Three Fates

by Nora Roberts

  inside her. “That they let her go to jail? Their own child?”

  “Juvie’s not jail, but it’s close enough. Her parents divorced, and her mother likes to remarry. She bounced between the two of them, then took off when she hit eighteen. No dings on her adult record, so she either cleaned up her act or got better at avoiding the cops.”

  “You’re telling me this because you think with her background, her record, she might be a problem for us. If Gideon thought that, he’d have said so.”

  “I don’t know Gideon, and I prefer drawing my own conclusions. Speaking of your brothers, they’re both clear as far as legal difficulties. And you, you’re as pure as your skin.”

  She jerked her head back when he reached over to brush a fingertip down her cheek. “Mind your hands.”

  “What is it about Irishwomen and their skin?” he said as if to himself. “Makes a man want to lap it up, especially when it smells like yours.”

  “I don’t mix flirtations and business,” she said stiffly.

  “I do. As often as possible. Being a practical woman, I’d think you’d appreciate the efficiency of multitasking.”

  She had to laugh. “Well now, I’ll admit that’s a unique line, Jack. But if you think the sophisticated world traveler can lure the naive village girl with clever lines, you’ve mistaken the matter.”

  “I don’t think you’re naive.” He turned his head, met her eyes. “I think you’re fascinating. And more, I’m curious about what I felt run through me when I looked over the high grass and old stones of a cemetery and watched you lay flowers on a grave. I’m very curious about that, Rebecca, and I always satisfy my curiosity.”

  “I felt something, too. That’s as much why I’ve come with you as wanting to know what’s in Dublin. But don’t think you can maneuver me, Jack, because you can’t. I’ve a goal to meet, for myself, for my family. Nothing can get in the way of it.”

  “I didn’t think you’d admit it.” He gave his attention to his instruments. “That you’d felt something. You’re a straightforward woman, Rebecca. A straightforward woman who knows computers, who can pack for a last-minute trip in a single bag and be on time. Where have you been all my life? We’re about to start our approach,” he said before she could answer.

  THERE WAS ANOTHER rental car waiting at Dublin airport, and this time Jack hauled up Rebecca’s bag before she could grab it herself. She didn’t comment on it, nor on the conversation they’d had in the plane. She wasn’t sure either would be safe topics at the moment.

  She didn’t speak at all until he headed away from the city instead of toward it.

  “Dublin’s the other way,” she pointed out.

  “We’re not actually going into the city.”

  “Then why did you say we were?”

  Her suspicious nature was just one more thing he found appealing. “We flew into Dublin, and now we’re driving a few miles south. When we’re done, we’ll drive back and fly out of Dublin.”

  “And where might we be spending the night?”

  “At a place I haven’t been to for a couple of years. You’ll have your own room,” he added, “with the option of sharing mine.”

  “I’ll take my own. Who’s paying for it?”

  He grinned, lightning fast, in a way that engaged his whole face and made her want to trace a finger over that faint, crescent scar.

  “That won’t be a problem. It’s pretty country,” he commented, gesturing at the rising green hills that shimmered through the thinning rain. “Easy to see why he decided to retire here.”

  “Who?”

  “The man we’re going to see. Tell me, do you share your mother’s belief that the Fates are a kind of symbol?”

  “I suppose I do.”

  “And that they belong together for reasons more than their monetary, even artistic value?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “One more. Do you agree that what goes around comes around?”

  She blew out an impatient breath. “If you’re meaning there are cycles and circles to things, I do.”

  “Then you’re going to appreciate this.” He took the car up a hill, then around to a pretty road lined with dripping hedgerows and painted bungalows with thriving gardens.

  The road climbed again, turned again, and he swung into a short drive beside a lovely stone house where the chimney was smoking and the gardens were a small sea of beauty.

  “Your friend lives here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Even as Jack stepped out of the car, the door of the house opened. An old man stood in the doorway, leaning on a cane and grinning. He had a monk’s fringe of snowy hair topping a wide face lined with deep creases. Silver-framed glasses slid down his nose.

  “Mary!” His voice croaked like a frog. “They’re here,” he shouted, and came forward even as Jack hurried to him.

  “Don’t come out in the rain.”

  “Hell, boy, little rain doesn’t hurt. Everything else does at my age, but not a bit of wet.” He caught Jack in a one-armed embrace.

  Rebecca saw now the old man was quite tall, but bent a bit with age. His big hand reached up to lie across Jack’s cheek and looked, despite its size, fragile there, and somehow sweet.

  “I’ve missed you,” Jack said, and leaned down in an easy, unself-conscious gesture Rebecca admired and kissed the old man lightly on the lips. “This is Rebecca Sullivan.”

  He shifted his body, and again she noted the gentleness in him when he slid a hand under the man’s arm.

  “Well, you said she was a beauty, and so she is.” He reached out and took her hand, simply held it. And she saw with puzzled embarrassment the sparkle of tears come into his eyes.

  “Rebecca, this is my great-grandfather.”

  “Oh.” At sea, she managed a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

  “My great-grandfather,” he repeated. “Steven Edward Cunningham, the Third.”

  “Cunningham?” Her throat snapped closed. “Steven Cunningham? Sweet Jesus.”

  “It’s a great pleasure to welcome you into my house.” Steven stepped back, blinking at tears. “Mary!” he shouted again. “Deaf as a post,” he stated, “and she’s forever turning her bloody hearing aid off. Run up and get her, Jack. I’ll take Rebecca into the parlor. She’s fussing with your room,” he said as he led Rebecca away. “Been fussing since Jack called to say you were coming.”

  “Mr. Cunningham.” Off balance, she walked blindly into a neat parlor where everything gleamed, and sank at his urging into the deep cushions of a wing-backed chair. “You’re the same Steven Cunningham who . . . who was on the Lusitania?”

  “The same as who owes his life to Felix Greenfield.”

  “And you’re Jack’s—”

  “Great-grandfather. His mother’s my granddaughter. And here we are. Here we are,” he repeated and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’m sentimental in my old age.”

  “I don’t know what to say to you. My head’s spinning.” She lifted a hand to her temple as if to hold it in place. “I’ve heard of you all my life. And somehow always thought of you as a little boy.”

  “I was just three when my parents made that crossing.” He sighed deeply, then tucked the handkerchief away. “I can’t be sure how much I actually remember, or how much I think I remember because my mother told me the story so often.”

  He walked over to a polished gateleg table crowded with framed photographs and lifted one, brought it to Rebecca. “My parents. It’s their wedding photo.”

  She saw a handsome young man with a dashing mustache and a woman, hardly more than a girl, glorious in silk and lace and her bridal glow.

  “They’re beautiful.” Tears threatened to spill. “Oh, Mr. Cunningham.”

  “My mother lived another sixty-three years, thanks to Felix Greenfield.” Steven took his handkerchief out again and gently pressed it into Rebecca’s hand. “She never remarried. For some there’s only one love in a lifetime. But she was content, an
d she was productive, and she was grateful.”

  “The story’s true, then.” Composing herself, she handed him the photograph.

  “I’m proof of that.” He turned at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. “Here comes Jack with my Mary. When she’s done fussing over you, we’ll talk about it.”

  MARY CUNNINGHAM WAS indeed deaf as a post, but in honor of the occasion, she turned her hearing aid on. Rebecca was given a lovely room with fresh flowers in china vases and invited to rest or freshen up before supper.

  She did neither, but simply sat on the side of the bed hoping her mind would settle. It was Jack who knocked on her door fifteen minutes later. Rebecca stayed where she was and studied him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought it would mean more this way. It did to him, and that matters to me.”

  She nodded. “I think in my heart, I always believed it happened just as I’d been told. But in my head, I wasn’t so sure. I want to thank you for bringing me here, for giving me this.”

  He crossed over, crouched in front of her. “Do you believe in connections, Rebecca? In the power of them, even the inevitability of them?”

  “I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”

  “I’m not a sentimental man,” he began, but she laughed and shook her head.

  “I saw you with Steven, then with Mary, so don’t tell me you’re not sentimental.”

  “About people who matter to me, but not about things. I don’t romanticize.” He took her hand, felt her brace. “I looked at you. That’s really all it took.”

  “It’s confusing.” She managed to keep her voice steady, though her heart was humming in her throat. “This maze of circumstances that links our families.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “I’d like to keep things simple.”

  “Not a chance,” he told her as he drew her to her feet. “Besides, I like complications. Life’s bland without them. You’re a hell of a complication.”

  “Don’t.” She pressed a hand to his chest as he pulled her closer, and felt like an idiot. “I’m not being coy, I’m being careful.”

  “You’re trembling.”

  “Oh, you enjoy that, don’t you? Getting me all stirred up and confused.”

  “Damn right.” He gave her one hard tug. It brought her to her toes, had her sucking in a breath for an oath. Then his mouth was on hers, hard and hot and hungry enough to blur the curse into a small sound of shock.

  He kissed like a man accustomed to taking, with a ruthless skill that had her pulse pumping fast and her belly quivering with need. Though the reaction stupefied her, she felt her own bones go liquid.

  And so did he.

  His hands dived into her hair, used it to draw her head back. “The first time I saw you,” he said. “That’s never happened to me before.”

  “I don’t know you.” But her lips were warm with the taste of his, her body primed for the weight of him. “I don’t sleep with men I don’t know.”

  He lowered his head, skimmed his teeth lightly over her throat. “Is that a firm policy?”

  “It used to be.”

  He nipped his way along her jaw. “We’re going to get to know each other very quickly.”

  “All right. That’s all right. Don’t kiss me again now. It isn’t proper, not with them downstairs this way, Jack. They’re waiting supper for us.”

  “Then we’ll go down.”

  THEY SETTLED IN the small dining room made charming with china figures and antique glass. The walls were decorated with a collection of old, floral-patterned plates.

  “You have such a lovely home,” Rebecca complimented Mary. “It’s so nice of you to let me come.”

  “It’s a treat for us.” Mary beamed and helpfully cocked her ear in Rebecca’s direction. “Jack never brings his girls to see us.”

  “Doesn’t he?”

  “No, indeed.” She had the soft music of Ireland in her voice. “We only met the one he married twice, and once was at the wedding. We didn’t like her very much, did we, Steven?”

  “Now, Mary.”

  “Well, we didn’t. She had a cold streak, if you ask me, and—”

  “The roast is perfect, Gram.”

  Distracted, Mary sent Jack a twinkling look. “You always favored my pot roast.”

  “I married you for it,” Steven said with a wink. “Like a lot of young men, I did the Grand Tour when I was done with university,” he told Rebecca. “Outside of Dublin, I stayed at a small inn and met my Mary, whose parents ran it. I fell in love with her over pot roast, and ended my tour then and there. It took me two weeks to convince her to marry me and move back to Bath.”

  “You exaggerate. It took you only ten days.”

  “And we’ve been married now sixty-eight years. We lived in America for a time. In New York. My father’s family had fallen on very hard times. They’d never recovered from the crash of ’twenty-nine. One of my daughters married an American and settled there. It’s her daughter who’s Jack’s mother.”

  He reached over to lay his hand over Mary’s. “We’ve had four children, two sons and two daughters. They gave us eleven grandchildren, and they six great-grandchildren and counting. Every one of them owes their life to Felix Greenfield. That one unselfish and courageous act set the rest in motion.”

  “He didn’t intend it. The way it’s been told in my family,” Rebecca explained. “He only wanted to live, to survive. He was panicked when he found the life jacket. He thought only of saving himself, then he saw your mother, and you, trapped in the debris. He said she was so calm, so beautiful in the midst of all the horror. And she held you close to comfort you, and you her, without even crying for all you were just a little thing. And he couldn’t turn away.”

  “I remember his face,” Steven said. “Dark eyes, white skin already smeared with smoke or soot. My father was gone. I didn’t see it happen, or don’t remember. That she’d never speak of. But we fell when the ship lurched. She was carrying me, and we fell. She twisted herself to keep me from hitting the deck. She always had a limp when she tired after that.”

  “She was a brave and wonderful woman,” Rebecca said.

  “Oh, she was. And I think her courage met Felix Greenfield’s that day. The ship was sinking, and the deck tilting higher and higher. He pulled her up it, trying to get us to one of the lifeboats. But the boat lurched again, and though he tried to reach us—I see his face even now as he called out and tried to get to her—we fell into the water. Without the life jacket he’d given us, we wouldn’t have had a prayer.”

  “Even with it, it’s a miracle. He said she was hurt.”

  “She broke her arm shielding me as we went into the water, and as I said, she’d already badly twisted her leg. She wouldn’t let me go. I had barely a scratch. The miracle,” he said, “was my mother and Felix Greenfield. Because of them, you could say the thread of my life has been long and productive.”

  When Rebecca stared, Jack lifted his water glass. “Which brings us to the Fates. Did I tell you my great-great-grandfather had a small antique shop in Bath?”

  A chill ran over Rebecca’s skin. “You didn’t mention it, no.”

  “Yes, indeed.” Steven polished off his roast beef. “Inherited it from my grandfather. We were going to visit my mother’s parents there. My grandmother wasn’t well. After my father was lost, we stayed in Bath rather than returning to New York. Because of that I developed quite an interest in antiques and made my own living through them, in the same shop my grandfather had. Another twist of fate that owes its run to Felix.”

  He crossed his knife and fork tidily over his plate. “I can’t tell you how fascinated I was when Jack told me Felix stole one of the Three Fates from Henry Wyley’s stateroom just before he saved my life. Mary dear, are we going to have that apple pie in the parlor?”