fast for me to fake, and I stubbornly refused to accompany Michael anymore. But Michael had forgotten me altogether. He was watching Thomas, who’d been pushed into the center of the dancers.
“Go, Tommy!” Michael yelled. “Show us how it’s done.”
Thomas was grinning, and his feet flew as the onlookers cheered him on. I could only stare, thoroughly caught. The fiddle cried, and his feet followed, stomping and kicking, an Irish folk hero come to life. Then he was pulling Michael, who could hardly contain himself, into the circle with him, sharing the stage. Thomas was laughing, his hair falling into his face, and I couldn’t look away. I was dizzy with love and faint with hopelessness.
I was thirty-one years old. Not a girl. Not an innocent. I’d never been a giggling fan or a female obsessed with actors or musicians, with men I couldn’t have and didn’t know. But I knew Thomas Smith. I knew him, and I loved him. Desperately. But loving him—knowing him—was as implausible as loving a face on a screen. We were impossible. In a moment, in a breath, it could all be over. He was a dream I could easily wake up from, and I knew all too well that once awake, I wouldn’t be able to call the dream back.
All at once, the futility and fear that had shadowed me from the moment Thomas pulled me from the lough crashed over me, dark and heavy, and I gulped the punch in my glass, trying to relieve the pressure. My heartbeat thrummed in my head, the pulse swelling into a gong. I left the ballroom at a brisk walk, but by the time I reached the front door, I was running from the reverberations. I hurtled from the house and out into the cover of the trees. Panic clawed at me, and I pressed my hands against the scaly bark of a towering oak, clawing back.
The night was clear and cold, and I pulled the crisp air into my lungs, battling the ringing in my skull, willing the clanging beneath my skin to quiet and slow. The rough reality of the tree anchored me, and I lifted my chin to the breeze, closed my eyes, and held tight to the trunk.
It wasn’t long before I heard his voice behind me.
“Anne?” Thomas was still breathless, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, his hair tousled, his suit coat discarded. “Brigid said you shot out of the house like your skirts were on fire. What’s wrong, lass?”
I didn’t answer him, not because I was contrary, but because I was close to tears, my throat tight and my heart so swollen and sore I couldn’t speak around it. The lough beckoned, and I suddenly wanted to walk along it, to taunt it and reject it, just to reassure myself that I could. I released the tree and moved toward it, desperate. Defiant.
“Anne,” Thomas said, reaching for my arm, stopping me. “Where are you going?” I heard the fear in his voice, and I hated it. Hated myself for causing it. “You’re afraid. I can feel it. Tell me what’s wrong.”
I looked up at him and tried to smile, lifting my hands to his cheeks and my thumbs to the indentation on his chin. He grasped my wrists and turned his face, kissing the center of my palm.
“You’re acting as if you’re saying goodbye, Countess. I don’t like it.”
“No. Not goodbye. Never that,” I protested, vehement.
“Then what?” he whispered, his hands moving from my wrists to my waist, drawing me to him.
I took a deep breath and thought how to best explain the persistent whisper of the lough that was always lapping at the edge of my happiness. In the darkness, feelings were harder to ignore and easier to unleash.
“I don’t want you to disappear,” I whispered.
“What are you talking about?” Thomas murmured.
“If I go back, you will disappear. I will still exist, wherever I am, but you will be gone. You will be gone, Eoin will be gone, and I can’t bear it.” The gong swelled again, and I leaned into him, resting my forehead against his shoulder. I breathed deeply, holding him in my lungs before I let him go again.
“So don’t go back, Annie,” he said gently, his lips in my hair. “Stay with me.” I wanted to argue, to demand he acknowledge the fallibility of his suggestion. But I embraced him instead, comforted by his faith. Maybe it really was that simple. Maybe it was a