Anne Stuart (39 page)

“
It weren’t your fault, my lord,” Ryan said earnestly. “Haven’t you learned that in your years of exile? You were young and hotheaded, and a true Irishman…”

“
And my parents were killed because of it.”

“
It weren’t your fault,” Ryan said again. “They caught the lads who did it, you know. Hanged them down in County Wicklow, and left their bones to rot.”

“
They had come for me, not my parents,” Killoran said savagely. “And I was away from home, playing schoolboy pranks that got them murdered.”

“
Don’t you go blaming yourself for the evil that infects this land. We need you here, my lord. The people need you. Ireland needs you. Don’t abandon us again.”

“
I’m sorry, Ryan. I’m here to sell my land to my friend. And then I won’t be coming back.”

Ryan looked toward Nathaniel. “Another English landlord?” he said softly. “You’d do that to your own people? I don’t believe you. When you walk the land, breathe the good Irish air again, you’ll know you can’t leave us.”

Killoran stared at him, brimming with despair and frustration. Ryan was an old man, ageless even years ago when Killoran was a young lad, wild and full of ideals. He knew too much, and it took all Killoran’s hard-won cynicism to fight off the effect of his words.

“
I’ve come here for the last time, old man,” he said. “I’ll see the old place, I’ll breathe the air, and I’ll walk the land. And then I’ll sell my property to an English landlord and never set foot here again.” And he walked away from him, out into the early evening air.

He walked slowly, the casual, lazy pace of an English gentleman with time on his hands. Until he was out of sight of the inn. Then he began to move more swiftly, ignoring his damnable weakness and the pain in his shoulder.

He still remembered the back way, across the meadows, down through the thicket, past the stream that was swollen from spring rain. Suddenly, after waiting so long, he could wait no longer. He had to see the house, to prove to himself that it no longer mattered. The past was past; he had no ties to the land, the country, his long-dead family. He could let it all go.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected. Twelve years of neglect weren’t enough to send the roof tumbling in, walls collapsing. At first sight, in the twilight, it looked the same. Until he moved closer and saw the broken, boarded-up windows, the tangle of undergrowth creeping up the sides of the house. For a moment he stared as the setting sun illuminated the upstairs windows, and he felt nothing but a blessed emptiness.

And then it came back, a swamp of feeling, washing over him. His mother, laughing, beautiful; his father, in shirtsleeves, out in the paddock with the horses.

The grand manor house up North had been burned. With his parents inside, torched by Protestant bullyboys in search of a trouble-making young aristocrat who should have been grateful his rank protected his Catholic blood. His parents had burned to death and he had left, never to return. And all that remained of his inheritance was this, the farmhouse where he’d grown up, where he’d known happiness, before his father had been thrust into a title he’d never wanted, and they’d had to leave this place for death and disaster at the hands of their enemies.

He moved closer, only to realize with a start that the windows on the upper floors were open to the cool spring breeze. The heavy front door was ajar as well, and the place, for all its overgrowth, seemed oddly welcoming.

He fought it. Fought the pull. He wouldn’t let it wrap around his heart again. He was growing damnably weak, to fall in love with a fierce-hearted young amazon, to start feeling sentimental about an old house. He’d dismissed Emma from his life. He could dismiss this house as well.

Someone had been there, he knew it the moment he stepped inside. He could smell soap and water, a recent fire in the grate. He could smell life in the house, and it hurt.

He moved through the place silently, half in a trance, not knowing what he expected. Whether it was the little people of his childhood fairy tales or something more dangerous, he neither knew nor cared.

He went up the broad oak staircase, listening to the familiar creak of the fifth step. There was silence all around, but he wasn’t alone. He didn’t know if they were ghosts or memories or travelers. He only knew where they lay.

The bedroom at the top of the stairs had once been his parents, before his father had inherited the title and the grand, cold house and the life that Killoran had hated. Here they’d been happy.

He walked into the room, moving straight toward the casement windows and pulling them closed against the cool evening air before he turned and saw her.

He’d known she would be there, irrational as the notion seemed. He felt no shock, no surprise at seeing Emma sleeping peacefully on the huge old bed in which he’d most likely been conceived. She was wearing colors, something light and green, and her hair was loose and untidy around her dirt-streaked face. And he knew immediately who had cleaned his house.

Her feet were bare. Long, narrow feet, for a large woman. Her hand was tucked under her chin, her eyes were closed, and she looked weary and immeasurably sad.

Perhaps she heard the latch of the windows, the imperceptible sound of his tread on the freshly scrubbed floorboards. Perhaps it was just that sixth sense that comes into play when one knows one is being watched. Her eyes opened, blinking, and she peered through the gathering dusk, straight at him.

“
This is my house,” he said slowly, so as not to frighten her.

She sat up, edging back against the carved headboard. “I didn’t know,” she said, breathless. “No one told me. It was abandoned, and so sad, and I...” Words failed her, and she just stared at him, with such pain and longing that something cracked inside him.

He moved to the bed. “How can a house be sad?” he asked her.

“
Perhaps it missed you. Perhaps it needed you desperately, even though you’d left it, turned your back on it.”

“
It’s better off without me,” he whispered.

“
It’s lost without you,” she said, her honey-brown eyes full of grief. “Why have you come here? You didn’t know I was here, I’m certain of that.”

The strands were weaving around him, gossamer-fine Irish silk. He made one last attempt to fight his way free. “It was all I have left.”

“
No, it isn’t,” she said. “You have me.”

He didn’t say a word. Darkness was descending around them, filling the room, and it seemed a dream. One could do what one liked in dreams, couldn’t one? There was no danger in dreams.

“
I have you, have I?” he murmured. “Is that a blessing or a curse?”

She didn’t flinch. “It depends on how you look at it,” she said. “On whether you want me or not.”

“
What do you think?”

“
I’ve never been sure.”

And he realized with shock that she spoke the truth. She truly didn’t know how much he wanted her, needed her, longed for her.

It could be his freedom. He could turn his back on her, on the house where he’d known his happiest years, turn his back on Ireland. And she’d find a new life. She was young enough, resilient enough.

It would be his first decent act in more than a decade. An act of such nobility and selflessness that no one would even suspect he was capable of it. He could do it, and he could do it for her.

“
You’re mine, are you?” His voice was harsh. “Much as I appreciate the offer, I rather think I should decline.”

“
I’m rich, you know” she told him, nervous. “My inheritance from my father’s munitions factories is quite vast...”

“
I don’t want your money.”

“
I know you don’t need it, but—”

“
Actually, I’m penniless,” he said. “The devil’s luck finally abandoned me. Too many nights of deep play, a horse race I was fated to lose. This house and some land near Wicklow are all that I have left.”

She stared at him, and the faint light of hope vanished from her eyes. Perhaps for good. “Why did you leave me at Cousin Miriam’s?” she asked suddenly. “Why did you just walk away once Darnley was dead?”

He managed a shrug. “I’d finished what I had to do.” He picked up a lock of her long red hair and ran it through his fingers. “Lovely as you are, dear Emma, you no longer held any use for me.”

“
I see,” she said in a muffled voice. “I should leave your property.” She tried to move, but he forestalled her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She felt thinner, more fragile beneath the thin green material, and there were shadows under her eyes.

“
I thought you were my property as well.”

“
You don’t want me.”

“
I may be cruel, heartless, and penniless, dear Emma,” he said lightly. “I never said I was a fool.”

He should walk away. Now. And he knew he couldn’t. One last taste. Surely he was already doomed to hell—this could give him something to think of during an eternity of damnation.

He leaned forward brushing his mouth against hers, a mere temptation. It proved his undoing.

Her breath was warm and sweet against his mouth. And hardly realizing what he did, he threaded his hands through her tangled hair, cupping her face as he deepened the kiss.

She said not a word of protest, of longing, as he stripped her clothes from her body. She lay back on the mattress, watching him as he knelt over her, and when his mouth touched her breast she arched her back. He tasted her skin, her belly, between her legs, using his tongue, and it took him only moments to shatter her deliberate control, so that she cried out in the gathering darkness.

One last time, he told himself, rising over her, unfastening his breeches. But her hands were reaching up, pulling at his clothes, and he barely noticed the pain in his shoulder as she stripped the coat off, pushed the white linen shirt away from him; didn’t realize what she was doing until he felt her grow stiff beneath his hands, and heard her sharp intake of breath.

He knew what the bullet wound looked like. It was an ugly thing, red, raw, barely healing. And he didn’t for a moment think he might convince her it was anything other than what it was.

“
He shot you,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“
It was merely a scratch,” he lied, but she wasn’t listening.

She rose up onto her knees, and she was magnificent in the shadows, her long mane of fiery hair tumbled around her lush white body. “You didn’t tell me,” she accused him. “That’s why you left. You’d been hurt, and you didn’t want me to know. That’s why you didn’t come to see me, why you disappeared.”

“
Stop thinking I have any decency!” he snapped, half mad with fighting his better instincts. “Who’s to say I would have done any differently? If you had any sense at all, you would leave me. I dislike people hovering over me, I don’t care about you or anyone, I don’t—”

She stopped him. She kissed him. Her mouth was open and full beneath his, and he was powerless to resist, to push her away, with his hands, with his words. She kissed his mouth, his nose, his eyelids. She put her mouth tenderly beside the bullet wound, then let it trail down his chest. Her hands shoved his breeches down his hips, and her mouth followed.

She was clumsy, she was awkward, she bestowed the most erotic torture he’d ever endured. There was no way he could pretend to be unmoved by her, not when his body betrayed him. Not when his actions betrayed him, and he pulled her up, against him, and kissed her mouth.

He prided himself on being a clever lover, always in control. He had no control now, no cleverness. He pushed her back on the bed, looming over her in the darkness, kneeling between her legs. She reached for him, and he came to her, pushing in deep, trapped by her body, her arms, her love.

He thought he could prolong it, but he was helpless against the tide of need that swept over him. He needed her, needed to take her in this bed, this house, this land. He needed to thrust deep and fill her with his seed. He needed to claim her, and claim his heritage. He’d fought it for too long.

He lifted himself above her, staring down at her as the bed rocked beneath his powerful, rhythmic thrusts. Her eyes were open as well, looking up at him, and then her eyes fluttered closed as her body convulsed around him, and he came as well, rigid in her arms, no longer fighting it, and her, and his own lonely heart.

It seemed to take forever for his breathing to slow. She was curled up against him, her face wet with tears, her body warm and pliant, the smell of sex and desire mixing with the heady scent of lavender and roses, soap and water, and the fresh spring air of Ireland.

He brushed the tears from her face, gently, and she turned, a smudge of dust on one pale cheek, her hair a tangle behind her. “Do you really want me to leave you?” she asked.

For a moment he didn’t move, but his hand didn’t leave her face. “It would be best,” he said in a measured voice.

“
That’s no answer. Do you want me to leave you?”

“
I have no money, no house but this one. I’m a cruel, heartless bastard who cares for nothing and no one.”

“
Do you want me to leave you?”

“
I’d make the devil’s own husband. I’d never want to leave here, you’d go mad with the isolation, I’d have to spend most of my time with the horses, you’d grow weary of bearing children…”

“
Do you want me to leave you?”

He stared down at her. “Never,” he said. And he pulled her back into his arms.

Epilogue

“
Da!” The demanding little voice echoed through the spotless old house. Killoran stood inside the front hallway of the farmhouse, stripping off his rough leather gloves. He was pleasantly exhausted, he smelled of horses and sweat, but he doubted his demanding eldest daughter, Letitia, would notice.