Free Married At Midnight by Katherine Woodwiss

truth.
    And acknowledge a son not of his blood? And a wife from a shop?
    Then perhaps he'll contact you and tell you what he wants you to do.
    Perhaps he will, thought Kate, pushing the matter yet again to the back of her mind.
    When Charles Edward Stuart landed in Scotland, however, attempting to raise that nation in support of a Stuart claim to the throne, she found she couldn't resist the papers any longer. The rebellion was all anyone wanted to talk about, and she was as interested as they.
    The recall of troops from the continent to face this new threat was an essential part of the story, but she didn't see anything about the Buffs. When she came across important news, however, it was quite incidental.
    The name Tennant leaped out at her. It was among a list of officers giving up their commissions, and the editor of the paper had added a special note.
    Major Charles Tennant—so he'd been promoted— had resigned his commission in order to support and assist his elderly uncle, Lord Jerrold, grieving over the cruel murder of his son and heir Thomas Tennant by the highwayman
    Jem Suffolk, hanged for the crime at the Colchester Assizes. Major Tennant was now heir to the viscountcy.
    Well, there it was, and it must even mean his father was dead. He was next in line.
    And he was now in England.
    That fact created an absurd little fizz inside her until she realized that he hadn't contacted her.
    His silence, added to the fact that he was now heir to a title, should have simplified matters. She must keep silent for
    his sake.
    It plagued her conscience, however, so that strife in Scotland faded to insignificance alongside the warring loyalties in
    her mind. Kate's mother must have noticed, for one day she pushed her down into a chair in the parlor and said,
    "Kate, tell me what is the matter."
    Kate tried to find the strength to lie yet again, and failed. She told her mother the whole sorry story, most it through
    tears.
    "Well!" said her mother, fairly quivering with outrage. "If Dennis Fallowfield were still alive, he'd wish he wasn't!"
     
     
    Kate laughed and blew her nose. "That's what Captain Tennant said."
    "He sounds like a man with some sense of right and wrong. So, Kate, what are you going to do?"
    Her mother was an amiable, soft-seeming woman, but Kate knew her sense of right and wrong was firm.
    Sitting on the moral fence would be unacceptable. "What do you think I should do?"
    "It's for you to decide, dear, but you cannot hide from it. Your captain—or major as he is now—is caught in this dilemma, too. He is married and thus cannot marry again. Yet he may wish to. He may feel it his duty to provide an
    heir for this title."
    "He has a brother .. ."
    Her mother fixed her with a look. "You would condemn him to chastity or a life of sin?"
    Kate hadn't quite looked at it that way, since she knew perfectly well that the captain had not led a life of chastity.
    It was true, however, that he might want a family of his own.
    She gnawed on a fingernail, a habit she thought she'd broken in childhood. "But if we make our marriage known, Stephen will be his legal heir."
    "There must be a way of getting around that."
    "Perhaps, but only by making a horribly public scandal of the whole thing. It would brand me a whore and Stephen a bastard to the world. Must I really do that?"
    Her mother turned pale. "The poor innocent. If only we could find those actors who played aunt, companion, and clergyman. They'd still serve as witnesses."
    "And what, do you think, is the chance of that?"
    "As likely as a rain of fish. Oh Kate, poor Kate."
    "But what am I to do, Mama?"
    "I think you must go to see Major Tennant and discuss the matter. Perhaps he can see a way out of the situation. Even
    if not, you owe him the chance to have a say."
    "He could have found me if he'd wished to speak of it!"
    "Perhaps he feels you don't want the matter raised. Come, come," she said briskly, "no good will ever be done by shilly-shallying and talk might