the rear of the smithy, while Cate, wrestling with her gown, dodged among the cribs and coops, until she was directly across the yard from the blacksmith’s front doors.
Cate was poised to make her move, but stopped at hearing the rapid approach of hooves and wheels. She dove deeper into the shrubbery and peeked back to see a two-wheeled curate pass, Harte at the reins. The two Marines idling at the door snapped to attention when he pulled up, scurrying to open them for him.
Luck was with her: the doors stood open, the guards attending their commander inside.
Her hair had flung off most of its pins and tumbled free about her shoulders. She ruffled it further, and then slapped herself hard on the cheeks to redden them. Taking a deep breath, she sprung up and raced for the barn. With a siren-like scream, Cate ran, wildly flapping her arms. Skidding up before the doors, she threw her head back and gave another frenzied howl, circling and flailing in apparent hysterics.
From inside came shouts of alarm and running feet. She flew at the first Marine out the door, and screamed, pounding his chest with her fists. She ran to the next, maniacally babbling. Harte appeared, flanked by more Marines. Pitching to a new stridency, now alternating from hysterics to sobbing, she launched at Harte. He touched her arm and she jerked away to run terrorized to the next, clawing at the vermillion fabric as if for protection.
“Dear God, Catherine!” Harte exclaimed. He pulled her to him, and she arched her back to yowl squarely into his ear.
“Stop them!” Cate wailed into Harte’s coat. “Stop them! Don’t let them take me. Not again!”
“Pray, who? I beg of you?”
“Pirates!” she cried in wild-eyed shrillness, and threw a terrified look over her shoulder. “No, no, don’t let them take me. Nooo…!”
While she burrowed against him, the Marines were dispatched inside and in a defensive position around them, as if the pirates might materialize directly. Since there were no tears—she wasn’t that good of an actress—Cate kept her face deep in the crook of Roger’s shoulder as she cried, going louder at the least suggestion that he might move away.
“Commodore,” shouted one of the soldiers, running from the building’s dim. “Commodore, Blackthorne: he’s gone, sir.”
“Noo…! Nooo…!” she screeched, scrabbling frantically at Harte’s coat, the effort made worthwhile by a satisfying ripping sound. “Don’t let him have me, pleeaase! Not again!”
“Don’t just stand there,” Harte cried. “Go get him.”
The hallmark of a good soldier is calm before battle, but nothing in Harte’s training had prepared him for a hysterical woman. Perfect! The longer she could keep him off balance, the better. She thought to throw herself in front of the charging Marines, but Harte’s grasp was too firm. They had said Blackthorne was gone; that would have to be enough.
Roger stiffly patted her shoulder as he held her, with words Cate supposed were meant to be comforting. Murmuring more useless nothings, he guided her to the carriage. He leapt in beside her, a pop of the whip and the horse was off on a high trot. She kept her face hidden. Her performance had opened the floodgates, and she now swung wildly from make-believe hysteria to the real thing. The image of Nathan hanging by his arms was there at every closing of her eyes, and she began to shake with a mix of revulsion and fury at the monster that had put him there; the very one she now clung to. Growling like a rabid dog, she hammered him with her fists, one landing at his jaw, another, his ear.
Roger applied the whip to the horse.
Now at a full gallop, the carriage soon slid to a halt in a spray of gravel at Lady Bart’s doorstep. Harte eased Cate out of the carriage and bustled her into the house. The servants met them in the foyer, the entire house being thrown into an uproar. Leaning heavily on his arm, ostensibly for support, Cate dug her nails into the flesh of his wrist as she was taken upstairs. Lady Bart appeared at the top, clad in a wrapper and a cap, its flounced edge hanging ridiculously low over her nose.
In a confusion of voices, curious faces peeking from behind chamber doors, Cate was ushered down the hall to her room, where she was deposited on the bed. Red-faced at having entered a lady’s chamber, the Commodore quickly exited, leaving Cate to end her performance.
“Oh, you poor