The Secret Rose (39 page)

He paused a few feet from her and wiped his face on his arm. When he looked at her again, his face was solemn.
So
ye know now, do ye?

“Aye,” she answered softly.

Will it be making a difference?

“I don’t know,” Aisleen answered truthfully. “I don’t understand it.”

His smile was as warm and beckoning as sunshine.
When will ye learn that ye’ve no need to understand it, only to accept it?

“You lied to me!”

Sure, and I should have said, macushla, ye’re wedded to a man ye’ve known all yer life!
he answered with a sad, sweet smile.

“It can’t be!”

Ah, well, if it cannae be then it cannae be
,
he answered in gentle mockery.
I’ll
nae be pleading with ye for the believing of it. Some things cannae be had for the wishing of them. Others cannae be undone for the same.

Aisleen stared at him, his blue eyes the bridge between the moments. “Why?”

He shrugged.
What the pooka writes, he himself can read.

“That is no answer,” she protested. “It is a childish riddle.”

He smiled.
Ye once liked me riddles.

“I was once a child. I’m no longer a child.”

And don’t I know it!

Aisleen turned her head away. It was not possible. She was dreaming, dreaming of a magic that did not exist.

’Tis yer saying it makes it so, colleen!

She turned back, but it was too late. He was gone. The walls of the bedroom had returned, the bed, table, and chair. Only the humming in her blood continued. Was she intoxicated? Yes, that was it. She had drunk a cup of rum. She was unquestionably, completely drunk!

*

Thomas had stopped to wash the worst of the blood from his face, neck, and chest before entering the house. Even
so, Sarah gasped at the sight of him. “And me the winner!” he said before she spoke.

“Shame on you, Tom Gibson!” Sarah cried. “You’ve thoroughly enjoyed yourself while your wife has been beside herself with worry for you.”

“She knows there’s naught to fear,” he answered easily, but his gaze moved to the bedroom door. “Is she sleeping?”

“I wouldn’t call it sleeping,” Sarah answered, “not when Jack’s poured the better part of a rum keg down her poor throat. She’s never taken a drink before, poor lamb, and when she’s weathered the sore head that’s sure to come, she may never drink again.” She paused to wink at him. “You’ll never have a better chance to make her listen to you. And if you’ll take some advice, you’ll tell her now what you should have long ago.”

Tom dabbed the cut above his eye. “Not now, Sarah. She’ll be too weary.”

“Maybe,” she answered. “But if she were my wife, I’d talk to her before she ran away a second time.”

Thomas’s gaze went back to the door. “I didn’t know.”

“Luck saved you a ride to Bathurst,” Sarah added, hoping to goad him to action. “There’s many a gentleman who wouldn’t mind telling her how pretty she is and how much she stirs his heart.”

Thomas glanced at her. “Ye’re meddling in me business.”

“So I am. Enough said, from me. It’s your turn, Mr. Gibson, and high time!”

Thomas did not know what to expect when he opened the door, certainly not the sight of his wife sitting in bed with a warm smile of welcome on her face.

“Oh, you poor man!” she said. She raised a hand to touch the gash over his left brow. “Does it hurt?”

“Never a bit,” he answered, more interested in the sights revealed by the slipping sheet. She was lying in bed naked! As he gazed at one ruby peak, he unconsciously wet his
lips. “Do ye feel like a bit of conversation, lass? Ye’re particularly fond of conversation.”

Aisleen giggled. She knew it was quite improper to giggle even if one giggled in the privacy of her room with only her husband to hear. Highly improper, but she could not stop. Her fingers trailed down his temple to his cheek. “You’re growing whiskers,” she said in wonder as she rubbed against the grain of his new beard.

Thomas sat down carefully on the side of the bed, wary of this new Aisleen. “Aye, a man in the bush most often wears a beard. Ye’ll nae be liking it?”

Aisleen curved her nails to catch the bristles. “I don’t know. It will scratch, won’t it?”

“Some women don’t mind.”

The change in her eyes was startling. From bemused gold to amber rage in a blink. “I won’t have you walking down the street with another woman hanging on your arm!”

“Saw that, did ye?” Thomas smiled. “Then ye know it wasn’t me fault.”

“It was certainly your fault!” Aisleen snapped, but she couldn’t hold her anger. Giggles bubbled in her chest, fermenting and then foaming over at the most inconvenient times. “Oh, Tom!’ she gasped between giggles. “You mustn’t make me angry. I don’t like being angry.”

Thomas smiled and reached out a hand to steady her by the shoulder. “Aye, and I’ve given ye grief enough this day. Poor lass, look at yer chin.” He touched the bruise with infinite tenderness. “It must pain ye something fierce.”

“It doesn’t,” she answered truthfully. “Jack gave me something for the pain.”

His laughter was quite the best laughter she had ever heard, she decided. “Jack has the same cure for every ailment. I hope ye will not be thinking too badly of him come the morning.”

Aisleen looked at him, at his black hair and blue eyes, at
the masculine contours of his jaw and brow, at his handsome mouth that she wanted very badly to kiss. “Love me,” she whispered. “Please love me!”

“But I—”

He was unprepared for the strength of the arms she swung suddenly about his neck to bring his head down for her kiss. Her kiss was warm and wet and inviting, and he forgot everything but it and the warm silky body that thrust itself against him. Wrapping his arms about her, he followed her down into the bed.

Her hands were suddenly everywhere: at his belt, pulling it free from the buckle, at his shirt, unfastening buttons and tugging the tail from his trousers. Her breasts were impossibly soft against his chest, except for the hard nubs of her nipples.

He tried to be careful, not to jar her head, but she would not let him be gentle. She pulled him eagerly onto her, her kisses dragging at his mouth, devouring him in their hunger, seeking his breath before he could catch it. The heady intoxication of her passion brought to flame his own desire for her. Yet she was not satisfied with a return of her kisses. She wriggled under him until he lifted his head in puzzlement. She scooted up in the bed until she was half out from under him and then threw back her head and arched her back, offering him two swollen nipples.

He caught one peak in his lips and felt her shudder with pleasure. Bracing his elbows on the bed, he supported her back with his hands and began, one stroke at a time, to lick up from the shallows of her ribs to the summit, where he caught the nipple with a flick of his tongue. Each time, she
gasped until the lower half of each breast was slick and she
quivered uncontrollably.

When she lifted her head, her face was deeply flushed, her hair tangled in her lashes, and her eyes two honeyed pools of passion.

“Ye’re so beautiful!” he whispered. And she was, with a wild unstudied beauty that had nothing to do with light, or dressing, or composition of muscle and bone.

He lowered his head to rub his bristling chin into the soft curve of her belly, his hands sliding lower to buttress her hips. He had never touched a woman in this way before, had never known one long enough to hold and touch and possess as his fertile imagination might direct. His head moved lower, into the wild, fiery tangle that smelled of heather and sea mosses, and there he plied her with his tongue until she wept and shuddered and wept again, all for him.

He had not words for the emotion sweeping over him, just a deep primitive satisfaction that she allowed him these moments, this mastery that he had not even known was possible. His Aisleen, his “vision”—she was worth waiting for, worth fighting a hundred men for, worth anything for this!

When his own need for fulfillment levered him up across her once more, he had not words to express the need or the pleasure. He buried his face in her shoulder, lifted her hips while she, for the first time, parted her thighs without persuasion. He came into her easily and completely, a perfect match of soft, wet warmth and firm, hot flesh. She embraced him from within, welcoming him as no woman had, holding him as no woman had, pleasuring him as nothing ever had.

When it came, the fierce explosion of passion shook them both, left them gasping and shuddering and holding on to each other as the only reality in the world.

Afterward, as his head lay heavily upon her shoulder, Aisleen thought she felt the cold trail of tears upon her skin. But that was not possible. What did he have to weep about? It was she who was lost. She lightly stroked his head,
smoothing the silky hair that lay behind his ear. “Do not weep,
avourneen machree
.”

*

“You make a fine pair! A black eye and a bruised chin! The folk of the New England district will know there’s real gentry among them at last,” Matt pronounced as he and Sarah stood outside the hotel the next morning to see their guests off on the coach for Bathurst.

“We’ll heal right enough,” Thomas answered and touched his tender eye. “Haven’t had more fun in years.”

Aisleen merely looked at Sarah, too miserable from her hangover to give much thought to her chin. “Thank you for everything,” she said through stiff lips and gave the woman a quick hug. “You must come and visit us once we’re settled.”

“Don’t know that we’ll have the time,” Sarah answered and patted her stomach. “Soon we’ll be busier than ever. Matt’s thinking of opening another public house far west of here at a place called Broken Hill. Some of the older diggers think it’ll be the place of the next big strike.”

Matt hushed Sarah with a hand over her mouth. “Can’t tell the little woman a thing,” he groused. “Before ye know it, there’ll be a dozen sly grog shops going in under me nose.”

“Don’t suppose ye’d consider moving up north?” Thomas asked. “Not many of our kind in the district. We could do with some honest Irish neighbors, if ye know what I mean.”

Matt smiled. “Maybe, when I’ve made me fortune and we’re more settled.” He glanced at Sarah, and she nodded at him.

“That’s the ticket!” Thomas moved to help Aisleen climb onto the dray with extra seats that served as transportation to Bathurst. He climbed up after her and waved a hand. “G’day, Matt, Sarah! See ye next time through!”

Aisleen did not look back as they rounded the corner; she could not without shaming herself with tears. Once more, she was being uprooted just as she was beginning to feel a bond between people and herself. Was it always to be like this?

“We’ll be seeing them again,” Thomas said beside her. “I’ve known Matt some years. He’ll come round to me way of thinking, see if he doesn’t.”

“Were you transported together?”

For a moment, Thomas said nothing, and Aisleen wondered if she had embarrassed him. They were not alone. They shared a seat with a huge woman with whiskers on her chin and a rummy breath.

Thomas reached out and took her hand, his eyes on the road ahead. “There’s many a thing I should be telling ye, lass, but now is not the time. When we’re alone together, I’ll be answering yer questions,
all
yer questions. I swear it.”

Aisleen leaned her aching head on his shoulder, and his arm came about her to hold her close “That’s me lass,” he murmured in her ear

Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace

For him who hears love sing and never cease…

—The Rose of Battle

W. B. Yeats

Chapter Sixteen

A lurch of the coach jolted Aisleen awake on the seat, but Thomas’s arm was there at her waist to hold her steady. She looked into his face and smiled.

“Not much further now,” he said. “We’ll soon be stopping for the night.”

She nodded and lowered her head back onto his shoulder, where she looked past him out of the coach window. The afternoon sky shone in vivid shades above the Blue Mountains. They had taken the regular coach from Bathurst across the mountains, a trip that Thomas informed her would take the remarkably short time of a day and a half when she considered that the journey with the sheep had taken more than three weeks.

After a moment, she glanced at her fellow passengers. There was a thin woman in a deep-brimmed bonnet that hid her features. Beside her, a child of eight dressed in his Sunday best clung to her hand. To their right, two rough,
pipe-smoking diggers sat silently exhaling clouds of bilious cheap tobacco that circled the brilliant feathers they had stuck in the bands of their bush hats. They had not spoken, but Aisleen was aware that their gazes seldom left her. If Thomas noticed, he said nothing. She suspected that he
did
notice, for he occasionally patted the hard lump under his jacket which was the butt of his pistol.

Aisleen suppressed a yawn, delighted that she was not on the trail with Jack, who was following them on horseback and leading Thomas’s mount. They were to meet on the eastern side of the Divide and then travel north to the New England district together. The coach was faster, more comfortable, and the meals served up hot and hearty at coaching inns. If she never saw the back of another cook wagon, she would not regret it.