OnlyYou (19 page)

“Enough,” Mary snapped. “It is time we leave for home.
Besides, I went through something similar with your father and I survived very
well.”

Kaitlyn’s eyes darted to Mary’s. The older woman’s gaze was
direct, meant to emphasize to only Kaitlyn that she did indeed understand
exactly
what was happening and that she held no negative judgments toward her.

For the first time in months, Kaitlyn felt a bit of the
weight she had been carrying lifted from her shoulders. She sighed with relief
and smiled easily at Mary, wondering if Gabriel would be as accepting once she
finally got up the nerve to tell him.

* * * * *

Kaitlyn inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the clean,
fresh air of the summer evening. Staring at the home that she had come to know
as her own, she decided that it was time to tell Gabriel—past time, really. She
nodded to herself in determination and took a step toward the house. Mary would
be pleased when Kaitlyn handed her the letter to give to Paul to take to town.
After the previous day’s encounter with James Clark, Mary had seemed on edge.

The sound of a horse galloping down the drive behind her
halted her footsteps. She turned and gazed into the distance, spotting what
looked like a large man on top of a black horse.

Her breath caught in her throat as Gabriel’s face
immediately popped into her head. No, it couldn’t be him. He was in New York.
Besides, all horses looked basically same, didn’t they? They only really
differed when it came to color and there were a lot of black horses around.

Weren’t there?

Kaitlyn’s feet froze to the ground as the figure came into
clearer view. Her heart began pounding as shivers of excitement coursed through
her. It was definitely Gabriel. She blinked several times as though she was
staring at an apparition.

He reined in the horse several feet from her and quickly
dismounted. His chestnut-colored eyes locked onto hers, causing her heart to
jump. His handsome features struck her, almost as though she was seeing him for
the first time all over again.

With slow, deliberate strides, he approached her, his
expression stony. He paused only a foot away and stared down at her.

Kaitlyn’s breath caught in her throat and every muscle in
her body tingled in his unexpected presence. She wanted to reach for him, to
throw her arms around him and press her body up against his solid form—partly
to assure herself that he was indeed standing before her and was not a figment
of her imagination. However, something indefinable in his expression gave her
pause.

Gabriel’s eyes dropped from hers briefly as he glanced down
her body. She could have sworn that his hand shook as he reached toward her and
placed his palm flat against her protruding stomach. His touch was like a bolt
of lightning cutting through her and, instinctively, Kaitlyn almost backed
away.

He knew.

She wasn’t certain how he found out but it was definitely
clear that the movement of his hand to her belly was deliberate and not
accidental. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes, fighting back tears.

“Katie,” he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion, “why
did you not tell me?”

She opened her eyes and forced them to meet his. The raw
pain glittering in those dark orbs was almost her undoing. “I’m sorry,” she
replied as a lump rose in her throat.

“Why did you not write to me?”

“You did not write to me either,” she snapped, irritated by
how whiny her voice sounded.

He sighed with obvious exasperation. “If I recall correctly,
you were quite upset with me the day we parted. I did not wish to push you into
a correspondence before you were ready.”

Kaitlyn smiled weakly and dropped his gaze, shame washing
over her for having avoided sending him a letter. He had been thinking of her
comfort and she had been thinking of…well,
her
comfort. She had been so
self-consumed and worried about how her letter might sound to him that she
hadn’t thought at all that he might have welcomed her correspondence regardless
of what she wrote.

“However,” he continued, his voice turning hard, “with all
of the writing you seem to do in your free time, I assumed you would eventually
come around and write to me. Especially after hearing of your correspondence
with Mrs. Washington.”

Kaitlyn wouldn’t have exactly called it a “correspondence”.
She and the general’s wife had only exchanged a couple of letters so far. Still,
she understood how her silence toward him in the face of writing to Mrs.
Washington might irk him.

She shrugged, having no real defense for her actions. “I’m
sorry. I just didn’t know what to say.”

“How about simply telling me that you were carrying my
child?” he coldly retorted. “I should have heard it from you and not from my
mother.”

Mary. She should have known. She winced at his sharp tone as
she arrived at the realization that Mary had to have known about it for weeks
in order for Gabriel to receive a letter from her, considering the slow nature
of mail distribution in the Colonial period.

Kaitlyn could feel heat rising to her cheeks at having
messed this up so completely. “I didn’t even know until yesterday that your
mother knew anything about it,” she answered.

Gabriel’s shoulders slumped and he caressed her cheek with
his hand, the anger suddenly leaving his face. “You have not told anyone about
this, have you?”

She began to shake her head but then very distinctly
remembered having blurted the news to James Clark the previous day. She opened
her mouth to confess when the sound of another horse galloping down the drive
reached their ears. They both turned and stared down the road.

When Kaitlyn realized that the rider was James Clark, she
wished that the earth would simply open up and swallow her whole, putting her
out of her misery. She began tightly twisting part of her skirt around one
finger as she bit her lower lip. What were the chances that the one person on
this earth to whom she actually confessed to being pregnant would at that
moment be coming toward them?

James’ eyes widened in surprise as he brought his horse to a
stop a few feet away. He dismounted and quickly approached them, his gait
taking on a slight swagger she had never seen before.

“Captain O’Connor,” he coolly said as he cast his eyes
toward Kaitlyn. All traces of his formerly timid self seemed to melt away at
his feet and Kaitlyn couldn’t help but stare at him in disbelief. “Have you
come to clean up your mess?”

“James,” she began without thinking. She lightly gasped,
only realizing then that she had just called him by his first name. It still
seemed silly to her but she knew that it was considered improper and that it
suggested a familiarity she certainly didn’t want Gabriel to think existed.

Gabriel cocked a disapproving eyebrow at her, flashing her a
we’ll-talk-about-this-later look. He looked James in the eye, his stance
casual. “I am uncertain of what you are speaking, sir.”

“Have you not yet told him, Kaitlyn?” James asked, saying
her name very slowly as though he were implying the very same intimacy she was
trying to avoid.

She looked up at Gabriel and caught the slight grimace
passing across his face. Her heart began to sink as she realized that James had
just beaten her to the punch.

Gabriel grabbed her arm and yanked her behind his back, the
twitching muscle in his jaw signaling to her that he was definitely pissed off
and that she was the cause. “What is your business here, Mr. Clark?”

“Kaitlyn has not told you about that either?” James asked,
smugly eyeing Gabriel. “Well, I have come to offer myself as her husband once
more. I must admit to having been caught by surprise yesterday when her answer
to my proposal was that she was carrying your child but now I am fully prepared
to commit myself to her if she will have me.”

Gabriel snarled under his breath and took a menacing step
toward James.

Kaitlyn grabbed his cloak and found herself being dragged
along behind him. “Gabriel, please,” she pleaded at his back.

He stopped and his back stiffened. “You will have to come
though me to get to her, Clark.”

“I see,” James stated, clasping his hands behind his back as
sudden nervousness crept back into his eyes. “Since you have an obvious claim
to her, I shall step aside. But listen to me well, O’Connor. I will stay in
town for as long as you are here. If you have not righted this delicate
situation before you return to the front lines, then I will step in. Kaitlyn
will come to live with me in Virginia and I will claim your child as my own,
raising him as a Protestant.”

“Get off my land,” Gabriel menacingly countered, placing his
palm on the pistol in the holster on his hip.

James’ face paled slightly as he bowed his head and peered
at Kaitlyn. “Good day, Miss McCann. If you need anything, please do not
hesitate to contact me.”

Kaitlyn resisted the urge to nod and smile politely, certain
that Gabriel would see the gestures as a betrayal of him. She watched James
mount his horse and goad it into a gallop down the road. She hadn’t realized that
she was practically holding her breath until she saw James turn toward the east
at the end of the driveway.

Gabriel shook off her gasp on his cloak and walked back to
his horse. He patted the animal soundly on the neck and began guiding it to the
barn.

Kaitlyn stared at him, dumbfounded and uncertain if he
expected her to follow him. Several minutes later, Gabriel walked out of the
barn and silently strode past her on the way up to the house.

Though she knew she had made a huge blunder in not telling him
about the baby, she quickly came to the conclusion that Gabriel was acting like
a complete jackass. After all,
she
was the one who was pregnant.
She
had been the one living with the secret for months. Here she was in the most
confusing and frightening time of her life and he was acting all high and
mighty because other people found out before he did.

Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his back, boring holes
right through him. A strange, new feeling of courage flooded her body. Her
hands clenched and unclenched at her sides as she broke into a brisk walk,
determined to follow him inside and tell him off.

He walked into the drawing room and tossed his hat onto the
chess table next to the window. Untying his cloak, he glared at her and threw
it on top of the hat.

“You told Clark before you even told me?” he demanded, his
voice barely restrained.

He hadn’t shouted but this was the first time she had ever
heard him raise his voice even slightly. Her arms stiffened at her sides and
she lifted her chin defiantly. “You have absolutely no idea of the hell I’ve
been through, do you? I’m the one who could barely stand the smell of food and
vomited daily for weeks!” she shouted as a surge of energy swiftly coursed
through her veins. “I’m the one whose back aches and feet hurt if I’ve been
standing for too long! I have felt scared and alone for months and all you can
do is stand there and bitch about how I let the news slip to Mr. Clark?”

Gabriel raised his eyebrows but she couldn’t quite tell if
it was due to surprise or insult at being shouted at by a woman. Unfortunately,
she wasn’t going to find out since at that moment, Mary burst into the room,
followed by Eileen.

“My goodness, dear child, whatever is the matter?” Mary
crooned with a worried brow. She suddenly stopped and her mouth dropped open as
her eyes landed upon her son. She gasped, “Oh, my darling boy!”

Mary quickly crossed the room and threw her arms around
Gabriel. Eileen eyed Kaitlyn worriedly and moved to her side, wrapping
Kaitlyn’s hand in hers.

Mary placed a big kiss upon Gabriel’s cheek and stood back
to look at him. “You look too thin,” she announced with a nod of her head. “We
have some scones left over from breakfast. And I have plenty of the raspberry
preserves you love so much.”

Gabriel shook his head and turned his gaze back to Kaitlyn.
“No thank you, Mother.”

Mary’s eyes darted back and forth between Gabriel and
Kaitlyn. “Gabriel—”

“Is Paul around?” he asked.

Mary nodded.

“Send him to Father Murphy,” he said, locking his dark eyes
determinedly upon Kaitlyn’s. “Have Paul ask the priest if he can perform a
wedding tomorrow.”

The brims of Mary’s eyes glistened with unshed tears. She
opened her mouth to speak but then thought better of it and began to walk
toward the door.

Kaitlyn’s heart seemed to stop beating for a moment. She
began shaking her head and wrung her hand away from Eileen. Under normal
circumstances, she would have been surprised and thrilled to receive a marriage
proposal from Gabriel. But not like this—not because she was pregnant and he
felt like it was something they had to do.

Mary rushed to her side and grabbed her arm, caressing
Kaitlyn’s hair in a motherly gesture. “Katie, darling, calm down. This is for
the best.”

Kaitlyn shook her head again and stepped back from Mary. She
turned her eyes to Gabriel as one, hot tear rolled down her cheek. “No,” she
stated emphatically, nearly choking on the word.

“Katie,” Gabriel began, his jaw tensing with determination,
“we are going to marry.”

Her stomach churned as exhaustion fell upon her like a steel
weight. She shook her head again. “No, we’re not,” she replied with more
strength than she felt.

Kaitlyn’s breathing became shallow and the walls felt like
they were closing in on her. She had to get out of there. She turned and ran
from the room, dashing up the stairs.

She would rather face this pregnancy and life alone than
marry a man who didn’t really want her.

Even if that man was Gabriel O’Connor.

Chapter Fourteen

“Katie!” Eileen called, beginning to run after her.