"Me?"

"Why else would he be doing this?"

"You two either put your hands together now or say good-bye for a long time. Right hands. The knot needs to be tied correctly."

Silence roared through the cavernous hall, bouncing off the stone wall and floor like hurled boulders of defiance.

Ryan finally shrugged off the meaty hands attached to his shoulders. "Do it, Rachel."

"I will not." Her green-brown eyes flashed. She'd bathed earlier, he realized. That special scent wafted all around her. He could be in a dark room with a hundred women and still know her. "This is ludicrous," she said. "David isn't going to send you anywhere."

"Would it make a difference to you if he did?"

"Yes." Her eyes fever-bright in the candlelight held to his. "I would not wish anyone sent off to San Francisco."

"Then you would at least miss me?"

"David won't do this, Ryan."

They both shifted their gazes to the aforementioned subject. "You're bluffing," Rachel whispered. "Aren't you?"

David's expression told her that not only would he ship Ryan off; he was definitely considering doing the same to her. "He can't marry us legally," Ryan finally said, holding out his hand if only to end this farce. "He is full of hot air as always."

"Put your hand atop his, colleen," David said, then added when she refused. "Touching him shouldn't be difficult considering what you told me less than an hour ago."

With a sardonic lift of his brows, Ryan shifted his gaze to Rachel's horrified face.

"Rachel..." David warned.

"All right! I will!" She set her hand atop his.

Her pale fingers trembled. Outside, rain beat against the stained glass of the church, and Ryan cursed himself for coming to Ireland. He cursed his stupidity a thousand times, half-listening as David spoke words over them before binding a blue cord over their wrists and tying the knot. The heat of Rachel's palm seeped into his skin, touching him in all the wrong places. Slowly, as his senses grew attuned to her, he became more aware of her standing diminutive beside him, to the faint blur of her blue skirt, which caught in his vision. She barely reached his chin. Despite his detachment, too many emotions at that moment rose out of the shadows to capture him. An odd sensation of reality lent volatility to the possessive instinct kicking him in the gut.

She was beautiful. Everything about her was soft and shiny, from the way the candlelight pulled the red-gold of the sunset from her hair to the liquid intensity of her eyes as she turned to look up at him and spoke the vows David asked her to say. With her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes bright, her fury eclipsed by distress, she might have been a Spartan waiting for death in the pass of Thermopylae for all the tragedy in her eyes.

In the end, the handfasting ceremony might have ended calmly if Ryan hadn't been drinking earlier. Or if the man behind him hadn't drawn a pistol on him in the first place and forced him here. David had always been a bully-a bloody tyrant.

Ryan's mood descended rapidly and, when David leaned over to untie his hand from Rachel's, Ryan hit him with his left hand. His brother went sprawling against the desk, sending books and papers scattering over the floor; then came back with considerable more force behind his fist.

Still tied to Ryan's hand, Rachel had grabbed his arm in an attempt to keep them separated, without realizing she was leaving him defenseless. David's fist smashed Ryan beneath the jaw. His head hit the pillar that supported the heavy-timbered ceiling, and he went down as if hit by a pole axe.

"Enough!" Rachel commanded. "This is your fault, David Donally!" she turned amid her billowing skirts, testing Ryan's scalp until her hands felt the lump.

Ryan remained unconscious.

"You've hurt him, David. How could you be such a brute?"

"You asked me to save you from damnation." His teeth showed pink as he withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his lip, unrepentant, as he studied his brother's fallen form. "The two of you have one year and a day to decide your future."

"Handfasting isn't legal." The thought of having Ryan in complete control of her life, even for a year, was obscene. "It's...pagan."

"Ah, but the custom is practiced widely all over the British Isles. And my boys will confess to your willingness to be here." David raised his gaze. "Won't you?"

Rachel glared at each of them until Ralph Blakeley finally shrugged, as unrepentant as David had been. "It 's for the best, Miss Bailey. Father Donally says so."

"When my brother wakes up, he can decide what he wants to do with a wife and an affianced." His voice remained without humor. "Perhaps you can all share the same house. Become friends."

"I'll never forgive you for this, David Donally," she called after him, as he and his two Fenian bodyguards left the room. "And you can be sure I won't be coming to you anymore for confession! Ever!"

The door slammed.

"That should worry him into his grave," Ryan muttered, from his place in her lap.

His eyes remained closed, and she saw him flinch when he moved his head. "Are you all right?" She touched his cheek. Then worked to untie the knot binding their hands. "Can you move?"

"If you don't count my double vision and jarred brain, I'm perfectly cheery." He tested his jaw. "Am I still in Ireland?"

"Yes, unfortunately." Rachel pulled at the knots on the rope. "I'm sorry that David did this to you."

His eyes suddenly narrowed on hers, and her heart leaped into her throat. "What the hell did you tell him anyway?"

"Nothing," she answered too hastily, thankful when the ribbed cord fell to the ground between them.

"Nothing?" Ryan sat up and draped his elbow across his knee as if to get his bearings. "Nothing? Like your affair was nothing?"

"My affair?"

She struggled to climb to her feet, but Ryan clasped her ankle. "Yes, your affair." In one furious movement, he slid her across the stone floor beneath him, dragging up her skirts. He imprisoned her flanks with his thigh. "That little piece of nothing in your past that no one wants to talk about."

"Don't talk about me as if you have such a pristine history."

"You don't know me, Rachel. And if everything you think you know you gleaned from the newspapers, you know very little about me at all."

For the first time in her life, Rachel didn't care if Ryan was right and she was wrong. She felt responsible for everything. For ruining his plans for his daughter. His future. She didn't know what to tell him. She'd never felt more like a coward than she did at that moment. "What are we going to do?"

"Don't look so tragic, Rachel." He cupped his hand over her chin and looked into her eyes as if to discern the cause for her concern. "David doesn't have the power he thinks he does. We're not married."

"Then everything is as it was between us?"

"There has never been anything between us, Rachel." His gaze touched her lips, and the touch sent a physical current through her veins. "Maybe if there had been, we could have saved ourselves the agony of today," he said.

"Agony?" She laughed. "Meaning I would have found you boring by now and would feel free to continue on with my life?"

"We could always find out." The corner of his mouth crooked, reminiscent of that naughty-boy grin that had always made her melt. "Just how boring things would have been between us."

Rachel ran her tongue over her lips, raising her gaze from his lips to embrace his eyes. He was always so sure of himself, of his influence over people. The heat from his body seeped through her clothes. "Or you could just leave Ireland as you found it"-her voice was breathless soft-"and go back to London."

"Even if I wasn't lying on top of you in my brother's rectory, I still could not do that."

A shiver hampered her ability to navigate her words. She braced her small fists on his shoulders. They were hard and sculpted beneath her palms. "I don't want an affair with you, Ryan."

"What do you want?"

He'd pulled back to look at her, and she found herself acquiescing to the intimate tone in his voice, the probe of his eyes. She was vain enough to think she could control the situation. "Are there rules to this sort of thing?"

"Not for what I want to do with you, Rachel."

She groaned. The sound forming deep in her chest. Just thinking about his hands on her body sent a frisson across her nerve endings. An exotic fog began to cloud her judgment.

"One time wouldn't officially be considered an affair," he whispered against the corner of her mouth."It isn't?""Not even close." His words were husky and dangerous. "One night. No business. No past. No future.

Only you and me, Rachel."

She did have a way to prevent conception in her pocket, yet nothing was ever one hundred percent. But

the power of Ryan's body, his words, and the promise of more set her heart racing. He'd still not kissedher.She wanted him to kiss her."Ryan." Her voice was a whisper against his."Tell me what you want." His lips grazed the soft curve of her ear. "Tell me.""I don't know.""You do, Rachel."Would one night be enough?"No business." Her eyes slid closed. "No past. No future," she said, ready to quench the burn. "Then everything will be as it was?"

"I swear." His lips touching hers, she tasted her own restless energy. "Everything will be as it was, Rachel."

And opening her mouth to his, Rachel sank into the carnal promise of that one crushing kiss.

Chapter 10.

R yan thought about retracting his oath the moment he shut the cottage door behind Rachel. Normally oriented toward decisive action, he attributed his accelerated heartbeat to the fact that they'd just traipsed a hundred yards through a path in the misty woods. Silently, watching her survey the room, he leaned with his back against the door and let his gaze dwell on the picture Rachel made as she stopped and looked into the bedroom. Firelight traced her profile with inviting strokes of light and shadow. Her awareness of him never more visible as she turned to take in the simple furnishing, the papers he had spread over the table, his coat and jacket lying on the settee. Finally, she raised her gaze to his.

The air between them turned electric.

She looked wanton in silhouette, her hair unfettered and free flowing past her waist. He suddenly felt irresolute and knew he had methodically plundered her defenses to the very loss of his own.

"When did you last have your courses?"

"Pardon?"

"Do you want to take a chance that anything we might do will lead to a child?"

"You needn't worry about that."

"Pardon me for caring, Rachel, but yes the hell I do."

His gaze held her pinned to the floor, his dark eyes penetrating. But one corner of his mouth lifted. It seemed even progressive women of means were embarrassed to talk about the subject even with the man to whom she wanted to have sexual congress.

"What I meant to say is that I have something...that should assure..." Nervous but determined, she faced him directly. "I have something that will aid against conception."

"Indeed." When he made no move into the room, she looked away.

"Elsie knew a midwife. Despite Elsie's age, she is far more experienced in dealing with these matters..."

"You and Elsie spoke on this subject?"

"Not on purpose." Flustered, she lifted her chin. "You think that I'm knowledgeable about such worldly things; I am not. But neither am I naive enough not to understand the far-reaching ramifications of what can happen between a man and a woman." She moved against the back of a chair, and when he still did not reply, she lifted a brow. "Am I supposed to apologize that I should have left the cottage tonight prepared?"

The oblique statement settled the matter of any doubt in his mind. If he might be unsure of his own intentions toward her, he was no longer unsure of hers toward him.

His gaze holding hers, equally direct, Ryan reached behind him and twisted the key in the lock. "No apology is necessary."

He removed the key and set it on the table beside the door. His body was tense and aroused. A fire glowed in the hearth, all that remained of the blaze that had burned earlier in the evening. He laid peat atop the embers.

"Do you want anything to drink?" he asked.

"Not tonight." Rachel's hands slid into the folds of her skirts. "I want to know when I wake up tomorrow that this was real."

The words she spoke held him captive and, with an effort, he pulled his eyes from hers. He braced a hand on the mantel, fingers gripping the edge, and waited for the flame to catch and burn. A strange flutter pulled at his stomach, and with something akin to disbelief, he realized he was nervous, like a green lad in the throes of his first sexual encounter. The confidence that had become so much a part of him through the years had fled and left him raw and wanting, unable to comprehend the emotions that stirred in the passing currents of air much like the hot embers in the fireplace.

He looked over his shoulder. Rachel had not moved and seemed to be suffering the same hesitation that pulled at him. Yet the fire was there between them, simmering like the flames in the hearth, slowly consuming the air they breathed. He felt the heat go over him. The warmth infusing his veins.

There was no going back for him. He did not play the regret game, so did not question the actions that led him to this cottage. His adolescent obsession had become a palpable force in his mind.

She was beautiful. More beautiful than the verdant Irish hills she so loved. More beautiful than the ocean and the sky.

He had never understood himself when he was around her, but he understood now.

He'd once imagined this moment.

He'd wondered what she would feel like to his touch. Taste like to his lips. He wanted to know all of her.

As if the years had not passed by them. As if the journey they'd traveled had been the same. He could not change what had come before, but tonight she would be his.

They gradually migrated to the center of the room, and Rachel stepped into his arms as if she had always

belonged against him. As if her thoughts lay parallel with his.

"Why are we doing this?" she whispered.

"When I find the answer, I'll let you know." Ryan laid his cheek against her fragrant hair, her feminine