"What made you think it was a false marriage?"
"I was young, but I wasn't stupid. Or maybe I was, I don't know. After the... the ceremony, Sean took us all to a pub. He was already drunk, so I don't know what he wanted with more whiskey, but then I have never understood drink. There was a barmaid there, and she said, 'If that one's a priest, I'm a nun.' Then she asked me if my mother knew that I was out with these men. Suddenly everything became clear to me."
"And you ran away," Cole said as he pulled her closer.
"Yes, I ran. But I didn't get very far. I was halfway back to the cottage where my mother lived when Sean caught up with me."
When she said no more, Cole urged her to continue. "Then what happened?"
He could feel her body tense into a knot. "It was dark and Sean was drunk. He said that after all the trouble he'd gone to, I owed him. He said he'd never worked so hard to get a woman, and he was going to have me--whether I wanted him or not."
For several minutes Cole rubbed her shoulders until he could feel the tension beginning to leave her body. "I went to London," she said softly. "I got a job as a cook's assistant, but I was fired five months later because it was evident that I was going to have Jeremy."
Kathryn took a deep breath. "I stowed away on a ship bound for America, and since then..."
"Ssssh," Cole said. "Be still. It's over now."
"But it's not!" she said fiercely, twisting about to look kt him. "Can't you see that it will never be over as long as I'm alive? Sean knows about his son. He wants him, and he'll do anything to get him back."
Putting her head in her hands, Kathryn began to cry. "I can't give Jeremy up. And he wont allow me to send him back."
"Jeremy's father can't do anything to harm you because he's dead," Cole said above her sobs, and it took Kathryn a moment before she heard him.
"What?"
"Sean O'Connor died of a fall from a horse years ago. He was drunk, he took a fence, and he didn't make it. Died instantly." A thousand questions tumbled through Kathryn's head. "But if he's dead, how can he be chasing us? Why would anyone else want us?"
"Jeremy is his son," Cole said softly, then waited for her to understand.
"His bastard, you mean," she said bitterly.
Cole smiled at her. 'Tell me, was the barmaid who told you O'Connor's friend wasn't a priest, was she pretty?"
"Yes, very, but what... Oh, I see. You think she and Sean were lovers?"
"What do you think? Was O'Connor the type to have a mistress in the local tavern?"
"Sean O'Connor went to bed with any woman anywhere," Kathryn said bitterly. "He was rich and gorgeous, and he had a way about him that was as charming as the devil." Her eyes began to fade to dreamy. "All he had to do was talk to a woman in that low voice of his and a girl would--"
She broke off because Cole kissed her, kissed her hard and thoroughly, and when he pulled away, she was limp in his arms.
"Did he kiss you like that?" Cole asked angrily.
Kathryn's first thought was to tease him, but she saw the hurt in his eyes. She had yet to comprehend what he must have done to be able to rescue her. She had never thought to see him again. Yet she couldn't continue to see him because there was danger and--
"If Sean is dead, then who put those posters out saying I was wanted?" she asked, eyes wide.
Cole was watching her closely, and he was relieved to see that she was not grieving over hearing that her son's father was dead. "Why did you marry him?"
"I didn't love him, if that's what you mean," she said with a grimace.
"But, according to you, he was the most handsome man on earth. Even the angels must have praised him."
Kathryn smiled at his jealousy. "Yes, he was beautiful to look at, but the truth is he was as stupid as his sister. If it didn't have four legs he didn't understand it. I doubt if the man could read a nursery rhyme."
"Yet you married him."
"It was either that or have my mother discharged. Besides, I told you, the marriage was fake."
"The marriage was real," Cole said softly. "Whoever told you the priest wasn't real was lying."
"But it wasn't real! I accused Sean of faking everything, and he admitted it." "Maybe he didn't like being called a liar. We men tend to be like that," he said, smiling, and she smiled back, thinking of the lawsuit she'd brought against him.
Suddenly, Kathryn sat up straight. "But if the marriage was valid, then Jeremy is--"
"Exactly," Cole said. "Jeremy is the rightful owner of the O'Connor estates."
For a few moments Kathryn sat there blinking at him, then she leaned back into his arms. "It was Sean's aunt, wasn't it? I never met a more spiteful woman than she. She was older than Sean's father, her brother, and she told anyone who would listen that, had she been a man, she would have been the owner of the estates." Kathryn gave a little one-sided smile. "Of course there were those who said that the woman was a man, certainly more of a man than Sean's father ever was."
"So what are you going to do now?" Cole asked.
"I... I don't know. How does one go about claiming an estate for one's son?"
"Maybe I could help," Cole said softly.
Kathryn's mind whirled with too many thoughts. If she and Jeremy went back to Ireland to live, she'd never see Cole again. But how could she give up such a future for her son? To her disbelief Cole began to laugh as he snuggled her close to him, nuzzling her neck.
"Could you tell me what it is about me that you find so amusing?" she said stiffly.