Now and Forever (86 page)

"Strange, madam." He moved closer to her. "There are times it seems as if you see the world for the first time."

"It's part of my charm."

"I had not thought of it thusly."

She gathered the tatters of her dignity around her and stood. "This interlude has been charming, Mr. Devane, but I'm afraid it's time I went back downstairs to help Abigail repair her doll."

"You are a kind and generous woman."

"Yes," she said, favoring him with a quick smile. "I'm glad you noticed."

His dark-eyed gaze swept over her body, igniting small fires everywhere it lingered . . . and a few places where it didn't. "There are other things I have noticed, as well."

"Your daughter isn't one of them." The words were out before she could stop them.

"Confine yourself to mending, madam. I will care for the child."

"Did you hear what Abby said?" Dakota demanded, meeting his eyes. She hadn't intended to broach the topic, but now that she had there was no stopping her. "The whole town is talking about us and I haven't even been here a full day."

"Amazing," he said dryly. "I would have ventured you'd been with us much longer."

"Insult me all you want," she said, stung by his words, "but that doesn't change things. You've put your daughter in the middle of a mess and I want to know what you're going to do about it."

She didn't give a damn for herself—as soon as she found Andrew and Shannon and the hot-air balloon she would be on her way home again—but for some reason she cared greatly for Abigail. There were few enough ways in which a girl could make her mark in the eighteenth century. She didn't want scandal to be the way that was thrust upon Abigail.

"'Tis of little consequence," Devane said in a voice that betrayed nothing of what he was feeling. "I have seen most of the Commandments broken by the good people of Franklin Ridge. Their opinions carry no weight in this house."

"Apparently they carry a great deal of weight with some people in this house."

"Cook has a marked affinity for the grape," Devane said, dismissing her concerns. "She speaks when she should be tending her fires."

"And she speaks to your daughter," Dakota snapped. "This ridiculous charade has gone entirely too far. If you don't tell her we're really not married, so help me, I'll do it myself."

"Do so, madam, and I will see to it you spend this night in jail."

"For telling the truth?"

"For being a spy."

Her breath left her body in a sibilant whoosh. "You're joking, aren't you?" she demanded when she could breathe again. "Me? A
spy
?" A bark of hysterical laughter echoed in the high-ceilinged room. "I'm the one who didn't even know what town she was in."

"A clever ruse," he said. "Like the sorrowful story of your widowhood."

"You're a cruel man," she observed, "delighting in the misfortunes of others."

"And you, madam, are a liar."

#

Patrick watched as she swept from the room as quickly as her full skirts would allow. It was obvious she wished to put as much distance as possible between them, and he was relieved.

The wench was willful, argumentative, and ungrateful, and still she had managed to awaken inside his breast emotions he had thought long dead. He had believed himself past tenderness and compassion but when she had lain unconscious in his arms he had experienced a surge of fear that lingered with him still.

Why he should about the well-being of a woman he had known for less than twenty-four hours was a question for which he had no answer, and he vowed to waste no time pondering such things. He was a man and it had been a long time since he had held a woman close. That was reason enough.

The child, however, was another matter. Dakota Wylie was right to be concerned for Abigail's standing in the town. He did not expect to live to see the end of the war and the thought of Abigail alone in the world sickened him to his soul. He understood the ways in which scandal could mark her future, ways in which her mother's reckless actions already had, and he wished better for the child.

She was the only true innocent in the whole unfortunate matter of his marriage to Susannah. Even if her paternity would forever be subject to conjecture, he owed Abigail a future of promise as befitted a man of his position, which was all the more reason to see to it she reached the Girls' School of the Sacred Heart as soon as possible.

He had little respect for the convenient morals of the good people of Franklin Ridge.

How they loved to cluck their tongues in righteous disapproval over an eight months' baby…or the affairs of a wayward wife. He had suffered the smug glances dripping with amusement and pity and vowed that the opinion of others would never matter to him again.

But her opinion matters,
a voice inside his head mocked.
You desire her approval more than is wise.

The thought was laughable. Patrick Devane didn't give a damn about anyone's approval. Certainly not the approval of a woman whose lies were as blatant and poorly conceived as Dakota Wylie's. Each time he pressed her for the details of her situation, she grew flustered, then angry, and the centerpiece of her story shifted position like a willow tree in a windstorm.

Why that should endear her to him was a question Patrick did not wish to pursue. He had no patience with liars and no faith in women and she was both. Yet each time he looked into her onyx black eyes he felt something deep inside his soul stir with recognition, as if he had been searching for her his whole life long.

Damn nonsense, he thought as he caught the faintest scent of her perfume in the air. He wanted naught from her save answers to his questions. The mythical dead husband. The friends she longed to find. Where in bloody hell Knots Landing was situated and why the women of that town had strange names like Dakota and Shannon—

Andrew.

His gut tightened. She had said one of her companions' names was Andrew and that she did not know his surname.

Some say 'twas Andrew McVie dangling from the basket of the bright red ball in the sky. . . .

And all of this had happened on the day he found Dakota Wylie under a pile of leaves.

"Damn nonsense," he said again as his heartbeat accelerated. McVie was dead. Why else would the risk-taking patriot have vanished so completely? Besides, the notion of a basket propelled through the air by a huge red ball was too laughable to countenance. There had been rumors of such monstrosities being constructed by the French, but all such attempts had ended in disaster.

Still, the coincidence of events made him uneasy and he vowed to keep a sharp eye upon Dakota Wylie while she was under his roof.

Which should be an easy task, since she was living there as his wife.

#

As the afternoon wore on, Dakota had the distinct feeling that time as she knew it had slowed and she was living many lifetimes in the space of a single day. It was an odd feeling, as if time were trying to help her grow accustomed to her new way of life. She found herself acutely aware of her surroundings, senses heightened to the point of pain, as she drank in the details of eighteenth-century living.

And the fact that Abigail thought she was her new mother.

They sat together near the fireplace in the front room while Dakota struggled with needle and floss. It had taken her a full five minutes to thread the needle. She'd misplaced her granny glasses somewhere in the big house and was lost without them. At the moment, poor Lucy's chances for a full recovery were looking as grim as any guest-wife for the Cartwright boys on
Bonanza
reruns.

She congratulated herself on the analogy as she stabbed the doll's innards with the needle. If only there was somebody she could share it with.

"Do you love Papa?" Abigail asked out of the blue.

Dakota stabbed her finger with the needle. A tiny drop of blood pooled on the tip and she popped it into her mouth. "What a question!" she said, forcing a small chuckle.

"Yesterday in the woods you didn't like him at all."

"Well," said Dakota slowly, "things have a way of changing, don't they?"

"I thought Papa lied when he told the soldiers we were a family."

Dakota swallowed hard. "I—I do not think he meant to share that fact with them, but the circumstances were such that—"

"Did you know I was your daughter when you first saw me?" the child interrupted, eager to move on to a more important topic.

Her heart lurched. She blamed it on major jet lag. "No, Abby, I didn't."

"You didn't like me."

"I didn't know you."

"I didn't like you."

Dakota grinned. She couldn't help it. "I didn't much like you either," she admitted.

Abigail nodded solemnly. "I know. You thought I was plain."

"I never said—" She stopped, cheeks turning red with embarrassment. "You heard it in here, didn't you?" she asked, placing her hand over her heart.

"Yes," said Abigail. "And you thought Papa was going to kill you."

"He was very angry."

"Why would you be afraid of Papa if he was your husband?"

The kid would be a whiz at Twenty Questions. "Because even married people have arguments."

Abigail considered her statement with all the gravity it deserved. "Papa doesn't like you."

"We had a disagreement," Dakota went on, stung by the innocent words. "It will end soon."
Like the moment I walk out the door.

"You can't walk out the door," Abigail said in a prim and singsong voice. "'Tis snowing harder even than before. Papa won't be able to send me to Boston for a very long time."

The child looked smug and proud of herself, as if she had called down the storm to suit her own needs. Who knows? Dakota thought. Maybe she had. Anything seemed possible.

She carefully placed two stitches along Lucy's right underarm seam. She couldn't control her thoughts, but she could control what came out of her mouth. It occurred to her that this was as good a time as any to begin laying the groundwork for the dissolution of her faux marriage.

"You know, Abby," she began as she tied off the end of the floss, "sometimes a marriage does not last forever."

"Mama and Papa were going to get a divorce," the child said sagely, "but Mama died."

Dakota couldn't hide her surprise. She hadn't realized the little girl knew the truth. "Sometimes men and women believe they can live together but find it to be much harder than they thought."

"Reverend Wilcox says marriages are made in heaven and that God says they are forever."

Dakota thought of a number of things to say but they were all too blasphemous for the child's ears. She settled for a simple, "Nothing is forever, honey."

"You are," said the child. "You and Papa will be together forever and ever."

She's right, Dakota.
Her mother Ginny's voice seemed to fill her chest with sound.
You finally met Mr. Right!

Dakota almost laughed out loud. They had nothing in common, not even the century in which they lived. This place, this man's house wasn't where she was meant to be. It was no more than the paranormal equivalent of changing planes at O'Hare: complicated, a little dangerous and forgotten as soon as you got home.

But you'll never forget this,
her heart whispered. Not that sad-eyed little girl with a head full of dreams she couldn't quite understand. And not the angry man who had held Dakota in his arms and kissed her the way no man had ever kissed her before or ever would again.

#

The farm

The sun rose and still Zane and Josiah did not return.

Neither Emilie nor Rebekah said anything about that fact as they fed their children steaming bowls of oatmeal and tended to the hearth fire and did the thousand other chores necessary to keep a home in proper running order.

They are safe, Emilie,
Rebekah's look said across the bustling kitchen.
Put your trust in the Almighty and you will not be disappointed.