The Rebel Read online

  “And pray, what were you planning to do if Jane and I were out here alone?” he asked, amused as always by his mother’s way of thinking. “Not planning to spy on us, I should hope.”

  “Heavens no! Only keep watch on your behalf.” She smiled tenderly. “I know you do not need my approval. But still, I want you to know that I think very highly of Jane. She is a very special young woman.”

  “I know,” he agreed quietly.

  She walked past him and stopped by the edge of the garden—her eyes scanning the dark valley beyond. “Perfection does not exist, Nick. Beauty is only a passing illusion. Happiness is not a beginning or an end, but a lifetime of commitment. It is a journey.” She turned to him. “To love is to give.”

  This was not the first time Nicholas had heard these same words. They represented the principals he’d been raised to believe in, to live by. He’d heard them many times in his youth, though he wondered where it was that he’d begun to feel unworthy of happiness. Somewhere on the Plains of Abraham, he supposed.

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “That’s good,” she nodded, satisfied. “You’ll need to remember them. Jane deserves it.”

  Nicholas said nothing as his mother walked back toward him.

  “However, seeing that you obviously have nothing to do this evening, would you care to see the greatest treasures Woodfield House holds?” At his wry smile, she shook her head and patted him on the arm. “No, you can find your own way to Jane’s bedroom, my dear. I am speaking of her workroom. The studio where she paints.”

  “Your vast knowledge and wisdom continues to amaze me, m’lady.” He offered her his arm.

  CHAPTER 22

  “I spoke with Finn earlier today, Egan,” Liam said as the two waited for the others to arrive. “He said that John Stack’s and Denis Cahill’s tenant farms were paid a visit this morning by the dragoons. And this afternoon, they were over to Kilcorney, putting their noses in at the Connell place, at Jock Dineen’s, and at Ned Ryan’s, as well. They were questioning everyone about ye.”

  She tried to make light of her friend’s worry. “Unless they’re dividing and passing out bits of heaven, I do not think these folks will say anything different about me than they did the last time…or any of the times before.”

  The farmers Liam had mentioned would cut off their right arms before informing on her. The families mentioned all knew perfectly well who Egan was. Each of them had aided the Shanavests or, at one time or another, provided shelter for displaced families over the years.

  “But Finn thinks this is only the start,” Liam warned. “There are many others out there who shan’t be as loyal…or as brave…or as smart to know what to say or not to say. He’s worried about ye.”

  “About me? In all this time, the man has made a point of not making himself known to me!”

  “Aye…well, I cannot answer for him on that. But, sure as I’m standing here, the man is concerned. He even had us move the blind woman, Bridget, to Charleville last night because ye had talked to her. And don’t ye know, this morning at dawn there were dragoons searching all over Buttevant for her.”

  “You and I have been involved with this fight too long to become frightened so easily,” Egan said confidently. “This is not the first time they have searched through the straw for us.”

  Liam shook his head. “There has always been safety in numbers, and in knowing that when they come after us, we can spread in a dozen different directions and give them the slip. But this time, they appear to be after ye alone, my joy, and none of us like it.”

  Egan glanced at the large group that was gathering. She looked past Ronan’s deep frown across the fire and searched the faces in the crowd until she found Patrick. Her friend’s gentle and loyal face was a reminder that she needed to push aside her own disregard and really listen to what she was being told. These people did care for her, and she for them.

  “What does Finn recommend?”

  “He wants ye to stay in the shadows for a while. With a wee period of calm and easy going…with no sign of Egan…he thinks the searching and the questioning will soon die down.”

  “How about the gathering at Kildare?”

  “Finn thinks we should decide on someone else to go for ye.” Liam studied the gathered crowd. “’Twill be good if we can tell the people about the change in plans tonight.”

  Very well, she thought. So, she would not go on the trip. As everything stood now—and especially after today—she was afraid that she would be distracted by her feelings for Nicholas. Her friends needed better representation from their group than what Egan could offer now.

  “So who do ye think should go for ye?” Liam pressed the question again.

  “Patrick.” Egan answered. “He would be perfect for it.”

  ***

  At the sight of the empty stall, Sir Thomas’s hopes dropped like stones into a chamber pot. At the same time, frustration fueled his temper.

  All along tonight, he’d assumed Jane was with the baronet. Seeing both of them disappear after dinner, he’d thought—nay, he’d hoped—that the two would be sneaking off together to some dark and private corner of the night.

  He had not been mistaken. Subtle as they were, the signs and gestures had been all too apparent. Spencer was smitten with Jane…much to the blackguard’s credit. And, by thunder, if the scoundrel was man enough to go after her even after learning of her scandalous past, then, hang it, who was he to get in the way? Aye, something good might turn up after all. Despite his roguish reputation, the baronet looked to him to be the type to act honorably when it came to Jane. He had the look in his eyes. This had all the makings of a love match—if such a thing existed in this world of hard hearts and itching palms. But he’d known straight away that Spencer was cut from a different cloth.

  Sir Thomas glanced again around the empty stall.

  Damn Jane for trying to ruin it!

  He stormed out of the stables and up the hill toward the house. The cursed Whiteboys needed to be set back on their heels soon. They needed to have their leaders dancing in the Cork breeze. They needed a goodly taste of fear. Scare the buggers off, and Jane might just be discouraged enough to give up the cause while there was hope of something with Spencer.

  Enough was enough, hang it. He had left Musgrave to do his job too long. Sir Thomas needed to get involved once again and show the dandy how an old dog goes for the throat.

  ***

  The flickering light of a dozen candles brought to life the images on the canvases. Nicholas stood back and stared at the paintings he’d uncovered and stood up in every available space.

  After bringing him up into the attic studio, Alexandra had left without a word, leaving Nicholas alone to peer through this window into Jane’s mind. To view on his own a young woman’s burning talent. To sense the life that had produced such work.

  He had pored over her paintings with the fervor of a treasure seeker who had just found the long-hidden riches of Croesus himself. And as he went from canvas to canvas, he’d felt an unexpected rush of emotion that had forced him simply to sit and gaze from time to time. He had been touched, impressed, and his eyes had opened to the battles and the grief that had played such an important part of her life.

  But the most disturbing revelation had been the magnitude of Jane’s love for Conor. For a woman to forego so much of her life, to become so consumed with a cause that she wasn’t born to, bespoke great devotion to this man. It was daunting to think that she would ever be able to love another…that he would ever be able to win her.

  But hell, he thought fiercely, the taking of Quebec had not come easily, either. And this was far, far more important.

  He strode to her worktable and opened a leather case of sketches there. A charcoal drawing of himself was on top of a number of other sketches. He gazed at it carefully. It was quickly drawn, but unmistakable in its intent and its power. It was a depiction of him looking intently at someone he was holding captive beneath hi
m.

  It was a representation of the first day they’d met. She’d captured the mixture of surprise and heat in his face. The rest of the picture, however, confused Nicholas until it occurred to him that the rest was the work of her imagination. In the sketch, he was wearing a loose flowing shirt, unbuttoned and showing the muscles of his chest beneath. His hair was loose and wild around his face. His hand was reaching out of the sketch, reaching toward the artist.

  What he was looking at was an erotic evocation of what might have been…of what was yet to come! She had been drawn to him from the beginning.

  The creak of the door opening at the bottom of the stairs jolted Nicholas into the present. He peered down the steps and saw Jane looking up at him.

  “So you found this place,” she whispered. Her face was hidden by shadows, and he did not know immediately if she was pleased or angry.

  Nicholas watched her come through the door and latch it. Desire rushed through him as he watched her slowly ascend the steps. She was wearing the black breeches and shirt—her white smock had been discarded—and the image from the sketch came to life in his mind.

  “I took the garden path back from the stables…but when you were not outside, I thought you might already be asleep.” Nicholas saw her eyes take in the jacket and cravat he had tossed aside. Her gaze lingered on his rolled-up sleeves and bare arms.

  “Our time together this afternoon was too brief.” He extended a hand to her, and she took it. He drew her up onto the top step and into his arms. “I must warn you that you have created an insatiable appetite in me for what I sampled today.”

  Her lips opened under his and Nicholas tasted the sweetness and smiled even as he kissed her.

  “And I thought I was the only one who was suffering,” she murmured.

  Her fingers worked the buttons of his shirt. The feel of her cold hands touching his warm skin sent another surge of desire through him.

  Nicholas led her to the middle of the attic studio. She frowned slightly as her gaze took in the paintings he’d uncovered and displayed around the room. The look of uncertainty in her eyes pulled at his heart.

  “There are so few who know that I use this place as my studio…and even fewer who have seen any of my work. I am not traditional in what I do. Perhaps, what I lack in...”

  “I would account myself only a fairly knowledgeable critic of the fine arts, but I have seen enough of the acclaimed works to say your work places you easily among the greatest of those artists painting today.”

  “These are…” Jane shook her head and spoke softly, “You mock me.”

  “Hardly.” He cupped her face and looked steadily into her eyes. “I want to make love to you, Jane. Here, with these works of genius, with these windows to your past around us.”

  He kissed her until she was leaning into his touch and her hands began to move down over his chest. He caught her wrist as it reached his waist.

  “We should not rush through this. Not this time.”

  Jane’s eyes rounded as he pulled the narrow cot to the middle of the room. Around them flickering candles and glistening paintings provided both light and color, and he drew her down onto the cot. Once again, his mouth feasted on hers. She shivered with anticipation and leaned back on her arms as he started unfastening her shirt. With a deliberateness that he hoped would not prove his own undoing, he caressed each inch of exposed skin…until he reached the top of her chemise. There he found not only the linen undergarment, but also a specially made inner shirt, one doubled in thickness and tight to bind and conceal her breasts. He smiled at the dozen tiny hooks that appeared as he finished opening the outer shirt.

  “Do you remember the first day we met in the woods?” he asked softly.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Laying her down on the cot, he carefully undid hook after hook. When the task was done and the inner shirt lay open, he looked at the buttons of the chemise.

  “Just to torment me,” he murmured. “Well, two can play…”

  As he unfastened each button, he pressed his lips to the newly revealed expanse of skin, causing her to draw in her breath sharply and grip the sides of the cart as he reached the soft curves of her belly. He lifted his head and slipped the shirts and the straps of the chemise over her shoulder. Sliding his hands lightly over the smooth lines of her collar bone, he drew a line with his index finger down into the valley between her breasts. Freed of the constraining clothing, the perfect orbs of ivory flesh with their hard, extended tips rose and fell. She arched her back as he cupped one breast and ran his thumb across her nipple.

  “So beautiful…and ready to be tasted.”

  One of Jane’s hands slipped over his hip and touched the burgeoning manhood trapped in his breeches. He slid down along her body, moving himself beyond the reach of her hand.

  “Nay, my sweet. You cannot move, and you are mine to torment.” He gave her a look of mock warning before lowering his mouth to her waiting breast. She moaned and he felt her fingers thread their way into his hair when he started to tease and suckle.

  This afternoon they had not had time for discovering of each other’s bodies. Their lovemaking had been passionate, powerful, and direct. It had not been a time for seduction and exploration. But Nicholas was determined to give her just that now.

  He let his mouth trail to the other breast where he feasted until her breaths became ragged. He slid still lower, and his lips kissed their way down her soft, smooth stomach. His fingers were deliberately slow as they undid her breeches and began pushing it over her hips.

  “Nicholas…”

  Jane’s hands reached for him as he moved down on the cot and removed her boots and stockings and peeled the breeches from her legs.

  “Come to me,” she whispered hoarsely. “I need you now.”

  “Yes…and I need you.”

  Her naked limbs were a glimpse of eternal beauty glowing before his eyes. They were unmatched in art. Not Michelangelo or Botticelli or Titian—or any of the modern masters, either—had ever captured the curve of this foot where it bowed gently from toe to heel. He lifted it and placed his lips there. He slipped his fingers over the tapered lines of the ankle to the softly muscled calf and the perfect machinery of this knee. He kissed the dimpled skin and smiled at the little panting sounds of her breathing. With her foot now resting in his lap, his hands caressed with the lightest touch the firm flesh of her thigh until they reached the apex of their journey, that tantalizing triangle of hair and the moist folds beneath.

  He saw her breathing heavily, her breasts rising and falling with no discernible regularity. But her dark eyes were watching every move he made.

  “Nicholas…I never…I…”

  This was the response he’d been waiting for, so he pressed his mouth to her moist flesh. He heard her moan as he entered and stroked her with fingers and lips and tongue, suckling the very center of her womanhood until he knew she had entered a paradise of bliss.

  When she cried out softly, clutching at the cot as her body arched and shuddered, he knew that no artistic joy could ever rival the natural joys that lovers share.

  Slowly, he relented in his ministrations as her waves of ecstasy subsided—for the moment.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered, reaching for him.

  He sat up just out of her reach and discarded his shirt. “Not yet, my love.”

  Her eyes were smoky pools of ebony as she watched him stand and remove the rest of his clothes. When he tossed his breeches aside, her gaze narrowed as it fell upon his erect manhood.

  A soft blush colored her cheeks and spread down her neck and breasts. “Is it possible that you…and I…”

  “Let me show you the possibilities.”

  Moving back between her legs, he pressed her down against the cot and kissed her as the head of his staff entered the slick folds. She drew a sharp breath as he drove into her, and he silenced her cries with his mouth.

  Passion that he’d never known overwhelmed him when the spas
ms of her tight sheath closed around him. When her hands clutched at his buttocks, he felt her drawing him even deeper, demanding that he drive into her again and again, filling her sweet depths with his own pulsating flesh. Together, they found the rhythm of the dance, and together they rose to what he was sure must be the very heights of Elysium.

  When her release came, it came with the sweet abandon of the innocent, triggering a matching explosion in his head and in his loins. He muffled his cries against her throat as he continued to drive into her, pouring his seed into her body. As he came, she wrapped her legs around his hips and kept him locked in her arms and in her body.

  A long time passed before either could speak or even catch their ragged breaths.

  “How long can we stay up here without being discovered?” he managed to ask finally. He lifted his head and looked into her beautiful flushed face.

  “A long, long time. Months probably. No one ever comes up here, but me.”

  “Good.” With their bodies still joined, he felt himself hardening again inside of her. He rolled Jane on the cot, until she was on top. He took hold of her buttocks and drew her tightly against him, eliciting a surprised gasp. He gazed at her full breasts pressed against him—the cascading ringlets of hair framing her smiling face. He was once again fully erect.

  “You want to make love again?”

  “Actually, I was hoping for a tour of this magnificent gallery of art. But, of course, I shall need little enticements between the works, to keep my attention and sustain my self-esteem. I am very limited in my talents, you know.”

  “I fear I cannot agree on that score at the moment,” she said, raising an eyebrow and then smiling. “But what kind of enticement did you have in mind, sir?”

  He let his gaze travel around the large space. “Let me see…after we have finished with this cot, we would need to make love with you on my lap in that chair. And perhaps once against the wall…and once again with you facing the wall. We definitely need to try the strength of your worktable. And then that beam certainly has an interesting angle to it, I should say…”