Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
SEAN HAD THE SAME DREAM every night. He’d had the same dream so many times that he knew he was dreaming the instant it began, but that did not decrease his panic, his fear, his horror.
Paralyzed, he could only watch the events of that bloody night unfold, helpless to prevent the massacre of the villagers and the murders of his wife and her son.
Peg smiled at him, but the question was always there in her faded eyes: Why don’t you love me, Sean?
He wanted to go to her and beg her forgiveness and tell her that he did love her, even though it would have been a lie. Circumstance had dictated that he marry her and they had both known it.
“When will you give me my boat back?” Michael appeared, his skin oddly gray, his hair, once crimson, almost black.
Sean had punished him that night for being rude to his mother by taking the carved toy away. It had been a gift from his father, a sailor who had disappeared at sea. The small toy remained in his pocket now, even as Sean slept. He was not given a chance to reply.
The mob of angry villagers appeared and he knew he had to stop them from marching up the road to Lord Darby’s estate.
He knew what would happen if they appeared at those iron front gates.
He knew it because he had been there, not just three years ago on that bloody night, but as a child, the day his own father had led a similar mob against the British.
He tried to tell them that no good could come of this but his voice wasn’t working—he couldn’t get the words out.
His panic escalated. He tried to seize the arm of Boyle, Peg’s father, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He tried to seize Flynn, but he vanished before his very eyes and the estate was burning, the soldiers were there, and he was there, his dagger in the gut of a redcoat, a boy really, and then the boy looked at him, meeting his regard, the question there unspoken, why?
And when Sean laid him down he was looking up into the blazing blue eyes of a British officer.
Colonel Reed was staring at him with hatred.
Sean understood what Reed intended. He tried to chase him, but the officer was galloping away and he could not catch up.
The days passed by him and he was still running madly to the cottage where he was hiding his family, and even as he ran, he knew what he would find and he was sick with dread and desperation.
Too late, he was there, but the house was an inferno, too late, he screamed for them both, but Michael was nowhere to be found and when he found Peg, he held her as she lay dying. …
Sean cried out, sitting up, sweat pouring down his body.
For one moment, he was somewhere else, in the midlands in a small, starving village just a few miles from Kilvore. For one moment, there was smoke and fire, shouts and retreating hoofbeats and he choked, sobbing over his dying wife and their lost child. He gasped for air.
Sanity returned, and with it, reason and reality.
He was not back in Kilvore. He was not beside the burning inferno where his wife had died.
He shoved to his feet. He was standing alone in the woods.
The horse he had stolen yesterday in Cork was grazing some short distance away, hobbled so he could not wander.
Sean was trembling violently and he knew he could not stop it. He could only wait for the tremors to pass. He walked to the edge of the glade, knelt and vomited.
He sat back on his heels, closing his eyes, recalling that he was at Adare. His home—the home where he had been raised from the time he was eight years old—was on the other side of the woods. In that huge house was the earl, whom he loved as a father, his mother, his brother and stepbrothers.
He stood. Elle was there, too.
But she wasn’t Elle anymore. His gut tightened, his heart lurched. The panic came, and it was so huge that he couldn’t even try to deny it to himself.
She had become a beautiful woman, a woman he barely recognized.
But she was still stubborn and fearless, even if the skinny child had vanished.
He could insist to himself that it was natural for him, in his celibate state, to be responding to her body, her beauty.
But he hadn’t really noticed any of the women he’d passed on the streets in Cork.
Even the cobbler’s pretty daughter had evinced only a vague and passing interest.
He had meant every word when he had told her that she should be afraid of him.
He wanted her to fear him, his lust and the British who were after him—he wanted to chase her away.
He hated the way she looked at him. He hated that she seemed to love him still, perhaps more so than ever.
But she had refused to be frightened and she did not seem to be running away. Worse, she had offered him her bed.
Maybe he was the one who was afraid of her.
She had offered him her body.
But he would never accept her offer, even though the mere thought of it increased his arousal.
He was not going up to the house tonight, because her offer came with strings.
He could try to convince himself that Elle was gone, but she wasn’t.
She still worshipped him, and he saw her love every time he looked into her eyes.
She might be prepared to give him her body, but she wanted his heart in return.
And that was never going to happen.
Even though he was certain Sean O’Neill was dead and buried, some part of him remained, because he couldn’t use her, even if he desperately wanted to. And it was only in part because she now belonged to another man. He did not want to hurt her more than he already had.
Besides, he was leaving and she was marrying the other man.
God, he hated Sinclair! Yet he had known from the moment he was old enough to understand the politics of dynasties that Elle would marry a title and, if possible, a fortune.
And he felt as if he might explode out of his skin.
He had the frantic urge to stop the wedding.
Worse, his body raged to accept her damnable offer and take her to bed.
He could not understand himself anymore.
Instead, Sean fought the inexplicable anger.
It was a very good match, in spite of Sinclair being an Englishman.
He was going to America anyway. And there was no possible way that she was coming with him.
Because they would chase him and if he were caught and she was there, she might suffer the same fate as Peg.
He knelt and vomited again.
Where had that notion come from? He wondered, feeling dizzy now as he leaned against a tree.
He wasn’t taking Elle with him because he wasn’t rotten enough to make her a mistress and he would never take another wife.
He wasn’t taking Elle with him because she deserved her titled heir and his fortune and a future filled with peace.
I am coming with you.
I want to go hunting, too!
Sean tensed. A memory he did not want to entertain threatened him.
IN brAIDS AND DRESSED for riding, she was glaring and stomped her foot.
He sighed. He had known this would happen if she ever learned that they were going hunting for two days.
He had begged Tyrell not to mention their hunting expedition to her.
This particular week he hadn’t been able to shake her from his trail for more than a few minutes.
“You’re nine years old and you are a girl, even if you seem to wish you were a boy.
You’re not coming with us,” he said firmly.
“Yes, I am,” she said, stamping her foot again. “And so what if I wish I were a boy? Being a girl is stupid! I hate dolls. I like hunting! I like fishing! I like worms! I’m not too young—Father took you hunting when you were nine!”
“How would you know? You were a baby then.” Annoyed, he turned and started to leave his room. She followed.
“I asked him, and he told me.”
He stopped in his tracks and she crashed into his back. “Has anyone ever told you that you are too clever for your own good? You’re not coming, Elle. If you’re not careful, you might turn into a boy—and then you will die an old maid!”
She began to cry. “I hate being a girl! I hope I turn into a boy so I can be just like you.”
There was no reply to make to that. Worse, he was feeling sorry for her and guilty for being cruel, so he rolled his eyes and left.
Amazingly, a few hours later, as the hunting party set out, there was no sign of Elle.
He wondered if it was possible that she had given up, but he highly doubted it.
Was she sulking in her room? Was she still crying?
His heart stirred. Her tears were usually a matter of theatrics, but he hated it when she cried anyway.
A few hours later, they were many miles from Adare.
They had stopped to rest, water the horses and take some refreshments.
Sean had actually forgotten about Elle as Cliff was regaling them with the story of his latest conquest—the lady being half a dozen years his senior and the bride of one of Father’s elderly friends.
But then Elle’s fat red pony wandered into the makeshift camp and he was without his rider.
Fear briefly paralyzed him.
They split up to search for her. He was afflicted with images of her lying on the trail, her neck broken—one of the most common causes of death. This was his fault, he kept thinking, and he prayed that she was all right. If anything dire had happened to her he would never forgive himself…
He found her walking up the trail, looking dirty and unhappy, but unhurt. When she saw him, her face lit like a harbor beacon and she cried out, running toward him, holding her arms out.
He leaped from his charger and ran to her, hugging her hard. “What were you thinking?” he cried, almost angry. Then, cupping her cheek, “Are you all right?”
She nodded, her eyes huge and serious. “Sean, I fell asleep!”