“Stunning.”
Jane turned her head and found Nicholas
looking only at her.
“
You
are stunning,” he repeated,
coming closer. With each step Jane’s heart pounded faster. Every
limb in her body tingled with awareness as his gaze swept over
her.
He stopped only a breath away. His large
hand covered hers on top of the stone. An unfamiliar rhythm of need
began to pound within her. It was as terrifying as it was
exciting.
Jane tried to focus on the beauty of the
land and not on the man. The moon had risen high on the sky. Not
far from the circle of stones, a deserted cottage stood half hidden
in the high meadow grass. In spite of the brilliance of the moon, a
million stars lit up the velvet cloth of heaven.
“I had forgotten how this place made me
believe I could touch the sky…become part of the wind.” She met his
gaze. “Too many years I have been away from here.”
“Wearing black—staying away from
here—playing the hermit—being frightened of any attachments. They
are all related, are they not?”
“I am not frightened of attachments,” she
immediately protested, not entirely certain that she was ready to
pour out her heart…and her past.
“But you are, Jane.” Nicholas’s fingers
brushed the windblown hair away from her face. His warm touch
lingered on her skin. “You are frightened of me. I am not talking
about my physical size, or if I can handle you or not when you are
pointing a knife at me. And I am not referring to whatever
knowledge I might have of your secret activities, either.” He gave
her a knowing smile. “You are afraid of the man, of our mutual
attraction, and what is happening between us.”
“There is nothing between us.” She tried to
pull away from the stone, but the pressure of his hand held her in
place. She still wasn’t ready to give up the fight. “If you believe
that because I kissed you, that I am attracted to you…I told you
that was an expression of gratitude…I was moved by what you
did…and…”
“You appear flustered, Jane.” He brushed his
mouth against hers, and pulled back before she could either push
him away or melt against him. “You want to ignore ‘us.’ But you do
not know what to do with everything you are feeling here.” He
pressed a finger at her heart. “And here.” He gently touched her
temple. “I could gladly show you where else you are confused, but I
would not take such liberties until you readily admit you are as
attracted to me as I am to you.”
“This is foolishness.” She turned her face
away, not wanting him to know how accurate his words were.
“Why did you bring me here?” Nicholas cupped
her chin and turned her face to him. “There is something here that
you want to show me or perhaps tell me.”
“I only brought you here for the excellent
view.”
“At night?” he asked softly.
She asked the same question of herself. The
impulsiveness of riding after him, and then kissing him, and then
wanting to share…this particular place. What had she been thinking?
These pagan stones at Knocknakilla held a special place in her
life. They had belonged for so many years only to two young people
in love.
Looking up at him, she wondered with a
moment’s panic if it was just because of this man that she was
willing to open this door to her past. How could so much change so
quickly?
“I have seen you in action, Jane. You have
no fear in risking your life for these people—for your beliefs. And
yet, right now you are afraid.”
Of course she was afraid. She knew the pain
a wound to the heart inflicts. She knew the rending ache that comes
in the night, tearing at you until you pray you will die before the
dawn comes. She knew what it was like to lie curled in the corner
of a room and watch the evening light fade, and have no more tears
to cry.
Yes, she was afraid. She was afraid of how
he would act—how he would feel—if he knew the whole truth.
But she was also afraid that she cared for
Nicholas Spencer much more than she could ever put into words.
The stars seemed to disappear in the sky.
Everything around them became still. The birds. The breezes. Nature
itself appeared to be waiting for Jane to speak.
“It is inevitable that you should hear
scandalous rumors of my past while you are staying at Woodfield
House.” She spoke quickly before losing her courage. “I myself have
hinted more than a few times of my ruined reputation. I brought you
here because…because I thought instead of rumor, you deserve to
hear the truth…from me.” She took a deep breath and met his gaze.
“Once you hear what I am all about, then we can rethink this
business about your…your attraction to me.”
He entwined his fingers with hers on top of
the stone. “Tell me this thing that is so horrible about your
past.”
It would have been much easier to talk of
her past if she were not faced with the reality of the present.
Nicholas Spencer was all around her.
“Right here, in this very place, I gave my
maidenhead to a man I loved.” She hoped to shock him with the
bluntness of the truth. “We played together as children, fell in
love quite by accident, and—on many nights just like this—stood
where we are standing and planned our future together.”
Jane looked around her and saw all the
images of long ago imprinted on the grass and stone.
“Conor was everything to me. He was my past,
my present, my future. He was my life and my dreams. He was my hero
and my hope. He offered the sanctuary I had never found within my
own family.” She looked up into Nicholas’s face. “I have no regret
for what I did, and I feel no shame in talking about him…to you or
anyone, ever.”
“Nor should you.” His touch stayed—his eyes
dark and shining and never once wavering from hers.
“But he was a poor farmer. A commoner. A
Catholic. Even worse, Conor was a Shanavest who had a heart
generous enough to love me despite the sins of my father and my
country against his people.” She didn’t want the tears to come. By
God, she didn’t! But they burned her eyes, and she turned away from
him, this time pulling her hand free.
The wind began to pick up again. Jane pulled
the cloak tighter around her shoulders and walked to the center of
the circle of stones.
“Unlike my own people…” she said bitterly,
“—who spend their entire lives judging others by narrow,
hypocritical standards and acting in ways that breed hatred, Conor
treated me as a living, breathing person…and not as some straw
figure representing his English oppressors. He refused to judge me
based on the past. He refused to be intimidated by our differences
in station—or my so-called education. We would all be judged as
equals in God’s eyes, he would say.”
She looked up at the stars through a sheen
of tears. The hurt still cut so deep. The memories, though hazy,
continued to stab at her heart.
“Where is he now? Where did he go?”
“He was hanged.” The salty taste of tears
reached Jane’s lips. She tried to take a deep breath to steady her
voice. “Conor was hanged on the orders of my own father. He was
killed not because of any horrible crime. He was always the most
peace loving of the Shanavests. The magistrate…” She stabbed at the
tears. “—my father…issued his death warrant because of his
involvement with…
me
.”
The tears choked the words in her throat.
Jane let out a broken breath and tried to fight the sob rising in
her chest. She walked out of the circle and stared at the valley
beyond. In her mind’s eye, she could see Conor’s dead body swaying
heavily. In the wind, she could almost hear her own cries echoing
through the town.
Nicholas’s arms reached around her and
captured her hands, and Jane welcomed his strength when he drew her
gently back against his chest.
“This is a hard world, Jane.” His chin
brushed against her hair. “And I am sorry for the injustice we
bring to it.”
She leaned against him. Nicholas’s strength
gave her courage to find her voice again.
“We were to elope the next day. But
somehow—through one of the servants, I think—my father found out
about our plan. I was locked in…but I managed to send Conor a
message. Still, though, he showed up…hoping, I suppose, that I’d be
able to get away.” She closed her eyes to lesson the pain, but it
could not be shut out. It was inside of her. “Four other
Shanavests—Conor’s friends all—were arrested that night, as well,
not far from Waterford. None of them, though, had any idea how
quick their end would come.”
Jane tried to pull a hand free to wipe her
face, but Nicholas turned her gently in his arms and carefully
brushed her tears away himself.
“They…my family…were planning to keep me
locked up. They wanted to hide what I had done…what Conor and I
were going to do. As far as they were concerned, no one outside of
the household would ever know about their daughter’s shame. But
they couldn’t hold me. I ran away.” She stared at the lapel of
Nicholas’s jacket, but all she saw were five bodies dangling in the
wind. “When I found him…them…I made sure everyone knew. I was mad,
I suppose. I forced my way through and cut those bodies down. I
knelt on that gallows and cursed my father and the others who were
responsible. I told the crowds that gathered that Conor was my
lover. I even claimed that I was carrying his child.”
“Were you?”
“I thought I was. I prayed that day that I
was. But it was just not to be.”
Nicholas lifted her chin. The brush of his
callused thumb against her skin caused her to shiver involuntarily.
In her mind’s eye she saw another man, barely more than a boy—a
work-roughened thumb brushing away her tears. How many times she’d
cried in Conor’s arms, fearing for their future?
“The only vengeance I could wreak that
day…on my father…on my family…was in ruining their name. I never
thought for an instant that their peers would sympathize with them
over the incomprehensible wickedness of a daughter. Indeed, the
world…and my father…would cut me out of the light. From that day
on, I would become the daughter that they never had.”
He simply pulled her tightly against his
chest and held her. Jane let her sorrow pour out, her tears falling
on his jacket. She didn’t know how long they stood there. No words
passed between them, but with an occasional brush of his lips
against her hair, the press of his hands on her back, a change
began to occur within her.
For too long she had lived for vengeance she
could not exact. Deep inside, she knew that killing one man—her
father—would never bring back those five men or ease her pain. But
joining the Whiteboy movement had helped.
Sometime later, Jane realized she had
stopped crying. As if just awakened herself from a deep sleep, she
found her gaze focusing on the dark shapes of the standing stones.
There were five.
Five stones standing for longer than anyone
knew. Five stones carried here and erected for some mysterious
purpose by people long gone. Five of them standing against the
elements. Standing against wind and rain. Against sun and ice. Five
of them.
Perhaps, she thought, the descendants of
those people still lived here. Still worked this land and claimed
it as their own. Despite the invasions of marauding Vikings and
Romans and Englishmen, these people—these stones—still stood
defiantly on the moor. Five that would stand forever.
Jane breathed in the clean smell of the
fresh night air. She looked at the stones and felt the endless
hours of loneliness and anguish quietly slip away. She would no
longer allow herself to be crushed by grief.
“I see tragedy and sorrow in your past—but
no shame,” Nicholas whispered. His fingers threaded gently into her
hair, and he pulled her head back until she was looking up into his
face. “I admire your courage. I admire the woman who you have
become despite the adversity in your life.”
There was understanding and compassion in
his face…but fire, as well. Something within Jane thrilled to find
that, despite hearing the truth of her past, he still wanted
her.
“The present and the future belong to those
who seize it, Jane. Seize it with me.”
“Genteel society shuns me. It will be
scandalous for you to have anything to do with me.”
“Genteel society can go to hell,” he
growled. “I know the hypocrisy of the world. And I know what is
good and decent when I see it, too.”
His mouth descended, brushing over hers,
before coaxing her lips apart. Jane’s hands moved up his chest as
he kissed her thoroughly. Realizing she was falling too deep and
too fast, her fingers fisted on the lapels of his jacket, and she
tore her mouth away.
“Wait! There is Clara…we cannot.”
“I have said this before Jane. There is
nothing
between Clara and me, and there never will be. I
have already spoken to your father.” Nicholas’s large hands framed
her face, and he looked steadily into her eyes. “How must I say it
for you to understand? Who else should I tell? What will it take to
convince you that that
you
are the one who fascinates me.
You
are the one I am pursuing.”
Jane rose up on her toes and kissed him
again. This time, she tried to convey all of her frustration—all of
the longing that tore at her—into the heated press of lips, the
chafe and dance of tongues. Nicholas’s reaction was immediate. His
arms wrapped around her, his mouth as greedy as her own as he gave
as much as he took. Jane clung to him, trying to keep her balance
and retain a shred of sanity.
Too many years had passed. It had been so
long, that she’d forgotten what it was like to lose herself in a
haze of passion. But as Nicholas’s hands caressed and molded the
cloak and dress against her body, and—as every inch of Jane’s body
came alive with a sensual awareness—images of young love no longer
danced before her eyes, but the hard, hot reality of this man and
her own admission on what all of this meant.