by Laurel McKee
And that was why she had to go away. She didn’t belong to him. He would only destroy her in the end.
“She’s a stubborn colleen,” he said. “She wouldn’t go.”
“Of course she wouldn’t.” Sarah laid her hand gently on his shoulder to roll him onto his back. “She is in love with you.”
In love? With him? A spark of something like hope rose up in his heart, but he shoved it back down again. Love had no place in his life, only duty to his people and his name. She had a duty to her own family, one that was so very different from his own. The Blacknalls and the McTeers might as well live on different planets, not miles apart in Kildare.
“She’s not in love with me. I’m just a bit of an adventure for her,” he said. “She’s practically betrothed to Grant Dunmore.”
“Is she indeed?” Sarah carefully unwound his stained makeshift bandage to examine the wound. “Poor girl. That one will never be faithful to anyone but himself.”
Conlan thought of his cousin with Lady Cannondale and hoped Anna would never really marry him. He was entirely unworthy of her. But then, was there a man anywhere who could be truly worthy of her?
“They say he’s the most handsome man in Dublin,” he said. He winced as she carefully cleaned the wound. “Rich, too. Some ladies would fancy that.”
“Not me. Not her, either, I think. Looks fade, and I wouldn’t trust whatever the source is of his riches. He would bore her in a fortnight.”
“Would he?” Conlan asked, hopeful in spite of himself.
“Of course. What use is a man like that to women like us? There’s no fire, no adventure, nothing to believe in.” She poured whiskey over the reddened flesh, making him shout at the sting. “And no honor, either.”
Conlan remembered the flash of hurt in Anna’s beautiful eyes when he sent her away, his heart aching to lose her. Then he remembered her shouts of temper. “Perhaps. But I think I have lost her.”
“Oh, no. She’ll be back. And what’s more, I think you want her to be back.”
Of course, he wanted her back. “No, it’s too dangerous. She’d be better off with Grant, despite all his faults.”
Sarah sighed as she unwound a fresh bandage. “You have not listened to a word I’ve said. But you’ll learn. She will never give up in what she believes in. She’s too much like you, Conlan. Even I can see that.”
She leaned down and gently kissed his cheek. “Oh, Conlan, my friend,” she said. “I’m going to enjoy watching this little battle of yours so very much. I have a feeling you are going down to defeat.”
Chapter Eighteen
Welcome, welcome!” Lady Connemara cried as the doors to her home swung open. “And a merry Christmas to you all. We will be such a fun party now that you have arrived.”
Anna clambered down from their carriage, stiff and sore after their journey from Dublin. She had been hoping for a quiet evening, supper and a bath in her chamber, maybe an hour’s reading with Caroline, but it seemed that was not to be. Over Lady Connemara’s shoulder, she glimpsed a bustling blur of activity in the soaring, pale marble foyer, and she could hear laughter and carols on a pianoforte.
Christmas was already under way, the largest, most raucous holiday in celebration-loving Ireland. Even the traditional holly wreaths were hung on every door and window, a particularly Irish touch.
“We are so happy to be here, Harriet,” Katherine said. She and Caroline climbed down from the carriage behind Anna as the servants leaped into action to retrieve their baggage. “Time in the country is always so restful.”
“Oh, Dublin is too crowded for words,” Lady Connemara said. “We are so quiet and peaceful here. But do come in, it is perishingly cold! Your rooms will soon be ready, and in the meantime, there is tea and brandy punch in the drawing room, and my daughters are entertaining everyone with some music of the season.”
Caroline took Anna’s arm as they hurried up the shallow marble steps into the house. She balanced a stack of books in the crook of her other arm. The foyer echoed with shouts and cries, running footsteps, shrieks, and music from the open drawing room doors.
“The wren, the wren, the king of all birds! St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze, up with the kettle and down with the pan, and give us a penny for to bury the wren!” they sang loudly.
“Peaceful and quiet indeed,” Caroline said wryly. “I doubt I will be able to think one single thought all week. They’re like a flock of wrens themselves.”
Anna laughed. “It is Christmas, Caro! It’s meant to be noisy.”
“She hasn’t been sparing with the decorations, either,” Caroline said. She gestured to the loops of greenery twined around the gilded staircase banisters, tied with huge red satin bows. Every painting was surmounted by sprigs of holly, and an elaborate kissing bough trailing white streamers hung in the drawing room doorway.
“It is lovely,” Anna said. “Very—festive.”
Despite the puzzlement and anger that she felt when Adair sent her away so abruptly, her spirits rose with the music and the bright decorations. It was Christmas! She had always loved an Irish Christmas with all the parties and dancing. Surely she could feel more like herself now. She only wanted to be herself, to discover who that was. She studied the kissing bough over the door, made of mistletoe and white ribbons, and remembered that Christmas was a time for miracles. For new beginnings.
“Come along, Caro,” she said. “I’m quite parched for some of that brandy punch.”
“Anna.” Caroline tugged at her arm, her expression serious. “I need to talk to you about something important.”
Caroline wanted to talk to her about something important? Anna’s high spirits chilled. That sort of thing never happened. “Whatever is the matter? Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Caroline shook her head. “No, nothing like that. I just don’t want Mama to hear.”
“We can walk in the garden soon, if we can escape the company,” Anna said, intrigued. “Surely no one will follow us in this cold.”
“Yes, of course.” Caroline couldn’t say more, as other guests arrived and they were all swept into the crowded drawing room. Friends quickly surrounded them, pulling them into the music and laughter. The lush marble and brocade room smelled of evergreen boughs and brandy, of woodsmoke and hothouse red roses, and drew her into the holiday company.
Anna trailed behind Caroline through the winter-dormant garden, around the deserted stone summerhouse and along a pathway that led up the slope of a hill. At its crest, she could glimpse the high wall of the Connemaras’ estate and over it a meadow with a large house in the distance. Was that Adair Court? she wondered. So very near, but so far. Maybe if she could go out riding one afternoon, just to explore and look about…
“Are you quite set on marrying Grant Dunmore?” Caroline suddenly asked.
“What?” Anna said, startled. She kicked impatiently at the gravel path under her foot. “Why does everyone assume that? I don’t think I ever said I wanted to marry Sir Grant. And he has not asked me.”
Caroline shrugged. “I suppose his dinner party was something of a declaration of his intent. He wants a hostess for his fine house, and he seems to think it should be you.”
“Is that all I can be?” Anna said quietly. “An ornament?”
“Certainly not! No one who has the craftiness to sneak out of the house right under Mama’s nose should waste their talents on mere parties. But…”
“But what? Come on, Caro! Obviously you brought me out here, away from the brandy punch and music, to say something. Tell me.”
“I just don’t think you should marry him!” Caroline blurted.
Anna looked at her sister in surprise. “Why not?”
“Because he is not good enough for you. I don’t—I don’t think he’s terribly honest. Or faithful.”
“Oh, Caro,” Anna said with a bitter laugh. “Are there any honest, faithful men?”
“There was our father. And Will. And—well, maybe that’s it
. I don’t know.”
“Two out of millions, then,” Anna said. “I’m sure Grant Dunmore is no worse than any other man of our class. But you’re correct in saying he’s not right for me. I’m not sure I’m really the sort of wife he wants.”
Caroline gave a relieved smile. Her tense shoulders slumped in her cloak. “Truly?”
“Truly. I would at least have to know him much better first.”
“Anna, Caroline!” their mother suddenly called from the terrace. “Do come inside now, it’s too cold to be out.”
“We’re coming, Mama,” Caroline answered. She turned and hurried toward the house. Now that her duty in warning Anna was done, she seemed to retreat back to her quiet, self-contained ways.
But Anna caught up with her and grabbed her arm. “Caro, tell me—why did you feel the need to warn me about Sir Grant? Did something happen at the dinner party?”
Caroline hesitated and then shook her head firmly. “I just have a bad feeling about him, that’s all. I shouldn’t have said anything at all.” She gently drew away her arm and dashed up the terrace steps into the house.
Anna followed slowly. She was quite sure Caroline wasn’t telling her the whole story, but she couldn’t press the point now. The drawing room was filled with new arrivals, including Lord Hartley, who swiftly claimed Caroline’s attention.
Anna wondered if her sister knew that Hartley was not good enough for her. Caro was so pretty and clever, so young, yet she was determined to marry this middle-aged, balding, child-laden man. If Grant Dunmore sought an ornament, Hartley surely wanted a research assistant and a stepmother for his children. But at least he did seem to be kind—and faithful.
She glimpsed Grant standing in the doorway beneath the large kissing bough. He looked very handsome indeed, clad in his travel garb of greatcoat and doeskin breeches, with his coppery hair tousled. Yet the look in his eyes as he watched her was one she did not care for. It seemed almost—proprietary.
Or maybe it was just Caroline’s cryptic warning that made her imagine things. She pushed away the disquiet and plunged into the crowd with determined gaiety. It was still Christmas, after all. She couldn’t let worries over a man she didn’t want—and one she very much did want, but couldn’t have—entirely spoil her holiday.
Chapter Nineteen
Anna reined in her horse at the crest of a high hill. From that vantage point, high above the rolling fields, she could see for what seemed like miles and miles. The Connemara house, with all its convivial company and holiday cheer, was left far behind, and she was alone with the dark gray sky and the cold wind.
Yet it was not just the urge to be alone, to gallop over the fields and feel the rush of the wind in her hair, that drove her away that morning. Just past the low stone wall at the foot of the hill lay the Adair estate.
Her horse pawed the ground restively beneath her as she studied the land beyond that wall. She didn’t know what she had expected to see there. Maybe something that would tell her an essential secret about Conlan McTeer, some magical shimmer in the very air. Yet it looked no different than any other land in County Kildare. There were lush fields and hills, a pale gold-green in the winter, laying like a patchwork blanket seamed with gray walls and strands of silvery ash trees. A few hardy sheep cropping the grass and a few crows in the trees were the only signs of life.
But in the distance, she could see mysterious towers and a curl of smoke that seemed to beckon her forward.
She glanced back over her shoulder. She was still alone. She had slipped away without a groom, far from the watchful eyes of her mother and sister and of Grant Dunmore. Far from everyone at that party, who so smugly waited for her to announce her future as Lady Dunmore. No one would know if she explored for a while before she went back.
She tugged on the reins, letting the horse run free. They dashed down the hill, the wind shrieking past them. Anna laughed at the joyous pleasure of speed and movement, shouting as the horse jumped the wall, and they were on Adair land.
She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do now, so she turned the horse in the direction of the towers. There was a bridle path cut through the meadow, just wide enough for one horse, and she followed that wherever it would take her. The sky seemed even darker and lower now, a charcoal gray that threatened snow, but she didn’t want to turn back. She couldn’t, not yet. An insatiable curiosity drove her forward, a need to feel close to Conlan and start to understand him.
She came to the rise of another hill, one crowned with a moss-encrusted Celtic cross. She drew in the horse to study its faded designs, the familiar loops and curves of the knotwork pattern. But there were no words to tell her why it was there, what its significance could be. It was a beautiful marker of a fierce spirit fighting for survival in its own land. Much like Conlan himself.
She folded back the veil of her riding hat to better see into the distance. In one direction lay a clutch of whitewashed cottages, a small village with smoke curling over their thatched roofs. In the other lay the big house, Adair Court.
She studied it closely. It was older and darker than Killinan Castle. Killinan had been in her family for generations, but the only remnant of the old medieval keep was a single round tower, a crumbling shell where she and her sisters played as children. Later generations created a more comfortable and fashionable pale stone Palladian mansion.
Adair Court retained its crenellations and towers, like something in an old fairy tale. Ivy vines, brown in the winter, crowded over the walls and covered the mullioned windows. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a moat and drawbridge, knights galloping over it with swords drawn and horses’ hooves clattering.
Much like the pounding hooves she heard now, thundering over the turf. She looked back to see Conlan himself galloping toward her on a fearsome black horse. He charged up the hill like one of those knights of old but Anna held her ground, even as he reined in a mere two feet from her. Dust and grass flew into the air.
Despite the way they parted in Dublin and her resolve to do her duty to her family she felt a terrible thrill to see him again. She didn’t realize until she looked into those green eyes just how much she had missed him. It was as if she had been walking around with a part of herself missing, and now she was whole again.
Even in the cold, he wore no hat or neckcloth, just a tweed riding jacket over his shirt. He didn’t smile at her, but she saw a sudden flare of light in his eyes that gave her hope that he was happy to see her, too.
“What are you doing here, Anna?” he asked.
Anna laughed. “And good day to you, too, Your Grace. Am I trespassing again, like when we first met in ’98?”
“So you remember that day, too?”
“Of course I do. You seemed quite terrifying that day, like a dark villain from a Gothic novel.”
“And now?”
“Now—now I know better. You are even more terrifying than you were then.” And he was—terrifying because of the threat he posed to her resolve to be respectable. The threat that he posed to her heart.
A reluctant smile touched his lips, and she saw that in the country he did not shave as often. Dark whiskers roughened his jaw and those sensual lips, and his cropped hair had grown longer. It made him look even more medieval, her Irish warrior.
“I don’t want to frighten you, colleen,” he said. “But you shouldn’t be out alone on a day like this. It looks like snow.”
“I had to escape from all that holiday merriment at the Connemaras’,” she said. “It’s so loud and stuffy there, and if I heard ‘Three ships came sailing’ one more time I would start screaming and not be able to stop. I didn’t mean to go far, but…”
“But?”
“I wanted to see your home. I was curious what kind of land could spawn such a man as you.”
Conlan laughed reluctantly. “And what have you learned in your explorations?”
“Not a thing. You are more of a puzzle than ever.”
“Am I? That’s gratifying.
What puzzles you here?”
“This cross, for one,” Anna said, gesturing to the old Celtic cross. “What does it mean?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s been there for many years, too many for anyone to remember. My mother used to say it was the grave of our ancestor, Ewan the Brave. He was a warrior who fought the Vikings.”
“Really? An ancient warrior’s grave?” She studied the cross again, even more intrigued. “How romantic.”
“I admit I hardly even notice it now. It seems a part of the landscape.”
“So you were not coming to visit your ancestor?”
“I had a much more prosaic errand,” Conlan said. “I was going to call on some of my tenants, until I saw a witch on horseback trespassing on my estate.”
Anna shifted the reins in her gloved hands. “Perhaps I should not have come. After the way we parted in Dublin, I should consider that I may not be welcome here.”
His smile faded. “I was in pain that night and furious with myself for leading you into danger again. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“It seems to me I led myself into danger.”
“But you would not have been following me if I hadn’t taken you to that tavern first, if…” If they had not made love. The unspoken words hovered between them. “I meant it when I said you should stay away from me.”
“Yes, I should. But I can’t seem to. Can you stay away from me?”
“It would appear not, since here you are. You do have a witchlike way of appearing everywhere I turn.”
Anna laughed. “To be a pest is my own special magic.”
“Since we can’t be rid of each other, would you like to come with me now?”
“To visit your tenants?”
“Yes.”
“Me?” She was very glad indeed that he invited her, that all seemed calm between them for the moment. But she was strangely frightened, too. What if they did not like her? What if they thought her a—a spoiled Ascendancy princess? “Really?”
