The Ground She Walks Upon (21 page)

"Secrecy?" Ravenna asked, rather surprised.

"Why yes. Of course. 'Tis why you haven't seen nary a servant but me. Himself wouldn't allow it. Even tonight when he was taking his whiskey in the library, he was still concerned that no one know you spent all these days under his care."

"Well... who am I, then, that Lord Trevallyan has taken such great care with my reputation?" Ravenna stared at the servant, waiting for an answer. She was disappointed to see Katey begin a retreat.

" 'Tis up to the master to decide that, miss," the maid said, a little nervously.

Confusion crossed Ravenna's face.

Katey seemed to take pity on her. Pensively, she wiped the table with her apron and explained, "The lord is a lonely man, miss. You must understand that. He's not in the habit of bringing home waifs in need of care. In truth, Himself doesn't bring too many people to the castle at all. Oh, you may hear about the routs and such, but those are all Lord

Chesham's doing. Usually the master takes his drinks as he may, and then he retires to his chamber to sit in the chair opposite yours, and he reads all through the night. An educated man, Himself is. I've heard he's read all the books in the castle and then some. He lives in his library."

"Is that where he's been..."
sleeping
she almost blurted out, but the question was even too improper for her, "... where's he's been all this time?" she corrected.

"Himself's got County Lir to look after and look after it he does. Not much time for visiting, that one. Tis partly why he is lonely." Katey sauntered toward the servants' door in the dressing room. In a pleasant voice, she said, "Just you rest now, miss. I'll bring you a toddy from the kitchen before bedtime."

"Thank you, Katey," Ravenna said, her thoughts very far away.

Katey tried to hide her enigmatic smile. "My pleasure, miss. You know, old Peter Maguire was quite a gossip. God bless you, miss. And God bless our Ireland." With that, Katey disappeared into the dressing room and the servants' passage beyond.

Boggled, Ravenna stared at the dressing room. She rose from her chair to call Katey back and have her answer all the questions firing in her mind, but when she reached the dressing room, the servant was gone, escaped into the medieval labyrinth of the keep.

She knew a better source for answers anyway. Trevallyan. As Katey had implied, he was even now in his library sipping a whiskey. It was only proper for her to thank him, and she didn't know if she would see him in the morning to be able to do so.

She ran to the shaving mirror over the bureau. Her hair was presentable, if not exquisite; her cheeks were pale, in fact she still looked a bit ghosty with her large eyes and dark hair, nonetheless, she pinched some color into her face, straightened her bodice, and left for the Trevallyan library.

To find one room in the midst of two hundred was a daunting task. It took more than a quarter of an hour for

Ravenna to even make her way to the newer portion of the castle, but once there, she found it was not difficult to detect which room was the library. There was only one light burning beneath the elaborately carved and gilded doors in the new wing. Unless Greeves was up late polishing the silver, the occupant of the room had to be the master.

She placed her hand on the gilt doorknob and experienced a sudden attack of nerves. He might not be pleased to see her. In fact, he might be quite displeased to find her intruding upon his private life. She pressed her ear to the mahogany door. No voices. Whoever burned the candles was alone.

Slowly she opened the door.

She remembered the library well from their last conversation in it. Trevallyan sat in a chair facing the hearth beneath
a
portrait of
a
woman to whom he bore a distinct resemblence. The woman had to be his mother. The Celt.

"My lord," she said in a low tone.

Slowly he turned his head. If he was surprised or pleased by her appearance, he didn't show it. Instead, his features hardened into an implacable, unreadable expression.

"What are you doing here?" he said.

Her nerves caught on fire. "I—I came to tell you farewell. I'll be leaving at first light." She met his gaze but didn't enter the room. There was no point in running into the dragon's lair.

"You don't look well enough to be leaving." He rose from his chair and walked over to her. Taking her arm, he led her to the chair opposite his. It was a large, old fashioned wing chair from the previous century, and it enveloped her within its needlework.

"I—I really didn't mean to bother you here in your library," she said, becoming a bit unglued by his intense gaze.

"Then why did you?"

The question seemed unanswerable. Even she wasn't sure why she had sought him out. She wouldn't have minded
a
pleasant chat before retiring, but one didn't have pleasant chats with Lord Trevallyan.

She clasped and unclasped her sweaty hands. "I told you. I came here to say good-bye—"

"No."

His answer left her with little leverage. Slowly, she added, "... and to thank you for the book."

"I see."

He stared at her from his chair, so far away, more than an arm's length away, but still close. Close enough so that she could see the color of his eyes. Green stones awash in deep water.

She met those eyes with all the bravado she could muster, but they were terrible, disapproving eyes. He had always disapproved of her, and with every attempt to win his regard, she had seen the disapproval grow deeper, had felt it sting more. It had intensified with every encounter, until now, when she was as polished and educated as she would ever be in her life, the disapproval cut a path through her self-worth like a scythe through O'Shea's rye.

"What's wrong with me that you look at me the way you do?" The whisper may have left her mouth, but it came from her aching heart.

"There's nothing wrong with you. You're beautiful. So beautiful that..." His gaze flickered down her face and figure. She wore the old scratchy blue dress she had worn to Peter Maguire's funeral. It was not a dress to win beaux, but he seemed to hardly notice what she was clothed in. He looked too deeply to notice the superficial. "... so beautiful I'd like to..." His gaze locked with hers. The message in his eyes scared her. And the excitement she felt from it, even more so.

"Shall you be my lover, Ravenna?" he said with words what had already been spoken.

She took several deep breaths and stared at him. Everything should have been so simple now. It was the point where a maiden should renounce the cad and stomp from the room in righteous indignation. Kathleen Quinn, no doubt, would have leapt from her chair, cracked Trevallyan across his face, and sent her brother to the castle at dawn to cut him down.

But she had no such option. Try as they might at the Weymouth-Hampstead School, they could not turn water into wine. She understood all too well from years of grinding repetition that she was poor, orphaned, Irish. Her education had not elevated her. It had only tortured her further by creating dissatisfaction with her lot in life. With no family or friends to protect her, she could no more take Trevallyan to task for his offer than she could keep Malachi from the hangman should they catch him.

Quietly she stood and then walked to the door.

"You haven't answered me," the voice boomed from behind her.

She turned to face him, wounded not only by the insulting offer but by the fact that she almost longed to accept it, and if not for her heightened sense of self-preservation, an instinct born and bred from her lowly beginnings, she feared she might have.

"No. The answer is no." She gave him a steady, diligent stare.

He stared back from his place in the chair, a strange frustration on his face. His voice became quiet, almost ominous. "I'm not making you an offer, Ravenna, I'm asking you a question. Are you to be my lover?"

"What would make you ask such a question?"

An unholy glint appeared in his eyes. "I've been told there is no choice in the matter. For years they've been telling me that my world and its circumstances are preordained." He nodded to the portrait of the beauty above the mantel. "She was much like you, Ravenna. My mother was a commoner, Irish and poor, but my father was captive to her love until his dying day. They needed no
geis.
They married, and it's been said that is why there's peace in Lir. The Trevallyans must marry commoners, and they've a
geis
to make sure they do it."

He stood and stepped toward her, his intense gaze staring right into her soul. "So the question keeps running through my mind until it's fair driving me bloody mad: Will you be my lover, Ravenna? Is it as certain as the fact that the moon will rise above the
ogham
stone on
beltaine?
And if not, how shall I win you? Have I enough money to cloak my age? Have I the charm to seduce you where Chesham and his amateurish efforts have failed?"

"Do you love me? That's the only chance a man will ever have." She raised her chin, pride building a fort around her fragile emotions.

He shook his head and looked at her as if she were a stupid child. "Do I love you? How absurd. That's not it at all. For you're the one who's to love me. This
geis
that has damned my very soul says I am to win a woman's love. And they say that woman is you, Ravenna."

She looked at him. A slow shock seeped into her. His talk mystified her, even frightened her, but it made such insane sense. He had a
geis,
and she was entwined in it. That was why even now, she wore a ring with the Trevallyan adder on it. There was a
geis
driving all this madness, and no doubt it had been for years. Perhaps even before her birth.

Her hand went to her lips in dismay and horror. So many questions flitted through her mind. Why hadn't Grania told her about this? Grania knew all the sorcery that went around Lir and she wouldn't have kept her granddaughter stumbling around in the dark, unforewarned. Or did Grania know it all along and keep it secret from her? Had all of Lir and the heavens above known about it and kept it from her?

The thought left her unbalanced. She didn't quite believe it; she didn't
want
to believe that Trevallyan's actions so far had been at the prompting of a
geis.
But still, there could be truth in his words, considering the fact that their rings were alike. And she now understood Trevallyan's inexplicable interest in her. Fate and a few old men of the county were trying to drive them together, but the
geis
had not figured on her resistance. Nor, obviously, had it figured on the elusive nature of love.

"Where are you going?" he said to her departing figure.

"If you have a
geis,
then perhaps you'd best hold to it or suffer the ill fortune it brings."

"You agree to be my lover?"

She wouldn't turn around and meet his stare. "If you have a
geis
that says you're to win a woman's love, then that is your
geis.
And if I'm that woman, then you must win my love."

"They say all of the county will suffer if I don't fulfill this thing I curse and despise. There's famine to the south. I can't bear the thought of Lir, our beautiful, abundant farmland, turning into a graveyard like down in Munster. Does that make you understand my offer?"

"If you must win my love, then you must win it. There is no other way to fulfill a
geis."

"Do you believe in
geise,
Ravenna?" he said a little desperately.

Her voice was hollow with tears. "No," she said. She didn't know why she wanted to cry, but she suspected it had something to do with the futility of the conversation. She now understood all the cryptic behavior of those around her. Trevallyan's regard and attention had only been the result of a doubt planted in his educated mind that the
geis
might be real. Now that they had discussed the idea, it would be dismissed as the folly it was. As she would be.

There was an extended silence, then the room crackled with harsh laughter.

She turned to look at him, feeling the wet, acid etch of tears down her cheeks.

"Don't you see how absurd this is?" He reached her and took both her arms in a grip. "The ancients of this county have devised all these plans, and yet not even you believe any of it."

"Yes. It's absurd." But she didn't feel his apparent joy. She didn't know when she had become attracted to him, or how to define the attraction she felt. Niall Trevallyan was certainly not the impressive physical specimen his cousin's friends were. In fact, she wondered if she passed him on a crowded Dublin street if she would even notice him. He was not a particularly tall man, nor was he a man of bulging muscles. But as she stared up at him, she decided that without a doubt she would have noticed him anywhere. His piercing gaze left an indelible mark on her memory. His face was handsome in detail, his lips and nose clearly carved of noble ancestry, but what set him apart from other, more common men was the acute Celtic slant of his brows. It made him look wicked, a progeny of the devil. And all Trevallyan's altruism couldn't erase the feeling one had when one looked at him that he was a man who held the power to destroy and create as a birthright.

"Please... let me go. I'm tired. I need to rest." She lowered her gaze to his hands that held her.