Read Online The Rebel by May McGoldrick - Free Book Online Page A

very
real, for the first time in her life, Jane actually agreed with
something that her father was attempting to do. Clara needed a
husband. She needed a respectable home and a future far away from
the turmoil that continued to rip at the entrails of this country.
For too long, the blood and pain and anguish that had caused such a
chasm in Ireland had affected her family, as well, festering and
contaminating all.
    Clara, however, was young, beautiful, and
pliable enough to forget everything here. There was still time for
her to start a grand new life for herself in England.
    The younger sister had come to Jane’s room
tonight after everyone had retired, but not to question her about
the incident that had occurred in the afternoon. She’d come to
inform her of the plans to visit Ballyclough tomorrow. She’d asked
her to go along, and Jane had reluctantly accepted.
    And as Jane now shielded her face against
the stinging rain, she only hoped that her family would complete
this marriage negotiation soon. She didn’t care to look upon
Spencer’s face for even a moment longer than necessary. Her first
meeting with him was a memory she wished to bury forever.
     
    ***
    The stone arch over the recessed doorway
that led out into the gardens afforded Nicholas a dry place to
stand and smoke his cigar. The teeming rain run in rivulets down
along the stone-paved paths into the garden. One of the dogs that
wandered about the estate lay curled in a ball near his feet.
Beyond the gardens, he could see the dark hulk of the ancient
stable with its two long arms of horse stalls reaching out to the
stone wall that completed the paddock enclosure. A newer, more
modern horse barn loomed beyond. When the lightning flashed, the
slate of the roof looked silvery in the rain.
    Despite the excuses he’d used to escape
earlier, sleep continued to elude Nicholas long after the
inhabitants of Woodfield House had settled in for the night. The
sound of the storm and the lash of the rain against his windows had
finally driven him from his bed. Restless and dissatisfied with the
world, Nicholas stood in the darkness and smoked and watched the
falling rain.
    A brilliant array of lightning flashes in
the distance drew his eye, and he silently counted the delay as he
had always done since childhood. Leaning against the stone and
mortar of the arched entry, he waited until the thunder reached
him, one peal building on the last, impressive in its untamed
power. Then, unbidden—even as the air reverberated from the
thunder—from somewhere in the back of his mind, the image of Jane
Purefoy’s face formed itself. Ringlets of black hair dancing in the
wind. Black eyes, dark as the night, daring him to follow her into
the storm.
    Nicholas threw the cigar into the dirt and
crushed it with his boot, angry for allowing himself to be so
easily bewitched. He’d never allowed himself to become consumed
with any woman before, and he wasn’t starting now.
    As he turned to go back into the house,
another bolt of lightning lit the fields beyond the stables, and he
stopped, fairly certain he had glimpsed a solitary rider riding
across the valley floor.
    ‘Bewitched’ was the right word. After all,
everyone knew Ireland was the land of ghosts and faerie folk. Of
pagan priests and haunted hillocks and storm-riding banshees who
carried with them the promise of sudden death.
    He stared out into the darkness until
another flash illuminated the scene. There it was again—a hooded,
dark-caped phantom—and it was covering ground. The rain-slick sides
of the black horse gleamed as it tore across the valley. As the
blackness enveloped the field again, Nicholas could see in his
mind’s eye the windswept cape flying behind as this ghostly rider
rode hard out of the heart of the storm.
    He waited, listening for the approach of the
horse, but the thunder rolling in across the fields and the teeming
rain obliterated any further sign. When another bolt of lightning
finally lit up