She closed her eyes and remembered her vision of him attired as a knight.

He smiled slightly. "You know a lot about history?"

"Enough to understand the time period."

"Then you know that going to war with your neighbors wasn't exactly an unheard of thing in that century."

"You went to war?"

He nodded. "More than once I helped make the swords, the horseshoes, and the armor that protected those that went to war. Finally one day I couldn't stand to be left on the outside anymore. I put together my own suit of armor and fought for the castle."

He sat up, and she didn't see a wince or hear a groan out of him. He looked as if he'd never been mortally wounded twenty-four hours ago. Instead he slid off the bed, stood, and stretched his arms high above his head. His muscles rippled, and she felt renewed desire spike inside her womb. Heaven help her, he was the most exciting, gorgeous, incredible male she'd ever seen, and she itched to taste him again. Instead of acting on her impulse to go to him, she waited for him to finish the story.

"O'Hennessy had a sister that lived nearby outside the castle. She had a daughter..."

Clarissa felt a surge of jealousy. "The young blonde I saw in my vision?"

"No. Darina was like my sister. She was pretty, a brunette only sixteen years old. Far too young for me." His sigh filled with hurt, a sound she never expected a tough vampire to make. "Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, one of the men in the village raped and murdered her."

"It happened to you again. You lost someone you loved."

He paced to the fan-shaped window and peered outside. "Two innocent little sisters. I started to wonder what I'd done to deserve this kind of pain in my life."

"What happened then?"

He turned back to her. "I left the castle in pursuit of whoever murdered her. I chased the bastard across Ireland into Wales but there he faded into the countryside. I was never able to find him."

"I'm so sorry, Ronan."

Silence covered the room while she pondered the horrendous agony he must have suffered over the years as he lost women important to him. Then something more intense came to mind. "What about the blonde woman I saw in my vision? She was lying on a path with her throat bleeding. You were...you looked as if you suffered her loss."

Agony spread fresh across his countenance, and for a moment she wished she hadn't mentioned it. He licked his lips, and a sardonic smile touched one corner of his mouth as if he wanted to say something sarcastic. Instead he apparently swallowed the impulse.

"That event was still to come," he said. "When I was twenty-eight I decided Ireland didn't have anything more for me. After learning to read and write under the help of a monk, I thirsted for knowledge and information. I traveled to several other countries including Wales, Scotland, Italy and Spain. I traveled back to Ireland when I was thirty."

More curiosity washed over her and she couldn't help asking, "And during all this time I suppose you lived like a monk?"

This time, when he smiled, the grin seemed genuine. "Over the years I'd courted a few women, made love to them. But I neverfell in love. I returned to Allegheny's Castle and there I finally met someone who changed my idea of love."

"The blonde in my vision."

"Fenella. She was the daughter of a friend of mine. After courting her in secret for a few months, I offered for her hand in marriage. She said yes and her mother and father agreed to the match."

"That's wonderful."

She imagined how it might feel for this man to care for her with all his heart and knew his adoration would be a glorious, unspeakably beautiful love. How lucky Fenella had been.

His gaze blazed hot with grief, an intense hurt and longing.Luck wasn't with us, colleen.

Evil was. The village outside the castle was plagued by a vampire, and I wanted to marry Fenella as soon as I could and bring her into my protection. We were going to marry on a Monday. I remember the day like it was yesterday. But then...

Yes?

One night the vampire came to her home and killed her mother and almost finished off her father. Her father urged her to run for the castle and safety. When I went looking for her the next day I found Fenella on a path near some bushes where the vampire had dragged her. She didn't even make it out of the village but she was in sight of the castle walls. Her throat was...she was dead. And so was my heart.

Clarissa's soul clenched as she experienced his regrets and sorrows like daggers to the stomach. Pain manacled her soul, and she allowed her tears to fall.

She became a vampire?she asked in her mind.

No. He'd drained all her blood. A vampire is only made when the sire doesn't take too much.

"Sire? The vampire who killed her?"

"Yes."

Then Clarissa saw something she never expected in a million years. First one tear, then another trickled down Ronan's face.

Her throat tightening, she managed to say, "Oh Ronan. I'm so sorry."

She stood and reached for him, twining her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. She wanted to sob for Fenella, for the woman who'd first loved this man and lost him. More than anything, she wanted to do whatever it took to erase the ache ablaze inside him.

His arms went around her shoulders and he buried his face in her hair. "She was beautiful, Clarissa. Beautiful inside and out and she didn't deserve what happened to her."

"Of course she didn't. I wish I could...I wish I could remove the hurt."

He rubbed his chin over the top of her head in a slow gesture of comfort. "You can."

"How?"

"Be simply being here. You're the only person I've told the whole story. Lachlan and Sorley know the half of it. They think my first encounter with the ancient one was during the American Revolution."

"You didn't tell them the real truth because it hurt too much." Her heart lurched at the implicat ion. "You must trust me, then."

"I trust you with my life."

Warmth stole into her where moments before only pain resided. Moved by his sensitivity, by emotions she never suspected lived inside his hardened exterior, she reached up and palmed his chest. She felt the strength under her fingers and the beat of his immortal heart. His body trembled once.

"Was it the ancient one who killed her?" she asked.

"I didn't know it at the time, but yes, it was."

"What did you do after Fenella was killed?"

"I heard rumors about the vampire. That he lived in caves and the forest not far from the castle. I hunted him, but he always eluded me. I traveled throughout Ireland until I ran into a vampiress in Derry. At the time I thought all vampires were evil."

"What happened when you ran into her?"

"We fought in a room in the inn. It didn't take much for her to pin me down." A sardonic smile tilted his lips. "She tied me to the bed."

Her eyes widened, imagining him struggling with a woman more powerful than him.

Then her mind made an erotic leap. "What did she do after she tied you to the bed?"