The Ground She Walks Upon (25 page)

"Come at seven o'clock. We can have a sherry in the library before we eat." The wicked smile still shone in his eyes. "Now you'll have to excuse me. I must find out how Seamus fares." He bowed to her as if he were in court dress and not standing on a boggy road, his shirt and coat torn at the arm where a bright red bandage signaled his wound.

Ravenna walked the dark and lonely road to the castle even though she had no doubt Trevallyan would be sending a carriage for her. The outing was a form of rebellion, of independence. She had kissed Grania good night and struck out on her own, half hoping the Trevallyan carriage would pass her along the way so she could stick her nose up at it. But before long, she regretted her decision. A quarter of the way to the castle, a large shadowed figure crossed the road and blocked her passage. A salt wind kicked up from the east, blowing her hair and the hood of her cape into her eyes, and making it difficult for her to distinguish who it was who stopped her.

Her throat was dry and tight with fear when she called out, "Who goes there? What business have you with me?"

"Why do you head to the castle at this hour, Ravenna?" the man said. His voice possessed an aching familiarity.

"Malachi," she whispered. Running to him, she was glad there was no moonlight to reveal the suspicion and fear that crossed her face. "What are you doing here? Everyone is looking for you—they think—well, they think you've been up to something terrible."

"I've been hiding. But I had to see you. It was worth all risk."

He touched her face, and his gentleness moved her. He wanted so much to please her, yet nothing he did pleased her.

"Do you know who tried to kill Trevallyan, Malachi?" She knew her voice was cold. It seemed to bring him upright.

"I wouldn't be shootin' Seamus if I were wantin' to kill Trevallyan." Bitterness ate at each word.

"Well, someone made a mess of it, to be sure. So tell me who it was? You must tell me."

"I can't be doin' that."

She slumped in despair. His reaction was not so much unexpected, as disappointing. "Please, Malachi, in the name of God, you cannot be doing such awful things. The men you're with are killing innocents."

"The Ascendency have no innocents."

"And Kathleen Quinn, is she not innocent?"

His silence grew ominous. "What does she have to do with this?"

She took his rough, work-worn hand in her own soft one. "I remember how you were once. She passed in her carriage. We all admired her, but you—you wouldn't even look at her—-it was too painful. I could tell you worshipped her."

"It's you I worship. I only worship you." He hung his head. "Why do you go to the castle, Ravenna? Why?"

"I..." She lost her tongue. There didn't seem any way to explain it all to him, about her father and her long stay at the castle while she recuperated, and the way Trevallyan looked at her that made her want to flee and succumb at the same moment. "I don't love him," she finally whispered. And it was the truth. She didn't love him. There was only a strange growing attraction she felt for him, and she was determined to overcome it.

"Then come with me. I want to marry you. We can go to Galway. Me uncle lives there—I can be a fisherman, and we can forget all about Lir and the Ascendency... and the boy-os."

"Tell me who tried to kill Trevallyan. They should be brought to justice, and you know they should be," she pleaded.

"Justice! There is none here!" He raised his fist to the window-lit castle in the distance. "And all because that man has taken everything that should be ours! But tell me he won't take you. You must tell me so, Ravenna."

"He may only take what I choose to give," she said softly.

"Then give him nothing. Come. Go with me now."

She was at a loss. Her friendship with Malachi would always exist, no matter what, because of their childhoods, because of the letters that had held her together in London. But she didn't love him. She had no way to explain to him that she was changed from the girl he used to know. Her education had ruined her, exiled her from all the expectations of her class. She would be unhappy being a fisherman's wife, and yet she knew in her mind that his offer was the best a girl such as she could hope for. She couldn't accept it, however. It was now not enough. So her only choice was to do nothing, to be no one, to live in the limbo of her self-imposed exile forever.

"Trevallyan says he knows information about my father. That is why I'm going to the castle and why I must go now." Unshed tears caught in her throat. She was hurting him, and the last thing she had ever wanted to do was hurt him.

"He lies. He only wants to—"

"No!" She fought the urge to cover her ears. "No, Malachi, it isn't like that. He's been a gentleman. Always a gentleman."

"He can afford to be." The hatred in his voice was clear.

"Please, you must go." She looked both ways down the darkened road. "If someone should come and recognize you, the peelers'll put you in the gaol. I don't want to see you come to that." She turned to him. "Please stay out of trouble. And tell them to leave Trevallyan alone. He's done nothing wrong but be born to a legacy you cannot abide."

"If he takes you from me, I'll do him."

She gasped. "Don't say such things."

"Aye, but it's true." His voice was hoarse with emotion. "I'll not abide him takin' you from me. I love you. I've always loved you. You're what I live for, Ravenna. You're me beautiful girl, and I pined for you all the years you were at the English school. He cannot be takin' you away from me. I can't live with losin' you to him."

"You aren't losing me to him," she said.

"But I'm losin' you, and if not to him, then to who?"

She released a small sob, knowing he wouldn't understand. Knowing she would hurt him. "To me, Malachi. You're losing me to me."

His silence gave testament to his pain. A light broke the hills in the foreground, and Ravenna wondered if it was a carriage from the castle, come to pick her up at the cottage.

"Be off now, before they find you." Her voice wavered with tears. She touched his face in a tender gesture of farewell.

"I'll win you. Whatever it takes."

His words sent a chill through her blood. "Don't do anything foolish, Malachi. If you picture Trevallyan's blood running, then remember that his is no different from Kathleen Quinn's. I don't believe you could hurt her."

"She was an angel. With her clean face... and her velvet dress." He crushed Ravenna to his broad chest. His voice was hoarse with pleas. "But don't you see? Kathleen Quinn is not real. You are real. You're the earth that I walk upon, the ancient
ogham
stones that cross Lir's fields. I worship you, Ravenna. Don't you see it? Don't you care?"

The lights from the carriage were growing stronger. Fear and concern caught her breath. "Please, you must go—"

"Then meet me. After your dinner with Trevallyan. There is a servants' passage from the drawing room that is hardly used. Take it, and meet me at the bottom of the stair. All that I ask is that you meet me."

"All right. I'll meet you. But now you must fly."

Before the words left her tongue, he was gone, merely a shadow in the night.

T
he coach
drew near, and she was caught in the light of its lanterns. As she thought, it was the carriage sent from the castle. Ravenna allowed the man who had replaced Seamus to help her ascend the vehicle, and before she knew it, Greeves was showing her to the library.

Malachi's encounter left her rattled, but she was more so within the castle, in the clutches of Lir's esteemed member of the Ascendency, magistrate and king. She had wanted to forget him, and yet if what Trevallyan told her proved to be the truth, if he did truly help her find out who her father was, she would be indebted to him for the rest of her life.

She warmed her hands at the fire, refusing the chair Greeves offered her. He bowed and left. When Trevallyan didn't show, it occurred to her that the mischievous one-armed butler might have played another trick on her and put her in the wrong room, but then she heard a noise at the entrance, and Trevallyan was there.

He gave little indication he'd been wounded. The bandage, if he still wore it, was hidden beneath the arm of his frock coat. He looked fit and rested, dressed in his usual somber attire, dark coat and trousers, relieved only by a glimpse of stark white shirt that peeked through a black neckcloth. Miraculously, he had eluded death, a fate Seamus now wrestled with.

"Sherry?" He raised one aristocratic eyebrow.

"Yes," she answered, irked that he always deemed it acceptable to dispense
with
a proper greeting and farewell in her company. She was nothing but a peasant to him, and would always be such. She marveled at how infuriatingly supercilious he could be. To him, the attitude was clearly a birthright.

He walked to the mixing table and handed her a tiny glass of the amber-red liquid. She took a sip, willing it to have quick effect on her nerves.

"How is Seamus?" she asked quietly.

His eyes hardened to ice. "He is barely alive. I fear only a miracle can save him."

"Miracles have been known to happen."

His gaze slid to hers. Without premeditation, he reached out and ran the back of his hand down her smooth cheek. "Yes," was all he said before he turned away and sat in the large leather chair by the fire.

"So tell me about my father. That is, after all, why I've come." She walked toward him, again irritated that he would seat himself before seating her.

"I fear if I tell you now I shall be lacking company at dinner." He glanced at her, the same old disparaging, amused glance that was somehow inbred into the peerage. In one lightning moment, he'd expressed disdain for her cheap clothes, her low social position, and her suspect manners.

Bristling, she said, " 'Tis unfair of you to keep me on tenterhooks, waiting to hear-—"

" 'Tis unfair of you," he interrupted, "to be... to look... so..." His angry gaze drifted to her figure. He became inexplicably angrier.

"You must tell me about him. I need to know," she implored quietly.

"After dinner."

She stared at him. He watched the flames in the hearth, his posture implacable.

"You know I desire to know about my father. You leave me no choice but to wait." Her voice never wavered. "It seems I am at your mercy."

"How quickly you forget it."

She forced herself to swallow the scathing comment on the tip of her tongue. Instead, she said, "This pretense is preposterous. Shall I return when you are feeling better, my lord?"

He finally looked at her, and there was a slight quirk to his mouth, as if he enjoyed her standing up to him. "No, stay. Forgive my ill temper. 'Tis not every day I am shot. Especially by a felon who would as soon see me hanging by the neck from my own tree as lying by the roadside in a puddle of blood."

"I promise you and Seamus that I'll do my best to find out the man who did this."

His eyes gleamed more dangerously. "Indeed?" He took a small folded piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and threw it on the table beside her.

She reached for it and read it with a slow, building horror.

Finished, all she could do was leave it on the table and place her shaking hands in her lap. "You know I didn't send that message to you," she whispered. "I don't know why they used my name."

"Because they knew I would come," he said quietly. He watched her, and his mood turned morose. "My man O'Donovan saw you talking to MacCumhal. Were you with him, perchance, before you went to town today to find Seamus carried off like a corpse?"

"Malachi didn't do it, I know he didn't do it."

"How do you know?" he challenged.

"I just know, 'tis all. You must take my word for it."

His lips twisted in an all-knowing, cynical smile. The contempt in his glance was like the flick of a whip. She knew he was remembering the night she'd gone with Malachi to the Briney Cliffs; the night he'd found her lying in the road in her sodden night rail.

"I do believe I hear Greeves's footsteps." Coldly, he stood and offered his arm to her. "Come, dine with me."

Being without recourse, she allowed him to escort her.

Greeves took them to a small, cozy eating room off the parlor that she had never seen before. It was hung with threadbare medieval tapestries of indigo and gold. Long ago, it must have served as some sort of dressing room for the Celtic king who had built the castle. Now, since it was off the modern kitchen, it was furnished with a small mahogany table and old-fashioned Chippendale chairs from Trevallyan's ancestors. Trevallyan, no doubt, took most of his meals in this little room. It both pleased and chagrined her that he felt no compulsion to entertain her in a grand, distant manner. She wondered why he was so comfortable with the intimacy of her presence in his lair. Especially since he didn't seem to be able to make up his mind how he felt about her. He was either angry at her, lusting after her, or mercilessly reminding her of her inferior social position —all of which managed to inflict pain.

With little conversation, they sat and ate Fiona's tempting meal. The mutton was delicate, the peas fresh, the bread white and crusty. Afterward, they were served an exotic drink made with mint, sugar, and whiskey called a julep. Trevallyan explained that the recipe had come from a plantation in Mississippi where some Ulstermen he knew had struck it rich in cotton.

She sipped her drink, sated on the good food and watched him from across the small table. The places Trevallyan had gone, the world he had seen, she envied it. She might have even told him so, except that Greeves entered the room and told him the physician would like to speak to him.

"Would you care to retire to the library while I check on Seamus?"

She stood and clutched her napkin. "All right. Then will you tell me about my father?"

"In good time. He might not be your father, you know."

"I know he is. I can feel it."

He quirked his lips, then departed.

She told Greeves not to bother escorting her to the parlor, that she could find it on her own. Greeves nodded and began to clear the table for Fiona. He didn't watch her as she left.

In the passage, Ravenna decided to take the moment to meet Malachi. It made her nervous thinking of him waiting for her inside the castle while Trevallyan blamed him for the shooting. Determined to tell him to leave before Trevallyan returned from Seamus's, she darted past the parlor to where she remembered the drawing room to be. Opening one door after another, she finally stumbled upon the correct room, but this time there wasn't a fire in the hearth to light her way.

There was a lamp on the table outside the door. Retrieving it, grateful that it was lit, she scuttled back into the drawing room, making sure to close the door behind her.

The jib was easy to find from memory. The door sprung open and she descended the damp, winding staircase, her nerves rattled by the sound of tiny feet that scurried below.

"Malachi?" she whispered to the darkness.

Not a sound answered.

"Malachi?" she said again, this time much louder.

"Aye," came a voice, muffled by distance. She took the stairs two at a time and descended far enough into the earth so that she could see the light of his lantern.

"There you are," she exclaimed, relieved to see his familiar face.

"Ravenna. How goes it?" His mouth was hard and disapproving. He was clearly jealous.

"We'll be done soon. Trevallyan had to leave me to check on Seamus."

"Seamus is dead."

His words froze her. The shock of it felt like the sting of ice. She knew the man had been terribly wounded, but somehow she couldn't believe the incident had ended in a death. She had always hoped the boy-os would see the trouble they were entering into, and quit before something this terrible happened. "How—how do you know?" she asked numbly.

"Everyone knows by now."

She detected his own horror and fear in his voice. Weakened, she lowered herself to the stairs, unmindful of the damp ruining her best wool gown. "Why did they do it, Malachi? Why? Tell me why?" She couldn't run from the question. The incident had gained nothing; it had only lost. No one was better off for it. No one.

"You know why it was done," he answered distantly.

"But what did it accomplish?"

His silence was testament to his own confusion. Finally, in a shaky voice he said, "Come with me to Galway. We'll forget about the boy-os and put this mess behind us. You can dream of Trevallyan all you want, and I'll never complain, just come with me, Ravenna, come and be my wife and... and... and... save me..." He grew deathly silent. Then she heard the harsh, raspy sound of a man's sobs.

Her heart seemed wrenched in two. Malachi had grown into a man, but here, weeping at her feet was the young boy she had known, the little urchin who had stood up to others in her defense, who had in his noble, childish way, clung to the shreds of honor his father had left him before he had been killed.

Slowly, she put down the lamp and wrapped him in her arms. He cried on her breast for a long time while she held him and pressed her smooth cheek to his wet one. He quieted finally; the grief purged. Yet in the absence of tears was a silence that spoke of confusion and blame and death.

"You must leave here," she said softly when he raised his head.

"Aye, but not alone...."

"Yes, alone. I've got to stay and find out about my father. You must leave the county and never see the boy-os again. You can go to Galway without me."

"I won't."

"You must."

"I love you."

She closed her eyes. Slowly she lowered her head to his shoulder, despair eating away at her insides. She didn't love him in return, and the words to tell him seemed unspeakable.

His brawny, meaty arms wrapped around her like steel bands. They alone seemed enough to protect her from the storms seething around her, but as she was coming to find out, brute strength lied. He couldn't protect himself, let alone her.

"Go to the next county, at least. Perhaps one day—if things change—I will join you," she whispered at last, unable to offer him anything better.

"But what must change?" he asked, dragging his lips across the top of her head.

My feelings, my desires, for you, for Trevallyan.
"I don't know," she fibbed.

He held her close, as if unwilling to let her go, as if he somehow knew they might never be together again. Gradually, she succumbed to him, holding him close as well, enjoying the bittersweet kinship, if only because she knew it was destined to be so brief.

And brief it was.

A shuffling noise startled them. They looked up the winding stairs. The shadow of a man loomed over them.

"Get up, MacCumhal, so that I may see your face when I kill you."

The voice shattered the tender moment. Terror traced through her veins as she lifted her head from Malachi's shoulder. Trevallyan stood above them on the staircase. He was all but hidden in the darkness save for the gleam of lamplight on the pistol he held tightly in his hand.

"No—this is all wrong—" she stuttered, gasping for the breath to still her pounding heart.

"You killed Seamus, you bloody, incompetent bastard, and you shall pay for it." Trevallyan lowered himself to another step. Then another. The light played off his angry features. "He worked for me all his life. He was like my own family, and you murdered him.... And for what?

What?" His
shout
echoed through the stone staircase like the moan of a phantom.

"He
didn't
kill Seamus. I told you that," Ravenna pleaded,
still clutching
Malachi.

Trevallyan reached the step just above their entwined figures. He gazed down at their embrace. Even in the flickering shadows of lamplight, she could see the rage burn in his eyes.

Slowly, deliberately, he placed the pistol to one side of Malachi's head. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled back the hammer.

Malachi stiffened within her arms. She released a ragged gasp.

"Stand up so that I may kill you like a man. I'm not like the coward who killed Seamus."

"Trevallyan—no! My God, no!" She reached up and grasped the pistol's muzzle, turning it toward her.