Whispers of Heaven (32 page)

She tilted her head, her gaze searching his familiar, handsome face. "What if you hadn't fallen in love with me, Harrison? Would you still be marrying me?"

He huffed a small laugh, but she heard a hint of the irritation it was meant to conceal. "What kind of a question is that, Jesmond? I should think you'd know me well enough to know that I would always do my duty."

His duty. They had all been brought up to do their duty, to God, to Queen and country, to their family name ... "But what if you had discovered you didn't even
like
me?" she persisted. "Then what would you have done?"

"Then I suppose I would have decided I was the wretchedest man alive instead of the luckiest. Really, Jesmond— What is all this about?"

It was bad form, what she was doing, the way she was pressing him, but she didn't care. She wanted to know. "And if I had been a convict when you fell in love with me all those years ago, Harrison? What would you have done, then?"

"Good God." He sounded genuinely shocked. "As if I could fall in love with such a person."

She stopped and turned to face him, the sun bright in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Why not? I'd still be me."

He shook his head vigorously. "No. You would not."

"I could have been falsely accused. Or the victim of circumstances."

"It wouldn't matter. I could no more fall in love with a convict woman than you could fly off this cliff." He tried to make light of it, but his nose was quivering in that way he had, and she knew he was becoming displeased with her.

She swallowed hard, conscious of a swelling of emotion at the back of her throat, a heaviness in her heart. He said he loved her, and she knew he believed it. He certainly desired her. But she was beginning to wonder how he could love her when there was so much about her of which he seemed to disapprove. Now that she was to be his wife, she noticed that he voiced his disapproval of her more frequently, and he seemed to expect her to change herself accordingly. To make herself into what he wanted her to be, the Jesmond of his imaginings. The Jesmond he loved, but who didn't exist.

She thought, sometimes, that it was her fault, for he was one of the people from whom she hid parts of herself, so that she had never allowed him to really know her, to know all of her, only, it had occurred to her lately to wonder how well she knew him. Theirs was not a world that encouraged openness or real honesty. Oh, actual mendacity and deceit were condemned, and loudly. But the very need for conformity, and that cherished English stiff upper lip, seemed to foster dissemblance and insincerity and distance. It seemed strange to realize that she and Harrison had grown up together, yet she knew Gallagher better, after less than a month, than she would ever know Harrison, after even a lifetime together. They would go through their lives together, she and Harrison, never really knowing what was in each other's hearts, or in their minds.

"No, I don't suppose you could," she said quietly, and would have turned away, only he caught both her hands in his, stopping her.

"Darling," he said, and she heard the thread of irritation in his tone again, despite the endearment. "There's something we must discuss." He pulled her closer to him, her hands held tightly. The breeze whipped at her skirts, flapping them out like sails. "I know you've been home only a short while, and I haven't wanted to press you, but..." He grinned suddenly, a boyish, rueful smile that echoed, again, the Harrison of her childhood. "What I'm trying to say is, we need to set a date for the wedding. I go to Hobart in a few days' time, but I should be back before the end of November. Shall we make the wedding for the first Saturday in December?"

He voiced it as a question, but she knew by his expression that he didn't expect her to do anything more than agree. She sucked in a quick breath, aware of a surge of panic, as if she were caught in the deadly currents of Shipwreck Cove and they were pulling her down, down, sucking her into a life she no longer wanted. "I don't know if that will give me enough time," she said, floundering, helpless, torn. "I mean, there's so much that will need to be arranged—"

Harrison laughed softly. "I think you underestimate your mother. She's been planning this wedding for more than two years now, remember? She says she will have ample time."

Jessie dropped her gaze to her hands, caught fast in his, hers gloved in blue, his in black. She thought of other hands, browned by the sun and scarred by cruel labor, and she thought,
By December, he will be gone.

Aloud, she said, "You have already discussed this with Mother?"

"Why yes. I thought I should."

It struck her as odd, for him to be discussing their marriage date with her mother before he broached the subject with Jessie herself. But then, he had probably been discussing the wedding with Beatrice for years.

"Jesmond."

Something in his tone made her glance up. He was looking at her with that mingling of possessive tenderness and hunger that she was coming to know. His head dipped toward her, and she held herself very still, willing herself to relax for his kiss.

He covered her mouth with his, his hands still holding hers captive between them. His lips were cool and dry and vaguely pleasant, moving against hers. But there was no trembling onslaught of fierce and wonderful need, no soaring glimpse of the sublime, and she knew there never would be.

If she had never glanced up on that windswept hill, she thought; if she had never seen an Irishman standing there, dark and wild and beautiful, if his fierce eyes and untamed soul had never stirred her blood and stolen her heart, would she have been content with this life others had planned for her? Would she have known this welling of loneliness and despair?

She felt Harrison's grip on her hands tighten until it almost hurt, his breath quickening, his mouth pressing down on hers with a roughness that surprised and frightened her. But before she could react, he ended the kiss abruptly and turned away, his hand shaking as he withdrew a white handkerchief from his pocket and patted his lips. The wind gusted, smelling of warm grass and the sea. From the copse of dark wattles near the top of the hill came the call of a thrush, low and sweet. But he said not a word, and she thought he must have shocked himself, with the intensity of his reaction to that kiss, here, in the middle of this sunny meadow, where anyone might have come along and seen them.

She watched him, pulling himself together, hiding the improper bits of himself away, and she felt an ache of great sadness within her, for herself and for him. He had told her he loved her, but he didn't seem the least perplexed by the fact that she had never said the same to him. They had always been friends; he knew she held him in esteem and affection, and she supposed that, for him, that was enough. A man did not look for violent emotions in his gently bred wife; everyone was always telling her that. She suspected he would be shocked—horrified, in fact—if he ever guessed at the potential for physical passion she knew she possessed within herself.

And it occurred to her, as they turned to walk together, back toward her brother and his sister, that this was simply one more aspect of herself that she would need to keep hidden from those who claimed to love her. Those whose love, she knew, was conditional upon her behaving—upon her
being
—as society said she ought. And she wondered how many more parts of her life, of herself, she was going to have to hide. How much of herself she could ignore, pretend didn't exist, before, one day, she lost the essence of herself entirely.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Warrick lay on his back in the warm grass, one foot propped up on his bent knee, his shirt open at the neck. He had his hat tipped forward, shading the upper part of his face, but his eyes were open, his gaze fixed on the sun-sparkled expanse of the sea and the billowing white sails of a ship just visible on the horizon.

"Why don't you sail anymore?" asked Miss Philippa Tate, as calmly as if she were asking if he were hot or if he'd like another cup of tea.

He turned his head to look at her. She sat on the picnic rug, her lace-trimmed, rose-strewn skirts disposed modestly about her, one of her endless collection of parasols protecting her complexion from the ravages of the Australian sun. "That, Miss Tate, is an extremely prying, impertinent question. And prying, impertinent questions are very bad form."

She tipped the parasol back so that he could see her face, see the hidden smile in her eyes. "If you were anyone else, I wouldn't have asked. But since you're always telling me you have no patience with the dictates of polite society, I didn't think you'd mind."

"You know why I don't sail anymore, damn it," he growled.

His show of temper seemed to have no effect on her whatsoever. "I think you'd be happier if you did. I think you need it. I think your soul needs it."

"What the hell do you know about my soul?" he demanded, but she only smiled in that distant way she had and set her parasol to twirling.

He sat up and leaned toward her. "You know what it would do to Mother if I took up sailing again."

She met his gaze squarely, her big brown eyes dark with a quiet kind of understanding that always frightened him a bit. "You do any number of things that seem to be precisely calculated to upset your mother. Why not sail?"

He swung his head away to stare out over the heaving blue waters of the sea. Sometimes, it was like a sharp, slashing knife, his yearning for the sea, a pain so poignant and deep, he used it to stab himself with, over and over and over.

"Have you considered hair shirts and self-flagellation?" she said in that same calm voice. "I understand they're very effective in purging the body of lingering illusions of guilt."

His gaze snapped back to her face.
"Illusions?"

"That's right."

He looked at her, at the damask curve of her cheek, at the arc of her lips. "Why does everyone think you're so meek and proper?"

"Because I am."

"Huh. Not with me."

"No. Not with you." She stretched out her hand to touch his arm. "I'm worried about you, Warrick. You've always been as free and wild as the wind. But lately, it's as if you have this fire burning inside of you.
I
'm afraid that if you don't do something to let it out, it's going to burn you up."

He should have been annoyed. If anyone else had said such a thing, he would have been annoyed. But they were old friends, he and Philippa. And she was also right.

He put his hand over hers, felt her fingers quiver, then lie still in his grip. "Do you know, I've always envied you," he said softly.

"Me? You've envied me?" She gave a startled laugh that brought a brush of color to her cheeks and made her look startlingly, almost breathtakingly attractive. "Whatever for?"

"You've always fit so effortlessly, so comfortably into your world. No, it's more than that; you're comfortable with who you are, and it gives you such a sense of... serenity."

"That's not serenity you see, Warrick. Only lack of imagination and courage."

He smiled. "What would you like to do that you're not doing?"

A strange light shone in her eyes, like a fierce hunger that was there, then gone. "Sail around the world with you."

He felt the smile die on his lips. "Ah, Philippa." Reaching out, he touched the soft, dusky fall of her hair, where it lay against her slender white throat. "I'm the one who lacks the courage for that."

Above the darkly indistinct shapes of trees in the park, the moon hung fat, luminescent in the star-glittered, blue-black sky. It wasn't full yet, that moon, but it would be, soon.

Jessie stood at the French doors of her room, her cheek pressed against the blue damask drapes, her gaze fixed not on the moon, but on the dark hulk of the men's barracks across the distant yard. It hurt, to look at that barracks and know he was there, locked in the darkness, although it hurt more to think of all the nights to come, when he would no longer be there. But then, her love hurt. It was a forbidden thing, her love, forbidden and impossible. Even if he didn't try to run away, even if he stayed, he would never be hers, could never be hers. And she knew him well enough to know that this life he was living, this convict life of humiliation and degradation and abasement, was one he could not endure. He needed to go. It was right that he was going. But that didn't stop the thought of his going, the thought of the danger he faced, from being like a knife to her heart.

She had moved through these last weeks of her life weighted down by fear and sorrow. Fear and sorrow and guilt. In another few days, she would be driving into Blackhaven Bay with Philippa, to deliver Harrison to the ketch that would take him down to Hobart Town. And when he came back, he would make Jessie his wife.

Sometimes ... sometimes she thought it was wrong, what she was doing, marrying Harrison when her heart belonged to someone else. How much of a woman's heart, how many of her secrets, was she allowed to keep hidden from those close to her, Jessie wondered. Perhaps she would tell him, when he came back from Hobart. Tell him, not who she loved, perhaps not even how deeply, but tell him that she had loved another.

He deserved to know that, she decided, before he married her. But she wouldn't tell him before he left. She wouldn't tell him until long after this full moon.

The town of Blackhaven Bay stretched some half a mile long but only several streets deep along its pebbly, surf- battered shore. It was a pretty settlement, of neat, two-story houses and shops, built in the Georgian style of sandstone and whitewashed timber, backed by green hills rising to the distant, rainforest-covered mountains. The town had grown both larger and more conservative with the settlement of the inland valleys, but it had begun its existence as a whaling port. At this time of year, when the whales were running, the tall masts of whalers still crowded the bay, and when the wind was in the wrong quarter, the stench of death still hung in the air from the whaling station south of town. As picturesque as it was, the bay had always seemed to Jessie a place of poignant and terrible beauty, as if it were haunted by the souls of all the whales that had met such hideous fates here. She'd said as much to Harrison, once, but he'd looked shocked and told her she was being both fanciful and blasphemous, so she'd never mentioned it again.