“Sorry, Miss Lorelei.” The deputy sounded truly contrite.
Desperate now, Penelope gave her head a mighty jerk, ignoring the pain as Adele’s handful of hair ripped from her scalp. Flinging her now freed head back from the woman’s body, she shouted, “She’s lying! She’s the criminal, not Seth Tyler! She kidnapped my baby and has been blackmailing me with threats to his life.”
“As you can see, she’s out of her mind with shock,” Adele countered, fighting to hold onto her thrashing burden.
“No!” Penelope shoved against Adele with all her might, then bucked back in the same motion, heaving backward out of the woman’s arms. Like a sail in a blustery wind, the cloak unfurled from her body as she toppled, billowing to the ground where she fell upon it, naked and with the breath knocked out of her.
A buzz went up among the steadily swelling crowd at the door, while Seth rushed to her side. Where he was pale before, he was positively ashen now. Without a word he rewrapped the cape around her and helped her sit up, keeping his gaze averted from hers the whole time. Penelope, too, remained speechless, at first because she hadn’t the breath to speak, and then because she simply didn’t know what to say or where to begin.
It was Seth who finally broke their silence. “The child, is it …?” he asked, his hoarse voice breaking as his gaze met hers. His eyes were dark and shadowed with raw emotion: rage, betrayal, and a pain so terrible that it hurt to see it.
As much as she wanted to look away, to escape the soulpiercing sight of his anguish, she couldn’t. Not when she knew that she’d caused it; not when she wanted so badly to soothe it.
Gently laying her hand against his face, so white and rigid that it could have been carved from alabaster, she whispered, “Yes, Seth. You have a son. A beautiful, wonderful son.”
He closed his eyes then, as if in doing so he could shut out his pain. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why?” His voice was as tight and choked as if he’d just been gut-punched.
“I wanted to … I was going to,” she replied slowly, moving her hand from his cheek to tuck a tendril of hair behind his ear.
He jerked from her touch. “When?” he demanded. His eyes were open now and flickering like twin flames. “You, with all your talk of love and trust … when were you going to tell me of our child?”
“I was going to tell you just as soon as he was rescued from Adele. I had a plan. I was going to hire a tracker—”
“A tracker?” he echoed. His growing wrath was truly frightening to see. “You’d rather trust a tracker—a stranger—to rescue our son, than me, his own father? Christ, Penelope! How little you must think of me and my abilities.”
“No! It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t thinking straight,” she said in a rush, desperate to explain. “You don’t understand—”
“That’s because there is nothing to understand,” Adele cut in. “She had a baby, that much is true. I helped deliver it. But it died at birth, and she’s never been able to accept the loss.”
“That’s a lie!” Penelope exclaimed, looking wildly from Adele to the deputy. “Our baby is alive.”
Adele gave her a patronizing look. “Poor girl. She has these spells where she still believes he’s alive. Sometimes she tries to steal another woman’s baby, claiming it’s hers. Other times she blames me, or whoever happens to be handy, of kidnapping it. Obviously the trauma of the rape has prompted her delusions.”
“No!” Penelope glanced frantically from the deputy’s frowning face to Adele’s falsely solicitous one and finally back at Seth. Aside from a muscle working in his jaw, his face was now completely void of expression. Speaking more to him than the others, she explained softly:
“It’s true that Adele helped deliver our baby, but he didn’t die … though I almost did. It was a hard birth … a breech … I hemorrhaged badly and, in my weakened state, contracted a fever. While I was delirious, she stole the baby, and she’s been using him to blackmail me ever since … threatening to do all sorts of horrible things to him if I didn’t do her bidding.”
She touched Seth’s tense jaw then, a jaw so like that of their son, imploring him with her eyes to believe her. “I love my baby, just as I love his father. That love was what pulled me through my fever. Since then, I’ve done everything Adele has demanded to assure his well-being. I deserted my operatic career to travel the West with her company; I relinquished my money, my freedom, my self-respect; I deceived and lied to those I care for most. All to keep our child safe. All well worth the sacrifice.”
She thought she detected a softening in his eyes then, a barely perceptible change that she might have missed had she not known him so well. Lightly caressing his jaw with the thumb of the hand cupping it, she whispered, “At first I didn’t confide in you because of the things you said in New York … about me and Julian. I was afraid that you wouldn’t believe that the baby was yours, that you’d laugh and tell me that I got what I deserved.”
His face contorted, as if he were pierced by a savage pain. “Perhaps you were right in thinking me a fool. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps,” she cut him off quietly, “we are both fools. I should have confided in you yesterday when you trusted me with the truth about what happened in New York.” She shook her head. “But I couldn’t. I was ashamed to confess that our son had been kidnapped. I thought that if I had him rescued before I told you, that you might not think me such a complete failure as a mother.”
Seth laid his hand over hers on his jaw. “I wouldn’t have thought you a failure, not if you’d told me everything exactly like you just did. I’d have thought, like I do now, that you’re a wonderful, loving mother. The exact kind I want for my son.”
“This is all very touching, but a farce,” Adele snapped, effectively shattering the tender moment. “The child is dead, and he wasn’t yours anyway, Tyler. He was Byron Garrett’s.”
Seth’s eyes narrowed as he transferred his gaze to Adele. Pulling his face from Penelope’s hand, he rose to his feet.
“Seth—” Penelope began to explain, standing as well.
But he cut her off. “Byron Garrett? The actor?”
“The very same. Lorelei, or shall we say”—Adele glanced at Penelope smugly—“Miss Parrish, told me that she had relations with him while performing some opera at the Boston Theater.”
“I only said”—Penelope tried to interject.
Again Seth cut her off. “The opera was Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. For the record, Miss Parrish was a superb Isolde.”
Adele shrugged. “I’m sure, but the opera or her performance is hardly of any importance in this matter.”
“Every detail of her stint at the Boston Theater is of extreme importance to me,” Seth retorted, coolly. “For it was there, after the closing night curtain, that Miss Parrish agreed to marry me.”
Adele snorted. “No doubt she found herself caught and thought to cuckold you into giving Garrett’s bastard a name.”
“Seth … no,” Penelope gasped, the cape sliding down her shoulder as she reached out to clutch his arm.
But he ignored her. “You’re sure it was Garrett’s child?” His eyes were little more than glowing slits now as he studied Adele.
“Oh, it was Garrett’s, all right,” she asserted, tossing Penelope a triumphant smirk. “It looked just like him.”
Seth nodded slowly, as if mulling the idea over. “Then, Garrett is a man of rare skills. Very rare indeed. For Miss Parrish”—he shot Penelope a look of gentlemanly apology—“was a virgin when I first took her … just hours before he sailed for England.”
She smiled her forgiveness, her heart flip-flopping with joy as his lips crooked up into a faint grin. Everything was going to be fine. How could it not be with Seth on her side?
“Seems to me that the important question isn’t who fathered the baby, but whether or not it’s alive,” interrupted the deputy, who’d been silently following the exchange. “Which is a separate matter from what happened here.” He pointed to Miles’s bo
dy.
Penelope stepped forward, clutching the cape to her breasts. “If you don’t mind, Deputy, I’d like to tell my side of the story now.” When he nodded, she told of Miles’s obsessive infatuation with her, then recounted the events leading up to his death.
“And so you see, Deputy,” she finished, “Mr. Tyler was simply protecting himself when Mr. Prescott was killed.”
“It’s true, Deputy,” Seth confirmed, wrapping his arm around Penelope’s waist and kissing the top of her head.
The deputy glanced from the couple before him to the two saloon girls who had yet to speak up. “You,” he barked, beckoning the women forward. “What did you see?”
“It’s true that Mr. Tyler was on top of Adele, and that it looked like he was roughing her up,” replied one woman, a plump redhead with a pretty, freckled face. “But he got right off her and went over to Lorelei when she called him. The way he covered her up and touched her all tender and lover-like, well, it was obvious that things weren’t like they looked.”
The other girl, a petite brunette, bobbed her head. “Looked to me the way Lorelei said.”
The deputy turned back to Adele. “Well, ma’am?”
She shrugged, as cool as if she’d faced this sort of situation a hundred times before, which perhaps she had, given her nefarious activities. “Maybe I misread the situation,” she admitted with a snort. “But then, what was I supposed to think when I saw Lorelei lying there naked? I hadn’t a clue she was carrying on with Tyler.”
She fixed her icy gaze on Penelope then. “As for this nonsense about a baby, all I can do is plead innocent and challenge Lorelei to produce proof of its existence.”
The deputy considered for a moment, then nodded. “Seems fair enough to me. Miss Lorelei?”
Penelope looked frantically from Adele’s gloating face to the deputy’s querying one. She had no proof, and Adele knew it. The woman had taken great pains to see that she had none.
“Sweetheart?” Seth murmured, his arm tightening around her.
“I—she—” Penelope stammered in her urgency to make the deputy understand her position. “She’s got him hidden in a cabin in the foothills. I’m not exactly sure where … I was blindfolded when we went up there. But if you’ll hold her for a few days while I search, I know I can find him.”
The deputy shook his head. “Unless you can produce evidence that this baby exists, some sort of paperwork, or even someone who’s seen him, I have no grounds to hold Madame du Charme.”
“But can’t you see?” she cried, her voice now edged with hysteria. “If you let her go, she’ll take him away where I’ll never find him. Or maybe even kill him. Please—”
“Deputy, do you really want to chance having an innocent child’s blood on your hands?” Seth interjected, giving Penelope’s waist a reassuring squeeze. “Be warned: if this child comes to harm because of your failure to take action, I’ll see that you’re stripped of your badge and never hold a decent position again. By the time I’m done, you’ll be lucky to find a job digging graves.”
The deputy quailed visibly beneath Seth’s threat, yet he doggedly insisted, “The law is the law, and I can’t be arresting folks without evidence that a crime has been committed. Now, if the lady can show me something to back her claims—”
“I can back her claims,” boomed a deep voice from the door.
Penelope’s heart seemed to miss a beat as she swiveled her head to identify her savior. It was One-eyed Caleb. He was lounging against the doorjamb with his arm thrown casually around the shoulders of a buxom blond saloon girl. With a grace that was as beautiful as it was predatory, he straightened up and sauntered into the room, coming to a stop opposite Penelope.
“You’ve seen this child?” the deputy asked, hopefully.
Caleb nodded. “Lorelei, here, came to me a few weeks ago, wantin’ to hire me to rescue her kid. She didn’t have the money for my fee, but I knew by the look in her eyes that she’d get it somehow, so I went ahead and did the trackin’ on faith. I followed her and Prescott to a cabin in the foothills one Sunday, and saw her bring a baby outside to show it a couple of rabbits.”
Adele began to protest, but he cut her off. “It was Lorelei’s kid. Don’t let Madame, here, tell you any different I heard Prescott and another man talkin’ about it out back of the cabin. Seems Madame, here, has been up to some nasty tricks.” He fixed Adele with a look of pure loathing. “Never could abide anyone usin’ kids like that. Been eatin’ at me so bad that I was gonna get Lorelei’s kid back for her, free of charge.”
Seth stepped forward to offer Caleb his hand. “I’ll pay you double your usual tracking fee if you’ll take us to that cabin now. I want my baby safe as soon as possible and”—he shot a commanding look at the deputy—“Madame du Charme arrested immediately.”
While the two men shook hands, the deputy seized Adele.
“Yes. Hurry after your brat,” she taunted with wicked glee. “Who knows? You might even get there in time to find him alive.”
Penelope gasped, panic exploding in her chest.
Seth snarled, his hands clenched into fists as he advanced toward the gloating woman. “If you’ve harmed that baby—”
She laughed, a vicious, ugly sound. “Oh, I haven’t done a thing to your little darling. I didn’t have to. I got word days ago that he contracted measles from a wagonful of homesteaders who stopped at the cabin for water. Sam says he’s real sick.” Her eyes glittered with malice as she fixed her gaze on Penelope. “Seems you might get rid of your brat after all, Lorelei, just like you wanted when you came to me whining for an abortion.”
Penelope felt the color drain from her cheeks as Seth slowly turned to face her. He looked devastated, more wounded even than when he’d told her of his parentage. “You sought to rid yourself of my child?” he whispered hoarsely.
“Seth,” she murmured, shaking her head helplessly as she moved toward him. “I—”
“Is it true?” he demanded, cringing from her touch as if it burned him. “Did you wish to destroy our child?” His anguished gaze bore into hers, ruthlessly seeking the truth, fervently imploring her to tell him that it was all a lie.
After a beat, she opened her mouth to explain, to beg him to understand. But it was too late. He’d turned away.
He’d seen the answer in her eyes.
Chapter 25
No one in the party spoke as they made their way up the foothills toward the cabin where the baby was being held. Caleb, astride a black and white pinto, led the way, followed by Penelope and Doc Larson, with Seth trailing several paces behind.
Penelope had ridden by Seth’s side for the first few miles, tearfully trying to explain why she’d sought Adele’s services. But he was in no mood to listen, and after ignoring her for what felt like an eternity, she gave up and urged her horse forward to ride with the more congenial Doc Larson.
God, he was tired. So damn exhausted that he couldn’t see straight. Seth rubbed his eyes for the hundredth time that morning, then squinted painfully at the rocky horizon. What the hell was wrong with him, anyway? Not only did everything look like a badly focused photograph, but the sunlight, dim as it was through the covering of clouds, hurt his eyes almost unbearably.
And then there was his head. He soundlessly groaned his misery. The throbbing that had plagued him at the dance was back, and becoming alarmingly more intense as the hours went by. So were the dizziness and nausea.
Seth gritted his already clenched teeth tighter and braced himself more firmly in the saddle. It was a miracle he hadn’t fallen from his horse, what with his light-headedness. And thank God he hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday. He could just see it if he were to fall from his horse and be sick, Penelope would fuss and fawn over him, and show him all the sweet compassion of which he knew she was capable. That would be intolerable …
… And wonderfully welcome. He grunted his frustration. He was so damn confused about his feeling for Penelope and what she’d done, that
he didn’t know if he was coming or going.
While half of him understood the desperation that had driven her to seek Adele’s services, the other, perhaps the unwanted child he’d once been, cried out in protest. That an innocent babe should pay for his parents’ mistakes was an outrage he found unforgivable.
And yet how could he not forgive her? Especially when it was he who had driven her to Adele? By the very nature of his accusations, he’d made it impossible for her to come to him, leaving her with few options, none of them pleasant. Perhaps if he were in her shoes, he, too, might have approached Adele.
Seth shuddered. No. He doubted if he could be so cold-blooded. After all, was tearing a child from the womb really any more forgivable than killing it after it was born, as his mother had sought to do? If indeed his mother was guilty of that crime. Suddenly things were less black and white.
Hadn’t he seen by the example of his own son’s present circumstances that a mother was sometimes powerless to control her child’s fate? And knowing that, wasn’t it only fair to consider the possibility that his grandfather had kidnapped him, as Louisa claimed, and that she truly hadn’t found out that he was alive until years later?
That troubling hypothesis simply made his head pound harder, so he pushed it from his mind. He’d think about Louisa later, when his mind was clearer …
… If it cleared, Seth brooded, the ominous hidden-injuries-turned-fatal tales springing to the forefront of his mind. He grunted at his own foolishness. Ridiculous. There was nothing wrong with him. He was just tired, and with good reason. He’d spent the entire night making love to Penelope …
Like the thoughts of his mother, he instantly banished the remembrance of their night together. He wouldn’t think about their passion, their sweet rapture. To do so would only further muddy his judgment, and he had to view the present situation as objectively as possible. He had to decide what was best for their son, and then act on that decision.
Not that there was really anything to decide. Marrying Penelope and providing the baby with a home and a name was the only right choice there was. The real question was: could he live with Penelope knowing she was capable of being so heartless?
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