CHAPTER SEVEN
I met him at the cotillion. Such a dashing young man, with his blue eyes and black, black hair. He was the very devil, complimenting all the ladies in that wonderfully wicked Irish accent….
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Gen looked up from the first page of her great-great-grandmother’s journal to see Rafe’s curious frown. “I thought this was the whole idea.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and paced the other way. “I know. But those pictures...”
Gen set the book down in her lap. “Exactly. Those pictures. Not just you and me, but finding out that my great-grandmother was named Anne. Just like my mother. Just like my daughter. I never knew, Rafe. Not any of it. Heck, I still don’t even know my grandmother’s name. I think that one of those trunks contains her life, though, and I have the most horrible feeling that her name was Genevieve. I think it all happened for a reason, and I think the answers are in this book.”
“I don’t think you want the answers,” he insisted.
That brought her to her feet. “Why not? What do you think I’m going to find? That I am that woman in my dream? That my dead great-great-grandmother has some kind of unnatural sway over my life?”
“I don’t know,” he retorted, dragging a hand through his hair. Truly upset now, agitated enough to finally get through to Gen.
She set down the journal and walked over to him. Caught him midflight and held on to him. “Rafe,” she said, “what is it?”
His eyes were unnaturally bright, brittle. He couldn’t seem to look at her, as if the sight of her might somehow hurt him. “I...”
“What?”
But he could only shake his head. Finally, though, he focused his gaze on her, only making her even more unsettled. “I don’t know,” he said, enunciating each word carefully. “Just like I didn’t know why that box was there, or why I knew I liked red hair, especially yours. Why I know so clearly that you’re the only woman I’ll ever love, and that you’re in some terrible danger.”
“And this has something to do with it?”
It took him a second, but he nodded. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, I’m the one who’s been urging you to find out more. Now I think you could find out too much.”
How did she tell him it was too late? That there wasn’t anything in this world, even him, that could keep her from finding out the truth? Somewhere in these words lay the clues to why the women in her family had tried so hard to hide from their past. Why, maybe, she was so terrified of being abandoned. Could this woman, this phantom through whose eyes Gen had been able to look, have had such power that she had been able to infect Gen with her own tragedy?
Rafael and Genevieve O’Shea had had one child, a daughter named Anne. From the only information Gen had, Anne had had one child, a girl. That girl had had Gen’s mother. And Gen’s mother had had her. And something of those women hovered in this old house like a sorrowing ghost that Gen suddenly needed to exorcise.
She had to know.
“You’re here with me,” she offered as excuse. “We can’t be surprised.” Still he wouldn’t bend. Gen straightened in self-defense. “I’m not the one who opened the door on the past, Rafe.”
“It doesn’t feel right.”
“What about you?” she asked. “Don’t you want to know? My God, you can’t remember anything. You know me, you know this place—which is called O’Shea’s Seven Oaks, by the way—but nothing else rings a bell. What if somehow youarethat Rafe, the one my great-great-grandmother lost?”
“What if I am?” he demanded. “Would that change anything? Would that give her her husband back? Would that mean that I love the wrong woman?”
“Do you know me?” Gen asked.
“I told you I did.”
“I mean, do youreallyknow me? Not just recognize my hair and my eyes and name?”
“Yes! That was never a question, damn it. I know how you laugh and how you cry and how gentle you are with children. I know that I’ve never felt anything more delicious than your hair, and that when you make love you sing….”
Gen gasped. No one in the universe knew that but Michael. No one.
She felt the tears collect in her throat.
“Then what does it matter?” she asked, her voice hushed, her hands trembling where they held on to him.
“It matters,” he said softly, his eyes dark with turmoil, “because I can’t lose you again.”
