The Ground She Walks Upon (11 page)

"We will
be having another for dinner, Greeves. Tell Cook to prepare accordingly." Trevallyan shrugged out of his bath and wrapped his hips with a white linen towel. The night ahead would surely prove tedious, but for some reason he was anxious to see it begin. Anticipation hummed in his veins like a narcotic.

"Is the count bringing in one of his
bambini?"
the butler asked dryly.

Trevallyan's gaze darted between the butler and his valet who handed him a bottle-green silk dressing gown. "You've been with me too long, Greeves. You're no longer bothering to hide your sarcasm."

"Pardon me, my lord. When your cousin and his friends choose to descend upon the castle, I'm forced to rise at dawn and ring a little bell through the hallway so the 'lady' friends might return to their respective beds. The bell tolls and the bodies run through the hall like rats in a dark alley. 'Tis most distasteful."

"Fabuloso isn't sending for any young women on this trip. On the contrary, the girl is Chesham's guest tonight." Trevallyan's gaze caught his image in the shaving mirror that the valet had set before him. Every line seemed to grab his notice, as if he'd just discovered it for the first time. "The fair Ravenna of Lir is dining with us." He looked away from the mirror and grimaced at the girl's lack of a last name.

"Shall Father Nolan be joining you also?"

Trevallyan shifted his gaze to the butler. "Why would we be needing a priest? You expect me to marry the baggage, too?"

Shock slackened Greeves's features but only for a second.

Niall scowled into the mirror. "I know you used to have a drink or two with the mayor. Did the old gossip tell you tales?"

"My lord, Peter Maguire is dead and not long in the ground. If I may, I think it unwise to speak so of the dead."

"Yes, but did he tell you anything—anything of witches and
geise
?" Disgust crossed Trevallyan's expression.

Greeves cleared his throat and did his professional best not to look curious. "The mayor said nothing of the kind. I only thought you might like Father Nolan to attend because he's been at the castle so frequently since you cried off marrying Lady Arabella."

Trevallyan grew pensive. There was an anger within him that festered. "Number four, Greeves. Lady Arabella was number four." He spoke as if in confession. "Four attempts at love. Four miserable failures. That old priest and his searching of my heart. Love has made my life hell when I might have known bliss. Fine. Go ahead and send a note to the father and have him join us. Let's make this whole evening as rich as possible." He lifted his chin, and his valet lathered his face with soap, soap that blessedly hid the lines.

"Very good, sir." Greeves gave a slight bow, shot the valet a rather bemused look, then departed.

The valet shaved. Trevallyan stared.

Above the white lather, the corners of his eyes were rayed with lines. Two fists seemed to take the knot in his stomach and tighten it without mercy. The lines on his face chronicled time and youth that could never be regained. He would never be a young man again. Hope for a future, a future that became more finite with every cursed year was like the sands in an hourglass, trickling away.

He frowned, and the valet stopped the straight razor just before he cut him. Niall relaxed his face and the valet continued. Yes, he was getting older, but women had never complained. If anything, they seemed to be more attracted to him now that he no longer looked the smooth-skinned youth. Helen, his dead wife, had sought a callow face. She had had designs, and she knew all too well that a man of experience would never have fallen for her schemes. It was scant balm for the bitterness that still clutched his heart, but he took comfort in it. Experience and knowledge, he was convinced, could avert the worst disasters. Without a doubt, if he had been older when he'd met Helen, if he had never been told about the
geis,
things would have been different. Certainly the geography of the grave sites.

Helen and her wickedness had scarred him. With every woman after her, each time he became a little more callous, a little more calculating himself. Happiness eluded him, but it had not been taken away by Helen, rather, she and the women who followed merely made him feel its absence more keenly. Now it howled like a wolf on the moor. He wanted what he could not find.

In his youth, his dreams had been simple. He'd desired children to carry on the Trevallyan name and a woman by his side to share the joy and pain of a lifetime. Even the poorest Ulsterman was not denied such things. Yet by fate or God or
geis,
Lord Niall Trevallyan was. It lay just out of his grasp, in the realm of the unreachable. He knew it would come to him if brought by the right woman. So far she was as elusive as the stars that glittered in the night sky.

He turned his head and allowed his valet to work on his other cheek. There were some who would believe the
geis
had cursed him. He knew the old men of the council would say it began twenty years ago when he spurned their wisdom and married Helen. In their minds, his pain had been the price of defiance. His wounded heart and the mocking little grave next to his wife's—his son's grave by inscription, but not by blood—was almost to be expected for casting aside the powers of fate and the Otherworld.

But still, he would not allow himself to fear the
geis.
Intellect was stronger than superstition. Education more powerful than any belief. His rational mind would not surrender to ancient Celtic nonsense. His failures haunted him, but he knew fear of the
geis
was not what kept him alone. On the contrary, if he believed he was succumbing to such foolishness, he'd have married and married and married to prove it wrong. Certainly there was no dearth of marriageable women around him. In his stable of fiancees, there had been Mary Maureen, honey-haired and sweet-tongued; Elizabeth, a hellion from Galway who had amused him to no end; and finally Lady Arabella, gentle, aristocratic, the kind of woman any man would be proud to have bear his children.

But every time he attempted a trip to the altar, that priest erected the brick wall. Love. Had he loved any of them?

The answer sent a spasm of despair through his soul. It was always no, and he had never been able to escape it, because Father Nolan always demanded he see it. Happiness came through love, the old priest had told him again and again, and Trevallyan now knew it better than most after his disastrous attempts at marriage. When it came right down to it, he had had to concede that he could not will himself to love a woman, no matter how hard the lust for her, no matter how sweet the desire. Now, after so many attempts at marriage, it was not fear of the
geis
that kept him alone and unhappy. No, the fear that clutched his heart went deeper than that. He feared he had no ability to love. The old men would say the
geis
had robbed him of that. They would tell him that it was his fate not to be able to find love for these other women. In their narrow little minds, they would believe that destiny had locked his heart away and the only woman holding the key was the girl the
geis
had chosen for him. For her, he would be able to love. Which, of course, he knew was the crux of the Trevallyan curse. He had to win her love, they told him. If he could win her love, he would be free. And what kind of hell could be worse than to be able to love only one, one who might refuse to give her love in return?

He sighed and closed his eyes. The
geis
and its absurdities invariably made him tired. If he could not love, it was because he had not yet found the right woman. In the evening, melancholy and restless, he would prowl the lonely towers of Trevallyan Castle and think of
her,
the nebulous, imaginary woman he searched for. He was convinced he would know her when she came to him, and,
geis
or no, he knew his love for her would be immediate and acute. And why not? He had waited twenty years for it. For
her.
She had become his hunger, and when he found her, he would devour her as a starving man devours bread.

He looked in the mirror once more. The face that stared back had weathered and matured. It showed capabilities a girl the age of Ravenna could not appreciate. The
geis
was wrought of stupidity. He was a man of forty. He deserved a woman by his side, an equal, not some stupid young girl who could not keep up with him. It was obvious beyond even articulating that the only thing he and a girl twenty years younger than himself could have in common was a bed, and he didn't take young girls to his bed. He wanted more than just a mattress binding them together. A woman could satisfy him where a girl could not.

He studied his eyes where the day's sun had highlighted each crinkle. The girl Ravenna might think him old, especially in comparison to his smooth-skinned cousin and his cohorts, but it made no difference to him what she might think. She was not the companion for him. He shuddered just thinking about her, the barefoot hoyden with her ripped dress and dirty face.

He tapped his foot, impatient to be gone from under the razor. He wanted to clear the name Ravenna from his mind.

But she stayed in his thoughts like a haunting melody.

She was just another young woman, he told himself. A babe in many ways. And yet...

His eyes darkened. Today, when he had found her in the clearing, there was something about her that belied her young age. There was a sadness, a quiet dignity, that made her seem older than her tender years. Her demeanor had mystified him because it was so unexpected.

So... womanly.

He didn't like it. She lingered in his thoughts like a mystery that begged to be solved. And mystery, he instinctively knew, was a dangerous thing. It was the essence of womanhood. It was the thing that drew a man in, left him aching for each new clue until the snare closed, and he was lost in the maze, seduced, vexed, and yet so deeply grateful to be there. To his intense dismay, Ravenna, the illegitimate girl saved from the tavern and the field by his mercy alone, possessed mystery. It unsettled him.

His jaw tensed. The razor paused once more. He made a conscious effort to relax.

A union between them was unthinkable. He was modern, literate, educated. A thinker. Old men and superstition weren't going to rule his life. And even if he had believed in the
geis
and been deliriously pleased with his chosen bride, it would not work. As a wife, the girl would prove to be a disaster. She was not the kind to marry an earl; her class and her poverty aside, she was much too outspoken, much too defiant. Even as a child she had had that defiance. He remembered it well when he'd caught her in the tower. She'd been less than a grubby street urchin, looking then as she had today, with dirty bare feet and a smudged face. But she'd stared at him with those brilliant eyes, like a vixen caught in a trap, just daring him to try and tame her.

He took in his reflection and the face being slowly uncovered by the hand of his valet. Now the child had grown into a woman. There was no doubt about that, he conceded, reluctantly picturing her as he had seen her in the woods, her blouse torn, revealing womanliness in the fragility of her collarbone, a delicate contrast to the full, plump swell of her breasts.

He closed his eyes, shutting out both the view of himself in the mirror and the vision of her in his mind. He wanted no business with her. She'd spent years at a fine English school, but even they had been unable to wring the Celtic wildness out of her. The baggage was a full-grown woman now, and once more he'd caught her trespassing, barefooted, dirty-faced and brilliant-eyed. The thought of a marriage between himself, the scion of intelligence and refinement, and an untamed Irish peasant was beyond the pale. Too, there was no resolving their difference in ages. The girl was nineteen years old, and he was forty. A tender age wasn't his usual fare at all. That she had grown from a foolish girl into a beautiful woman was of no consequence. She was too young and too inexperienced and too raw-edged to interest him.

He gritted his teeth as the steaming towel was placed on his freshly scraped cheeks. An old anger simmered within him. The
geis
could be damned all to hell. He wasn't about to give in to it. To ask him to win this girl's love was ridiculous. Certainly he could marry her, he could bed her, he could lure her with money and status, but taking a young girl to wife seemed only for those out to prove their manliness and youth, neither of which was in question for him. Love was the only question, and he couldn't imagine it. It was rare if not impossible to find a girl of her years who could truly give her love to a man old enough to be her father. He was not going to ever be able to fulfill the command of the
geis,
and deep down he wondered if he wasn't almost relieved by the futility of it. He'd spent twenty years rebelling against the idea of his courtship with the chit, at great cost if the
geis
were true, he thought grimly, reminded of the two gravestones out in the Trevallyan cemetery. He wanted nothing to do with such ideas now.

The valet lifted the hot cloth. Trevallyan stared into the mirror, again watching his face, but thinking of her.

Thinking of the flat, soulless nights that lay behind him, and lay ahead. He wondered if one day the loneliness would become unbearable. Not finding
her
was a terrible secret fear. That it was inevitable was the worst.

Where were the children and noise and happy confusion he'd once thought his due? Where was the life he longed to have?

Ravenna of the black hair and stunning eyes.