Meghan gazed dumbly at him, her eyes enormous with pain and shock. The face that stared back at her was that of the stranger from the pond. It was not real, not any of this. Beneath her, pebbles dug into the tender flesh of her knees, and the mist-laden sod oozed dampness into the hem of her
leine,
but still she could not believe she was awake. It was a dream. At any moment Una’s hard hand would shake her and the gruff but dear voice would admonish her for dreaming away the morning.
“Una won’t die. She cannot die.” She said it calmly, and
then, when she had lovingly tucked the beautiful velvet cloak carefully about the older woman, a peaceful smile turned up the corners of her lips. “She’ll rest easier now.” She patted the cloak and then rose to her feet.
Revelin was not pleased by the look of dismay that came to Robin’s face as the girl turned to him, but she seemed not to notice Robin’s expression as he backed from her as she passed by. “Follow her, damn you!” Revelin hissed in English, and Robin did so, but at a distance.
“Curse you for a coward, Neville,” he added under his breath as he watched the girl move toward the now-smoldering rubble that had once been her home. A touch at his knee brought his attention back to the old woman; he looked down to see her regarding him.
Una gazed long and hard at him, eyeing his beardless cheeks with suspicion until she saw the glistening of blond stubble along his jaw line. She was dying and she knew it. So much depended upon the next moments. Yet, he was young, so young. Did she dare entrust him with the secret?
She reached out and gripped his thigh. “Hear me…Leinsterman. There’s nae time. I’m after dying and I know it. Do ye say true when ye say Meghan…saved yer life?”
He nodded, pleased at last to know the girl’s name.
Una’s grip slackened. “Then ye be…after owing Meghan, I’m thinking. There’s a way…to repay her.” A cunning light came into her eyes. “Yet, ’tis only fair I warn ye. ’Twill bring ye a deal of trouble.”
Revelin answered her readily. “Have you not witnessed with your own eyes how little I fear trouble?”
A ghost of a smile lifted her features. How easily the young rose to the bait of a challenge, she thought. Her estimate of him was not wrong. “Give me…yer hand, lad.”
Unhesitatingly Revelin placed his hand in her bony grasp.
“I give me Meghan into your fosterage—”
“Revelin, Revelin Butler,” he supplied.
“Butler?” Una’s gaze narrowed suspiciously.
“My mother was an O’Conner,” Revelin supplied with a smile of admiration that the dying woman had enough wits about her to balk at his English surname. It was the name Butler that had opened his path to court, that made him acceptable to the peerage at Whitehall, the name whose power he hoped would win him the hand of Lady Alison Burke. How ironic that the old woman should prefer the name that he had not thought of using once in the past eight years.
The tension went out of Una at the mention of the Irish name. After a long moment she said, “Take her…take the lass away. She’s an O’Neill. Ach, Shane.” She sighed and briefly closed her eyes. “There are devils that wish me Meghan dead. Ye must protect her!”
“With my life,” Revelin answered.
“With yer life,” Una echoed, her eyes closing again as a fresh stream of blood coursed from the corner of her mouth.
“Una! Una! I’ve found it!” Meghan raced across the clearing and fell to her knees beside her aunt, holding a cloth-wrapped bundle to her chest. “Look, Una,” she continued, lightly shaking her aunt’s shoulder. “Please, open yer eyes and see for yerself.”
Una straggled to break free from the dark recesses of the twilight engulfing her. “Nae time,” she whispered. “Leinsterman…the knowledge is yers. Use it…when the time comes.”
Her eyes opened wide as she clawed in the darkness until she again found the solid strength of Revelin’s leg. Her nails bit deeply into his flesh as she whispered, “The lass…she’s not to know. The gift…she mustn’t touch it! Never betray the secret!
“Meghan,” she cried, the name garbling in her throat. “Meghan…when the sight comes on ye…forgive….”
“Una? Una!” Meghan dropped the bundle to seize her aunt by the shoulders and shake her. “Una! Wait! Una, ye weren’t to die! ’Tis my death they wanted, not yers! Una!”
But the eyes that stared up at her saw nothing, and Meghan released her and, with a shuddering wail, flung her body over the older woman’s, as though by doing so she could shield Una from the long-fingered grip of death.
“Ye promised ye’d never leave me,” Meghan whispered as with gentle fingers she stroked the still face. “Wait for me. I want to go with ye!”
Revelin’s mouth tightened as he watched the heaving shoulders of the sobbing girl. There was nothing he could do to ease her pain, and he wisely refrained from cutting short her grief, though her every gasp of misery tore a new rend in his composure. He had heard many people cry, some of them for loved ones, many more for selfish reasons, but never had anyone’s misery so touched him. As he looked away toward the forest shadows stretched across the hissing grayness of the rain-darkened clearing, he wondered if there had ever been a more wretched sound than the girl’s tears.
One painful moment bled into another until Meghan no longer knew when her sobs turned to dry gasps and then stopped altogether. Una was dead. No tears would return her. There was no reason to live, no place of refuge; no one would ever look upon her again and not be repelled by fear of her ugliness.
And the fault was her own.
Then, overwhelming her conscious thoughts, a vision claimed her. So stealthily did it rise that for once she did not detect its coming. The soft woodsy green and gentle hills gave way to a foreign land where, in a gray sky, sea-swollen clouds dragged their ragged edges over the tumbled-rock mountains. Winds, whipped by the North Sea, careened down through the unfamiliar narrow valley where she huddled, alone with the never-ceasing wail of the wind.
A storm was coming. The fresh tang of salt dried on her lips, and she knew the sea was nearby. The sea’s roar came to her now on the breeze and she shivered. It was cold, colder than any winter she had ever known in her life.
From out of nowhere came the thunder of hooves and the whooping battle cries. Two armies of faceless riders surged from the mists before her frightened eyes.
“No! Don’t,” she cried, rising to her feet and lifting her hands in pleading to those nearest her. “I cannot be responsible for more deaths, do ye hear me? I mean no harm to anyone!”
Her words were lost in the cries of battle. The frenzied roar of bloodlust resounded as the warriors rode forward encircling her. The clash of blade on blade threw sparks above her head as they met. Horses and men whirled about her, forcing her to dodge hoof and boot. Clouds of dust erupted as they fought, obscuring her vision and cutting off any path to safety.
Yet she ran, stumbling between rearing steeds and bellowing soldiers who slashed the air with sword and pike. Past caring for her own safety, she pushed forward with one thought in mind. They fought because of her, because of some evil knowledge she possessed but could not direct. If she did not leave the valley, she would bear the blame for the lives that would be lost. She must get away to make them stop.
“No more deaths! No more!”
Revelin jumped at the sound of her voice. The girl had been still so long that he thought she slept. But she leaped to her feet now with a startled cry. Her eyes were wide and staring vacantly at him as she said, “Always deaths! I must stop it! I must make it end!”
The last thing he expected was the stiff-armed shove in the stomach that sent him tottering back on his heels as she dodged his embrace and raced past him. She should have been easy to catch, for the beating she had taken had left her stiff. When she stumbled and fell, he gasped in sympathy, but she was up in an instant; and when he realized he might, indeed, lose her if she reached the cover of the forest before he overtook her, he rushed to seize her.
The tug on her arm swung Meghan around as easily as if she were a rag doll and brought her face to face with him. His
features swam before her eyes, taunting her with their perfection. He was so beautiful, while she was so ugly. “Ye’ll nae touch me if ye fear for yer life,” she said softly. “Ye must never touch me.”
Revelin caught her as she slumped forward and with swift economy he lifted her high in his arms.
All the strength drained out of Meghan as she felt his arms come around her. He was real! Suddenly she knew that this was what she wanted, to be held close. No one had held her since she was very small. She could not even remember the last time Una had embraced her. Una. “Ach, Una, ye’re dead now, and because of me,” she whispered, turning her face into the supple leather of the man’s jerkin.
Revelin’s arms tightened as he heard her murmur of anguish, and he pressed his lips against the cool satin of her brow. “It wasn’t your fault, lass. She didn’t blame you.”
The reassuring words were a small but needed comfort. Meghan closed her eyes, accepting the safety of his arms, and her hand stole cautiously across his chest to find an anchor in the curve between his neck and shoulder.
Robin stood by the horses, and as Revelin approached he moved as though to mount up.
“There are several matters that need tending first.” Revelin’s face was grim as his gaze moved meaningfully from Robin to the body of the old woman.
Robin gasped. “You’re joking, are you not?”
Revelin did not reply as he passed the horses and looked about for a place to lay the girl. The broad limbs of a nearby oak offered shelter from the rain.
As he bent to place her on the ground, Meghan suddenly put both arms around his neck and hugged him close. “Don’t leave me! Please! They’ll come back!” she whispered frantically and buried her face in the sweet warmth of his neck.
Revelin pulled her closer with a reassuring hug. “The herdsmen? They won’t come back, I promise you that.”
“No! No! The dreams! The dreams will come back if ye leave me,” she cried, her voice hoarse with fear. “They always come back, again and again. They never leave me until it happens. Then it’s too late!”
She raised her head and gazed deeply into his eyes. “Do ye not understand? ’Tis my fault they’re dead. I knew what would happen, the ‘sight’ always knows, but I couldn’t stop it! It isn’t my fault, the knowing, I cannot stop it!”
Revelin stiffened in amazement at her incredible talk of strange visions and dreams. Surely the girl was overwrought by the death of her companion. Yet, the eyes holding his were shadowed by very real fear and misery, and he realized that she believed what she had told him. It occurred to him that she had not been surprised by Robin’s reaction to her birthmark; she had been frightened. Perhaps Robin’s suggested reason for the herdsmen’s actions was not far from the truth.
A remembrance of the first moment he had looked into her eyes came back to him. He had been more a stranger to her then than she was to him now. And yet she had rocked him in her arms, held him fiercely tight, spilled her tears upon his cheeks. Even if she were all that some claimed, he would not abandon her.
Poor child,
he thought as his fingers moved tenderly to cup the back of her neck and bring her against his chest. The superstitious fools had done their best to kill both women. Of course she would feel the guilt of her kinswoman’s death. But her talk of dreams was nonsense.
He raised a hand to stroke her forehead, his voice as soft as his touch as he said, “Do you trust me, Meghan?”
Meghan nodded slowly.
Such vulnerability was rare, and it embarrassed him that she should entrust herself to him so readily. “Then you know I shall not do anything to hurt you. You have my protection for as long as you want it.”
His arms tightened as he bent to place a comforting kiss on her forehead. At that moment Meghan lifted her head to speak.
His kiss missed her brow, slipped off the tip of her nose, and found its mark on the soft shape of her mouth.
The instant his lips touched hers, Meghan ceased to think of anything else; The astonishing touch of his lips upon hers lasted but a moment, but it struck like lightning to the core of her being. One kiss was not enough, not nearly enough, and she reached up to bring his head back down to hers.
She had no experience of kissing. The second kiss was a question posed in answer to the first, and she was hardly prepared for the reply. This time, his lips parted on hers. The fiery warmth of his mouth flooded hers and a sensation somewhere between fear and pleasure engulfed her. When his lips lifted suddenly from hers, she was left with a dizzying sensation of disappointment. Not knowing why she felt that way, she stared up at him, her eyes questioning.
Astonishment held Revelin still as his gaze lingered over her mouth, dewy soft and trembling from his kiss. Then he turned away. He had not meant to do that. Merciful heavens! He was not so lost to propriety that he could seduce a girl beside her unburied kin.
He shook his head, refusing even to glance down at her again. ’Twas her fault he so forgot himself. She had pulled him to her the second time, had arched herself against him, had begged the kind of kiss he had given her. No, that was not fair. Had he not only moments before realized how deranged grief had made her? Surely she did not understand what she was doing. She was showing her gratitude, nothing more. The passion in the kiss was his fault, and more was the pity, he thought, for it had set his blood humming.