Whispers of Heaven (44 page)

"Lucas—" She swung to face him, the pain of losing him stabbing her chest so fiercely, her voice broke with anguish. "Oh, God. I don't know how I'm going to bear this, when just the thought of never seeing you again is more agony than I could ever have imagined." She reached out to capture one of his fine, scarred hands in hers and bring it to her cheek, her gaze roving his beloved face with the desperate need to memorize every line, every subtle nuance of shadow and light. A sad smile trembled her lips. "Did you ever love me? Even just a little?"

He let his fingertips skim over her cheeks, her lips. "I have always loved you,
mo chridh.
Even before there were stars in the sky, I was loving you. And long after every star in the heavens has faded to dust, I'll still be loving you. Beyond forever."

The next morning, Jessie was in the cutting garden, filling a basket with bridal wreath and ranunculus, when she looked up to see Harrison coming through the rose-covered wrought- iron archway that marked the entrance through the hedge.

"There you are, Jesmond." He came down the narrow brick path toward her, his fingers worrying the fobs that hung from the gold watch chain against his silk waistcoat, his aristocratic features tight with that look of concern and disapproval that was beginning to make Jessie's stomach twist with nerves every time she saw it. "I've just learned your mother will not be attending Saturday's ceremony."

She bent to cut another ranunculus. "St. Anthony's overlooks the bay," she said with deliberate calm. "My mother never goes within sight of the sea."

"Yes, I know. But Jesmond—" He broke off to lift the basket of flowers from her, as if it were an overwhelming burden. "Here, let me take that." Looping the basket over his own arm, he fell into step beside her. "How can the mother of the bride not attend the wedding? What will people think? I thought you'd arranged for the wedding to be held in one of the inland towns."

"No." The word came out stronger than she'd meant it to, so that he looked over his shoulder at her in mild surprise. "I mean ..." She forced herself to smile, and reached out to rest one hand on his sleeve. "St. Anthony's is our church, Harrison. It's where we will be attending worship every Sunday, where our children will be christened and ..." Her voice trailed off as she saw the warm glow that leapt into Harrison's pale gray eyes at her words. She felt a traitor to him and to herself; she felt diminished by her own lack of honesty. But how could she tell the truth? How could she say to a man like Harrison,
I don't care what people will think; I don't want my life to be ruled always by fear of other people's opinions.
How could she say to him,
I don't want my mother at my wedding because what she is doing to me—what she is doing to us both—is unforgivable.

Of course, she could say none of that. So she swallowed the treacherous surge of feelings that rose within her, and said quietly, "I think we ought to be married here, at Blackhaven Bay, where we will live out our lives."

"If it's what you want." He put his hand over hers, cap- turing it when she would have turned away. "Only, surely you want to have your mother with you at such a time, to help you dress, to share the moment with you?"

She looked up into his handsome, familiar face, and drew in a deep breath. "Harrison, there's something I've been meaning to discuss with you," she said in a rush, before her courage failed. "I would like Genevieve Strzlecki to attend our wedding."

"Genevieve Strzlecki!" He dropped his hand from hers, his brows drawing together as he stared at her in a moment of stunned silence. "This is some sort of a jest, isn't it?"

"No." She slipped the flower basket from his loose grasp and turned away, her hands shaking slightly as she reached to cut a spray of baby's breath. "No, I am most serious. Not only has Genevieve been my dearest friend for years, but she is also my aunt. I want her at our wedding."

"Your
aunt?"
He took a quick step up the path, away from her, his fine coat flaring open as he planted one hand on his hip, the other hand coming up to rub his forehead in a distracted gesture. "Good God, how can this be? She is not at all a proper person for you to know."

In that moment, he sounded so much like Beatrice that Jessie could only stare at him.
I am marrying my mother,
she thought in a wave of despair. But aloud, she said, "Genevieve is my mother's sister, Harrison. I have only just discovered i he relationship, but it would mean a great deal to me, to have her at my wedding." She paused, then added shamelessly, "I specially since my own mother won't be there." Setting aside the secateurs and basket, she closed the distance between them, her arm slipping around his silk-covered waist as she reached up to brush his smooth cheek with a soft kiss.

Please?"

It was the first time she had ever touched him in such a familiar way, spontaneously, and he looked both surprised and gratified. "All right." He smiled down at her. "If it makes you happy."

She found, to her shame, that she could not meet his glowing gaze. She felt like the vilest sort of harlot, to have sunk so low as to win what she wanted from him with smiles and manipulation and suggestive caresses—the full panoply of feminine wiles she had always scorned and disdained. Never had she done such a thing before, but she knew, in that moment, that this could easily become the pattern for their marriage.

He was not the type of man who would ever willingly treat her as an equal partner, as someone with intelligence and opinions and wishes of her own that he needed to take into consideration as he ordered their lives together. If she tried to discuss things with him honestly, if she tried to meet him head-on, or argue with him as another man might do, he would never compromise with her, would only grow angry and end up scorning her, perhaps even hating her. There was a reason, she thought, why women under their husbands' power had learned to use subterfuge and flattery and the lure of their bodies to get what they wanted. Women's ways were the ways of the weak because in their society, women were weak.

But she wondered how long a woman could use the kind of methods she had always despised, before she came to despise herself.

Genevieve perched on a low, three-legged stool at the base of her garden, a drawing pad balanced on her knees, a stick of charcoal hovering in her fingers as she studied the battered rocks far below, her eyes narrowed against the wind. Humming lightly to herself, she brought the charcoal down in a series of bold black strokes across the paper. When the sun shone brightly out of a clear blue sky, and the sea swelled with gentle serenity, she liked to use watercolors. But on days like this, when the fine promise of spring seemed to have disappeared beneath the onslaught of a series of storms sweeping up from the Antarctic, she found charcoal a more appropriate medium.

She glanced up again, this time turning her head toward the overgrown drive. Someone was coming. Someone on a high- steepping chestnut that fidgeted and jibed at the bit, as if sensing its rider's hesitance.

Genevieve rose, her gaze on the man at her doorstep. Leaving her paper and charcoal on the stool, she walked inward the house, her long skirts brushing the scraggly wet leaves of the roses and daisies of her sea wind-battered garden. She watched, her heart thumping with emotion, as he swung gracefully out of the saddle, a tall young man with ashen fair curls and the face of a somber angel. He wasstaring at the door of her cottage. He hadn't seen her yet.

"May I help you?" she called.

He swung about, one hand coming up to remove his smart beaver hat. "Mrs. Strzlecki?"

"That's what I call myself, yes." She smiled. "Although I'm sure your mother has told you I've no right to either the name or the title."

She saw an answering gleam of mischief light up his fine gray eyes. "I am Warrick Corbett," he said, as if she hadn't watched him grow to manhood, even if from a distance.

"I know."

He gave her a charmingly shy smile. "I understand you're my aunt."

"Yes."

He held out his hand. "I'd like to know you."

She drew his hand through her arm, and held it tightly, more tightly than she perhaps should have, for although she was his aunt, he didn't know her, had only just met her. "Come into my kitchen, and I'll fix you a nice..." She'd been about to say
a nice cup of tea
, only she looked up at him, and laughed, surprised by the tears that stung her eyes. "Brandy, I think."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

That Saturday, Jessie arose to a wedding day filled with low gray clouds and a raw, blustering spring wind heavy with the scent of coming rain.

Throwing a cloak about her shoulders, she let herself out the side door of the house and went for a walk through the misty garden. But the neatly edged paths and formal plantings proved too controlled for her troubled soul, and so she left the garden and cut across the park, to the pond. The grass beneath the soles of her kid boots felt slippery with early morning dew, the wind bracing against her cheeks. She went as far as the new stone wall surrounding the family burial ground then stopped to look back at the castle, its double rows of sandstone arches and flat-topped tower rising somber and dark in the flat light.

It still hurt, to think that after today this would no longer be her home, but the anger and alienation of the past few weeks had done much to lessen the pain of her leaving. Once, she had expected marriage to Harrison to change her life, but she knew now that her life would never change, not unless she found the courage to change it, to change herself. She had always thought of courage in terms of physical courage—the daring required to set a horse at a high wall, to climb a steep cliff, to sail across the seas to an unfamiliar land. But she knew now that there was another kind of courage, the courage she needed to be herself in a world that demanded conformity, even at the expense of honesty; the courage to stand firm against other people's attempts to control her, to make her into what they wanted her to be; the courage to suffer through the pain and unpleasantness of their disappointment and anger when she could not—should not—do what they wanted her to do.

All her life, she had tried so hard to be the daughter her parents wanted her to be, to make them happy, to make them proud. She hadn't thought that a woman could be too loyal, too self-sacrificing, too noble and giving. She hadn't realized that in the effort not to betray those she loved, she could betray herself. Somewhere, somehow, she had lost sight of that line, that line between what she owed those she loved, and what she owed herself. She wasn't going to lose it again. She had promised herself she would try to be a good wife to Harrison, try to make him happy, and she would. Only, not at the expense of being true to herself. That was a promise she was making to herself, today.

With a sigh, she turned to walk along the pond, its gray surface ruffled by the morning wind. When she reached the old apple tree, she paused, her head tilting back as she stared up at the leafy branches shifting with a shivering rustle against the low pewter sky. The air smelled of wet earth and new green fruit, but if she breathed deeply, she could almost— almost catch the scent of apple blossoms.

In marrying Harrison, she might be marrying a man she did not love in order to save the life of the man she did love, but she was still being true to herself; she knew that. This decision might have been forced upon her by her mother, but it was still her choice, a sacrifice she made freely, and for all the right reasons. She hadn't lost herself in her love for Lucas; she had found herself. It was the tragedy of their lives that they hadn't been able to keep from losing each other.

Now, standing here beneath a cold, uncaring sky on this, her wedding day, Jessie felt the ache of that loss bite painfully deep, all the way to her bones. It was never going to go away, this grief of losing him. In time, she knew, it might lessen. But now it was an agony so sharp and profound, she felt a howl of unbearable loss begin to build inside of her, build and build until she was clutching her crossed arms against her stomach, her body hunching over as a silent scream welled up from within her, a soundless shriek of mourning that twisted her insides and kept coming, and coming, and coming. The wind blew around her, cool and damp with mist. She heard a scattering of raindrops and the sound of footsteps hurrying toward her.

She straightened with an effort, one fisted hand pressing against her open mouth in an effort to choke down that silently welling howl of loss. Then pain turned into something like panic as she recognized the small, wizened figure of Old Tom coming fast across the park, his gait awkward, his features drawn with worry.

She flung herself forward, the hem of her cloak streaming out behind her in the wind as she ran across the park. "What is it?" she cried, reaching the old man just as he stumbled, her hands flying out to catch his shoulders before he fell. "What's happened?"

Tom braced his hands on his thighs, his breath coming in quick pants.
"I
've had a message from the
Agnes Anne,
brought by one of the seamen. He says Captain Chase reckons there's a bad storm coming through, and he wants his ship gone from Blackhaven Bay and well out to sea before it hits."

Jessie's hands dug into the old man's shoulders so hard she practically shook him. "But they can't leave now! Chase
said
he'd take Gallagher with him. He said—"

"Listen, lass. They'll still send a lighter to the cove to pick up Gallagher, like Chase said. But it's got to be this morning."

"This morning?" Jessie let go of the old man's shoulders to swing around in a wide, frantic circle of gray sky and blurring treetops. "Oh, God. Can we do it?"

"Aye. Aye, we can—if we can get a message to Gallagher, and to the lad in the gaol's kitchen. It's better today than Monday, to be sure, for you'll be getting married at just about the time the prisoners take their morning exercise. Which means that Captain Boyd and his lieutenants will all be at the

church when Gallagher and the rest go over the wall." * * *