A vicar could not have smiled more benevolently. “I loved you all the more, my sweet Jane.”
Oh, God, her brother. The bond of blood! Her stomach roiled.
His hand cupped the back of her neck and drew her unresistingly against him to plant a brotherly kiss on her forehead. “Ah, Jane, the old Hindu was right after all.”
The brother she had so desperately wanted when she was a child. Oh, Terence!
“We can return to England together, Jane.” He stroked her back as he made the plans. “Soon Manor House shall be mine again, and we can—”
His hand, stroking her, hit her elbow, loosening the pistol from her grip. At once she was on her knees, grappling for the pistol, as was Terence. Then the explosion shattered her ears—and shattered her heart.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
“Hit’s all right, missus,” Polly cooed, as she unbuttoned the myriad buttons of her mistress’s blood-splattered dress. A frown puckered her rounded face. What dreadful thing had happened? The missus would say nothing. She moved, instead, almost like a sleepwalker.
Polly slipped the pink morning dress over the woman’s shoulders. “Just ye sit there before the looking glass, and I'll brush those tangles from yer ’air.” She tried to restore some semblance of propriety to the young woman’s wild appearance, all the while wondering where she could find the master. The missus needed him in a bad way.
Numb, Jane sat before her reflection. Terence was dead, and she would never know now if she would have had the courage to pull the trigger.
A thundering noise erupted from below, like the battering of a drawgate. With a small cry, Polly dropped the brush. Jane whirled around, eyes wide. Nerve-rending shouts rumbled up the stairway, followed by the pounding of feet on the wooden stairs. “Hang the bloody bitch!” came a woman’s shrill cry.
A score of men and women—young and old—burst through the doorway to overflow the room. But Jane saw only the victorious leer of Uriah Wainwright—and the object his left hand held. Her quirt.
“You recognize it, do you now, Lady Jane? Found it at the Tory’s place—along with these.” He tossed sheets of charred paper upon the bed. “They brand you as a Tory spy, my lady. As we shall brand you.”
“No!” she whispered in a raw voice. “You’re wrong!” Panic filled her lungs, so that even breathing was an effort, to say nothing of the words she might utter in her defense.
They gave her no chance. Her arms were twisted behind her, and the rabid mob hauled her down the stairs. Behind her she could hear Polly screeching the invective of a dockside whore, only to be suddenly silenced.
The size of the mob increased as Jane was dragged along the Duke of Gloucester, with Uriah proclaiming her treachery for all to hear. “Plotting to kill Washington, she was!” he answered to the curious who questioned the commotion. Whereupon near riots would break out. Angry jeers were hurled down upon her. A tomato, thrown by a boy who could not have been more than twelve, splattered against her stomach.
In the blinding summer sunlight the grim and forbidding public gaol loomed on the knoll ahead of her. Here almost sixty years earlier thirteen of Blackbeard’s henchmen were imprisoned and later hanged. Now the jail was badly overcrowded with British redcoats, Tory sympathizers, deserters, and spies. Yet she welcomed the refuge from the abusive hands that mauled her and the sight of the violent, blood-lusting faces.
But such was not to be her good fortune. Instead she was thrust roughly upon the pillory, her hands and head shoved into the apertures. Her loose hair was caught painfully in the padlock’s closure, smarting her eyes with fresh tears.
“Is it ready, gents?” came Uriah’s brittle voice.
She strained to see what was happening behind the cascade of her hair. The crowd of outraged citizens parted for someone, then Uriah came into her line of vision. His hand wielded—not her quirt this time but a branding iron, glowing red-hot. As he drew near her, she could hear the sizzle of its tip, formed in the letter T.
For once his slitted eyes were on a level with her own. Grasping a handful of her hair, he jerked her face upright and held the branding iron immediately before her. Its heat alone singed her flesh. Great silent sobs racked her body. “Please . . . oh God, no!” she gasped. She didn’t want to scream, to give the horde the satisfaction of seeing her cringe. She was a lady, wasn’t she? Her lids closed out the horror awaiting her, and her teeth sank into her lower lip to contain her cowardly outcry. Shudder after shudder passed over her.
The pleasure that awaited the task glowed as hot as the branding iron in his fox’s eyes. “The letter T for traitoress, milady.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“Milady is no traitoress.”
All heads swiveled in the direction of the baritone voice. As they had for Uriah, the crowd once more parted—this time for Ethan Gordon. His gaze swept over the mob, hungry for blood. But it would not be Jane’s. He permitted himself only the briefest glance at her to assure himself she was unharmed. His guts wrenched at the sight of her bound. Yet there was still that haughty glare in her eyes. A lady to the death, unless he could sway the mob’s intention otherwise.
He recalled the powder-smeared remains of Terence MacKenzie. Incredible that this meticulous, highborn lady was capable of such bravery. But then he should not find it incredible at all—had she not surprised him at every turn, this tempestuous madcap who was also capable of great warmth and giving?
Jane, resolute and faithful, dauntless and dear.
He turned his attention on the bastard before him. “Release her. ’ ’
The calm assurance in his voice visibly disconcerted Uriah. “We have proof she was in league with the plot to assassinate Washington!” he gloated.
Behind him the agitated citizens muttered their agreement. “Hang her!” shouted one voice among the furious onwatchers.
Ethan planted his fists on his hips and lazily surveyed the crowd. “Milady is a counterspy, good people.”
The milling crowd entirely missed his sarcasm. They were being cheated of their entertainment. Their vengefulness would not be appeased. “Prove it,’’ Uriah snarled.
Ethan swept a deep mocking bow. “The Leper, at thy service.”
“The Leper!” The exclamation leaped from person to person.
Derangement played across Uriah’s narrow face, but he kept the crowd in his grasp as he snapped, “That is equally impossible to credit!”
“Nevertheless, ’tis the truth,” Ethan drawled. The idea was so preposterous that he could see a few of the people entertaining the possibility of the statement. He strolled toward the pillory, throwing over his shoulder, “Check with Governor Henry, if thee doubts me.”
How long the surprising admission could hold sway over the people was uncertain. His large fingers worked deftly at the padlock. He saw the relief in Jane’s eyes—and that other quality he had been looking for these agonizing last few months. He quickly swept her up into the cradle of his arms before she could collapse.
As if he were the proverbial leper, the stunned citizens parted for him. Unmolested, he carried Jane along the oakshaded avenue toward the Paradise house. He knew he would not release her even when they reached his bedroom.
She murmured into the hollow of his shoulder, “Your heart is thudding like a drum, Ethan.”
“ ’Tis because thee is so heavy.”
She threw back her head, spilling her disheveled hair over his arm, and grinned up into his face. “I don’t know why I ever agreed to marry such a big lout as you.” Then, her lips—sensuously formed lips, he observed for not the first time—her lips lost their impish curve, as she said, “It’s true, isn’t it? You are the Leper.”
“No longer, mistress.”
“Jane.”
He grunted. “ ’Od’s blood, Jane, but thee is heavy!”
She nibbled at his earlobe, which made it difficult to concentrate on where he was going. “You exposed your cover—for me!” she marveled, low. “You must love me,
Ethan Gordon.”
“Aye,” he panted. “I suppose I must.”
She tilted her head back again. “But what will happen now? The Leper is exposed. You can no longer serve the colonies.”
Polly opened the door with an enormous grin. “Saved the missus, yew did, did yew, sir!”
He winked and climbed the stairs—slowly, laboriously. The spurs of his riding boots clinked in triumph. “My work for the . . . colonies . . . isn’t finished, Jane. I have been . . . asked by the general . . . to move to Paris to serve as . . . as Mr. Franklin’s diplomatic aide on . . . behalf of the American Colonies.”
“You—are going alone?” she asked in a small voice.
He kicked open the door and fell with her across the bed. “I didn’t think I was going to make it,” he gasped.
She wriggled from beneath his heavy thigh and leaned over him. Her unbound hair tickled his nose. “Ethan Gordon, I’m going with you!”
He caught her oval face between his great paws. “Did thee think otherwise? I have bought thee—I have married thee—and I am certainly not going to relinquish thee now, Jane Gordon.”
And then he whispered those words that for so long his pride had made him afraid to speak. “Thee I love.”
T H E E N D
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Watch forKINGDOM COME, due out in February, 2014.
Parris Afton Bonds is the mother of five sons and the author of more than thirty-five published novels. She is the co-founder of and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. Declared by ABC’s Nightline as one of three best-selling authors of romantic fiction, the award winning Parris Afton Bonds has been interviewed by such luminaries as Charlie Rose and featured in major newspapers and magazines as well as published in more than a dozen languages. She donates her time to teaching creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who has given outstandingly of time and talent to other writers. Prestigious recipients of the Parris Award include Tony Hillerman and the Pulitzer nominee Norman Zollinger.
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Mood Indigo Page 23
