She stood quite still, half turned away from him, her hand gripping the branch until her fingers turned white. "This is why you didn't want me here, looking around," she said after a moment, her voice coming out low and breathy. "You're planning to escape." She swung her head to stare at him over her shoulder. "You are, aren't you?"
He looked into solemn, hurting blue eyes, and felt her pain slam into him, felt his own pain, hot and deep and undeniable. "Aye," he said. "That I am."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"When?" Jessie asked, not looking at him. They sat together in the sun at the end of the old dock. She had her arms wrapped around her drawn-up legs, her chin on her knees. "When will you be leaving?"
"The night of the next full moon."
She swung her head to stare at him. He had his back propped against one of the weathered gray pilings, one arm resting on his bent knee. "You're not the only one going, are you? It'll take at least six men to row that boat."
He thrust his legs out straight in front of him, his head tipping back as he returned her gaze steadily. "Aye. And will you be telling on us, then, Miss Jesmond Corbett of Castle Corbett?"
The tide was coming in, sending the water to lap against the sides of the dock. In the distant cove, seagulls cried wheeling above the rumbling surf. She watched as the breeze stirred the ragged ends of his dark hair, where it hung over the collar of his convict coat, and felt a terrible fear seize her, so that it was all she could do not to reach out and hold him to her. Hold him safe. "If they catch you, you'll be killed. Or worse."
"I told you. I died four years ago."
She swallowed hard, wanting to say so much, unable to say any of it, the pain in her chest deepening until it was an agony. She sucked in a quick breath that was almost a sob, and looked away again.
"It's for the best I'm going," he said softly. "After what almost happened today, you can't deny that."
Oh, it was for the best, she knew that. But what was best, and what she wanted, were two very different things.
She'd known he could never be hers, known this day was coming, this day when she would have to say good-bye to him. She'd known it, but now that it was here, she wondered how she was going to bear it. How she was going to bear living a life that didn't include him. There was no going back to the life she'd lived before, she knew that; no going back to the woman she'd been before she looked up at that rocky hillside and saw him standing there.
"I could help you," she said, her gaze fixed on the gentle swell of the sea, the sea that would take him away from this life he hated, away from her. "I could get you clothes, food."
"No. If we're caught, anything you gave us would be traced back to you."
"I'm willing to take the risk."
"Well, I'm not."
She kept trying not to look at him, for fear of what he'd read in her face. Only, how could she not look at him, when she loved him so much, and soon she would never see him again?
Turning her head she let her heart drink in the sight of him, the straight uncompromising line of his dark brows, the tanned, hard angle of cheek and jaw, the sparkling fire of his Irish green eyes. She felt her love for him flare up, hot and bright and eternal, knew that her love, and the pain of losing him, would both be there forever. Knew, too, that he'd seen it all—that he'd looked into her eyes and guessed the terrible secret of her soul.
"Lass," he whispered, and reached out his hand to her.
She took his hand in hers, their fingers entwining tightly. They sat there for a long time, hand in hand. Then they arose and rode back to their separate lives.
This time, she did stay away from him. Far, far away. She read some more of The Pickwick Papers to Beatrice, and went for long, solitary walks in the park. And early in the following week, Jessie went on her picnic with Harrison, Philippa, and Warrick.
It was Harrison who drove them to a high bluff overlooking the rocky coastline. There they spread a rug upon the grass and drank champagne from crystal glasses and ate pate de foie gras and cucumber sandwiches from white china plates with gold trim. Afterward, Harrison took Jessie's hand and they went for a walk along the flower-strewn hillside. A balmy, spring-scented breeze fluttered the blue ribbons of her hat and flattened the white jaconet muslin of her dress against her legs. They might have been two old friends, out for a stroll, she thought. They were two old friends; only now they were also more, and that was the problem.
She felt wretchedly deceitful, to be walking demurely arm in arm with the man she had promised to wed, while every call of a seagull, every crash of the waves against the distant rocks, the very softness of the breeze against her cheek, reminded her of another man. She could find no cause for shame in loving Lucas Gallagher. Yet she felt weighted down by guilt. And she realized that her guilt came, not from what she felt for Gallagher, nor for what she had done with him, but from the lack of honesty, the duplicity in what she was doing now.
Tilting her head, she looked up at the man beside her. The sun and the sea breeze had brought a healthy glow to his cheeks, a sparkle to his eyes that made him look younger, less serious, more like the boy he had been. There were times, times like this, when her affection for him welled up within her, warm and good, and she believed that even though her heart would always belong to someone else, she could make Harrison happy. He expected so little of her, only that she behave with the decorum that their society demanded and furnish him with a comfortable home and well-reared children. He did not expect—perhaps he did not even want her to love him with the kind of wild excess of which she now knew she was capable. And the man she could love like that—the man she did love, with all her heart, would be gone soon.
It was a thought that brought with it such a terrible ache, such a soul-gripping fear, that she wondered again how she would bear it. She knew only that she would bear it, because she had no real choice. By the next full moon, Lucas Gallagher would be gone, or dead, and then her love for him would become just one more secret she kept hugged to her heart.
"Do you remember," Harrison was saying, his mustache lifting with a smile that brought a gleam of amusement to his eyes, "the time we came here for a picnic on Boxing Day? I was fourteen and you were ten, and some benighted person had given you an enormous kite for Christmas."
She laughed at the memory and looped her arm through his in a way that brought them closer together. "I remember. I thought it was so big, that if I ran very fast down the hill, the kite would lift me up and I would fly. You tried to stop me."
"I tried. You pushed me away and ran anyway." He put his hand over hers, holding her close, and she saw the amusement in his eyes fade to be replaced by something else, something darker. "That was the day I knew I was in love with you, and that I was the luckiest man in the world to be marrying you."
She tilted her head, her gaze searching his familiar, handsome face. "What if you hadn't fallen in love with me, Harrison? Would you still be marrying me?"
He huffed a small laugh, but she heard a hint of the irritation it was meant to conceal. "What kind of a question is that, Jesmond? I should think you'd know me well enough to know that I would always do my duty."
His duty. They had all been brought up to do their duty, to God, to Queen and country, to their family name ... "But what if you had discovered you didn't even like me?" she persisted. "Then what would you have done?"
"Then I suppose I would have decided I was the wretchedest man alive instead of the luckiest. Really, Jesmond— What is all this about?"
It was bad form, what she was doing, the way she was pressing him, but she didn't care. She wanted to know. "And if I had been a convict when you fell in love with me all those years ago, Harrison? What would you have done, then?"
"Good God." He sounded genuinely shocked. "As if I could fall in love with such a person."
She stopped and turned to face him, the sun bright in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Why not? I'd still be me."
He shook his head vigorously. "No. You
would not."
"I could have been falsely accused. Or the victim of circumstances."
"It wouldn't matter. I could no more fall in love with a convict woman than you could fly off this cliff." He tried to make light of it, but his nose was quivering in that way he had, and she knew he was becoming displeased with her.
She swallowed hard, conscious of a swelling of emotion at the back of her throat, a heaviness in her heart. He said he loved her, and she knew he believed it. He certainly desired her. But she was beginning to wonder how he could love her when there was so much about her of which he seemed to disapprove. Now that she was to be his wife, she noticed that he voiced his disapproval of her more frequently, and he seemed to expect her to change herself accordingly. To make herself into what he wanted her to be, the Jesmond of his imaginings. The Jesmond he loved, but who didn't exist.
She thought, sometimes, that it was her fault, for he was one of the people from whom she hid parts of herself, so that she had never allowed him to really know her, to know all of her, only, it had occurred to her lately to wonder how well she knew him. Theirs was not a world that encouraged openness or real honesty. Oh, actual mendacity and deceit were condemned, and loudly. But the very need for conformity, and that cherished English stiff upper lip, seemed to foster dissemblance and insincerity and distance. It seemed strange to realize that she and Harrison had grown up together, yet she knew Gallagher better, after less than a month, than she would ever know Harrison, after even a lifetime together. They would go through their lives together, she and Harrison, never really knowing what was in each other's hearts, or in their minds.
"No, I don't suppose you could," she said quietly, and would have turned away, only he caught both her hands in his, stopping her.
"Darling," he said, and she heard the thread of irritation in his tone again, despite the endearment. "There's something we must discuss." He pulled her closer to him, her hands held tightly. The breeze whipped at her skirts, flapping them out like sails. "I know you've been home only a short while, and I haven't wanted to press you, but..." He grinned suddenly, a boyish, rueful smile that echoed, again, the Harrison of her childhood. "What I'm trying to say is, we need to set a date for the wedding. I go to Hobart in a few days' time, but I should be back before the end of November. Shall we make the wedding for the first Saturday in December?"
He voiced it as a question, but she knew by his expression that he didn't expect her to do anything more than agree. She sucked in a quick breath, aware of a surge of panic, as if she were caught in the deadly currents of Shipwreck Cove and they were pulling her down, down, sucking her into a life she no longer wanted. "I don't know if that will give me enough time," she said, floundering, helpless, torn. "I mean, there's so much that will need to be arranged—"
Harrison laughed softly. "I think you underestimate your mother. She's been planning this wedding for more than two years now, remember? She says she will have ample time."
Jessie dropped her gaze to her hands, caught fast in his, hers gloved in blue, his in black. She thought of other hands, browned by the sun and scarred by cruel labor, and she thought, By December, he will be gone.
Aloud, she said, "You have already discussed this with Mother?"
"Why yes. I thought I should."
It struck her as odd, for him to be discussing their marriage date with her mother before he broached the subject with Jessie herself. But then, he had probably been discussing the wedding with Beatrice for years.
"Jesmond."
Something in his tone made her glance up. He was looking at her with that mingling of possessive tenderness and hunger that she was coming to know. His head dipped toward her, and she held herself very still, willing herself to relax for his kiss.
He covered her mouth with his, his hands still holding hers captive between them. His lips were cool and dry and vaguely pleasant, moving against hers. But there was no trembling onslaught of fierce and wonderful need, no soaring glimpse of the sublime, and she knew there never would be.
If she had never glanced up on that windswept hill, she thought; if she had never seen an Irishman standing there, dark and wild and beautiful, if his fierce eyes and untamed soul had never stirred her blood and stolen her heart, would she have been content with this life others had planned for her? Would she have known this welling of loneliness and despair?
She felt Harrison's grip on her hands tighten until it almost hurt, his breath quickening, his mouth pressing down on hers with a roughness that surprised and frightened her. But before she could react, he ended the kiss abruptly and turned away, his hand shaking as he withdrew a white handkerchief from his pocket and patted his lips. The wind gusted, smelling of warm grass and the sea. From the copse of dark wattles near the top of the hill came the call of a thrush, low and sweet. But he said not a word, and she thought he must have shocked himself, with the intensity of his reaction to that kiss, here, in the middle of this sunny meadow, where anyone might have come along and seen them.
She watched him, pulling himself together, hiding the improper bits of himself away, and she felt an ache of great sadness within her, for herself and for him. He had told her he loved her, but he didn't seem the least perplexed by the fact that she had never said the same to him. They had always been friends; he knew she held him in esteem and affection, and she supposed that, for him, that was enough. A man did not look for violent emotions in his gently bred wife; everyone was always telling her that. She suspected he would be shocked—horrified, in fact—if he ever guessed at the potential for physical passion she knew she possessed within herself.
And it occurred to her, as they turned to walk together, back toward her brother and his sister, that this was simply one more aspect of herself that she would need to keep hidden from those who claimed to love her. Those whose love, she knew, was conditional upon her behaving—upon her being—as society said she ought. And she wondered how many more parts of her life, of herself, she was going to have to hide. How much of herself she could ignore, pretend didn't exist, before, one day, she lost the essence of herself entirely.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Warrick lay on his back in the warm grass, one foot propped up on his bent knee, his shirt open at the neck. He had his hat tipped forward, shading the upper part of his face, but his eyes were open, his gaze fixed on the sun-sparkled expanse of the sea and the billowing white sails of a ship just visible on the horizon.
"Why don't you sail anymore?" asked Miss Philippa Tate, as calmly as if she were asking if he were hot or if he'd like another cup of tea.
He turned his head to look at her. She sat on the picnic rug, her lace-trimmed, rose-strewn skirts disposed modestly about her, one of her endless collection of parasols protecting her complexion from the ravages of the Australian sun. "That, Miss Tate, is an extremely prying, impertinent question. And prying, impertinent questions are very bad form."
She tipped the parasol back so that he could see her face, see the hidden smile in her eyes. "If you were anyone else, I wouldn't have asked. But since you're always telling me you have no patience with the dictates of polite society, I didn't think you'd mind."
"You know why I don't sail anymore, damn it," he growled.
His show of temper seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever. "I think you'd be happier if you did. I think you need it. I think your soul needs it."
"What the hell do you know about my soul?" he demanded, but she only smiled in that distant way she had and set her parasol to twirling.
He sat up and leaned toward her. "You know what it would do to Mother if I took up sailing again."
She met his gaze squarely, her big brown eyes dark with a quiet kind of understanding that always frightened him a bit. "You do any number of things that seem to be precisely calculated to upset your mother. Why not sail?"
He swung his head away to stare out over the heaving blue waters of the sea. Sometimes, it was like a sharp, slashing knife, his yearning for the sea, a
pain so poignant and deep, he used it to stab himself with, over and over and over.
"Have you considered hair shirts and self-flagellation?" she said in that same calm voice. "I understand they're very effective in purging the body of lingering illusions of guilt."
His gaze snapped back to her face. "Illusions?"
"That's right."
He looked at her, at the damask curve of her cheek, at the arc of her lips. "Why does everyone think you're so meek and proper?"
"Because I am."
"Huh. Not with me."
"No. Not with you." She stretched out her hand to touch his arm. "I'm worried about you, Warrick. You've always been as free and wild as the wind. But lately, it's as if you have this fire burning inside of you. I'm afraid that if you don't do something to let it out, it's going to burn you up."
He should have been annoyed. If anyone else had said such a thing, he would have been annoyed. But they were old friends, he and Philippa. And she was also right.
He put his hand over hers, felt her fingers quiver, then lie still in his grip. "Do you know, I've always envied you," he said softly.
"Me? You've envied me?" She gave a startled laugh that brought a brush of color to her cheeks and made her look startlingly, almost breathtakingly attractive. "Whatever for?"
"You've always fit so effortlessly, so comfortably into your world. No, it's more than that; you're comfortable with who you are, and it gives you such a sense of... serenity."
"That's not serenity you see, Warrick. Only lack of imagination and courage."
He smiled. "What would you like to do that you're not doing?"
A strange light shone in her eyes, like a fierce hunger that was there, then gone. "Sail around the world with you."
He felt the smile die on his lips. "Ah, Philippa." Reaching out, he touched the soft, dusky fall of her hair, where it lay against her slender white throat. "I'm the one who lacks the courage for that."
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