The Ground She Walks Upon

by Meagan Mckinney

  She stared up at the young man, wary of his handsome looks and charm. Hardened by her years of English schooling, she’d believed English lords like the Ascendency were the devil incarnate. Malachi had told her so once very long ago. Never had he said they would look like Adonis.

  “She’s been struck speechless, Chesham,” said another man atop a Thoroughbred, flanked by two young squires. He had a drunken gleam in his eyes, and he swayed in the saddle. “Reginald Ramsay, at your service, fair lady. If Trevallyan will not apologize for his ill-treatment of you, then I shall do so for all the good men of England.” He bowed to her and almost fell off his horse.

  Her eyes widened. Their pretty words flattered her; made her soften. Like Little Red Riding Hood in a pack of wolves, she looked up at the gentlemen, anxious to repel their charm because she knew all too well they liked to have her kind for supper.

  “Bonjour, mon ange noire. Je suis Guy de la Connive, à votre service,” a third man said in a forced French accent. He was very dark, extremely handsome, and as Ravenna could see, very much in love with himself. Posing on his horse to give her his best facial angles, he said in flawless English, “Is this what the druids call a wood nymph, Trevallyan? If so, then I am suddenly very much interested in Celtic history.”

  The fourth man grunted his agreement. He was handsome also, beautiful in truth, the very model of manhood. Even without the poses of Guy, who had made a great effort in his introduction to pronounce his name the French way, “Gee,” with a hard G, this fourth man was perhaps the most handsome man she had ever seen.

  “Is pleasure to meet you,” the man said with an Italian accent that was so thick it had to be authentic. He swept back a long hank of blond-brown hair with a practiced jerk of his head. “Long, long time I ride in wood. Wait for girl look like you.”

  He paused as if waiting for a reply. She merely watched him, mesmerized by his incredible looks, astounded by his bad, inscrutable English, stumped that such a beautiful male creature could have such a dull cast to his gaze, a reflection, she feared, of the intelligence within. He made her recall the bluestocking wit, Mrs. Fitzherald, who once said, “I’m not fond of handsome men—one always fears they’ll be dumb.”

  “Is compliment to girl,” the Italian said, prompting her for more of a response than her awestruck stare. He began to look annoyed, and finally she smiled, relieved. If the Beautiful Creature could feel insulted, then at least he wasn’t as dimwitted as she feared.

  “This is Count Fabuloso,” Guy smoothly introduced. He waved back the tall, well-built count, who dwarfed the stallion beneath him. The two men jockeyed forward as if fighting for position in front of Ravenna.

  At these shenanigans, Trevallyan’s bad humor seemed to get worse. He said in a contemptuous tone, “Chesham, tell your friends that they needn’t fall over themselves to ingratiate themselves with this chit. She’s unharmed except for some torn clothing, and she’s on her way home where she belongs.” He looked at her, waiting for her to leave.

  She pulled herself upright and stared him in the eyes. If Grania had taught her the Evil Eye, she would have turned him into stone. “My skirt is ruined, Lord Trevallyan. Your hounds did the damage. As I have paid for my mistakes, so must you pay also. You owe me for the cost of my clothes. I’ll not be going until you pay me.”

  He laughed. A rather dark, nasty sound. “What? You think I carry my gold with me when I go hunting? I’ll send Greeves over with some coins tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” she scoffed. “You English aren’t honorable with your debts. Everyone knows that.”

  He grabbed her arm with a grip of surprising strength. “To begin with, I’m Irish,” he answered, his voice ominous and hard, “as Irish as you and your kind are. The Celts aren’t the only ones who’ve been here for hundreds of years. Secondly, have no fear I’ll pay. No doubt the cost of the shabby clothes you wear is less than I pay my sculleries for an hour’s time.”

  “I might not have your wealth, Lord Trevallyan,” she spat, “but if you do not make reparation for this wrong, then I declare you a man without honor.” She jerked her arm from his hold. Stepping back, she gave him one last disparaging look before she turned to go.

  “Wait!” Lord Chesham called out.

  She glanced over her shoulder, her expression one of expected disillusionment.

  “Niall, tell the girl we must make reparations for what we’ve done to her,” Chesham announced slyly. “I think dinner at the castle might set her a-rights, what do you think?”

  Trevallyan stared at his cousin as if he’d just declared himself mad.

  Ravenna stood deadly still and glanced at both men. Chesham’s offer of dinner was beyond condescending, especially since she could tell by his manner and the way he and his cronies snickered among themselves when they thought she was not looking that they thought her little better than a scullery from the castle kitchen. Still, it amused her to see Trevallyan put in such a tight spot. To refuse Chesham’s dare would make him look like an ogre. To accept was clearly his most despised nightmare.

  “What say you, Niall?” Chesham prompted.

  She watched Trevallyan seethe. If his reluctance hadn’t been so insulting, she might have been amused. Finally, wanting to end the whole affair, she turned to go once more, but Trevallyan’s voice, devoid of warmth or grace, rang out behind her.

  “You would be most welcome to attend dinner tonight at the castle.”

  She turned, unable to hide the shock that surely crossed her features. Trevallyan looked as if he’d just been forced to stay an execution he’d been wishing for, but Chesham looked as pleased as a cat before a saucer of cream.

  With eyes false and pleading, Chesham said to her, “We would be honored, Miss…? What is your name, fair maiden, if I may ask?”

  She blushed to the tips of her toes, feeling like the fool Trevallyan thought she was. Defiant about using a trumped-up last name, she stared at the men and said evenly, “My name is Ravenna.”

  “Ravenna. Of the black hair. Beautiful.” Chesham dismounted, every motion a smooth play of seduction. He took her hand and made a grand gesture of kissing it in front of the others. She knew her face had to be the color of cherries. “I especially would be honored, Ravenna, if you would dine with me tonight.”

  “You’re really overdoing it now,” Trevallyan said, his expression filled with disgust.

  Ravenna looked at the young Lord Chesham and Trevallyan. Both were blond men, but one had the face of an angel, the other the face of the devil. Trevallyan’s anger goaded her to defy him all the more. He was clearly most put out that Lord Chesham had forced him to invite her to dinner. To him, she was nothing but a low-born Irish bastard, just as the Weymouth-Hampstead girls regarded her.

  So she would eat at the castle, she thought rebelliously. She would take them up on the invitation just to prove to the lot of them that she was good enough to do such things. Despite her birth, she was good as anyone else in County Lir.

  Then she thought of Kathleen Quinn.

  The exalted Kathleen, with her beautifully-plaited blond hair pinned to her nape. Kathleen, in her sky-blue silk dress, she pictured sitting grandly in the banquet hall of Trevallyan Castle, conversing easily with an English lord. Kathleen would have been accepted by the girls at the Weymouth-Hampstead School. A woman like Kathleen was the kind to have dinner at the castle. Not a misfit like Grania the Witch’s granddaughter.

  “I must be going,” she said softly, ending the matter. She hadn’t really wanted to eat at the castle anyway. Besides, she had nothing to wear but the scratchy wool dress she’d worn to Peter Maguire’s funeral, and that was hardly festive enough for a dinner party with the peerage.

  “Will we see you tonight? At eight perhaps?” Lord Chesham asked, taking her hand and pulling her back. “I’ll have Trevallyan send his coach for you.”

  “Move along, Chesham,” Trevallyan nearly barked. “The girl has declined. She has no business at the castle in any case.”<
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  Not her kind, she finished his thought for him. Her violet-blue eyes met Trevallyan’s; her own sparked with defiance. “I’d love to have dinner with you, Lord Chesham.”

  Trevallyan shook his head in despair. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Chesham’s face break out in a grin. The others sat their mounts and watched the proceedings unfold like a match between the Christians and the lions.

  “Good. I’ll have Trevallyan break out his best cognac for the occasion,” Chesham purred.

  “I’m afraid, Lord Chesham,” she said, turning to him, “that your host won’t be so hospitable. ’Tis fine to chase the people of this county with his hounds. ’Tis another thing altogether to invite them to take bread at the table of the Ascendency.”

  Her gaze slid to Trevallyan. She waited for his anger.

  He hid it well. Calmly, he faced her, and if not for the wicked light in his eyes, she would have never suspected it.

  “’Tis untrue what you say about me, Ravenna. So come to dinner. Let me prove to you the kind of Ascendency you have in County Lir.” His gaze flickered over her figure, lingering restlessly on the blouse that was torn and dirty. He lowered his voice until it was for her ears only. “Yes. Come to the castle. You’re no child any longer. Come to dinner. ’Tis time you and I have out with it.”

  She looked at him, confusion flitting across her face.

  Trevallyan began to laugh. The men on their horses danced around them as if they were anxious to be a part of the conversation. Ravenna could take no more.

  She lifted her chin and looked straight at Lord Chesham. In her best imitation of the Weymouth-Hampstead haughtiness, she said, “The coach may pick me up at eight.”

  She gathered her torn and dirtied skirt and walked from the clearing toward the main post road. Refusing to even think of Trevallyan, she stared at her angry white-knuckled fists and filled her mind with pictures of Chesham and his unbelievably handsome cohorts. But then she noticed the gold serpent ring, which she now wore on her third finger. Against all sanity, she began to wonder if Trevallyan still wore his ring and if the two rings were as similar as she remembered. She hadn’t noticed his ring in their encounter in the woods, but if nothing else, the night ahead promised there would be ample chance to find out.

  Chapter 9

  WE WILL be having another for dinner, Greeves. Tell Cook to prepare accordingly.” Trevallyan shrugged out of his bath and wrapped his hips with a white linen towel. The night ahead would surely prove tedious, but for some reason he was anxious to see it begin. Anticipation hummed in his veins like a narcotic.

  “Is the count bringing in one of his bambini?” the butler asked dryly.

  Trevallyan’s gaze darted between the butler and his valet who handed him a bottle-green silk dressing gown. “You’ve been with me too long, Greeves. You’re no longer bothering to hide your sarcasm.”

  “Pardon me, my lord. When your cousin and his friends choose to descend upon the castle, I’m forced to rise at dawn and ring a little bell through the hallway so the ‘lady’ friends might return to their respective beds. The bell tolls and the bodies run through the hall like rats in a dark alley. ’Tis most distasteful.”

  “Fabuloso isn’t sending for any young women on this trip. On the contrary, the girl is Chesham’s guest tonight.” Trevallyan’s gaze caught his image in the shaving mirror that the valet had set before him. Every line seemed to grab his notice, as if he’d just discovered it for the first time. “The fair Ravenna of Lir is dining with us.” He looked away from the mirror and grimaced at the girl’s lack of a last name.

  “Shall Father Nolan be joining you also?”

  Trevallyan shifted his gaze to the butler. “Why would we be needing a priest? You expect me to marry the baggage, too?”

  Shock slackened Greeves’s features but only for a second.

  Niall scowled into the mirror. “I know you used to have a drink or two with the mayor. Did the old gossip tell you tales?”

  “My lord, Peter Maguire is dead and not long in the ground. If I may, I think it unwise to speak so of the dead.”

  “Yes, but did he tell you anything—anything of witches and geise?” Disgust crossed Trevallyan’s expression.

  Greeves cleared his throat and did his professional best not to look curious. “The mayor said nothing of the kind. I only thought you might like Father Nolan to attend because he’s been at the castle so frequently since you cried off marrying Lady Arabella.”

  Trevallyan grew pensive. There was an anger within him that festered. “Number four, Greeves. Lady Arabella was number four.” He spoke as if in confession. “Four attempts at love. Four miserable failures. That old priest and his searching of my heart. Love has made my life hell when I might have known bliss. Fine. Go ahead and send a note to the father and have him join us. Let’s make this whole evening as rich as possible.” He lifted his chin, and his valet lathered his face with soap, soap that blessedly hid the lines.

  “Very good, sir.” Greeves gave a slight bow, shot the valet a rather bemused look, then departed.

  The valet shaved. Trevallyan stared.

  Above the white lather, the corners of his eyes were rayed with lines. Two fists seemed to take the knot in his stomach and tighten it without mercy. The lines on his face chronicled time and youth that could never be regained. He would never be a young man again. Hope for a future, a future that became more finite with every cursed year was like the sands in an hourglass, trickling away.

  He frowned, and the valet stopped the straight razor just before he cut him. Niall relaxed his face and the valet continued. Yes, he was getting older, but women had never complained. If anything, they seemed to be more attracted to him now that he no longered looked the smooth-skinned youth. Helen, his dead wife, had sought a callow face. She had had designs, and she knew all too well that a man of experience would never have fallen for her schemes. It was scant balm for the bitterness that still clutched his heart, but he took comfort in it. Experience and knowledge, he was convinced, could avert the worst disasters. Without a doubt, if he had been older when he’d met Helen, if he had never been told about the geis, things would have been different. Certainly the geography of the grave sites.

  Helen and her wickedness had scarred him. With every woman after her, each time he became a little more callous, a little more calculating himself. Happiness eluded him, but it had not been taken away by Helen, rather, she and the women who followed merely made him feel its absence more keenly. Now it howled like a wolf on the moor. He wanted what he could not find.

  In his youth, his dreams had been simple. He’d desired children to carry on the Trevallyan name and a woman by his side to share the joy and pain of a lifetime. Even the poorest Ulsterman was not denied such things. Yet by fate or God or geis, Lord Niall Trevallyan was. It lay just out of his grasp, in the realm of the unreachable. He knew it would come to him if brought by the right woman. So far she was as elusive as the stars that glittered in the night sky.

  He turned his head and allowed his valet to work on his other cheek. There were some who would believe the geis had cursed him. He knew the old men of the council would say it began twenty years ago when he spurned their wisdom and married Helen. In their minds, his pain had been the price of defiance. His wounded heart and the mocking little grave next to his wife’s—his son’s grave by inscription, but not by blood—was almost to be expected for casting aside the powers of fate and the Otherworld.

  But still, he would not allow himself to fear the geis. Intellect was stronger than superstition. Education more powerful than any belief. His rational mind would not surrender to ancient Celtic nonsense. His failures haunted him, but he knew fear of the geis was not what kept him alone. On the contrary, if he believed he was succumbing to such foolishness, he’d have married and married and married to prove it wrong. Certainly there was no dearth of marriageable women around him. In his stable of fiancées, there had been Mary Maureen, honey-haired and sweet-
tongued; Elizabeth, a hellion from Galway who had amused him to no end; and finally Lady Arabella, gentle, aristocratic, the kind of woman any man would be proud to have bear his children.

  But every time he attempted a trip to the altar, that priest erected the brick wall. Love. Had he loved any of them?

  The answer sent a spasm of despair through his soul. It was always no, and he had never been able to escape it, because Father Nolan always demanded he see it. Happiness came through love, the old priest had told him again and again, and Trevallyan now knew it better than most after his disastrous attempts at marriage. When it came right down to it, he had had to concede that he could not will himself to love a woman, no matter how hard the lust for her, no matter how sweet the desire. Now, after so many attempts at marriage, it was not fear of the geis that kept him alone and unhappy. No, the fear that clutched his heart went deeper than that. He feared he had no ability to love. The old men would say the geis had robbed him of that. They would tell him that it was his fate not to be able to find love for these other women. In their narrow little minds, they would believe that destiny had locked his heart away and the only woman holding the key was the girl the geis had chosen for him. For her, he would be able to love. Which, of course, he knew was the crux of the Trevallyan curse. He had to win her love, they told him. If he could win her love, he would be free. And what kind of hell could be worse than to be able to love only one, one who might refuse to give her love in return?

  He sighed and closed his eyes. The geis and its absurdities invariably made him tired. If he could not love, it was because he had not yet found the right woman. In the evening, melancholy and restless, he would prowl the lonely towers of Trevallyan Castle and think of her, the nebulous, imaginary woman he searched for. He was convinced he would know her when she came to him, and, geis or no, he knew his love for her would be immediate and acute. And why not? He had waited twenty years for it. For her. She had become his hunger, and when he found her, he would devour her as a starving man devours bread.