“And your real name?”
Thomas rubbed her chin with his thumb. “Ye know it.”
“Fitzgerald.”
“And so it is.”
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Well now, lass, we weren’t well acquainted, ye and me. It was hard enough to coax ye into marriage without asking ye to believe that ye were marrying a cousin.”
Aisleen sat up straighter. “Our marriage. If you are not Thomas Gibson then we are not legally wed!”
“Ye’re vexed,” Thomas said calmly. “I suppose what ye say is true, in a manner of speaking.”
“In a manner—! You lied to me, not once but repeatedly,” Aisleen cried. “I’m not your wife, I’m your—your mistress!”
“I confess up to the reality of it,” Thomas agreed pleasantly. “And I don’t mind saying that the situation holds a certain fascination for a man. But being a honest soul, I’ll save ye from a life of sin by offering to wed ye a second time.”
Aisleen twitched her skirts away as if in anger and said primly, “I would not marry you if you were the last man on earth!”
“Aye, and I would not be asking ye, for there’d be none to join us,” he retorted in high humor. He could not see her face, but he thought he felt the warmth of her smile. “But we’re among civilized folk, lass, and it won’t do. Maybe we’d nae give a lamb’s tail about what others say, but there’s the bairns to be considered. I don’t much fancy the name bastard being attached to a child of mine.”
“I’m not bearing a child of yours,” she replied.
“Aye, but ye will, lass. We’re well matched and ye love it so!”
“Go away, you horrid man!” she said, slapping away the hands that reached for her. “You’re not well enough to bedevil me in that manner. Besides, until we’re properly wed, you’ll take no more liberties with me!”
“Lass, there’s no liberties I could be taking in any case this night.”
Aisleen remembered the dark bruises that ringed his groin “Will you, that is, are you getting better?”
“Oh, lass, if ye could see yer face!” Thomas hooted in glee.
Aisleen put her hands up to cover her cheeks and then snatched them away. “You can’t see my face.”
“Maybe, but I know what ye’re thinking, and just the knowing of it tells me I’m healing well enough.”
To his surprise, she did not laugh or further berate him but burst into uncontrollable sobs. He watched her in amazement, certain that the hysteria would end as quickly as it began. When it did not he reached out and drew her against him, but she did not want the harbor of his shoulder. She twisted away and when he tried to pull her back, she elbowed him, and with a soft gasp he released her.
Aisleen spun about on the seat. “Oh, Tom, I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”
Thomas had raised a hand to his still-tender middle. “Never mind. If ye will be denying me even the comforting of ye, then I’ll nae touch ye again.”
Aisleen gasped in a hiccupy breath. “You do—don’t understand.”
“That’s the glorious truth!”
“It’s too much. The marriage. Your name. The fears. The death of Jack. And Sean. And now the colony gone mad with celebrating, which I don’t deserve!” She took a deep, steadying breath and faced the truth. “I am a coward.”
Thomas grinned at her. “Ye had a bad fright, lass, and sorry I am for all of it. But to say ye were not grand and brave is a lie.”
Aisleen shook her head. “I was frightened witless. I couldn’t bear to touch you at first. You were bloody and sick, and I was repelled. And later, when the natives came, I nearly killed one of them out of quaking fear, not because I was strong enough to protect you. I started at every rustle of bush. Cried every time I burned myself. Quaked in my boots through every night I couldn’t saddle the horse,
couldn’t carry you any distance, didn’t know which direction to go for help. No, I was too much of a coward to leave your side. And Sean—if the ants hadn’t attacked him, he’d have killed me. That’s the truth about your heroine!”
“Did ye miss anything?” Thomas asked kindly.
She lifted her head from her hands. “Jack died because I was too frightened to use your pistol. I should have stayed and fought.”
“Anything else?”
“I’m not brave! I don’t want to be a legend!”
Thomas took out of her hand the handkerchief she drew from her purse and patiently wiped the tears from her cheeks and chin. “Blow,” he ordered and then wiped her nose. When he was done, he gathered her close once more, ignoring the twinge in his ribs, and tucked her head under his chin. “Ah, lass, you’re the most contrary creature as ever God put on this earth. Ye’ll send me to me grave puzzling over ye, which is no more than I deserve.”
“You mock me,” she whispered.
“Ye’re a Fitzgerald, so ye should be knowing what yer fate was to be. The rose mark is the answer.”
Aisleen stilled. “You know about that?”
“The legend of the Fitzgerald Rose? Now what kind of an Irishman would I be not to be knowing the history of me own clan?”
Aisleen lifted her head. “You know the stories of Meghan and Deirdre?”
“Shall I tell them to ye?”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary. But if you know them, then you know that I failed to keep the bond of the legacy.”
“How’s that?”
“Oh, it’s all so silly. The rose birthmark, the sign that I would save the Fitzgerald line. The castle Liscarrol was the Fitzgerald legacy handed down from Deirdre. My father
went to his grave hating me because I could not prevent its loss.”
“Now how were ye to do that?”
Aisleen felt the cold wind of failure at her back but resisted it. “It’s only a legend. There’s no magic.”
“Forgive me if I don’t agree, lass.”
Aisleen turned to look at him.
“Ye saved me life. That may seem an inconsiderable achievement beside the deeds of our ancestresses, but, faith, if it doesn’t seem a grand thing to this Fitzgerald!”
His words, spoken with a careless charm with which only he could imbue them, struck her a hammer blow. She had saved him, perhaps haltingly, even against her will at times, but she had done it. For that she was famous. An accident. No magic; no mythical creature had reared up to save…
“Tom, do you believe in fairies?”
Thomas smiled. “Aye. One’s whispered in me ear for years.”
“A boy?”
“Nae, a lass with a sharp edge to her tongue and a perverse streak that will nae bend to reason.”
Aisleen lowered her eyes.
Did she ever say she loved you?
she questioned silently.
There was no answer. There was nothing but the faint jingle of the horse’s bridle and the slurred hiss of the river and her own breath.
Suddenly she realized that there should be no easy reassurance, no charmed reply to lend a helping hand across the chasm of distrust and fear of her own self. She was done with childish fancy. She was a woman in love. Love was not a game for pixies and fairies. It was a very real and singularly human emotion. Love made a man and woman two halves of a greater whole.
She raised her eyes to his face and her hand to his cheek. “I love you, Thomas Fitzgerald. Take me home.”
Thomas turned his head to lay a kiss in her palm. “Was I ever after telling ye the name of me station? No?”
*
Liscarrol Station: June 1861
The wind whipped through the New England highlands of New South Wales tucked in between the Gara River and Black Mountain. Aisleen stood on the veranda of her home, looking out across the stark beauty of the wintered valley, where gray-white clouds scudded across the shoulders of the nearby hills. As she watched, the first flakes of snow drifted down. In another hour, it would be daylight. Tom was due home any day now.
A gust of wind dragged at her nightgown, and she folded her woolen shawl more tightly about her shoulders. She was quite proud of the shawl, for she had spun the thread and knitted it out of Liscarrol wool. Tom had laughed at her efforts, saying his wife could afford to buy whatever she needed, but she was not a fool. They were land poor, their investments in sheep and dairy cattle. Tom knew almost nothing about milk cows, but she had lived among herdsmen as a child and was willing to lend a hand. Their milk and butter was already being sold in Armidale, Uralla, and as far away as Tamworth.
Overhead, shutters slammed back against the upstairs window.
“Close those this instant!” she cried. She marched down the front steps and out into the early morning. She spied two black heads peeping out between the balusters of the second-story veranda and cupped her hands about her mouth. “Revelin! Killian! Back in bed this instant!”
“Ma! Ma! Look! Snow! It’s snowing, Ma!” came the barrage of replies.
“Aye, so it is,” she answered. “And which of you wants to be ailing and poorly so he cannot play in it come morning?”
“Ah, Ma!” came the chorused reply.
“Back inside, the pair of you, before your da comes riding in and sees you lurking about in your nightshirts. I’m sure I don’t want to think what he’ll have to say about it!”
The twin black heads, so like their father’s, disappeared from the railing.
“Now that’s a fine thing, frightening bairns with talk of the great ogre their sire is.”
Aisleen spun about, new-fallen snow loosened from her shawl by the action. “Tom!”
He jumped from his saddle and picked her up by the hips to swing her around.
“Put me down, you great lummox!” she cried, playfully beating him with her fists. “I’ll not be handled so freely in my own yard!”
Tom paused, staggering as though he might pitch over with her, and then slowly allowed her to slide down. By the time her feet touched the ground, she had forgotten the snow, forgotten her phony anger, forgotten everything but that she had not seen him in more than a month. Her arms had looped themselves about his neck, and she pulled his head down to meet her kiss.
His lips were cold, but his tongue was hot.
“Oh, Tom! A whole month!” she said breathlessly into his ear when finally they had warmed themselves with the passion of kisses.
“And here I am thinking it was worth every minute of it if this is how I’m to be greeted,” he answered, straining against her until she could not mistake the source or magnitude of his pleasure.
“You’re incorrigible!” she exclaimed and playfully bit his ear “Oh! No! Tom!” she squealed as he caught her by
the waist and hoisted her up over his shoulder “Put me down!”
“Aye, I will. Inside,” he answered, calmly walking to their front door with an arm about her hips to steady her and the reins of his horse in his other hand. He paused long enough to hand the horse over to the boy who raced out from the barn.
“Glad to have you back, Mr. Fitzgerald,” the boy said, his eyes growing as big as soup plates as he stared at the missus collapsed over the mister’s back in a fit of laughter.
“A lass will be taken this way from time to time when she’s missed her man too long,” Thomas explained with a smile. “Ask yer da. He’ll tell ye what’s to be done.”
“Conceited wretch!” Aisleen reared up and tried to wiggle free, but Thomas held her fast, adding a second arm about her hips.
Once on the veranda he marched around the house to the back bedroom and opened the shutters and stepped in.
The room was dark, the fire nearly out. He picked up a log from the rack and stirred the embers before dropping it in.
“Do you suppose I could be released now?” Aisleen inquired above him.
Thomas marched over to the big brass bed that had been his wedding gift to her and, bending forward, rolled her off his back and onto the mattress.
She lay where she fell, arms outstretched and skirts twisted. Thomas smiled down at her as he peeled off his sheepskin coat. “A man could travel many a mile and not see a more welcome sight,” he murmured as he reached to tug his shirttail from his trousers.
“In three years, you’ve learned nothing of manners or civilized behavior,” Aisleen scolded, but her eyes strayed in warm interest over the muscled chest he revealed as he peeled off his shirt.
“Aye, I’ve a thing or two to learn about manners,” he answered and unbuckled his belt. “I’m none too gentle with porcelain tea cups and lace-edged napkins.”
“We don’t have lace-edged napkins,” she answered as she watched his trousers slide free of his thighs. With mingled disapproval and exhilaration, she saw that he did not wear the woolen underwear she had bought him for winter.
“We do now. In me saddlebags.”
“What?” she asked distractedly as he reached under her skirts and gently spread her knees apart and then stepped between them.
“Is something on yer mind, lass, that ye’re nae listening!” he questioned as he reached higher. “Why, lass, ye’re naked!”
Aisleen blushed as his hand roamed her belly. “It’s not usual to wear pantaloons under one’s nightgown.”
His grin was devilish as he bent over her and carried the edge of her gown up with his hands. The new log had caught flame, and the firelight danced over her skin. “Ye’ve filled out a bit. I like that. Bairns have given ye the deep bosom and broad hips a man can hold on to.” His large hand, showing dark against the lush skin of her belly, moved up to lightly squeeze a taut-nippled breast. “Lass,” he breathed hoarsely, “I’ve missed ye.”