"I... I have lost the doc.u.ments of my marriage, Miss Heston. I am looking for the witnesses."

"Well, here we are. Myself and Aggie here." She gestured to the other woman, who nodded vaguely. "Her wits are going. Fine companion she's turned out to be. Does nothing but eat."

Rather dizzy with relief, Kate asked, "And the clergyman?"

"Reverend Trowlip. You'll find him down at his parsonage, I suppose, nursing a brandy bottle. Such a fuss as he made about coming here to wed you two in my own chapel. Seems to think I should go to his church. What's wrong with a lady praying to G.o.d for herself in her own chapel? All he wants anyway is money for 'gla.s.s.' Money for windows and things, you might suppose, but it all goes for bottles." She stared up at Kate. "I did tell you I have no money, didn't I?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry for it. Can we help you in any way?"

The old woman jerked back in surprise. "We?" She peered behind Kate. "Who are you, sir?"

"Major Charles Tennant, ma'am. A fellow officer of your great-nephew, and husband to his widow."

"Indeed! I like your jaw, young man, but you'll still get no money of me!"

"I a.s.sure you, we wouldn't take it if you offered. You so clearly need every penny. But Dennis and Kate did have a son."

"Ah-ha!" Miss Heston emphasized the explosion with a thump on the arm of the settle. "Now I see it. You want my money for the boy. How old is he?"

"Just six months."

"Bring him here when he's ten. No younger. I can't abide young children. And don't bother bringing him if he don't have manners. Can't abide brats. If he can make a bow and say please and thank you, I'll consider leaving him my pittance."

The old lady's sour words didn't bother Kate at all, for hope and relief were spreading through her like the warmth of the fire. In fact, she went forward and took a clawlike hand. "That's very kind of you, Miss Heston. I'll be sure to bring him here to see you. He should know his father's family."

The old woman scowled up at her, but didn't remove her hand.

"And," added Kate, "I now regard you as my family. If you have need of anything, you must send word." As if by magic, Charles pa.s.sed Kate his card with Marchmont Hall, Strode Kingsley on it, and she placed it in Miss Heston's unresisting hand.

They found their own way out into the sunshine.

"I was really and completely married to him," Kate said in wonder. Then she added sharply, "The loathsome toad!"

"Indeed. A nasty trick to steal the doc.u.ments and deny it. I suppose he just found marriage too restricting. I apologize on his behalf."

"But why? Why court me and marry me, then ... ? Oh G.o.d, it was all just the wager."

He took her hand. "He never could resist a challenge, and your una.s.sailable virtue must have seemed an exciting one.

I'm sorry, Kate."

"I'm just sorry that I proved such a disappointment to him."

He drew her into his arms. "Don't. It wasn't your fault. None of it was. He wasn't a man for domesticity. I was considerably surprised when he turned up with a regular woman. I'd probably have keeled over with shock if he'd announced that he'd married. But I'm sure he intended to play honestly with you at first. He was a gentleman." He rubbed her back comfortingly. "Perhaps it was us all along."

She looked up then. "What do you mean?"

"A few times he accused me of wanting to steal you. Even of having an affair with you-"

"The wretch!"

"He read my wishes correctly. Especially when he started going to other women."

"I suspected it. Especially as I grew big with child." Kate wondered why-with all the other betrayals-this one hurt so much.

"Perhaps he sensed that what you had together wasn't perfect. Put it behind you, Kate. I want domesticity, I want marriage, and I adore you. And I will be completely faithful to you, till death us do part."

"You'd better be," Kate said, pulling out of his arms and deliberately using her smile. "Let's go and talk to Reverend Trowlip."

The plump, red-faced, elderly clergyman confirmed the marriage without hesitation, though he railed at Miss Heston's practice of only using her decrepit private chapel. In return for a couple of guineas, he copied out his record of the marriage and signed it for them.

"For gla.s.s," he muttered as he pocketed the coins. Kate suspected that Miss Heston was right, and the gla.s.s was in bottles rather than windows.

She didn't care. She didn't have a care in the world!

As they walked back toward the curricle Charles said, "All we have to do now is to amend the birth record."

"Will that present any difficulty?"

"None at all. A man can't be declared father to a child if he couldn't have been legally married to the mother at conception."

Kate leaned against the side of the curricle, almost weak with relief. "It's over? It's settled?"

"It's over. It's settled." He took her hand. "But do you know what? I want to marry you again, with all pomp and ceremony, and with the whole of Aylesbury as witness. So you can never get away."

Kate looked up at him, tears in her eyes. "Jess warned me about that. She thinks marriage just ties a woman down."

"I want you tied down. I want to be tied down with you. Gads, this is beginning to sound decidedly odd!" He raised her hand to his lips, watching her with those remarkable eyes. "Marry me, Kate. Marry me with pomp and ceremony and forever."

Kate went into his arms. "Oh yes. Yes, please. Till death us do part."

Jo Beverley.

In writing The Determined Bride, JO BEVERLEY finally managed to use the knowledge and experience gained teaching woman-centered childbirth cla.s.ses, and in giving birth to her own two children. These days, however, she's a full-time writer with sixteen romance novels to her credit-four of them RITA Award winners-and a member of the Romance Hall of Fame. Her most recent novel is The Shattered Rose, a medieval romance.