Her eyes narrowed with determination. Well, Garret MacQuade could take his damned notions of protecting her from herself and shove them into the nearest rattlesnake hole. She'd had enough of that lost look in his eyes, enough of the tremor in him when he fought the need to kiss her.
Enough of wanting him so badly she ached with it.
With a quick glance around the quiet wagon Ash thrust her chin out at a stubborn angle and made her way to the tailgate. Still wrapped in Garret's blanket, she climbed out. Her bare feet chilled upon the still-wet grass, yet deep inside her fires burned hotter than any flame, fed by love, desperation, and the most fragile of hope.
The slanted roof of the lean-to was limned in silvery light, and she could just make out the faint outline of Garret pacing beneath its shelter—an animal caged, trapped in brutal jaws of loneliness.
Clutching the blanket closed above her breasts, Ashleen marched up the hill, feeling for all the world as if she were going to war—to fight for something far more treasured than a mere patch of land or cherished ideal.
She knew the instant he saw her, for he stilled, every line of his lean body whipcord taut. And when she drew close enough to see his face the sight made her heart clutch in her throat, her hands tremble.
"Go back, Ashleen," he said, his voice snagged, low, rough, yet raw with stark need. "This isn't one of your fairy stories. And I'm sure as hell not one of those honor-bound knights whose tales you love to spin. I'm no good for a woman like you. I'm a loner. A drifter. I've done more than my share of things I'm not proud of. But touching you... making love to you here, now... that would be the most unforgivable thing of all."
"Why? Because I was almost a nun? Because... because you feel responsible for me? Or because I won't know how to please you like that dance-hall girl with her dress split down to her middle?"
"Hell, no! It's not because you... you're not..." He swore, slamming the flat of his hand against the support. The roof shook, bits of bark and leaves falling from the branches tied overhead.
"Damn it, Ashleen, if we make love now, how are you going to feel when we reach Stormy Ridge and I ride out of your life? How are you going to feel months later, a year later, when you don't hear from me, don't see me? I know you, damn it. I know you and your damn ways. You'd be talking to angels, asking them for miracles. Expecting them from me. And I don't want to think of you night after night, watching and waiting for someone who's never going to come."
Ash swallowed the lump in her throat, her eyes stinging at the bleak picture his words had painted. They were close enough to the truth to make her chafe inwardly, and to build the desperation inside her until she quivered with it.
But she only met his gaze levelly, all her love glowing fiercely in her eyes. "Is that any worse than someone who always watches for the earth to crumble away beneath him? Who won't even look at a sunrise because he knows the nighttime will come?"
A harsh, hurting laugh rose in Garret's throat, and he lifted a trembling hand to curve along her cheek. "What would you know of nighttime, Ashleen O'Shea—you, who seem woven of light? Sometimes I think you're one of your wood sprites come to life. But life—real life—isn't made of the magic kingdoms you wove locked away in your convent. There's more ugliness, more pain than an angel like you can imagine."
Ash turned her face to plant a soft kiss in his rein-scarred palm, lifting tear-bright eyes to his anguished ones. "I'm not the naive angel you imagine me to be, Garret. I'm not blind to the ugliness you speak of. I held my best friend's hand while she died. I held her child in my arms and cried—cried because I had betrayed them both."
"Ashleen—"
"No." She lay her fingertips upon his lips, her eyes clinging to his, pleading. "I should have known Moira was starving. Should have known how desperate she was. But I went to see her as seldom as possible because it reminded me... reminded me of him, and it hurt too much."
"Him?" There was a darkening in Garret's eyes. Jealousy. Yet also so much tenderness, Ashleen ached with it.
"Moira's husband. Meggie's father." Ash steeled herself, knowing she was laying open wounds she'd never allowed anyone to see, laying them open in hopes that they might somehow heal Garret's own.
"His name was Timothy Kearny. Handsome as the devil and thrice as daring. Every girl in Wicklow was half in love with him, and I was just as foolish as the rest of them."
She drew in a steadying breath before she could continue. "He said that he loved me. Wanted to marry me. But that we had to keep our betrothal a secret, because his raids against wicked landlords might endanger me."
She let her hand fall from Garret's lips, shaking her head at the gullible child she had been. "I believed him."
Ash felt the warmth of Garret's fingers as they enfolded her own, chafing gently at her skin as if to warm it. "You don't have to tell me any more, Ash. You don't need to—"
"Oh, but I do. I need you to hear, to understand. It's just hard... hard to admit how foolish I was. But then I was only sixteen, even more full of romantic notions than I am now. The secrecy, the stolen kisses, the trysts when I could sneak away from the convent—they all seemed so deliciously romantic, like some hero tale of old. Until..."
She drew her hands away from Garret, closing her fingers again in the scratchy wool of the blanket draped about her shoulders. "It was harvest time. He and the other Young Irelanders were supposedly going on some dangerous raid. When we met in the glade he told me that as soon as he came back he would carry me off to America. Make me his bride. If he lived through the attack."
Ash felt her cheeks burn, surprised that even now the thought of those hours could fill her with shame. "He pleaded for one night... one night to carry with him in his memory. Said he couldn't bear to face death without making me his own."
She could feel waves of tension roiling off of Garret's stiff frame. Feel his anger, his compassion, an almost feral protectiveness that touched her.
"You... you made love with him?" Garret asked, his voice grating with shared pain.
Ash nodded, lifting her face to meet his gaze. "I would have been glad of it, Garret. Glad. Except that when I stole away from the convent to meet him two weeks later, it was to find him wed to my best friend, his babe already growing in her belly."
"Goddamn that bastard to hell—"
Ash held up her hand to stop his tirade and gave a weak laugh. "The worst of it was that Moira didn't know. About Timothy and me. He had been feeding her the same lies—only when her brothers discovered that Moira was with child they made certain he did right by her."
