Now and Forever (68 page)

His words were torn apart by another vicious gust of wind that grabbed hold of the basket and threatened to flip it end over end.

This is wrong,
Dakota thought, clinging to the lip of the basket as the child's cries grew louder inside her head. Shannon and Andrew were meant to journey safely back to his time. His friends' lives, and the lives of their descendants, depended upon it. Wasn't she the one who'd found the proof in black and white on page 127 of
Forgotten Heroes
? She was the wild card, the X factor that changed the equation and threatened their future.

The fire sputtered as the basket withstood another pummeling gust of wind. Shannon crouched on the floor, gripping the ropes that connected the gondola to the balloon itself, while Andrew reached out to Dakota.

"Grab my hand, mistress!" his voice rang out.

The basket tilted wildly to the right and she let out a scream as she fell to one knee.

"Now!" Andrew commanded. "We are dropping fast."

A few years ago she'd gone into Manhattan for dinner at a rooftop restaurant when the skyscraper's elevator malfunctioned, dropping the car three stories in the blink of an eye. This was the same stomach-turning sensation, magnified one hundredfold. But was she dropping only through space or hurtling down through time as well?

The towering black cloud enveloped them in a tunnel of darkness. She could hear Shannon's and Andrew's voices rising above the roar of the wind but it was impossible to see them. The bottom of the basket made a sickening noise as it scraped the tops of the trees. Her nostrils twitched at the smell of pine and rich earth coming closer, closer.

"I hate you!" The child's voice trembled with pain. "I
hate
you!"

Dakota felt the little girl's pain in the center of her heart, in that place reserved for the children she would never have.
Go with it. You have no other choice.

Whispering a swift prayer, Dakota climbed to the top of the basket railing and jumped.

Chapter One

It was said by the good people of Franklin Ridge, in the Colony of New Jersey, that Patrick Devane was the angriest man in four counties and on that December morning he did little to dispel the notion.

His housekeeper, Mrs. O'Gorman, dabbed at her rheumy eyes with a wrinkled handkerchief. "'Tain't my fault, sir," she said through loud sniffles. "The child's willful as her mother and there wouldn't be a thing I could do to stop her."

"The child is six years old," Patrick snapped. "She requires a firm hand and a watchful eye, two things you are unwilling or unable to provide."

Mrs. O'Gorman's expression shifted from lugubrious to sly. "And a child needs a father, if I may be so bold, and it seems to me you been one in name only."

"Enough!" His roar rattled the walls. "You'll be out of my house by nightfall."

"And I'll be thanking the Almighty for that," Mrs. O'Gorman said, thrusting her chins at him. "I'd rather be workin' for Fat George in London than spend another day in this terrible place."

"Take care, woman, or I'll see that you get your wish."

Mrs. O'Gorman, no longer concerned with employment, was a woman unleashed. "'Tain't my wish that's comin' true, mister. 'Tis yours. The child is gone--just the way you wanted it--and if she has the sense of a May fly, she won't be back here where she ain't wanted."

With that the woman stormed from the library.

He swore softly at her retreating back. He'd heard them whispering belowstairs. How his cold heart had driven his warm-blooded wife into the arms of another man. And they said the way he treated the child was cause for scandal, although they knew he kept her clothed, fed, and sheltered as was his duty as a Christian man, and would see to her education, as well.

"'Tisn't natural to treat your own flesh and blood this way," Mrs. O'Gorman had said to her cronies the other day when she thought he could not hear. "All that money and not an ounce of warmth in his black heart."

"My papa is the best man in the world," Abigail had declared, biting Mrs. O'Gorman in her plump forearm.

Mrs. O'Gorman had tried to shake her off but the child clung to her prey like a hound to a fox and it had taken three servants to finally pull her off.

"Poor little thing," Rosie, the scullery maid, had whispered loud enough to be heard in Trenton. "Him always treatin' her like a poor relation when it's his fault she's the way she is."

Abigail had rewarded the girl with a kick in the shins that had sent Rosie packing. If he did not put a stop to it, the child would drive every member of the staff from the house, nursing bite marks and bruises.

She loved him, the child did, and he felt the weight of her love with every breath he took. She was so like him, lashing out in her pain and confusion, but loyal in a way he knew he didn't deserve. How well he understood her. There were times he saw himself reflected back in the flash of defiance in her eyes and then he remembered. His heart wasn't the stone the townspeople believed it to be. How much easier this would be if it were. How often had he steeled his heart against the child in an attempt to make the inevitable parting easier for them both and how often had he failed.

This last series of tantrums had forced his hand and he was not. Danger was everywhere in the town of Franklin Ridge and he needed to see to the child's future safety before it was too late.

"This cannot go on, Abigail. Arrangements will be made for you to attend school in Boston." He had hoped to delay this action another half-year but in truth this was the safer course of action for the child's sake, if not for his.

"No!" Her gray eyes darkened like the sky before a storm. She had spirit, this child. He would grant her that. It would serve her well in the future since she had not been granted her mother's beauty. "You cannot make me!"

He chose to ignore the challenge. "The Girls School of the Sacred Heart is a fine place. They will teach you the things a young lady must know to make her way in the world." The things a mother would teach her daughter, if the mother had seen fit to stay. Abby would be safe there, no matter what happened to him as the War played out.

Her plain little face crumpled beneath his gaze. So much power to have over one so small and defenseless. Better to break the cord between them cleanly and be done with it when his own future was cast in the darkest shadows. Her mother was dead. His family was long gone. He was all the girl had in this world and if something should happen to him – as seemed more inevitable with each day that passed – he needed to know she would be well provided for.

"I hate you!" she cried when he informed her that the matter was closed to further discussion. "I hate you!"

"I don't doubt that," he'd said, turning away. "There is little reason for you to feel otherwise."

She lacked her mother's beauty, but she had her mother's spirit, that fiery temper and pigheaded stubbornness, and for a moment he'd felt a stab of dark emotion in the center of his chest.

How many nights had he stood over the child's bed, watching the way her tiny fists pumped the air as she slept?
She's fighting the world,
he'd thought as pride filled his heart. Same as he'd fought the world as he struggled his way out of poverty. The notion of life renewing itself suddenly made sense to him in a way he'd never imagined.

What a fool he'd been to believe his troubles were all behind him.

He had loved once and deeply. Few who knew him today would believe him capable of so tender a sentiment, but there had been a time when his bitter heart had known how sweet life could be. A time when all things had seemed possible, if only because he knew how to make dreams come true.

"I'll build you the grandest house in the thirteen colonies," he had promised Susannah in the throes of new love. "You'll have servants and fine gowns from Paris, everything your heart desires."

His dreams were as big and untamed as the country that had given him birth and with a woman like Susannah VanDorn by his side, there was nothing he couldn't do, no dream he couldn't make come true.

He'd built the house. He'd filled it with servants. He'd showered her with silk gowns and satin slippers and more love than any woman had ever known. For every dream he fulfilled, a new dream sprang to life, eager to take its place.

But those dreams were now long gone. Susannah had destroyed them the day she walked out the door and into the arms of another man.

 
The child. There is the child to consider.
The child he had once believed the reason he had been put upon this earth. The sad-eyed little girl who looked to him to explain something even he didn't understand.

The truth was Abigail wasn't his child at all but the offspring of another man. Living proof that he'd been cuckolded, not just once but a multitude of times, by a wife as faithless as a stray cat.

"My parting gift," Susannah had called the revelation as she rolled her rings and earbobs in a long strip of velvet and tucked it into her satchel. "I had been with three other men the month she was conceived." Her full red lips curved upward in a smile. "The odds are not in your favor, my sweet."

He came close to murder that night. Blood lust flooded his brain, forcing out reason and sanity. With one blow he could snap her fragile neck and put an end to the pain and misery she'd caused him. Salvage what remained of his pride.

"Do it," she'd dared him, her eyes blazing. "Do it and pay for the action the rest of your pathetic life."

Not even Susannah's death one year later in a carriage accident had lessened his rage.

He saw their looks each time her name was mentioned. He heard the whispers when they talked about the child. Pious, sanctimonious bastards, the lot of them, feigning concern when all they cared about was lively gossip for their parties. Martha Washington's latest haircomb or his miserable plight--it was all the same to the good people of Franklin Ridge.

He knew more about the lot of them than they could ever imagine. He knew the spies and the traitors, knew how many guineas it took to sway a man's devotion to a cause. Every man had his price, whether it be silver coins or the golden glow of a woman's hair by candlelight. He made it his business to know what that price was.

"Sir?"

He turned at the sound of Cook's voice in the doorway. Her full face was still flushed from the heat of the hearth fire. Her fingers, knuckles swollen with arthritis, twisted the coarse tan fabric of her apron.

"You wish something?" he asked. He saw to it that his tone did not betray his chaotic thoughts.

"The child," Cook said, meeting his eyes. "She missed the midday meal. My boy, William, from the stables and Joseph are willin' to lead a search for the wee one."

"This is not the first time she has done this and it will not be the last."

"But the sun will set within the hour and--"

"I know when the blasted sun sets, woman! Do you take me for a fool?"

She was wise enough to keep her own counsel. "Begging your pardon, sir. 'Tis dangerous times and many's the innocent who comes to a bad end. We love her like she's one of our own."

He heard the reprimand hidden within her words but let it pass. Better they think him heartless.

"Have William saddle my horse," he roared, tired of the censure in their voices. "I'll search for the child."

And when he found her he would see that she was on her way to the Girls School of the Sacred Heart in Boston before the sun rose in the morning before it was too late.

#

"I hate you!" Abigail Elizabeth Devane cried as she lashed out at Lucy with the toe of her leather boot. Her six-year-old heart was set upon murder. The doll's soft rag body tore at the seam beneath the right arm and a strip of pale green cotton poked through. Lucy was stupid, a baby's plaything, and Abigail wasn't a baby any longer. That's what her father had told her that morning when he said that she was to be sent away to school in a place called Boston.

She reared back and kicked the doll again, harder this time. A rip opened up on Lucy's left leg. Wads of yellow checkered cloth bunched through the opening. Good! That was better than blood, better than big pieces of broken bone. She wanted to throw Lucy into the river and watch her sink. She wanted to toss the doll into the cooking fire in the kitchen of the big house and smell the stink of burning cloth.

Grabbing Lucy by the right arm she made to fling it against one of the big pine trees when she noticed that Lucy's head was hanging by a piece of yarn no thicker than a cat's whisker.