“Please, Henry,” she sobbed. “But you know
that wasn’t for myself. I was doing it all for my parents. After
Jane—after what she had done to disgrace their name—I had to do
something to mend the past.”
“Jane! Always blaming Jane!” He spat out the
words. “I wish you would put aside this pretence of selflessness,
Clara. Others might believe you and be fooled, but not I.”
His words jolted her, tearing the air from
her lungs.
“No,” she gasped. “It’s true. I was doing it
for them—and I thought I could go through it.”
“And now?” He towered over her.
“I cannot. Now that Sir Nicholas is here—now
that I see that he may truly offer for me—I cannot go through with
it. I care nothing for this Englishman. I never will. You are the
one who has my heart. You are the only one whom I think of. You are
the one I want to spend my life with.” She reached up with
trembling fingers and touched his lips. “He is too experienced. Too
worldly for someone like me. Everything about him intimidates me.
But you, Henry…my gentle Henry…”
She stood on her toes and pressed her lips
against his. Softly, tentatively, innocently, she placed small
kisses on his firm chin, his clenched cheek, and again on his lips.
She kissed him with the same innocence that he had kissed her six
months earlier when he’d proposed to her.
“So what is to happen now?” His hand fisted
roughly in her hair, and she cried out as he pulled her head back
until he was looking into her face. “So what if I yield to your
wishes. I only make a fool out of myself before you again. So what
if you send away this suitor that frightens you with his…with his
manliness. I’ll tell you. Tomorrow, your restless and greedy nature
will again assert itself, and another will appear to take this
one’s place.”
“No!”
“Yes! For you know that there are no new
wardrobes of dresses every season for the wife of a country cleric.
There are no journeys aboard. No London parties. No dozen or so
dashing rogues chasing you about the drawing rooms of Bath. You
would be bored to death, Clara. You would curse me for eternity for
leading you into the dull drudgery of a clergyman’s life.”
She shook her head. “I shall be true to my
promise. I shall never regret our lives together.” Tears continued
to soak her cheeks. “The love we share will be enough. I ask for
nothing more.”
“And what of your parents? Of the honor that
you presumably wanted to restore to your family name?”
“I cannot think of any of that now. Not when
there is a chance of losing you forever.”
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered
bitterly, his gaze scouring every inch of her face. “So perfectly
young and naïve and beautiful.”
Before Clara could object, Henry’s lips
crushed down on hers. But this was no kiss of innocence, but an
unleashing of repressed desire. His strong fingers delved deeper
into her hair and his mouth devoured her lips, forcing her mouth
open, his tongue surging inside. She gave a stifled gasp and felt
her body mold against him. The sudden awareness of her limbs made
her long for something more. Her hands reached up around his
neck.
Then, without warning, he abruptly ended the
kiss and pushed her away.
“I understand you better now than I ever did
before. Like a child, you only want what you cannot have.”
She shook her head and tried to move back
into his arms, but he kept her away.
“Well, your ‘gentle Henry’ is gone,” he said
mockingly. “He was just a fool who treated you like a rare and
delicate flower, but found himself stung by those fair petals.” He
pushed her farther away, his voice hardening. “You chose your way
six months ago. Marry your Englishman and finish what you have
begun. I wish you all the worldly treasures you were born and
brought up to possess, but leave me be.”
In an instant, he was gone.
Clara stared in shock for a long moment at
the closed door, and then turned to the wall. Standing alone, she
wept bitter tears of anguish for the one true love she had so
stupidly thrown away.
***
Her mount was indeed a fine one, and well
accustomed to the soft turf and uneven terrain of the Irish
countryside. And Jane was the rider to handle her.
For a quarter of an hour, the woman led him
on a merry chase. Up hill and down. With her black hair streaming
wildly behind her, she leaped streams and ditches and hedgerows
with stunning ease and grace.
The pace she set made it impossible for
Nicholas to talk to this fiend of a horsewoman. If the ground
leveled out into a smooth green meadow, she was sure to cut away to
some higher passage where the sharp edges of white rock protruded
from the hillside, endangering both horse and rider.
Emerging from a broad, fast-running stream
that left him half a field behind her, Nicholas shook his head at
her spirit. He had to give her credit. Jane Purefoy successfully
used every racing ploy known to slow him down and create distance
between them. She might have been forced to take him along, but
that didn’t mean that she had to endure his company. At the top of
the next hill, Nicholas saw Jane rein in her steed, and he quickly
closed the distance between them.
Her cheeks were flushed with health, and she
turned slightly in the saddle, black eyes flashing, her chest
heaving from the exertion of the ride.
Nicholas didn’t think he’d ever seen a more
magnificent site.
She looked away as he rode up to her. The
Awbeg came into view. There, along the steep green banks of
meandering river, he saw the buildings and broken walls of an abbey
and the neat little village just to the north.
“You should be able to find the main
thoroughfare through Buttevant with no difficulty,” she said,
uttering her first words since leaving Clara at Ballyclough.
“What are those two towers?” Nicholas
pointed interestedly in the direction of the village. He was
searching for a way to detain her.
“The ruins of Lombard’s Castle.”
He noticed the activity beyond it. “And what
is being built beyond the town.”
“A barracks to house troops.”
“I see.” he raised a curious brow. “Well,
that should discourage rebellion, I should think.”
“With that thought, Sir Nicholas, I take my
leave of you.”
“I thought you planned to visit a friend
here yourself.”
“I do, but she doesn’t live in the village
proper. She lives close by, though.” Jane gestured in the vague
direction of the abbey. “But the village has an inn and a number of
shops and a couple of very fine stables to wile away your time. I
shall come after you when I’ve finished my business.”
She started along the ridge following the
river, but stopped and turned sharply to him when he started to
follow.
“That way.” She pointed toward the village.
“You go that way. That will take you where you want to go.”
“Would you at least tell me who it is that
you are visiting? Just in case I become lost and in need of your
assistance?”
“Come, Sir Nicholas, it is impossible for
you to lose your way. Now please be off. Clara and Reverend Adams
are expecting us back by noon.”
For a moment, he considered being completely
disagreeable and trailing after her, but decided against it. With a
nod at her, Nicholas nudged his horse down the incline, all the
while keeping an eye on Jane as she rode off along the crest of the
hill.
He was a man well acquainted with women of
all social classes and types. It had long been a leisure activity
to attempt to understand the many feminine moods and needs. For the
most part, women liked him and sought out his company. He’d
generally expected the same response here.
Obviously, Jane Purefoy was not to be
classed with other women.
Nicholas reined in and watched her disappear
beyond the crest of the hill. Somehow, he had to make her
understand that he was not threat to her or her seditious pursuits.
At the same time, he wanted to let her know that he no longer had
any interest in courting the younger sister.
He spurred his horse toward the village,
knowing that explanation and extrication can be complicated matters
at the best of times.
And these were hardly the best of times.
***
The path from the rectory to the chapel was
empty of the town’s inhabitants, and Henry Adams was glad of
it.
His passion had taken control of his reason,
and he was already regretting his behavior. He had given way too
quickly to his anger. His own personal pride, stung long ago, had
possessed his soul far too easily.
The sun was shining down on his bare head,
but he didn’t notice it at all, focused as he was on his own
failings. How could a man of the cloth—he thought harshly—possess a
character so fallible and weak?
As he reached the heavy iron-banded door of
the chapel, he hesitated, turning instead to the pathway that led
across the small stream and up the hill toward the graveyard by the
road to Mallow. He would not step into the house of God with the
heat of passion still raging in his mind and body.
Clara’s soft mouth had been so willing. The
press of her firm body offered the fantasy of many tempestuous
dreams. But her words plagued him. They were words that he longed
to believe, but knew not how to trust.
Henry’s passion for the younger Purefoy
sister had taken hold of him a year ago, but the fever of it still
raged in his blood.
Although he had known the family for years,
it was Jane that he’d known best from their youth. The two of them
were about the same age. The two of them had shared so much of the
same outrage over the ill treatment that Ireland endured. When they
were younger, they had both even spoken out—with that indignation
found so often in the naïve—against the English Penal Laws that
afflicted the peasantry and the landowners and the merchants alike.
Indeed, despite the gossip surrounding Jane when they were younger,
their own friendship had remained true throughout their adolescence
and his years at the university. To this day, he knew that she
considered him a trusted friend, and he considered her the
same.
One thing he had not confided in her,
though, was his feelings for her sister.
Henry sat himself on the low stone wall
surrounding the crowded graves of peasants, tanners, and quarrymen.
Here lay the history of this village, he thought, enclosed by a
square of rough gray stone. Our time here is so short. We’re born
to toil—and toil we do. We suffer and then we die. But somewhere
between the years of blood and tears, we hope for moments of
love.
He looked back across the stony brook at the
village and at his rectory. Last summer, the flowers were blooming
in his little garden and the fields around Ballyclough green and
alive when Henry saw, for the first time, that light in Clara’s
eyes. No longer a child, she had somehow, without his noticing,
grown into a beautiful young woman. There had been other things, as
well, that Henry had become aware of then. Her quiet dignity. Her
determination to keep peace between the members of her tumultuous
family. He also noticed the way that she tried to hide her
inclination to hang on every word he said and on his every
movement.
It had been easy to fall in love with Clara.
It had been even easier to allow himself to dream of someday asking
for her hand in marriage. And dream he did. For though he was well
born, he was still a country clergyman and she a knighted
magistrate’s daughter. Whatever her parents might have wanted for
her, though, when he set out to court her privately, she’d been
more than willing to receive his attentions.
The rosebuds were full and ready to open
when Henry Adams held his heart in his outstretched hands and
approached Clara with his offer of marriage. He’d wanted her
consent first before broaching the subject with Sir Thomas. His
greatest mistake had been in taking that consent for granted.
Anger at the memory drove him to his feet,
and Henry walked across the road and into a field that had lain
fallow this year. Upon these lands, he knew, cattle and sheep and
goats had once grazed freely, their hides supplying the tanners of
Ballyclough with the materials of their trade. Now, fertile farms
surrounded him, the profits of the tenants’ labors going into the
pockets of the great landowners. The planted lands of the English
were a far cry superior to the marshy patches of bog land that the
Irish were allowed beyond the next line of hills. And it was the
same worship of Mammon that was ruining this country that made
Clara refuse him.
Frustrated beyond words, Henry stopped in
the middle of the field. He was just not good enough. It simply
came down to that. There was no way she could consent to a marriage
that didn’t improve her family’s name—or wealth—or position—or
whatever. Clara had been bred to reject him that day. She’d been
raised to take that fertile ground…and he could offer her only a
life in the marshes.
Though he’d been hurt, he had never
mentioned any of this to Jane—not out of pride, but because he knew
this would be another blow to her. In a family that thrived because
of the privilege and superiority that went with being English, Jane
had always fought against it, and he knew she believed she’d had
some positive influence on her younger sister. How disappointed
Jane would be to learn Clara’s true feeling. How many sleepless
nights had it taken him to come to grips with it!
Henry Adams shook his head. Well, that was
behind him now.
He turned his back on the green fields and
started toward the decrepit ruins of the tanners cottages crowding
the stream at the lower end of the village. He knew where to
go.
Darby O’Connell, with a stubbornness
inherited from his father, had remained in Ballyclough, determined
to eke out an existence in the tanning trade that his grandfather
and his grandfather’s grandfather had practiced before him. But his
hard life became harder when his wife delivered a dead baby two
weeks ago.