The Beloved One (24 page)

Charles was right behind them.

Too late, the last of the pack saw the huge stallion bearing down on them.  Contender's shoulder hit one of them a glancing blow and sent him sprawling in the dirt.  Another dived out of the way just in time to avoid being trampled.  And there, just ahead in what was almost complete darkness, Charles saw the bowlegged seaman reach out, grab Amy's flying cape, and jerk her savagely backwards.  She cried out and her little package went flying.

Immediately, the man was upon her.

"No!  Get off me, you horrid beast!"

She was no match for him.  He pushed her down hard, his laughter obliterating her screams even as one hand tore at her cloak and the other grabbed her petticoats and flung them high.

"Jack, watch out!"

But Charles was already off Contender, musket cocked as he ran toward the two struggling figures.  He shoved the muzzle straight down into the seaman's nape.

"
Let the lady go.
"

Jack froze.  Behind him, the other seamen skidded to a halt.

Tension strummed the air.

Slowly, Jack turned his head, his eyes glinting in the faint light as he gazed hatefully up at Charles.  Beneath him, Charles could see Amy, her face pale with fright, her eyes wide and staring.  She did not recognize her savior.

"
Lady
?" said Jack, with an ugly sneer.  "Why she ain't no lady, she's nothing but a half-breed slut who —"

He never finished.  Charles sent his boot flying into the seaman's head, and drove him, sprawling and unconscious, into the dirt.  Behind him he heard curses, and then running feet as Jack's band fled, no doubt back to the tavern for reinforcements.

It was not, he decided, a wise idea to remain here.

Holding his musket aside, he bent and stretched a hand down toward the young woman who lay in the alley staring up at him.  She regarded his hand blankly for a moment.  And then her gaze went to his face, and in that moment, Charles saw recognition, disbelief, and pure, unbridled joy fire her eyes as she tentatively reached up to grasp his offered hand.

"Charles?  Is that . . .
you
?"

Chapter 17

With Amy before him, Charles slowed Contender up before the Leighton's house three minutes later.  He sent the horse trotting around the house and into the back garden; there, safely out of sight from the road, he leaped down, pulled Amy from the saddle, and held her against his chest as though he'd never let her go.

He was shaking with fury.

"Amy."  He felt the blood pounding in his ears.  "
Amy
."  He rested his brow against the top of her hooded head and just held her for a long, emotional moment.  "What the devil would have happened if I hadn't chanced to come along when I had?"

"Oh, they would've left me alone, eventually," she said, her voice muffled against his chest.  "They just like to have a little sport with me, but I don't think they'd actually —"

"
Have a little sport with you?"

"Well, not much.  You see, last week Mira gave me a knife that I could've used if things got beyond my control —"

"I'd say they were already well beyond your control, madam, when I happened along!  Does Sylvanus know about this?"

"No." And then, with a little shrug of her shoulders, "You know he probably wouldn't do much about it, anyhow.  I — I am not Ophelia or Mildred."

She said it without pity or sadness; just a simple acceptance of her place.  "Oh, poppet," Charles murmured, his heart aching for her, and reaching down, he pushed her hood back, cradled her face between his hands, and turned it up to his.

She was lovely.  The past sixteen months had further defined her already striking features, but otherwise, she was unchanged.  The same huge dark eyes still gazed up at him.  The same glossy hair was still parted in the middle, plaited, and pinned up beneath a little cap.  The same sweet mouth still warmed him with its shy smile.

The same craving to kiss it still burned up his blood.

"Amy," he said softly, as he lowered his head to hers, and before he even realized it, he was kissing her with a hunger too long denied.  She melted against him.  Sweet, soft lips clung to his with a passion that rocked him to his boots.  Her tongue came out to touch, to taste, his, and he felt her hand against his heart, where such a great swell of emotion rose that it nearly sent him to his knees.  And somewhere deep inside of him, that part of him that he dared not listen to, and had tried to ignore all these long, lonely months, sang with joy and leaped with happiness and screamed that
this
was what he'd been searching for all this time,
this
was what he had needed to heal, this — this quiet love, this unconditional acceptance of all his flaws and weaknesses — was the key to finding his way back to himself, and the man he had once been. 
Oh, Amy, Amy, Amy. . . .

So lost was he in the kiss, so lost was she in returning it, that neither saw the figure who appeared at the door and stopped short with a gasp.

Ophelia's eyes narrowed.

"Well, well, well," she said nastily, as her half-sister jerked back, away from the disreputable character she'd been kissing with such wanton passion.  "I send you to town to bring back some headache powder for poor Mildred, and what do you do?  Return with this — this unkempt heathen who's as much of a savage as yourself.  To think you'd stand here right on our very own lawn, throwing yourself at him like the shameless little whore that you are —
Lord CHARLES!
"  Ophelia slammed a hand to her mouth, suddenly unable to breathe.  "My g-goodness, I did not recognize you!"

And God help her, she probably wouldn't have recognized him even in broad daylight, let alone the gathering gloom!  The bright hair she'd last seen carefully combed and clubbed now hung in rippling, unruly waves halfway down his back.  His face was bearded, he wore a fringed buckskin coat, and leather breeches were molded to long, hard, handsomely muscled thighs.  Ophelia could only stare, open-mouthed; why, he looked more like a wild frontiersman than the crisply mannered, impeccably bred aristocrat that she knew him to be!  But any doubt she had that he was Lord Charles de Montforte, was banished without a doubt when he inclined his head and addressed her in that same cool, detached manner he'd always used when speaking to her and Millie.

That same cool, detached manner he'd never used with Amy.

"My dear Miss Leighton.  It seems that you are forever putting me in the position of having to demand an apology on behalf of your sister."

"I — I thought you were someone else!"

"Did you?  But I do not ask your apologies on
my
behalf," said Lord Charles, his mild tone belying the fact that his eyes had gone as cold as winter starlight.  "And while you might have mistaken me, and quite understandably so, for someone else, you knew very well who your sister was."

Indeed she had.  And as Ophelia's gaze went to Amy, standing there with her lips looking dark and lush from kissing the man that she, Ophelia, had wanted so badly and tried so hard to get, the man that Amy certainly didn't deserve, the man that
should have been hers
, Ophelia felt a jealous rage so dark and violent that it set her to trembling right down to her toes.  Her eyes narrowed to slits.  How dare he defend that little slut;
how dare he
!  And how dare Amy — dirty, vile, whoring Amy — triumph where both she and Millie had failed!

Ophelia's chin snapped up.  "If you think I'm going to apologize to that half breed
bitch
, then you've sadly underestimated me," she snarled, raking Amy with a look of bitter loathing.  "I will not apologize to her now, tomorrow, or ever, and why should I?  She's nothing but dirt beneath my feet and I hate her!  I hate her and I always have! 
She's
the one my mother loved most,
she's
the one that everyone says is so kind and good when we all know she's nothing but a conniving little slut, and now
she's
the one you're kissing and holding when you should've been kissing and holding
me
, and this after all that Millie and I did to try to win you, after all the trouble we went through to keep you here with us.  I can't believe you'd choose that disgusting little creature over one of us!"

"Ophelia!" cried Amy, aghast.

"Shut up!" screamed Ophelia.  "You make me
sick
!  I hate you and I hate
him
for choosing you when he should've chosen
me
!"  And then, because she was past caring, because she was blinded by a vicious desire for revenge, because she wanted only to cut and wound and devastate Charles as he had cut and wounded and devastated her, she screamed out the terrible secret that she and Mildred had kept for the past year and a half.  "And let me tell you something else,
Captain
!  Those letters you wrote and the replies you got from the army, your brother, and your dear, darling Juliet?  Ha, ha, well, they were ours! 
Ours!
  Millie and I read those letters you wrote, and we made up the replies so you'd stay here with us, fall in love with us, and marry one of us!"

At that moment Mildred came flying out of the house.  She grabbed her sister's arm, desperately trying to quiet her.  "Ophelia, stop!  It's not worth it!"

"It is too worth it! 
Anything's
worth it to punish him for choosing Amy over us!  I've never been so humiliated in all my life!"

"What's going on here?" cried Sylvanus, hurrying out of the house with Will and Crystal right behind him.  "What on earth are you girls screaming about?"

But Charles was staring coldly at Ophelia, his face completely devoid of expression, his eyes glittering with pale blue fire.  And then, in a tone so dangerously soft that it sent chills up the spines of everyone present, he murmured, "Is it true, then, that the two of you have deceived me?"

Mildred felt all the little hairs on the back of her neck go stiff.

"
Have you?
"

Amy, Sylvanus and Will regarded the two sisters in horror.

Mildred bowed her head.  "I'm sorry, Lord Charles but —"

"Of course we did, you fool!" cried Ophelia, swiping angrily at her tears.  "How often do you think girls like Millie and I get the chance to net handsome English aristocrats?  We never posted those letters for you!  We read them and listened in on your conversations with Amy and we made up the replies, but you never even suspected, did you?  Oh, how that poor silly chit in Boston must've grieved for you!  I wonder if she bore you a boy or a girl?  I wonder if she found someone else to marry so it wouldn't be raised a bastard?  I wonder if she even
survived
the news of your death, but oh, what difference does it make now, when you've long since forgotten her in favor of this — this whoring little savage!"

"
Ophelia!
" cried Sylvanus, but she turned and fled, sobbing, back into the house, leaving a shame-faced Mildred all alone with everyone staring at her in horror.

Sylvanus, looking as though someone had just punched him in the stomach, turned disbelieving eyes upon his daughter.  "Is this true, Mildred?  Is it true that you girls never posted those letters for Lord Charles, but made up false responses in order to keep him here?"

Mildred squeezed her eyes shut.

"Is it true that you willingly did this, and allowed him to think that everyone he loved, and who loved him in turn, had betrayed him?"

Mildred's entire face seemed to crumple before them; then, with a harsh sob, she pushed her fist to her mouth and fled into the house after her sister.

A terrible silence remained.

Sylvanus took a deep, bracing sigh, and as he released it, Amy saw, for the first time, anger coming into the eyes she had always known as kind.

"I am ashamed and embarrassed, Captain, by what my daughters have done.  I can assure you that they will be dealt with severely.  I'm sorry . . . if there's anything I can do —"

"There is nothing," Charles said stiffly, and then turned and walked a little distance away, his back to them all.

Sylvanus took a step toward him; then, thinking better of it, he went back inside, Will, with Crystal beside him, following sadly in his wake.

And Amy was left alone with Charles.

He took a few more steps, then sat down heavily on the edge of the watering trough, his head in his hands and his fingers splaying up through his hair.  He remained still for a long moment, and when he finally raised his head, wiping both hands down his face and blinking once in that slow, thoughtful way he had, Amy nearly cried for him.

"So the letters were never sent," he whispered dazedly.  "What a terrible irony . . .  Dear God.  Dear God, forgive me."

Amy quietly sat down beside him, but he made no move to reach out for her.  He did not even look at her.  And Amy knew that nothing she could say would take the pain away, or undo the wickedness of what her sisters had done.  If he never trusted another human being again, if he never opened his heart to anyone else after this, she would not blame him one bit.  He had suffered more in this past year and a half than any one person should have to suffer in a lifetime.

"How easily I have been deceived," he continued, head still in his hands as he stared at the ground at his feet.  "Why didn't I realize that your sisters were capable of such treachery?  That the situation was ripe for them to behave as they did?  But no.  In my despair, I never questioned the responses to my letters — and no one will have questioned what became of me."

Amy knew he was right.  When Charles had fallen at Concord, apparently dead, the army had gone on without him.  When Will had gone back for him, he'd switched his regimentals for the coat of a dead rebel.  And while the Englishman had been brought to Newburyport, the American had been buried in an enemy's uniform in a grave near Concord.  There was no reason for anyone to question the identity of the body that had worn Charles's clothes.  There was no reason for anyone to think Charles hadn't died that terrible day eighteen months past.