down the gauntlet, Pendle, for I most certainly see no reason to face anyone on my wife’s account. So know this, I’m not accepting this challenge to defend her, I’m doing it because no man of integrity can decline a challenge without bringing upon himself a charge of cowardice.” Dane returned his frozen gaze to Thomas. “Name your seconds.”

Pendle spoke up swiftly. “One will suffice, sir.
I
will second my nephew.”

Dane nodded. “Then I will name only Dr. Eden, who may not be present at the moment, but who will, I’m sure, stand for me.” He continued to look at Thomas. “The choice of weapon, time, and place, should be mine, but I offer it to you. What is your preference?”

Thomas struggled to his feet. “I choose what I know you’d choose, Marchwood. Your dueling pistols, the oak grove on your land, at dawn tomorrow.”

More gasps greeted this, for everyone knew William Denham had died in the oak grove, and that Dane’s pistols had been used.

Dane affected indifference. “As you wish,” he replied, and then turned to walk away, but Kathryn gave a despairing cry and hurried to try to seize his hand. She didn’t care that everyone was watching, only that he didn’t reject her. “Please, Dane, I beg of you!”

But he caught her wrist, and raised it disdainfully so that for the first time she saw she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring.

“You have already ceased to be a wife, madam,” he breathed, tossing her arm aside.

“I—I don’t know why the ring isn’t there,” she cried.

“Enough.”

“I love you, Dane,” she whispered, gazing at him through a haze of tears.

“What would a whore like you know of love?” He strode away through the crowd, which parted for him to pass.

A shroudlike numbness settled over her, and as she gazed after him, Thomas took an unsteady step toward her, but suddenly his legs seemed to fail him and he slumped to the ground. Jeremiah Pendle gave a cry of concern and knelt to see what he could do, and the crowd closed around them both. She was excluded, condemned as much by the citizens of Gloucester as by Dane.

Suddenly a pony and trap rattled over the cobbles and halted by her. Alice held out a helping hand. “Climb up, my dear, for it is done now, and the time has come for you to decide.”

Kathryn accepted the hand and scrambled onto the trap, which soon conveyed her swiftly away from the scene. She was too upset to speak, and was thankful that Alice didn’t say anything as the trap drove through the city. There were few people about, because everyone was at the docks, but the sound of the pony and trap brought someone to one of the shop windows. Kathryn caught a glimpse of Mr. Talbot’s thin, anxious face, but then he drew hastily back out of sight again. She saw the name written above the shop door.
Thaddeus Talbot, Gunsmith.

They’d almost reached Alice’s cottage when Kathryn managed to speak at last. “What will happen now?”

“The duel. Nothing can prevent it.”

There was an unmistakably odd note in the old woman’s voice, and Kathryn looked quickly at her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Maybe a great deal, maybe nothing.”

Kathryn searched her profile as she drove. Something isn’t going according to your plan, is it?” she said suddenly.

Alice maneuvered the pony into the alley to the courtyard, and drew the trap to a standstill at her door. A man emerged from a stable that stood where Jack Elmore’s apartment was to be in the future, and led the pony away as soon as Alice and Kathryn had alighted. Kathryn followed the nurse into the cottage, where the ground floor was taken up by a low-beamed kitchen parlor.

Drawing out a chair by a scrubbed table, Alice bade her sit down. “The time has come to tell you all you need to know, my dear, and I hope with all my heart that at the end of it you will make the right decision.”

Chapter Twenty-one

“Are you
really
going to explain everything?” Kathryn took off her bonnet and shook her hair from its pins. “Or are you just going to tell me enough to keep me doing what you want?”