Haunting Beauty (16 page)

“Are you just going to
go
?” she demanded, but her voice betrayed her with a painful hitch.

“What would you have me do?” he said softly. “Until we figure out what’s happened, we can only play along. Whatever this is, it’s no dream.”

“I know that, but . . .”

She couldn’t finish. Couldn’t risk bursting into tears as she tried to find the words that would aptly describe her fear.

“But what, Danni? What is it?”

“I just thought we should stick together, in case . . .” In case one of them was suddenly zapped back to reality. In case it wasn’t her. In case it was.

Sean seemed to hear her unspoken thoughts. Gently, he cupped her face with his hands and pressed his lips to her forehead.

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmured, his deep voice soft against her skin.

“I’m not afraid. It just makes sense that we shouldn’t separate. . . .”

“It does. But if we huddle together like children afraid of a storm, won’t there be questions? Questions we haven’t a way to answer.”

“So what?”

“So what if we can’t find our way back? What if we are stuck here for some time? What will we do when everyone thinks we are daft? I’ve seen what happens to the lunatics. It isn’t pretty.”

Danni’s eyes widened. She wanted to ask what he meant by that. Did they torture them or lock them up in the asylums of Dickens?

“But what if . . .”

“Don’t be worrying that I’ll not be back, Danni. I won’t leave you here.”

That he’d guessed the source of her fear so accurately unnerved and unraveled her at once. She felt transparent and ridiculous as she stood there shaking in her shoes over the thought of being left alone.

“I mean what I say. I won’t be leaving you.” He waited for her to acknowledge that simple statement. She gave a small, unconvincing nod. “Just go with Nana and do whatever it is she tells you to do—sounds as though you’ll be scrubbing floors for the day. Whatever it is, you can handle it. It’s all just minutes to pass until the world rights again, isn’t it? And maybe you’ll learn something that can help us make sense of this mess while you’re there.”

It was true, everything he said. But it didn’t make it better.

“I’ll be returning before suppertime and then we’ll sort it out. I’ll be back for you. I swear it.”

He didn’t intend to dump her in this strange place and leave her to survive on her own, she lectured herself sternly. He’d be back. He swore it.

“Do you hear me?” he asked.

She nodded again.

“Do you trust me?”

She nodded once more, realizing she meant it even as surprise rolled over her. She did trust him, crazy as it might be, and Sean rewarded her for it with a dimpled smile that knocked her heart sideways. It was teasing and serious all at the same time, as complex and mystifying as the man behind it and the emotions churning inside her.

“Danni,” he said softly. “Have you any idea why it is they’ve been expecting us?”

“No. I thought maybe you did.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand it all. It’s like she had it all planned out, isn’t it though? Calling herself my great-aunt, intro ducing me as a cousin. . . .”

“I know. All I can think is that we must be here for a reason.”

“And what reason would that be?”

“It’s twenty years ago, Sean. Don’t you get that? And if it’s
exactly
twenty years ago, then in a couple of days my mother is going to vanish with me and my brother, your dad is going to kill himself and . . .”

And someone is going to dump your young body in an unmarked grave with mine. . . .

She stilled, thinking of it with an aching pain in her chest. If the vision had been true, then Danni—adult Danni—would be buried in the same grave as Michael. “Are you coming, cousin?” Niall called politely.

“One minute, please,” he answered. To Danni, he said, “I need to go. Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes.” But it was a lie and there was no way she could hide it. She wanted to cling to him and beg him not to leave her. She steeled herself not to do it.

Gently he tilted her chin so he could see her eyes.

“G’wan with you now,” Colleen chided. “Give her a kiss, Sean, and be off. Herself won’t be going farther than the MacGrath house while you’re gone.”

Danni caught her breath as he lowered his head to do as he was told. His lips brushed hers in a shock of sensation that traveled her skin like a shiver. When he’d kissed her before it had been exciting and hot, but now . . . his touch was electric. It galvanized her and wiped her mind clean of everything but responding.

The kiss began as a gentle comfort, but her hands were on his chest, her fingers curling into his shirt to hold him as her mouth opened beneath his and she kissed him back. She did cling then, urgently. Begging that he not stop, not step away. Not leave her. He made a deep sound, a groan of reluctance as he pulled back, and despite her fears, despite her worries, she felt the flare of victory when she saw the hunger in his eyes.

“We’ll finish this later,” he promised softly. “It will not be long before I’m with you again.”

There was so much said—so much
un
said—in the simple statement that she could only nod in answer. But which Sean would be returning to her? The ghost or the man? And where would
she
be when he walked through her door once more? Back home in her lonely little house? Or here in this world she didn’t understand?

With a feeling that surpassed panic, she watched as he followed his father and Michael down a winding path toward the sea. As they went, other men stepped from the haphazard scattering of bright yellow and garish pink homes into the gray light of dawn. Niall introduced his cousin and welcomes rang out as the others greeted him with laughter and good-natured banter.

As Sean shook hands with them, she saw him glance back at her, and though she was too far to see it, she knew there was surprise in his eyes. He was as baffled by their friendliness as he was by his own confusion. What had he been thinking all these years when others looked right through him? Had he somehow managed to block it out, pretend it was common to be ignored? But now that he was faced with true normal behavior, he couldn’t help but see the difference.

“Come. Come now,” Colleen urged. “Ye’ll be seeing the lad again when he’s worked his day. You’re due at the big house and you’ll not want to be late.”

Turning, Colleen looked at Bean who waited dutifully just inside the door. What was it with Danni’s dog and Sean’s grandmother? “Don’t be jumping on me furniture, now,” she said gently and Bean immediately signaled her understanding by curling up on the worn rag-braid rug by the door.

Amazed, Danni could do no less than obey as well when Colleen ushered her away.

Chapter Thirteen

A
s they walked, Colleen chattered about Ballyfionúir, Ballaghs, and MacGraths. In a morning that had been no less than astonishing, hearing Colleen speak of Danni’s family history—of the heritage she’d never imagined—took Danni to a whole new level of amazement. She was from an old family—an ancient family, if Colleen was to be believed. And they’d all been living here on the Isle of Fennore while Danni had been on the other side of the world unaware they existed at all. Listening helped assuage her fear and calm the aching part of her that wanted to turn and run back the way Sean had gone.

But beneath the chatter, Danni had the sense that Colleen was playacting. Pretending to be a grandmotherly figure when in fact she had a set agenda. She was leading Danni to something—something other than the “day job” at the MacGrath house. Wary, Danni followed, aware that each step might be the one that plunged her deeper into obscurity. Aware that in this time and place, the point of no return was literal. There was a ticking clock over her head, one set to countdown to that grave she’d seen in her vision.

“Now Fia MacGrath is an outsider,” Colleen told Danni with a sad shake of her head. “From County Cork, they say, God bless her. And didn’t it cause such an uproar when Cathán brought her home and declared she was his wife? Many a girl
and
her mother cried into her pillow that night. ‘Beauty won’t make the pot boil,’ ’tis what they told each other. But Fia is a good-hearted woman, and not a one of them can deny the luck she brought with her. Isn’t Cathán living like a king these days? Soon enough they’ll be blowing fecking trumpets when he passes them on the road.”

“He’s rich, then?”

“Or doing a fine job of pretending. ’Twasn’t always the way of things before Fia, though. After himself passed on there were gray days a plenty.”

“Himself?”

“Well, Brion MacGrath of course. Cathán’s father. He kept the island afloat with just his will alone. With him gone, didn’t the taxes come due and the storms hit hard, as if just waiting for the master to be out? And wasn’t poor Cathán always in the field when the luck was on the road?”

Colleen nodded in agreement with herself. Danni wasn’t quite certain what she’d be agreeing with so she stayed quiet.

“And poor Mary O’Leary’s son, swept out to sea and not found for a week. Washed up in Kinsale, he did. He looked like a rotten sausage burstin’ from his skin after seven days and nights in the ocean.”

Danni grimaced at the visual. “That’s terrible.”

“Ah, sure it is. It was a wonder there was as much left of him as they found. A wonder it was, I told Mary. She was just glad to have anything at all to pour into the casket for Father Lawlor to bless.”

Danni was glad Colleen didn’t seem to expect a response to that.

“But isn’t it good fortune for you and your husband to be coming at just this time? With Cathán living like a king and the jobs being handed out like potatoes in heaven? Work is not so easily had in Ballyfionúir as it is in America, or at least it wasn’t before Cathán brought his bride home to his island.”

As Colleen talked, they came upon a cluster of houses lining the rough dirt road and neighbors bustled out to meet them, sometimes waiting at their gates for their arrival. It was like a bell had been rung announcing visitor’s hour, Danni thought, overwhelmed by the friendly faces and endless jabber. Had she and Colleen stopped for tea each time it was offered, they’d have been waterlogged and hours late to their destination.

“Isn’t it grand to have visitors from America?” one freckled and plump woman told them. She had a baby on one hip and another tight by the hand. “A wonderful place, is America, though the streets are fearful I hear. But isn’t that President Reagan a handsome man, God bless him. Did you know that Tom Quinn’s niece moved to Detroit a few years back? Do you know it, Detroit? Is that near your Arizona, Danni?”

Danni smiled politely, not certain any of the lilting questions were actually meant to be answered.

“Unfortunate girl was killed by a Ford Bronco in a Mac-Donald’s parking lot, poor lamb. Have you ever eaten at a Mac-Donald’s, Danni?”

“Yes,” she answered solemnly. “And if the Fords don’t kill you, the fat will.”

“Oh,” the woman said, pulling her baby closer.

At last Colleen led Danni away and they left the houses behind. Danni couldn’t help the glance over her shoulder. As she suspected, the neighbors had gathered to talk amongst themselves about the Arizona stranger.

“Not much excitement around here, is there?” Danni asked.

“You’d be surprised,” Colleen answered.

They rounded the base of a hill and a new sight grabbed Danni’s attention and made her pause. The ruins . . .

It had been a castle when it was whole and functional. Not the sparkling imagery of Cinderella, but something dark and solid, meant to withstand the blood rites that came with holding land and ruling people. From another time, another world, its existence seemed as unlikely as Danni’s presence in its shadow.

Staring up at the weathered stone walls rising like an illusion from a sunken flat terrain at the top of a massive knoll, Danni shivered. In the vision, she’d stood in the valley with the remains hun kering behind her, perched so precariously close to the steep crag that a strong wind might have pushed them over into the angry and churning sea.

Gray and crumbling, the ramparts were a weak sentry to the elements of time. Pieces of walls and fragments of corners stood within the remains of a broken enclosure. Rough-hewn stones fit like puzzle pieces up the round tower to a gaping hole where once a roof had been. Danni could hear the wind whistle through the sculpted openings and collapsing partitions that gave only a hint as to the shape and size of the original structure. The sound made her cold to the bone.

The road she and Colleen walked split here, with one branch twisting up to the desecrated ruins and the remainder of what must have been an enormous gateway; the other circumvented the hill and curled back around it. She turned, putting the fortress behind her, and took in the valley below that she’d seen so vividly in the visions. There in the distance were the flocks of grazing sheep, the sharp rocks of the sea cliff, and the emerald carpet that held it all together. Beyond and to the right where the path twisted, she saw the house—a beautiful Victorian creation that looked the anomaly it was with the decaying castle for a neighbor.

She scanned the horizon again, looking for the last piece of the puzzling vision. Then she saw it. There, made smaller by the distance, was the arrangement of three enormous stones, balancing a fourth like a giant house of cards.

Wishing she could stop herself, she imagined the steps she’d taken in the vision—reliving the anxious fear now as she gauged the interval between ancient dolmen and the unmarked hole where she’d seen her own body laying beside the boy—Michael, she now knew. Her eyes were drawn inexorably to the very spot where she and the grown-up Sean had stood. To the grave . . . a grave that had yet to be dug.

Ahead, Colleen slowed and turned to face her. “It’s all right now, child,” she said. “’Twill be all right now.”

Her voice pulled Danni’s gaze away from that awful place. She stared at Colleen, hearing those murmured words echo in her mind.

’Twill be all right now.