“Course I know who she is. She’s the arsonist who’s due to be hanged today.” The man seemed pleased and held out his hand for the coin Sean had promised him.
Sean stared at him in disbelief. The words cut through him like a knife. He had seen her only days before, was it possible?
The man wiggled his fingers. “I told you what you wanted to know, my lord.”
Bridget was wild, but was she that wild? He knew, instinctively, that she was, but still he asked, “Are you certain it was she. Look again.” He held out the miniature to the innkeeper.
“Won’t forget that one. Mary Duffy. She seemed like a lady, but she wasn’t any better than the lowest ruffian. She even lied to say she was with child, just to postpone her jig with the reaper a day or two.”
Sean, confused by the false name, glanced down at the miniature of his sister and felt the shock run through him. He had shown the man the portrait of Kate in his haste. “Mary Duffy? Are you certain that is the name she gave?”
“Saw her took up myself. Heard her say it. Even went to the trial to give witness, but they didn’t need me.”
Kate. Why had she given a false name? “Where is the hanging to occur?”
The man wiggled his fingers again and Sean dropped the coin into his waiting hand. After a moment of waiting, he dropped another. The man grinned as he gave him explicit directions. “But you’d best hurry if you want to see her fall, since it’s nearly time.”
Kate? She was supposed to be safely on her way back to London. He raced through the narrow, crowded streets, cursing himself. He should have escorted her to the coast himself. Should have guarded the ship until it sailed. Should have-- He stopped, recriminations would not help him rescue her.
How had she come to be facing a hangman’s noose? The man had called her an arsonist. He clearly recalled her horror when he set fire to the shed. What had she done? More importantly, how could he stop the proceedings?
”Pretty hair.”
Kate was horrified to hear herself extend an automatic “Thank you,” to the man who stood at her side, with a large pair of shears. He was preparing her for the hanging, shearing her hair short. She closed her eyes at the tug and pull at her scalp. She had put her faith in Bridget’s plan, since things had turned so quickly, before the duke could possibly respond.
Jamie had pleaded with her one last time to reveal her identity. Though he had conveyed Bridget’s scheme, he obviously had no belief that it was wise. “This plan is madness. It may not even work.”
He had not even been willing to share the plan until he was satisfied that she would not reveal her true identity. His doubts had come through with every detail he revealed to her in a low voice, so that the guard would not overhear. “Bridget has arranged for the rope used to hang you to be altered.”
“Will it break?” Kate imagined falling to the ground, suddenly free of the feel of the rope around her neck and swallowed reflexively. But then what?
“No.” He shook his head, a scowl etched into his still delicate features. “That would not serve any purpose, they would merely collect you from the ground and hang you again with a new rope.”
“Then what will happen?” She couldn’t imagine that the sudden green-tinged pallor of his complexion was an indication she would find the answer heartening.
He paused a moment and then said swiftly, “If it works, it will choke you, but not kill you.”
If it works. “And if it doesn’t?”
“Then you will die.” He looked away for a moment, as if he couldn’t bear to see her absorb the truth. “Bridget says it has been done before, if that is of any comfort to you.”
Since it seemed to be of no comfort to him, Kate could not stop herself from asking, “Always successfully?”
He paused before answering yet again, the greenish cast to his complexion more pronounced. “No. But when one has no other choice…” He glanced at her doubtfully, “Bridget says it will work. She says she had a vision.”
“She said she had a vision I would have a son, as well.” That had certainly not been true.
He blushed. “She was puzzled about that. Her visions still show you with a child in your arms.”
“And she saw the Daisy’s Pride lost at sea.” That was the whole reason for this mess in the first place.
He looked away. “Word is that it is missing.”
Missing. And now Bridget had seen her surviving this scheme without betraying Sean. For some reason, Kate believed her. This would work. “If she says it will work, then, it will. I will be as fortunate as the others whose necks were saved.”
“Other criminals,” he said sharply. “I don’t know if it is wise—“
Kate thought of her own helpless condition and wondered at those who had gone before her in similar circumstances. “I suppose if your people are being hanged for no good reason, one must find a way to circumvent false justice. I know I am willing to try.”
He met her eyes and grasped her hands as he leaned forward for one last plea. “Are you certain you will not change your mind? I can tell them myself. My father sailed on the Daisy’s Pride,” he faltered for a moment, letting the implication that his father might be lost at sea hang between them, and then continued bravely, “But his reputation is well known here. I shall be believed.”
Kate was tempted, for just a moment. “I cannot.” She would trust to Bridget. Would trust to the ingenuity of a desperate populace that had faced oppression for centuries and found ways to circumvent some of the worst of the uneven justice.
“Very well. Then we shall have to give Bridget’s plan a try.”
“It will work.” She spoke to console him more than herself. She believed her words, but they offered no comfort. What did she have to live for? She had no child, no hope of a child, and her husband did not want her.
“I will tell Bridget that you agree to this method of escape.”
She laughed at the idea. “What does my agreement matter? I will be dangling unconscious from the rope until I strangle to death, or I am rescued. I have no part to play in this.”
He looked toward the door where the guard stood. “Still, there is a risk for those who will attempt to help you. They need to know you will not betray them.”
Kate glanced around her cell and said with absolutely certainty. “I will not say or do anything that would put anyone else here.”
She watched him leave with a sense of unreality. Would she ever see him again? Would Bridget’s mad plan work for her, as it had for others? And if it did, what would she do once she had her life back in her own hands?
She closed her eyes, refusing to cry, not even when they came to lead her away to her own hanging.
She saw Jamie again when she stood on the scaffold in the sunshine. At first, the jeering crowd below her was a sea of unfriendly faces, but then she saw him, white faced, clutching tightly to Bridget, who seemed serenely confident that things would go well.
Kate tried not to flinch when the rope was fitted around her head to lay heavy and limp around her neck. She could see no difference between this rope and any other she had ever seen. Had they chosen the right rope?
She said a quick prayer of hope that all went well. At least, she told herself, if she did hang, it would be as Mary Duffy. No one would connect her to Sean. And he would never know. She had made Jamie promise not to tell him. He assured her Bridget had made a similar promise.
A disturbance in the crowd distracted her from the last movements of the hangman and she welcomed it. Until she saw the man who was bearing through the crowd like a maddened bull. It was Sean.
“Don’t—“ she tried to tell him as she fell, all words choked from her as she slowly began to strangle in front of his eyes. Don’t tell anyone who I am she screamed soundlessly until darkness closed around her.
Sean beat his way through the crowd, his eyes fixed on Kate’s slender figure. Surely he could reach her in time.
She saw him, he thought. There was a spark of awareness in her eyes, and he swore she had been about to speak to him, just as she fell.
With a roar, he tried to reach her dangling body, but the crowd held him back and they cheered and danced and tossed him aside.
As the next prisoner was led up to the scaffold, and Kate’s body was unceremoniously cut down and carted away, he turned his direction in the crowd, to follow the cart to the place where it dumped its precious burden on the ground as if she were a sack of potatoes. Perhaps not even with that much care.
He was too late. He could see that from a distance, but he refused to accept what his eyes told him. She lay cold and blue on the ground. “Kate. Katie. Oh my Kate. What have I done to you?”
“Sean, do you want to get her killed with your foolishness?” Bridget appeared beside him, cloaked, her face hidden from his sight. “Let me do this.”
He stood back, astounded, as she moved forward, wailing. A guard came to question her suspiciously, but she claimed to be Mary Duffy’s sister and within moments, she had laid claim to the body.
“You there!” Bridget turned, her cloak falling back to reveal the glow in her green eyes. “Come help me carry my sister’s body away from here.”
Sean came, numbly, lifting Kate’s slight weight in his arms. She rested limply against him, a dead weight. Dead. She was still warm, though. If he had been just a little earlier, he castigated himself and then stopped. No. If he hadn’t tried so hard to push her out of his life, she’d still be alive.
An urgent whisper sounded behind him. “Take her away now, my lord, unless you truly wish to see her hanged.”
He turned to see Jamie Jeffreys. Sean looked into the blue eyes of his enemy’s son and saw no arrogant malice or trickery, only grave concern and jittery tension. “Did you do this?”
“Tell Bridget I have paid my debt and owe her nothing--not even children.” With that, the boy turned and strode away stiff backed as any proud Sassenach.
Sean wondered if the two had married. But he didn’t have the desire to know. Not now. He followed Bridget away from the scene, ignoring the cheers of the crowd as another man swung.
Bridget stopped at a neat blue door and knocked three times, then once. The door opened just wide enough for Sean to pass with Kate in his arms and then shut quickly. The sound of a bolt being shot home was loud in the darkness. And then a candle was lit.
“Quickly, there is no time,” the strange woman said. “Put her down here.” She used the candle to indicate a pallet on the floor.
“I will not.” Sean protested. He would not let her go. Not yet. The rituals would have to be performed, he knew that. But not yet. Not here.
“Sean—you will ruin everything.” Bridget said. “Give Kate to this woman if you want her to live.”
Live? A sudden suspicion gave him hope and he did as the woman bid. But once Kate lay on the pallet, he pushed aside the stranger and tried to rouse Kate himself. He rubbed at her cheeks, startled when her bluish color gave way to a pinker hue.
For long moments, nothing happened and he began to believe that the pink color was an illusion of hope. But then she began to cough and struggle for breath. In a moment her eyes opened, blue and clear.