Whispers of Heaven

by Candice Proctor

  She stood up and walked, ethereally thin and beautiful, to where a small stream trickled over a stony course. By midsummer, the stream would be gone, but for now it still ran, clear and sweet. He watched her kneel in the grass and stoop to scoop up a handful of water, the sun glinting golden and glorious along her bare back and lean hips. She was so natural, so relaxed, she enchanted him. Still.

  He had been coming to see her for weeks now, making love to her, holding her in his arms, telling her his dreams. Yet he knew that he'd never come close to making her his, never grasped the essence of her. What he wanted from her continued to elude him. And he was beginning to realize it always would.

  "Why do you do it?" he asked. "Why do you lay with me? You say you don't love me."

  She straightened and turned to face him, her lips lifting in a brilliant smile. "You're beautiful. Like an angel—you're like something from a different world. It's not often a body gets a chance to touch something from a different world."

  He sat up, his forearms resting on his bare knees. "Don't you love me even a little?"

  She cocked her head, studying him as if she were trying to understand him, trying to understand this need he had for her love. He knew she'd had other men, men to whom she'd given herself freely after that first rough taking in the hills of Scot-

  land. Hadn't any of them wanted more from her, he wondered, more than what she'd been willing to give him? "I like you line," she said slowly, as if reaching carefully for her words. "Only, how can I love you when I don't even know you?"

  "Haven't you learned to know me some, these past weeks?"

  "Some. But I could never really know you. We're too different."

  He arose and walked toward her. He still felt awkward and a little shy, moving about naked the way she did, in the open.

  "I think," he began, then paused and smiled, reaching out to put his hands on her hips. "I believe, that two people can know and love each other instinctively—intuitively—the first time they meet."

  She tilted back her head so she could look up at him. Her face was blank. "I don't even know what those words mean." She took his hand in hers and put it between her legs, where she was still warm and sticky from what they'd done together. " This is what I know. This is what we have. And this," she added, reaching out to close her other hand around his half- erect penis.

  To his shame, he felt himself swell, again, in her grasp. He didn't want this to be all there was between them. He wanted there to be something beautiful and glorious, something special, something profound. He'd never thought of himself as a romantic fool. But it occurred to him, now, that perhaps he was, after all. He buried his face in the sweet fire of her hair, and began to laugh.

  After a moment, her laughter joined his. Then her mouth found his, and he wasn't laughing anymore.

  Early that evening, two days after her visit to Last Chance Point, Jessie was crossing the yard after paying a visit to Old Tom when she glanced up to find the stableboy, Charlie, pelting out of the stables toward her, one hand holding his hat planted on his head, his bony elbow pointing skyward.

  "Miss," he called, his eyes wide in his freckled face. "Miss Corbett. Oh, wait, do."

  "What is it?" she asked, catching him by the shoulders as he skidded to a breathless halt. "What's wrong?"

  "It's Gallagher, Miss." The boy's shoulders heaved, his mouth slack as he fought to catch his breath. "He's taken the gray and gone off, I don't know where to. But he was in a rare taking, he was."

  "He has ridden out wow?" Jessie narrowed her eyes against the glare of the setting sun, her gaze on the pink- and gold- touched clouds hovering over the mountains to the west. "But it's late," she whispered. "The barracks ..." She swung back to the boy. "What happened?"

  "Captain Boyd's been up at the house, Miss. They've found the six men who escaped, and Gallagher heard about it."

  Jessie felt her heart begin to pound hard in her chest. Thank God, thank God, she thought; thank God he wasn't with them. Aloud, she said, "They've been caught? All of them?"

  Charlie shook his head. "Only three, Miss. The other three are dead. And two of the ones in jail at Blackhaven Bay might not live long enough to hang."

  Jessie knew such a rush of nausea she had to ton away, her fist coming up to press against her lips. She had seen men hanged, seen their faces turn black and distorted, their bodies stained with their dying release. "Were they good friends of Mr. Gallagher?" she asked softly. "The men who escaped, I mean?"

  The boy nodded, his thin, bony head bobbing up and down. "One of them, the one they call the Fox, he was Gallagher's messmate on the transport out. And another, Daniel O'Leary, was on the chain gang. Saved his life, Gallagher told me."

  "Is he one of the men in jail, this Daniel?"

  "No, Miss. Daniel's dead. The Fox killed him."

  "Listen to me, Charlie," she said, glancing up at the house, where Beatrice was probably already dressing for dinner. "I want you to saddle my mare while I quickly change into my riding habit. If anyone asks, Gallagher is with me, and we're out late because I want to observe the aurora australis."

  "The what?"

  "The southern lights. And Charlie," she added, as he started to run off. He paused to throw her a questioning glance over his shoulder. "Thank you."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  She found the gray tethered to the elm at the edge of the garden, near the empty fountain. The man who had ridden it here was nowhere to be seen.

  From the cove below came the familiar rushing sweep and drag of the tide, mingling with the grinding chirp of crickets, as she nudged the reluctant mare across the abandoned garden, toward the ruined house. The sun had all but disappeared behind the mountains, leaving the sky a pink-cast teal blue and reducing the colors of the landscape to muted tones of charcoal.

  Shivering slightly, she drew up before the house, her head falling back as she stared up at the gaping, empty windows and cracked walls. She could not have said how she knew he was here, yet she did know. She found the old mounting block half-buried in the long grass, and used it, then tied her horse to an iron ring set in the crumbling stone garden wall. "Easy, Cimmeria," she murmured, stroking the nervous mare's nose. "I don't think these ghosts hurt horses." She kept her voice light when she said it, but Cimmeria only snorted and threw up her head, the dainty, white-stockinged feet dancing sideways.

  Since that long-ago day when a much younger Jessie had stood in the polished, black-and-white marble hall and admired the Grimes' grand oak staircase, she had never entered this house. Now, her heart pounding in her chest, her throat dry, she passed through the open, blackened doorway into the shattered ruin of that same hall.

  All the walls of the house, even those on the inside, had been built of convict-hewn stone, some fourteen or more inches thick, and still stood, reaching up to the darkening evening sky far above. But the oak staircase was gone, the tiles underfoot now cracked and littered with leaves and bits of charred wood too small to be carried off for fuel. Clasping her arms tightly against her chest, Jessie passed through a doorway on her right, into what had once been the drawing room.

  The dark shape of a man rose up, silhouetted against the darkening sky, his hands braced wide against the sides of what had once been a set of elegant French windows leading onto a flagstoned veranda overlooking the sea. A small mew of alarm escaped her lips before she could stop it.

  "'Tis it one of the resident ghosts you're expecting, then?" Gallagher said, his brogue broad and aggressive. "Tell me..." He dropped his arms to his sides and stepped toward her. "Of the three, which do you think would be the most dangerous?"

  She watched him come at her out of the night, as dark and dangerous, in his own way, as anything spawned by hell. "You frightened me," she said, her head tilting back so that she could look up into his fiercely beautiful face.

  "I noticed. What are you doing here?"

  "That's my question." She wanted to pound her fists in frightened anger against this broad ch
est. She wanted to cradle his face between her palms and kiss his hard man's mouth. She wanted him to hold her in his arms and tell her that he loved her as much as she loved him, and that he'd never do something like this again. Instead, she said, "Do you have any idea what they would do to you, for riding off like this?"

  He shrugged, his mouth tightening into a bitter line. "A week's solitary confinement, maybe two, on bread and water. I've suffered it before—it, and worse—and survived."

  "So it's all right then, is it? How about if they decided to give you fifty lashes instead? Would that still be all right?"

  He swung abruptly away from her, his back held painfully straight and rigid. "I'm not a man who likes rules, Jessie. I don't like being controlled, or taking orders, or conforming to other people's expectations. Sometimes ... sometimes I just need to fly in the face of it all. Even if I have to pay for it."

  A silence fell between them, a silence filled with the distant rumble of the surf and the whisper of the wind through the trees. She took a step toward him, then stopped herself. "I heard about your friends," she said, her voice falling awkwardly into the stillness of the night. "I'm sorry. But you shouldn't blame yourself. It's not your fault."

  He spun to face her. There was an intense aura of recklessness about him tonight, of wildness, that both frightened and excited her. "Isn't it? I'm the one who found the bloody boat. I repaired it, and I planned the whole stupid fiasco."

  "It wasn't stupid. Someone told on you, and those men decided to go anyway. It was their decision. How does that make it your fault?"

  "If I'd been with them—"

  "If you'd insisted on going with them, then my brother would have seen the boat leave the cove, and the Repulse would have picked up all of you in a few hours."

  "Instead of a few days?"

  She saw the glitter of chilling hardness in his eyes, and her heart shivered in fear. "You hate me right now, don't you?" she whispered. "For being English, and for being a part of this whole, brutal, dehumanizing system."

  He walked up to her, the sea breeze blowing through the open doorway to ruffle his dark hair, the silver light of the moon glazing the sharp features of his face. "I don't hate you," he said softly.

  "Lucas ..." She reached out to him, her hand shaking. "It won't make your friends' suffering any less, if you set things up so that you're suffering, too."

  He took her hand in his strong, warm grip, his eyes narrowing as he stared down at her. "You think that's why I'm doing this? So I'll be punished?"

  "Isn't it?"

  She felt his hand tighten around hers, saw his chest lift as he drew in breath. "I don't know." Abruptly, he let her go and walked away to lean one shoulder against the old doorway, his gaze on the sea, the waves glimmering black and white- crested in the moonlight. "You shouldn't have come here."

  "Why not?"

  He pushed away from the doorway, his boots scraping over the rough, broken flagging as he moved to stand at the edge of the veranda, his hands on his hips. She followed him. They stood, side by side, watching the ceaseless march of the tide, washing onto the beach below. After a moment, he said, "Do you realize you've never asked me why I killed that man, Nathan Fitzherbert?"

  She turned her head to look at him. "I figured you'd tell me your reasons when you were ready."

  "What makes you so sure I even had a reason?"

  She studied his profile, the harsh line of his brow, the masculine jut of cheekbonc beneath taut, sun-darkened skin. "Because I know you."

  He let out his breath in a harsh, guttural sound. "Is there such a thing as a good enough reason to kill another human being?"

  "Probably not. But I can understand why a man might feel driven to it." She let her head fall back, staring up at the night sky, the stars oddly blurred in the purpling night. "You don't need to tell me."

  "No. I should have told you before."

  "If you think it will make me turn away from you," she said the words strained by the tightness in her throat, "you're wrong."

  "You haven't heard it yet."

  She sank down to sit on the broken edge of the veranda, her legs hanging over the three-foot drop to the ruined garden, her gaze on her hands folded in her lap. She wanted to know more about this man, to understand him better, to understand llie darkness that haunted his wild soul. But she wasn't entirely certain she was ready to hear what he was about to say.

  "It happened when you were at university in Dublin, didn't it?" she said quietly

  She was aware of him hunkering down on his heels beside her, his forearms resting on his spread thighs, but she kept her gaze lowered. "I was visiting my sister Rose at the time," he said, his voice flat. "Rose's husband, Patrick Maguire, was a good friend of mine. He was a writer—a journalist. He had a printing press in his basement, a secret press that he used for the cause."

  Jessie didn't need to ask which cause. In Ireland, there was only one real cause.

  "That night, a troop of English soldiers came to the house. Someone must have told them about the press, because they knew right where to look for it."

  She glanced up. "Nathan Fitzherbert was one of them?"

  He nodded, his face chillingly emptied of all emotion, his eyes as flat as his voice. "Fitzherbert was the officer in charge. He had six men with him. After they'd smashed the press, he let them take turns at Rose. All six of them."

  Jessie sucked in a quick breath, trying to ease the sudden ache within her. Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God, no.

  "Patrick and I tried to stop them. Fitzherbert blew Patrick's brains out. I thought he meant to do the same with me, but he had other plans. He made me stand there with his pistol to my head, and watch."

  Jessie realized her hands were clenched so tightly together, they hurt. She straightened them slowly, pressed them flat against her thighs. "Did she survive—your sister?"

  "It didn't kill her, what those soldiers did to her. So the next day, Rose killed herself."

  She drew up her feet to hook her heels on the edge of the veranda and wrap her arms around her bent legs, her face pressed into her knees. She had heard of such things happening, but always as something abstract, something distant. This had been done to the sister of the man Jessie loved—and by English soldiers. She felt sick, and ashamed. "Did you try going to the authorities?"

  "You mean to the English?" He let out a harsh sound that was not a laugh. "I tried. There is no justice for the Irish in Ireland. Not as long as the English are there."

  His gaze met hers, his eyes black and shadowed. She realized she was holding her breath, and let it out in a long sigh. "So you killed him yourself."

  He picked up a broken bit of stone from the edge of the shattered veranda, turned it over and over again in his hand. "I followed him home from the pub one night. Caught him cutting across a park, alone. I gave him a shillelagh, and told him to fight for his life. But the shillelagh is an Irish weapon, not an English one." A fierce smile flashed across his face. "Since the English don't allow us to own guns, we've learned to fight with what we have, even if it's just sticks. He didn't have a chance."

  She remembered an afternoon in early September, in a death-haunted mountain clearing, and Gallagher swinging a branch with lethal skill at a bushranger's head. He was right; even armed with a cudgel, the Englishman wouldn't have stood a chance. But she said "You gave him the opportunity to fight you, man to man. That's not murder."

  "Isn't it?" His fist tightened around the rock. Smiling vaguely, he stared down at it, then hurled it explosively into the darkness of the night. "I set out to kill him, and I did. I hose weeks in between—between that night when the English broke into my sister's house, and the night I killed Fitzherbert—they're a blur to me. I don't remember any of it. But I remember the killing."

  "What did you do then?" she asked, her voice a broken whisper.

  He rose in one swift movement and came to stand behind her, so close she could feel the heat of his legs against her buck. "I left Dublin. Went
into the Comeragh Mountains. But the soldiers, they found me eventually. I was all for confcssing what I'd done, but my father, he said they'd no real evidence to convict me. He said my mother had already lost one child to the English, and he wasn't sure she could bear losing another in such a way. So I held my tongue, for my mother's sake."

  He paused, and the silence filled with the moan of the wind and the lonely cry of a curlew. "My father was right, of course," he said, his voice wry, brittle. "They didn't have enough evidence to convict me of the killing. So they got me on treason charges instead, and my mother had to bear losing another child, after all."

  She tilted back her head to look up at his taut, dark features, one hand stealing up to rest against his hard thigh, behind her. Beneath her touch, his convict trousers felt rough, coarse. "At least you were transported, not hanged."

  He bent to settle behind her, his arms coming soft and warm around her waist to bring her back against his chest. "What does it matter? She'll never see me again."

  She wrapped her hands around his arms, holding him close. "It matters."

  He freed one hand to take off her hat and settle his cheek against hers. She could feel his chest lift, pressing against her back when he breathed. He held her that way for a long moment, as the night breeze wafted up from the old garden, cool and sweet with the aroma of the sea and damp growing things.

  "At first," he said, his voice rough, almost shaky, "I really thought I could do it, Jessie—be smart, beat the system, get my ticket-of-leave and survive. That was before I realized how well-connected Fitzherbert was, before I realized that I was never going to be free again." He paused. "Unless I escape."

  She drew in a deep gulp of air, her chest hurting as if she'd forgotten to breathe. His arms felt splendidly right, wrapped around her, enveloping her in his familiar warmth and strength. She loved him so much she ached with it, and now he was talking about leaving her again. "You were wrong," she said. "It doesn't change the way I see you."

  He pulled her up onto her knees and drew her around to face him, his hands hard on her shoulders, his features ghostly shadows in the night. "That's because you haven't heard the worst of it."