Sweet Release (18 page)

Lifting her chin, she walked over to Andromeda and took the mare’s reins.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to merit your rage, Mr. Braden, but I am not some alehouse trollop to be used and dismissed at your whim.” The trembling of her voice betrayed the torrent of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.

He turned toward her and fixed her with an unyielding gaze. “What kind of woman would want to make love with a man she thinks is a rapist?”

Comprehension flooded her, and she felt the color drain from her face. She understood the question and its horrible implications. “You are not a free man yet, Mr. Braden. I pray for your sake you remember that.” She climbed into Andromeda’s saddle. “Your insolence could be your undoing.”

“How right you are, mistress.”

* * *

Alec gave Cassie a good ten-minute head start before he mounted and began the ride back, sure she wouldn’t want to arrive home in her disheveled state with him at her side. That would undoubtedly spawn awkward questions and unkind rumors.

When he’d first spied her she’d seemed a vision of Ophelia, floating lifeless and beautiful on the river. He hadn’t realized until she had begun to thrash and kick at him that she was alive, and that was one moment too late, he thought ruefully, shifting in the saddle. Though his dip in the river had cooled his skin, the sight of her clad in that wet chemise, the curves of her body outlined in transparent white, had given rise to heat of a kind that no amount of cold water could douse. If he’d had any sense he would have brought an end to this torment by giving them both what they needed. Had she not spoken his convict name, bringing him to his senses, he would have. But if he was going to make love to her, he would make love to her as Alec Kenleigh, not Cole Braden. Deep down she believed him. He knew she did. But for some reason she would not admit the truth, not even to herself. She would not have allowed him to lass her and touch her the way he had if she truly believed him a felon. Nor would she have kissed him back with such fervor, touched him so boldly.

He could still feel her fingertips moving over his chest, taste the sweetness of her lips as she opened her mouth to his. And the way she’d smiled when she’d seen the effect she had on him . . . it was the smile of Eve, of a woman just discovering her primal power.

Damn.’ He shouldn’t be attracted to her. She was not the sort of i woman he wanted. She was bossy, too assertive for a female. She had a hellish temper. She kept slaves.

Slaves carried over in Kenleigh ships.

The mare began to prance uneasily beneath him, jerking at the reins.

“It’s all right, girl,” Alec crooned, puzzled, tightening his grip.

Boadicea stomped, snorted, and rolled her eyes in fear.

Alec felt the horse’s muscles bunch as if to rear.

Timber groaned and cracked. Alec jerked his gaze toward the sound, kicked in his heels, and gave Boadicea her head. The mare sprang forward. With a crash, the tree hit the road behind them, missing them by a yard.

Alec muttered reassurances and pulled the reins hard, trying to slow the spooked horse. “Whoa, girl. We’re fine. Good you were paying attention.”

The whites of the horse’s eyes flashed, but she began to settle under Alec’s firm handling. Still, they were a good quarter mile down the road before Alec could safely dismount and retrace his route to check out the accident that could easily have spelled his death. From a distance he could see it was an old tree, enormous, its branches dead, its exposed wood whitened by sun and wind. For a moment he thought it had simply collapsed from age and decay. Then he saw the choppy marks of an ax on its stump, fresh wood chips in the grass.

He glanced around but saw no one. Depressions in the grass around the tree told him someone had been there moments before. But who? And why? Mounting again, he rode through the trees looking for answers.

When he neared the plantation outbuildings a frustrating hour later, Alec glimpsed two carriages in the courtyard, one pulled by a matching pair of bays, the other by a team of dun geldings. Recognizing the latter as belonging to Sheriff Hollingsworth, he brought Boadicea to a gallop.

Freedom had arrived at last.

Hitching the mare to the porch rail, he took the steps to the great house two at a time and was met at the door by Nettie, who led him down a hallway to a simply but elegantly furnished sitting room. He’d barely had time to register the seated forms of Cassie and the sheriff, to note Geoffrey Crichton’s overdressed presence at the window, when a strange woman detached herself from the background and walked toward him.

“Well, ‘ello there, Cole,” she said, her smile revealing broken and missing teeth, her tone openly sexual. Her face, though perhaps once pretty, was wrinkled and scarred from the pox. “Miss me?”

Alec saw the blood drain from Cassie’s face, saw her hands clutch the arms of the chair. “Who is this woman?” he asked.

“A fellow prisoner from Newgate who has just confirmed that you are, indeed, Nicholas Braden, felon and liar.” Crichton turned toward Alec with a triumphant sneer.

“That’s impossible.”

“You’d best give up this ruse, convict, for it will bring you nothing but the lash,” said Crichton, resting one hand on the back of Cassie’s chair and giving a limp wave with the other. “One would think from the look of your scarred hide that you’d had enough of that to last a lifetime.”

Alec had never been accused of lying, and had he been at home in England he would have called out any man who dared to do so. It was by the slimmest margin that he now managed to keep his temper in check.

“I speak the truth,” he said, addressing the sheriff, who sat on a green brocade settee, his enormous form taking up space intended for two. “My name is Alec Kenleigh. I’ve never seen this woman before today.”

“More lies!” Crichton snarled.

“Sally, you’d best take another look. A man’s life is riding on this,” the sheriff said to the bondswoman. “We already know you’re a thief, a whore, and a liar. Consider yourself under oath. If we learn you’re lying about this, you’ll stand in the pillory, and I’ll personally cut off your ears.”

For a moment the bondswoman’s face turned a sickly white. Then she stepped closer to Alec, inspecting him from head to toe. Her brown hair was heavily streaked with gray and hung in dirty strands to her shoulders. She stank. How could any man, no matter how long deprived of the pleasures of a woman’s body, pay to tup such a repulsive creature?

“You claim to have known Nicholas Braden in prison?” asked Cassie, rising. Dressed in a pale blue gown, her hair freshly coifed, she looked every bit the genteel plantation owner’s daughter, not i at all the type to swim in her shift alone in a river. Her face was impossibly pale. Her hands were trembling.

“Aye, I knew him, if you get my meaning, missy,” Sally said with a lewd grin. “He had a big appetite for the ladies, ‘e did. The gaoler gave me to ‘im more than once.”

Cassie’s eyes widened, and Alec saw hurt and remorse fill them.

She looked away.

“Cassie, she’s ly—”

“He’s hung like a bloody stallion, though ‘tain’t how big it is, mind,” Sally said,” ‘tis what a chap does with it what matters.”

“Quit your indecent prattle, woman,” said Crichton, with a menacing glare that made Sally visibly shrink. “Miss Blakewell is gently bred and needn’t hear such filth.”

“Is this or is this not Nicholas Braden?” asked the sheriff impatiently.

The room was silent. Sally’s gaze darted to Crichton before resting on Alec. “Aye,” she said at last.

“Who is forcing you to lie?” Alec demanded, grabbing the old woman’s wrist and forcing her to look him in the eye. “Is it someone in this room?”

The woman’s brown eyes grew wide with fear, and she began to stammer incoherently. What at first was only a hunch, Alec now knew to be the truth. Someone was coercing her to lie about him. Someone here had so terrified Sally, she had risked mutilation and public humiliation to avoid his—or her—wrath. Inspiring such horror hardly sounded like something of which Cassie was capable. But if not she, then who? Crichton, perhaps? The fop hated Alec, for certain, and the old whore seemed afraid of him. But then his contempt for all beneath him was palpable. The sheriff? What motivation could he possibly have?

Filled with pity and disgust, Alec released her. There seemed to be little point in further questioning the woman. He felt certain that whoever had put her up to this was in the room, watching. She’d reveal nothing more.

“Murphy, what say you?” asked the sheriff.

Alec noticed for the first time a wiry, middle-aged man with an unusually long nose; he was standing off to one side, holding his hat in his hands. Dressed in a plain cotton shirt and breeches, the man examined him carefully, one hand stroking the stiff gray whiskers on his chin.

I can’t be certain,” he said at last. “Braden was a tall man, for sure, and ‘is hair was dark. But the nose is all wrong, and ‘e was soft around the middle, not the hale sort at all.”

“What about my voice?” asked Alec. “Surely you had occasion to speak to the man. Was his voice like mine? Was his speech refined?”

Murphy considered this for a moment. “I can’t say for certain. Braden always used pretty words, sir, but the voice . . . It has been so long. Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” he said to Alec. “I just can’t remember.”

“Is there anything else you two can tell us?” asked the sheriff. “Did anything unusual happen before you sailed? Did you see or hear anything?”

Sally shook her head, looking at the floor.

Murphy rubbed his whiskers, then nodded. “Braden took sick with gaol fever afore we sailed. He was shakin’ and shiverin’ wl they brought ‘im aboard. Couldn’t walk, eat, nor hold up ‘is head” he said. “Thought they should’ve just left ‘im in the gaol to die in peace instead of sendin’ ‘im to this place.”

“Get on with it, man. Just tell us the parts of the story we need to hear,” demanded Crichton, looking both bored and agitated

“Some of the men swore Braden died the night afore we sail. They says they saw ‘im starin’ open-eyed at nothin’, blue as the sea and not breathin’. Since his shackles was empty that mornin’ believed ‘em. But the next I knew, a fellow the crewmen said Braden was makin’ such a noise on the other side of the wall, captain had ‘im flogged, not once, but two or three times. I member thinkin’ that the fever must ‘ave destroyed ‘is mind.”

Alec closed his eyes. Broken images flashed through his memory. His wrists bound painfully above his head. Darkness. Throbbing pain in his head. A foul-smelling rag in his mouth. Unrelenting thirst. The agony of the lash as it bit into his flesh again and again.

“That was not Nicholas Braden. Twas I,” he said after a moment.

“So you awoke one morning to find Mr. Braden’s shackles gone and were told he was dead?” Cassie asked. Some of the color I returned to her cheeks.

Murphy nodded.

“And the next day the sailors told you that he was in the bed next to you?”

“Aye, missy.”

“Did they tell you why they had moved him or why they’d beaten him?”

“Nay, missy.”

“Did you see him again after—”

“This proves nothing.” Geoffrey strode across the room to stay between Cassie and Murphy. “The mutterings of a filthy whore. The ramblings of a thief. This entire effort has yielded nothing.”

Sally shrank against the wall as he looked in her direction. Murphy gazed at his own feet.

Sheriff Hollingsworth stood. “I’m afraid I agree with young Mister Crichton. Though certainly suspicious, what we have here is neither enough to warrant releasing you from your indenture or enough to prove your words lies, Braden. I’m afraid we shall have to wait for word from London before this matter can be put to rest. Until then, Nicholas Braden you remain.”

Alec’s hopes disintegrated. “Damn it, man!” He struggled for control as fury surged white-hot through him. “Nicholas Braden died, and I was put in his place. It’s obvious.”

“Perhaps. But I still need proof,” said Sheriff Hollingsworth.

Then he turned to Crichton, the entire matter apparently forgotten. “Come, Geoffrey, the cook has baked some of that wheat bread of hers. She won’t be able to hide it from me this time. I can smell it.” With a hearty laugh and a slap on the younger man’s back, the sheriff made for the cookhouse after instructing both convicts to wait for him by his carriage.

“I’ll be watching you, convict.” Crichton’s flat gray eyes peered menacingly out from under his white wig. His upper lip curled with contempt.

“Go to hell.” Alec turned and strode from the room.

Chapter Twelve

Cassie strolled with Geoffrey toward the crowded cookhouse, surreptitiously watching Cole lead Boadicea to the stables, trying to respond politely to Geoffrey’s inquiries despite the turmoil raging within her. First the prostitute had convinced her Cole was nothing but a scheming, lecherous liar. Then Murphy, who seemed to be the more trustworthy of the two convicts, had raised enough doubt in her mind to convince her again that Cole might be telling the truth. The events Murphy described on board ship certainly were odd.

“Catherine? Have you heard anything I’ve said?”

“I’m sorry, Geoffrey. Do go on,” she said, giving him her warmest smile and trying to look like a woman who had nothing more on her mind than playing hostess to her father’s guests.