The Ground She Walks Upon (26 page)

"Would you have me shoot you both?" Trevallyan asked. Too quietly.

"How did you know I was here?" she cried out, searching for any delay.

"The lamp was missing on the table outside. When I entered the drawing room, I saw
light
beneath the jib." His face bore pain. "These stairs lead to a cave beneath the castle. That was how I knew you were meeting..."he growled some unintelligible oath and pointed the
pistol
back toward Malachi, "him."

She pressed her cheek against the muzzle. When the initial surge of fear ebbed, she whispered, "Would you shoot me too, Niall?"

She had never before used his Christian name. It seemed to move him. She prayed it moved him. The seconds passed.

He caressed her hair, wrapping a lock around his palm like a bandage, the black tresses in stark contrast to his strong white hand. She watched him closely in the darkness. A bitter smile touched his lips. "I think this
geis
might make me
shoot
myself before you, Ravenna."

She stifled a bout of nerves. "Then let Malachi go. I promise you he did not pull the trigger this afternoon." She held Malachi tight. He felt like a fence post in her arms, as tense and straight-backed as a wooden soldier. He was terrified. Even in the cold damp of the stair, she could feel the perspiration drip from his temple.

The pistol was a rod of cold death against her cheek.

"You beg for his life, my love?" Trevallyan whispered.

"Yes, yes. Let him go and I swear you shall never see his face in this county again."

"Promises that are never kept."

She leaned the pistol to her cheek, terror locked in her heart. Malachi had begun to tremble, but he said not a word in his defense.

"Let him go," she pleaded. "I would rather you kill us both than see him die for a crime he didn't commit."

"Do you care for this bastard that much?"

"Yes," she said truthfully, unable and unwilling to explain where her feelings for Malachi began and ended.

Trevallyan's anger broke free of its chain. He unwound his hand from her hair and shoved a booted leg at Malachi. Entwined
as
they were, both she and Malachi tumbled down several steps. She felt Malachi scramble to help her to her feet when Trevallyan butted the pistol point right in the young man's face.

"Don't touch her," he growled. "Leave this place and never
ever
return. Do you hear me, boy-o?"

Malachi nodded. Even in the darkness Ravenna could see he was white
as
a sheet.

"You're not worthy of her regard," Trevallyan spat like a curse. "So begone. Run like the spineless cur you are, and know that I'd have seen your brains dripping from these walls before I'd have let you go, if she had not begged me to spare your wretched life." He booted Malachi once more and sent him tumbling farther down the stairs.

In the cover of shadows, Malachi stood. In his shabby clothes and shabby dignity, he raised his fist and clear voiced, said, "This isn't over, Trevallyan. You can't take everything from the likes of me without paying a price. Just you wait. There'll be many a dry eye at your funeral." With that, he took his leave. He jumped down the stone treads three at a time and disappeared in the blackness below. Deep in the darkened bowels of the keep, she heard him curse like a hell-bound sinner.

And then there was silence in the tower, and the patter of rats' feet echoed once more off the walls, and the metallic drip of water on stone continued as if there had never been an incident.

Painfully, Ravenna clawed at the damp stones to aright herself. She rose to her feet, her heart heavy with dread. Now she had to face Trevallyan all alone. Now she would feel the brunt of his fury over Seamus's death.

"Come here," he said hoarsely.

As if she were Grania, she took the two treads slowly, each reluctant movement costing her in strength and resilience.

In the light flickering from Malachi's abandoned lantern, she found his expression dark with betrayal, and something else, an emotion that exquisitely straddled love and pain.

"I only came here to find out about my father, not to meet Malachi," she whispered futilely to him.

As if it caused him untold agony, he took her by the waist and pulled her against him. In a raw, low voice, he said, "Did you know they were going to try to kill me?"

The question hit her like a slap across the cheek. "No. I didn't know about it. On my mother's grave, I swear to you I didn't." She stared at him, her heart drumming in her chest. It looked bad. There was no denying it.

From his waistcoat, he removed the small note he had shown her earlier. Further damnation. "Do you know anything about this? Anything?"

She shook her head, unable to accept that her name on that small piece of paper had become the vehicle of the day's tragedy. "I know nothing about any of this except that I know Malachi is not capable of killing. He is simply not capable of it," she whispered, her voice quavering with fear.

A repressed rage contorted his features. "You're all blameless, isn't that right? The whole bloody lot of you. And you,
you,
claim the most innocence of all. Yet time and again, I find you in a clandestine meeting with MacCumhal. I find you holding him and probably even..." He didn't seem able to finish.

"I wouldn't hurt anyone, my lord." Her entire body trembled. "Malachi was my friend from childhood. I understand him, 'tis all."

"But you refuse to understand his need to destroy me." His voice lowered to a growl. "To murder Seamus, God rest his soul."

"No." She grabbed the lapels of his topcoat. "Malachi wasn't the triggerman. I know he's sorry for what happened to Seamus. He was not the man to kill him, and I'd lay down my life to prove it."

He stared at her. With a surge in her stomach, she knew he didn't completely believe her. Finally, in monotones, he spoke as if tired of fighting a war he could not see, nor understand.

"When I was a young man, I held a babe in my hands—a beautiful baby—a child who held nothing but promise." He rested his cheek against the top of her head as if he were praying for her soul. "I was told this child was to be my bride and I ridiculed the idea. But I found I couldn't abandon her. She was a life to be molded, her promise had yet to bloom. Even though I didn't want her, I was compelled to help her. I saw to it she had everything...."

Her breath caught in her throat. His words hypnotized her. He couldn't be telling her what she thought he was saying, but the shocking truth of it seemed like the final piece in a long-held puzzle.

"The babe grew up to be a woman. A beautiful woman. And even though I had provided her everything, shaped her life as I wished, I told myself I didn't want her." His cheek was warm against her hair, his embrace warm and almost comforting. "Yet one day, as fate threw her at me time and again, I stumbled upon the fact that the beauty had a soul.

She possessed a wit that I found distracting, and a heart that seemed as lonely and wanting as mine. I found myself thinking about her, worrying about her, wondering about her. Soon she was all I thought about."

The embrace turned into the cold steel bands of a trap. His hand clamped in her hair and she cried out more from the shock of his revelations than from the roughness of his touch. What he was saying couldn't be true, but deep in her heart, she feared it was. He was her provider, not her long-lost father. It had been Trevallyan all along.

He tilted her head back so she'd be forced to look up at him. Behind her, she could hear her wooden hairpins scatter down the stone stairs like grapeshot. "But here I find she is in thick with murderers and thieves. All my schooling," he shook her, "yes,
my
schooling, and
my
cottage, and
my
silverware, and
my
money, has not kept her away from the wrong kind. I thought to make a lady of her and here I find instead..." He couldn't seem to speak the word.

"Don't," she begged in an anguished whisper.

"And the thought of him..." His voice trembled. "The thought of
him..."

The idea seemed like a dagger twisting in his gut. He closed his eyes as if shutting out the pain. "... the thought of MacCumhal...
fucking
you is enough to kill me."

A sob caught in her throat. Writhing beneath the shame of his words, she couldn't even look at him.

"No more thoughts, however. No more." He held her hard, ignoring her struggles to be free.

"Don't ever speak such terrible words to me again," she cried, fighting off tears and struggling with his unwanted hold. It shocked and hurt to think his money had been governing her all her life without her ever knowing it, but it hurt worse that he thought her nothing but a whore in need of salvation.

"Terrible? Terrible?" He seemed to laugh. "Nay, words are not terrible. Seamus being murdered is terrible." His anger erupted, and his dark, furious expression was a fearful sight in the suffocating dimness. She yearned to run from him and return to the warm safety of her cottage, but it was impossible to flee him now. His angry grasp was like an iron shackle. He had stolen everything from her this night, even her home. The cottage wasn't hers to run to anymore. It had been his all along. Her world had been ripped apart.

With a moan of defeat, she quit fighting him. Despondent, she murmured, "I only came here to find out about my father. You must believe me that I had nothing to do with the shooting today. I promise you that if you tell me what you know about my father, I will leave here and never bother you again."

"Griffen told me the story about a man who died twenty years ago in Antrim."

"Who was this man?"

His expression turned hard. "Who? I'll tell you who. But not here. Oh, no, definitely not here."

She nodded, then came upon a cold realization. Her gaze locked with his. "I won't—"

"You won't, eh? For him, but not me." His laughter rang in her ears. "No doubt the thought of this old man pushing up inside your young sweet flesh is too distasteful."

"How you
speak
is distasteful," she said violently.

In an ominous tone, he said, "Distasteful or not, it's time. They threw you at me. Well, I'll tell them all: I've caught you. Do you hear me? I've caught you."

Panic made her mouth go dry. She stared at him, unwilling to accept the meaning of his words. "I'm not a prize you've finally won," she whispered.

"No?" His lips twisted in the mockery of a smile. "But what are you then? A princess? A peeress? A fine lady whom I should court on bended knee? You're a fraud.
My
fraud. Your education—or rather
my
education—enlightens you, but not well enough. You seem unable to grasp the fact that you were born a bastard child, alone and penniless, who'd probably be dead by now without my tender mercies."

"Tender mercies," she accused softly. "Is that what you've shown me?"

A tiny glimmer of guilt flashed in his eyes but he seemed determined to ignore his better self. In a husky voice, he said, "Without me, you'd be digging the fields for praties... or worse. I'm your salvation and always have been. You fail to understand that."

"I understand everything too well, my lord. I've no delusions. How can I, when you've always seen to it that I be made brutally aware of my lowly circumstance?" Tears came unbidden to her eyes. "Fear not that you've
ever
mistaken me for a lady, for you haven't, but still I'm not your slave. You can't do with me as you wish. If you are my salvation, then I'll defy all those who would have me saved."

"But who's to stop me, Ravenna?" He calmly looked down into the black hole of the bottom of the staircase. "Your one mangy knight has fled. Your meager protection is gone." He looked back at her, his gaze burning. "Now it is time."

"I'll tell you only once: I want nothing of this and nothing of
you."

"Ah. 'Tis good to finally hear the words you should have told MacCumhal."

She released a moan and ground her fists into his chest. He took her waist in a viselike grip and again pushed her against the stair wall. With excruciating slowness, he lowered his head to hers.

"Don't do this." Her voice quavered with sorrow. "Don't take everything from me in the name of salvation because you fear a
geis
and want to prove it wrong."

His breath was hot on her temple. "I'm not afraid of a
geis.
The
geis
is only words and I damn them." Slowly he caressed her face, his own a dark shadow. "There's only one thing I have learned to fear in this world: It is the inevitable."

"And is this inevitable?" Her words choked on tears. He didn't answer her; he only stared.

The question bore down on her like a lead weight. She began to weep. No woman had ever wanted to be free of a man more than she did at that moment; nor had any woman desired one as intensely. With every insult that cut her, she longed for his approval that much more. Caught between desire and despair, she found herself trapped with only two choices: She could flee him now with a broken heart, or she could hand her heart to him and watch him break it.

The decision wrenched her very soul.

He waited in the silence for further protest, further struggle. None came. Slowly, relishing every touch, he lifted her chin and crushed his mouth over her parted lips.