Charon's Crossing

"Maybe it wasn't what it seemed."

Matthew shot her a look that said she was crazy. And maybe it was crazy, wanting to shield him from his memories. He was nothing to her except an unwelcome, even dangerous, presence in Charon's Crossing. Besides, there was no changing whatever he was about to tell her. It had already, happened, almost two centuries ago.

"Dammit, Kathryn!" His eyes glittered fiercely ire the moonlight. "Why do you try and protect her? Is it because you share the same blood?"

"I'm not trying to protect her! I'm trying to..." She shook her head. "I'm just suggesting that you might have misinterpreted what you saw."

"I saw them," he said through his teeth. "Do you understand? They stood on the terrace not two feet from me and Waring took Cat in his arms. 'You have made me a happy man tonight,' he said, and then the son of a bitch bent her back over his arm and kissed her while his hand slipped down her neckline and cupped her breast. Christ, I went crazy! I flew at him like a madman, pulled him off her, and bashed him in the face with my fist."

Kathryn reached out her hand as Matthew swung away from her but something kept her from touching that proud, rigid back.

"Waring fell to his knees, his nose spouting blood, and I turned to Cat, convinced she'd been victimized by that horse-faced bastard." His face twisted with memory. "She looked at me as if I were a weevil she'd found in a piece of hardtack, rushed past me and dropped to her knees beside Waring, calling him 'beloved' and 'sweetheart,' cradling his head against her bosom. Then she glared at me with all the hatred of the world shining in her eyes and cursed me for having hurt the man to whom she had just become betrothed."

This time, Kathryn couldn't stop herself from touching her hand to Matthew's shoulder.

"Still, I could not accept the truth. I tried to take her in my arms. I reminded her of the vows we'd made and when she would not listen, I grew desperate. Time was racing by and I knew it. I tried to tell her that we could not waste our breath in argument." His head drooped forward and his voice fell to a whisper. "God help me, I told her everything. Of the Americans, waiting to take Elizabeth Island, of my plan to rescue her before the attack..."

"And Waring heard?"

Matthew lifted his head. "He heard," he said flatly. "He staggered to his feet, his face livid. Catherine threw herself into his arms, denying everything I'd said, but he thrust her aside and called her a whoring slut. I knew I had to stop him. I shouted his name and drew my sword. Waring drew his..."

Kathryn shuddered. She had only to close her eyes and she could envision what had happened next: the glint of sharp metal, the clang of steel upon steel, the looks of lethal fury, the thrust, the parry, the slash and riposte until, finally, there was a gush of scarlet blood.

"When it was over," Matthew said, his voice so low she had to strain to hear it, "we both lay at Cat's feet, mortally wounded and sinking into the dark river of death."

Kathryn's voice was choked with emotion. "Oh, Matthew! How horrible it must have been. To have been so deceived by the woman you loved..."

His hands shot out and clasped her forearms. "Dammit, Kathryn, I don't seek your pity. I was not the true victim of Cat's deception. It was my men."

Kathryn stared at him in bewilderment. "Your men?"

"My crew. They died that night, every last man of them, even my cabin boy, a foolish child barely old enough to have stopped whimpering for his mother each time he fell and skinned his knees." His voice broke and he turned away, but not before Kathryn had seen the bright glint of tears in his eyes. "It was my men who paid the price for my monumental stupidity, do you understand? They trusted me and I betrayed them, I sacrificed them for the deceit of love."

"Catherine told her father what you'd said about the planned American attack on Charon's Crossing," Kathryn said through stiff lips.

Matthew nodded. "Her shrieks brought Russell and his guests running. She told him a fanciful tale in which I was both pirate and rapist, unmasked by her pig of a fiancé, and Russell was only too happy to believe her. He had me bound, left me lying in a pool of my own blood, and led his troops to the harbor. The other ships were safe, for their captains had wasted no time in putting out to sea when I had been discovered missing... but the Atropos had disobeyed orders and waited for me."

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Kathryn shut her eyes tight. "Oh God," she whispered.

"Nay," Matthew said hoarsely, "not even God could save my men that night."

"You can't be sure they all died," she said in a desperate attempt to ease his tortured conscience, "I mean, you weren't there..."

"I lived long enough for the battle to end, and for Catherine to stand over me and tell me that she wanted me to die knowing my ship was sunk and my men dead." He gave a bitter laugh. "I had ruined her life, you see, or so she said. Her father had an empty title. He had no money, no land and no influence back in England, either. Cat had schemed for power and position. I—I had just been a diversion."

"How you must have hated her!"

"Hate?" He laughed again, a terrible, cold sound that sent a tremor down Kathryn's spine. "That is too simple a word for what I felt. I gathered the last of my strength and cursed her with my dying breath. 'May neither you nor your issue ever know love or peace, Catherine Russell,' I said. What I did not realize was that I was dooming myself, for it would seem that to damn someone with what turns out to be your dying breath is to turn the curse back upon yourself."

Kathryn gave an uneasy little laugh. "But—but surely you don't believe in..."

The look he gave her made her swallow the rest of the sentence and the rush of hysterical laughter along with it. He was a ghost, a man trapped between the dead and the living, and she'd almost chided him for believing in curses and what happened to those who made them as they lay dying.

Of course, he believed. And so did she. He had doomed himself. Had he doomed her, too? She was Cat's descendant. Was Matthew's curse the reason she hadn't been able to return Jason's love?

"Have no fear," Matthew said softly, as if he had read her thoughts. "The burden of my words plagues only the giver. I, and I alone, must bear their onus."