The Ground She Walks Upon

by Meagan Mckinney

  He squeezed his eyes closed. He would not be bested. He would not succumb. Superstition and fate, they were nothing but the products of coincidence. Intelligence was what mattered. Using his brain and not his loins would win him this fight against stupidity. And he wanted to win, didn’t he?

  He growled an oath.

  Then his attention was blessedly distracted by the sound of paper slipping to the floor. He looked down at Ravenna’s dangling arm and found a loose sheet with her practiced scroll covering almost every inch of it. He wondered if she was penning a letter to MacCumhal, and though he knew it was ungentlemanly of him to read it, he had never professed himself to be a gentleman. He leaned forward and retrieved it. He read it all the way through. Twice.

  Grace took the news of her sister’s exile very hard. At night she found she had difficulty sleeping because her mind pictured Skya alone and weeping into her apron. She heard the sound of human wails in a dark woods where no human sounds were ever heard.

  She awoke one morning with the determination to seek out her sister and rescue her. If that was not possible, if Skya refused to return, then Grace wanted to at least bring her sister a stein of red wine and some occasional company.

  The battlements of the castle were crenulated with the silhouette of soldiers. They waited in silent agonies for King Turoe to begin his long-promised siege to find his son, the prince they did not hold. Grace veiled her long blond hair with a crude piece of fustian she had “borrowed” from one of the kitchen workers, then, looking like a common serving wench, she stole out of the heavily guarded bailey. She ran down the promontory on which her father’s castle stood and lost herself in the Dark Woods of Hawthorn below.

  Niall replaced the paper on the table beside Ravenna’s sleeping figure. A little begrudgingly, he had to admit her writing was a fine piece of work. One that showed skill and imagination, and the ability to take its reader by the hand and lead him into another world. Indeed, he wanted to read on, but he knew there was no more. The story was now just a fragment; the rest had yet to be written, but what little he had read proved an intelligence and sensitivity he didn’t want to grant existed in a girl he had found running shamelessly in the night.

  Reluctantly, he forced himself to look at her. He’d been rather shocked by the sight of her in the chair, but now the shock was lessening. He had bought the chair for his wife long ago, before he even knew who his wife would be. There was irony in the geis, if nothing else. The thing was beginning to have a personality of its own, mocking him at every turn.

  He looked down at the sleeping girl. Her pink lips were parted in slumber and her heavy black lashes created smudged shadows beneath her closed eyes. She looked pale and vulnerable and in need of protection. It rather irked him to see her that way. Pale and vulnerable. Trustingly asleep in his chamber, in his chair, as if there were no such things as big, bad wolves.

  A bit more roughly than needed, he placed his hand beneath her jaw and pushed her head up.

  Slowly, the glorious black lashes fluttered open. She met his gaze with a steady one of her own. He was pleased to see the slight glimmer of fear in the violet depths of her eyes. Think what he might of the girl, he had to admit she was not unintelligent.

  “You should not be out of bed,” he said brusquely.

  “I was not only out of bed, but on my way out the door.” She pulled back from his touch, irritation enlivening her dark-angel face.

  He glanced with amusement between the bed and the massive carved doorway. “And you needed a nap in between? Methinks you tire easily.”

  She didn’t bother to answer; instead, as if a dread thought had just occurred to her, she straightened in the chair, swept back her hair, and covertly searched for the paper. When she saw it on the table, she seemed to relax.

  “What have you been doing all evening?” He was pleased how the question seemed to unnerve her.

  “I—I was reading. I didn’t think you’d mind. You’ve so many books.” With apprehension in her eyes, she stared at him like a mouse waiting for the barn cat.

  “What have you been scribbling over here?”

  He nonchalantly reached for the paper on the table. She leapt out of the seat like a wraith.

  “Don’t look at that! ’Tis mine!” She snatched it from his hand. To her obvious chagrin, he began to laugh.

  Glaring at him, she said, “You read this while I was asleep. How dare you! How rude!”

  “I thought you might be penning inflammatory pamphlets. One can’t be too careful with the likes of your friends, me girl,” he said, unable to stop the black laughter that emanated from his chest.

  “You thought no such thing. You were snooping. At least admit your crime.”

  “All right. I was snooping. So what exactly are you writing? I couldn’t decipher it.”

  She appeared wounded. “I’m writing a novel.”

  His laughter broke out anew. “Indeed? That’s rich.” He could see she despised him. Her venomous stare could kill a boar.

  “And why do you mock me? What’s wrong with my becoming a novelist? ’Tis a fairy tale I’m writing. I think it most suitable for women.”

  “You’ll never get it published. Why don’t you spend your time sketching, or improving your needlework like any other gentlewoman?”

  “Give me one reason why I shall fail at this.” She placed her hands on her hips and dared him to answer.

  He stared at her, dismayed at her spirit, beguiled by her appearance. “I can give you one reason, and then a multitude,” he said slowly. Despite wanting to appear aloof, he couldn’t stop his gaze from flickering down her figure. Admiration—and something not nearly so pure—crossed his features as he regarded the way her curves wore his dark, masculine dressing gown. What was it about a woman in heavy masculine clothes that made her seem five times softer and more curvaceous than in her own clothes? Looking at her, he knew he would be forever vexed by the question.

  “You won’t get published,” he stated, “because you’re a female. Publishers just don’t publish novels by a woman.”

  “They’ve published some women. And women may like to read what I write. I write about heroines.”

  “You’re ignoring the fact that the chaps in London aren’t going to take you seriously. Publishing is an ancient business, run by men. They don’t care to read what women like. All that romance. Why, I shudder to think about it.”

  “But if there was money to be made, they would publish a woman.”

  He heaved a sigh, wondering how he could make this small, fragile, bulldoggish female understand. “Women may indeed want to read novels such as yours, but they’d best settle on penny gothics because that’s all there will ever be for you ladies. No man wants to read about a woman. That is, unless she’s the victim of a tragedy.”

  “I’ve tragedy in my novels.”

  “Then why don’t you take a nom de plume. Niall Trevallyan is a nice name.”

  Her expression seemed very far away, as if she were already having reveries about her success. “No, I shall write under my own name, ‘Ravenna.’ I shall become a great novelist, and if the literary community laughs at me and disparages my work because my heroines triumph over their tragedies, and over men, then so be it. I shall be beloved by my readers.”

  “Silly girl. You will lose that battle.”

  “‘A wild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not stifle it.… I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society.…’” Ravenna stared at him, and added, “…and in publishing.”

  He groaned. He couldn’t believe it. Where had this child been spawned? He couldn’t quite pin her down. Just when he thought he had her character assessed, he discovered another facet of her character he’d never counted on. “Don’t throw Mary Wollstonecraft at me. And where did you read all her nonsense anyway?”

  “One of my teachers had A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in her room. She let me read it whenever I was invited to tea.
”

  He stared at her, confounded. Ireland was rumbling with rebellion for the Home Rule, and yet, here was this little ember of a woman talking of equality between the sexes. Perhaps ’twas a good thing she was a bastard and not raised papist. He couldn’t wait to see what Father Nolan would have to say about her outrageous thinking. Wickedly, he made a mental note to invite the father and Ravenna both to tea. Already he had several incendiary comments tucked away in his head to ignite that little tête-à-tête.

  “I shall get published, just you wait, Lord Trevallyan.”

  Her determination impressed him. “They will never accept you.”

  “Perhaps not men. But that’s only half the population.”

  “’Tis the only half that matters.”

  “Now.”

  She tossed him a quiet, secretive smile that could have seduced Saint Patrick to stroll through the fires of all hell. His stomach rolled into strange knots as he watched her clutch the satin lapels of the dressing gown to her breasts and walk to the coal-lit hearth.

  She was nothing like he had thought she was. Every time he had her caged, he only had to look behind him and she was there, taunting him to capture her once more.

  “Is this career as a great novelist going to save you and your grandmother from poverty, or will you marry Chesham instead?”

  She extended her hands toward the glowing coals, her composure unruffled by his thinly veiled insult. “What business this is of yours, I shall never know, but since you insist upon prying into my life, I will tell you. I pray my work gets published, but Grania and I do not depend upon it. We receive a stipend every month from my father.”

  “Father…?” He nearly choked. “But you don’t get that money from him. You don’t even know who he is.” He could have kicked himself once the words were out.

  Her eyes glittered like a cat’s. Angrily, she said, “My father loved me dearly, Lord Trevallyan. Though he hadn’t the chance to marry my mother, he nonetheless saw to my care and upkeep. Grania won’t admit where the money comes from, but I know just the same that it is my father who has provided for me. He loved me.”

  Now that’s a real fairy tale, he thought, silently watching her, but she was so poignantly defiant about her father’s love, nothing short of a pistol to his head would have made him admit at that moment that it was he, not her disreputable father, who had paid for her upkeep all these years. “My guess is that he did not deserve such a devoted daughter,” he said softly.

  She seemed pained, as if struck by regret. “No. I think he must have deserved much better.”

  There was a long moment as they both stared into the fire, each seemingly absorbed in his or her own thoughts.

  Finally, she whispered, “Have they caught Malachi yet?”

  Niall looked at her melancholy profile until it was burned into his mind. “They say he has escaped into another county. No doubt his cronies’ll get him shipped to America. You’ll probably never see him again.”

  The pain in her eyes made him suck in his breath. Anger grew and consumed him. It licked like flames at his heart. Especially when he saw the crystalline sparkle of tears in her eyes.

  “What do you see in MacCumhal?” he demanded cruelly. “He’s a rotten character. He’d only have gotten you into trouble; worse yet, he might have gotten you killed. He’s gone, and I say good riddance. He saved us the length of rope we might have wasted to see him hanged.” He stared at her, oddly exhilarated by the anger in her gaze. When she said nothing, he couldn’t resist the temptation to push her over the edge. “I see you sorrow at his departure. You cry because you did not have an end like your mother’s.”

  “Malachi is my friend. If you were something other than the devil himself, you would know what it is like to lose one’s friend.”

  She leashed her fury well, and he was sorely disappointed. He wanted to see her lose control. He wouldn’t have even minded if she had tried to slap him because he would have enjoyed the tussle. Better yet, he would have won.

  She looked up from the fire, giving him that steady, composed gaze he knew she had learned in the English boarding school. For the first time ever, he regretted having sent her away.

  “If you would excuse me, I’d like to be alone now,” she said.

  He cursed himself for forgetting her fragile health. Suddenly the shadows beneath her eyes, her pale, drawn face, gave him a small stab of guilt. “Of course. You must not be feeling well.”

  “I’m feeling fine, Lord Trevallyan.” She stared at him in a rather arch manner. “’Tis just that I would like my privacy to pray that Malachi reaches his destination with God’s speed. To pray for his soul and his safety.”

  Jealousy struck him like a hot poker. Before he could stop himself, he released a bitter laugh. “It’s pitiful that you should pray for him. What? Has your literary soul taken with his rebellious impulses? How cliché, how stupid.”

  “Stop it.” Her English facade finally began to crack beneath her Irish fire. “I won’t take this. You’re not my father, and you’re not my lover. You cannot scorn me and tell me what to do. I won’t listen to you.”

  “I’m not your father … but I would be your lover.” He stared at her, shocked by the truth that had come from within. “Oh, yes,” he whispered, his voice hushed by the revelation. “That I would be.”

  The sheer, unadulterated horror that crossed her features would have made him laugh had it not been for the fact that it bruised him sorely. Covering over his vulnerability, he sneered, “So, shall we all queue up? MacCumhal, Chesham, and now me? You could have us all, you know. Each in our own way.” The words felt like bile on his tongue.

  “I hate you.” Tears of hurt glistened in her eyes. “No man has ever made me hate like I hate you.”

  He stared at her, wondering if he was pleased the geis would now never come true, or torn apart that this woman who was slowly winding him around her finger despised him as she despised no other on earth.

  Numb and silent, suddenly longing for his whiskey decanter, he bowed and left her in peace.

  Ravenna slumped to the chair as soon as the door shut behind him. In tearful agony, she wondered how he could treat her so viciously one minute and so tenderly the next. As she sat hugging the arm of the chair, it crossed her mind that Trevallyan might be a lunatic. It was possible he was the product of decades of bad English breeding. But she knew if Niall Trevallyan was insane, he hid it well behind an intelligent, orderly, mature facade.

  She closed her eyes, her injured head and pride draining her of energy. She did hate him. He made her feel like a whore. He made her feel loose and dirty and stupid. He’d done worse than even Malachi had done.

  And yet…

  And yet, he had spoken to her about Mary Wollstonecraft. He had rooms full of books that few in her world seemed to appreciate. She could talk to him when he wasn’t being cruel, and she felt he listened—a strange and unique trait in a man. In some ways, Niall Trevallyan had many of the characteristics that she wanted in a man. His company offered not just the flattery of male desire, but a man to talk to, to read with, to walk with in the garden, holding hands. Were there no other men such as he? She recounted in her mind all the men she knew. When she got to the picture of the count and herself walking in the garden and talking about Mary Wollstonecraft, she suddenly choked on a giggle. The sad truth was there seemed to be no man out there for her. She wanted a hero; she dreamed her father had been a hero, she wrote about heroes, but where was the one for her?

  Against her will she stared at the massive carved double doors where Trevallyan had exited.

  Chapter 15

  MORNING TEA was carried into the private apartment at precisely eight o’clock the next morning. A small, gray-haired, sweet-faced Irishwoman whom Ravenna thought was named Katey brought it to her on a silver tray with hot crumpets wrapped in lacy white linens. Too officious for questions, Katey addressed Ravenna’s bleary-eyed countenance with a pleasant “good morning,” then briskly
screened off the bed with the bedcurtains.

  From behind the green damask walls, Ravenna heard the noise of a stream of heavy-footed servants bringing hot water up from the kitchen. Her nerves were set on edge by the screech of a copper bath dragged across bare stone and filled with bucket after leather bucket of boiling water. Unsure what was expected of her, she pulled the covers to her chin and waited for Katey to come fetch her. The desire to bathe was strong—she still wore the mud that she had fallen in so many nights ago—but her desire for privacy was stronger, and she was certainly not going to trot nude to the bath before what seemed to be a dozen servants.

  Katey, in her exceedingly cheerful manner, solved the dilemma. She dismissed the lead-footed army, and when the last had begun the descent down the tower stairs, the maid drew back the bedcurtains, sprinkled French rose petals into the bathwater, and disappeared herself, leaving Ravenna astonished at the almost mechanical efficiency by which the household was run.

  Of course, the servants would be forced to be exacting in order to meet Niall Trevallyan’s arrogant expectations, she thought crossly. She stared at the tub for a long time, convincing herself that if she had the energy to make it to the tub, she had the energy to find her way home. Her head still hurt, but not nearly as acutely as it had the day before. But there was no solving the problem of clothes. She had none other than Trevallyan’s batiste shirt. Even Trevallyan’s dressing gown seemed to have disappeared with Katey.

  With a weary sigh, she drew away the covers and climbed down from the bed’s high mattress. She unbuttoned the shirt and trailed it on the ground behind her, dropping it before the tub, then she sank within the sweet warmth of the water. After pouring herself a cup of tea from the nearby table, she sighed again, this time for another reason entirely. For the first time in her life she was experiencing true luxury.

  Dreamily, she sipped her tea and blew at the fragrant, rising steam of the tub water. The copper tub’s contents heated and soothed her sore muscles. Soon, she thought she would either be fit enough to run home, or would fall asleep.