Whispers of Heaven

by Candice Proctor

  She stared at him coldly. "You were with them."

  "A man doesn't last too long in this bush on his own," Gallagher said, his voice quiet. "You know that."

  She glanced at him, although she was careful not to look at him too long. He was too close to her, too naked too... male. "1 remember a saying I heard once. Something to the effect that when a man lays down with dogs, he must expect to rise up with fleas."

  "An te a luidheas leis na madraidh, eireochaidh se leis na dearnadaidh." He gave her a slow grin. "You've spent too much time with Old Tom." As she watched, the smile faded slowly from his lips to be replaced with an almost frighteningly intense expression. "Give me the gun, Miss Corbett. If you turn him over to the authorities, they'll send him to Port Arthur or Norfolk Island. Or hang him."

  It occurred to her, then, that she ought to be afraid of him, of Gallagher, that he could simply take the gun away from her without asking. And she wondered if that's what he would do, if she said no. She searched his dark, hard face, her breath coming quick and tight. "You would do this for him?"

  "Yes."

  From deep within the forest came the harsh cry of a cockatoo. She realized there'd been a subtle shift in the light, as afternoon stretched out toward evening. Torn apart by indecision and uncertainty and a deep sense of confusion, she let her gaze travel from Gallagher, to the black man, and back again. What he was asking of her was wrong, by everything she had been taught. Yet he had saved her life at the risk of his own. Now he was asking her for this, and she didn't see how she could, in all justice, deny him. "I won't lie about his presence here," she said. "When Warrick finds out what happened, he'll hunt your friend down and kill him."

  "Yes."

  She gave him the gun and walked away.

  She went to sit on the log at the edge of the clearing. She sank slowly, her body trembling, her arms wrapping around her waist, hugging herself. "If you want anything from these dead men," she heard Gallagher say, "you'd best take it and get out of here fast." The other man's response was a murmur, too low for her to hear.

  She stared across the clearing, to where the gelding now grazed peacefully, the sun shiny on its well-groomed hide. Nearby, the body of the second bushranger lay sprawled in an ungainly heap. She wondered if he, too, was dead, then saw his head and decided he must be. A fly buzzed, and for a moment she thought she might be sick. She put her head on her knees and squeezed her eyes shut. She could hear the two men moving around the glade, but she didn't look up.

  After a time, she heard Gallagher say, "You stay on this is- land, and they're going to catch you. Maybe sooner, maybe later, but it'll happen."

  Raising her head, she stared across the glade to where the two men now stood, near the uphill track. "Yeah?" said Parker, his chest rumbling with a mirthless laugh. "What you reckon I oughta do? Swim back to Africa? Man, even if that was possible, I was born in Georgia."

  She watched as Gallagher rested his hands on his hips, his pelvis tipping forward in that peculiarly masculine stance he had. He was faced away from her, and he hadn't put his shirt on yet, so that she could see the lean, muscled line of his naked back, the beautiful, taut brown flesh crisscrossed with that patchwork of old scars that could have been left only by a cat-o'-nine-tails. Someone at some time had whipped this man long and savagely. Jessie drew in a sharp, oddly painful breath at the thought. She had seen men flogged. Seen them stripped and tied to the triangle, seen their backs ripped open and bloody, their bodies quivering with shock and agony. She thought of those things being done to this man, and felt her chest swell with a confusing upsurge of dangerous, impossible emotions.

  "You could make your way to the northwest," he was saying, "where the sealers' ships sometimes put in. They're always looking to take on new men, and they aren't particular about any prior claims Her Britannic Majesty might have to their hides."

  Parker shook his head. "Yeah, I've heard about those sealers. They might take on men, but they don't treat 'em good. I already been a slave twice, first in Georgia and then here. I'd rather be dead."

  "A slave can always run away again," Gallagher said after a moment. "A dead man can't."

  Parker shrugged and showed his teeth in a wide smile. "At least when you die, you're free." He held out his hand, and Gallagher took it in a strong, two-handed clasp. "Thanks, mate."

  She felt ill at ease, as if she were intruding on something private, something she had no business observing. Swinging her head away, she stared across the meadow, to where a small brown quoll had ventured out, nose twitching, ears alert.

  A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to find Gallagher standing beside her, his legs spraddled, the pistol held loosely in one hand. She glanced beyond him, but the black man was gone. They were alone in the wind-ruffled meadow.

  Reversing the pistol, he held it out to her, butt first. "Take it."

  She stared down at the gun, then raised her gaze, slowly, to the man who held it.

  "Take it," he said again. "If I get caught with it, it'll be my death."

  She took the pistol, the weight of it dragging her arm down to her side. She let it lie in the grass. "What you did was crazy."

  "Was it?" He propped his foot up on the log beside her and leaned his elbow into his knee. "Parker is a good man. He doesn't deserve to hang."

  "A good man?" she repeated incredulously. "He's an escaped criminal and a thief. And heaven knows what he was originally transported for."

  "Murder, I think." He slanted a look at her, as if daring her to be shocked. His mouth was smiling, but his eyes remained hard. Sad. "A man doesn't always plan the direction his life takes, Miss Corbett. Sometimes things just... happen."

  They stared at each other, and the moment dragged out, became something more. She felt her breathing slow down, making her acutely aware of the parting of her lips, the lifting of her chest, the flush of warmth in her cheeks. And all the while he watched her. Watched her, until the burning intensity of those dark, haunted eyes became too much for her to bear. Lowering her gaze, she found herself staring at his leg, where the cuff of his convict trousers had pulled up, showing the old shackle scar ringing his naked ankle.

  She pushed up from the log and took a quick step away from him, away from what was happening. She meant to cross the clearing to where her mare, Cimmeria, grazed quietly. But then she saw the two dead bushrangers tied face down across her saddle, and she paused, her hands coming up to cup her elbows and draw them in, hard, against her sides. Tipping back her head, she stared at the clear blue sky above her. "I haven't thanked you for saving my life," she said, her back to him, her voice sounding strangled.

  She was aware of him coming up behind her. She thought for one absurd moment that he might touch her, but of course he did not. "Yes, you have. By letting Parker go. Besides, we don't know that they would have killed you."

  "What they were going to do to me ..." She swallowed hard as the horror of it reared up inside her, churning her stomach and stealing her breath. "It's said to be worse than death."

  "It's not."

  She looked at him over her shoulder. "It's not what?"

  "Worse than death. It's humiliating and degrading, and you might feel like you want to die afterward. But if you're strong, you can rise above it and survive."

  She studied his hard profile, the elegant flare of his cheek, the unexpectedly sensitive line of his mouth. He was so beautiful, so beautiful and fierce and frighteningly attractive, she sometimes thought she might burn up from the inside, just looking at him. "Why did you ride after me?" she asked suddenly. "Did Warrick send you?"

  "No." Turning away, he went to pick up his shirt where it lay forgotten in the grass. "Charlie told me you'd taken Cimmeria out by yourself, and I knew there were bushrangers in the neighborhood."

  "How could you have known?"

  "I knew," he said simply, thrusting his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. And even though she knew she should look away, she couldn't help it: she watched him. />
  He had a magnificent body, tanned dark by the sun and hardened by years of physical labor. She let her gaze rove over the carefully defined sinew and muscle of broad chest and taut stomach, of strong arms and powerful shoulders. She watched him pull the shirt over his head and ease it down over his torso, and she wondered what such, a man's body would feel like beneath a woman's hands. Beneath her hands. And then her breath caught in her throat because she realized it was what she wanted—to touch him, to put her hands on him. It was a wicked impulse, an indecent thought. A forbidden yearning. She could not understand where it had come from. But she couldn't pretend it hadn't been there.

  Still tying the laces at his neck, he walked to where he had thrown his boot. She stood, her elbows clutched to her sides, her pulse racing as she watched the muscles flex beneath his shirt as he reached to pick up his boot. She noticed the way the sun struck the planes of his face as he straightened, the harsh light emphasizing the shadows beneath his brows and high cheekbones. And then she realized she was doing it again, and she swung her head away and did not watch anymore.

  The sun sank behind the treetops, throwing the glade into shadow. The breeze that stirred the grass and rustled the leaves was cooler now, and scented with the approach of evening. She should be home safe in her own room, dressing for dinner. Not here, in this violence-haunted glade, with two dead bushrangers lashed to her mare, and an incomprehensible welling of impossible, reprehensible thoughts and desires stealing her breath and leaving her trembling and confused.

  He swung into the saddle and kneed the chestnut toward her, leading the mare. "Give me your hand," he said, his saddle leather creaking as he reached down to her.

  She held out her hand in its soft lady's riding glove, and watched his strong, scarred fingers close around her wrist. She swung up behind him, acutely aware of the pressure of her inner thighs against his rump as she settled on the gelding's broad back. She remembered reading how once, long ago in the Middle Ages, noble ladies embarking on long journeys would often ride like this, pillion behind their grooms. She thought about those ladies and their grooms as

  Gallagher kneed the stallion out of the sun-dappled glade and into the quiet gloom of the forest track.

  It seemed such a familiar, intimate thing to do, to sit so close to a man, her legs spread wide by the horse, her body touching his so intimately, her hands riding low on his hips. She could feel the heat of him through the coarse cloth of his shirt, feel the supple leanness and hard strength of his man's body, moving gracefully with the rhythm of the horse. She was intensely, achingly aware of him, not as a simple groom but as a man. A man who had risked his life to save her own, then risked it again, to save a friend. A man whose half-naked body fascinated her and intrigued her and left her wondering what he would look like without any clothes on at all.

  A man whose very nearness made her heart race with an exhilarating, treacherous rush of forbidden excitement and unbidden, impossible desire.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  That night, the wind blew warm and wild and fierce, and Jessie put her cloak on over her nightdress and went out into the storm-wracked darkness.

  She stepped out of the shelter of the veranda, and the wind slammed into her, stealing her breath and snatching so viciously at the billowing folds of her wrap that her knuckles ached from the strain of trying to clutch the cloth to her. The air was full of dust and the roar of wind crashing through the trees in the park and the smell of coming rain, although the moon still shone fitfully through breaks in the jumbling, turbulent clouds. Dried leaves scuttled ahead of her down the brick garden path and she quickened her step, not knowing where she was going, feeling only the need to throw open her soul to the wildness of the wind and the restless dangers of the night.

  She cut across the grass, the earth cool and damp beneath her bare feet. When she reached the rippling, moon-glimmered expanse of the pond, she stopped, one arm looping around a low branch of the old apple tree she had climbed so often as a child. At some point in the week or two since shed come home, the apple blossoms had all shriveled up and blown away. She hadn't even noticed their passing, but she felt now a great aching sadness at their loss.

  She looked back at the house, rising so big and strong out of the darkness. She knew and loved each arched recess, each soaring chimney. Yet it all looked, somehow, different from the way she remembered. Or perhaps it wasn't different, she thought, sucking the storm-charged air deep into her lungs. Perhaps she was the one who had changed, or at least her situation had changed. Because in a subtle but very real sense, the house was no longer hers, or at least it soon wouldn't be, not in the way it had been through all her growing-up years. If she married Harrison, she would come here only for brief visits, as a guest, and then she would go away again.

  And then she wondered at herself for the thought, because of course she would marry Harrison. She had always known she would marry Harrison. He had been her closest friend since childhood, and he would make an ideal husband for her future. Everyone said so. He was gentle, handsome, well- bred, and wealthy. Their lives together would be a familiar and therefore comfortable round of all that she had ever known. And if a dangerous, unwanted voice dared to whisper that such a future might not be what she really wanted, that didn't mean she had to listen. She didn't need to let herself— shouldn't let herself—remember the way a certain pair of Irish green eyes could light up with laughter, or the forbidden, unexpected way her heart beat fast and her breath caught whenever those eyes met hers.

  She stiffened suddenly as a long, lean shadow moved from beneath the stone arcade of the veranda and passed out into the moonlight; a familiar shadow that wound its way purposefully through the parklands toward her, not stopping until he was close enough that the moon cast his silhouette across the wind-tossed water.

  He was still dressed as if for riding, in knee-high boots and doeskin breeches, for they'd been out until long past dark, the men, visiting the glade where she'd been attacked and arranging to have an Aboriginal tracker brought in to study the site in the morning. He'd come in too late for dinner, so that he'd simply ordered a tray and retreated to the library with a bottle of brandy. She hadn't seen him since.

  "Care to tell me why you've suddenly developed this disturbing predilection for wandering off by yourself?" Warrick said, gazing across the shifting surface of the pond.

  The wind blew her loose hair into her face, and she brought up one hand to catch it. "How did you know I was out here?"

  He dropped his chin to his chest, but not before she caught the slow smile that curled his lips. "I saw you. From the veranda."

  "Perhaps it's that kind of night," she said, trying to keep her voice light. "It calls to the restlessness within us."

  He swung his head to look at her over his shoulder, his gaze hard. "Are you restless, Jess?"

  She tightened her arm around the branch, feeling the bark rough and cold through the thin cloth of her nightgown. "This afternoon was... unsettling."

  "Near rape generally is."

  "Please." She put out her hand as if to hold him off. "Don't you scold me, too. I've already had enough of that from Mother."

  He let out a short huff of laughter. "Hell, I'm not enough of a sanctimonious ass to tell you off for anything you've done. You know that. Just like I know you're not here, now, because of what happened with those bushrangers. My guess is that whatever drove you out here tonight is the same thing that made you ride off alone toward the mountains this afternoon." His expression became serious, his gaze probing. "What is it, Jess? What's wrong?"

  She let go of the tree and went to stand beside him, her arms crossed at her chest, her hands anchoring her cape closer to her body. She found she couldn't look at him and ask what she wanted to ask, so she stared instead at the choppy waters of the pond. "Do you know what you want out of life, Warrick?"

  She looked at him then, and saw the bitter twisting of his lips that might have been a smile. "Hell." He let out his breat
h in a sound that was supposed to be a laugh, but wasn't. "I'm lucky if I know at any given moment whether I want a shot of brandy or a pint of bitters, let alone what I want out of lifer

  "You did know, once."

  He swung away from her to stare off into the darkened, wind-thrashed parkland, his shoulders in the flawlessly tailored riding jacket held painfully taut, his head thrown back, the fingers of one hand tapping restlessly against his thigh. "Did I? Oh, I thought I did, all right. I was going to sail every sea known to man, and then a few more no one had even discovered yet. I was going to be an officer by the time I was sixteen, and captain of my own ship before I was twenty-five." He paused, holding himself very still. "All boys have dreams. Not many of us get to live them."

  "Some do."

  He spun to face her, his eyes a little wild, his breath coming so hard and fast she could see it lifting the fine cloth of his shirt. "Do they? Cecil dreamed of growing up to make this estate bigger and more prosperous than our father ever imagined."

  "Cecil died," she said quietly.

  "That's right. Cecil died. And my dreams of going to sea died along with him. With him, and with Reid."

  The wind blew between them, colder than before and heavy with the promise of the coming rain. "What do you think Reid dreamed of?" she asked, her throat suddenly tight.

  "I don't know. He never said." Warrick took a step that brought him beside her again, his eyes narrowing. "Is that why you went to the clearing this afternoon? Because of Reid?"

  "I'm not sure."

  The wind blew her hair over her face, and he brought up his hands to gently rake back the tangled strands. "I thought you always knew what you wanted, Jess. Marriage. Children. This valley. And don't try to tell me you've suddenly developed a hankering to run off and study the geology of Outer Mongolia, because I won't believe you. You love this island."

  "I do. It's not that. It's..." She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, gripping him tightly, straining to put her thoughts into words. "All my life, it's as if I've had this. .. this struggle going on inside of me. Between the Jessie who wanted to learn about things like botany and astronomy, and to gallop her horse faster than was considered quite proper for a gentlewoman, and the Jesmond who wanted to make Mother and Father happy by being the kind of daughter they could be proud of."