Whispers of Heaven

by Candice Proctor

  "Gallagher? But... he's a groom."

  Something in her voice brought his gaze around to her again. "He's also a very handy man with a hammer. I think he used to be a shipbuilder or some such thing."

  She turned her face away from him to stare up at the house. "Some such thing."

  He studied her pale, half-averted face, and felt it again: that indefinable sense of uneasiness. He wanted to ask her what was wrong. He wanted to ask if there was anything he could do to help. But how could he help her, he thought wryly, when he didn't even know how to help himself.

  The thick black muck of the marsh held the smashed bow of the boat in a tight grip, the water of the estuary lapping at Lucas's bare thighs as he heaved and swore, then heaved again.

  He could hear the steady rush and retreat of the tide coming in, rolling up over the nearby beach with a foaming swish. In another half hour he'd probably be able to float the damn thing free. But he didn't have half an hour; he was going to be lucky to make it back to the barracks before sunset, as it was.

  Gritting his teeth, he heaved again, hard, and heard the mud release its captive with a loud sucking pop that filled the air with the fetid stench of dampness and decay. Lucas flipped the boat over onto its hull, then paused to swipe his bare arm across his sweaty forehead, his chest heaving as he drew in air.

  The boat was big, bigger than he'd have preferred. True, its size would make it safer in the open sea. But it also meant they'd need to take more men with them when they made their escape. And more men meant more mouths, more chances of secrets leaking out, more chances of getting caught.

  Stooping, he leaned his shoulder against the stern and pushed, grunting with the strain. He'd been so long getting back here, to the cove, that he'd been afraid he was going to find the boat gone already, carried off by the scavengers who picked over the debris on the beach. But it had been washed surprisingly far up the estuary. And people tended to avoid the Grimes House, if they could.

  Even as he worked, dragging the boat deep into a thicket and covering it with bracken, he was aware of the darkly silent walls of the house, brooding over him. It was like a tangible thing, the evil in this place. The evil and the anger and the despair. Even the birds and small animals seemed to avoid it, the ruined garden lying empty and quiet while around him the evening air filled with the chirrup of crickets and the noisy chatter of birds coming in to roost for the night.

  He shivered, the night breeze cold on his naked flesh, but he took the time to do what he could to smooth out the path of broken reeds and crushed grass left by the dragging boat. Thank God the growth was green and resilient; most of the evidence would be gone in a few days. He straightened, his eyes narrowing as he gazed at the sinking sun. It was getting late.

  He had tethered Finnegan's Luck to .the elm beside the broken fountain, and the Irish Hunter nickered when Lucas cut across the overgrown garden toward him. "What's the matter, big boy? Don't you like this place, either?" Lucas murmured, rubbing the bay's velvety nose before he turned away to scramble into his clothes.

  He'd expected to feel elation, or at least satisfaction, at finding the boat and securing it. The damage to the boat's hull wasn't as bad as he'd feared; he'd be able to repair it easily, given the right tools and material, and the Fox would doubtless be able to scrounge up some oars. He should be buzzing with expectation and hope. The freedom he'd wanted for so long suddenly seemed within his grasp. Yet all he could think about was the taste of heaven he'd found in Jesmond Cor- bett's arms, and the look in her eyes when he'd come at her out of the storm-driven surf that night.

  Lucas's hands stilled at their task, and he found himself wondering what it might have been like, what might have happened, if he'd walked into some Dublin lecture hall one day and seen her there, her features intense with concentration and interest. If they had strolled along the Irish Sea, and talked of her dreams, and his. If he had met her in the days when he still had dreams, rather than one wild, dangerous ambition—to escape.

  Swearing softly under his breath, Lucas thrust his arms through the sleeves of his coat and jerked the bay's reins free from the elm. The sooner he got away from here, the better it would be, he thought.

  For both of them.

  "You cut it a wee bit close there, laddie," said Daniel, his voice almost drowned out by the harsh clang of the barracks' door, locking them behind thick stone walls and iron bars for the night.

  Lucas grinned into the darkness. "Aye. A wee bit. But I got it, Daniel. We now have a boat."

  Jessie stood on the second-story veranda and looked out over the sun-gilded garden below. The warm afternoon air was filled with the clatter of lumber, and the steady banging of hammers, and shouts from the half dozen or so workmen busy knocking together the wooden frames that would be used to support the canvas awnings for Beatrice Corbett's garden party.

  As if he sensed her gaze on him, one of the men straightened, a lean man with midnight-dark hair and the graceful, controlled movements of a born athlete. He turned slowly, the sun glazing the striking features of his face as his head fell back and his gaze lifted to the veranda. He had stripped off his coat and waistcoat, his rough shirt hanging open at the neck, his forearms showing sun-browned and strong where he'd rolled up his sleeves. As she watched, he swiped his upper arm across his sweat-glistened face, his chest rising and falling with the exertion of his labors. She stood well back from the railing, in the shadow of one of the stone arches, but there was no doubt he knew she was there, knew she watched him. It was that powerful, the connection between them. Powerful and dangerous.

  She had never meant for this to happen, this painful wanting, this impossible love. She'd never meant for it to happen, but that didn't make the danger to Gallagher any less deadly, didn't make her disloyalty to Harrison any less wrong, didn't make her weight of guilt any easier to bear.

  She'd thought she could ride beside this man she loved, talk to him, be with him, and still control her feelings for him, still control herself. But that sunlit afternoon in the ruined garden beside the beach, when they had talked of doomed love and kissed with such wild abandon, had forced her to admit to herself what she had always known: that Gallagher was right, that it was a mistake for her not to stay away from him, a mistake for her to tempt fate by following the siren call of this forbidden longing.

  And so, for three days now, she had kept away from him. She hadn't been riding, had avoided the stables, had stayed away from anywhere she thought she might encounter him. But she couldn't seem to stop herself from searching for him in the distance, couldn't keep herself from watching him, as she was now, and wanting him. The desire was still there, and the temptation to give in to it. She was going to have to get away from here, she thought in desperation, backing farther into the shadows. She was going to have to get away from the castle, away from temptation, away from him. For weeks, Harrison had been gently hinting that it was past time they set a date for their wedding. She realized now that she'd been deliberately delaying her commitment, but no longer, she decided. Once she married Harrison, once she was living at Beaulieu Hall instead of the castle, she would, seldom see Gallagher. She wouldn't be able to watch for him, wouldn't be tempted to seek him out, wouldn't be tempted to touch him, to kiss him, to give herself to him....

  A whisper of sound brought her head snapping around, her body tensing, as if she'd been caught doing what she was only thinking about. She saw Warrick, brandy glass in hand, lounging against the open French door behind her, and she relaxed.

  He wore buckskin breeches and high boots, and looked as if he'd only just come in, his hair still ruffled by the wind, his warm body giving off the pleasant scent of the sun and the road. He had developed the habit of riding off first thing in the morning and not returning until late in the evening. She didn't know where he went, or what he was doing; she knew only that something was different in his life. And she wasn't sure she liked the effect it was having on him.

  "Home so soon, Warrick?" she
said. "It won't be dark for... oh, at least another three hours or so."

  He gave her a twisted grin and lifted his glass in a half- salute. "Mother commands my presence. Something to do with the smoking room and chairs and I don't remember what else." He threw down the contents of his glass with a quick flick of his wrist. "I'll be glad when this damned party of hers is over."

  "I hope the weather holds."

  He sauntered forward to stand at the railing, his brooding gaze only half focused on the activity below. "Do you really?

  I'm rather inclined to wish for rain, myself. An afternoon spent in the company of an assemblage of people selected entirely on the basis of their wealth, genteel birth, or positions of authority is enough to drive a man to drink."

  "You drink too much already, Warrick," she said softly.

  He pivoted to face her, an errant blond curl falling into his suddenly narrowed eyes. "So I do." He lifted his glass between them, the fine crystal balanced precariously on the tips of his fingers. "And I seem to be empty. Excuse me."

  He brushed past her. She wanted to call him back, to tell him she was sorry, to tell him she was only worried about him. Except that she wasn't sure she knew how to say it. So much of the easy camaraderie they'd once shared seemed to have disappeared, a victim of her secrets, and his.

  She felt a burning weight of melancholy press upon her chest, stealing her breath and leaving her aching and confused. Wrapping her hands around the railing, she looked out over the garden again, but Lucas Gallagher had disappeared. She didn't know whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  She should have been relieved. Only, she decided she was disappointed.

  She'd made up her mind to tell Harrison, the next time she saw him, that she was ready to set the date for their wedding. Only, Harrison was busy with estate business, and she didn't see him again until the afternoon of Beatrice's garden party.

  The day dawned blue and clear, with only a balmy breeze to sway the trees in the park. "You see," said Warrick, pausing beside her, "not even God would dare to disrupt Mother's plans."

  Caught in the act of drinking a glass of punch, Jessie choked and shook her head at him, but she didn't tell him he shouldn't say such things. She was learning.

  For hours now, the garden had been steadily filling with their neighbors—or at least, those of their neighbors considered socially acceptable enough to attend one of Beatrice

  Corbett's functions: men in swallow-tail coats and top hats, ladies in fine gowns with wide swishing hems and old family jewelry and veiled hats that shielded their complexions from the ravages of the southern sun. The gentle strains of a sonata, played by the Blackhaven Bay String Quartet, floated away through the trees.

  This was her world Jessie thought with a bittersweet ache as she looked out over the sea of rainbow-hued silks and carefully smiling faces; this world of champagne and smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches, of carefully modulated voices underscored by the clink of crystal and the gentle whack of a croquet mallet striking a ball. This world of refinement and luxury, sustained by the brutal labor of doomed men broken by chains and whips and the cold dark terror of the isolation cell. She and Lucas Gallagher might both be a part of this world, but the roles they played in it were quite different. Their lives might brush, one against the other's, but only in certain, carefully prescribed ways. They were never meant to mingle, never meant to speak of things that mattered, never meant to touch or kiss.

  Never meant to love.

  "Don't look now," said Warrick, his mouth close to her ear, "but he's there, by the wisteria arbor. With Mother."

  "Who?" whispered Jessie, controlling with difficulty the impulse to swing around and stare behind her.

  "Captain Boyd, scourge of absconders and wayward daughters, and seeker after rich widows."

  Jessie pressed two gloved fingers to her lips to hold back an inappropriate smile. Schooling her face into blandness, she pivoted slowly, as if idly surveying the crowded garden, her gaze skimming over carefully tended roses and faultless parterres until she could see the wisteria arbor, where a short, stocky man with gray-laced dark hair and thick whiskers was bending low over Beatrice's hand.

  "I remember him," Jessie said, shifting slightly in a vain attempt to see her mother's face. "I noticed him on the beach. A very officious little man." She frowned as Beatrice began to walk with the captain toward the south lawn. "Are you quite certain Mother isn't seriously considering his suit?"

  Warrick laughed hard enough to turn several heads in their direction. He leaned into her again, lowering his voice. "You must be joking. The man's fortune could only be described as paltry, and marriage is an economic institution, remember? At least as far as Mother is concerned."

  Jessie brought her gaze back to her brother's handsome face. "Do you think she ever loved Papa? Even just a little?"

  His smile turned sour. "Lord, no. Her parents arranged the match. She conformed to their wishes, of course, because conforming is what Mother does best, and she's continued to do her duty ever since, God help us all. Love never had anything to do with it."

  The string quartet was playing Haydn now, the sweet, sad notes weaving a spell of melancholy over the low murmur of the crowd in the garden. Jessie watched her mother turn, her head coming up, the wide brim of her black satin bonnet lifting to show she was smiling. For one shining moment, she looked unexpectedly young and happy, almost pretty, and Jessie felt her breath catch, for it was as if she had been given a glimpse of the young woman her mother had once been, the woman Jessie herself had never known. "Do you think she was ever in love?" she asked quietly.

  Warrick widened his eyes and let out a huff of air between his teeth. "Mother? You must be joking."

  Jessie found she couldn't look at her mother anymore, so she looked instead at the Blackhaven Bay String Quartet. She had known them since she was a child, these four aging colonists with their old-fashioned knee breeches and beautiful music and unselfish willingness to come along and add a gentle touch of England to any social gathering in this part of the island. Only, there was something different about the quartet today. The man on the left was young, not old. He was turned away from her, yet there was something familiar about the lean length of his body, about the way he held his head, about the graceful way he moved.. .

  "Warrick," she said, her hand tightening around her brother's wrist when he would have moved off. "Why is my groom playing the violin in the Blackhaven Bay String Quartet?"

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Warrick swung his head around and grinned. "You didn't hear? Jacob McCallister rode into the yard this morning sporting red spots all over his face."

  "Red spots?"

  "Measles. He had to go home. The other members of the quartet were saying they couldn't play without another violin, so Gallagher offered to take McCallister's place."

  "No, I hadn't heard," said Jessie, her voice coming out oddly flat and hollow. She knew she shouldn't let herself stare at him, at Gallagher, but he drew her gaze with an inescapable, dangerous pull.

  He looked magnificent, his body lean and powerful and humming with the potent, leashed strength of a feral wolf turned loose amidst a herd of sedate, contented sheep. She let her gaze rove over him, beguiled by the interplay of the familiar with the unfamiliar. She knew the delicate curve of the scarred wrist holding the violin to his shoulder, the graceful, fluid movement of arm and torso as he drew the bow across the strings with a reverence that was like a lover's caress. She knew him, but she did not know him like this.

  She had seen him swinging a pickax in a quarry and working horses in a paddock, his rough convict clothes soaked in sweat and layered with dust. She had seen him half naked, his wet chest gleaming in the golden glow of a setting sun or the brittle white flashes of lightning from a storm- cracked sky. But she had never seen him like this, dressed in the trappings of her own world. This might not be his world, now, but there could be no doubting he had known a similar world, once. The black,
long-tailed coat he wore was old, and it didn't fit him very well, yet he carried it with an insouciant grace few men in the garden could emulate. She stared at him, at the fierce beauty of that half-averted face, at the lowered lashes that hid the rebellious green fire of his eyes, and felt her breath catch painfully in her throat. For one, stolen moment, she allowed herself to imagine what it could have been like . . .

  What it could have been like, if he were just another English colonist, like the rest of them, here in her mother's garden by the civilized exchange of invitation and consent— a guest who could smile at her from across the mingling crowd with no fear of who might be watching, who could set aside his violin and walk toward her, the sun warm and free on his face. If she could simply rest her hand on the crook of his arm and walk with him beneath the alley of oaks, his head bending toward her as she looked up at him and smiled...

  "It's a damnable nuisance, of course," Warrick was saying. "I could ill spare him from the stables on a day like this."

  Guiltily aware of the flush rising to her cheeks, Jessie jerked her gaze away from the man with the violin. "Where did he get the tails?"

  Warrick shrugged. "Presumably from the same place as the violin," he said, and wandered away, toward the smoking room, his hands fumbling in the pockets of his waistcoat.

  She told herself she wasn't going to look at him again, at Gallagher, but the lure was too potent to resist.

  He was smiling, only not at her. He was smiling at the music he was making with his hands and his body and his soul. He looked relaxed, at peace, and there was a kind of contentment, deep in his eyes, such as she had never seen before. A contentment which, in that moment, she envied.

  It felt like slow, painful death to look at him. To look at him, and know he could never be hers. Then he glanced up. For one blazing moment, their gazes met, and the impact of it, the fiery shock of it, arced across the garden, leaving her shattered.