"He was with the others," the Fox said. "I couldn't get
them alone to talk to them, and it was getting late. I figured it was safer to bring him than to leave him. And he does want to come."
"We've room enough," said Lucas, eyeing the man. "Ever handle a boat?"
The man's face broke into a wide smile. "What you think? I'm from Achill Island."
Lucas grunted. "Get in the boat then. We leave as soon as Daniel arrives."
He started to turn away, toward the ruined homestead, when the Fox caught his arm. "You know what this means, don't you, boyo?"
Lucas swung back around, his eyes narrowing as he searched the other man's thin face. "And what would that be?"
The Fox wiped his cuff across his sweat-sheened forehead, his chest still shuddering from the long run. "We've six men for the oars, and a lad who knows the ways of the sea better even than yourself. You'll not be needing to come with us, if you've a mind not to."
For one, terrible moment, temptation beckoned. "I'm coming with you," Lucas said, and pulled away to go watch for Daniel.
Jessie walked into the middle of the stables and stopped, her head tipping back, her hands hanging limply at her sides. She turned in a slow circle, the world a wet blur of shadowy rafters and whitewashed walls and bars of fading golden light streaming through high windows and wide doors.
She couldn't have said why she had come here, except that Gallagher had, for a time, made this place his. She breathed in the familiar scents of hay and warm horseflesh and leather, and felt the loss of him like a rip in her being.
He had come into her life, a lean dark man with haunted eyes and an untamed spirit, who captured her heart and stirred her soul and challenged her to be all that she'd ever dreamed of being. He had come, and now he was gone, and she was left with such loneliness and pain and a desperate, wild yearning for the impossible. A yearning for the impossible, and a fear that churned her stomach and left her breathless and shaky.
Oh God, oh God, her mind screamed in a silent prayer. Let him be all right. Let him get safely away. Please, please...
They had ridden out almost immediately, Warrick and the overseer, the dogs barking and excited, the men grim-faced and determined. She had watched them go, yet she felt no sense of betrayal in wishing them failure. Warrick might be her brother, but it was wrong what he was doing, hunting men down as if they were animals—men kept under threat of whip and chains, and forced to work as slaves. Men whose crime was sometimes nothing more than a willingness to die for a noble cause.
She realized suddenly that, at some point, the sun must have set. The chirping of the crickets had grown louder, the air cooler, the open doors now showing only pale gray sky against the darkness of the stable's interior. In a nearby stall, a horse moved restlessly, crunching its oats and slurping water. It occurred to her that Gallagher must have seen to the horses before he left, and for some reason, the thought undid her.
Slowly, she sank to her knees on the cold uneven brick floor, her rump settling back on her heels, the palms of her hands coming up to press against her stinging eyes. She was never going to get over loving him, she realized with an ache of awful certainty. Her love, and the pain of losing him, would be there forever, an eternal mingling of sweet joy and terrible, soul-wrenching sorrow.
The clip-clop of a horse's hooves hitting the hard-packed dirt of the yard brought her hands down, her chest jerking as she sought to catch her breath. She staggered to her feet, brushed stray wisps of hay and dirt from her skirt, pressed the back of one balled-up fist to her lips in a desperate effort to bring herself under control. Her entire being was quivering with worry and heartache, but somehow she managed to draw on a lifetime of training in the suppression of emotion to pull herself up straight and hold her head high as she faced at the open doors.
Unaccountably, she felt her heartbeat quicken, knew a rush of tingling awareness that she feared might be nothing more than wild, useless hope. She tried to damp it down, tried to tell herself it was impossible. But her feet were already moving toward the wide double doors. She heard the hoofbeats pause, heard the creak of leather as someone swung from the saddle, his tread light upon the hard earth. A man's form appeared, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.
"Oh, God," she whispered. "It is you." And she threw herself into his arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"I thought you were gone," she said hoarsely, her spread hands running over the features of his face, his shoulders, his arms. She felt driven by an obsessive need to touch him everywhere, as if to be certain he was truly here and not simply a phantom conjured up from abject despair. She rubbed her cheek against his, felt his breath warm against her neck, and had to squeeze her eyes shut against a threatening sting of tears. "Oh, God. I thought you were gone, and I felt as if I had lost a part of myself."
He caught her hands in his and kissed them, his features sharp and haunted in the moonlight. "I should have gone. For your sake as well as mine, I should have gone."
"No. Don't say that."
His arms encircled her shoulders, his hands tangling in her hair as he drew her in to him. "Some things are true, even if we don't say them," he whispered. And then he was kissing her, kissing her as a drowning man might devour air, whole- mouth kisses of desperation and need and blind want.
She gave herself up to him utterly, to his touch and his kiss and the warm rush of forbidden yet undeniable desire that thrummed through her. She could not get close enough to him. She strained against him, her tongue tangling with his, her breasts flattening against his chest, his aroused body hard against her stomach. She lost all sense of where she was, of everything except the wild joy of having him again in her arms.
But he at least must have remembered they stood in the
open doorway, for he tore his mouth from hers, whispered harshly, "This way," and pulled her with him into the dark, hay-sweet recesses of an empty stall, his mouth recapturing hers before they were halfway there.
Her back slammed up against the smooth wooden partition of the stall, the panel rattling unheeded, her fingers digging into his shoulders as his hands closed over her breasts.
His touch was magic, his kiss a thing of splendor. It was like a whisper of heaven, to be this close to him again, to be able to hold him, to be held by him. And still, she wanted more. She wanted to feel his man's weight, bearing her down into the softly rustling hay. She wanted to make him a part of her, to draw him inside her, deep inside, where a fiery need curled bright and hot and insistent. She wanted him in every way a woman can want a man, and the realization brought her no shame, only a kind of joyous wonder.
She heard him groan with want, his body arching to lift her up, then let her slide slowly, exquisitely down the hard length of him. She knew he wanted her with the same desperate passion as she wanted him, and it was a sweet exaltation, even as the danger of this time and place seemed to settle over them both.
"Lass," he said on a harsh expulsion of breath, his head tipping back, his eyes squeezing shut as he fought to bring his raging desires under control. "We're mad and no doubt about it. Anyone could come walking in. And I'm not sure we'd even hear them coming."
"Probably not," she said with a smile, her fingers digging into the hard muscles of his back, her lungs heaving as she gulped in steadying draughts of cool, hay-scented air. "It's just... it feels so good to hold you, I can't bear the thought of letting you go again."
He pressed his open mouth against her forehead, his arms slipping around her waist, his breath shuddering his chest as he held her tight against him. "I know." -
She ducked her chin to lay her cheek against his chest, and felt his heart beat strong against the side of her face. "Tell me," she whispered, her hands sliding up beneath his coat to splay against his back, the flesh strong and warm beneath his coarse shirt. "Can you tell me what happened?"
He cupped the side of her head in his hand, his fingers gentle as he stroked her hair. She looked up, and saw
his devil's grin flash quick and seductive in the shadows of the night. "Aye. But if I'm not to have you on your back in this hay, I'd best do my telling while I'm unsaddling the gray."
She breathed a soft laugh, caught his hand in hers, and kissed his knuckles. "I'll light the lantern."
The light brought a warm golden glow to the center of the stables while leaving the two wings of stalls in vague shadow. Jessie hung the lantern from a hook in one of the supporting posts, the tin hitting the wood with a soft clang. She watched him strip the saddle from the mare's back, and knew from the jerkiness of his motions that however great his joy in being with her again, the disappointment of his failed escape attempt ran deep. It was a thought that hurt, although she told herself it should not.
"You did mean to leave tonight, didn't you?" she said abruptly.
He looked up from unbuckling the bridle, his face set in hard lines. "Aye."
"And the other men? Warrick said some half a dozen are missing."
"They got off. Unfortunately, one of them felt he had a score to settle with someone before he left the castle."
Jessie reached out to run one hand down the white stripe on the gray's nose. "I know."
He glanced at her, then went to work on the horse's near neck and shoulder with a brush. "Yeah, well, your brother's dogs picked up the man's scent right away. He'd barely made it to the cove when we heard the dogs, barking up on the bluff."
"Did they catch him?"
Lucas shook his head. "No, but I knew they'd be on the beach before the boat made it out to sea, and it was still light enough that they'd be able to see which direction the boat turned. The Repulse would have picked us up before we got much past Blackhaven Bay."
She continued to stroke the horse's face as he worked the brush over the animal's flank and around to the other side. "So what did you do?"
He paused for a moment, his head bent, his hands braced against the gray's withers. "I pushed the boat off, and then I rode back to meet your brother and the overseer, Dalton, at the top of the bluff."
"But..." She looked at him, her heart aching for what she saw flash ever so briefly in his eyes, before he shielded it. "Why?"
He swung his back to her, his movements with the brush brisk, his voice deceptively light. "To delay them, of course. I spun them a wild yarn about being at the Grimes homestead when the escapees came up and launched their boat. It was a grand—and excruciatingly long-winded—tale I told, full of violence and heroism, ending with my ultimate escape from the clutches of the murderers. But not, of course, before I was able to discover their direction."
"You told my brother the boat went north?"
He met her gaze over the gray's broad back, his dark Irish eyes shadowed and mysterious. "Och, no. I told him they'd turned south. Dalton knows an Irishman would never prig on his mates. The Repulse will run north, all right, looking to catch up with them. By the time the bloody Brits realize their mistake, the lads should have had enough time to lose themselves on one of the wilder peninsulas to the south of here."
She watched him lead the gray to its stall. "Didn't my brother wonder what you were doing at the cove, so late?"
His voice came to her out of the dark recesses of the stables. "I told him you thought you'd lost your locket there, and I'd gone back to look for it."
"And he believed you?"
"Aye." He came at her, his ragged convict coat flaring open, his shadow leaping huge across the stable wall behind him. "Because I found it, you see."
She saw the gleam of warm gold in his palm as he reached up and pinned the round locket to her bodice, his fingers brushing gently against her breast. She watched his hands, then lifted her gaze to his face. "I'm sorry you weren't able to leave. I know how much you wanted it."
He shook his head. "I wanted to leave, yes. But I'd decided the entire scheme had become too damned dangerous. So now I keep asking myself if I stayed so that my mates would have a better chance of escaping, or for another reason entirely."
"You would have gone, if my brother hadn't ridden up when he did."
"Would I?" He turned away, his back held straight, his face cast in shadows. "Until I met you, I hated everything about my captivity on this island. I was willing to risk dying, just to seize a chance to escape. But now... I feel as if I have something to lose." He paused. "A part of me hates you for that."
She came up behind him, close enough that she could have touched him, although she did not. "Tomorrow, I want to go for a ride. Up to the rainforest."
He spun about, his eyes flaring dark and wide with comprehension. "Lass..."
She pressed the tips of her fingers against his soft, warm lips. "No. Don't say I shouldn't do this. Not this time."
He captured her hand in his, pressed a kiss to her palm. Over their joined hands, pale held fast by dark, his gaze met hers. "Some things are true, even if we don't say them."
Late the next morning, they followed the track that wound through the foothills and up into the rainforest-clad mountains, the midday sun warm and bright as it filtered through the overhanging canopy of myrtles, wattles, and stringybarks. Lucas tilted back his head, his gaze on the antics of a colorful honeyeater, his thoughts a lifetime away. He would never get used to the pattern of the days here, to the cycle of the year in Tasmania.
Across the seas, in Ireland, October was a time of golden leaves scuttling before a cold wind, of pewter skies hanging low over dark, bare-limbed trees and waterlogged fields. But here, in Tasmania, October was a time of vivid color and fresh life, of tulips and lilacs and bright green growth, of clear blue skies and balmy spring breezes. It disconcerted him, this reversal of the seasons, underscoring his exile, his alienation from all that was familiar in a way that was both subtle and profound.
He glanced at the woman who rode beside him, her back straight but relaxed, the fine black skirts of her expensive habit spread out around her, a faint flush high on her pale cheeks as she kept her gaze fixed on the path ahead. For Miss Jesmond Corbett, October meant spring. If she left here, he thought, if she went someplace like America, she would suffer there the same sense of dislocation he knew here. She would never feel quite at ease, never feel as if she entirely belonged. And then he wondered at himself for the thought, for she belonged to this place. She loved it; it was her home, and she would live out the rest of her days here. When he did finally manage to escape from Tasmania, he would be leaving her behind. The pain of it, the pain of his leaving her, was like a raw wound that bled every time he touched on it.
She had spoken little since they left the castle. She was also having a hard time looking directly at him. Yet he knew from the tilt of her head that she was still determined on this thing she had decided to do. He thought, for her sake, that he shouldn't be letting this happen. But the need in him, the wanting, was deep and powerful, an all-consuming drive that overrode common sense, self-preservation even. He might know, on some esoteric plateau, that they were making a potentially deadly mistake. But he didn't think he had the will to stop it.
In the weeks since they had visited the limestone caves, the stream had slowed, the boom of the low falls lessening to a melodic trickle. He watered the horses and tethered them where they could graze, while she walked through the forest of thick straight trunks and feathery ferns to a place where a windfall had let in the sun, and grass grew thick and deep. He watched her sit on the grass, her skirts spread around her, her gloved hands clasped together in her lap, her head bowed. He had always yearned to touch her there, where the delicate bones at the nape of her neck showed distinct and vulnerable against her smooth white skin. And so he allowed himself to do it now, a caress-soft brushing of his fingers as he came up beside her.
He heard her draw in a quick breath, then let it out slowly before she looked up at him, her eyes a dusky blue and solemn. She said, "I have decided that when Mr. Tate returns from Hobart, I shall tell him I cannot marry him."
He dropped to sit facing her, his legs crossed, his knees
not quite touching hers. He didn't say anything, and made no further attempt to touch her.
She glanced down again at her hands, laced so tightly together in her lap. "I do love Harrison, but it is as a friend only. I see that now. I honestly thought that would be enough. Perhaps if I'd never met you, it would have been enough. But I doubt it. I think I would always have been aware that there was something missing. Its absence would have made me miserable, and in time I would have made him miserable, too."
"What will you do, then?"
She looked up quickly. The smile spilling across her face was so natural and spontaneous that it took his breath. "What I've secretly always wanted to do: conduct a geological survey of the entire island. Most unladylike, don't you think? The majority of my inheritance is in land that is tied to my marriage. But I do have a small legacy that will be mine when I come of age next year. Perhaps I'll apply to the governor for a land grant of my own. Some women have done it. Perhaps I could get you assigned to me."
"Lass..." Reaching out, he entwined his hand with one of hers. "I might not have escaped last night, but I will do it. I will be leaving, one day. It's only a matter of time. I'll not be spending the next fifty years of my life as a convict in a British penal colony."
He watched the light fade from her face, her throat working as she swallowed and looked away, toward the white froth of the falls. "No. I should have known that. It's just... so very hard. I feel as if I've been searching for you my entire life without even knowing it. Now that I've found you, the thought of losing you is ..." She wrapped her free hand around their entwined fingers, holding him tightly. "Beyond enduring."
"Yet you will have to endure it."
"I know. But not yet." She raised his hand, still clasped between both of hers, to her breasts, her gaze hard on his face. "I want you to make love to me, Lucas."
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