Bogus Bride

His heavy face looked as if it had been carved in wood, so still and stern it seemed. It was an expression that brought excuses immediately to Samuel’s lips.

“It is clean—only a little untidy,” Samuel said, bravado elevating his chin. He knew he sounded insolent, but he could not help himself.

Caitlin seemed not to notice the threatening atmosphere. She treated William with a casual irreverence that Samuel could only marvel at, and certainly could not hope to imitate.

“I am Caitlin Parr. This is Caitryn, my sister. The squire would not be averse if your son joined us for lessons, Dr. Jardine. He says all children should have regular lessons. Our tutor knows Latin and Greek, and Mama would see that he changes his shirt and bathes frequently. It would be good for him.” She spoke primly. Even at nine years, her clear brain led her to make an unerring attack upon the paternal sense of duty.

Samuel had stood there, crimson-cheeked with mortification. He studied the rather grim expression on his father’s face, and decided that the girl’s preposterous suggestion was being considered very seriously, as if there were some question about whether or not it would be accepted. He shrugged. It was all one to him. He didn’t care.

“Caitlin and Caitryn. Too much alike. Cat and Cait. Too confusing,” Samuel said, determined to be perverse. He knew he was beginning to sound rude, but he couldn’t help it. The green eyes bored into him. For a gleeful instant, he thought she was going to blow up.

“Would you come? I’ve always wanted a brother.” Caitryn smiled a smile that gripped Samuel smack in the middle. What sweet words. His shy, lonely heart lightened, lifted.

“Oh,” he said with soaring joy, forgetting his vexation with the angel’s older sister. “I’d consider it an honor to be your brother, Caitlin.”

“I’m so glad!” She smiled all over her little cherub’s face. “But you’ve mixed us up. She’s Caitlin. I’m Caitryn.

Caitlin gave him a furious look, as if she’d taken a grip on her resolve. She found an unexpected ally.

William’s voice was stern. “That’s settled, then! You need proper schooling, Samuel, else weakness of memory and confusion of brain will land you in a fine mess one of these days.”

Caitlin cast a glance at William. “If I am ever so quiet and well behaved, Dr. Jardine, can I come and watch, and—maybe when I am bigger—help you?”

Samuel almost laughed, seeing how disconcerted his father looked, as if he thought that the girl was an alien creature. He felt a flare of grudging admiration for her impudence.

To his surprise, William laughed. “I’ll think about it,” he said, but Samuel knew him well enough to see that he liked Caitlin’s bold approach.

And so, the Parrs took Samuel in, and Caitlin won over William Jardine with her high spirits and rebellious nature.

Grace Parr had been so taken with the life of King Henry VIII and his many wives that she had named her daughters after the ill-fated Catherine Parr. The similarity in pronunciation confused the child Samuel and, much to everyone’s amusement, he was forever getting their names mixed up.

The large, rambling house, hunkered by the edge of Bodmin Moor, had soon become a second home to the doctor’s son. His hair slicked back, his face scrubbed and polished, his jacket brushed, he’d visited the Parrs as often as possible. While Caitlin teased and tormented, Caitryn had smiled and soothed.

Samuel topped up his glass from the bottle of rye resting on the counter. He tried not to think ahead. Yet an unwilling dream enveloped him. He saw Caitryn waiting. He pictured her opening his letter with hope in her face….

He took a mouthful of the strong liquor, and wrinkled his nose. A voice in his head told him he had indeed had more than enough whiskey, but a louder voice cried out for more.

He made wet circles on the polished timber counter with the bottom of his glass. Why the hell was he thinking of the past now? It must be the whiskey. Too much grog made a man maudlin. And while drink was not one of his vices, he needed something to dull the pain.

In life, Samuel knew, one not only had to cross bridges, but one had to cross them at the proper time. Around went the empty glass. The trouble was, he had just burned his bridges. He shoved the empty glass toward Murphy with a violent motion.

Caitryn was the woman he should have married. Not Caitlin. Caitlin had been the bane of his life.

Damn, he needed time to comprehend the merging of past and present, to let the scattered pieces fall gently into place. Besides, he was in too far for backing out, now that he’d taken vows in front of the altar.

Samuel took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, accepted the refilled glass. His bride had a lot to answer for! He could still remember his father’s anger that his son of nineteen years had endangered the lives of the thirteen-year-old Caitryn and her fifteen-year-old sister.

And it hadn’t been Samuel’s fault Even after all these years, the injustice of his father’s accusations still rankled. It had been Caitlin who suggested taking the dinghy over to the cove and exploring the caves. And it had been Caitlin who went gaily tripping off into the hollow caverns and twisted her ankle, the delay caused by rescuing her making it impossible to leave the cove once the tide had turned.

Samuel was now convinced Caitlin’s sprain had been all pretense, but at the time he had been a gullible fool and believed her fabrication. Unfortunately, he did not even have the consolation that time had taught him wisdom. He might be that much older, but he had still fallen for another of Caitlin’s falsehoods. The letter…

Samuel settled on the situation at hand.

Caitlin. She was a part of that life he had pushed into the dark recesses of his mind, that life that included the mortification of the anguished secret that gnawed at him.

Caitlin. She had become like a many-armed octopus, her tentacles weaving themselves into every crevice of his life Yet he saw no remedy. Now he was married to her.

He should not have waited this long to fetch Caitryn. It had been a shock to him when recently he calculated her age and realized that by now she might already have married, and be nursing children. He could not picture it. He had not wanted to picture it. He had not wanted Caitryr changed.

For the first time in years, he’d felt the desolation of the exile, the poignant ache for home; thus, he had penned a letter to Sir Richard. It had been a long letter, the scrawling script telling them of all that had happened to him since leaving Cornwall, explaining how successful he had be come, and that he wanted to wed their daughter, Caitryn.

Only the wrong sister had come. It was Caitlin to who he was now married.

Samuel looked at the whiskey at the bottom of his glass What was it about the woman that made him so vulnerable? Was it the brain that was too quick and hard and brillian for her sex? Or was it that small, indomitable chin, or those firm lips that were the physical evidence of a passionate temper?

Samuel took another long swallow. The memory of the day he had realized Caitryn was the eternal Madonna and that Caitlin was the true daughter of Eve was crystal-clear. It had been one of those magical summer days.

He could recall the querulous sound of gulls calling overhead, the sounds of the sea surging and retreating, and Caitryn, his gentle Caitryn, sitting in the shallow crescent of the stony cove, diligently painting. She had turned her shoulders just enough so she could see both him and the sea.

Light had spilled out over the bay, chopped by the waves into splinters. The air had been strange, as if it had been combined with mist or syrup, and Samuel had watched Caitryn, transfixed. He had been young, and he had been susceptible.

She was like an angel, all pale skin and hair, her soft, harebell-blue eyes staring at something on the other side of the bay that Samuel could not see. Her eyelids fluttered, but her gaze never wavered.

Samuel, rapt as he was, longed to see what she saw, to know what she was thinking, to understand the nature of her spirit. At thirteen, Caitryn had a sweet, generous nature and a cherub’s smile.

“Stop dreaming, Samuel! Come and explore!”

Caitlin positively beamed. Her open mouth showed perfect white teeth. She seemed to mock him. The magic spell was broken. The sun seemed less warm now.

Samuel felt himself flushing at Caitlin’s evident amusement. He stared straight ahead, ignoring her.

Caitlin was not a beauty like her sister, although, she was arresting, in an exotic way. There might have been beauty in her green eyes, had they not been so needle-sharp.

Abruptly as a shark’s dorsal fin rising from water, there was the sound of a scream. That scream vibrated in his gut like a hard-driven blade, tearing into his mind, his heart, making him rush off to be the hero.

It had been Caitlin. Caitlin and her devious ways. A sham, a cheap trick—and Samuel had fallen for it! Lord, his stupidity, his utter gullible imbecility, to have been taken in by the green-eyed witch.

And she was his bride. His bogus bride.

Now, Samuel stared at the back of her head, with its heavy knot of midnight hair, at her slender back, at the graceful curve of her waist, and the sweet flare of her hips. Deep inside him, something rippled. He tingled with the force flooding through him, which caused Samuel to groan inwardly. Have you no shame?

His lips set hard. “Canvass an extra team tonight, Liam. The new crew can join us on the trip upriver tomorrow.” He placed a hand on Murphy’s shoulder to brace himself as he struggled to his feet. “It’s more simple and more effective to be ready for any trouble.”

Marshaling courage, Samuel pushed himself away from the table with one knuckled fist. He needed time to deal with the problem. Time he didn’t have. Heart pòunding, he moved to claim his bride. He put out a hand, clasped hers. Caitlin flashed him a brilliant smile. Her eyes behind their sooty lashes shone intensely green.

He took a deep breath to keep the quiver of emotion from his voice. “My dance, I believe?”

She accepted with a shade of restraint In Samuel’s arms, Caitlin lost all sense of time and space, as if the music had thrown her free, displaced and rushing with the wind.