Had she not run into financing trouble, she probably would have begun building the levee project on her own as well, he realized.

"You and I need to talk privately," Johnny said.

"As you can see, Miss Bailey is a liability." Sir Boris slid a brown packet toward him. "She will need to be removed, or the Irish division becomes a fiscal liability to us all. Pending government payment of the contracts, you can bring in workers from Liverpool and Wales. Cheaper wages will help us make a profit -"

"Rachel will never let you replace her people," Johnny said.

"If Miss Bailey isn't cooperative, we have ways to force the issue." Devonshire relaxed as he surveyed Ryan over his cigar. "A leak here and there about Miss Bailey-"

"The meeting is over." Ryan's dark gaze swept each man present. If he wrapped his hands around any throat, it would be Devonshire's.

He looked at the satchel at his elbow, thinking of his own and wondering what else might be in there. He had unread folders inside. As the meeting concluded, and those around the table stood, Ryan said, "A moment, your lordship." Without looking up from the papers in his hands, he stopped Devonshire. "Wait for me in my office, Johnny," he told his brother. He didn't care how overbearing the command. "I'l need to talk to you."

Devonshire ground out the cigar in the ash tin and waited with his legs outstretched beneath the rosewood table. He was watching Ryan as if he couldn't discern whether he was furious or simply distracted by the folder sitting next to his fingertips. "The decision about acquiring D&B is a long time in coming," Devonshire said. "With the pending deal in France making financial headlines, it's time to act."

"Exactly what would you leak to the scandal sheets that would possibly profit any of us, Devonshire?"

His lordship shoved away from the table and rose. "Your concern about her was quite noted the other night when you were seen leaving her hotel in full view of most of London. Maybe you should consider how she could damage you instead. Miss Bailey is not what you think she is." Devonshire walked to the door, an austere figure in black. "We're expecting important guests tonight for dinner," he said. "If they like you, there could be talk of a political future ahead of you."

"Don't overrate your importance in my life, Devonshire." Ryan's indolent facade was carefully back in place, and he waited for the man to turn. "You're here only because I allow it to be so."

Something ugly went over the man's face before he raised a polite brow. Then, dismissing himself, Devonshire opened the door and left it swinging on his way out.

Ryan shut the door to his office.

Johnny stood with his back to the rosewood desk as he looked out the window. Dark rivulets slithered down the glass as the rain picked up streaks of coal dust that layered the city's rooftops. "Her train left for Liverpool three days ago." Without turning, Johnny held up a missive. "She said her grandmother hadn't been in the best of health, and had decided to return to Ireland."

Ryan walked to his brother and took the note. Unlike his bold scrawl, Rachel possessed meticulous penmanship, with prissy g's and m's that an excessively orderly person who rose every day at the crack of dawn would write. A complete contrast to the decadent taste of spiced apples that lingered in his senses.

His fingers crushed the missive.

"Rachel hasn't any family other than her grandmother," Johnny said.

"I'm aware of her plight." He tossed the missive into the refuse container.

Johnny's dark eyes settled on Ryan. "Are you going to allow Ore Industries to acquire D&B?"

"I am Ore Industries, Johnny. We have spoken on this matter before. Ore Industries and D&B cannot coexist in the same environment."

One was the past. The other the future. Ryan always looked to tomorrow. He always had. This was no different. Johnny knew that.

Yet, as Ryan stared outside at the distant dome of St. Paul's and a city bound by its history, he set his hands on the waistband of his trousers, suddenly caught by the past. "Tell me how involved Rachel is in production."

"She took over the Rathdrum project after the chief engineer made a costly mistake in his assessment on the soil sampling. The train tracks had to be moved farther inland. The error cost D&B six months while Rachel completed the reassessment herself."

"And the levee?"

"The levee is in the final phase. Maybe she was tired of working behind Marrow. I suspect she has been bolstering him up for two years. She surrounds herself with competent foremen. I doubt Marrow has ever functioned in any capacity without her."

Hell, Ryan scoffed to himself. Rachel just has that effect on men.

By Ryan's estimation, she had left the day after she was supposed to attend the opera. That reeked of running away to him, especially after he thought they had reached an understanding of sorts. But then he had told her he wouldn't grant her special privileges concerning her levee project. Still, the part of him, which didn't feel angry as hell with her, worried.

"Jaysus," Ryan said, his tone acerbic. "The Dublin division has been nothing but a nightmare of charity work since its inception." A hand on one hip, he exhaled before reining in his temper. "I should have known why she came back here."

"Do you honestly believe Rachel came back to London because of that project?"

"Do you think I did something to send her fleeing from England?"

"Didn't you?"

His tall form unyielding, Ryan walked past his brother to gather what he needed off the desk. "She is a big girl, Johnny." He stifled the impulse to tell his brother to go to hell.

His entire life his family surrounded Rachel as if she was God's gift to sainthood and perfection. He was sick to death of dealing with the same rehashed arguments, of looking through perfect fences as if he somehow corrupted everything he touched. "Our whole damn family has filled her head full of dreams she thinks are attainable.

"She wasn't content with quietly managing the Dublin division. All of you have set her up to fall. Not me. And hell, Johnny, it's a bloody long way to fall. You know what I have to do." He lifted his coat from the back of the chair where he'd laid it earlier.

Johnny sat against the desk. "Are you going to Ireland?"

"For the moment?" Ryan adjusted the collar on his coat. "I'm going home to my daughter. Her birthday is in four days, and I'll be damned if she will spend it alone again this year."

It certainly hadn't taken Rachel very long to forget his daughter either. On his way out, Ryan ordered his secretary to cancel his dinner engagement for that night.

"Miss Rachel! Miss Rachel!" Little Kyra Blakely called from the street as David lifted Rachel out of the cart he'd ridden in to fetch her at the docks.

She turned as another little girl flung herself against Rachel's skirts. "Did you bring back licorice?" Cynthia's favorite. Her blue eyes peeked out from behind raven curls.

A half dozen children playing ball in the yard across the narrow spit of green ran to where Rachel had lifted the little girl into her arms. She always brought home gumdrops or licorice when she'd been away for more than a few days. Fortunately, David made a detour past the candy store on the way home from the docks.

Rachel lived on Dublin's southern fringes, in a picturesque hamlet that rested at the juncture of Old Military Road near Glencree. She spent her free time with her grandmother, living outside Dublin proper because it allowed her, for the most part, to live in anonymity. The fact that she was the granddaughter of a former village elder gave her a certain acceptance she might not have had otherwise for a single woman who seemed eccentric in her ways. At twenty-nine and an obvious spinster, she was allowed more freedom than the younger girls. Though she'd received marriage proposals from almost every bachelor or widower from Enniskerry to Glencree at one time or another, most people recognized she would never marry. Her last proposal had come from the kindly constable in need of a wife who could be a good mother to his nine children. The little girl she held in her arms was his youngest. No one understood what Rachel did for a living.

Frankly, no one understood her. No one really knew her either.

Yet the village children seemed to adore her for some reason. Perhaps because they venerated David and trusted that if he respected and loved Rachel, then she must be worthy of their affection as well. Or maybe because she had trained them well with gumdrops, for they all came running as if she were Saint Nicholas in skirts. And suddenly she was thinking about Mary Elizabeth, about cats and dogs, and eating worms. Her thoughts jerked to a stop as though the child's name was a yawning crevice in her heart for more reasons than anyone could ever know.

"Come, little one." David lifted Cynthia from Rachel's arms so Rachel could procure the anticipated treasure from the back of the cart. Removing a red tin, she flipped off the lid and doled out one to each child, finally slipping a gumdrop beneath David's tongue.

"And one for you, Father Donally."

"Ah, Rachel me love. You know the path to my heart, you do."

David was as full of Irish blarney as they came. Surrounded by laughter and noise, Rachel smiled into his darkly handsome face, cradled by a moment's return of strength and peace. David, with his starched white collar and black attire, was familiar, his presence imbuing her with a sense of emotional safety, a barrier that separated her from the last few weeks. Carefree and dashing, with a roguish tilt to his mouth, he looked perfectly at ease in the company of children. A dimple creased one side of his mouth as he smiled at the little girl in his arms, his teeth a slash of white against his darker features.

"Now, off with ye," he said to the child. "Miss Rachel has come home to see Memaw. What did I tell you all about making too much noise around her window?"

"Nonsense!" a huffy female voice called from the upstairs window behind Rachel. "If I get so old as to complain about a child's laughter, then you can put me in me grave, David Donally. Now quit your playing paddy fingers with my granddaughter so I can see her."

Rachel shaded her eyes against the afternoon sunlight. "Memaw, you are supposed to be in bed."

"I'll bring in your trunks," David said, a lingering smile on his lips. "Be sure and tell her how beautiful she looks."

"I heard that wicked blarney," Rachel's grandmother sniffed. "I stubbed my toe, and this man makes me into a convalescent just so he can keep me home."

"You injure my heart, Memaw." David laid a forlorn palm across his chest. "You'll get me in trouble with such outrageous accusations."

"Balderdash! I'll not be havin' ye reading your rites over me yet. Go away and leave me to some peace."

"A stubbed toe?" Rachel eyed David suspiciously. "You told me she hurt herself."

"A stubbed toe can be serious, colleen. You'd not have had me take any chances? She would have jumped in the cart herself and gone to pick you up. The doctor still thinks she should not be out of bed since her spell last month."

"Has she gotten worse?" Rachel grabbed a handful of her skirts and hurried through the door Elsie held open for her and up the stairs to her grandmother's room.

Memaw sat in a fat chair with her foot wrapped and propped on an ottoman. It was her favorite place in the entire house to sit. She'd settled her robust frame among the plush yellow pillows and had set about knitting. In the mornings, sunlight flowed through the windows like an amber breeze. The scent of freshly watered flower beds pooled in the room and mixed with the laughter of children outside the window.

She was a tall woman, several inches taller than Rachel's grandfather had been. Her hair, once a deep, vibrant auburn, had faded to a recalcitrant ginger and straggled from her cap in curly waves as lively as the expression that greeted Rachel upon her arrival.

"Memaw," Rachel dropped to her knees beside her grandmother's chair. "What have you done? This was more than a stubbed toe."

"Absolutely nothing." She sniffed. "I stepped into a puddle of water. It's that madman of a priest who wrapped my ankle and insisted that I stay off my foot." Bright periwinkle blue eyes looked out at Rachel from behind the multitudinous wrinkles that crinkled when she smiled. "David plots to keep me bedridden. You have returned earlier than expected," Memaw said, over the sound of her knitting needles.

They continued to talk over trivial matters, the warm weather, flowers blooming in the garden outside, the ball she'd attended in London. Her grandmother fished for information Rachel wasn't ready to give. What must Ryan think of her running away? Perhaps he was thinking it for the best. She and Ryan could return to managing each other through special courier and keep their contact restricted to business.

Her life had been a series of avoidable and bad mistakes. She wanted only to forget the foolish side of her that had reared itself so unmercifully these last weeks and return to her world of numbers, plats, and diagrams.

She would not think of Ryan Donally ever again. He must know the kind of man Devonshire was. Ryan was not blind and stupid.

Besides, she had her own problems with which to contend.

"Are you truly all right, Memaw?" Rachel finally asked, bringing the corner of the blanket to her cheek. Her grandmother always knitted from the softest wool. When Rachel was a little girl, she'd carried a woolen blanket this very same blue until she was five.

Until Ryan had called her a baby and dropped it into the hog pen.

Oh, how she'd hated him for weeks after that!

And just that fast, her composure fled. Her throat tightened. She felt the horrible swell of tears behind her eyes. The menace of failure. "Come here, child," Memaw's soft voice penetrated her heavy thoughts. "Come sit beside me for a moment."

Rachel looked up to see that Memaw had set aside the knitting. Her blue eyes softened as she patted her lap.

"Oh, Memaw..." Rachel dropped to her knees beside her grandmother and let the soft leathery hands cradle her head. "I don't want to cry. I feel so foolish and childish."

"He's marrying someone else, I know." Memaw's quiet whisper reached around Rachel's heart and held. "We tried to warn you before you left for London. But your going had purpose. Everything happens for a reason, Butterfly."

The sound of her childhood name brought a bout of determination. "How did you know?" Rachel sat back on her heels to regard her grandmother. "How did you know how I felt about him?"

"Don't you be forgetting I was there when he wed Kathleen." The blue eyes regarded Rachel with serious attention. "I think most of us knew then how ye felt."

"Oh heavens." Rachel buried her face in her hands. Put baldly, her sentiment seemed so melodramatic and made her into a pathetic spectacle. She shook her head, half-laughing and half-weeping, her long braid falling forward over one shoulder.

In truth, Rachel no longer knew how she felt. Physically attracted yes. Who wouldn't be to perfection? Mentally, Ryan stimulated her interest in worldly things, and she was in awe of his professional ability. She'd followed his career for years. His papers had been the mainstay of her education. But she and Ryan didn't exist on the same emotional plane. He didn't care about the same things that she did.

He'd always been dictatorial, quick-tempered, and careless of moral convention. Yet he also made generous grants to the university he'd attended. He gave to poorhouses and orphanages. She'd lost the ability to understand him. For how could a man who loved his daughter with such great affection coexist with the same person who pillaged companies and destroyed people's lives? Nor did he respect her as a professional, or he wouldn't have tucked her away in Ireland with that pathetic upstart Allan Marrow to head the engineering division when she was so much smarter than any ten men. He had never come to Ireland to see what she'd done.

With newfound resolution, Rachel sat back on her calves. "I'm a big girl, Memaw." She wiped at her cheeks, understanding how foolishly she was behaving. "We should be talking about you."

"Nonsense." Memaw lowered her voice, her palm gently cupping Rachel's cheek. "When that tyrant isn't here, I get along just fine."

Rachel laughed. "I'm glad that you only stubbed your toe." She smiled, her heart filled with love for this old woman, who was more beloved than her own parents ever were. "Now that I know you're all right." She took Memaw's hands. "I do need to check on the progress in Rathdrum. I'll have to leave in a few days."

"You let that rascal Marrow attend to Rathdrum," Memaw said adamantly. "There are bandits and scallywags along that road."

David leaned in the doorway, his arms folded over his chest. He looked as if he'd been standing there a long while. "Then David will need me to protect him," she said, a smile on her lips. She and her grandmother went through this argument every time Rachel took the road to her project site.

"Pious man that I am," he said.

"Balderdash." Memaw sniffed. "Pious, indeed. The devil's own, I think you are, encouraging her the way that you do."

"I have to go, Memaw. You know that." Climbing to her feet, Rachel brushed her skirts. The silly flow of tears was gone. She walked to the door, but David stopped her. He stroked his thumb over her cheek to grab the remnant of moisture as if to tell her that Ryan was not worth the tears. "Leave it to you to force me up the mountain and throw me off the cliff with no pretentious words of condolences," she said.

"That is what I do best." His teeth flashed white. "I put your trunks and other belongings in your chambers. Go clean up."

The evening was cold and gray as Rachel found her away among the row of lonely moss-covered gravestones, most of which sat outside the consecrated grounds of the local church. The low mist lay thicker beneath the boughs of two huge oaks, a peaceful area reserved for those unblessed souls, though why heaven couldn't be big enough for all souls, Rachel could never understand.

There were raindrops, like a spangle of stars, on her midnight blue sleeves, and the chilly air had whipped up the color in her cheeks. She had wrapped a shawl around her hair and shoulders and clutched it tightly beneath her chin, aware as a distant church bell rang for the evening service. She had not come to this place in a long time, though she sometimes attended services here, especially since this old church was between Glencree and Dublin.

Despite her rigidity, there was a moment when she felt the poignant grief that any child should be condemned to die at all. Certainly never her own infant daughter.

Rachel used to be a great believer in providence. If a person was good, didn't step over the line, followed rules, and worked hard, she would achieve her dreams. Rachel's journey had cost her dearly.

At Edinburgh, she was one of two women allowed to audit classes. Her father had once been a physics professor there. When she'd left London to begin a new life, she'd attracted the attentions of a university administrator who was also her engineering professor. She'd run from Ryan directly into another man's arms, wanting desperately to be loved. Two years into their relationship, he married someone else.

Someone respectable with noble feminine attributes. Men didn't marry their mistresses, after all. Rachel didn't know how much Lord Devonshire knew-or the official reason given to the university for her departure from Edinburgh. She had gone to live in a dormitory for wayward girls just outside Dublin.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled the scent of the damp earth. It rooted at her feet and touched her senses with plaguing memories.

She had been jealous that Ryan's child could be loved by so many when hers had died unloved except by her. She had said terrible things to Ryan at Kathleen's funeral. Her eyes shut, the memory of her own grief suddenly vivid. Despite Kathleen's frail health, she'd wanted to give Ryan a child so badly that she' d gambled away her life. In her mind, Ryan had allowed it to happen. And if Ryan was guilty of blaming himself for Kathleen's death, Rachel had been guiltier of adding to that blame, so deep had been her anguish, losing her baby and Kathleen all within weeks of one another. Rachel had walked away from the most important person in her life-as she had always walked away.

A twig snapped. David stood in the shadows beneath the heavily foliaged trees, his dark eyes unreadable in the twilight. "I thought I would find you here," he said.

"Don't let anyone ever tell you that absolute power doesn't corrupt," Rachel said, thinking of the man she 'd thought loved her all those years ago marrying his wealthy, flawless debutante, then thinking about Ryan. "Because it does."

"Tell me about your heart, colleen."

Darkness was falling over the small cemetery, and Rachel looked up at the sky. Her heart lay in pieces. "I know now I cannot ever be with Ryan," she said. "I'm not a suitable wife for obvious reasons. But for just one moment...Truly, I don't know what happened to get me up and pulling myself to London the way I did," she managed with self-effacing humor, turning as she once again let her gaze fall on the small grave at her feet. "Do you think she went to heaven? Despite my own sins?"

David walked to her side. She could see his black shoes in her peripheral vision. His height, like Ryan's, dominated his presence and hers. "Yes, colleen. She is there."

David took her back to Memaw's cottage in the donkey cart, though she could have returned faster on foot. Supper was nearly ready when he opened the back door and escorted her into the warm kitchen. "I 'll see you at the table in ten minutes," he said.