Every Time I Love You (31 page)

She winced painfully. “Please, Charles—”

“No. No, I do not please!” He slammed his glass upon the desk and stood, blond and handsome and striking—and cruel. “We will play no more games, Katrina. We will not fight. I will not drag you anywhere, kicking and screaming. I will make it very simple. Your husband lies under my power. Think of me as God, Katrina. I have given him his life, and I can take it away. It is completely up to you. And you know exactly what I want. I will give you about five minutes to decide. If you wish for your husband to live, you will stand up and walk back to that bedroom, cast away those bloodstained garments and scrub away your Yankee stench. If you choose not to do so, I will go out now, this very night, and have him wrenched from his bed, drawn to the square, and hanged. Do you understand your options, Katrina?”

She stared at him, and she prayed that he would say that he did not mean it; he was a British lord, after all. But he did not smile and he did not blink. And he was not lying, she knew. She began to pray that lightning would strike, that the earth would open up and swallow them all whole, that Armageddon would come.

Nothing happened. Seconds ticked away.

“He would rather die,” she whispered.

“Perhaps. If he knew.” Charles shrugged. “He would never need to know. For such a little, little thing, you can buy him life. He shall never be the wiser, and in the years to come you will be his wife, and not his widow. Are you so ready to see him hang, then? Is his life so cheap to you?”

“You can never understand such a man, Charles. You don't begin to understand honor, and it means everything to him.”

“Oh, really? Dead, Katrina, how shall he ever defend you? When he is hanged, I will return you to your brother and he will deal with you as he sees fit. When I finish with you, that is. I am not a barbarous man, but...”

She kept staring at him. The pain in her head became such a buzz that she could not bear it, and then it began to dull. She felt nothing but numb.

He came behind her and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Your time is nearly up. Get up, Katrina. And be ready for me. I will be with you in twenty minutes.”

“I don't trust you,” she said emotionlessly. “What will prevent you from having Percy hanged one hour from now?”

He went back to the desk and drew out a sheet of paper. He scrawled upon it, then offered it to her. “It is a pass. Back through the British lines. You will give me two days. He will need those two days for recovery, or he will die anyway when you try to move him. Two days, Katrina. Two days, and you will be free.”

She remained silent.

“Am I so loathsome, then?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. But she stood, and she snatched the pass from him.

He smiled, stretching his legs out on the desk. “Well, my dear Katrina, you will try very hard not to show it. Go. Your time is up.”

She swung around and she marched back across the hall and into the bedroom. She slammed the door and sank into despair, giving way to the sobs that welled within her.

There was a tap on the door. “Ten minutes, Katrina.”

Thankfully, the numbness fell over her again. Heedlessly she rose. Steam no longer rose from the tub and she was glad; the water had gone as cold as her heart.

It was the only way she could bear it.

When the ten minutes had passed, she was waiting for him. The shadows of dusk fell over the room. She bit her lip as he paused, seeing her there; then she closed her eyes as he began to undress her. He's not ancient, she told herself. He was young and well muscled, and his teeth were his own. He was fastidiously clean.

It did not help her. When he crawled beside her, when he touched her, a cascade of silent tears ran down her cheeks.

“Don't cry, Katrina,” he warned her. “Don't cry.”

She forced herself to stop. And inside, she began to shrivel up, and she felt that she was rotting.

Nothing could ever be the same again. Nothing in life. Perhaps Percy would never know, but she would, and that knowledge would lie in her heart forever.

* * *

Two days later, she rode away with Percy. He was still barely conscious. Katrina drove a pony cart with a flat attached where he could lie. She was grateful for one thing. He had barely been aware of anything since the moment he had been shot.

An armed guard escorted her part of the way. And after that, she was accosted by rebel lookouts. A riotous cheer went up when she identified herself and Percy, and they were given an escort back into the camp at Valley Forge.

Percy was ill through most of the winter, sometimes desperately ill. But on January 1, 1778 he awoke with clear eyes and a clear mind, and he reached out his arms to her. And she was certain that any price was well worth his tender smile.

It was not so easy, of course. She had to explain, with her heart beating double time, that the commander of the loyalist troups had been an old friend, who had let them escape, due to past associations.

Percy frowned at first. He had been certain, right before losing consciousness, that someone had been speaking caustically to her. She shook her head, gave him a brilliant smile, and kissed him again, laughing because he had grown such whiskers.

“You have been very, very ill. Feverish and delirious,” she told him. “See! It was a friend, for we are here, and we are alive. And Percy—oh, my love!—I could not live without you!”

Sore though he was, he pulled her to him, and his tender kiss became a hungry one. Weak as he was, his hands were suddenly everywhere, and before she knew it the ardent, desperate flames of her own desire had been kindled, and she was with her husband once again. Through it all, she was aware only of him, of the sweet and magical and heady passion that so sweetly raged between them. When it was over, she was grateful. So very grateful, because she had dreaded making love again. She had feared it, until it had happened so naturally. She had been afraid, horribly afraid, that she would burst into tears, that she would shiver or shake, that there would be some telltale sign that he would notice, that he would pull from her horror, that he would discover what she'd done—and despise her.

None of that happened. He whispered how much he loved her, and in the long winter nights that followed he proved it so tenderly that she was nearly able to forget herself.

It wasn't until spring, until Percy was on campaign and she was home again, that she had cause to panic once again. She was pregnant.

She didn't send word to him for the longest time because she was afraid, deathly afraid. So afraid that she was ill with it, and nearly lost the child. In May, she wrote to him because she knew that if she did not send word someone else might do so. In her missive she tried to sound optimistic and cheerful because she figured Percy was feeling downhearted. The war was wearing on and on, and it was going so drearily for the Patriots. The British army was regular and well trained and heavily supported with mercenary troops. The Patriots came from thirteen different colonies, and they were often ill-clad and ill-equipped and ailing, to boot.

He came back to her, though. She would never forget it. It was the end of August, and the hot weather was just giving way to lovely cool nights and breezy days. He came riding down the path pell-mell, his horse rearing as he reined it in before the veranda. He leapt down and hurried to her, so handsome in his tight, dove-colored britches, knee boots, and loose white shirt. She felt so heavy! But he lifted her off her feet as if she weighed nothing, and he kissed her and he laughed and he lamented the fact that she had grown so very big without his being there to see it. She tried to smile and she started to cry because she didn't know how to tell him that she was desperate for her pregnancy to last another month, so that she would know Percy to be the child's father for a certainty.

It did. God must have smiled upon her, for their son—James Percival, after her father and Percy's dear friend and Percy himself—was born on October first, nine months to the day from that first time they had touched after she'd fulfilled her bargain with Lord Palmer.

And again, when she held her son, when she and Percy marveled over him, she was glad again for life. She could forget the horror in the beauty. If there were no war...

But there was a war. A never-ending war, it seemed. Percy would come home to her and ride away again. Time helped to ease the painful memories of the past, but the future grew more arduous. With joy Katrina watched her son grow, but with dread she watched her husband ride away again and again. Battles were won, and battles were lost. The British came south, attacking in Georgia and South Carolina. Savannah fell in December of 1778; Charleston was captured in May of the following year.

And in the spring of 1781, the British decided to use Yorktown, Virginia, as their base of operations.

Katrina had heard nothing of this development. One morning she woke to see that there was a British gunboat out in the river. She panicked, for there was no one to help her. James, Percy's old friend, led a militia group, which spent much time riding the countryside to protect it, but they would be no match against this kind of force.

Nearly one hundred people lived on the estate, and another hundred lived on the surrounding farms. Katrina wondered if they would burn the house—it was, after all, Percy Ainsworth's house. Then she remembered, with a full and blinding clarity, everything that had happened to her in the winter of 1777, and she nearly became hysterical. She could not lose control; she did not have time.

Quickly she packed a bag for the baby and called a group of the household servants and a young tenant farmer and his wife, entrusting them to bring her son inland, to Percy's cousins in the Valley. She wrote a hasty letter and prayed that it might find its way into Percy's hands, telling him about the ship, and in her haste, telling him that she was afraid. She knew that he was somewhere near. Benedict Arnold, the despised turncoat, had just led troops against Richmond, and Percy had been ordered south to harass and raid the British flank.

She kissed her son, allowing herself the luxury of a few tears; then she watched from the back until he was gone.

By then, the British were coming up the path to her home.

She prayed that this time it might be different. There were many fine officers and men in the enemy army; she knew a number of them.

But when the men drew near to the veranda, her heart sank. There was a naval captain among them, telling her that he needed supplies for his vessel and his troops. She would have gladly supplied their ship and their troops, if that had been all. She wouldn't have had much choice; she didn't have the power to stop them.

But the naval captain wasn't alone. Both her brother, Henry Seymour, and Charles Palmer were with him. Seeing them, Katrina had to grip the column to remain standing.

Henry came straight to her. Katrina ignored him. It had been more than five years since she had seen him. She told the ship's captain that he could take what he wanted, surely. She would be happy to deal with him—but she would have nothing to do with Seymour or Palmer.

“Sweet sister! Sweet, sweet sister! After all these years!”

Henry came up the steps in a fury, pushing her toward the door of the house. “Get back in!” he commanded her. He turned to the naval captain and told him to proceed with supplying his ship.

Henry Seymour drew her into the passage. He and Lord Palmer surveyed the manor with a practiced eye, opening doors to find the salon. With the three of them in the room, Henry closed the door. The silence that held for several seconds was stark and painful. “We should burn it, burn it to the ground,” Henry muttered. Then he swung around on Katrina in a sudden fury. “Witch! You turned traitor on me, Katrina. Whore, and then traitor. After all I did for you.”

“Henry, you must not be so harsh,” Lord Palmer murmured solicitously. Katrina ignored him; she despised even the sound of his voice.

“All that you did for me!” she cried to Henry.

“Still, still, I am your brother, and blood runs thick. When it is over, if Ainsworth is not slain, I will procure an annulment for you. You married without my permission. I will take you home, Katrina, to Kent.”

“Spare me your kindness, brother,” she said bitterly. “I was never anything more to you than a pawn, Henry. And I will never go back to England. I am well of age now, and I will never leave my husband!”

Lord Palmer paused by her fine Chippendale table, fingering the brandy decanter. “And child?” he queried pleasantly.

“My son is not here; you cannot threaten me with him.”

“Threaten you? Why, I'd no intent to threaten you, my dear. I merely wanted to see if he was mine. I'd heard of his birth, of course.”

She inhaled sharply, then narrowed her eyes. “You need have no fear. He is not.”

“Why the hostility, Katrina? After the disgraceful way you behaved. Charles is still willing to marry you.”

“You are both insane!” she hissed. “Now get out of here—your people have taken what they wanted. Go!”

They smiled at each other, as if she had lost her mind. Perhaps she had. There were a few frightened slaves in the house, no one who could come to her defense. She realized with a sinking feeling that they were merely playing with her, that they would do as they so chose.