The Bartered Bride

by Mary Jo Putney

  The livery stable Gavin used regularly was only two blocks away, so she turned left and ran. Despite the exercises she’d done in her cell, she was panting when she reached the stable. She went directly to the office on the left of the entrance.

  Fitzgerald, the owner, looked up and turned dead white. “Holy Mother of God!” he gasped as he crossed himself.

  “I’m not a ghost, Mr. Fitzgerald. If I was, I’m sure I’d be cleaner and better dressed. I was kidnapped and held prisoner near here.” She gulped more breath. “The hanging—it hasn’t happened yet, has it?”

  Startled recognition showed in the stable owner’s face. “Nay, but it won’t be long now. Blessed Jesus, what can be done?”

  “Would Seabourne still be at the Tower? Or on his way to Newgate?”

  “He was to spend last night in the prison. ’Twas said friends might try to free him if he was brought to Newgate today in a carriage.”

  “Lend me your best horse and I’ll ride there myself.” She hesitated, knowing the distance wasn’t great, but unsure of the route. “Can someone guide me?”

  “I’ll go myself.” He stood. “But my only sidesaddle is broken, my lady.”

  “I can ride astride,” she said impatiently. “But we must go now!”

  And may God grant that she be in time.

  Chapter 38

  “IT’S TIME, my lord,” one of the two constables said respectfully.

  “Very well.” Gavin finished his tea, a cup of Elliott House’s finest. Though he’d consumed a fair amount of brandy during the night, he’d avoided becoming drunk. Obliterating one’s last hours seemed a waste.

  Strange how hard it was to accept that death was imminent and unavoidable. Usually the end of life came by accident, or crept in with age and disease. There was something monstrously cold-blooded about an execution.

  He stood and checked in the mirror that his appearance was presentable, then turned to his companions. Ashburton had left in the early hours to make a last desperate attempt to get the sentence commuted. The other three men looked ready to shatter into small pieces. In some ways this was harder for them than for him.

  He shook Lord Michael’s hand. “Take care of Katie.”

  “We will,” the older man said gruffly. “She’ll know the truth.”

  To Kyle, Gavin said, “Thanks for…everything.”

  Unable to speak, Kyle gave him a swift, hard hug, then turned away.

  Taking Suryo’s hand, Gavin said quietly, “You have been more to me than my own father.”

  “And you have been the son I never had.” Suryo bowed over their joined hands. “May Allah guard your soul.”

  Gavin walked out of the room without looking back. His friends had been granted a place right by the scaffold. He wasn’t sure if he was glad or sorry they would be present. There was comfort in knowing men who cared about him would be bearing witness—but it also increased the pain.

  As they approached the Debtor’s Door, Gavin heard a rumbling chorus of voices chanting, “Seven, eight, nine…” The crowd was counting the tolling bells.

  On the twelfth stroke of noon, Gavin and his escorts emerged from the building at the foot of the scaffold, where a line of constables was holding a small area open. In front of him was the largest crowd he’d ever seen. The roar that greeted his appearance rattled the windows. As he climbed the steps to the scaffold, he felt waves of barbarous excitement and sick curiosity beating against him.

  Every window of every building in sight showed avid faces of people who’d paid a premium for a good view of the hanging. Thieves and workmen and drunken young bucks, fathers carrying children on their shoulders, enterprising peddlers who’d parked their carts against walls and were charging for the privilege of standing on them.

  A constable raised his voice to say, “At one Tyburn hanging, the viewing stand collapsed and a dozen people were killed. The cove who was executed went off with a smile at the sight.” Gavin understood the sentiment.

  Gathered on the scaffold were the wardens of the Tower and Newgate, the executioner and his assistant, and a grim-faced Lord St. Aubyn. As Lord High Steward, he’d used his authority to suggest that the evidence was far from overwhelming, to no avail. Now he must preside over a sentence that troubled him.

  The vicar was also present. “Will you pray with me, Lord Seabourne? For if not, I will surely pray for you.”

  This time Gavin nodded. What had seemed irrelevant the night before now appeared like a good idea. Two black cushions were produced, and he and the vicar knelt to recite the Lord’s Prayer together. Though Gavin had long since lost the habit of churchgoing, his Scottish grandfather had taught him to live a principled life. Was that enough? He hoped so, because he’d always believed a man’s acts mattered more than his words. If he hadn’t lived well, last-minute repentance was not enough to save his soul.

  When he stood again, Gavin recognized that the physical symptoms of fear were taking possession of his body. Pounding pulse, quickened breath, an explosive need for action—all the reactions that would be useful if he were in battle or fighting for his life. Now they only made it excruciatingly difficult to appear calm.

  As his hands were tied behind his back, he hoped he would not disgrace himself. When death was all one had left, one wanted to do it well.

  St. Aubyn said, “Do you have any last words, Lord Seabourne?”

  Gavin had thought to remain silent, but found himself saying, “May God protect the innocent from injustice.”

  St. Aubyn nodded, his lips tight.

  “The hood, my lord?”

  Gavin almost refused the executioner’s offer, not wanting to blot out his last view of the pale blue autumn sky with its drifting clouds. Then he saw the feverish, eager eyes watching him, and nodded for the hood. If panic contorted his face at the end, at least no one would see.

  Despite its looseness, the hood felt suffocating as it cut off his sight. The first of his senses lost. Hearing remained, the hammering of his blood drowning out the blood lust of the crowd. He reached for the mental and emotional discipline he’d learned from Suryo when he studied the fighting arts of the Islands. With detachment came a measure of peace. All men died; he’d cheated death more than once, and now his time had come. So be it.

  The rope was prickly as the noose was fitted around his neck. He wondered if the vicars were right and soon he would be with Alexandra.

  That was an outcome worth praying for.

  Alex gasped with horror at the teeming crowd that extended out from Newgate. As they reined in their horses, Fitzgerald said, “It don’t look good, my lady. You’ll go faster afoot.”

  “Thanks for your help.” She vaulted from her mount and began working her way through the crowd. “Please, I must get through!” she called over and over as a bell began to toll the noon hour.

  Frantically she tried to force her way through packed bodies. A massive stevedore turned and growled, “What’s your hurry?”

  “I’m the woman Seabourne was convicted of murdering,” she exclaimed. “Please, help me stop them from killing an innocent man!”

  The stevedore snorted as he took in her shabby appearance. “You’re Lady Seabourne? And I’m the King of England!”

  She raised her hand and showed the expensive rings that the Pierces hadn’t yet stolen. “Before God, I swear I’m Lady Seabourne. In the name of mercy, help me!”

  His expression changed. Turning, he began to force his way toward the scaffold. “Make way, make way!” he boomed. “’Tis a day for miracles.”

  She followed close behind him. Between jostling bodies and heads, she caught a quick glimpse of Gavin as his hands were tied behind him. He looked remote and beautiful, untouched by the raucous vulgarity of the crowd. She shouted in an attempt to get the attention of the men on the platform, but there was too much noise for a single voice to be heard.

  The stevedore stopped. “I can’t go no further, but mebbe you can go over the top if you’re game.”
r />   Not sure what he meant, she said, “Anything! And thank you.”

  He grabbed her around the waist and tossed her forward onto the crowd, bellowing, “Help the lady before the damned government makes her a widow!”

  Hands caught her and passed her forward in a crazy journey as men laughed and called, “Help the whore along!” Drunken men who thought this a game groped her, but she was getting closer, closer.

  Dear God, the noose was going around Gavin’s neck!

  Her rough passage had her almost to the steps, and suddenly she was looking into the stunned faces of Kyle, Suryo, and her stepfather. “Stop this!” she screamed as she tumbled over the last of the crowd, crashing downward between a pair of startled constables.

  “Merciful heaven!” Lord Michael plunged toward her while Kyle and Suryo pivoted and raced up the steps. But as the colonel pulled her into the space at the foot of the stairs she heard the sharp, unmistakably mechanical sound of the trap falling.

  Motion slowed as the trap shuddered and fell away from Gavin’s feet. The noose tightened with killing swiftness, choking the cry that threatened to rise from his throat.

  Then someone cannoned into him, dragging him to one side. The noose was still choking but his feet were on the scaffold, preventing him from falling.

  “Hang on!” It was Kyle’s voice in his ear.

  He tried to protest, unable to imagine the punishment his friend would suffer for interfering with an execution, but he had no breath, he was blacking out from lack of air.

  Then the noose suddenly fell way and the hood was wrenched from his head. Dizzily he saw Suryo with a kris, fibers of the rope falling from the wavy edge. And Kyle, speaking as he moved behind Gavin to untie the bonds that held his wrists, but it was impossible to understand the words.

  The officials on the platform were in turmoil, and the noise from the crowd had become a clamor that pounded like tidal waves. A tall, shabby woman with a disheveled dark braid falling between her shoulder blades was speaking to St. Aubyn, hands moving vehemently. Then she turned.

  Alex. Impossible. This was the hallucination of a dying man.

  “I’m really here.” The hallucination smiled crookedly. “I owed you a rescue.”

  “Alex.” He touched her, feeling solid flesh beneath his hand. Did spirits feel real to other spirits? “No. You…you can’t be.”

  “Believe it, my love.” She stepped forward and embraced him, warm and shaking and feeling exactly like Alex. Breath ragged, he wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck.

  If this was hell, he wanted to stay forever.

  By the time they reached 42 Berkeley Square, Alex was weaving from exhaustion. She’d acquired a variety of bruises in her passage through the crowd, but no matter. After St. Aubyn had ushered everyone into the relative quiet of the prison, she’d explained the plot and handed over the key to the wine vault. St. Aubyn had immediately sent constables to arrest the Pierces, assuring Gavin and Alex that this time, justice would truly be done.

  The colonel, after a hug that threatened Alex’s ribs, set off for Wales with the promise he’d have Katie and her mother in London within the week. Kyle, jubilant, left for Wrexham House to tell Troth the good news. He promised they’d call, but not until the next day. Gavin’s heir, Philip, talked his way into the prison, and shook his cousin’s hand with what looked like genuine pleasure. Then, blessedly, Suryo had taken charge of getting Gavin and Alex safely home in St. Aubyn’s own carriage.

  Throughout it all, Gavin said hardly a word. She guessed that he was still disoriented. What would it feel like to have accepted death, then be rudely jerked back to life? She shuddered when she thought how very, very close she’d come to failing.

  Bard blanched when he opened the door and saw two people he thought dead on his doorstep. Alex said, “Suryo, will you please explain to everyone what happened?”

  “With pleasure, my lady.” Suryo’s smile was white against his dark skin as he took Bard off to the servants’ hall so everyone could hear the good news at once.

  Since Gavin seemed uncertain what to do next, she took his hand and led him upstairs, saying, “All I want is peace and quiet and you.”

  When they reached the privacy of her room, he turned to her, shaking his head. “I’m still not quite sure you aren’t a dying man’s fantasy.”

  “Let me see if I can persuade you otherwise.” She walked into his arms, wrapping herself around him. His hands began kneading her as if, piece by piece, he was confirming that she was real. “You’ll just have to get used to having me around again, Gavin, because from now on I’m staying very, very close.”

  Her warm, dearly familiar body began to dissolve his emotional paralysis. “Alexandra.” He breathed her name as he mentally tried to define a difference he sensed in her. A good difference. “If I live to be a hundred, nothing will ever match the joy of finding you alive.”

  “And I you,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “It was so close. So terrifyingly close.”

  “You’re a hero, Iskandra. The bravest, most indomitable woman in the world.”

  She grinned. “And also the most bedraggled. I’m glad I was allowed washing water, or I’d hate to think what my condition would be.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. You’re still the most beautiful woman in the world.” He kissed her and slowly the warm essence of his wife began to thaw his frozen spirit.

  The kiss deepened, and suddenly joy and wonder and passion blazed through his veins. Her response flared to meet his. Tripping each other with impatience, they moved to the bed. He fell backwards onto the mattress, pulling her down on top of him.

  “No,” she gasped. “Not this time.”

  For a moment he thought the last terrible weeks had created new fears, but instead of retreating, she locked her limbs around him and rolled over so he was on top of her, his weight pressing her into the mattress. “Today, Gavin, I’m afraid of nothing.”

  Urgently he tore at their clothing, clumsy with need. Her hips rose to meet his as they came fiercely together. The life he’d thought was over poured through him and into her, scalding and joyous. She cried out, and for an instant he felt their spirits become one. All that she was became part of him, enriching his existence.

  They lay panting together for a long time, reluctant to separate. Finally he rolled onto his side, clasping her pliable body to him. She slipped one leg between his and rested her forehead against his cheek, twining them together.

  “I’ve never felt so alive in my life. The very air seems to sing. And you, my dearest love, are magnificent beyond words.” He kissed her forehead. “One of the things I regretted most was that I’d never said I loved you. I…I thought I’d lost the ability to love deeply, Alexandra. That’s why it took so long to recognize.”

  She gazed at him through her dark lashes. “I had the same problem. I think it’s because we did everything backwards. Disaster, marriage, and then love. It wasn’t easy to get beyond everything that happened, but now….” She traced the line of his jaw tenderly. “Finding you made everything in the Indies worthwhile.”

  He laughed. “I wouldn’t have minded a boring courtship, but then I don’t suppose I’d have fully realized how incredible a woman you are. You’re whole now, aren’t you? I can feel the difference.”

  He was right, she realized. The ragged pieces of her spirit had healed, and never again would fear rule her life. “More than whole, my love.” She took his hand and placed it on her belly. “I’m quite certain that young Viscount Handley is here.”

  As he caught his breath, hope and concern in his eyes, she said quietly, “This time everything is going right.”

  “This time, and forever.” He smiled with deep intimacy—her husband, her lover, her mate. “Don’t you think we’ve earned the right to live happily ever after?”

  Epilogue

  USUALLY THE seating of a new peer in the House of Lords was a quiet matter, but never before had that august chamber re
ceived a man whom it had condemned to death. That fact made for an atmosphere that was…interesting.

  Feeling a deep sense of unreality, Gavin entered the great hall with his two sponsors. He felt absurd in his formal robes of state—how many ermine had died for the glory of the Seabourne rank? Too many. And he’d never worn velvet before in his life.

  In need of sanity, he glanced up at the small gallery to find Alex. She was seated between her daughter and mother, in the middle of a larger group of friends and relatives. Troth was there, and Lady Jane Holland, and the Duchess of Ashburton, looking very grand. The sight relaxed him, for in the last months they had become his friends, not merely women of rank and privilege.

  Alex wore a necklace featuring the baroque pearl he’d taken from the neck of the Maduri dragon, and she touched it when he looked at her. The gesture was a private reminder that the dragons of the House of Lords paled in comparison to the ones he’d defeated in the past.

  He smiled, briefly able to forget the gravity of the day. It had only been a month since the birth of their son, James Michael Elliott, and Alex’s Madonna curves were softly luscious. She threw him a kiss, perhaps thinking of the night before, when she’d announced herself more than ready to resume her wifely duties. And she had, with enthusiasm and imagination….

  Wrenching his mind away from the intimacies of the night, he studied the seated rows of Britain’s aristocracy. Today they were not his judges, but his peers. Many of them were poker-faced in a way suggesting embarrassment—after all, they’d very nearly executed an innocent man, and in some cases judgment must have been based on distaste for his foreignness rather than the facts of the case. Other expressions were more welcoming, particularly from those lords whose consciences were clear where Gavin was concerned.

  Traditionally two sponsors of equal rank introduced a new lord, so Gavin was flanked by Kyle and his brother, Lord Grahame. It was startling to see the twins together, identically dressed. Catching his glance, Kyle winked. At least, Gavin thought it was Kyle.