The Ground She Walks Upon (18 page)

She forced her gaze down at the foreign garment covering her. Of course her own clothes would have been too wet and muddied for her to be put to bed in them. She lifted one arm and saw how the sleeve extended way beyond her fingertips. The garment was sheer white batiste with mother-of-pearl buttons down the front. A man's shirt. Trevallyan's shirt.

A hot, sickly blush crawled up her cheeks as she remembered what she had been wearing when Trevallyan must have her found her. She had been wearing nothing but her night rail. She could just picture the ladies at the Weymouth-Hampstead School, or the Catholic matrons of the parish, dropping dead of mortification. She couldn't even blame them. Her own constitution was much more sound than those sheltered English roses, and even she felt ill with shame.

"And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...."

At the sound of Trevallyan's voice, she jerked her head to the right. There sat the reason for her humiliation, watching her, his eyes as cool as the ice from the winter Boyne.

She met his gaze, for the moment forgetting the blinding white pain in her head. He sat in an elbow chair with his black-booted feet crossed in front of him. He was dressed in black trousers and a starched shirt much like the one she wore. His black neckcloth nearly covered his fashionably turned-out collar, and his figured-silk waistcoat, the color of crushed grapes, lent him an air of wealth that seemed in marked contrast to his dark, somber gray frock coat. He looked down at her, with an air of disdain. His face was freshly shaven and smelling of vetiver soap, while she, on the other hand, looked a mess.

Shrinking inside from humiliation, she pictured herself as she sat in the bed. Her hair hung in a curtain of black knotted hanks, and she was hardly bathed since her encounter with all the mud.

She waited for him to say something cutting, but he didn't. He merely glanced at her and said obliquely, " 'Tis a good motto for life, is it not? 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.' "

She opened her mouth, quick to explain that she had not meant yet again to be trespassing on his land, but her gaze fell on his face. Beneath all the polish, he appeared worn. There was a tiredness around his eyes that she hadn't noticed before. He looked as if he'd been carrying a terrible burden that had now been lifted. In the back of her mind, she wondered if perhaps it was she who had burdened him, but the idea seemed so absurd—the Lord Trevallyan sitting vigil at the bedside of a woman little better than a street urchin—that she couldn't quite believe it. There was no reason for him to care for her; more so, in her every encounter with him, he'd gone out of his way to make sure she knew what little value she held in his esteem. If there was something troubling him, it surely hadn't been her health. Then her gaze lowered to his lips. A terrible, downright sickening thought occurred to her. She had dreamed she had kissed Malachi, and it was a dream so real she could still feel the press of warm lips on her own, feel the hard, strong hand cup the back of her neck and pull her farther into his embrace. She would swear on her grave she had kissed someone and that it hadn't been entirely a dream. If all along she'd been in Trevallyan's possession, then she might have actually kissed...

Her hand clamped over her mouth that was now open wide with shock, not retort. She met his gaze and her eyes burned with guilt. It couldn't be true. She couldn't have kissed him, but the discomfort she found in his own gaze damned her more than her own foggy remembrance.

"Did—did... Did I kiss you?" she whispered, agony in her voice.

"Yes," he answered coldly, suddenly unable to meet her eyes.

She cringed at his stiff, disapproving countenance and wondered how she could have become such a trollop. Perhaps she was cursed by her mother's past after all. Perhaps it was something she could not control, like the funny, hot feeling she got whenever she thought of the men who bathed nude in the River Lir. So was her life over? Was she now going to have the urge to kiss every man? Even the good father and Trevallyan's old, one-armed butler? God save her.

" 'Twas not
that
unpleasant, I wager."

Her gaze flickered back to his. If she didn't know better, she'd believe there was a tiny, so-small-if-you-blinked-you-would-miss-it, glimmer of amusement in his blue-green eyes.

Stupidly, she stuttered, "Wh-what was not that unpleasant, my lord?"

"The kiss."

"But I didn't mean to kiss you," she blurted out, backing away from the topic like a wet cat running from a bucket. "Please believe me, I thought you were someone else."

Trevallyan stared at her so pointedly he seemed to be drilling holes right through her. "I see," he said, his voice tinged with a strange anger. "Was this man, perchance, the criminal who burnt down the Quinn barn last night?"

She felt a knot tighten in her throat. Malachi had been in trouble when she'd seen him last. She didn't want to hear tell of crimes. "Was anyone hurt?"

"The barn couldn't be saved." He quieted. "Nor could Kathleen's prize mare."

Ravenna stared at the rumpled sheets, sickened by the picture of a terrified mare burning up in flames. She couldn't believe Malachi, the boy she had known and loved, would do such a wicked deed, but deep in her heart she knew it was probably true. Something had happened to him. Growing up poor and resentful had turned Malachi's mischievous tendencies into criminal ones.

"Do they know who it was that burned the barn down?" she asked, her throat dry and fiery from withheld tears.

He gripped her jaw and turned her head to face him. "A man said he saw the criminal's face lit briefly by the barn fires. He said he thought the lad looked like... Malachi MacCumhal."

"A scant sighting in the dead of night is not evidence the fire was set by him." She bit her lower lip and her forehead lined with worry. "Besides, I can't believe Malachi would
purposely
do such a thing. Nobody loves horses as much as he does. Why, he sneaks old Reverend Drummond's mare an ear of corn every time the old man isn't looking."

"Malachi will hang if he doesn't quit this White Boy nonsense."

"He didn't burn that barn down, I tell you!" She thrust her jaw from his grasp and stared at him with eyes that glittered with anger. Her behavior was contrary to her thoughts, but as irrational as it was, she still couldn't accept Malachi's blame. And especially not from Trevallyan. Niall Trevallyan had never known hardship and loss. He sat in his fine castle all day, counting his riches and devising the next pleasure, like all the rest of the Ascendency. At the moment, the wife and baby buried in the Trevallyan graveyard didn't seem to mar her picture of him one bit. The man before her had been born to every privilege and fortune, and he could never know how Malachi felt. Never.

"You defend him?" Trevallyan asked coolly.

"Yes," she snapped, though she was no more sure of Malachi's innocence than Trevallyan was.

Trevallyan screeched back his chair and rose. He crossed his arms over his chest and peered down at her as if she were a hapless child. "So you claim he's not guilty. I trust you can back up that claim."

She stared up at his grave features, fear for her dear friend twisting in her heart. "I—I
know
he didn't burn down that barn. You must understand, I know Malachi. He's a good lad. I
know
he is."

"What you think of his character is irrelevant to the magistrate."

"Oh, please,
please
don't take this to the magistrate. You must not get the magistrate involved in this petty mischief."

"Ravenna," he tipped her chin up so that she would look at him, "this is not petty mischief and it is already in the lap of the magistrate because
I
am the magistrate."

She gazed up at Trevallyan in shock. She'd been away so long in London she had forgotten the hierarchy. It was easy to understand why Malachi hated Trevallyan so. Malachi always referred to Lord Trevallyan as if he were king. If Niall Trevallyan owned all the county and was the magistrate too, he might as well be king for all the difference it made.

"Fifteen people came to the castle this morning demanding Malachi be hanged. They want the lad's politics put to rest once and for all."

"Have they caught him?" she whispered, her voice wan and hollow from grief.

"No. He's hiding. But when they do catch him—"

"When they catch him you can tell them he is innocent."

Trevallyan raised one faded gold eyebrow. "How so?"

"Because he was with me last night," she uttered, her face still as stone. Lying was a sin, but she couldn't believe all the terrible things said about Malachi either. Besides, it was true. Malachi had been with her last night. At least part of the night.

But, just as she had dreaded, when the alibi was out, she saw on Trevallyan's face what everyone would think of her story. All would say that she and Malachi had met on the bluff because they were lovers. Her reputation, if she ever had one anyway, would be ruined.

"By the clothing I found you in, I needn't ask what you were doing." The lord's expression seemed to grow hard, as if he were fighting the urge to slap her.

"Tell Lord Quinn that Malachi didn't burn down his barn. He's not a White Boy. He would never hurt anyone intentionally."

"His politics are bad, Ravenna. It's rumored he's hurt— no—
killed
people, whether he wanted to or not. He seeks justice with injustice. You're a fool if you cannot see that."

She stared at him for a long moment, then crumpled to the bed, defeated. "I don't know if he burned the barn down or not. I only know that I was with him last night. And I shall say so if I must in his defense."

Suddenly she was grabbed by force and shoved against his chest. "You are never to see Malachi MacCumhal again, do you hear me! You are to stay away from him. Stay away from him!"

She released a muffled sob and looked wildly into his aqua eyes. She had never seen anyone so angry. Not even Malachi had looked so murderous. "What right do you have to order me about like this and tell me who will or who won't be my friend? You act like a jealous..."
Lover,
she'd almost said, and she might as well have, for the word stood between them as clear as if she'd spoken it.

He released her as if he had suddenly discovered she was anathema. She fell against the satin coverlet and pillows in a heap of white batiste shirt and jet-black hair.

He stared at her and said, "I do
not
care for you."

"Then why do my affairs concern you in so passionate a manner?" she retorted, brushing a knotted tress of hair out of her eyes.

He looked away as if he despaired of answering. "This
geis,
it's destroyed my life...."

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you know what a
geis
is, Ravenna?" He turned and looked at her with the same cold expression she knew so well.

"I know what a
geis
is."

"The Trevallyans have a
geis.
I've defied it." His gaze traveled to the window where the graveyard could be seen beyond. The black, crumbling tombstones jutted through the low-lying mists, which the sun had yet to burn away. She shivered at his expression.

"Some in this county would say that beyond in that grave lies the proof of my defiance," he whispered.

"What is your
geis?"
she couldn't stop herself from asking.

He looked at her and a fearsome smile twisted his lips. "The day I believe it will be the day I tell you."

"But... you must believe it a bit or you wouldn't be behaving this way...." Her words dwindled as he drew closer. His expression was hard and somewhat mirthful. She didn't like it at all.

"I'm an educated thinker. A modern man of the nineteenth century. The coincidence of this
geis
bedevils me, I'll admit it. But believe it, never." He sat down on the edge of the bed and clamped his hand at her nape. She stared up at him, frightened and yet intrigued by his strange moods.

"You've grown into a beauty, Ravenna, and don't think I haven't noticed. It's just one other thing that bedevils me." His gaze slid downward to where the shirt parted, revealing a healthy portion of her breasts.

Embarrassed by her loss of modesty, unnerved by his challenging stare, she struggled to clutch the shirt together, but with his remaining hand, he held hers to her lap.

"What do you see when you look at me, Ravenna?"

Her eyes locked with his. The pounding of her heart grew fierce. "What do you mean?"

"Out of curiosity—if I were to come to your bed—bow would I fare against your young stallion MacCumhal? Would you look at me and find me a good and worthy partner?" He drew her closer until their noses almost touched and she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek. "Or would you just laugh at me and call me a lecherous old man for chasing such a sweet young skirt?"

A red-hot blush prickled her cheeks. He had a right to think her a loose-moraled woman after how he had found her and after her confession that she had been with Malachi last night. Still, rational thought didn't squelch the fire of anger burning in her chest. His insulting talk was too keen to ignore.

"My lord, I would not reject you for your age," she looked at him hatefully, "but for your wit."