Now and Forever (96 page)

"Abigail!" Patrick's voice rang out as she disappeared into the shadows. "Do not venture too far."

He quickened his pace to keep up with the child. Dakota was about to quicken her own pace when something caught her eye. About ten feet to her left the pristine whiteness of the snow was marred by an odd, shadowy depression. Curious, she pushed her way through the snow.

She didn't know exactly what she'd expected to find, but she did know a loaded handgun wasn't on the short list of possibilities. She was no firearms expert, but she knew she'd seen this gun before and it hadn't been in a museum.

It was Shannon's, the one her friend had kept locked away in her desk drawer. A flood of possibilities rushed through her mind. Had the gun tumbled out of Shannon's bag or had she deliberately tossed it away, to keep the gun from falling into enemy hands? Instinct told Dakota it was the latter. While she'd come through time armed with jelly doughnuts, apparently Shannon had had the foresight to bring something equally lethal, albeit in a different way. She glanced toward the woods. Patrick's back was to her. She whispered a quick prayer of thanks. If he saw the gun, he'd ask questions and she'd be forced to tell him everything.

Quickly she reached under her skirts and tucked it into the top of her left stocking, then continued on toward the carriage.

#

Approximately thirty minutes later, Patrick guided the horses up the lane toward the house. To Dakota it seemed as if they'd been on the road for thirty days. The gun was wedged firmly between the carriage seat and her thigh and she'd shifted position more often than a politician.

"'Tis the fifth time you have done so," Patrick observed "What gives you such discomfort?"

She crossed her fingers beneath the lap robe. "My back hurts."

He nodded and she breathed a guilty sigh of relief.

Patrick brought the carriage to a stop at the front door. Abigail, who had been napping beneath her lap robes, burrowed more closely against Dakota's side.

"It seems a crime to wake her up," Dakota said innocently as Patrick climbed from the carriage and came around to help her. "She's sleeping like a log. Why don't you carry her upstairs to her room?"

He swung Dakota from the carriage, letting her slide slowly down his body until her feet touched the ground. As if they
could
touch the ground when she was this close to him.

"You try my patience, Dakota Wylie," he said as she met his eyes. "Can you not allow the future to proceed at its own pace?"

Oh, Devane,
she thought wistfully as the gun slid down to the back of her knee.
If we only had the time . . . .

Chapter Nineteen

The house was in chaos when they returned. If possible, more soldiers than before were crowded into the front hallway and main rooms, and each one of them seemed to consider it his solemn duty to make as big a mess as possible.

"What in bloody hell is going on?" Patrick demanded as the door closed behind them.

Dakota glanced around as the confusion and noticed most of the furniture had been moved out. "Looks like McDowell meant what he said about throwing a party for us. I thought he was just talking to hear himself speak." She'd known lots of blowhards in her time and McDowell had seemed about as reliable as any of his kind. "He's probably moving the furniture to make room for dancing."

Devane's jaw tightened. "The house still belongs to me, whether or not McDowell wishes to acknowledge that fact. I will not have my possessions removed without my permission."

Abigail tugged on his sleeve. "Don't be angry, Papa. They'll be gone soon."

Dakota crouched down next to her and helped the child off with her cloak. "Not soon enough for your papa, honey. The soldiers will probably be here until spring."

Abigail's grey eyes took on the dreamy expression Dakota had come to recognize. "Not him," she said, tilting her head in the direction of the library where McDowell was sequestered. "He'll be far 'way by Christmas." Abigail turned and ran toward the kitchen for a cup of cider.

Patrick stormed toward the library and Dakota seized the opportunity to flee upstairs with the gun.

There weren't a lot of hiding places to choose from, not with a child, an inquisitive male, and a score of soldiers in the house. She slid it under the feather mattress in the anteroom, then smoothed the quilt and fluffed up the pillow. So what if it would be like sleeping on top of a hand grenade? The important thing was that nobody found it.

"Dakota! Where are you?"

"Be right there, Abby," she called out, thanking God the child hadn't popped up ten seconds earlier.

Abigail stood near the armoire in Devane's room and, for a moment, Dakota was afraid the child had flashed on the hidden passageway, but Abigail had something much more exciting on her mind.

"Papa found two more ladies!"

I'll bet he'd be dynamite on a treasure hunt.
"Two more ladies?" she asked, tugging on one of Abigail's braids. Probably new parlormaids to help Cook run the household. "Where did he find them?"

"They were standing right there at the kitchen door!" Abby's eyes were wide with excitement. "They're so pretty…."

Dakota's smile faltered.
I really don't want to hear this.

". . . and then she slapped Papa and called him a monster!"

She snapped to attention. "Somebody hit your father?"

Abigail nodded vigorously. "The lady with the red hair. She said Papa had ruined her life."

A knot formed in the pit of Dakota's stomach. "Did she say how he'd managed to ruin her life?"
It's 1779, Wylie. Take a wild guess.

Abby frowned as she thought. "She said her children would not have a father, and that's when Papa told me to leave."

"You stay here," she told Abigail. "I'm going downstairs to see what's going on."

She went straight to the kitchen where she'd heard the commotion. Cook was kneading bread with large, angry motions. Will sat on a chair near the back door while a beautiful young blonde warmed her hands by the fire. Dakota winced. The girl was young enough to be Patrick's daughter, which meant she was exactly the right age to date him.

If that was the competition, she might as well fling herself into the stew pot and be done with it.

You're the mistress of the house,
she told herself as they noticed her standing in the doorway. It might be a temporary role, but she was going to play it to the hilt while it lasted.

"My husband," she said to Cook, with a nod toward Will and the lovely young woman. "Where will I find him?"

"The front room, missus. But I don't think you want to be going in there."

Let this one be homely,
she prayed.
Thirty pounds overweight would be nice.
Just once in her life she'd love to nurse a healthy superiority complex about something other than the fact she could reshelve books faster than any librarian in the Western world.

Patrick sat in the wing chair near the window. He didn't look happy to see her. "Go back upstairs," he ordere. "Now!"

She resisted the urge to click her heels together and say, "Yes,
mein Fuhrer.
"

The woman wasn't anywhere in sight. Obviously he hoped to keep it that way. "Abby told me we had company," she said sweetly. "I thought you might like to introduce us."

"I said leave
now
!"

She stepped into the room. "Don't bother trying to hide her, Devane, because I know what's going on."

"Do you?"

Dakota spun to her right at the sound of the female voice. A gorgeous redhead stepped from behind the door. She was a good six inches taller than Dakota and twenty pounds lighter, and she had a pistol pointed straight at Patrick's heart.

"Come in," said the woman with a brittle smile. "Sit down next to your husband. You might want to hear about the kind of man you married."

"No, thank you," Dakota said with an equally brittle smile. Damn the luck. If she still had Shannon's gun tucked inside her stocking, she could give the woman a run for her money.

"My wife knows naught about the situation," Patrick said. "Do not bring her into this."

The red-haired woman dismissed him with a contemptuous glance. "Then it's time she learned, isn't it?" She gestured toward a wing chair opposite Patrick's. "Sit down."

Dakota considered making a run for it, but it was obvious the woman was at the end of her rope. She sat down opposite Patrick.

The woman was still talking, but suddenly Dakota couldn't make out what she was saying. She could see the woman's lips moving, but the words were garbled. As if they were coming at her fast and loud but in a foreign language.

"What was that?" she asked, leaning forward in her seat.

The buzzing inside Dakota's head drowned out all other sounds. Patrick touched her arm. She knew he did because she saw his hand upon her forearm, but it felt as if he were touching her through layers of cotton wool.

What was going on? She had the same drifting, otherworldly feeling she'd had that last day when the balloon was about to sail off. But the balloon wasn't anywhere around.

A lighthouse. . . a sense of danger everywhere . . . a tall, red-haired woman—

"Emilie?" Dakota asked.

The woman looked down at her, gun still aimed at Patrick. "We know each other?"

"In a way," she said.

Emilie moved closer to Patrick. "Been talking about me, have you, Devane? I'm surprised. I thought you kept your secrets close to your vest."

"Let my wife go," he ordered, his voice cool as ice. "Grant her safety and I will tell you all."

"Tell me all," Emilie countered, "and then maybe I'll let your wife go."

"You're making a mistake," Dakota said, unable to keep silent. "Don't you realize you're both on the same side?"

"So he has you fooled, too," Emilie said, glancing toward Dakota with pity in her eyes. "The man's a spy."

"So are you."

Next to her Patrick started in surprise.

"You're right," Emilie said to Dakota, "but the trouble is he's passing our secrets on to the British and now my husband is going to pay the price."

Tell her the whole story, Wylie. Tell her you know how it's all going to end up.

"Where is Zane?" Emilie demanded in a tone of voice bordering on hysteria. "Where did they take him?"

"I do not know, madam," said Patrick. "I wish with my entire heart that I could find those two brave men, but thus far I cannot."

Emilie spat at his feet. "Liar!"

Dakota jumped up and faced the woman. "Patrick is telling you the truth."

"If you believe that, you're an even bigger fool than Zane and Josiah were."

"He
is
on their side."

"Madam," said Patrick dryly, "I can fight my own battles."

"Apparently not," Dakota observed. "Otherwise she wouldn't have that gun pointed at your head."

"I never trusted you," Emilie said to Patrick. "Not from the first. But even I didn't believe you would do something this terrible."

Once again Patrick explained the situation that someone from within the spy ring had betrayed Rutledge and Blakelee. But Emilie was having none of it.

"I realize love must be an alien concept to you, Devane, but my husband is everything to me. We have gone through a great deal to be together. . . we have two beautiful children and another—" She paused for a moment then shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. "Family is the most important thing on earth, but—"

Emilie swayed on her feet. Patrick leaped from his chair to catch her before she fell, while Dakota grabbed for the pistol.

"Damn you!" Emilie slid to the floor and buried her face in her hands. "I have looked everywhere for them . . . asked everyone I met. . . but no one will—"

"Dakota?"