Sinister Intentions & Confiscated Conception

by Heather Graham

  Mike and Douglas were there, and so were Jamie and Barney Canail. Mike was laughing because Douglas was on the ground, struggling to retrieve a rubber ball from Sam the sheepdog’s teeth.

  Barney Canail saw her first. “Afternoon, Mrs. McHennessy,” he called out.

  She waved to the group, then started walking toward them apologizing. “I’m so sorry I’m late. The time—”

  “Kit McHennessy!” Douglas laughed, his grin charmingly boyish. “Y’er not but five minutes late, and havin’ Mike here has been the pleasure of our day!”

  “Aye, old Sam’s day, fer sure,” Barney agreed, bending to scratch the dog’s ears. “Was yer trip profitable?” he asked.

  As Kit gazed into his watery green eyes, she wondered if the question meant more than the obvious. It was almost as if he had been expecting her to find something out. Something that concerned a lot more than history.

  “Very profitable. Thanks so much for the tip.” Maybe Barney had known that Julie McNamara would send her to the library, she thought, and maybe he had known that the goat-god would be on display.

  She was letting her imagination run wild. There was very little she could do about her dreams, but she refused to think so hysterically in broad daylight.

  “Mike,” she asked, “how did you like school? What did you study?”

  “A lot of math. I was good at it. Really. Ask Mr. Johnston!”

  Kit ruffled his hair and smiled at Douglas.

  “He was an excellent student. The others loved havin’ him. He taught the class all about New York City.”

  “Well, now that yer back, lass,” Barney Canail said, grimacing a little as he struggled back to his feet, “Jamie and me were thinkin’ of headin’ in fer a pint.”

  “Mom’s taking me to the cliffs,” Mike told them.

  “’Tis a beautiful day fer a walk,” Douglas said. “Ye’ll have a grand time, boy.” He turned to Kit again. “Would you like me to pick him up again tomorrow mornin’?”

  “I...that’s a lot to ask of you.”

  “I don’t mind. ’Tis no trouble. Really.”

  For a minute Kit felt uncomfortable, as if control was slipping from her grasp. As if an unseen force were sinking cold talons into her shoulders. Then she realized how ridiculous that was. “Thank you, Douglas. That would be great,” she said.

  “Then I’ll see ye agin in the mornin’, lad,” Doug said cheerfully. He nodded to Kit, waved to Jamie and Barney and whistled as he walked around the corner of the house.

  Mike began tugging at her arm. “Can we go to the cliffs now, Mom? You promised.”

  “Yes, Mike, we can go now.” She glanced at Barney and Jamie. Were they watching her peculiarly? “I guess we’ll see you in town later,” she murmured.

  “Aye, most likely. Have a nice time, now,” Barney said.

  Her smile felt strained as she waved again and followed Douglas Johnston’s trail around the house. His little Datsun was already gone.

  Mike crawled eagerly into the car, chattering away about the kids at the school. Kit answered him in monosyllables, which were the only replies he seemed to need.

  The drive seemed short—too short. And no amount of logic could keep her heart from feeling heavy.

  Nothing had changed. Nothing.

  Down the rutted and twisted road stood the cottage, whitewashed, thatch-roofed. Wildflowers were there in abundance, and, beyond the cottage, high grass and bracken grew in passionate disorder, waving and flattening with the wind like an ocean of green and mauve and shimmering blue. Far to the left and right, sweeping downward into the fertile valleys, were the forests, shadowed, intriguing, beckoning her to come explore their secrets.

  Where the greenery ended, the cliffs began. High, sheer, strewn with rocks and pebbles, they dropped to the sea below. The sky, which was a dismal gray and filled with capricious clouds, stretched above. Kit knew that she could look down and watch the sea pounding against the rocks. The spray would rise, crystalline, catching whatever sun escaped through the roiling clouds. The roar of the waves would rise to mingle with the whine of the wind; seabirds would shriek, and it would be as it had been eight years ago.

  As it had been centuries ago.

  Kit hadn’t realized that she had already parked the car along the road that led to the cottage. She was sitting with her hands folded together, clamped hard in her lap, and she was shivering. She had forgotten how much colder it could be along the cliffs.

  “Mom?”

  She glanced at Mike, who was staring at her with curiosity and concern.

  “Can we get out now?”

  “Sure. I was just...cold. Are you sure your jacket is warm enough?”

  “Yeah. I’m plenty warm.”

  Kit nodded and stepped outside, vaguely hearing Mike’s door slam shut. She hadn’t closed her own door. She was hanging on to it, staring out at the cottage—and the cliffs beyond.

  It had been nighttime when she had come here that first time. The wind had been vicious, the sky pitch-black, except for a full moon that cast glowing light and mysterious shadow. It was a place that seemed to have a life of its own, sometimes lonely and forlorn and brooding, sometimes wild and menacing, as if it were waiting to trap the unwary....

  Watching...

  Always she had a sense of being watched, as if the rocks and the distant trees had eyes, as if they lived and breathed and watched her every move....

  Kit gave herself a little shake. She was giving a personality to a pile of rock, and that was ridiculous. She had never been afraid of the cliffs. She had walked along them often after Michael had died.

  She closed her door and started walking now, shoving her hands into the pockets of her pants. “You coming?” she asked Mike.

  He nodded and hurried to catch up with her. She slipped an arm around his shoulders as they walked.

  “You’ve got to promise to stay away from the edge,” she said lightly, just like any mother warning her child to be careful.

  His answer came with a little sigh—any child’s response to a parent who seemed to think that being a child meant you had no intelligence.

  Mike pulled up the hood of his jacket. “It’s windy here,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” Kit agreed. She glanced at the sky. She could see the clouds moving, seeming to consume the open sky. It would be dark much sooner than she had expected. The clouds were definitely the warning of a coming storm.

  “Can we go into the cottage?” Mike asked curiously.

  “No. I’m sure it’s locked.”

  “Oh,” Mike said. She didn’t know if he was disappointed or not.

  They walked past it, and then everything seemed to be exactly as it had been eight years earlier. Because she could see the tall silhouette of a man standing on the grassy section of the hill that led to the treacherous rise of rock.

  Her heart skipped a beat; her footsteps paused for a fraction of a second. But then she kept walking, because she realized that she had almost been expecting him to be there, that she would have been disappointed if he hadn’t been.

  “It’s the man from the cemetery,” Michael murmured excitedly.

  “I know,” Kit said.

  Justin turned then, aware that they were coming. His feet were planted firmly apart; he was a man who had long known the cliffs and the wind, and who challenged them with little thought. His dark hair was slashed across his forehead by the wind, and his hands, too, were shoved into his pockets. He stood very still, watching her approach. The woolen scarf he had wrapped around his neck drifted about him, floating on the wind, then falling again to lie against his mauve sweater.

  His eyes were on Kit as she neared him, his gaze unabashed and offering no apology. Only when she stood practically in front of him did his gaze flicker and fall to Mike.

  “Hello, Mr. Michael Patric
k McHennessy. Have you come to see our cliffs, then?”

  Mike nodded eagerly.

  Justin’s eyes rose to Kit’s once again. There was a questioning look in them, and a certain patient amusement. “Mind if I walk along with you?” Though he dropped his gaze and asked the question of Mike, Kit knew it was directed to her.

  “Mind? No!” Mike said.

  Justin placed a hand on Mike’s shoulder, and the two of them started walking ahead of her. She followed, staying about three feet behind.

  She heard Justin tell Mike that the rocks were the very type known to house the “little people,” or leprechauns.

  “Have you always lived here?” Mike asked Justin.

  “Not always, but mostly.”

  A few minutes later they were at the edge of the cliff. They could see the water below, rushing and swirling, battering and lashing rocks, receding and leaving little pools that sparkled in the weak sunlight passing through the clouds.

  Kit was glad to see that Justin had positioned Mike several feet from the edge at a section where the rock sloped gently, instead of dropping off abruptly. He warned Michael that the rocks were known as the Devil’s Teeth.

  “I know,” Mike said solemnly. “They killed my father.”

  Justin didn’t reply. Kit backed uneasily away from the two of them, her eyes on the ground, but she felt Justin watching her. She didn’t need to see him to know that he was staring at her.

  Justin bent and collected a handful of pebbles. He tossed one over the edge. It fell and was lost in the tumult below. Then he handed the pebbles to Mike.

  Mike grinned with sheer pleasure, and Justin stepped back to stand beside her. He looked at her, and she thought she saw a hint of tenderness in his eyes. She knew that he was searching for the changes that the years had wrought. Curiously, she didn’t mind; she felt as if she was coming to know him again, as if the time that had changed them and made them strangers was fading until it was gone.

  “I’ve been here half the day, waiting,” he told her.

  She tried to shrug casually. “If you wanted to see me, you could have just called.”

  “I did. You were out.”

  “I went into Cork.” Kit hesitated, and when she spoke her voice was both defiant and reproachful. “I am writing a book.”

  He grinned and deep creases etched themselves around his eyes and mouth. “I believe you.”

  “Did you call my publisher?” She couldn’t keep herself from asking the question, but she couldn’t keep herself from smiling, either.

  He didn’t answer her right away. Instead he sat down in the long grass, plucking a piece and chewing it idly. With a little sigh of exasperation, Kit sank down beside him.

  She felt her heart contract with pain. He had told her to go home, yet he had also told her that they needed to talk. Did he suspect the truth? She felt as if he were some sort of predator—and she his only half-suspecting prey.

  “Did you?” she repeated irritably.

  “Well, now, I don’t know who your publisher is, do I?”

  “I am doing a book on Ireland!”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  “About ancient superstitions that linger to the present day!” she snapped.

  He was still smiling as the wind ran riot about them and began its banshee moan. “Well, then, All Hallows’ Eve should interest you. You can attend the...pagan rites.”

  “Stop it, Justin!”

  He frowned. “What’s the matter with you? I was merely teasing. It’s simply a party.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, Justin...” She sighed impatiently. “Don’t you see?”

  “What am I supposed to see?”

  “Justin, you said yourself that the tea was drugged—”

  “Aye, it was, Kit. But I don’t see any evil in it.”

  She sprang to her feet. “You don’t? Well, you weren’t the one with such a horrible thing on your conscience.”

  “It bloody well was on my conscience!” he retorted, and then he was standing, too, facing her in anger. His smile tightened as his blazing eyes narrowed. “And there was nothing horrible about it. The moral issue aside, I had a damn good time!”

  “What are you arguing about?”

  Mike’s voice broke through Kit’s anger, and she spun around, stunned that she could have forgotten how close he was. “Nothing,” she assured him quickly.

  “And everything!” Justin said laughing. He ducked down to Mike and grabbed his shoulders.

  “How would you like to go to a castle for dinner?”

  “Oh, boy!” Mike said excitedly.

  “We’re not going!” Kit snapped.

  “Oh, but you are,” Justin told her. Mike turned around to stare at her hopefully, and Justin kept his gaze steadily on her. His hands were still resting on Mike’s shoulders—as if he had the power to take the boy away from her.

  I should tell him to jump in a lake! Kit thought furiously. But she hesitated, her throat dry. “You might have asked me first,” she finally said coldly.

  “We can go! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!” Delighted, Mike started running through the high grass.

  Justin shrugged, undaunted by her reproach. “Molly wants to see you. She’s staying for dinner herself.” He hesitated for a moment, then said softly, “You have to come, Kit.”

  She lowered her eyes, her palms damp, her heart beating too quickly. There was a power here. A power that had drawn her back after eight years. The power of the hills and the cliffs. The power of the wind, whistling, crying, whispering in soft tones that she should stay...

  The answers were here...and Justin was here.

  She looked into his eyes. They were very dark and had taken on the cast of the gray-clouded sky. Like the forests around her, they compelled her with their secret depths. And he knew exactly what she was thinking. The curl of his lip betrayed his amusement.

  “I’ve been wanting to see Molly,” she said with an exaggerated sigh of resignation. “And I suppose we have to eat dinner somewhere.”

  Justin laughed. “Is that a yes? Well, thank you so much, Mrs. McHennessy. How gracious.”

  He turned and started walking. Swearing under her breath, Kit followed him.

  Justin caught up with Mike, and as they walked he asked about the airplane ride, and he listened intently when Mike told him proudly that he had already spent a day in an Irish school.

  Justin stopped when they reached the cottage. He stuck a hand into his pocket, then took Kit’s hand and pressed something into her palm.

  She stared into her hand. He had given her a key.

  “It’s to the cottage,” he told her. She met his eyes again. He was staring at her intently, and an inner chill gripped her. Then something hot and mercurial seemed to quiver along her limbs. He had told her to go, yet he was trying to get her to stay....

  “The cottage?” she mumbled stupidly.

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “I own it, you know.”

  No, she hadn’t known. “Why not? You own everything else,” she muttered. She looked quickly around for Mike. He was already heading toward the car, so she lowered her voice and said vehemently, “But you don’t own me, Justin O’Niall.”

  He caught her arm, pulling her against him when she would have followed her son. “Don’t I, Kit? Don’t I own just a piece of you?”

  The deep, husky whisper was filled with insinuation. Despite herself, Kit was trembling as she jerked herself away.

  She watched Justin join Mike at the car. The two of them had their heads together and were talking animatedly, seemingly unaware of her existence. Kit hugged herself as the wind rushed around her, taking her breath away, seeming to grip her with cold gray fingers.

  She pressed her hands against her cheeks. She had thought she was mature a
nd sophisticated, but she was still no match for Justin O’Niall. Not for his strength, nor his will, nor his determination.

  Nor his appeal to her senses—and her soul.

  Chapter 5

  “So,” Justin said at last, a slight smile curving his lips as he leaned back in his chair, striking a match to his cigarette and staring at her over the flame, “what have you been doing for the last eight years?”

  Kit sipped her coffee. He might have been asking her what she had done last week. “Not much,” she murmured, shrugging in response to the cynical hike of his brow. She lowered her eyes, curious that she could be so comfortable here. His home was a castle in the true sense of the word. He’d told her once that it had originally been nothing more than earthworks, then a wooden defense post; then, after the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England, the people had rebuilt it in stone. It was small, as castles went, and the arrow slits had been enlarged to make normal windows. The outer walls were nothing but rubble, but the great hall remained, and there were three towers with wonderful old curving stairways. Kit was certain that Justin had spent a small fortune remodeling the place to include all the contemporary comforts: brand-new kitchen, central heating, an intercom system—but then, if Justin was as famous as Robert claimed, he probably had an income that could handle it easily.

  It was a wonderful place, she realized. She had adored it eight years ago, and she felt the same way now. She wondered if Susan Accorn had been enchanted by it.

  The great hall had changed very little. The dining room table, with its carved high-backed chairs, still sat on a low dais looking out over the rest of the room. In front of the fireplace were the same chairs where she had once sat with Doctor Conar, Liam O’Grady, Molly and Justin, when they had told her that she had to decide what to do with Michael’s body.

  Kit trembled and set her cup down. This room brought back memories, but it was nice to be here. The fire in the hearth warmed her, and the whiskey sours Justin had made before dinner had softened the rough edges of her nervous system. Molly was giving Mike a tour of the house, and Kit and Justin were alone, acting curiously like old friends who had been apart for a long time.