The Ground She Walks Upon

by Meagan Mckinney

  The thought made her stomach churn. But she wondered how to deny it. She was convinced that Malachi wouldn’t have succeeded in bedding her. Trevallyan, on the other hand, seemed to have some strange kind of power over her.

  She set her jaw. The only solution was to recognize that power and keep it from ever controlling her again. She could think clearly now, and she saw the pitfalls. There was no having a relationship with Trevallyan. He was too dangerous, but more than that, he was above her class. He was also crazed. The whole circumstance of this trip proved that. He thought to hold her prisoner; the very idea was frighteningly absurd. She could only conclude that it would be suicide to give her heart to such a manipulative, powerful man as he. He would twist it to his satisfaction, then trample it when his amusement was over. She knew better than to let him do that. Now that she had fallen, she was going to see to it that she never fell again.

  A knock sounded at the door, startling her. She expected the serving girl, but she opened the door and, instead, came face to face with the devil who seemed to possess her.

  “Yes?” she asked coolly, her hand grasping the doorknob in case it should prove prudent to close it quickly.

  The corner of Trevallyan’s mouth turned up in a weary, yet arrogant, smile. “You act as if I’m here for a visit.”

  “Aren’t you?” She was proud of the way she controlled her voice. She wanted him to think she was as cold as stone.

  “No.” His hand caught the edge of the door, and he pushed.

  Her heart beat a tattoo in her chest. She tried to close the door on him, but it was futile. He was inside her room before she could blink.

  “You can’t just storm in here. This is my room and I want to be alone in it,” she snapped.

  He unfastened his watch and fob and tossed them on the bureau. “Be alone, if you wish, but not in my room.”

  “Your room?”

  He eyed her, his icy aqua gaze brazenly assessing. “Did you think this was your room? That this common little inn had a thousand rooms just like this one so that all and sundry might have their privacy?”

  “I—” She clenched her teeth. “In truth, I hadn’t given it much thought. You see, ’tis rare that one such as myself sees how the Ascendency lives.”

  He ignored her sarcasm and sat down on the edge of the bed. She watched him, noticing there was fatigue around his eyes; his mouth was a grim, troubled line. He had yet to remove his frock coat, and he rubbed his wounded arm as if it pained him.

  A stab of guilt ran through her. Then one of anger. She had no responsibility for what had happened to him. She was not a rebel and had never been. Instead, she was an outcast, and if the Ascendency scorned her, the people of Lir did as well, for she was nobody to all of them; not Anglican, not Catholic, not even legitimate. Their troubles were not her troubles.

  But somehow, as she watched him painfully try to ease out of his frock coat, she knew she was entwined in those troubles.

  Frowning, she said quietly, “I don’t hate the Ascendency. I didn’t send that note to you. I wouldn’t do such a thing. I would never hurt anyone.”

  In a deep, raw voice, he said, “Even if you had sent that note, it wouldn’t change anything.”

  She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise. “How can you say that? You were almost killed. Seamus was killed.”

  “It still wouldn’t change my desire for you.”

  The words sent a strange tingle down her spine. Her gaze met his. He looked angry, as if he held her responsible for emotions he didn’t want.

  But possession was what really mattered to him, and at times such as these, she knew she’d do well to remember it.

  “You mean it wouldn’t change your lust for me, don’t you?” she whispered.

  “Lust, desire, love, what’s the difference?”

  She didn’t answer. It was difficult to swallow her hurt. She thought about the vault where his dead wife and child—a child of betrayal—lay in eternal rest. The imagined faces of all his rejected fiancées passed across her eyes, and suddenly, just by his question, she understood why so many things had gone wrong.

  He ignored her and began pulling off his boot. He cursed as he struggled without a bootjack.

  “It seems you need your valet. Why didn’t you bring him?” she asked, trying for an innocuous subject.

  He looked up at her and smirked. “And where would I hide you in these small rooms? It wouldn’t bode well for your reputation to have him see you here, don’t you think?”

  She might have been grateful that he had sought to protect her, but it was difficult to do so when he was so arrogant. Trying to head off a temper, she sat in a plush brown velvet chair by the fire and refused to even look at him. She was beginning to see just how difficult this journey was going to be.

  Another knock sounded at her door, diverting her. Trevallyan answered it and opened the door to Gavan the innkeeper and his three boys. The stout man jovially set down the traveling trunks that each boy carried on his shoulders, accepted Trevallyan’s coins with numerous ingratiating bows, then removed himself and his entourage, leaving the two alone once more.

  The door clicked behind Gavan, and Ravenna returned her melancholy attention back to the fire. She made several ungracious mental remarks to herself about the master needing three trunks for his accoutrements when she, in her poverty—even if she’d been allowed to bring a bag, which she had not—would be hard-pressed to fill a carpetbag with all her worldly belongings. She was stewing in this idea when a sound made her look up.

  It was almost like a small groan of pain. She turned her head and found Trevallyan still trying to remove his boots. On the bed next to him lay his frock coat, and he struggled with the boot in just his shirtsleeves. His left sleeve was ringed with blood.

  A small gasp of shock passed her lips.

  He gave her a censorious glance.

  “Your wound…” she breathed softly.

  He dismissed her with a flick of his cold eyes. “’Tis nothing.”

  “But it’s bled through your entire bandage.” She couldn’t stop the wave of concern that overtook her. As much as she might fear him, he was only mortal after all.

  Against her better judgment, she rose from the chair and went to him. Silently, she grasped his boot and pulled. He watched her with a wariness in his eyes.

  “You’ve done too much today,” she admonished.

  “I’m a grown man. I can decide what is too much.”

  “The wound may not be a bad one, but you were still shot.” Heaving like a serving wench, she finally managed to pull off his other boot. “The blood on the bandage is fresh. It’s not a good sign.”

  “T’ank you, Moother dere,” he said in a lowly accent.

  She wanted to hit him. “Where are some fresh bandages?”

  “In my trunk.”

  She spun around. “You have three trunks.”

  “Mine is the wooden one. It belonged to my father.”

  She nodded and went to the old burl walnut trunk. “If this is your trunk, I should summon Gavan. He’s brought us too many trunks.”

  “The others are for you.”

  On her knees, rummaging through his linen shirts, she looked up at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I have no trunks.”

  “I had Fiona pack some of my wife’s things. Though the gowns are a little out of date, I think you’ll find them satisfactory. I can assure you they were never worn. Helen’s greed and caprice for new gowns was only surpassed, I came to find out, by her greed and caprice…” his jaw tightened, “… for men.”

  Ravenna stared at him, hating the way his hurt seemed to seep into her and mangle her emotions. She didn’t want to feel it because if she did, she would end up in his bed again, without marriage or respectability.

  “Here are the bandages,” she said breezily. She walked over to him and placed the strips of boiled linen on the heavy velvet coverlet. He removed his bloodstained shirt and waited for her to begin.

>   Her nerves jumped from seeing him half-naked. Dark, tawny hair covered his chest, a chest that was still smooth and hard, and one that tempted her to run her fingers across it, damning her with the memory of how she had done just that the night before. Like a physician viewing a patient, she tried to mentally distance herself from Trevallyan’s body, coldly attributing his youthful physique to the many years of hard riding to the hounds. Still, no matter how hard she tried to rationalize and extricate herself from her attraction to him, her emotions foiled her time and again. She drew close, and her shaking hands sloshed water from the basin she was holding. He rose to take it from her and the water spattered the wool rug. Becoming undone, she threw a towel to the ground and forced herself to concentrate on the bloody knots on his arm.

  But as she feared, his proximity affected her. She couldn’t stop herself from studying him. His silvery-blond hair was slicked back and brushed to his nape, a look well suited to him. The severity of it highlighted a classic profile and the cold beauty of his eyes. In his youth he’d probably been considered quite handsome, but now, having aged, his boyish prettiness had roughened, and matured, and secretly, she preferred him that way. He looked like a man. She inhaled and reluctantly relished the dark, sensual scent of him. He smelled like a man, too.

  He groaned, and a muscle bunched at his jaw. She looked down and saw how careless she was being. The dried, bloody strips had nearly bonded to his skin, and she was pulling them away as if they were the slick peel from a grape.

  She murmured an apology, then dipped the towel in the water and tried to dampen the stuck bandages. Mutely, he gave himself to her ministrations, and only after she’d wrapped the clean linen around his arm and tied the final knot did he seem to relax from the pain.

  “That should feel much better now,” she whispered, finding herself looking down at him, their faces only inches apart.

  His gaze flickered downward to a glossy, raven-black curl that rested on her bosom. After her bath, she had neglected to pin her hair and now the heavy length of it hung loose and free. The headmistress of Weymouth-Hampstead had hated her hair, telling her time and again that the unruly mass was a sign of her sinful Irish ancestry. And Ravenna had been slapped too many times when the headmistress had found her tresses not properly pinned and tamed to rigid satisfaction to now not believe it.

  But if it were true, Trevallyan’s gaze refuted it. He touched the curl with something akin to worship in his eyes. Unable to even breathe, she stood still while his finger caressed it, his knuckles pressing into her breast, his thumb tracing the curve while a sensual tingle ran down her spine.

  Then, without warning, he slipped his hand behind the dark curtain of hair at her nape and pressed her forward.

  “Don’t,” she whimpered, their lips barely touching.

  He searched her gaze for a long moment, pain lingering in his own.

  “Don’t,” she pleaded again, terrified of losing her razor-thin hold on her self-control with every brush of his hard lips.

  He clearly wanted to ignore the protest. His hand tightened at her nape; another hand drew around her waist, pulling her between his knees.

  “Don’t … I beg of you.…” she wept, hating the melting sensation he gave her as much as she despised her wellspring of tears.

  As if his limbs were made of wood, he slowly, awkwardly, reluctantly dropped his hold. But his eyes never wavered from hers. A silent communication passed between them. His desire for her was as obvious and eloquent as the knot in his cravat. The English gentleman within him had stopped himself upon her refusal, but the Celt in him, the warrior whose ancestors had claimed Ireland for their own, who had danced in pagan rhythms for their god, raged at the idea of being refused. By female instinct, she knew without a doubt that the bloodshed of this battle would ultimately be placed upon her brow.

  He stood, and she stepped from the circle of his arms, wiping her damp cheeks, willing away her cowardice.

  “Get some sleep. There’s another long day ahead.” He ground his teeth while he spoke, the muscles in his jawline creating a fascinating display of male anger.

  “Fine,” she said, her even tone belying her red eyes.

  “I’ll be downstairs if you should need me.”

  Thank God, she wanted to say, but stopped herself. It was too cruel. Even in her naïveté, she could see he took her rejection hard.

  “Good night,” he said stiffly.

  “Good night,” she whispered.

  Then she was alone.

  Later in the night, after restless dreams of joy and terror, Ravenna awoke in the large bed. Belowstairs she could hear the barkeeper barking orders to a servant. She surmised it was late, because she could no longer hear the jovial shouts and drunken singing from the patrons.

  Then, like a convict who has glimpsed the face of his own damnation, she realized an arm was slung over her hip. A man’s arm. Heavy and warm, in lax possession.

  While she had slept, Trevallyan had entered the room and gotten into bed with her.

  Slowly so as not to wake him, she reached beneath the covers. Her palm met warm, hard skin. A well-muscled torso. A line of smooth, crisp hair that arrowed downward to a place she was not brave enough to explore. She pulled her hand back, not surprised he slept in the nude. Once, at their last dinner at the castle, he’d told her he preferred to hear poetry to the hum and bustle of the city; preferred to see trees to even the most ornately painted walls; preferred to taste wine than waste his tongue with talk.

  He’d told her his Celtic blood made him more a man of the senses than of propriety. And now, alone with her in this tiny inn, he’d convinced her of it.

  “Go to sleep.”

  The voice rumbled from his side of the bed. She drew back to the edge of the mattress, but short of scrambling from the bed, she couldn’t slide his arm from her hip.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she choked, unable to see him in the pitch black room.

  “If I married you, if I gave you respectability, I could be here every night.”

  She stiffened at the implication. Her feminine guile told her this was what she should want. Maneuvering a rich and titled man into marriage was supposed to be the pinnacle of a woman’s life purpose. So why did the temptation seem so hollow? So pointless?

  If she loved him, wouldn’t she throw herself into his arms?

  If he loved her, would he hold her prisoner, manipulate her life as if he were marionetting a play, imply that she was somehow not worthy of respect until her name was permanently linked to his?

  The answers stung her, confused her. But one thing she knew for certain: Marriage with Trevallyan would never work. Four women had come to that conclusion, three of them spared of the consequences. No doubt he would prove to be a tyrant. She would no longer be able to write; he would scoff at her dreams of publishing. The supercilious Lord Trevallyan would not permit her to be a person in her own right because the gulf between their social classes was unbridgeable. He would look down on her, patronize her, suck away all her will to fight. The only way a marriage would work would be for him to respect her. And he would never do that while she held so little power.

  “I don’t want to marry. I want to write.”

  Her answer left him silent. His arm grew heavier upon her thinly covered hip.

  “I’ll make you want this. I swear with all the blood on my Irish soul, I will do it.”

  The anger in his voice made her want to weep from the futility of it.

  “I’ll give you anything you want, Ravenna. Anything.” He spoke the words like a curse.

  “All I want is to see the home of my father.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “And to be left alone.”

  As she expected, he made no more vows.

  Chapter 21

  THE NEXT day they drove into the Antrim mountains, keeping as far east as they could in order to avoid the muck and traffic of Belfast City. As the terrain grew more rough, Trevallyan grew more silent, more chivalrous, more
distant.

  But Ravenna’s excitement swelled as they crossed each hill, as if she sensed a meeting with destiny. At one time the man who had fathered her had looked at these same green hills and dreamed, perhaps, the same dreams as she did.

  “Your color is high this day,” Niall commented, his gaze cool and faraway.

  She turned her eyes from the open window. “When will we get there?”

  “Not for another night. Cinaeth Castle is remote and difficult to reach. I fear tonight we may not even find ourselves an inn.”

  A blush stained her cheeks at the mention of the inn. The entire night had been spent in an unseemly fashion. Unable to summon the fight to make him leave, she had simply stayed in the bed, lying stiffly on her side, sure she would not sleep the rest of the night.

  But slumber, if not propriety, eventually took over, and in the morning when she awoke, she was disturbed to find her limbs intimately entwined with his. She wore a night rail, one she had found in the trunks, but the thin, shell-pink silk was of little protection. Lying next to him, in the intimacy of one bed, she felt everything: the heat of his skin, the bunch of his muscles, the brush of crisp hair on his forearm as it lay across her chest, seemingly flung there in his sleep. She had tried to rise, but the long length of her hair was trapped beneath him.

  Even in his sleep, Trevallyan held her captive.

  Nothing was right. They were together at a strange inn, unmarried, and she, wearing the unworn undergarments fashioned for his deceased wife. Waking as she did should have been one of the worst moments of her life. But yet, the sun rose through the diamond panes of glass, laying a cheerful checkerboard of light over the bed. Swallows sang in the tree beneath the slightly open window. And though the hearth was cold, she was warm, wonderfully, wholly warm, and oddly well-rested, and enveloped by a foreign emotion that was very much like … rightness.

  Even now in the carriage the feeling carried over. The sky overhead sparkled like a newly polished aquamarine, and the hills were quilted in Ireland’s emerald green. Perhaps it was just the weather that had her feeling optimistic, but when she peeked at the handsome man sitting across from her in the carriage and remembered how he’d looked in slumber, the tension gone from his face, the hard lines softened until they almost disappeared, a boyish quirk to his lips that made her fight the strange urge to kiss him awake, to her dismay, the feeling of well-being deepened and bloomed. It was all unaccountable.