“I’m afraid I’m not very good, Mr. Collins.”
“That’s not how I remember it. I never knew you well, but I saw you dancing with Declan once. You were wonderful. And stop calling me Mr. Collins, Annie. We’re long past that.”
I sighed as he pulled me toward the swirling couples. Of course the other Anne Gallagher could dance. Our differences just kept mounting. I thought of my awkward relationship with rhythm, of dancing in my tiny kitchen in big Manhattan, grateful no one could see, all disjointed limbs and stubbed toes, feeling the music with all my heart but incapable of converting it into grace. Eoin always said I felt too much to dance well. The music is overflowing in you, Annie. Anyone can see that.
I believed him, but that didn’t make me feel any better about my lack of ability.
“I think I’ve forgotten how,” I protested but Michael was undeterred. But the music suddenly changed, and the singer gave up his attempts at modernity, slipping into something far more traditional. The violin shimmied and whined, and clapping and stomping commenced. The pace was frenetic, the steps far too 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 choice.
I lifted my face, needing his eyes and his steadiness, needing him to know that if it was a choice, I’d already made it.
“I love you, Thomas. I think I loved you when you were simply words on a page, a face in an old photo. When my grandfather showed me your picture and said your name, I felt something. Something shifted inside me.”
Thomas didn’t interrupt or profess his own love. He just listened, staring down at me, his gaze soft, his mouth softer, his touch against my back the softest of all. But I needed something to hold on to, and I curled my hands into his shirt the way I’d clung to the tree. His skin was warm from dancing, and his heart drummed beneath my clenched fists, reminding me that in that moment, he was mine.
“Then the words on the page and the face in the photos became a man. Real. Tangible. Perfect.” I swallowed, trying not to cry. “I fell so fast, so hard, and so completely. Not because love is blind, but because . . . it’s not. Love isn’t blind, it’s blinding. Glaring. I looked at you, and from the very first day, I knew you. Your faith and your friendship, your goodness and your devotion. I saw it all, and I fell so hard. And the feeling continues to grow. My love is so big and full and brimming that I can’t breathe around it. It’s terrifying to love so much, knowing how fragile our existence really is. You’re going to have to hold on to me, or I’ll burst . . . or maybe I’ll just float away. Up into the sky, out into the lough.”
I felt a tremor run through him from his gentle hands to his forgiving eyes, and then his lips were smiling and pressed to mine, once, twice, and again. His sigh tickled my tongue, and my grasping hands flattened against him, yielding. Then he was murmuring into my seeking lips, kissing me even as he spoke.
“Marry me, Anne. I’ll shackle you to me so you can’t float away, so we won’t ever have to be apart. Plus, it’s time you had a new name. It’s damn confusing to keep calling you Anne Gallagher.”
Of all the things I’d thought he’d suggest, marriage was not one of them. I pulled back, my jaw slack, and I laughed in disbelief. For a moment, I forgot about Thomas’s lips and searched his eyes instead. They were pale and guileless beneath the sheltering boughs and the light of the winter moon.
“Anne Smith is almost as ordinary as Thomas Smith,” he murmured. “But when you’re a time-traveling countess, the name isn’t all that important.” His teasing tone was at odds with his very serious proposition.
“Can we do that? Can we really get married?” I breathed.
“Who’s to stop us?”
“I can’t prove that I’m . . . me.”
“Who needs proof? I know. You know. God knows.” Thomas kissed my forehead, my nose, and each cheek before pausing at my mouth, waiting for me to answer.
“But . . . what will people say?” What would Brigid say?
“I hope they will congratulate us.” He pressed a kiss to my upper lip, then to the lower one, tugging it softly, urging me to follow his lead.
“What will Michael say?” I panted, pulling back so I could converse. I could picture Michael Collins congratulating Thomas while he whispered warnings in my ears.
“Mick will say something rough and irreverent, I’m sure. And then he’ll burst into noisy tears because he loves as intensely as he hates.”
“What—” I began again.
“Anne.” Thomas pressed his thumbs to my lips, cradling my face and quieting my stream of questions. “I love you. Desperately. I want to bind us together in every way possible. Today, tomorrow, and for every day after that. Do you want to marry me or not?”
There was nothing I wanted more in the world. Not a single, solitary thing.
I nodded, smiling against the pads of his thumbs, submitting completely. He moved his hands, replacing them with his mouth once more.
For a moment, I reveled in the possibility of permanence, in the clean, all-consuming taste of him. Promise sang between us, and I let myself hum along.