The Ground She Walks Upon

by Meagan Mckinney

  “Yes, it’s beautiful,” she whispered, hugging herself, her plaited hair flying behind her like a black banner. “Just as I remember.”

  “Then kiss me,” he rumbled against her nape, his lips buried in the tender flesh of her neck. Slowly a hand crept up her waist, reaching … reaching … for parts she kept private.

  “No,” she whispered, and stepped away from him. The winds suddenly became icy. He offered warmth, but for some reason she didn’t want to accept it. By all reasoning, she should desire him to kiss her. Nonetheless, she didn’t.

  “I remember a fiery creature from days of old, not this prude you’ve become,” he said, shouting over the increasing blasts of wind.

  She didn’t answer him. Instead, she stared at the storm, wondering when she would feel the first cold drops.

  “Kiss me, Ravenna,” he said, his arms clamping around her like a bear’s. His lips dragged down her neck, and she trembled within his warm embrace.

  There was something terribly wrong with her. She spent hours daydreaming about love, and now, when she had someone to love, she was rejecting him; her very own friend, Malachi.

  Whatever was wrong with her? she asked herself while he nibbled on her fragile earlobe. Was she repulsed by him? On the contrary, Malachi was a fine specimen of a man; he was tall, strong, and his face—while perhaps not the godlike visage of Count Fabuloso—it was most certainly pleasing to the eye, and doubly so to her for he was her friend.

  So why couldn’t she give herself freely to him? The question tortured her as his arms tightened, and he pressed himself against her form, which was clad in only a thin shift of linen.

  “Stop, Malachi. Please stop,” she found herself saying, though she cringed at saying it.

  His lips turned cold, and he leaned against her impatiently, as if he were unused to such a reluctant female. “What is it?” he almost snapped.

  “I—I just don’t know.” She turned away and hugged herself, staring far out at sea. “It’s just that we’re so different now. So different.…” She bit her lower lip. What she couldn’t say was that she was so different now. She hadn’t grown up by his side and seen how the other girls in town accepted his kisses. While he was at the stables bussing the girls, she had been practicing the useless skill of pouring out tea at the Weymouth-Hampstead School. She knew she was just a bastard. He long admitted his mother had never approved of her, for she was not even saved by attendance at Mass. And yet, here she was, unwilling to take his kisses because his crudeness and lack of guile shocked her educated mind.

  “Now that you’ve your fine friends at the castle, I suppose a gent like me ain’t good enough, is it?” He took her roughly in hand.

  She released a small cry. He frightened her, but she couldn’t bear the thought that she might have hurt him. “No. You must not think such things,” she gasped.

  “Then what is it? Are you looking for a proposal before a man can kiss you?”

  “Nay. I don’t want a proposal.” She struggled to be free. He wouldn’t release her.

  “You mean you don’ be wantin’ my proposal.” His anger turned on like a spigot. “You want a big, rich man, isn’t that right? It’s what all you lassies want. A bloody gent to buy you nice things and set you up fancy.”

  “I don’t want those things,” she confessed, panting. “They offer no guarantee of respect and love. And that is what I want most, Malachi. I want respect and love, and you aren’t giving them to me!”

  “I’ll respect you with this!” He raised his hand as if to strike her.

  She faced him, her stance frozen, her eyes daring him to do it.

  They stood there, poised on the cliff like statuary until a flash of lightning crackled across the water. The violence of it seemed to waken Malachi to what he’d been about to do. In horror, he glanced at his raised hand. In the same fury, now of contrition, he pulled her to him and buried his face in her hair.

  “Forgive me! Forgive me! My God, I would never hurt you.” Now it seemed his turn to tremble. “’Tis just I saw you in the castle and I … I could not bear it. You’re mine, Ravenna. You always have been. Don’t go to the castle anymore. You must not do it.”

  Suddenly he froze.

  “Oh, Jaysus,” he rasped. Quickly, he let her go. She nearly stumbled over the rocks.

  “What is it?” she cried out. Then she saw the reason. In the distance, streaming out of Lir was some kind of search party. The men carried torches and there looked to be nigh twenty of them.

  “What on earth is that? They can’t be looking for me,” she whispered. “Grania couldn’t get to town that swiftly.…”

  “Listen, Ravenna, I must go—” He grabbed the coat from her shoulders. Without it, she realized how bitterly cold the night really was.

  “Malachi—” She hugged her chest and turned to look at him. The tone of his voice had told her everything. “Have you gone and done something bad? Are they looking for you?”

  “Ravenna. Just kiss me once, for you may not see me again for a while.” His voice shook. In the fading moonlight, she could see his gaze shift to the stream of torchlights running over the hills.

  “What have you done, Malachi? Oh God,” she whispered, staring at him. “Is Home Rule worth this violence?”

  “Yes,” he rasped, pulling his hair in agitation. “The Big Lords are not our kings. We had our own kings before they sent these English dogs to command us. Trevallyan sits in his castle while I fetch his coal for his hearth. Me! A descendant of Celtic warriors!”

  She took a deep breath. Her heart felt as if it were being ripped from her chest. “But you haven’t hurt anyone, have you?”

  He stared at her while the storm battled behind him. She could hear the rain fall on the sea beyond like the coming of troops.

  “’Tis just been mischief, Ravenna. You must believe me. The boy-os and me haven’t hurt anyone … intentionally.”

  She saw the gleam of tears in his eyes, and she longed to hold him, but there wasn’t time. The men streaming from Lir were spread about the countryside. Already they could hear their shouts above the screams of wind.

  “Go,” she said to him, afraid of him and for him at the same time.

  “’Tis a war we’re fightin’, Ravenna. Just keep that in mind and don’t judge me harshly.” He held her close, but his embrace was as quick and ethereal as time. In seconds, he disappeared into the rocky outcrops of Briney Cliffs.

  “The memory of you was my only friend in England,” she cried into the shadows of the night, but she knew he had not heard her.

  The trip back to the cottage was cold and terrible. The wind brought rain, and the path became obscured with mud. Her thin linen night rail was no protection from the elements, and the freezing downpour soaked her to the bone. She might have regretted the trip, but though the rocks cut her feet and wind drove through her like icicles, she was glad she had gone. Malachi trusted her enough to reveal to her what he was up to. Perhaps one day, she might get him to see that destruction and violence weren’t the answer to Ireland’s problems, as Father Nolan had said so many times.

  Her shawl caught on a hawthorn. She tugged on it but it was no use; the thing held fast. “Bother it anyway!” she cursed in the howling wind. She’d return for it in the morning. A sodden shawl wasn’t going to keep her warm tonight.

  She slid down the hill and into a field of blowing rye-grass. Covered in mud, she had to fight the tears that sprang to her eyes. Life was too difficult sometimes, she thought.

  Bitterly she picked herself up and slashed through the tall grass as it cut at her ankles. Seeds and burrs clung to her muddy wet gown, increasing her agony. Why did they fight, anyway? she asked herself, trudging desperately through O’Reilly’s fields. Malachi fought for his precious Home Rule, but he had raised his hand to strike a woman. Was Home Rule going to help her? Was it going to make Malachi and men of his kind see her as a person and not just a young woman for the taking? He would never admit it, but Malachi was i
n some ways no better than his English counterparts. Lord Chesham had prettier words and far better skills at seducing a woman, but in many ways he and Malachi wanted the same thing.

  So were all men the same? Did lust drive all of them?

  She wiped the rain from her eyes and searched for the beginning of the road. By her calculations, she should have found it by now, but she was not as canny about the geography as she had been as a child.

  “’Tis the bride. The bride!”

  The voice made Ravenna nearly jump from her skin. It was Griffen O’Rooney. He stood in the middle of an iron fence. It took her a moment to realize that the iron fence was the same one that surrounded the Trevallyan family cemetery.

  “’Tis the bride. Ye’ve finally come to save us!” he shouted to her.

  She stared at him, his face lit by a feeble lantern he held up in his hand. Everyone called the old man mad, and he had had a penchant for the Trevallyan graveyard for as long as she could remember. On a cold, rainy night, she had no desire for a conversation with him.

  She backed away, wondering how the old grave-digger had become a lunatic. O’Rooney’s rantings about a bride made no sense, but she didn’t expect them to. All she wanted was to find her cottage, dry herself by the fire, and crawl beneath a heavy woolen blanket.

  “Doan’ go!” O’Rooney shouted, his aged, unsteady form remarkably impervious to the lashing torrent around him. He began to walk to her, all the while saying, “See what tragedy we brung … we killed her … the lass and her child. If we’d only listened to the geis.… I had to bury her all alone, for Trevallyan could not bring himself to come to her graveside. ’Twas you he was waiting for! We should have stopped the wedding! We should have stopped the wedding!” The old man suddenly began to sob, and the sound sent shivers down Ravenna’s spine. She might have tried to help the old man to his caravan, but despite his frailty, he was larger than she, and she didn’t think she could handle him.

  “Come back! Come back! Don’t leave us!” he called to her, exiting the cemetery.

  Ravenna knew she could outrun him; nonetheless, his strange words sent terror through her heart. She looked back, and O’Rooney stood in the downdrafts of rain, reaching out for her hand as if he wanted to take her somewhere. She was cold and exhausted, and susceptible to rash action. She ran blindly in the direction of her cottage, her hands tearing at the windswept night as if it would get her home faster. Suddenly, out of the black night carriage lanterns flashed before her eyes, sending the rain down around in a golden glow. She fell into what she thought was a mud-filled ditch. Horses’ hooves flailed above her. She screamed. Then all went dark.

  “What the bloody hell’s going on out there, Seamus?” Trevallyan barked from the interior of the carriage.

  “We’ve hit something, me lord. I—I think we’ve hit a girl.…” The carriage driver struggled to hold the horses to keep them from bolting.

  “Christ.” Trevallyan thrust open the carriage door and braced himself for the cold, pelting rain. “I don’t see anything—”

  “Over there, I think. In the ditch,” Seamus called out from the driver’s perch.

  Niall drew up the collar on his greatcoat and stepped to the ditch. He nearly choked when he saw a body, muddied and crumpled, and drowning in the water that gushed from the roadside.

  He slid down the embankment and gathered the small figure in his arms. A wet hank of hair hid the girl’s face. That she was a girl he had no doubt when he took her in his arms. The softness was unmistakable, but in the dark and the rain there was no way to distinguish who she was until he could get her to the lantern of the carriage.

  “Get to the castle in double speed,” Trevallyan ordered, the girl limp in his arms, the rain running in rivulets down his face. He pulled the wet, dirty form into the carriage, and the vehicle took off at breakneck speed.

  He turned up the carriage lantern, heartened the girl was breathing deeply and well. Shrugging out of his heavy wool greatcoat, he wrapped it around her sodden figure, the lamplight revealing all too well how female she was. She wore nothing but a thin, translucent night rail, and though grimy with mud, it was wet enough for him to be able to gauge a small waist and shapely hips. The gown clung lithely to one of the girl’s thighs and her chest left almost nothing to the imagination. He pulled the coat over her full breasts, her chilled nipples like buds straining to bloom against the thin, dirtied linen.

  Leaning her against the upholstered back of the seat, he swept away the muddied curtain of dark hair. A feeling of intense anger and unease swept over him when he saw who she was. The face failed to surprise him. Somehow he knew it would be Ravenna. He had warned her not to do foolish things, not to get into trouble, and now here she was, thrown into his arms once more. She was lucky to be alive, and—his eyes swept her disreputable state of dress—she was shameless. A sickening emotion akin to jealousy seeped into him when he thought of the few possibilities for her being out in the night in such a state of undress.

  He laid his head against the leather seat-back and tried to cool his temper. The girl was a hellion, and he’d known that ever since he’d found her thieving in his bedchamber. He’d hoped the English school might have tamed her—after all, she had acquired some polish there, given the chit’s stiff behavior at dinner—but somehow he might have known it never would. The granddaughter of a reputed witch had to be one of the few females in Lir a man could count on to be running about in the rain in only her nightclothes.

  He heaved a strangely burdened sigh and appraised her condition, doing his best to ignore the picture she had made before he wrapped her in his coat: the way her breasts rose and fell with each rhythmic breath, the way the sodden fabric caught between her legs, outlining a dark, seductive triangle, tantalizingly veiled. He did his bloody best to force it all from his mind and assess the damage.

  There were no bones broken. When he had assured himself of that, he drew his attention to a small red gash on her forehead. It was the only mark on her, and where, no doubt, one of the horses had nicked her with an iron shoe. She moaned as he touched it, a very good sign, and he decided it was not likely to be serious.

  She fell against him as they clambered over the old moat bridge and entered the bailey. He stared down at her red, moist lips parted in unwilling slumber. Limp in his arms, she slept like a princess waiting for a kiss.

  Of course, the girl would be Ravenna. He knew it not so much because she was one of Lir’s truly unpredictable creatures, but because destiny seemed to be throwing her at him whether he wanted her or not. He didn’t believe in the geis and he never would. Still, there were times such as now when he wondered if there wasn’t an odd little force at work in Lir.

  “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” he whispered to the still girl in his arms.

  Then he tipped his head back and laughed. He had almost had a moment of weakness, but it wouldn’t signify. He was a modern man who would defy that stupid geis to the end. He would never fall victim to it. There wasn’t a woman in all of the United Kingdom fine enough for him to beg for her love, and this wounded, bedraggled, disgraced creature certainly wasn’t the one to make him do it.

  With malicious glee, he threw a gauntlet to the gods.

  Chapter 13

  RAVENNA DREAMED of Malachi. She lay in a bed of blushing rose petals as soft as silk pillows, and her childhood friend stood over her, watching her as she slept.

  “Drink this,” he whispered. “The doctor gave you some laudanum for your aching head. You must take some more.”

  She raised herself up on one arm and took the heavy silver goblet. It occurred to her that Malachi owned no silver goblets, but she wasn’t bothered by incongruities in a dream.

  “Now rest,” he told her, his accent more refined than she remembered.

  She lay back against cushions she had mistaken for rose petals. Malachi still watched her, this time from a seat on the edge of her bed. H
e was and had been her only friend. In school, she had clung to his friendship as a child clings to an old, worn-out rag doll. He’d changed, but now he had returned, and she was glad that this Malachi who sat near her was unlike the Malachi on the cliffs.

  He took the goblet. His head close, too close, to hers.

  And suddenly the kiss she hadn’t wanted on the cliffs she now seemed to desire. Forgotten dreams of this man returned to her, and she ached to feel hard lips pressed upon her soft ones; yearned for a strong, gentle hand to run down her back and take her by the waist and pull her against him. In her own penned tales, she told of sweet love, but in her reveries, as now, the need for it burned like a fire tame innocence could not extinguish.

  She needed one tender kiss. But it had to be from the right man. It must come from the right man.

  Was Malachi that man? If not him, who other would there be in Lir?

  She gazed at his face, amazed at the planes and lines she didn’t remember him having before. But they were handsome planes, and the lines were cut deep with character. They drew her to him.

  He was not the Malachi she remembered. Though he had grown to be a man, Malachi had spoken on the cliffs like a child. He had raised his hand to her like a man of no account. Yet she knew the Malachi before her now would not do that. There was wisdom in his eyes, an intelligence wrought of emotional pain that would dictate his behavior. This man was, in truth, a man fully matured. One which she had feared Malachi hadn’t yet become.

  She reached out from the haze of her drugged sleep and touched his cheek. It was smooth, well-groomed, warm. Sensuously hinting of beard.

  He watched her, not moving. And perhaps because he wasn’t moving, and forcing things upon her she wasn’t ready for, she found herself riding with the impulse. She took his jaw in her weak grasp, raised herself up, and pressed her lips against his.