Whispers of Heaven

by Candice Proctor

  Jessie crossed the room to close the paneled cedar shutters against the twin dangers of morning light and potentially listening ears, then leaned back against them, her hands behind her waist, her head tilted to one side. "What is it, Mother?"

  Beatrice's needle flashed in and out through the fabric of her embroidery. It was like a refuge, Jessie had decided, her mother's embroidery, rather like Warrick's brandy glass. A refuge, or a shield; Jessie could never decide which. "You were out on the veranda with Harrison rather a long time last night," Beatrice said, her voice as crisp and precise as her stitches.

  Jessie let her breath out in a long sigh. "Mother, we are betrothed."

  Beatrice paused in her stitches, then went on. "I know. That's precisely what worries me, you see. Harrison is such a gentleman that under any other circumstances I would have no hesitation in trusting him to behave precisely as he ought. However, now that you are to be wed, he may feel that entitles him to take certain ..." The needle hovered, then dove fiercely through the fabric. "Liberties."

  "Mother, exactly what are you trying to say?"

  Jessie watched, bemused, as a rare tide of color suffused her mother's normally pale, composed face. She met Jessie's eyes for one awkward moment, then looked away. "There are some women who find it ... difficult to resist a man's advances. They allow themselves to be swept up by the ... intensity of the moment, so to speak, with the result that they do things they know they ought not to do." Beatrice lowered her voice and leaned forward. "Things which belong only in the sanctity of the marriage bed."

  "Mother." Jessie felt her own cheeks flame as she pushed away from the window to take an agitated turn about the room. "Really—" She swung to face the settee, her hands cupping her elbows against her sides. "All Harrison did last night was kiss me. Surely that is to be expected between a betrothed couple?"

  "Kisses can lead rapidly to other things." By now, Beatrice had abandoned all pretense of embroidery and simply sat with the frame gripped tightly in her lap. "If that happens, you must stop him, Jesmond. Do you understand? Even if you don't want to. You must wait until the marriage vows are safely said."

  Jessie let out a startled huff of something like laughter and went to sit beside Beatrice on the settee. "Mother, please believe me when I say there is no need for you to distress yourself with these worries. I don't think I am in any danger of being swept away by the heat of passion with Harrison."

  "Jesmond, it was obvious to anyone who saw your face that something occurred on that veranda last night."

  Jessie gripped her hands together, tightly, in her lap, and stared down at them. "Mother, I told you. He kissed me. I found it both alarming and unpleasant, and not at all anything I would like either to extend or repeat. So you need not be concerned."

  There was a long, awkward pause, filled with the ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantel and the distant sounds of the servants clearing breakfast from the dining room. "Forgive me, my dear," said Beatrice in a strained voice. "You are like her in so many ways, I simply assumed you were like her in this respect, as well. .."

  Jessie looked up quickly. "Like whom? Mother, what are you talking about?"

  "Never mind, dear." Beatrice reached out to close her hand over Jessie's. "I hope you took care not to say or do anything last night which might lead Harrison to think you hold him in aversion."

  Jessie blinked at her mother and might even have laughed, had it not been for the strange burning in her chest that stole her breath and left her feeling empty and sad. "A moment ago, you were warning me against allowing Harrison to take liberties with me. Now you seem to be telling me that I must be careful not to discourage him."

  "Jesmond ..." Beatrice paused, as if summoning the will to put her thoughts into words. "These things are so awkward to speak of, but now that you are to be wed..." She drew in a deep breath and let it out in a shaky sigh, her gaze resolutely fixed on the large, ornate Sevres vase near the windows as she forced herself to go on. "Most women find the male—" she hesitated, searching for an acceptable term "— physique both threatening and repulsive, and the intimacies of the marriage bed unpleasant. Nevertheless, it is something that we all must endure, when our time comes. It is the price we pay for our children, our homes, our positions in society." She brought her gaze back to her daughter's face. "Remember that."

  It was Jessie's turn to look away. Her mother's words hung in the air, bleak and sad and whispering softly of things that had not been said, that would never be said. Jessie rose and went to stand before the white marble mantel to stare down at the empty grate. She had never had any illusions about her parents' marriage. How could she have, when she had never seen them kiss, never known them even to touch when they could avoid it. They had lived their lives in parallel rather than together, going through their days in the same house yet not really sharing it, their dislike for each other something that was always there, politely hidden but nonetheless palpable, stealing the joy from their offsprings' childhood and bringing that pinched, sour look to Beatrice's face. Or was it the things she forced herself to endure in her marriage bed that had hardened Beatrice's mouth, Jessie wondered, that had killed whatever spark might once have animated her mother's now bland, drooping features, and left her bitter and sad.

  "Is that all you wanted to say to me?" Jessie asked quietly.

  Her mother busied herself with her embroidery, the needle flying in and out, in and out with unerring correctness. "Yes, I believe so. I see no reason to speak of this again."

  Jessie was at the door when her mother stopped her. "Do you go for a ride this morning?"

  One hand curling around the edge of the door, Jessie turned in surprise. "You said you didn't want me to ride until after your garden party."

  "Oh, well—" Beatrice waved one hand through the air in a vague gesture. "I think perhaps you've grown too restless of late. Go ahead and get changed. I'll ask Warrick to send a message to the stables."

  Jessie walked, slowly, up the stairs, feeling guilty and confused and ashamed. She had not set out, deliberately, to deceive her mother. She had not lied when she said she hadn't enjoyed Harrison's kisses. And yet.. . and yet she knew, too, that she was not one of those females who found the male physique repulsive, and she shuddered to imagine Beatrice's reaction if she knew the real truth. If she knew her daughter had stood on the banks of the River Daymond at sunset and admired the way years of hard physical labor could sculpt a man's naked chest. Or that her dreams had been haunted ever since by memories of a man's naked back, strapped with muscle and crisscrossed with a pattern of scars that could only have come from hundreds and hundreds of lashes delivered at the triangle by the vicious claws of a cat-o'-nine-tails.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Lucas perched atop the whitewashed split-rail fence, his forearms resting lightly on his bent knees, the toes of his boots hooked behind a lower rail, his gaze following the big bay stallion as it cantered in an easy, endless circle, its silver hooves flashing, its red hide sleek and gleaming in the fitful morning sun.

  The paddock was big. Big enough to give the horse the illusion of freedom—until it ran up against the far fence line and stopped, its neck arching, its ears twitched forward, its nostrils quivering. "That's right," whispered Gallagher. "You can run, but you can't really go anywhere, me lad. They've got you surrounded."

  "You gonna try riding him today?" asked Charlie, his voice tight with excitement as he climbed up to stand on the bottom railing of the fence, beside Gallagher.

  Lucas smiled. "Not yet. I want to get to know him a wee bit more first." He cast a sideways look at the boy. "Like to try workin' him on a longeing rein yourself, then?"

  "Wouldn't I just!" Charlie's face broke into such a wide smile that Lucas had to turn his head away, his eyes narrowing at the sight of Warrick Corbett strolling across the yard.

  Lucas watched the man come at them. He hadn't quite taken the measure of Warrick Corbett yet. In some ways, he seemed a good man to be assigned to, se
emed free of the sadistic tendencies that the English public school system could sometimes breed into a man along with a taste for cricket and Cicero and Shakespearean poetry. But then, Cor- bett had never been to Eton or Winchester, wasn't really an Englishman—although Gallagher doubted the man realized that yet. Corbett had been born and bred here, in Australia, and whether he admitted it or not, that made him different.

  But it didn't entirely account for that disconcerting wild- ness that could blaze in Warrick Corbett's eyes, or that dangerous, fallen-angel smile that could come out of nowhere. There was a volatility, an immature recklessness about the man that Gallagher didn't trust.

  "You, Charlie," Corbett called when he was still some six to eight feet away. "Go catch my sister's mare, Cimmeria, and saddle her up. And get that strawberry roan for Gallagher while you're at it," he added as the boy hopped off the fence and took off at a run for the far paddock. His head tilting back, the man swung to face Gallagher, that devilish grin of his firmly in place. "I've got a job for you."

  Lucas twisted sideways and swung his legs over the top of the fence to balance there, his arms braced wide. "I thought you wanted me to continue working Finnegan's Luck today."

  "I did. But it looks like that'll have to wait until later." Corbett paused beside the fence, his gaze following the restless stallion. "My sister needs a groom."

  Lucas tightened his grip on the rough wood of the fence and pushed off to land lightly in the yard. Whether in Hyde Park or the hills of Hampshire, no young Englishwoman with any pretense of gentility would even think of riding alone, without a groom in attendance. To do so would outrage every rule of propriety her society enforced. Yet it seemed a curious custom to follow here, where the groom was more often than not a convict.

  "I thought Old Tom was her groom," Gallagher said, his voice rough with a tension that stole his breath and twisted his gut. To be forced to ride at a respectful distance behind that beautiful but haughty young Englishwoman, to be at her beck and call as her groom, as her servant, suddenly struck him as more degrading and insufferable than anything he'd yet had to endure—more than the chains, more than the triangle and whip, more than all the grinding, day-by-day humiliations and indignities he'd endured through three long, soul-destroying years.

  Corbett rested one elbow on the fence's high railing, his attention caught, once again, by the restless, high-spirited horse. "Old Tom can't take a ride of that distance anymore. In fact, he was feeling badly enough this morning that I told him to go back to bed."

  "Why not send Charlie with her?"

  Corbett twisted to look at Gallagher over his shoulder. "Because Charlie's too young to be of much use if she should happen to run into a gang of bushrangers."

  Lucas knew he was pushing the boundaries of his position, but that still didn't stop him from saying, "Surely one of the other men—"

  Corbett pushed off from the fence and swung away, his face tight with annoyance. "None of the other men ride well enough to keep up with her. You're her new groom, Gallagher, and that's final."

  Jessie glanced up from latching the garden gate and saw a slim, black-haired man leading two horses out of the stables. She faltered, the long dark blue skirt of her riding habit slipping through her fingers as she stared at him. He had turned away from her to tighten the cinch of the saddle on an unfamiliar roan, but she recognized the leanly muscled length of his back, the sure, graceful way he moved as he pulled the strap tight and thrust it home.

  Ignoring the peculiar pounding of her heart, she picked up the trailing skirt of her habit again and crossed the dusty, sunlit yard toward him. A magpie broke into song, its sweetly melancholy lament floating to them from the apple trees that edged the nearby pond. The man didn't look up. Deliberately, she stepped past him, to the pretty little black mare with four white stockings that stretched out its soft velvety nose and nickered in greeting.

  "Hello, beautiful," she murmured, rubbing her hand over

  Cimmeria's nose and down the shiny black neck. "Did you miss me? I missed you." Smiling gently, she pressed her cheek against the familiar, dark, satiny hide. Yet even though she could no longer see him, that Irishman, she remained intensely aware of him, behind her.

  "Your brother says you'll be wanting to ride out to the cove," said Gallagher, his brogue ostentatiously, provocatively in place. She turned her head and glanced toward him. He still had his back to her, his fingers busy adjusting the stirrup leather on the roan's saddle, but she could hear the laughter in his voice.

  "That's right." She wished he would go away. She didn't understand this effect he had on her. He made her feel edgy and unsettled, not like herself at all. "Where is Old Tom?"

  "He's not well. Your brother sent him back to his bed."

  She swung about in surprise. "His bed?" Never in her life had she known Tom to admit to being sick enough to take to his bed. "What's wrong with him?"

  "Twinges of rheumatism, he says." Gallagher slid down the stirrup iron. "But his heart 'tis more likely. All the signs are there."

  "His heart?" Jessie stared at that distant line of huts, deserted now in the heat of the day. She knew the oddest sensation, as if her entire world had tipped slightly, so that she had to reach out her hand and steady herself by bracing her palm against the mare's saddle. The universe righted itself almost at once, of course, and yet... And yet she knew that nothing was quite the way it had been before. All her life, Tom had been there, strong and reliable, at her side. It had often occurred to her, when she looked back at her childhood, that she had more memories of Old Tom than of her mother and father put together.

  It had been Old Tom, not Anselm Corbett, who held Jessie on her first pony when she was barely old enough to walk. It was Tom who had encouraged her wonder at the joys and mysteries of the world around her, who had taught her to recognize and name the myriad of fascinating things, living and nonliving, that formed her surroundings. It was Tom who had explored with her the labyrinth of caves that honeycombed the nearby mountains, and shared a thousand other adventures of her growing years. He had always been called "Old" Tom, but she'd never really thought of him as old. Not old enough to be so ill now, perhaps even dying. All that time she had spent with him the other day, she thought; all that time, and he hadn't said a word to her about his failing health. But then, she'd told him she wouldn't be riding to the cove soon.

  She lifted her head to find the Irishman watching her, his eyes narrowed. "Why are you here?" she asked suddenly.

  "Your brother has assigned me to be your new groom."

  "You?"

  Something in her voice made him smile, bringing a softening to the edges of his lips, a lightening to the hard glare in those fierce green eyes. "Aye."

  But I don't want you, she almost said, only just catching herself in time. She felt buffeted by an overwhelming tangle of emotions, concern for Tom's health oddly mixed up with dismay and an inexplicable breathlessness that might have been excitement, except that made no sense.

  Giving the roan's withers a friendly pat, the Irishman came toward her, his face impassive, his cabbage palm hat tipped low to hide those brittle, angry eyes. He wasn't a big man, yet he seemed somehow to loom over her, tense and threatening. It was all she could do not to take a step back. She tried to imagine this man as her groom, riding beside her as Old Tom had done, and knew it was impossible.

  Summoning up a polite society smile of the kind that had been drilled into her since childhood, she said in her best drawing room voice, "Thank you, Mr. Gallagher, but I wouldn't want to take you away from your new responsibilities with the horses. If you would be so kind as tell that young stableboy, Charlie, that I—"

  "No."

  The abruptness of the word startled her into silence. He was unlike any servant she'd ever known. In fact, he wasn't like a servant at all. He was too self-possessed, too self-assured, too aggressively masculine in a way she did not like.

  "I suggested Charlie myself," he said, gathering up her mare's reins,
"but your brother seems to think bushrangers might not find a small, underfed boy much of a deterrent to mayhem and murder." He tipped back his head, so that the sun fell full on the finely sculpted planes of his face. "If you're ready to mount then, Miss?"

  Jessie knew all about the bushrangers that infested the island. Most were escaped convicts: desperate men, ill-clothed and ill-fed, for the Tasmanian wilderness was not kind to those unfamiliar with its ways. Not long before she left for England, three bushrangers had jumped a farmer's wife, just outside Blackhaven Bay. They'd dashed her baby's head against a tree, then taken turns at the woman herself. The problem was, the longer the convicts remained at large, the more dangerous and ruthless they became, for they knew that their recapture could mean only death—or worse. Most convicts considered being sent to someplace like Norfolk Island or Port Arthur much worse than death. And from what Jessie had heard about those places, she figured they were probably right.

  The Irishman's gaze was still on her, hard and challenging, as if he were hoping she'd change her mind and not go for a ride at all. "I'm ready," she said. With this man at her side instead of Old Tom, she wouldn't be able to visit the cottage on Last Chance Point, but she could still ride out to the cove.

  Taking the reins, she let him boost her up, her right leg hooking automatically around the pommel. He backed away quickly, as if he couldn't wait to put some distance between them. But he could go only as far as his own horse.

  She watched through lowered lids as he swung into the saddle, his movements fluid and practiced in a way that spoke of a childhood spent on horseback. So few of the convicts sent to Tasmania knew anything about horses. Those who did had most often been grooms or stableboys back home. But not Gallagher. He might do his best to play it down, but he was inescapably the kind of man who had grown up, as she had done, with a groom running beside his first pony. And she found herself wondering exactly what he had done to bring him so low, to bring him to this.