Hope blazed in Eileen’s heart as she waited for Sir John’s response. She had never dared dream that this day might come, but now that it was here, she would never relinquish it. She would go, with or without her uncle’s approval. She wanted desperately to know if she had a family and a home, or if she were only someone’s cast-off bastard. She did not understand the importance of this knowledge but knew she must have it.
The baronet looked worried. “Europe is torn by war,” he warned her. “If this is truly Elizabeth, she has not seen you for years. She must believe you dead. How could she possibly recognize a daughter she has not seen since you were five years old?”
Disappointment sank Eileen’s spirits. Practical Sir John was right, as usual. She could not even remember her mother’s face. How could she possibly expect someone to recognize her after all those years?
Drake did not relent. “You must try or always regret it. The journey is not any more dangerous than any other with the proper precautions. It may come to nothing, but at least you will have tried. None of us can do more than that.”
The wrinkles on Sir John’s face softened as Eileen beseeched him with her eyes. With a slight nod he surrendered. “Go to your aunt, Eileen. I will join you shortly and try to explain what madness has overcome us.”
Eileen leapt from her chair, kissed her uncle’s cheek, and ran from the room.
Sir John rubbed the spot where she had kissed him. “That is the first spontaneous show of affection I have ever received from the little rascal. She is so reserved, it is frightening.”
Drake had the grace to bite his tongue. Eileen’s reserve was only skin-deep, as he had every right to know. He suspected it was a defensive barrier against the cruelty of the world she had found herself in for so many years. With time and care, her reserve might dissolve entirely, and lucky would be the man who enjoyed it.
John settled back in his chair and clasped his hands over his stomach. “Now, tell me what you left out of your story.”
The marquess met the older man’s gaze. “It is not a pretty tale.”
“I did not think it would be. But I have some right to know what to expect when I go over there.”
Drake nodded. “I was in no position to tell hearsay from fact. All agreed that Lord de Lacy was killed by a band of highwaymen, men who had reason to hate authority, even though de Lacy was known to be fair and honest. The rogues found him picnicking with his wife and daughter. If there were servants, they ran. It was said the earl fought bravely, trying to hold them off so his wife and daughter might escape. But the countess was caught and raped right before his eyes. We’ll never know more than that, I fear. There were those who claimed the little girl was murdered while her mother looked on, but it could be just gossip. I could find no two stories alike. One old woman told me wild animals had carried away the little girl’s remains. It has been fifteen years, sir. Those old enough to know the truth are scattered and dead. Eileen must not be led to hope too much.”
The baronet closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are telling me, if Eileen is truly my niece, she witnessed her father’s murder and her mother’s defiling. I am not certain I wish her to remember that day.”
Drake restlessly walked to the window. “I know. I could almost wish she were someone’s bastard rather than wish that fate upon her. I don’t care to consider what such a sight could do to the mind of a five-year-old.” He turned around and stared at Sir John. “But can you imagine what the difference between aristocracy and bastardy must mean to the woman she is now?”
Before Sir John could reply, Drake forged on. “There is one thing we must consider.”
The older man looked up sharply at his tone.
“De Lacy’s brother now owns the land and properties and is called earl. Why has he never written you of the rumors I so easily uncovered? Or tried to trace his sister-in-law if the grave lies empty? What kind of man would not turn one stone to discover the truth?”
“If your rumors are true, a thief,” Sir John growled, standing abruptly. “But there may be more we do not know. If Elizabeth lives, she will be the one to tell us.”
Chapter 6
France, September, 1745
The convent sat nestled between rolling green slopes, at the foot of a tree-covered mountain. Grape arbors meandered up one of the gentler slopes, and neatly patterned vegetable gardens spread across the valley. As peaceful as the scene appeared, the travelers knew the truth of its security. The path into this remote countryside was nearly inaccessible. The inhabitants did not encourage strangers.
Leaving the servants in the convent kitchen, Drake, Sir John, and Eileen followed a gray-clad novitiate into the soaring arches of the reception hall. A wall of windows overlooked the cloistered inner gardens, and Eileen drifted toward the view while Drake spoke in French to the older nun awaiting them.
Once the woman they sought arrived, Sir John grew silent and disbelieving, and Eileen stepped up to greet the newcomer.
Drake held back a gasp of shock as the two women stood face-to-face, one garbed in a postulant’s solemn gray, the other in the dusty green traveling gown of a wealthy young lady. Even with the differences in garb and age, the likeness was startling.
The gray-clad postulate stood a few inches shorter than Eileen, and the color of her hair could only be imagined, but the fair, almost translucent cheeks matched Eileen’s delicate skin. Fragile cheekbones, small rounded chins, and delightfully upraised eyebrows reflected each other as if in a mirror.
Drake held his breath as the slight nun lifted Eileen’s heavy auburn locks and searched her hairline. With shaking fingers she traced a long, jagged scar on her scalp, a white ridge that once must have been a gaping, livid wound. A knot formed in Drake’s chest as he realized how close to death that wound must have taken the faerie creature who stood before them now. No wonder she had no fear of death. She had been there already.
Closer to these two than either Sir John or the senior nun, Drake could have sworn he heard the whispered word “Mama” from Eileen’s lips, but he decided it must be some echo of the wind in this vast chamber. Tears trickled down porcelain cheeks as the older woman made the sign of the cross and turned to regard the intruders upon this private scene.
Her coolness in the face of this discovery astounded Drake, but Sir John hurried to greet the postulate.
“Elizabeth! I cannot believe my own eyes. Why did you not tell us where you were? All these years we’ve thought you dead and buried. Emma will be ecstatic.” Elizabeth stepped backward, avoiding her brother-in-law’s exuberant greeting, darting a quick look to her mother superior before gathering up her skirts and turning to leave.
“Wait!” John cried. “Elizabeth, we must talk. Your daughter needs you. Surely you must see that?”
The slight woman halted, gazed rapturously at Eileen’s tear-stained face for a fleeting moment longer, then fled.
With a sob of despair, Eileen ran in the opposite direction, leaving the startled men to turn to the older nun for explanations.
The nun met the gazes of both men with sympathy. “Elizabeth has chosen to take the vows of silence of this order. When she is ready, she will become one of us, and the wounds of her past will be healed by her love for less worldly things. I am sorry we cannot help you.”
Not waiting to hear more of this religious lunacy, Drake strode in the direction Eileen had taken. A mother who would desert her own child was no saint in his mind. His sympathies lay entirely with the orphaned waif who had been stripped of home and family and left to look after herself all these years. The tears in those stricken gray eyes scorched his heart.
The kitchen gardeners directed him to the path she had taken, and once outside the convent walls Drake had no difficulty gauging her direction. The wooded mountainside called like a beacon signal. His long strides took him over the rough terrain.
He found Eileen facedown in a mossy glade, her shoulders shaking with sobs, all the more heartbreaking for their silen
ce. Auburn hair spilled in a cascade over the forest green of her coat, and she seemed as much a part of her surroundings as the trees and the sky. Only his heart heard her all-too-human cries.
Suddenly unsure of himself, Drake knelt beside her weeping figure. He knew Diane cried like this often enough, but never in front of him, never where he must be confronted with her pain. He knew how to make her smile, how to keep the tears from her eyes, but not how to dry them. Eileen’s anguish ripped at his soul, leaving him helpless. Drake cursed the world for its cruelty as he lifted her into his arms.
Eileen turned to him as a child to a nurse, burying her sobs against his shoulder, seeking support from the protection of his arms. Her slightness frightened him, and he feared the violence of her cries would tear her apart. Holding her close, Drake brushed kisses across the moist wisps of hair about her face, offering what solace he could.
The sight of her mother’s loving eyes had released a flood of memories long dammed behind a wound in Eileen’s mind. If only she could cling to the pleasant memories, but the vision of her father’s laughing, handsome face dissolved into the agonizing shock of his body crumpling on the forest floor. Demons rose up to shout and slash, and the mocking madness of dark eyes and a cruel mouth threatened her, sending her flying for safety.
The horrifying screams returned as if they were yesterday, echoing through the canyons of her mind, and the anguished tears she had hid for so long could not stop falling.
The pain drove her to seek comfort, for there could be no understanding. It had been too long ago; only the vision and the horror remained. And the tears. She didn’t want to remember, didn’t want to hear the screams, and she buried her face in Drake’s solid embrace, seeking oblivion, while the tears continued to pour unchecked.
Drake rocked her in his arms and spread kisses along her damp cheeks.
Eagerly, Eileen lifted her head to this more pleasant sensation, meeting the brush of his kiss with her lips. His butterfly touch reassured her, providing an escape from bitter memories, and she wanted more. He smelled of horses, sweat, and leather, masculine odors she had learned to abhor, but Drake’s gentleness confused her, as it always had.
Drake touched her upturned lips again, and this time her response shook her to the depths of her soul.
Wonderingly Eileen clung to Drake’s broad shoulders as his lips closed more demandingly on hers. Excitement shivered through her as she discovered the need in him that so matched her own. It could not be so, must not be so, but she gave no heed to logic. All thought lost, she surrendered to his masculine strength, and her hands slid behind his neck so she might meet the delirium of his kiss and erase the pain of memories.
With a groan Drake wrapped her in his arms and loosed the force of his forbidden passion. She responded as hungrily as he, and flaming currents of desire swept through her as she pressed her small body into his larger one.
The urge to comfort and be comforted had grown well beyond that now. Eileen’s outpouring of grief found surcease in the power of Drake’s kisses. She drowned in the intoxicating liquor of his breath, and her lips parted to drink deeper of heady wine. At the gentle caress of his tongue, a shudder swept her. She was grateful when he fell back upon the soft grass with his arms about her. She could not have remained upright on her own.
Their kisses grew bolder, seeking, exploring, finding those places that brought the most excitement, that brought them closer together until there was no telling where one began and the other ended. Drake’s mouth teased along her earlobe and scorched paths along her throat as Eileen buried her hands in the rich thickness of his hair and urged the return of his kiss to hers.
Obliging, Drake fastened his mouth against the swollen tenderness of hers. His hand found the laces of her bodice and loosened them with a single tug. The flimsy linen of her chemise yielded its protection, and his fingers trembled as they stroked her breasts.
Eileen gasped at this intimate invasion, but Drake’s kisses wooed her back to eagerness. The caress of his masculine fingers upon the sensitive peaks of her breasts sent an exquisite need piercing through her. She understood instinctively where this led, but she could summon no desire to end it.
With joy just within his reach, Drake traced the line of Eileen’s delicate cheek with his kisses. Only as he tasted the traces of salt did rationality return. Trustingly, the innocent creature in his arms arched into his embrace, eager for the lesson he would teach her. His sex surged impatiently against the entrapment of his breeches. He had no doubt he could have her and without reproach, but he could not steal a treasure like this in a moment of weakness. He understood that his future happiness depended on capturing this elusive faerie, but he would have her fully aware of what she did, as she was not now.
Regretfully Drake propped his weight on one elbow and gazed down upon the disheveled loveliness beneath him. Auburn tresses spilled across the mossy grass, and the silver wells of her eyes stared up to him boldly as ever. The froth of her lacy chemise had fallen from her shoulders, exposing her fair skin to the dappled sun of the glade. With a desire he could barely control, Drake teased a rosebud crest between his fingers, watching it harden into a tempting point.
“Drake?”
The soft murmur whispered like wind in the leaves, distant and elusive.
Unable to resist the urge, Drake kissed a rosy nipple before tugging the chemise lace back to cover it. He felt Eileen’s shiver of longing and filled his hand with the plump mound of her breast, not wanting to stop here, wanting just a few minutes more of this freedom.
“Please, Drake,” she murmured, arching to press against his hand.
Startled, certain his imagination had gone too far this time, Drake hastened to close her bodice, tugging the laces about the temptation he had little strength to resist.
“I am sorry, princess. I did not mean for this to happen.” Regret shadowed his words as he stared down at her with longing.
“I am not sorry.”
The words whispered back up to him with a clarity that could not be denied. Shaken, unable to conceal the flare of hope, Drake wove his fingers into the thick skeins of her hair and held her face still.
“Say that again,” he demanded, almost roughly.
“I am not sorry.” The words emerged a little louder now, a little less hesitantly. A teasing smile formed upon Eileen’s lips at his look of astonishment.
With the greatest of care, Drake lifted her from the grass as if she were a china doll, cradling her in his arms as he brought them both to their feet. Still, he did not release her, but held her while he searched her lovely face.
“I do not know whether to praise the heavens for the content of your words or the context. This is not an enchanted forest, is it?”
She smiled shakily at his idiocy. “It would be if we could stay here,” she murmured indistinctly.
Sensing her disquiet, Drake touched her chin with his hand, turning her gaze up to his. He read the stormy clouds of her eyes with ease. “You are remembering something unpleasant.”
She met his gaze without flinching. “I remember all.”
Still preoccupied with the newness of hearing her speak, Drake reveled in the discovery of the Irish lilt in her words—until he realized what she’d said. “All?” He tightened his hand in the hair at the back of her neck, preventing her from turning away. Nausea chewed at his stomach at the answer in her eyes. They had never really needed words between them, even less so now.
“My God,” he whispered in response to what he saw, and the words were as much a prayer as a curse.
Stunned, Drake held her close, pressing her head against his chest as his mind’s eye saw what Eileen must have seen as a five-year-old. How much would a five-year-old have understood of what had happened? Or perhaps the blow that had robbed her of her memory and her speech had also robbed her of her consciousness before she had seen the unspeakable?
Remembering the frightening shadows of her otherwise fairy-tale paintings, Drake
knew unconsciousness had not come soon enough that day. He could feel her shudders as the memory replayed within her. What did she see? Did she see her handsome young father slain by the knives and swords of brigands not worthy of sharing the same earth as he? Would she understand her mother’s terrifying screams as one after the other of the miserable rogues defiled her? How could a merciful God allow such atrocities?
And what had he done by returning such horrors to her?
Taking her head between his hands, Drake pleaded, “Forgive me, princess, for bringing this to you. I could almost wish you silent again than to give you such memories.”
Closing her eyes and drawing on her inner reserve, Eileen leaned into his rough palm. It was astonishing to him that he did not frighten her as most men did. How could she possibly trust any man after what she’d seen?
“It is better to know than to fear. Do not be sorry for me. I cannot bear it.” Abruptly she stepped away.
About to protest, Drake held his tongue at the faint shouts in the distance. She had heard them first, he surmised, and he refrained from reaching for her again.
Drake watched with sadness as Eileen lifted her hair, and tied it with a ribbon, covering it with the hood of her traveling cloak. In the shadows she seemed lost to him, and a wave of emptiness brought realization of the distance between them.
“Your uncle will be worried. What will you tell him?”
“Nothing.” She spoke sharply, starting nervously as the sound of voices came closer. “You must promise me that you will say nothing too.”
“Eileen, I own it would be convenient if I admitted nothing of what happened this day, but you must tell your uncle. . .”
“Nothing,” she stated firmly. “Should you say I spoke to you, I will behave as if you have taken leave of your wits.”
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