goodness, I quite forgot. I must go to evensong.’ Katherine gathered up her reticule and shawl, dropped when Black Jack had entered the room. ‘What is the Condemned Sermon?’
‘The Ordinary of the prison—that is the chaplain—preaches to the condemned awaiting execution, with a coffin in the centre of the chapel. It is intended to fix their minds upon eternity and to prompt repentance.’
‘How horrible.’ She shuddered, then resolutely pushed all thoughts of what Nick must be experiencing out of her mind. ‘I cannot begin to thank you, sir. At what hour shall I call for you? I thought to hire a chaise for ourselves and my maid. My man can follow with my coach, for it is old and slow.’
‘No need to hire. We will take my carriage. I have a good team and we will be in London by late afternoon, never fear. I will collect you at your inn at ten in the morning if you give me your direction.’
Katherine took a warm farewell of him and almost made it to the road outside before her legs gave way and she sank down on to the grass. ‘We did it! Oh, John, Jenny, he is not going to hang.’ And promptly burst into tears.
Nicholas Lydgate jerked upright on the hard pew where he had been attempting to doze and ignore the somewhat routine call to repentance the Ordinary was delivering. Sleep eluded him here as it did in his cell, but he had fallen into a pleasant half-sleeping dream involving freedom and Kat and broad acres under high moors. He straightened his back and looked coldly at the coffin lying in the centre of the chapel. Better not to dream, there was no hope to be had. To hope was to delude himself and he had never done that. The day after tomorrow his body would be tumbled into an open grave; he doubted that the prison authorities would go to the expense of providing a coffin.
If Kat was happy somewhere, so much the better. She would shed a tear for him, he knew. No one else would, and in a few years a better man than he would take what was his by birth. Robert would not disgrace the family name. He just wished he could be sure that Kat would be all right.
Katherine spent a sleepless night. What if the magistrate changed his mind or decided it was all some elaborate plot to free a guilty man? What if he was not believed when they reached London? What if the prison authorities changed the day of the execution and brought it forward?
As the clock struck three in the morning she threw back the covers, lit a candle and got out of bed to pace up and down the room. Her bare feet made little sound on the polished oak boards and the night was dark and still. Now she was moving, her frantic brain slowed and she felt calmer. Of course Mr Highson would not change his mind. He was a respected man of the law; even if Nick could not be freed on his word alone, it would be enough to halt the execution while further investigations could be made. And of course the date of the execution would not be brought forward, it was a public spectacle.
‘And surely I would know if you were dead,’ she whispered out loud. How strange that she felt so close to a man she had known for less than a day. But then they had shared an intense and strange experience—perhaps that had forged a bond.
Yet even before they had spoken, even while he had seemed a veritable ruffian, filthy and dangerous, there had been something as their eyes met. Katherine shivered and rubbed her arms. It might be mid-May, but three in the morning was no time to be out of bed wearing nothing but a thin night rail. She looked down and smiled. In her haste to pack and be gone from London she had thrown the same nightgown into her valise as she had worn on her strange wedding night.
‘That is a devilishly pretty nightgown, Kat.’ It seemed for a moment that Nick was in the bedchamber with her, his voice teasing with an underlying hint of sensual danger.
Katherine smiled again and climbed back into bed. She drew up the covers and blew out the candle flame, but stayed sitting up, her eyes unseeing on the darkness around her.
She was married to a very attractive man, she mused. Attractive in character as well as body and face. An honourable man. But for that sudden, hard kiss as they had parted he had treated her with respect and consideration. Katherine ran her fingertips over the swell of her lips. No one but family had ever kissed her, so she had nothing to compare it with, but somehow it had seemed that what he was wanting was not a simple sensual sensation but to imprint the memory of her upon his mind and body.
Had it given him what he wanted? It had certainly left a vivid impression upon her. She closed her eyes and the scent of him came back to her, the feel of his body hard under her spread hands, the taste of his mouth on hers. Katherine wriggled down under the covers and set herself to sleep again. Perhaps he too was lying awake, trying to distract his mind from the squalid reality around him by remembering that strange night.
It was torture to think of him there. Was that why she felt so strange inside? Unable to sleep, Katherine tossed and turned and tried to wait in patience for the morning.
Mr Highson was as good as his word, arriving promptly in a smart equipage somewhat at odds with his general appearance. ‘Now I know you will be anxious, my dear young lady,’ he said comfortably, helping Katherine into the coach, ‘but we will make good time and your husband will be safely out of that place by tonight, never fear.’
She smiled and thanked him for his assurance, but something in her appearance must have betrayed her for Jenny slipped her hand into Katherine’s and squeezed encouragingly. They set off at a brisk pace, leaving John and the old coach and pair far behind and, as King’s Langley and then Watford were passed, Katherine began to relax and feel that after all she had succeeded in saving her stranger of a husband.
Unconsciously her lips curved in a smile. How ridiculous that she, Katherine Cunningham, should find herself married. She had put the slightest hope of that out of her mind three years ago when she realised the depths of Philip’s fecklessness and the extent of his debts. Their acquaintances fell away as they were less and less able to go out into society and the few true friends that were left had gradually ceased to be frequent callers as Katherine sought to distance herself.
She could not endure their well-disguised pity, their attempts to include her tactfully in events where she might be able to afford to dress appropriately—and she dreaded any visitor coming across Philip in one of his drunken fits of moroseness. It was pride, she supposed, musing on it now. Strange that she had not realised it until she had recognised the same thing in Nick.
Well, she would not be married for long now, but she could not complain that it had been an uneventful experience.
‘Where are we now, sir?’ she asked, leaning forward to look out of the window.
‘Not far from—’
The carriage lurched, jolted and then tipped suddenly on to its side with a rending noise of breaking timber and the shrill scream of a horse. Katherine grabbed frantically for the hanging strap, was knocked away from it by Jenny’s helplessly tumbling body and then something came up and hit her across the forehead. The world went black with shooting white lights, then the noise faded away and all was still.
Chapter Seven
The jolt of the hammer on the anvil as the man struck off his irons jarred through Nick’s body until it met the thudding ache in his head that had seemed to clench his brain in its grip since noon the previous day.
He sighed in relief as the leg irons fell away, then stooped to place his hand irons on the anvil. It was a temporary relief, for they would tie his hands behind his back before he left this room. Then it was the short walk out onto the gallows’ platform along with his companions in death, who either huddled in front of him or who stood waiting their turn behind.
The stone-walled room was thronged with the condemned, the Ordinary, the Governor and Assistant Governor, the gaolers and the well-bred crowd who had paid to be admitted to this titillating glimpse behind the scenes. For perhaps the fourth time he let his eyes scan the room. No sign of her, thank God.
Not that Kat’s absence here gave him much comfort. He had believed her promise to return,