"Oh no, Christina. No more innocence, please. No more deception or lying. No pretending that what I saw didn't happen. I just want the truth. Just tell me why. Why did you do this?"
"But I didn't do it! I can—"
He flung the bottle against the wall. "Damn you girl! Don't lie to me!" Steffen saw you meeting with them—right here on the front lawns after dark. He saw you! Just like I saw you! Saw you hand them a letter that would hang me!"
"No," she cried. "I didn't—I mean I did meet with them... No—they met with me... while I was walking. They were waiting in the forest—"
"Yes, they were waiting, waiting because my wife told them that I wasn't there!"
"No, that's not true!"
"Oh? I suppose you'll deny that you planned to meet with them—to bring the letter?"
"Yes! I mean no—I didn't even find the letter then—"
"Then why did Steffen hear it mentioned?"
"He mentioned it! That man! Oh Justin, don't you see? I was just pretending!"
"Pretending? Were you pretending when I saw you hand him the letter?"
"He threatened me! He said he'd shoot—"
"There were no pistols, Christina."
"But he did!" She was crying now, trembling, not knowing what to do or say to make him believe her. "I was bringing the letter to you—"
"To me?"
"Yes, I—"
"Stop it!" he shouted, coming on her in an explosion of movement. He took her by the arms, stopping just short of shaking her senseless. "I've had enough of your lies! I know you did it! I know how you did it! But I don't know why? Why?"
Fear engulfed and choked her with a silent "no" that shook her head.
"Ah, my little whore," he said in a sudden and frightening change of voice. "That's what you are, you know. Only yesterday you lay in my bed and this while planning my hanging. Your performance was very convincing too. Very convincing, sweetheart. As a matter of fact, the only thing lacking in your performance, the only thing all truly good whores have over you and the one thing I will have from you is honesty! Answer my question! Why?"
"But... but... I d—didn't do it—"
"Damn you!" and his raised arm came hard across her face. The blow threw her to the floor and she went out quickly, easily, surrounded by a sudden safety of a black void.
Justin stared at her lifeless form until his rage and pain blinded him with his own tears. The shock of what he had never imagined doing to any woman, least of all Christina, could not break through the question that remained unanswered.
Why? Why did you do this?
* * * * *
Richard sat by the fireplace in blissful contentment, reading the medical journals found in Harvard's impressive library. The house was quiet, save for the crackle of the fire, the clink of his spoon as he stirred his tea. The last of his patients left hours ago, his maid recently, and he used the rare midnight hour of quiet to study.
Thanks to Justin, Richard's practice was booming. He was already reputed to be the best surgeon in town; one patient led to five others until his appointment book was full to bursting. A two-week wait if it was not an emergency. He would have to hire an assistant soon. There was a meeting scheduled at the end of the week with the dean of Harvard. The New World far surpassed anything he had dared to hope for.
Hearing a carriage pull up in front of his house along with the clamor of horses' hooves, he looked to the window. An emergency, he knew. He set down his tea and rose to meet them at the door.
Justin swung open the door without knocking just as Richard ran into the hall.
"Oh my God!" he said, seeing who rested unconscious in his arms. "What happened?"
"I hit her."
"You—" Richard stumbled over the word but, trained to act in emergencies, he snapped into action. "Bring her in here." He pointed to his examining room while he moved to light the room.
A half hour later he finished examining her and saw her up to his own bed. Her vital signs were good, and he had seen worse head bumps that did no harm. She'd either wake soon or slip from unconsciousness into sleep. Justin was lucky; his blow could probably kill a lesser man, yet alone a woman.
How in heaven or rather in hell's name could he have done such a thing?
Justin leaned against the fireplace, staring into the flames. He did not look up when Richard finally joined him in the study. "Is she all right?"
"I think so," he replied solemnly. "What happened, Justin?"
"I hit her," he repeated.
"You're drunk," Richard suddenly noticed.
"Yes. Quite."
"God, Justin, did you just get so drunk that you—" He could not say it.
"Yes and no. It's not so simple." Justin started through the events in an effort to explain. Richard kept interrupting with questions and Justin answered, hoping somehow Richard could explain it, but soon seeing he could not.
Richard had only one response to the fantastic tale that finally ended. "Christina did not do that."
"I saw her. I saw her put the pistol to my head and pull the trigger."
"Think on it!" Richard demanded, coming to him. "Christina? Christina could not hurt her own worst enemy yet alone the man she loves more than life itself. And you," he suddenly accused, "you have condemned her before hearing her explanation!"
"She would deny what I saw! She can give no explanation because there is none, save that she has hated me," he suddenly realized, "probably from the start."
A violence still radiated from Justin and Richard knew better than to defend Christina; he had no weapons in which to defend her anyway. He would have to wait until she woke and explained.
"My men will be waiting outside," Justin said in a voice that registered sudden exhaustion. "When she wakes and when you feel she is well enough, they will see her on board a ship that is sailing to Jamaica. She and Justin will stay with my relations there. Little Justin is already on board."
His son! He would lose his son in this as well. Lose him because he had not the strength to hurt her as much as she him. The silence filled his pain and then he resumed in a distant whisper, "Tell her though that it will not be forever. Tell her that someday and soon, I will find the strength to take him from her. Someday," he whispered passionately, "I will be able to hate her that much."
He looked up as though waking from a dream. Richard stared with unspeakable sympathy, wanting desperately to say something, anything to ease it, anything to stop him from sending her away. Justin was too torn to notice, yet alone respond to Richard's sympathy.
Until Richard found what he'd say. "When Christina lived with me she used to have a recurring dream."
Justin first thought he was going to describe the nightmare with which he was only too familiar.
"A dream where she spoke to you. Over and over again she'd cry in her sleep, 'Don't let me go, please don't let me go.'"
The whispered promise they made as lovers... Justin felt a dagger pierce his heart.
"Don't do it, Justin," Richard deplored. "Don't send her away before she explains."
"If only she could explain," he said after a pause, and then he would hear no more. He moved to leave. As he opened the door he realized he would probably never see Christina again. He suffered a fleeting moment in which he fought not to turn back. His hand shook as he shut the door and thereby broke the promise made to the only woman he would ever love.
* * * * *
Chessy woke in the middle of a cold night, having no idea what night it was. He immediately perceived a number of arresting facts. His head felt like it was split open with an ax and his jaw was broken. His pants were soiled and he smelled worse than a dead skunk. He was chilled to the bone; he might have been sitting in the fires of hell.
He spit out two teeth, the raunchy taste of old blood. Damn, but he'd be a grinnin' like old Hope afore his time! And that weren't the worst of it, no sir.
No the worst of it was he was sittin' on a bed of prickly needles with his arms a
nd legs embracin' the trunk of a pine tree like a dog humps a bitch in heat. 'Cept that he had none of the pleasure and all of the pain. Ropes bound his wrists and ankles and this made him wolf bait.
He tensed and looked around the eerie darkness of the forest, the idea of being wolf bait choked the cry in his throat and left him in an unnerving silence. Thoughts spun quickly. He thought of Christina heading into town with the letter. And when he thought of the trap those Frenchmen would surely set for her, of her lying on the road dead or bleeding, or wishing she were dead, he started screaming. One loud, long scream that lasted for hours. Wolves or not, his vision screamed for help.
* * * * *
Rosarn was finally returning from having spent the night at Jane's. Waiting on the front steps for the first sight of her and bursting with the news, Aggie ran out to meet her. "Rosy! Rosy! You won't believe what happened to the missus! I swear—"
"Oh I know all about it," Rosarn informed her with a dismissing wave of her hand. "I was there, you know—why, I even saw the missus off! Then I spent the night with Jane. You should have seen us," she laughed, "sitting up in bed, clacking away like two old hens in the coop. All the way to dawn. Oh!" She clapped her hands in excitement. "Wait till I tell ye the latest—" She looked at Aggie's stricken face. "Well, what's wrong, Aggie? Ye look like ye just passed judgment day."
"You know about it? About the missus findin' the letter?"
"Aye! I said I was there with Chessy when she found it. I went to fetch Raymond to drive her into town to see it to the master. Don't tell me!" She suddenly realized why Aggie was so excited. "We still get the bonus! Mr. Phillips will see us get the bonus even though 'twas his missus that found it!"
"No, no!" Aggie was shaking her head. "The missus betrayed him! She was the one! She turned the letter over to the Frenchman herself! He saw it! He caught her red-handed! Can ye believe it?" Aggie still could not. "Our own sweet missus doin' such a wicked thing? And he went up there last night and, and he struck her! Knocked her out cold and then he took her to town! But, and this is it—he took her trunks! I was told to pack 'em myself."
"What?" was all Rosarn could say.
"I says..."
It took Rosarn a good half hour to understand that something was horribly wrong. Something that no one knew yet. Something that had to do with... "Chessy? Where's Chessy?" she asked in a sudden panic after Aggie and the other servants went over the incredible story yet again.
Everyone gathered in Hope's kitchen looked around.
"Chessy ain't back yet," someone realized. "His wife's out back in the garden—"
"Oh dear!" Rosarn cried, and in a rush she tried to explain.
* * * * *
Christina woke at dawn's light and opened her eyes to Richard sitting by the bedside watching her sleep. Why was Richard watching her sleep...? "Richard?" she said in a question.
"Don't move, darling," he said in a voice all concern. "You've got a nasty bump on your head."
A bump?... She felt her head, and as she did so, her memory returned with a quick panic. She was afraid to move, to even look, until she knew. "Where... is he?"
"He left you with me."
She cautiously glanced around the room to ascertain the truth of this and, once done, ignoring all medical advice, she fell into Richard's arms. "Oh, Richard," she cried. "I didn't do it... I didn't do it!"
"I know... I know," he had to repeat a dozen times, for at first all she managed through her tears was this short denial of any guilt. Finally, with some effort, the story tumbled out, and after questions and answers and a hundred too many tears, the urgent point was grasped.
"He never received my message and they knew I was coming with the letter, so... Chessy! Oh, I'm afraid they... Oh please, someone must be sent to look for him!"
"Yes... yes, I see. I'll send for Justin immediately."
"No." This was whispered but firmly, as she wiped her tears.
"Christina, you have to explain to him what happened! My God, the man thinks... Why, right now two of his men waiting outside to escort you like a common prisoner to a ship that's bound for Jamaica. He's sending you away to live with relations there."
"He would send me... away?" The full import of this slowly sunk into her consciousness. "Little Justin?" she cried abruptly. "Oh no, Richard, he would try to separate me—"
"No, no. Little Justin is waiting on board." Pacing the floor now, Richard would not venture more of what Justin had said about his son in the heat of his anger.
Christina stared off into space. Never! He had always promised never to let her go—and now he would break that vow, a vow more sacred than the words uttered before a minister. Love was trust and yet he did not trust her. He would send her away and she would go—that was all. She would leave him again.
"You should see him, darling. His pain, rage, and God, but he is mad with it!"
She was silent.
"You must explain how it happened—"
"No," she replied softly again.
He looked at her with incomprehension, then suddenly thought he understood. "Oh darling," he came to her, "are you afraid? Are you—after—" Damn but he would choke on the words each time.
"Yes... and no. I don't know. I only know that I tried to explain what he should have already known once and—" As though transfixed, her hand reached slowly to her face where he had struck her. "And I'll not do it again," she whispered in a firm resolve. "If he wants to send me away, then I'll go."
"But he's going to find out sooner or later; he's going to know and then you'll be in Jamaica." He took her hands and pleaded for Justin. "He's suffering enough. Don't punish him more."
She wondered if punishment was her motivation; she couldn't dismiss the possibility completely. The only thing she knew for certain was that something horrible had happened to them. "I need time, Richard. I need to make sense of everything that has happened to us. Everything. I want to go away. I have to know if I still... if—" and like a physical force, the unfinished thought pushed her back into Richard's arms and she started crying again.
* * * * *
In his townhouse and lying on the couch, Justin was suffering the effects of two sleepless nights, enough liquor to stop an army, the rage and pain of losing two people he loved so desperately. The shades were drawn against the late morning sunshine. He held another full bottle of brandy in his hand, and no longer bothering with a glass, he systematically raised the bottle to his lips, drank, and set it down again. He thought if he drank long and hard enough, at some point he would be able to stop thinking.
He might have been successful, too, had his madness not drawn a series of starling conclusions stemming from his exact words to Richard. So startling, the conclusion brought him to his feet pacing in front of the mantel. So startling, it broke through the stupor of no less than three bottles of brandy.
Yes...
She had hated him from the start. Hatred from the moment she first saw him, so different from the imagination of a young girl's heart. Hatred from the day he abducted her, the day following when he stole her innocence. Only she had been so terribly afraid of him, so desperate to survive the ordeal, she concealed her hatred in love. A pretense of love as a desperate means of surviving. A pretense of love to appease a man she saw as, as—as what? A beast? A pirate? A killer of men and raper of women? Yes, a man despicably terrifying to her and this gross fear created the deception of love.
She escaped at her first opportunity only to soon find herself trapped again. Captured again. Again she escaped the only way she knew, by pretending love. There had been many clues throughout their time together; evidence of how she truly felt about him. The time she traded her wedding ring for a coin to buy a sketchbook, thinking him cruel and petty enough to deny her. The tears before and after their wedding night. And then, finally, the French agents presented her with an opportunity to free herself from him forever.
God it made sense!
He had never had her love! Never! He
had owned her as a man owns a slave, possessing her will and even her passion, but never her heart. She had kept that far from his touch; he had not even been close.
The thought of how desperate she must have been in the last two years overwhelmed him. He felt suddenly quite mad. Mad as someone feels upon discovering their reality is not shared by others. Mad as though he just realized that when he saw the light of day, others saw the dark of night. He fell into a frenzied craze; his hands shook and his heart pounded and just as he might have thoroughly lost control, a single sane thought crashed into his consciousness and demanded attention.
"Don't ever let me go."
Abruptly his thoughts spun. Could she have whispered that while hating him? While wanting only the opposite could she have laughed and teased, wanting him with such fierce passion while truly hating him, trembling in fear? Could a pretense of love be so convincing?
"No!"
And with this single declaration, the world came back to him with vivid clarity. He knew. He suddenly knew there had been a terrible mistake. He knew this without a single doubt and this, seconds before Jacob burst into the room with a letter in his hand.
"Jacob, there is a mistake here—"
"Yes," and knowing no other way to tell him, Jacob handed him the note to read. Not allowing anyone to disturb Justin, Jacob had taken and read the note sent by Richard. The note insisted only that men be sent out to look for Chessy. He had not understood this but had nonetheless done so. There were still many unanswered questions.
And now another note.
Justin read the letter written in Christina's own hand and could not at first speak.
"The gravedigger sent it over. It was found on Petiers's body. I already sent some men out to look for Chessy."
Justin raced to the door.
"It's too late." Jacob tried to stop him. "The men just returned. The ship set sail. She's gone."
"No..." was said as a desperate plea, and because he could not believe this, did not want to believe this, he started running. He ran out of his house and onto the busy street. He kept running and running and running until two miles later, he reached the dock and stopped.
Horsman, Jennifer Page 39
