Page 16 of The Marriage Debt
There was a long silence then the magistrate said, ‘When is he due to hang?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’ Katherine could feel the room swimming before her eyes. She had convinced him, she knew it.
‘Do not faint on me now, ma’am,’ he said firmly. ‘We have a journey to make tomorrow and I must get some paperwork in order.’ He turned a shrewd eye on the highwayman towering over them both. ‘I presume you have no intention of surrendering to me?’
The dark man grinned, showing a set of blackened teeth. ‘You have the right of it there, Mr Justice. I think I’ll go and rob a coach or two, just to let them all know that Black Jack’s back. Good day, ma’am. You tell your husband he’s a lucky man.’
‘You’ll end on the gallows,’ the magistrate prophesied grimly as the highwayman stepped over the cill.
‘Happen I will, sir,’ he responded equably and was gone.
‘You believed me, Mr Highson?’ Katherine demanded. ‘You will come to London with us and clear my husband’s name?’
‘Yes, my dear. I will write a deposition and get it sworn in front of one of my colleagues in town and we’ll be off tomorrow. ‘Your young man will be glad to see you, I will be bound.’
‘He is not my young man,’ Katherine began, then broke off at the twinkle in Mr Highson’s eye. ‘I wish I could let him know. He must be so–’ She broke off and took a moment to compose herself.
‘Today is Sunday, so he will have had the distraction of the Condemned Sermon,’ Mr Highson said. ‘That at least gets them out of their cells, although I doubt it could be characterised as light entertainment.’
‘Sunday? Oh my goodness, I quite forgot. I must go to Evensong. What is the Condemned Sermon?’
‘The Ordinary of the prison – that is the Chaplain – preaches to the condemned awaiting execution, with a coffin in the centre of the chapel. It is intended to fix their minds upon eternity and to prompt repentance.’
‘How horrible.’ She shuddered, then resolutely pushed all thoughts of what Theo must be experiencing out of her mind. ‘I cannot begin to thank you, sir. At what hour shall I call for you? I thought to hire a chaise for ourselves and my maid. My man can follow with my coach which is old and slow.’
‘No need to hire. We will take my carriage. I have a good team and we will be in London by late afternoon, never fear. I will collect you at your inn at ten in the morning if you give me your direction.’
Katherine almost made it to the road outside before her legs gave way and she sunk down onto the grass. ‘We did it. Oh, John, Jenny, he is not going to hang.’
Theo jerked upright on the hard pew where he had been attempting to doze and ignore the somewhat routine call to repentance the Ordinary was delivering. Sleep eluded him here as it did in his cell, but he had fallen into a pleasant half-sleeping dream involving freedom and Kat and broad acres under high moors.
He straightened his back and looked coldly at the coffin lying in the centre of the chapel. Better not to dream when there was no hope to be had. To hope was to delude himself and he had never done that. The day after tomorrow his body wouldbe tumbled into an open grave: he doubted that the prison authorities would go to the expense of providing a coffin.
If Kat was happy somewhere, so much the better. She would shed a tear for him he knew. No-one else would, and in a few years a better man than he would take what was his by birth. Robert would not disgrace the family name. He just wished he could be sure that Kat would be all right.
Katherine spent a sleepless night. What if the magistrate changed his mind or decided it was all some elaborate plot to free a guilty man? What if he was not believed when they reached London? What if the prison authorities changed the day of the execution and brought it forward?
As the clock struck three in the morning she threw back the covers, lit a candle and got out of bed to pace up and down the room. Her bare feet made little sound on the polished oak boards and the night was dark and still. Now she was moving her frantic thoughts slowed and she felt calmer. Of course Mr Highson would not change his mind. He was a respected man of the law so, even if Theo could not be freed on his word alone, it would be enough to halt the execution while further investigations could be made. And of course the date of the execution would not be brought forward, it was a public spectacle.
‘And surely I would know if you were dead,’ she whispered out loud. How strange that she felt so close to a man she had known for less than a day. But then they had shared an intense and strange experience, perhaps that had forged a bond.
Yet even before they had spoken, even while he had seemed a veritable ruffian, filthy and dangerous, there had been something as their eyes met. Katherine shivered and rubbed her arms. It might be mid-May but three in the morning was no time to be out of bed wearing nothing but a thin nightgown. Shelooked down and smiled. In her haste to pack and be gone from London she had thrown the same one into her valise that she had worn on her strange wedding night.
‘That is a devilishly pretty nightgown, Kat.’It seemed for a moment that Theo was in the bedchamber with her, his voice teasing with an underlying hint of sensual danger.
Katherine smiled again and climbed back into bed. She drew up the covers and blew out the candle flame but stayed sitting up, her eyes unseeing on the darkness around her.
She was married to a very attractive man, she mused. Attractive in character as well as body and face. An honourable man. But for that sudden, hard kiss as they had parted he had treated her with respect and consideration. Katherine ran her fingertips over her lips. No-one but family had ever kissed her, so she had nothing to compare it with, but somehow it had seemed that what he had wanted was not a simple sensual sensation, but to imprint the memory of her on his mind and body.
Had it given him what he wanted? It had certainly left a vivid impression upon her. She closed her eyes and the scent of him came back to her, the feel of his body hard under her spread hands, the taste of his mouth on hers. Katherine wriggled down under the covers and set herself to sleep again. Perhaps he too was lying awake, trying to distract his mind from the squalid reality around him by remembering that strange night.
It was torture to think of him there. Was that why she felt so strange inside? Unable to sleep Katherine tossed and turned and tried to wait in patience for the morning.
Mr Highson was as good as his word, arriving promptly in a smart equipage somewhat at odds with his general appearance. ‘Now I know you will be anxious,’ he said comfortably, helping Katherine into the coach, ‘but we will make good time and yourhusband will be safely out of that place by tonight, never fear.’
She smiled and thanked him, but something in her appearance must have betrayed her because Jenny slipped her hand into hers and squeezed encouragingly. They set off at a brisk pace leaving John and the old coach and pair far behind and, as King’s Langley and then Watford, were passed Katherine began to relax and feel that after all she had succeeded in saving her stranger of a husband.
She felt her lips curve in a smile. How ridiculous that she, Katherine Cunningham, should find herself married. She had put the slightest hope of that out of her mind three years ago when she realised the depths of Philip’s fecklessness and the extent of his debts. Their acquaintances fell away as they were less and less able to go out into Society and the few true friends that were left had gradually ceased to be frequent callers as Katherine distanced herself.
