Tomorrow's Dreams (44 page)

In three long strides, the deputy covered the distance from the door to Miles's body. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Seth. But where Seth was all lean, sinewy muscles, this man was stocky and soft around the middle. Hunkering down next to the corpse, he bellowed, “What in Sam Hill happened here?”

“He,” piped up the saloon girl who'd fetched him, pointing at Seth, “tried to rape her.” She shifted her finger to Adele. “Me an' Cleopatra an' Juliet saw him. He wur on top of her an' she wur strugglin' real hard.”

Seth made a derogatory noise and stood up. Everyone else began to speak at once.

The deputy jumped to his own feet and drew his gun. Leveling it on Seth's head, he barked, “You, Tyler, stay put! The rest of you, pipe down! I'll hear your piece one by one.”

Seth shrugged nonchalantly and sat down on the desk.

Gracing him with a final warning look, the deputy shifted his gaze to Adele. “We'll start with you, ma'am. What happened?”

Adele clutched Penelope tighter, patting her back as if comforting her. “I heard Lorelei, here, screaming, and when I came to investigate, I found Tyler raping her. I tried to stop him, but he turned on me and attempted to do the same. When my son heard the noise and came to my rescue, Tyler”—her voice broke with a pitiful sob—“he stabbed him through the heart!”

Penelope gasped loudly, horrified by Adele's lies.

The woman grabbed the back of her head and shoved her face against her breast, silencing her. “Ssh, dear. I know this is embarrassing for you, but if justice is to be served, we have to tell the deputy everything,” she crooned for the benefit of her audience. Then she pressed her lips to Penelope's ear and hissed, “One more sound, and your brat is dead. I mean it.”

From fearful habit, Penelope meekly complied, but only for a moment. Then it dawned on her. Adele was in no position to carry out her threats. Not without Miles's help, and she knew it. No wonder she looked so desperate. She realized that if Penelope told the deputy of her kidnapping and blackmail scheme now, that she had no one to get rid of the crime evidence—Tommy—and back up her pleas of innocence.

Once the baby was located, which wouldn't take long when Seth learned Tommy was his son and took charge of the search, this nightmare would end. Adele would be behind bars where she belonged, and Tommy would be safe. The only catch was that she might have to reveal her own sordid actions leading to this mess.

Her stomach twisted with dread at that thought. There were things she might be forced to tell that she'd prayed Seth would never find out. Things that might make him loath her as much as he'd once pretended, and with good reason.

But what choice did she have? If she didn't speak out, it was likely that Seth would be convicted of rape and murder. And God only knows what would happen to Tommy.

Penelope swallowed hard, though her mouth was suddenly dry. No. No matter the cost to herself, she wouldn't risk the lives of the man and child she loved. For once she was going to do the unselfish thing … the right thing. If Seth chose to hate her when he learned the truth, well, she'd deal with that later.

Thus resolved, she began to struggle against Adele in earnest. Yet, despite her best efforts to free herself, the older woman proved stronger and easily kept her in check without so much as pausing in her diatribe against Seth.

“What is it, Miss Lorelei?” the deputy cut into Adele's tirade, having obviously noticed her writhing.

Penelope tried to lift her head, to brand Adele as the liar she was, but the woman crushed her face harder against her breast, almost suffocating her. “The child is hysterical,” she informed him, furtively grasping her captive's hair close to her scalp. When Penelope let out a squawk of protest, Adele gave her curls a wicked twist, adding, “Shame, Deputy! You've made her cry again.”

“Sorry, Miss Lorelei.” The deputy sounded truly contrite.

Desperate now, Penelope gave her head a mighty jerk, ignoring the pain as Adele's handful of hair ripped from her scalp. Flinging her now freed head back from the woman's body, she shouted, “She's lying! She's the criminal, not Seth Tyler! She kidnapped my baby and has been blackmailing me with threats to his life.”

“As you can see, she's out of her mind with shock,” Adele countered, fighting to hold onto her thrashing burden.

“No!” Penelope shoved against Adele with all her might, then bucked back in the same motion, heaving backward out of the woman's arms. Like a sail in a blustery wind, the cloak unfurled from her body as she toppled, billowing to the ground where she fell upon it, naked and with the breath knocked out of her.

A buzz went up among the steadily swelling crowd at the door, while Seth rushed to her side. Where he was pale before, he was positively ashen now. Without a word he rewrapped the cape around her and helped her sit up, keeping his gaze averted from hers the whole time. Penelope, too, remained speechless, at first because she hadn't the breath to speak, and then because she simply didn't know what to say or where to begin.

It was Seth who finally broke their silence. “The child, is it …?” he asked, his hoarse voice breaking as his gaze met hers. His eyes were dark and shadowed with raw emotion: rage, betrayal, and a pain so terrible that it hurt to see it.

As much as she wanted to look away, to escape the soulpiercing sight of his anguish, she couldn't. Not when she knew that she'd caused it; not when she wanted so badly to soothe it.

Gently laying her hand against his face, so white and rigid that it could have been carved from alabaster, she whispered, “Yes, Seth. You have a son. A beautiful, wonderful son.”

He closed his eyes then, as if in doing so he could shut out his pain. “Why didn't you tell me? Why?” His voice was as tight and choked as if he'd just been gut-punched.

“I wanted to … I was going to,” she replied slowly, moving her hand from his cheek to tuck a tendril of hair behind his ear.

He jerked from her touch. “When?” he demanded. His eyes were open now and flickering like twin flames. “You, with all your talk of love and trust … when were you going to tell me of our child?”

“I was going to tell you just as soon as he was rescued from Adele. I had a plan. I was going to hire a tracker—”

“A tracker?” he echoed. His growing wrath was truly frightening to see. “You'd rather trust a tracker—a stranger—to rescue our son, than me, his own father? Christ, Penelope! How little you must think of me and my abilities.”

“No! It wasn't like that. I wasn't thinking straight,” she said in a rush, desperate to explain. “You don't understand—”

“That's because there is nothing to understand,” Adele cut in. “She had a baby, that much is true. I helped deliver it. But it died at birth, and she's never been able to accept the loss.”

“That's a lie!” Penelope exclaimed, looking wildly from Adele to the deputy. “Our baby is alive.”

Adele gave her a patronizing look. “Poor girl. She has these spells where she still believes he's alive. Sometimes she tries to steal another woman's baby, claiming it's hers. Other times she blames me, or whoever happens to be handy, of kidnapping it. Obviously the trauma of the rape has prompted her delusions.”

“No!” Penelope glanced frantically from the deputy's frowning face to Adele's falsely solicitous one and finally back at Seth. Aside from a muscle working in his jaw, his face was now completely void of expression. Speaking more to him than the others, she explained softly:

“It's true that Adele helped deliver our baby, but he didn't die … though I almost did. It was a hard birth … a breech … I hemorrhaged badly and, in my weakened state, contracted a fever. While I was delirious, she stole the baby, and she's been using him to blackmail me ever since … threatening to do all sorts of horrible things to him if I didn't do her bidding.”

She touched Seth's tense jaw then, a jaw so like that of their son, imploring him with her eyes to believe her. “I love my baby, just as I love his father. That love was what pulled me through my fever. Since then, I've done everything Adele has demanded to assure his well-being. I deserted my operatic career to travel the West with her company; I relinquished my money, my freedom, my self-respect; I deceived and lied to those I care for most. All to keep our child safe. All well worth the sacrifice.”

She thought she detected a softening in his eyes then, a barely perceptible change that she might have missed had she not known him so well. Lightly caressing his jaw with the thumb of the hand cupping it, she whispered, “At first I didn't confide in you because of the things you said in New York … about me and Julian. I was afraid that you wouldn't believe that the baby was yours, that you'd laugh and tell me that I got what I deserved.”

His face contorted, as if he were pierced by a savage pain. “Perhaps you were right in thinking me a fool. Perhaps—”

“Perhaps,” she cut him off quietly, “we are both fools. I should have confided in you yesterday when you trusted me with the truth about what happened in New York.” She shook her head. “But I couldn't. I was ashamed to confess that our son had been kidnapped. I thought that if I had him rescued before I told you, that you might not think me such a complete failure as a mother.”

Seth laid his hand over hers on his jaw. “I wouldn't have thought you a failure, not if you'd told me everything exactly like you just did. I'd have thought, like I do now, that you're a wonderful, loving mother. The exact kind I want for my son.”

“This is all very touching, but a farce,” Adele snapped, effectively shattering the tender moment. “The child is dead, and he wasn't yours anyway, Tyler. He was Byron Garrett's.”

Seth's eyes narrowed as he transferred his gaze to Adele. Pulling his face from Penelope's hand, he rose to his feet.

“Seth—” Penelope began to explain, standing as well.

But he cut her off. “Byron Garrett? The actor?”

“The very same. Lorelei, or shall we say”—Adele glanced at Penelope smugly—“Miss Parrish, told me that she had relations with him while performing some opera at the Boston Theater.”

“I only said”—Penelope tried to interject.

Again Seth cut her off. “The opera was Wagner's
Tristan and Isolde
. For the record, Miss Parrish was a superb Isolde.”

Adele shrugged. “I'm sure, but the opera or her performance is hardly of any importance in this matter.”

“Every detail of her stint at the Boston Theater is of extreme importance to me,” Seth retorted, coolly. “For it was there, after the closing night curtain, that Miss Parrish agreed to marry me.”

Adele snorted. “No doubt she found herself caught and thought to cuckold you into giving Garrett's bastard a name.”

“Seth … no,” Penelope gasped, the cape sliding down her shoulder as she reached out to clutch his arm.

But he ignored her. “You're sure it was Garrett's child?” His eyes were little more than glowing slits now as he studied Adele.

“Oh, it was Garrett's, all right,” she asserted, tossing Penelope a triumphant smirk. “It looked just like him.”

Seth nodded slowly, as if mulling the idea over. “Then, Garrett is a man of rare skills. Very rare indeed. For Miss Parrish”—he shot Penelope a look of gentlemanly apology—“was a virgin when I first took her … just hours before he sailed for England.”

She smiled her forgiveness, her heart flip-flopping with joy as his lips crooked up into a faint grin. Everything was going to be fine. How could it not be with Seth on her side?

“Seems to me that the important question isn't who fathered the baby, but whether or not it's alive,” interrupted the deputy, who'd been silently following the exchange. “Which is a separate matter from what happened here.” He pointed to Miles's body.

Penelope stepped forward, clutching the cape to her breasts. “If you don't mind, Deputy, I'd like to tell my side of the story now.” When he nodded, she told of Miles's obsessive infatuation with her, then recounted the events leading up to his death.

“And so you see, Deputy,” she finished, “Mr. Tyler was simply protecting himself when Mr. Prescott was killed.”

“It's true, Deputy,” Seth confirmed, wrapping his arm around Penelope's waist and kissing the top of her head.

The deputy glanced from the couple before him to the two saloon girls who had yet to speak up. “You,” he barked, beckoning the women forward. “What did you see?”

“It's true that Mr. Tyler was on top of Adele, and that it looked like he was roughing her up,” replied one woman, a plump redhead with a pretty, freckled face. “But he got right off her and went over to Lorelei when she called him. The way he covered her up and touched her all tender and lover-like, well, it was obvious that things weren't like they looked.”

The other girl, a petite brunette, bobbed her head. “Looked to me the way Lorelei said.”

The deputy turned back to Adele. “Well, ma'am?”

She shrugged, as cool as if she'd faced this sort of situation a hundred times before, which perhaps she had, given her nefarious activities. “Maybe I misread the situation,” she admitted with a snort. “But then, what was I supposed to think when I saw Lorelei lying there naked? I hadn't a clue she was carrying on with Tyler.”

She fixed her icy gaze on Penelope then. “As for this nonsense about a baby, all I can do is plead innocent and challenge Lorelei to produce proof of its existence.”

The deputy considered for a moment, then nodded. “Seems fair enough to me. Miss Lorelei?”

Penelope looked frantically from Adele's gloating face to the deputy's querying one. She had no proof, and Adele knew it. The woman had taken great pains to see that she had none.

“Sweetheart?” Seth murmured, his arm tightening around her.