Whispers of Heaven

by Candice Proctor

  She reached out a shaky hand to touch his shoulder. "I am genuinely grateful for the offer, Charlie, but I can't allow you to put yourself at risk of punishment."

  "They won't be able to do me nothin' if I go to America, too," he said, staring up at her with old, hard eyes. Eyes like that didn't belong on a boy his age.

  She shook her head. "No. It's too dangerous. You might be recaptured. Even killed."

  Behind her, Old Tom let out a derisive snort. "And 'tis a fine future he'll be having, then, if he stays here in Tasmania, is it? The way I see it, if the boy's willing to take the risk, it's no' your place to stop him. It's his life."

  Jessie pivoted her head to meet the old man's gaze, and smile sadly. "Wise Tom. You're right, of course." To Charlie, she said, "I would like your help. I think we're going to need it."

  It was later, when she was leaving the stables, that she turned to put her hand on Old Tom's arm and ask him suddenly, "What does mo chridh mean?"

  He looked at her with sad, knowing eyes. "Mo chridh? It means 'my sweetheart,' lass. My love."

  "You need to find someone competent to help Old Tom in the stables," Jessie told her brother the next day as he sent the shay rattling down the hill to Blackhaven Bay. The morning was cool, but fine, the sun reflecting off the blue waters of the bay in bright, dazzling glints. But all Jessie could see was the fortress-like sandstone walls of the gaol, standing dark and somber at the edge of town.

  Warrick looked up from handling the ribbons, a boyish scowl settling over the perfect features of his face. "I had someone—the best bloody groom I've ever seen. Until you decided to use him for something else entirely." He spanked the reins against the mare's rump, urging the dapple gray on even faster. "I tell you, Jess, I never expected you to serve Harrison such a backhanded turn."

  She swung her face away, one hand coming up to grasp the brim of her bonnet to keep it from flying off as the shay lurched and rattled along at a dangerous speed. Warrick always drove too fast. "I wasn't using Lucas Gallagher for anything, Warrick. I love him."

  "A convict, Jess? A bloody Irish convict?"

  Her gaze jerked back to him. "My God. You sound like Mother. I'd no notion you were such a snob."

  An unexpected band of color stained his perfect cheekbones. "I'm not a snob," he said in a peculiar, strained voice.

  "You certainly sound like one. Oh, Warrick ..." She reached out to touch his sleeve in a sudden rush of emotion and need. "I would have expected you, of all people, to understand the confusion of my feelings about Harrison."

  The color on his cheeks deepened, but he only pressed his lips into a tight line, and said nothing.

  They had reached the outskirts of town now and were turning to run along the strand. She could see some three or four ships riding at anchor, along with the smaller coastal craft. She studied the rocking hulls and waving masts, and found the Agnes Anne.

  "Sometimes, friendship can deepen, Jess," Warrick said suddenly. "Even when you don't expect it to."

  She looked at him, surprised by his words. "This one won't."

  "Then why are you getting married next month?" he asked, looking at her hard as he reined in before the livery stable, but she only shook her head. "I'll not be letting you near the gaol," he added, "if that's what you're thinking, coming here with me today."

  "No, of course not," she said with forced lightness, stepping down without his help. "I only want to visit my dressmaker, and then perhaps go for a walk along the bay. Shall I meet you here in, say, two hours?"

  Jessie sat on a low stone wall facing the beach, near the edge of town, and watched a tall seaman with sandy-colored sidewhiskers and the forthright, direct gaze of an American walk toward her. He had a hitch in his stride that seemed to emphasize the rollicking nature of his gait and made him look faintly rakish, like someone Lucas would know. The thought made her smile sadly.

  He didn't come right up to her, but paused nearby, his gaze fixed on the faint line of the horizon, where blue sky met blue, blue water. "I hear y' been lookin' for me."

  Like him, she stared out to sea. "You are Captain Chase?"

  "Aye."

  "I understand you are a good friend of Lucas Gallagher."

  He glanced down at her, quickly, then away. "Aye. That I am."

  "Did you know he's been put in gaol?"

  "I'd heard."

  "Well, I'm going to get him out."

  She didn't wear a nightcap.

  Warrick hadn't known that about Miss Philippa Tate, and it surprised him now, looking at her asleep in the shadows of her big four-poster bed, her hair spread across the pillow in a dark satin wave. She'd been right, what she said to him that day. He didn't know her, not anymore. She'd always known him, always accepted him for what he was—his wildness, his pain, his dreams and fears. Warrick thought he must have known her, once, when they were children. He wondered when they'd lost that.

  The grating of the safety match sounded abnormally loud in the stillness of the night. He held the flame to the wick of the candle of her chamber stick, watched it flare up, golden and surprisingly bright in the darkness of the night. Around them, the big house shuddered, as if wakened by the wind blundering against its walls. Then all was still again.

  She must have sensed the light, in her sleep, for she stirred. He watched her eyes flutter open, close, then widen. She moved quickly, reaching for the dressing gown laid across the seat of a chair near the bed. His hand got there first.

  "My congratulations," he said, giving her a smile that showed his teeth. "Most women would have screamed."

  She sat back, her hands fisting in the covers, although to do her credit, she didn't yank them up to her chin in an ostentatious display of maidenly modesty. "You've been drinking," she said, that infallible calm of hers firmly in place. Most people thought her a model of conformity, of compliance. But she wasn't. She was just one of the lucky ones, for she was naturally much the way her society expected her to be. She didn't need to pretend, didn't need to hide—or at least, not as much as some of them.

  "I have been drinking, yes," he said, giving her a low bow. "Only, not as much as you might think."

  "Why are you here?"

  Straightening, he raised his eyebrows and gave her his best leer. "In your bedroom? At one in the morning? Wouldn't you naturally assume I'm here to ravish you?"

  She stared up at him, the candlelight gleaming over her pale face and throat, her eyes dark and huge. "Some might. I wouldn't."

  "No?" He wrapped one arm around the bedpost and leaned into it. "Perhaps you don't know me as well as you think you do, either." He paused for effect, but when he didn't get one, he spun away. "As a matter of fact, we need to talk."

  "Why here, now?"

  "I found it appropriate."

  He turned to find a soft smile curving her mouth. "You mean, because it is entirely inappropriate?"

  "Yes, I suppose."

  To his surprise, she threw back the covers and swung her legs out of bed. "Why do we need to talk?" she asked, standing up. She didn't try for her dressing gown again, but then, she didn't really need it, swathed as she was from neck to ankle in yards and yards of tucked and trimmed linen.

  He stared at her across the six or seven feet of candlelit night that separated them. He was suddenly, utterly serious. "You told me the other day that you love me."

  She crossed her arms in a movement that pulled the cloth of her gown tight against the full, naked breasts beneath. "Did I?"

  He could see nothing but her slim white neck and bare feet and that faint outline of her breasts, and still, still he felt a curl of desire awaken deep within him. It disconcerted him, for he hadn't expected it, wouldn't have come here, now, if he had. "Don't play your parlor games with me, Miss Philippa Always-Oh-So-Correct Tate," he said, pointing an accusing finger at her. "You know you did."

  "I was angry."

  He thought she meant to deny it, and so he had a hard time bringing himself to ask the next question. He
hadn't realized, until now, how vitally important her answer was to him. He'd always taken her so very much for granted, he'd somehow missed noticing how terribly much he needed her in his life. "Did you mean it?"

  Her chin came up, and he held his breath, waiting for her answer. "Yes."

  His breath came out in a slow, aching sigh. "How long? How long have you loved me?"

  She made a low sound that might have been a laugh. "I can't remember a time when I did not."

  "It's a child's love, then," he said, walking toward her.

  "It was, when I was a child. I'm not a child anymore."

  "No. No, you're not." He reached out to touch the dark hair that curled against her breast. To his surprise, his fingers were shaking visibly, and he let his hand fall to his side again. "Are you telling me that when you were betrothed to Cecil, and then to Reid, you loved me?"

  "Yes."

  He stared down into her still, upturned face. "If Cecil hadn't died, would you have married him, even though you loved me?"

  "I told you I'm a coward." She brushed past him and went to stand at the closed windows, her back to him. "Besides, you were promised to the sea then, remember?"

  "You say that as if you were jealous."

  "Of the sea?" She put her hands on the drapes, opening them so that she could stare down at the moonlit gardens, a pale blue glow highlighting the finely etched features of her face. "I was."

  "You told me the other day I should start sailing again."

  She turned abruptly to face him. "Will you?"

  "Perhaps." He went to stand in front of her, close enough that his body threw its shadow across her, and he could see the rapid beat of her pulse at the base of her throat. "How much do you love me?"

  She tilted back her head to stare up at him, her hair sliding dark, long and seductive down her back. "Enough to let you take me," she said hoarsely, "here and now, if that's what you want."

  "I suppose it's easy enough to offer," he said, somehow managing to keep his voice light and his hands hanging awkwardly at his sides, "when you know I would never take you up on it."

  Her gaze locked with his, she reached down to clutch at fistfuls of the voluminous linen that fell about her. In one fluid motion, she drew the night rail up and off, then let the fine cloth drift in a white cloud to the rug at her feet. The light from the window lined her naked body, soft and so beautiful it made him ache, just to look at her. She was made smaller and rounder than Faine, and pale, so pale, for she had never lain naked in the sun-warmed grass. As he watched, her bare breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing, her eyes growing huge and dark in her solemn face.

  He reached out, slowly, to brush the backs of his fingers against her cheek, then let his hand trail down her slim throat, across her upper chest. He cupped his palm, let it hover for a moment over her breast. Then he touched her there, boldly, deliberately, his hand closing over her. He thought she might shrink from him in revulsion, or fear. He expected her to shrink from him. Instead, her lips parted, her breath keening out in an exhalation of surprise and delight, and he knew, he knew, that she'd meant what she said, and that she not only loved him, but she desired him, as well.

  It was the hardest thing he'd ever done, to stop touching her, to take a step back and stoop quickly to snatch up her nightdress from where it lay, a pool of chaste white against the darkness of the floor. He held it out to her, and after a moment she took it, clutching it to her. "You don't want me," she whispered, her eyes dark bruises, her voice like a painful tear.

  He touched his fingertips to her full lips", felt them tremble. "I want you. Believe me, Philippa, I want you. But not like this. And not here, not now."

  He gave her a slow smile, and after a moment, she returned it. Then he let his fingers slip through her hair to grip the back of her head and draw her to him for his kiss.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Harrison urged his chestnut gelding down the drive to the castle at a fast trot—a faster trot than perhaps was quite the thing, for he was finding it difficult to control his impatience. He'd been away from Jesmond for over a month now, after having already waited for her for more than two years, and he was feeling anxious and slightly ill-used. Soon, he reminded himself; soon, she would be his. It was a thought that quickened his breath and sent the blood thrumming through his veins in anticipation and a raw surge of lust that he found both repugnant and vaguely frightening.

  And then he saw her, a tall, slim woman cutting through the trees of the park, her long legs reaching out in that rather mannish, assured stride of hers that he'd never quite liked. She must have been for a walk, but she was headed back toward the house now and had reached the drive. The day was cool, a gloomy late-spring day of low gray clouds and mist that swirled in phantom wisps through the reaching branches and heavy leaves of the oaks and birch, elms and pines. She wore a navy mantle with gold braiding against the chill, and a navy bonnet with a wide brim that lifted as she turned. Her face was pale, and thinner than he remembered it, and so beautiful it made him ache, just to look at her.

  "Jesmond," he said, reining in the chestnut beside her and swinging out of the saddle. He didn't sweep her into his arms, for that sort of exuberant, demonstrative behavior wasn't proper, and even when in the grip of strong passion, Harrison was unfailingly proper. But he did take both her hands in his, and press them tightly as he brought them to his lips, her fine kid gloves smooth and cool beneath his touch, his gaze meeting hers.

  "Harrison," she said, her hands caught fast in his. "Welcome home."

  Her smile trembled slightly, and he thought he caught a glimpse of a faint sheen of tears in her eyes, which surprised him, for Jesmond seldom cried, even as a child. But when they turned toward the house together, her arm captured by his, he looked at her again and decided he must have been mistaken. She hadn't seen him for a month, and yet she seemed remote, as if her thoughts were far, far away. She never really seemed to miss him when he was away—at least, not any more than she missed, say, Philippa, or Warrick. And it came to him, as he looked into her pale face, that she had never needed him, either, not in the way he wanted her to need him. Sometimes it seemed to him that she needed her inappropriate and highly unfeminine pursuit of knowledge, her walks beside the ocean, her wild rides through the countryside, more than she needed him.

  But it was a disturbing thought, and so he pushed it away.

  That night, alone in her room, Jessie went to her clothes press and took out the white satin dress, brocaded with white rosebuds, which was to be her wedding gown. She'd had it made up before she left London, as per her mother's instructions, in what seemed like a different lifetime.

  She spread the dress across her bed, her hand skimming over the fine satin and lace trim. Once, she had taken a childlike pleasure in the selection and fitting of this, the dress she would wear for her wedding. That joy was gone now, its place filled by a deep, abiding sorrow sharply edged with guilt. It was wrong, what Beatrice was doing—what Jessie was doing—to Harrison.

  He hadn't changed, Harrison. He was still honorable and funny and slightly stuffy, all at the same time. He hadn't changed, but Jessie had. Or perhaps she'd simply learned to know herself a little bit better.

  Sweeping the dress up into her arms, she pressed her face into the silken folds. But when she wept, it wasn't for Harrison, but for a fierce-eyed Irish convict, locked fast behind the thick limestone walls of Blackhaven Gaol.

  "I wish you could have told me," Jessie said as she walked beside Genevieve along the wave-battered beach of Shipwreck Cove, the crash of the surf loud in their ears, the wet sand hard beneath their feet. Overhead, gulls wheeled, screeching, against a gray sky. The rain had stopped, but the air was still cool, the waves swollen and white-flecked. The weather and the sea matched her mood, Jessie thought: dark and somber and angry.

  "I made your mother a promise," Genevieve said, one hand coming up to catch the wisps of white hair blowing about her face. "Do you blame me for it?"
/>
  Jessie smiled. "No. I understand. But I'm glad I know now."

  It was the first time she had visited the cove in the weeks since she'd learned the truth about Genevieve from Beatrice. So much had happened since then, so much she wished she could talk to Genevieve about, but couldn't. It was bad enough that she'd involved Old Tom and Charlie in what she was doing; she couldn't drag Genevieve into it, too.

  "I hear Harrison is home," Genevieve said suddenly.

  "Yes."

  "People in town seem to think you're still marrying him."

  "I am."

  Genevieve stopped and put out her hand to touch Jessie's arm, turning her. "Why, Jessie? I thought you had decided against going through with it."

  Jessie sucked in a deep breath that shuddered in her chest, her head falling back as she stared up at the restless gulls. "Lucas is being sent back to the government."

  "Oh, Jessie... Have you been found out?"

  Jessie shook her head and swung away to hide her lying face. "Do you think Mother would let him live, if she knew?" She stared out at the surging, foam-flecked waves, the endless ache in her chest burning, burning. "Genevieve," she said, her gaze still on the thundering surf, "I want you with me at the vicarage before the wedding. I want you to help me into my dress."

  "Gladly. You know that. But surely your mother—"

  "Mother won't be there. Not with the wedding being held at St. Anthony's."

  "I thought arrangements had been made for the ceremony to be held inland."

  "They had. I changed them."

  "I'm surprised Beatrice allowed it."

  Jessie looked around, her lips twisting into a fierce smile. "I insisted." Beatrice hadn't liked it, of course, but in the end she had given way. The important thing to her was that Jessie marry Harrison, and quickly.

  "And Harrison?" Genevieve asked quietly. "Does he know what you're asking me to do?"

  "Not yet. But even if he refuses to have you at the actual wedding, I want you there with me, before."