by Marie Harte
“The leak was too severe to patch from the inside,” Aaron finally said, raising his mouth a sparse inch from the rim of his cup. A drop of tea glimmered on his lower lip, amber in the candlelight. “I’ve set up a basin beneath it to catch the water, though, and moved your bed to the other side of the room.”
“Thank you,” she said, barely removing her own lips from her cup.
She dared a glance at Aaron and he looked up from his own cup suddenly, his eyes locking with hers before she could look away. “It was nothing,” he replied. “I only hope you’ll find your bed comfortable when you return to it. The mattress was a wee bit damp, though ye seem to have absorbed the worst of it.” Here he smiled wryly as his cheeks reddened slightly. “So I laid a few extra blankets down over it.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
A particularly fierce gust of wind howled outside, driving the rain sideways against the house, rattling the windows. Caitlin shivered automatically, remembering the feel of icy water down her neck and back. Her hair and shift were still damp beneath her robe.
Aaron hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Are ye cold?”
“A little,” she admitted.
“Come sit by the fire with me, then.”
He rose and strode a few paces to the fireplace, settling in front of the hearth. She followed him, lowering herself to her knees on the warm stone as he grasped a brass poker and stirred the fire, feeding it one of the small split logs that rested in a neat stack beside it. The yellow flames enveloped the fresh wood, causing it to glow faintly orange as it surrendered itself to them, smouldering. A warmth that had little to do with the fire enveloped Caitlin when Aaron reached out, placing a solid arm around her shoulders and drawing her close to his side. She laid her damp head against his shoulder, tilting her face so her dark eyes could seek his.
She found his lips instead, and he pressed them against hers, soft and light. She moved a little closer to him so that their thighs touched. Her hair and shift begin to dry as she was warmed, by his arm at her back and the now crackling fire at her front.
“Someone’s coming,” Caitlin said after a while spent at Aaron’s side, staring dreamily into the flames. “Should we…”
Aaron turned his head to peer out of the kitchen, in the direction of the stairs, from where the sound of footsteps was coming. “No, don’t worry,” he said, drawing his arm a little more tightly around her. “It’s probably only my great-great-grandfather.”
Caitlin looked up at him, perplexed. “Your-great-great-grandfather?” She was ready to smile, even to laugh softly, but his countenance bore no evidence that he was joking.
“Aye,” he said, still staring at the staircase, “it’s him, and he shan’t bother us.”
Caitlin turned her head, following Aaron’s gaze, as a cold weight dropped into her stomach, causing each and every hair on her body, from the back of her neck to her wrists and ankles, to stand on end. Someone had appeared at the foot of the stairs and, suddenly, Caitlin could think of no reason why the figure couldn’t be Aaron’s great-great-grandfather. Pale against the thick darkness, the shape of a man had emerged, his features blurred yet decidedly masculine. He gave the distinct impression of being evanescent, yet he remained transparently whole as he turned, striding out of sight into what Caitlin thought was a sitting room. She was speechless for several moments, and, when she finally worked up the courage to speak, she found she could only manage a single word. “Aaron…”
He drew his arm a little more tightly around her once more, returning his gaze to the fire. “Don’t worry, you’re not daft—there isn’t a soul who’s lived here who hasn’t seen him at least once.”
“Really?” she asked, amazed and feeling as chilled as she had when she’d weathered the storm with Aaron hours before.
“Aye. He built this place, Cormac O’Brien, and he’s never left it. They say he was a stubborn man.” The corners of his mouth turned up into an amused smile. “I imagine he might be the only ghost that’s ever crossed the Atlantic.”
Caitlin shuddered. Aaron might find his grandfather’s stubborn spectre amusing, but she felt as shaken as a sapling during a tempest. “All the same,” she said, “I wish we hadn’t seen him.” She dared a glance towards the stairs, her heart racing for a moment, then slowing when she saw nothing. “I want to climb those stairs about as much as I want to go back out into the storm.”
Aaron chuckled, drawing her so close that she found herself nearly in his lap. “If that’s the case,” he said, “I’ll stay here with ye until dawn, if ye wish me to.”
* * * *
The next morning dawned bright, washing the countryside with light as it had been washed with rain the night before, the sun’s golden rays warming the manse’s windowpanes and illuminating the rooms within. Caitlin finally braved the stairs, following in Aaron’s footsteps, intending to slip back into her room before the rest of the house’s residents rose.
Already, she could hear an industrious clanking in the kitchen they’d so recently abandoned, an announcement that the cook, who rose before anyone else, had begun preparing breakfast. The resonating notes struck by steel against iron, tin against glass, helped to dispel any last remnants of eeriness from the staircase that the sun hadn’t already driven away. In its light, she imagined a spectre would be reduced to vapour, finally evaporating as the one they’d seen last night had seemed to be on the verge of doing, each step he managed to take without dissolving a small miracle.
Where did Cormac O’Brien go during the day? And, for that matter, where did he spend the night, when not in the sitting room? The thought sent a shiver down her spine and made her doubly glad Aaron had waited for dawn with her, letting her bide the rest of the night with the heat of his body and the fire to warm her against the chill of the long dead. She missed his now-familiar touch when she pulled the guest bedroom door shut behind her, finally leaving his side.
Their separation was brief. When Caitlin came out of her bedroom, dressed for the day, Aaron appeared in the hall, emerging from his room. He smiled at her, raising one eyebrow slightly. “Shall I escort you to the dining room for breakfast?” He hurried to her side, proffering an arm.
“That would be kind of you,” Caitlin said, linking her arm with his.
“Back in your own dress, I see,” he said as they started towards the staircase.
“Aye, it’s dry enough.” It was still somewhat dirty—Molly had brushed the worst of the mud from it, but stains only a thorough washing could remove remained—but she would be leaving for home after breakfast, and had nothing else of her own to wear.
“That’s good. Although I have to say the purple dress looked bonny on ye.”
Caitlin blushed. “I borrowed it from Katrina—I laid it out across the bed, where I thought she or Molly would find it. Do ye think I should go back and take it to her myself?”
Aaron shook his head, sending his ruddy locks, which he’d obviously taken the time to comb, swinging around his shoulders. “No, she won’t miss it—she’s got more dresses than she can count.” He bent to speak into Caitlin’s ear, his eyebrows arching mischievously as he did so. “The dress looked better on ye than it does on Katrina, anyway—only don’t tell her I said so.”
“Ahem.” Someone cleared their throat from an alarmingly close distance behind the couple, and they both whirled to see Katrina, dressed and preened for the day, a knowing smile curving one corner of her mouth. She eyed Aaron’s flaming cheeks with grim amusement.
“Dark circles beneath your eyes, tired expressions… It doesn’t look as if either of you got any sleep last night.”
Aaron straightened and spoke with as much dignity as he could muster. “Aye, well, you wouldn’t have either, if you’d had a roof break over your head during a storm, and then had an encounter with old Cormac O’Brien while ye were still chilled with the rain.”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Katrina replied, arching a fair eyebrow in apparent surprise, “but you
’ve been perfectly dry all night, and we both know you’ve seen our great-great-grandfather more times than ye can count.”
She had turned the corner and was descending the stairs before Aaron could reply, leaving him to glower after her.
Chapter Three
Breakfast was a feast of eggs fried with mushrooms, tomatoes and thick strips of bacon, supplied by the cook, who apparently considered cramming each and every O’Brien full to the brim with food her sole calling in life. Caitlin’s different surname did little to deter her—indeed, she had found out about Caitlin’s midnight soaking and claimed the incident as an undeniable reason for her to consume the largest breakfast of her life. Caitlin complied, slowly chewing forkfuls of the O’Brien bounty, all too aware that when breakfast ended, so would her time at the O’Brien residence.
She was guiltily regretful—surely, her family had already been driven half-mad with worry. And yet she dreaded her return home. As cold, wet and generally alarming as the past day and night had been, they had been the best of her life—so wonderful, in fact, that she feared the reality of them would waver when she left the O’Brien land, her time spent in Aaron’s arms revealing itself to be only a dream.
She shook her head, swallowing a bite of tomato and willing herself to stop entertaining impossible notions. Still, the melancholy longing for the morning to stretch on rested in the pit of her stomach, heavier than her breakfast.
When at last the plates were cleared and the cook’s second round of fried soda bread politely refused by nearly everyone, Caitlin stood, finding Aaron in the quietly chattering dispersing O’Briens. After exchanging cordial farewell wishes with his family, including his mother and his sister Katrina, they departed, stepping out into the daylight on their way towards the stables.
“After such a long storm, the land looks almost strange with the sunlight gilding everything, doesn’t it?” Aaron asked as they strode around the side of the manse, the sound of their footfalls soft against the damp grass.
“It does,” Caitlin agreed, walking a little closer to Aaron as her eyes swept from him to the fields and treelines, finding each and every bit of vegetation haloed by sunlight. Her gaze returned to him. His hair had taken on the same golden tint the sunlight lent to everything, making it look as if he had dipped his hands in liquid gold and run them through the red locks.
They entered the stable, the inside of which, not directly touched by the morning’s rays, seemed dim in comparison to the sun-bleached outdoors. The mingled scents of warm horse and sweet hay filled the air, familiar and comforting. Many of the stable’s dozen or so occupants poked out inquisitive heads as Caitlin and Aaron passed, the odd nicker of curious greeting sounding here and there.
“Don’t worry,” Aaron said as they passed the stall of an all-too-familiar sorrel gelding, “we won’t be taking him.”
Caitlin spared the horse a wary glance, remembering with a grimace the sensation of being airborne—and seemingly death-bound.
“Will ye want a horse of your own,” Aaron asked, “or would ye prefer to ride with me?”
“I’ll ride with ye, like yesterday, if that’s all right.” Caitlin was no stranger to the saddle, and she enjoyed a nice ride, especially on days like these, but she wasn’t about to pass up the chance to spend a good twenty minutes with her arms around Aaron. It might be the last time they touched until their next meeting, and she had no idea when that would be.
“Of course it’s all right,” he replied, smiling with obvious satisfaction.
Without further delay, he opened the stall door he’d been leaning against, stepped in and reappeared moments later with a large grey gelding, beautifully dappled and sturdy enough to carry two riders with ease. Aaron patted the animal on the neck as it nuzzled his shoulder. “We call him Boulder. He wouldn’t lose his head even if he was struck by lightning, I promise you.”
Caitlin stepped forward to stroke the animal’s neck, running her palm over his short, glossy summertime coat while his long, wavy mane tickled the back of her hand.
“Hello there, Boulder,” she said, wrapping a lock of nearly white hair from his mane around her finger as Aaron hefted a blanket and saddle onto the gelding’s broad back.
Boulder surveyed her with a dark eye, pressing his pink nose against her forehead and blowing softly, sending tendrils of her hair dancing about her face. She smoothed them back down as she exited the stable, walking next to Aaron as Boulder strode by his other side.
Boulder glistened in the daylight, transformed from grey to bright shades of silver, his patchwork of dapples winking beneath the sun’s rays. Aaron helped Caitlin onto his back before mounting, and she settled behind the saddle, arranging her skirts as modestly as possible. She was glad when Aaron put a foot in the stirrup and swung onto the horse’s back, his hair brushing her jaw as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
With a tautened rein and a leg against their mount’s silver side, Aaron turned Boulder in the direction of the McCarthy land.
“Your family must be worried sick,” Aaron said as Boulder strode off the carefully kept lawn and through grasses tall enough to tickle his knees. “I expect they believe ye were washed away in the flood.” He sounded worried.
“I expect so,” Caitlin replied. “Imagine what a relief it will be when I appear safely, and you looking every bit the saviour, with this golden sunlight rimming your head like a halo.”
“A halo, aye?” Aaron repeated, turning to dazzle her with a bemused smile.
“Aye.” She smiled against his back. “My mother will ply ye with bread spread with jam made from the peaches we grow in our orchard—she does that to anyone who comes visiting. Don’t put up a fight, or she’ll only try harder, and you’ll end up with a stained shirt.”
“Peach jam, hmm? Well, that’s a nicer reception than I’d imagined. But that’s only your mother. What about your father? I expect he’ll want to throttle me.”
Caitlin suppressed a laugh. “Throttle you? Why?”
“Why? For stealing you away for a night, leaving him to think you’d drowned, of course.”
Caitlin shook her head dismissively, her long dark waves brushing her elbows. “Ye didn’t steal me, ye rescued me. I’d never have made it home, and I’d have been trapped out in the storm alone all night if ye hadn’t come along. He’ll be grateful, I’m sure.”
“No man would be grateful to another for spending the night kissing his daughter.”
Caitlin did laugh this time, softly, as she brushed aside Aaron’s hair with one hand and pressed a light kiss against the back of his neck. It would have seemed a bold move the day before, but over the course of the past night she’d grown accustomed to touching and kissing him. Only a few butterflies danced in the pit of her stomach as she brushed her lips against his skin.
“Well, I wasn’t going to tell him about that.”
“He’ll find out eventually. I don’t mean for this to be our last meeting, or for last night to be our last together.”
Despite her new-found bravery, Caitlin felt her face go pink.
“I’ll be back to see you, Caitlin.”
“When?” she asked, her heart suddenly rushing, each surge of blood like the wing-beat of a bird about to take flight. The butterflies in her middle were back, with reinforcements.
“As soon as you’ll have me.” He paused, guiding Boulder around a turn and into the woods where the bridge waited innocently, the waters beneath it no longer rushing up and over its surface. “Would ye like for me to take ye for another ride sometime, to a place on our land where so many wildflowers grow ye could spend days picking them and still be surrounded by the ones left?”
Caitlin sighed, breathing in the faintly sweet scent of Aaron’s hair and exhaling against it, the rush of air parting his fiery locks and brushing the fair skin of his neck beneath.
“I would.”
* * * *
“Not much farther now,” Aaron said, shading his eyes with a hand to peer out at so
me glen, tucked away from Caitlin’s gaze but clearly visible to his mind’s eye. Nearly three weeks had passed since their first rain-swept night together, and July threatened to end, taking with it—according to Aaron—some of the summer’s loveliest wildflowers. It was with that in mind that they’d marked this afternoon as the one they’d devote to exploring what Aaron referred to as a hidden jewel in the O’Brien property, a desolate plain alight with thousands of many-coloured wildflowers. After nearly a month of visiting her and her family at their cabin, downing absurd quantities of peach jam and staying for more dinners than not, he’d worked his way thoroughly into her parents’ good graces. They hadn’t refused when he’d asked permission to take her out alone today.
Caitlin peered over his shoulder, her arms wrapped snugly around his waist as they rode together, and gasped. The field of flowers—truly a hidden treasure—had appeared suddenly, visible the instant their horse took the first step into a slight valley, its colourful blossoms rising from the earth in a vibrant riot. Aaron looked back over his shoulder, smiling, his eyes as bright and blue as the sky, which stretched cloudless overhead.
“It’s beautiful, aye?”
Caitlin nodded. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Aaron reined Boulder to a halt, swinging down from the saddle and lifting a hand in invitation to Caitlin. She took it, letting her fingers disappear beneath his as he helped her down.
Aaron paused only to remove Boulder’s bridle, releasing him to graze before taking her hand again.
“Is something the matter?” he asked a few moments later, his eyes sweeping over Caitlin, apparently concerned, as she trailed in his wake, stepping slowly and carefully while squeezing his hand occasionally for balance.
“Well, no—not really,” she said as her cheeks heated a little more than even the sun, unscreened by any clouds, accounted for. “It’s just that I don’t want to crush any of the flowers, so I’ve been trying to tread carefully.”
Aaron grinned, the hint of a chuckle sounding from somewhere in the depths of his chest. “It can’t be helped here,” he said. “To move at all is to crush flowers beneath your feet.”