The Rebel by May McGoldrick Page B

your
assistance?”
    “Come, Sir Nicholas, it is impossible for
you to lose your way. Now please be off. Clara and Reverend Adams
are expecting us back by noon.”
    For a moment, he considered being completely
disagreeable and trailing after her, but decided against it. With a
nod at her, Nicholas nudged his horse down the incline, all the
while keeping an eye on Jane as she rode off along the crest of the
hill.
    He was a man well acquainted with women of
all social classes and types. It had long been a leisure activity
to attempt to understand the many feminine moods and needs. For the
most part, women liked him and sought out his company. He’d
generally expected the same response here.
    Obviously, Jane Purefoy was not to be
classed with other women.
    Nicholas reined in and watched her disappear
beyond the crest of the hill. Somehow, he had to make her
understand that he was not threat to her or her seditious pursuits.
At the same time, he wanted to let her know that he no longer had
any interest in courting the younger sister.
    He spurred his horse toward the village,
knowing that explanation and extrication can be complicated matters
at the best of times.
    And these were hardly the best of times.
     
    ***
     
    The path from the rectory to the chapel was
empty of the town’s inhabitants, and Henry Adams was glad of
it.
    His passion had taken control of his reason,
and he was already regretting his behavior. He had given way too
quickly to his anger. His own personal pride, stung long ago, had
possessed his soul far too easily.
    The sun was shining down on his bare head,
but he didn’t notice it at all, focused as he was on his own
failings. How could a man of the cloth—he thought harshly—possess a
character so fallible and weak?
    As he reached the heavy iron-banded door of
the chapel, he hesitated, turning instead to the pathway that led
across the small stream and up the hill toward the graveyard by the
road to Mallow. He would not step into the house of God with the
heat of passion still raging in his mind and body.
    Clara’s soft mouth had been so willing. The
press of her firm body offered the fantasy of many tempestuous
dreams. But her words plagued him. They were words that he longed
to believe, but knew not how to trust.
    Henry’s passion for the younger Purefoy
sister had taken hold of him a year ago, but the fever of it still
raged in his blood.
    Although he had known the family for years,
it was Jane that he’d known best from their youth. The two of them
were about the same age. The two of them had shared so much of the
same outrage over the ill treatment that Ireland endured. When they
were younger, they had both even spoken out—with that indignation
found so often in the naïve—against the English Penal Laws that
afflicted the peasantry and the landowners and the merchants alike.
Indeed, despite the gossip surrounding Jane when they were younger,
their own friendship had remained true throughout their adolescence
and his years at the university. To this day, he knew that she
considered him a trusted friend, and he considered her the
same.
    One thing he had not confided in her,
though, was his feelings for her sister.
    Henry sat himself on the low stone wall
surrounding the crowded graves of peasants, tanners, and quarrymen.
Here lay the history of this village, he thought, enclosed by a
square of rough gray stone. Our time here is so short. We’re born
to toil—and toil we do. We suffer and then we die. But somewhere
between the years of blood and tears, we hope for moments of
love.
    He looked back across the stony brook at the
village and at his rectory. Last summer, the flowers were blooming
in his little garden and the fields around Ballyclough green and
alive when Henry saw, for the first time, that light in Clara’s
eyes. No longer a child, she had somehow, without his noticing,
grown into a beautiful young woman. There had been other things, as
well, that Henry had become aware of then.