Laurel McKee Page 13
Rolling hills, yellow-green under the gray winter sky, seemed to flow on forever, broken up by low black stone walls snaking their way up the slopes. Stands of silvery-pale ash trees and ornate iron gates hinted of homes hidden somewhere beyond those never-ending fields.
Despite the cold, a few hardy cows grazed, almost the only signs of life for miles. She saw no people at all.
It made her think of Dublin late at night, the streets empty and windows darkened. The sounds of patrols in the distance and the echo of that hateful “Croppies Lie Down” song. The fear had been palpable, an acrid odor on the air.
And all her dancing, champagne drinking, and card-playing had not been enough to erase the foreboding, to keep away the rumors of unrest, murder, rape.
She turned to the book lying open on her lap, a Gothic romance of haunted castles and a dark, tormented man, the innocent maiden caught under his terrible spell. How she loved such tales! Loved their images of an enchanted world full of danger and romance. They often kept her awake at night, turning their pages in a feverish haste and then lying awake in the dark imagining all sorts of terrors. Those tales did not seem so wondrous now, with true dangers lurking around every corner.
She shut the book with a snap, tucking it away in her valise. If such dangers came, how would she react? With tears and shrieks and swooning, like those fictional maidens? With courage and fortitude like Eliza?
She feared it would be the former.
Suddenly, the carriage felt so small, so confining, the tufted leather walls closing around her. She lowered the window and called out, “Can we stop for a moment, John? I wish to walk a bit.”
Her maid, Rose, peered nervously outside. “Oh, my lady, ’tis perishing cold outside! And no one is about at all.”
“It’s only for a moment, Rose. I need some fresh air. You can stay here, if you like.”
One of the footmen helped her to alight, and she hurried along the edge of the road, back in the direction they came. The wind was cold against her face, shocking her out of her nebulous forebodings.
Perhaps Mama was right, she thought. Perhaps novels were a danger, and she should read more history and philosophy. Like Caroline, who never seemed to worry about anything in her calm, scholarly serenity.
Anna dashed along a pathway leading away from the road, through a stile in a rough stone wall. The path twined up a wooded hillside, and from its flat summit she would be able to see for miles.
She took off her hat, letting the wind ruffle her blond hair. There were endless fields, endless expanses of pale green dotted with those dark cows and a few whitewashed cottages. The solid gray hulk of a great house loomed in the distance. It all seemed so quiet, so still, like a painting.
Anna shielded her eyes from the milky light, gazing farther down the road that eventually led to Killinan. At the crossroads was what appeared to be a scaffold, with the dreaded wooden triangle used for flogging suspected United Irishmen. Blessedly, it was empty today, but she still shivered at the sight of it.
“And what do you do here, miss?” a man’s deep voice suddenly said, almost making her jump out of her skin.
She spun around to find him standing behind her, just at the edge of the hill’s crest. A horse pawed the ground at the foot of the hill, but she had been too preoccupied with the scenery and her own worries to even notice his approach. If the rebellion and civil war did come, she would certainly be completely useless.
Anna sucked in a deep breath, steadying herself as she studied the man before her. And what a man he was, like a character in one of her novels—the mysterious, dangerous antihero lurking in a storm-swept castle. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and well muscled under his brown wool riding coat and doeskin breeches. Black hair fell in unruly waves over his brow, his craggy face shadowed by a growth of dark whiskers. Green eyes, so pale they seemed almost silver, burned as they glared at her.
What right did he have to glare at her? He was the one who crept up on her. Anna stiffened her shoulders, glaring right back. Perhaps if she acted like she was not afraid, she could forget that cold pit of terror in her stomach at the sight of him.
“I was traveling through and wanted a breath of air,” she said, with far more bravado than she felt. Her pride would not let her do what she really wanted—to run back down the hill and throw herself into the carriage, far away from those angry green eyes.
“Well, you are breathing the air on my property,” he said. His voice was deep and rough but touched with the lilt of an Irish accent.
“I saw no sign or locked gate,” she said. “And even if it is your property, as you say, I am doing no harm.”
“You shouldn’t be wandering around the countryside on your own, girl,” he said. “ ’Tis foolish in these days. You never know what villains may be lurking in wait.”
If there were any villains lurking, it was surely him, Anna thought with a shiver. He seemed so perfect in the part that he might have been cast from the Crow Street Theater! Dark, powerful, brooding…
And handsome, too, she saw in surprise as the wind tossed his hair back from his face. Not conventionally handsome, as her sister’s golden Will was, but compelling nonetheless. A dark Donn, the Celtic lord of death.
He was quite right—she should not be wandering about alone. Not with men around who made her feel like this. She was terrified, excited, exhilarated, all at once.
“Who are you, sir?” she said, trying for something of her mother’s unshakeable dignity. Lady Killinan’s haughtiness always kept the world at bay.
Obviously, it did not work, for he smiled at her in a sudden flash of infuriating amusement. She saw he was not just handsome—he was gorgeous. Alluring, enticing, masculine, in a way all her yapping, puppyish Dublin suitors could not even approach.
Anna struggled to hold on to that flimsy, false dignity, even as she could not quite breathe.
“Who am I?” he said lazily, taking a slow, loose-limbed step toward her. “That’s hardly important, miss. The question is, who are you? And why haven’t I seen you before?”
“I… I hardly think we have any mutual friends, sir,” she managed to say. Confused, she turned to run down the hill, away from this strange man and the spell he seemed to cast around her.
But he was a magic being, for he was beside her in a silent flash of movement, grasping her wrist in his hard, ungloved hand. It did not hurt; indeed, he seemed to exert no effort at all, yet she could not escape him. His heat and power surrounded her, burning away the winter day. Anna shuddered.
“I am quite certain we don’t move in the same circles, colleen,” he muttered, reaching out with his other hand to touch the fine fur edging of her cloak. “I know no English princesses.”
“I’m not English!” Anna protested, thinking of Eliza’s oft-repeated admonition—the Blacknalls were Irish and had been for generations.
“You speak like an Englishwoman,” he said, his touch sliding up the soft fur. His gaze followed, his eyes as dark as fine emeralds now. “Are you on your way to Castletown, mayhap? For one of the Conollys’ grand parties?”
Anna suddenly wrenched away, unable to bear his nearness another minute. She feared she would faint, like one of those ninny heroines in her novels. “It is none of your business who I am, sir, or where I am going!” she said, running back down the hill. Running away from him and her unladylike feelings.
But his laughter followed her, full of mocking amusement. “You would do well to heed my words, colleen,” he called after her. “Go home and bar your doors.”
She did not slow down until she threw herself back into the carriage. “Drive on!” she shouted. “Quickly.”
Rose stared at her with wide eyes. “Is something amiss, my lady?”
Anna shook her head, trying to catch her breath. “I am just eager to get home.” She craned her neck to stare out the window, but the road behind them was empty.
Had the whole scene been nothing but her overly vivid imagination, then?
“I think it is the Duke of Adair’s land, my lady.”
“Adair?” That name seemed familiar. Anna searched her memory of county gossip. Then she remembered—the reclusive Irish Duke of Adair, the last of an ancient line, had been in a dispute with his Protestant cousin over the estate. But that had been years ago. “I thought he lost the estate.”
“He got it back, my lady. Though who knows how long that will last, these days. You need to stay away from men like that. They’re terribly dangerous.”
Anna could well believe that that man wrested back his property, even under the weight of the Penal Laws against Irish landowners. Surely he always fought for, and won, everything he wanted. And she knew he was dangerous.
She leaned her head back with a sigh, closing her eyes. “We’ll soon be home,” she whispered. And as soon as the doors of Killinan closed behind her, she would surely forget her strange encounter with the enigmatic Duke of Adair.
Chapter Twelve
I think I have the high card! I take this trick,” Lady Connemara said. “What of you, Lady Mount Clare? Have you anything higher?”
Eliza glanced up, startled to find herself still at the Connemaras’ card party. Her thoughts were still on the proofs of her latest pamphlet, on its way to a secret printing press in a courier’s saddlebag.
“Oh no,” she said, quickly studying the cards in her hand. “You do win the trick, Lady Connemara. Shall we deal again?”
“It’s hardly surprising we are all so distracted,” Lady Connemara said as her partner, Lord Banning, nodded. “What with rumors racing through Dublin and preparations for war galloping apace. I’m tempted to barricade myself in my chamber until all is over!”
“My brother, General Hardwick, is in charge of fortifying the old city walls,” Mrs. Easton said, shuffling the cards again for another hand of whist. “He says the stones are ancient and crumbling and the mortar full of gaps, especially in the south. How can such a flimsy barricade hold out the French, I ask you?”
“I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Easton,” Lord Banning said. “That’s what our fine army is for! They won’t let any Frenchies or any damned Irish pikemen through. Those cowards will run at the first hint of real battle.”
Eliza glanced across the room at Will, who sat by the window playing backgammon with Miss Hardwick. Despite herself, she felt a pang of jealousy at the sight of their blond heads bent near each other.
“I do hope your sister will make it home in safety, Lady Mount Clare,” Lady Connemara said. “I vow I would not care to be on the roads these days.”
“I’m sure she will be fine,” Eliza said.
“In Kildare?” Mrs. Easton asked worriedly. “I have heard the place is full of rebels, hiding in the woods and bogs.”
“Perhaps we would all be better off in the country,” Lady Connemara said as distant cannon fire boomed like approaching thunder. They had been testing the guns along those crumbling walls all day and now were doing so into the night.
“At least there, in our own homes, we could see to our own fortifications,” Lady Connemara went on, gesturing to the footmen to serve more wine to steady everyone’s nerves.
“Not if we can’t trust our own servants,” Mrs. Easton said, watching suspiciously as her glass was filled by one of the footmen.
“I shouldn’t worry,” Lord Banning said again, drinking heartily. “I hear General Lake will soon be in charge of the entire forces. Now, there is a man who knows how to nip rebellion in the bud!”
Lake—a man who was an utter brute, Eliza thought, remembering tales of his doings in the north, including burnings, floggings, and torture. With such a man in charge, surely these things would spread over the whole country like wildfire.
And would he draw Will into such horrors, too? Even good men could fall into brutality in the red haze of war.
She looked at him again. He smiled gently at Miss Hardwick as the young lady blushed back. No, Eliza could not see such brutality from him; it would destroy him. And destroy her, too, to see it.
“Will you also go back to Kildare, Lady Mount Clare?” Lady Connemara asked, studying her new hand of cards.
“Perhaps,” Eliza murmured, shifting the cards in her own hand. “My mother and sisters are quite alone there, and I find I miss them.”
“I should go soon, then,” Lord Banning said. “Before the roads become quite impassable with the fighting.”
The card games ended soon after that, servants setting up refreshment tables as everyone milled about. There was laughter, gossip, and flirtation, as usual, even as the guns boomed in the distance, lighting up the night sky.
Eliza took a cup of tea from one of the tables, standing by the window to watch those red flashes against the darkness. She caught a glimpse of Will’s reflection in the glass, standing right behind her as he, too, watched the cannon fire. She did not turn to him, but her every sense was attuned to his presence. To everything about him.
“Can I see you tonight?” he whispered.
Before she could answer, the drawing room door flew open and a dusty messenger hurried in, still wearing his riding boots. Silence fell like a storm cloud over the company as everyone turned to the intruder. Excitement on a dull evening at last!
Lady Connemara rose from her seat, her hand pressed to her throat. “What is this?” she said tightly.
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” the butler said, dashing in after the messenger. “He insisted on speaking to his lordship at once.”
“Speak to me of what?” Lord Connemara said, taking his wife’s arm. “We have guests.”
The messenger ignored that, striding forward to hand Lord Connemara a sealed letter. “As a magistrate of West-meath, you are needed at the Castle at once.”
Lord Connemara broke the seal, hastily scanning the message, his face turning white.
“What is it?” Lady Connemara whispered. “The children…”
“Nothing like that, Marianne.” He did not look at her, just crumpled the paper in his hand. “I will come at once.” His gaze swept the startled party. “And I suggest all the officers here return to their homes and wait for their own orders.”
As Lord Connemara hurried away with the messenger, leaving a sudden excited clamor behind him, Eliza spun around to face Will. His expression was tight, blank, giving nothing away at all.
“I will come to you later, Eliza,” he said quickly. “I know it is probably futile to say this, but please go home. Stay quiet tonight.”
She nodded. She would go home, but she would send messages from there, too. She had to find out what was about to happen, one way or another.
Eliza lit the branch of candles on her desk, watching as they flared into bright, flickering light one by one. The rest of the chamber was deep in blackness, as was the night outside her window. Only distant, ominous fires lit the sky at its edges.
As she lit the last taper, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. For an instant, she was launched back in time to confront her younger self. Her hair fell over her shoulders in unruly waves, and her eyes were very large, dark, and as frightened as a doe’s in her pale face. Will was leaving very soon. She was sure of it. And this time he would not come back.
But she wore a garment her younger self would never have possessed. On a whim, she had purchased the dressing gown on her last shopping expedition with Anna and then immediately regretted it. It was a frivolous bit of sheer, pale blue silk trimmed with lace and white satin rosebuds. It skimmed over her body like a light caress, parting provocatively over the bosom and tied with satin ribbons. Beneath it, she wore nothing at all.
Yet now the gown felt foolish. He had said he would come to her tonight, and he was not there.
“Blast it all,” she muttered, reaching for the delicate satin ribbons. She would put on her sensible night rail and go to bed—alone. But as she pulled the first ribbon fre
e, there was a rustle at the open window, the sound of a booted footfall on the floor.
“It would be a shame to waste such a charming gown,” Will said.
Eliza whirled around, pressing a hand to her pounding heart. “Will! I thought you weren’t coming. After the party—”
“Sorry for my tardy appearance.” He closed the window behind him and pulled off his coat and cap. “Ran into a patrol near the river.”
“Did they give you trouble?”
“Of course not. I am quite adept now at taking cover when needed.” He grinned at her. “And I absolutely must mention again how fetching that gown is.”
Eliza laughed, sitting on the edge of the desk, dangling her bare feet above the floor. “I just thought you might.”
“It is most… charming. I’m glad you listened to me for once and came home after the party.” He crossed the chamber in two strides, his eyes dark with intent in the candlelight. He clasped her waist as he stepped between her legs, drawing her close against him as if there was no time to lose.
As their lips met in a welcoming kiss, one of his hands slid up over her ribs to balance her breast on his palm, massaging and squeezing gently through the thin silk. His fingertips circled her nipple, rubbing the cloth against the aching, pebbled skin. Eliza moaned.
“Eliza, Eliza. You are so very beautiful,” he whispered, lowering his head to take that swollen nipple into his mouth, wet and hot through the silk.
She buried her fingers in his hair, holding him close to her as the sensations grew deep in her stomach, hotter, tighter, until she feared they would snap and send her spinning off into the night sky.
“I think that you, Major Denton,” she gasped, “are entirely overdressed.”
She grabbed the hem of his shirt, dragging it up over his head. The cold night air washed over the damp silk of her robe, her breasts, and she trembled as she went about her task. She unfastened his breeches, easing the rough wool down until his manhood was free, as stiff as iron.
His arms tensed around her as he swung her off the desk. They fell to the floor, still tangled in their kiss, their frantic caresses, as if they were starved for the taste and the feel of each other.