They reached the bottom of the garden, but Jane found herself too captivated by his words to turn back. The two walked beneath a long, trellised arbor of grapevines. Without thinking, she pulled a bunch of the ripe fruit from the vine.
“I saw this kind of ignorance when I fought many years ago against the French on the Plains of Abraham in the taking of Quebec, and later in the campaigns against the Cherokee. I was even carried along by it to some extent. But this time I want to do better. I do not want to make the same mistake. I want to understand the truth.” She heard him take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “For the past two nights I have—with your father’s permission—spent some time in his library looking through papers he has collected regarding this area’s culture and history. But I should not need to tell you that these accounts have been written mostly by Englishmen, and lack any attempt at objectivity and accuracy.”
They stopped at a stone bench beneath the trellis, and he placed his boot on it. Leaning on a knee, he turned to her. “So, what I am asking is whether there is someone at Woodfield House…or someone who lives in the vicinity…who is knowledgeable and objective enough to give me a clear understanding of what is happening here.”
This hadn’t been what she was expecting. She’d been so continually faced for so many years with the flaws of an English system—and the flaws of the aristocracy—that she could not help but wonder about this man’s motives. He was not at all like his brethren.
“I must ask you, sir, if this desire for ‘understanding’ can be traced to our little skirmish yesterday and to your silence about the identity of the rebel. Perhaps you are concerned about your decision not to give me away.”
“No.” His denial was emphatic. “And I give you my word that as far as the rest of the world will ever know, you and I never met until last night…in your parents’ parlor.”
She paused. “Tell me, then. Why do you care?”
“I told you. I have been questioned about it, lectured about it by people like Sir Thomas, and this morning by Musgrave. I like to know the facts before I form an opinion.”
“Facts.” She leaned a shoulder against the trellis and met his challenging look. “Facts are all just a matter of perception.” She held up the fruit in her hand. “What do you see here?”
“Grapes. Nourishment. The raw materials for wine, I suppose.”
“What I see is the substance that holds the seeds of future growth. The individual grape seed has little hope of growing into a vine. But if I were to bury this entire bunch, in the spring we would find a number of vines sprouting up from the soil. Facts can be interpreted in different ways.”
Nicholas pulled a grape from the bunch in her hand and popped it into his mouth. “And sometimes a grape is but a grape.” He smiled. “But I accept your point.”
“Why do you need to form an opinion about us?” She shot him a challenging look. “You are here today, but you will be gone with my sister tomorrow. Why…”
“I shall not be leaving with Clara tomorrow…nor anytime thereafter. And stop muddying the discussion.”
“Very well.” She shrugged. “But my point is that you are here today, but you shall be gone tomorrow. My understanding is that in Quebec, you were sent to fight. It was impossible not to get involved. Here, you are visiting with your family. Why not simply enjoy the beauty of the countryside? Entertain yourself with all this area has to offer? In substance, you will leave here as the same person that you were when you arrived. There is no need for you to know any more about us.”
His gaze narrowed. He leaned toward her. “Why are you so set against me learning about your cause?”
Jane shrugged and walked away a step. She looked up at the blanket of stars overhead and tried to keep her tone light. “I am trying to do you a favor…save your holiday…eliminate undue concerns.”
“I did not ask for your charity, but your knowledge.”
She felt him move close beside her. She tried to hide the unexpected shiver that coursed through her when their arms brushed.
“Of all the people you have met since arriving, why are you asking me?”
“Because, despite your birth and parentage, you have chosen the more difficult path. And you are the only famous rebel leader that I have had the privilege of becoming acquainted with.” Even in the darkness she could feel the weight of his gaze on her face. “It was quite impressive to hear Sir Thomas use Egan’s name in the same breath as the others who are such a thorn in the side of the Crown.”
“And you thought, ‘How sad that he is so blind.’”
“Hardly! I was oddly grateful for his ignorance. There is something impressive and yet disconcerting…in the irony that an Englishwoman is a leader in such a movement.” There was no mockery in his tone, only quiet admiration. “When you first became involved in all of this, did you ever think that one day you might be considered a hero to those you fight for?”
“Or think that one day I would be hanged as a traitor?” Jane looked down, digging the dirt with the tip of one boot. She was not accustomed to being complimented. “The paths we travel are not always the same ones we started on…or would have continued on…if we were given the choice.”
“Do you regret your involvement?”
“I am content to be the person that I have become. I am resigned to the role I seem destined to play. But I would sacrifice all…sacrifice myself…if I could change just a few of the tragedies of the past or even one tragedy to come.”
Jane dropped the bunch of grapes into the dirt beside the path. A breeze, scented with late blooming flowers and cool on her face, stirred memories long buried, images of faces long dead.
“I became Egan to close off the pain…to forget…” A sudden tightness squeezed at Jane’s throat. She would never have become Egan if those five young men had not been hanged so unjustly. She would never have lashed out at the viciousness of this country’s ruling class if she had not seen her lover’s corpse rotting upon the gallows.
If Conor had lived, the extent of Jane’s involvement would most likely have consisted of pining for him during his absence. She was no hero. The man she’d loved and his four unfortunate friends were heroes. She was just a survivor.
When Jane felt Nicholas’s fingers brush away a tear that she had unknowingly shed, she turned and their gazes locked. She had an uncomfortable, hollow feeling that too much had been revealed.
“Will you someday tell me about your past?”
“My past is an open book…up to where the change was wrought in me. Ask anyone and they will surely tell you all about it.”
Too much emotion lay too close to the surface, and Jane recognized her vulnerability at this moment. Her feelings were too raw. The scabs of old wounds were opening up. Jane drew a deep breath, summoned her strength, and turned toward the house.
“Someone like Henry Adams should be able to tell you…whatever it is you wish to learn about this country’s past.”
“How foolish of me to not have guessed. He is a man who seems to be all too familiar with everything and everyone around here.”
She was too wrapped up in her own thoughts and ignored the disapproval in his tone.
“Though my life is my own, Sir Nicholas, I know that there are expectations that go along with being a guest. Perhaps we should retire to our respective places. Good night.”
She knew the formality of her words sounded forced, but she had to get away.
Jane moved quickly along the garden path, praying that he would not follow. As she walked, she made herself breathe normally and forced herself to be calm.
She couldn’t explain the melancholy she found herself suddenly afflicted with. With just a few words, spoken there in that same spot in the garden, the years had melted away and long-buried memories had burned their way up from within, destroying her insides on their way to the surface. Now she could feel the fiery ache once again in her flesh and in her very skin.
But this was not what she had worked
so hard to become. She had never expected time to heal, but to teach her. And she had learned over the years how to survive. She’d struggled and finally succeeded in keeping herself above the molten flood tides of remembrance. But this night, with this man, she had once again become vulnerable and fragile.
Wiping away a sheen of tears, she looked ahead. The sky was clear, the house black and intimidating. The breeze was coming from the east, from Waterford. And Jane remembered.
Nine years ago, she had walked down this same path to meet a man she’d loved. It was the eve of her birthday. She was turning seventeen, and Conor had met her under that same trellis at midnight. A kiss. It was to be a farewell kiss, but neither had known it. They’d only whispered of the future.
How could they know that he would be arrested the next day and executed before a fortnight had passed? How could they know?
“Jane,” Spencer called after her.
A painful cry broke free with the next breath, and she quickened her steps.
“Jane!”
As the tears streamed down her face, she hurried through the garden gate, hoping to escape into the house. But his strong hands caught her just as she reached the landing, spinning her around to face him.
“Jane, what’s wrong?”
No words would escape her lips. The tears, though, she fought to control. The past was behind…why did it still haunt her?
She struggled against the pain, forcing it back, and in a moment or two managed to look up into his face.
“If what I said upset you…I had no idea that your friend meant so much.” His fingers squeezed her shoulders. “It was none of my bloody business to…”
“What friend?” Sobriety came instantly as she realized how disconcerted he seemed. She wiped at the wetness of her face with back of one hand.
“Reverend Adams. I have no right to be critical of him. It is just that you say he is only a friend, but I find myself…hell, I find myself competing with the man for your attention at every turn.”
“Competing for my attention?” She found herself actually smiling up at him through her tears. “Why? Why would someone like you…want to compete for my attention?”
“You can mock me or continue this stubborn ignorance of my interest in you…” His thumb gently brushed away the wetness under her eyes. “—but I ask you to forgive me for the way I spoke of your friend.”
The baronet’s face was deadly earnest, but Jane was too consumed by his words and his touch to notice. The need to take comfort from another human being, to feel the unfamiliar warmth of a man’s touch almost overwhelmed her with its power. She stared at the glimpse of skin beneath the open collar of his shirt, at the solid pillar of his throat, at his broad and muscular chest. In an instant, she felt a different kind of heat stirring in her middle. A soft glow seemed to flow into every limb, softening the aching there and replacing it with another.
She abruptly tore her gaze away. What was wrong with her? She was clearly losing control of herself. She needed to regain command of her unraveling emotions.
“It is I who should be sorry,” she managed to get out. “This…how I acted…was totally inappropriate. My tears have nothing to do with Henry…or with whatever it was you said.”
He didn’t look convinced. While still holding her shoulders tightly, he looked more closely into her face. “Then why are you so upset?”
The whispered question went straight to her heart, taking her to yet another level of awareness. The caress of his breath against her skin felt so right.
“Ghosts.” She searched and found her voice. “From time to time, I have ghosts that haunt me.”
“So your tears have nothing to do with Henry Adams?”
“Nothing at all.”
Jane shook her head and felt the warmth continue to spread through her as his face relaxed. She had not allowed herself to dwell on his striking good looks until this instant. She had not noticed that they were standing beneath the protective stone arch of her home. Jane had not allowed herself to admit that she was wishing that the distance between their bodies might disappear.
She immediately tried to make herself push him away, but she couldn’t. Nicholas lifted one hand from her shoulder and tenderly touched the bruise by her mouth.
“Now that we are getting around to apologies, I should tell you I am very sorry for this.”
Jane had every intention of making some light remark, but the next breath was caught in her chest as she felt his fingers trace the lines of her lips.
“You are so beautiful, Jane. You are so alive and beautiful.”
She had to deny this. She had to walk away. But his touch had let loose a flood of sensations, and she found herself fighting just to stay afloat.
“I don’t think this…is a good idea.”
“You are quite right.” The words were drawled as if he meant it. Suddenly, though, she was wrapped tightly in his arms, and his lips were crushing hers.
She forgot to breathe. She could find no reason to complain. All she was conscious of was the consuming fire that was racing through her.
Her hands seemed to move of their own accord, pulling at his shirt, feeling the muscular lines of his back. He groaned his approval. Powerful arms gathered her closer to his body, pressing her to him until there was nothing left between two hearts pounding wildly as one.
Passion had been something she had experienced long ago, but buried away. She’d believed no man could ever conjure in her the need she had once tasted and even become consumed by. But now, wrapped in Nicholas’s steely grip, she found herself burning.
As he kissed her, she opened for him, driving them both an inch closer to an edge of oblivion. She felt his tongue searching, tasting. As he pressed her back against the stone arch, his body followed, scorching every inch of her with his heat.
“Jane.” He tore his mouth from her lips and pressed it to her throat. His hands glided down over her body—touching, possessing—and all she could do was clutch his hair and drag his mouth back to hers for another searing kiss. “I knew it would be like this between us.”
His mouth moved to her ear—teasing, biting.
…be like this between us…between us… The words reverberated in her mind. Us…
It was almost as if she were floating outside of her own body. As if in a dream, Jane looked down at herself. Nicholas’s mouth was tracing a path down her neck while his hands were on her back, sliding over the curve of her buttocks, pressing her to him.
Us…
And then, as something clicked in her brain, she was back in her body, conscious and nearly panicked. The moan in her throat became a cry, and the hands that couldn’t bring him close enough, suddenly pushed to get free.
He stopped instantly and took an immediate step back. “Jane…”
Jane still had difficulty catching her breath, but she made sure to speak the words that were screaming within her. “There is no us, Nicholas. There can never be an US!”
She raised a hand to silence him as he opened his mouth to speak.
“And please…please…” she begged him as she edged toward the door. “Forget what happened tonight. We both made a mistake. And it can never…will never…happen again.”
Jane ran inside, not knowing how she would ever be able to forgive herself for nearly seducing her sister’s future husband. Never again, she swore silently, climbing two steps at a time to her workroom beneath the roof. Never again would she allow herself to be alone with Nicholas Spencer.
Not for a second.
***
From the window of his darkened bedchamber, Sir Thomas watched the baronet walk back into the night. Even from this distance, he sensed the man’s frustration as he ran a hand through his hair.
“She is far more of a handful than you thought her to be,” he murmured.
As he always did, Sir Thomas had been waiting for Jane’s return. Standing by his chair, he’d happened to see her come up the pathway, only to be approached by the
visitor. And then he’d watched them walk down into the gardens.
The sight of the two of them had given him a moment’s pause, but he had quickly shaken off the thought. There was no chance of anything developing between them. Jane wouldn’t allow it. Perhaps he should have advised the young man about it during their private talk after dinner.
He’d been correct—as always. It hadn’t been long before he’d seen Jane practically run back toward the house with Spencer hot on her heels. And now he was looking at the frustration of a man rejected.
It was more than the scandal of her past that would keep the baronet and Jane apart. It was more than his own order to hang that presumptuous papist boy nine years ago that kept the wedge solidly between himself and Jane.
There was, indeed, much more.
At first, when he’d become aware of her coming in and going out at all hours, he’d been fool enough to think there was another man involved. Soon after, he’d started studying her paintings and watching her carefully. I had not taken him long to realize that his own daughter had taken up the cause of her dead lover. Jane was now supporting the Shanavests.
Sir Thomas moved away from the window and sank heavily onto the edge of the bed. It was to protect her that he had remained magistrate for so long, hoping that she would tire of the foolishness of the movement. He himself would not move against the rebels again while Jane was involved with them, but she was the reason he continued to harp at Musgrave to take stronger actions now to capture and hang the local leaders. The old man knew that with the ringleaders gone, there would be little fight left in the rest.
Only then, Thomas knew, he’d have a chance of removing the wedge. Only then, he prayed, he might have his daughter back.
CHAPTER 14
The small workroom Catherine Purefoy used as the center for running her household was abuzz when Jane poked her head in the next morning. There were four servants already standing in a line before her mother and taking a variety of directions from their somewhat hysterical leader. Meanwhile, Clara stood by the single window of the room, staring sullenly out, and totally unaffected by the madness in the room.
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