Aisleen came toward him on bare feet. “Who was Mr. O’Flaherty?”
“Ah, lass, now that’s a tale worth telling.” He pushed a wedge of cheese toward her and then reclined on an elbow, his legs stretched out. “O’Flaherty was the proudest man in five counties, that’s who he was. Proudest of all he was of his hens. Why, he built them a coop on the side of his cottage when everyone else said it was best to let them roost in the eaves. But being a careful and prudent man, and times being what they were, and that before the famine…”
He paused, his eyes growing darker for an instant. “Ah, well, that’s a different tale entirely. Eat.”
Aisleen bit into the wedge of white cheese and was pleased to find the taste sharp but not unpleasant. She looked across at him “Will you not finish the tale?”
He did not answer immediately, and after a moment she decided that he would not answer at all. But she was curious about him, and the camaraderie between them made it impossible to keep her curiosity contained. “What brought you out to New South Wales?”
Thomas reached for a bit of cheese and popped it into his mouth. “The answer may not please ye.”
She looked away. “I did not mean to pry.”
“Nae, lass, ye’ve every right to ask the question,” he answered, but she noted the reluctance in his voice.
“Did the potato blight send you abroad?”
“Nae, I was gone a year and more before the beginning of the great famine, though, strike me, if I could have seen me leaving as a blessing at the time.”
“How did your family fare?”
“I’m the last of me line,” Thomas answered, the implication clear in his bitter tone. “I was the eldest, there being Katie and Maggie, Mary and Sinead all younger than me. Was some years before I heard that they’d perished, whether from starvation or pestilence I’ll never know.”
“And your parents?” Aisleen asked quietly.
“Broken hearts and a weariness of life have put many under,” he answered.
Aisleen waited, but he seemed content to say nothing more; and she was too uncertain of him to ask further questions. When he offered it, she accepted the piece of damper covered with a slice of lamb. The taste of curry was new to her, but she was learning to appreciate the power of the spices the cook doused upon every morsel of meat a few days after the slaughtering of a lamb. It nearly masked the faintly rancid taste of the meat. They ate in companionable silence.
“So tell me about yer illustrious self,” Thomas ventured when he had finished his meal. “I did nae think to wed the bloodline of gentry.”
Aisleen looked up. It was there in his eyes again, the strange quizzing look that was too subtle to give a name. She had told him much. Did she dare share more? “We were once more than gentry. We were royal. Our blood’s mixed with kings and tanists. Legend says there’s the blood of the
Ard Righ
in our veins.”
“
Wirra!
A man stands himself in great company to be counting himself among yer acquaintances.”
She knew that he teased her and she did not mind. “Come, sir, you must have inherited so glib a tongue. Is there not a druid or perhaps a bard among your ancestors?”
His smile was full of secret humor. “I’d be lying were I to say different. But I’ll not shame me forefathers by calling them as witnesses to me worth. Yet we were speaking of ye. Were ye a wee solemn thing as a child, all starched petticoats and lace and ruffles?”
Aisleen smiled. “I was the rarest sort of hooligan, if the truth were known.”
“
Musha!
I cannae believe it. With a smudge of dirt on yer nose?” Aisleen nodded. “And a tear in yer best Sunday gown? Faith! Ye’ve destroyed entirely me image of ye.” He leaned forward on his elbow to add in a whisper, “And glad I am to hear it, for I want me daughters to feel the heart that’s beating in them.”
Aisleen’s smile wavered. His daughters.
Her
daughters.
Thomas saw the guarded look come into her face but continued. “Since the good Lord in His most mysterious of ways saw fit to spare me, I cannae keep from thinking that perhaps there was a purpose in that.”
Aisleen watched him. “Do you not feel guilty that you lived while your family died?”
“Aye, there was a time when I hated meself thoroughly. But man is a curious creature. He can only hate himself so long. ’Twas me own fault I was not in Ireland to die with the rest of them. To me own way of thinking, the least
selfish thing I can do for Da and Ma and the lasses is to live to bring honor to the family name.”
Aisleen caught her lower lip between her teeth. “I failed even that.”
“What is that?”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Perhaps I understand more than ye think,” he answered with a knowing gaze. “Yer da was a miserable excuse of a man who tried to shift the blame for his own failure onto the frail shoulders of his wee daughter. ’Tis no reason for ye to blame yerself.”
“What if the responsibility were greater; what if through no fault of mine my family looked to me to save and protect them?”
Thomas was quiet a long time. “What way could ye, a bairn, save them?”
Aisleen shook her head. As before, he had drawn out of her more than she meant to admit. “A foolish legend, that’s all it was. In any case, it does not matter now. I’ve lost everything.”
“All life is a struggle, lass. Did they not teach ye that in yer great schools of learning?”
“Aye,” she answered. “They taught me to live on my own, to rely on no one, that recklessness brings punishment, and that being Irish is a curse that no amount of blessing will ever completely cure.”
“Ah, well, ’tis glad I am to hear it that the English set so great a store by yer heritage,” he answered sourly. “And when they were drumming into yer head these right and morally uplifting thoughts, did they tell ye also that when a thing is lost ’tis often only in the knowing how to look that a man can recover the loss?”
Aisleen gave him a quick glance, expecting his smile of amusement to be in place. But it was not. His face was solemn. “Some things cannot be recaptured,” she said.
“What is it ye would have that ye’ve lost?”
Aisleen gazed at his handsome face, wondering why he could not read in her own face the desperate answer. “Perhaps,” she said very softly, “it is a matter of never having had it at all.”
He looked at her, and the world grew still, hushed. The breathless moment continued as if all life, even the breeze, had ceased outside his glance. “It’s in the knowing how to look. Let me show ye.”
The firm clasp of his fingers over hers brought Aisleen the first pang of misgiving, but she did not want to pull away from his touch. She wanted to trust him, wanted more than anything to believe that what she dared hope for was possible. But if it weren’t—oh, if it weren’t—then she would be utterly destroyed.
Thomas watched the shift of emotions across her face: the wariness, anticipation, reluctance, expectation, and then the tremulous hope that flickered unstably.
“Ye can make real whatever ye desire,” he said. “If only ye believe.”
Aisleen could not answer him. Too many unspoken desires stood on the precipice of her hopes and dreams. She prayed,
Let it be enough, now, this moment. Let me ask for no more than this.
Wordlessly she watched him push aside the remains of their meal with a hand and then spread his shirt on the rock. Then he turned to her, his eyes a deeper blue than the sky, and he pulled her down beside him as he reclined on the shirt. He curved an arm about her, pressing her to his chest, and stilled.
For a moment Aisleen could not think, could only feel the thunderous pounding of her heartbeat. Gradually other more subtle things made themselves felt. Heat rose from the stone beneath her hip and shoulder while the sun blazed upon her cheek, her throat, and her feet. The musical gurgle of the
pool serenaded the day. The piping notes of birdsong were repeatedly interrupted by raucous laughter from the kookaburra.
Then, overwhelming all else, Thomas himself invaded her senses. His heartbeat was a slow, steady throb under her ear. His warm skin cushioned her cheek. The scent of his skin distracted her more than the exotic fragrances of the bush. And the pressure of his arm at her waist encircled her with a protectiveness she had never, never before known. For the first time in her life she felt as if she belonged somewhere—here, in her husband’s arms.
Serenity, so rapt and complete all else faded before it, enveloped her. She thought she would never let the moment go. Yet sleep came stealing.
She awakened in shadow. The stinging heat of the sun suddenly eclipsed. He stood above her, his features blotted out by the halo of sunlight behind his head. She sat up and grasped the hand he extended.
She did not speak and neither did he. He turned his face from her as he led her away from the rock. She saw then, away from the blaze of his eyes, that he was naked. She knew who he was, and yet he was a stranger. He paused at the edge of the pool and turned to face her.
He reached out to frame her face and lay his lips on hers. He tasted of sunshine. His hands, strong and gentle, moved from her face to her shoulders. Wherever they touched, her skin warmed and tingled. They moved to the neckline of her gown, and as they trailed downward her gown opened before them. With a wanton whisper, the gown slipped past her hips to the ground.
Aisleen did not move to stop him. She could not. There was nowhere to go, nothing to say, nowhere to look but into his serious face. All will, all fear, all desire to be separate from him disappeared. He found the ribbons of her chemise. She had taken his advice not to wear a corset in the bush. A whisper of batiste pantaloons was all that lay between her and him. And then even that was gone.
He pulled her against him, and she sighed as the heat of his skin met the cooler plush of her own. He held her a long time, as though to impress upon her his own ease with his nudity. The soft breeze blew gently along her back, but where he touched her, warmth spread through her, a rush of blood brought to the surface by the stroke of his fingers. She turned her face upward voluntarily, thirsty for his kiss.
He was as needy as she, and they kissed in urgent anguish. She thought the stroke of his tongue too much pleasure to be borne until he found the tender weight of her breasts. He filled his palms with the generous curves and closed his thumbs against the budded nipples to rub them gently.
She whimpered in pleasure, unable to believe, only to feel, the utterly devastating joy of desire. And there was more. His mouth left hers, skimming over her cheek, the side of her neck, downward to the breasts he held in capture. The corded velvet of his tongue sailed under one rosy bud before the hot, wet hollow of his mouth drew it in.
She wrapped her arms about his back, holding onto him against the buckling of her knees as he suckled her. She closed her eyes, adrift in the timeless luxury of sensations too intense to be disturbed by sight.
When, at last, he raised his head, the smile of pure pleasure on his face was more flattering than words. He placed her arms about his neck and then lifted her off the ground by the waist. She tightened her arms as his hands moved under her buttocks. He pulled her legs up astride his waist and locked her feet behind his back. The repeated contact of her loins against his naked waist made her tremble as he stepped into the pool.
He was surprisingly agile as he traversed the slippery bottom, wading in deeper and deeper until the water eddied about their hips and mist from the waterfall sprayed them.
She shivered in laughter as the cold spray dewed them in rainbow droplets. He laughed with her, and then his lips found hers again and the heat of the kiss evaporated the chill.
His tongue met hers, taught it a lively jig that needed only the
bodhran
of their hearts for accompaniment. His embrace relaxed and she slipped lower until the hard length of him was pressed between her spread legs. Somewhere a distant fear chimed. This was wrong, wicked, sinful. And then he kissed her again and the chiming ceased.
His embrace tightened again, and she lifted herself against him in an unconscious need to assuage the throbbing of her lips, her breasts, her loins.
He entered her in one thrust, directing her movements as he murmured indecipherable assurances into the deep cleft of her breasts. Each push/pull of pleasure forced a small cry from her until her cries formed a hoarse chorus of joy.
She knew then that she had been lied to. They were wrong, those who said there was no magic. The magic was now, here, in this place, with this man.
He was a man born with the art of persuasion. She had thought that gift of charm lay in his words. But that was before she had known this pleasure in his arms.
His fingers dug urgently into her buttocks, his rhythm quickening as he joined her cries with short grunts of desire.
Aisleen held him tighter, and tighter, kissing his sweaty cheek, his brow, crying, laughing, holding him so tightly that she hoped to solder them forever as one. The final rotating thrusts of his pelvis plunged deeply into her. She knew it was the first time that they were really and completely one.
* * *
She awakened in the curve of Thomas’s arm, her hair spread out under his head, the copper flood a dramatic backdrop for his ebony locks. She raised up on an elbow. There was peace in his sleeping face, and joy, and wonder. Her eyes followed the length of his arm until she saw the place where his hand lay. Beneath his spread fingers on the curve of her hip was the rose-red birthmark of her heritage. Had he seen it?