Hope Springs (Longing for Home - book 2, A Proper Romance)

by Sarah M. Eden

  “Talk to him, Biddy,” Katie said. “I think it calms him.”

  A heart-wrenching mixture of hope and doubt filled Biddy’s face. She sat on the edge of the bed. “Ian, love?”

  He moaned deep in his throat, a sound of sheer pain.

  “Ian?” Biddy tried again. She set her hand on his cheek. “Come on, then. Look at me, darling.”

  He didn’t open his eyes. His grimace remained firmly in place. Still, he quieted.

  “We’re getting you something for the pain, love.” Biddy spoke soothingly. “’Twill help you rest, it will. You only need endure a bit longer.”

  Ian seemed calmer. Katie looked to Tavish, wanting his opinion. Their eyes met across the bed. He gave her a tiny nod.

  “Keep talking,” he said to Biddy. “I’ll see if I can’t find Da.”

  He came around the foot of the bed and paused long enough to press a light kiss to Katie’s temple. Her heart both jumped and warmed at the brief contact.

  “Stay with Biddy,” he whispered. “She’ll need you.” He left the room in a hurry.

  “Of course.” Katie crossed to the side of the bed where Tavish had stood. She pressed her hand to Ian’s forehead.

  “He’s a touch feverish,” she said quietly.

  Biddy held Ian’s hand in one of hers. She nodded, brow creased. “If only his da would hurry with the powders. I’m not sure what to do otherwise.”

  Katie didn’t either, but clearly Biddy needed someone to at least appear confident. “We’ll do what we’ve done all along. Wet cloths to cool him off. Water so he doesn’t grow thirsty.” That had seen him through the past two days. “Perhaps he’ll be able to eat more now that he’s a bit more awake.”

  Biddy nodded, a glimmer of optimism behind her pallor.

  Ian’s eyes scrunched tighter, and he whimpered.

  “I wish I could do more for him.” Biddy touched his face, absolute heartbreak in her eyes. “Are you thirsty, dearest? Hungry?”

  He didn’t answer but simply lay there with the same look of misery on his face. They’d worried so much when he wasn’t waking up. But was this any better? Ian was more awake but in too much pain to rest. And if he couldn’t rest, how could he possibly heal?

  “Do you sing, Biddy? Or hum or anything?”

  “A little.” The question clearly confused her.

  “Music soothes the soul,” Katie explained. “We’ve nothing else to give him for the pain. We can at least give him that.”

  Biddy nodded but still looked terribly uncertain. After a moment she began to hum quietly, the notes broken a bit. Katie didn’t immediately recognize the tune, but Ian stilled—that was all that truly mattered.

  Pain still etched his features, but bits of his agony melted into something like contemplation. Was he aware enough to be pondering on things?

  Katie dipped the rag that had been on his forehead in the bowl of cool water. She wrung it out and, taking advantage of Ian’s calm, laid it over his brow. Her eyes met Biddy’s, an unspoken recognition passing between them. The quiet tune was weaving its magic. Katie knew she should recognize the melody, though she couldn’t quite pull it from her memory.

  Biddy held her husband’s hand in her own, pressing them both to her cheek as she hummed. Katie had heard many talented musicians in her lifetime. Biddy’s unpolished, heartfelt tune topped every one of them, not for ability, but for sheer depth of feeling.

  Ian moved a bit. ’Twasn’t the jerking, desperate flailing of earlier. He simply turned slightly toward Biddy, as if listening more closely.

  In the next instant Katie realized what the tune was Biddy hummed: “I Am Asleep and Don’t Awaken Me.” She smiled at Biddy’s choice. They’d tried all of the past two days to awaken Ian from his pained slumber and there Biddy was humming a tune about not waking a person.

  Biddy stroked Ian’s hair above the cooling cloth. The weight in her expression had eased.

  Ian’s mouth opened, though no words emerged. Was he trying to speak?

  Again he moved his lips. Biddy grew instantly silent, her gaze riveted to her husband.

  Words shaking and broken, Ian whispered, “Don’t stop.”

  Biddy took an audible, gasping breath. “Dearest?”

  He winced. His breaths seemed labored. “I liked . . . the song.”

  “Recognized it, did you?” The hope written on her face was heartbreaking.

  Ian nodded a tiny bit.

  Please open your eyes. She needs to see you there.

  “And do you know me, love?” Tears hovered in Biddy’s eyes.

  Ian took a shaking breath. “Biddy,” he whispered.

  Relief surged through Katie. Ian was speaking. He had recognized a song almost before Katie did. He knew the sound of his wife’s voice. Surely these were good signs that he would recover in time.

  Biddy turned her head enough to press a kiss to Ian’s palm before returning his hand to her cheek.

  “Keep singing, woman.” Ian’s hoarse voice had grown ever quieter in the tiny moment since he’d last spoken. “Distract me . . . from . . . the pain.”

  “Your da’s gone for powders,” Biddy said.

  He nodded weakly. “‘Irish Lamentation,’ Biddy.”

  “But that tune’s so sad.”

  Ian took a shallow breath, wincing as he did. “Please.”

  Biddy took up the melody, clinging to his hand. The desperate hope in her expression tugged at Katie’s heart. The past days had been so very hard on Biddy.

  “I’ll see if I can’t find Mr. O’Connor,” Katie said. She was as anxious to get Ian the powders as she was to give Biddy and her husband a moment of privacy. There was something intimately tender in the moment they were sharing. Katie didn’t belong there with them.

  She stepped beyond the hanging quilt. Alone in the open space beyond, she wrapped her arms around herself. The sound of Biddy’s voice humming “Irish Lamentation” filled the silence.

  Katie closed her eyes. Music soothes the soul. She’d said it herself, but she wasn’t feeling very soothed. Weight pressed against her heart. The tunes of home took her thoughts back across the ocean. Did Father have music to calm him in his final illness? Was Mother humming to him?

  Katie had his fiddle there in Wyoming with her. He hadn’t even that instrument to offer solace. She’d meant to take it back to him, but her plans had changed. Her father was dying in Belfast, while she remained where she was.

  She needed her music, needed the feel of the fiddle in her hand and under her chin, the sound of the old tunes echoing inside. She needed quiet and peace. She needed—

  The door opened. Katie looked up.

  Tavish.

  He stepped inside with his father at his side. They both wore nearly identical looks of deep, worried contemplation as they spoke in low voices to one another. Tavish would likely have too many difficulties of his own to see her through her moment of weariness.

  His eyes met hers. She tried to smile. The gesture must have failed miserably. Concern immediately filled his expression.

  “Ian—?”

  Katie cut across him. “He is still awake. He’s even speaking a bit.”

  Such a mingle of emotions flitted across the men’s faces. Amazement. Hope. Wariness.

  Mr. O’Connor crossed quickly to the blanket-hung doorway. Katie fully expected Tavish to do the same. He surprised her by crossing directly to her instead.

  “Seems to me, Sweet Katie, you’re feeling a bit crushed by the weight of all this.”

  “We’ve passed a difficult few days,” she said.

  He pulled her into an embrace. ’Twas his answer for everything, really—a solution she’d come to value. She leaned against his chest, breathing in deep the masculine scent of him. His hand rubbed slow circles over her back, the repetition calming her.

  “Seems I’ve done nothing but fall apart lately.” Katie had been something of a mess in the short weeks since word of her father’s illness arrived.

  “N
onsense.” Tavish’s voice rumbled in his chest. “You’ve held up better than anyone could have expected, considering all that’s happened. And besides, what’s the use of having a man about if he can’t help piece you back together now and then?”

  She could smile at that. “No use at all, I say.”

  She felt him laugh. That sound had lifted her spirits so many times. Her grief ebbed, allowing clear thought to return.

  “Ian’ll be feeling better now that he has something to take for the pain,” she said.

  “Da wasn’t able to get the powders.”

  She pulled back and looked up at him. “Didn’t get any? Was the mercantile out?” That seemed unlikely.

  Tavish shook his head. “The Irish price for medicine’s gone up. Johnson’s asking five dollars a bottle.”

  She took a shocked step backward. “Five dollars? That’s a fortune.”

  “Until today, a bottle of powders was only two bits.” He shook his head. “But, then, not until today did someone on this road need the powders for something the other road did to him. We’re to be doubly punished, it seems.”

  “Five dollars?” That was three months’ salary at Joseph’s, the highest-paying job she’d ever had.

  Tavish reached out, cupping her jaw with his hand. “Now, don’t you go fretting yourself over this. You’ve plenty on your mind as it is. We’ll see to Ian.”

  How could she help but worry? Biddy would never rest so long as Ian was suffering, and Ian would suffer so long as he had nothing to ease his pain.

  “How can Johnson set so high a price on medicine he knows is so badly needed? It’s inhumane, is what it is.”

  “Son?”

  They both turned at the sound of Mr. O’Connor’s voice.

  “Run up the road, Tavish, and let your ma know her boy’s awake.”

  “Aye, Da.” Tavish turned to Katie. “Care to walk with me a piece?”

  The offer was tempting, but Katie’s mind was churning too much on the latest difficulty to go for a stroll, even with him. “Actually, I’d best get back to Granny Claire’s.”

  He walked with her as far as the road, then pressed a lingering kiss to the back of her hand. “A fine good day to you, Sweet Katie.”

  “And to you.”

  Tavish walked farther up the road, while Katie made her way down toward her new home.

  Five dollars. The price echoed as painful beats in her heart. Harvest was yet a few weeks off. Farming families wouldn’t have a great deal of cash on hand until after they sold their crop.

  Aye. But you have some. Hidden in an old, dented biscuit tin in her new room was the money she’d saved over the past eighteen years, her sole means of returning home. In the few short days since she’d decided to remain in Wyoming she’d begun imagining what she might do with her precious savings. Land of her own had been the excited answer. She could have a place of her own, a home she could never be thrown off of. If her connection to Tavish progressed, that money would help support them both, perhaps pay off the note on his land, free him of that burden.

  Five dollars would set you back quite a spell.

  She needed her savings in the short-term as well. ’Twas the only money she had to live on now that she hadn’t a job. And what little she brought in from selling her bread went to buy supplies for making more bread; there was no true profit in it yet.

  She stepped inside Mrs. Claire’s house. ’Twould take her some time to grow used to calling her “Granny” as the kind woman had requested.

  Mrs. Claire—Granny—sat in her rocker beneath the front window, as always. She pierced Katie with a concerned look. “Has Ian improved at all?”

  “He’s awake and talking a very little, but he’s hurting something terrible.”

  Mrs. Claire gave one of her wizened nods. “Poor man’ll likely be pained for days to come. Weeks, maybe. My younger brother fell from a wall when he was a lad. His head pained him for months afterwards.”

  Months. Would Ian suffer that long? How would he recover without anything to give him relief? How would he even begin to do the work that needed doing on a farm in the midst of harvest? Could he manage any of it in so much pain?

  “You look worn to a thread, Katie,” Granny said.

  “I am pulled a touch thin.” Indeed, Katie felt run clear off her feet. “I need to rest my own four bones a spell.”

  Granny smiled her wrinkly grin. “Your ‘own four bones.’” She shook her head in amusement. “You’ll have me thinking I’m back in Ireland again, talking that way.”

  Katie nodded. “That was part of our bargain, if I remember correctly.”

  “Indeed.” Granny gave her a sharp look. “You just set your mind to rummaging up a few more words and phrases from the Old Country, and try not to worry.”

  A moment later, Katie stood in the room Granny Claire had given her. Despite Granny’s words, Katie’s mind returned to the question of Ian’s medicine. Five dollars. It would take her at least a year to earn that much money baking and selling her bread.

  But Ian’s voice sounded in her memory: “Distract me from the pain.” And with it came her tiny sister’s voice from nearly two decades earlier: “I’m cold, Katie.”

  She’d not been able to do a thing for little Eimear. Not a single thing. She’d simply lay beside her in the bitter cold as the girl slowly froze to death that terrible night.

  Was five dollars really so enormous a price to pay to help Ian and Biddy?

  Katie pulled her old, trusted biscuit tin from under the bedtick. She pried the tight-fitting lid off and dumped the contents on the faded quilt spread over her new bed. She could spare five dollars. She could. Ian needed the powders desperately, and Biddy would fall clear to pieces if Ian didn’t recover. Biddy was like family to her.

  Though she couldn’t read, Katie had been taught upon arriving in America how to recognize the different paper moneys by the faces on each. Most of her bills were American, and nearly all worth only one dollar. She had a great many coins, but America had in recent years become enamored of paper dollars, and she’d been paid that way of late.

  She counted out five of the bills worth one dollar each. Spending the money she’d painstakingly saved caused her a touch of panic. Growing up in poverty had left her that way, always a little afraid of deprivations yet to come.

  Katie slipped the bills into the pocket of her dress. She snapped the lid back on her tin and stuffed it in its cozy hiding spot once more.

  She would have the powders for Ian. She would not fail him the way she had her sister.

  Chapter Six

  Katie had done her best to avoid Johnson’s Mercantile since her first week in Hope Springs. Mr. Johnson had spent that visit belittling and insulting her. She’d been told to keep to the shadows and keep quiet. From all Katie had learned of the shopkeeper since, she expected more of the same.

  She stood beneath the overhang in front of the mercantile, taking a moment to build up the fortitude she knew she’d need. She was about to hand over some of her precious savings to a man who would treat her terribly from the moment she entered his establishment. But she needed medicinal powders, and he was the only one who had them.

  Filthy Irishwoman. Mr. Johnson’s words echoed anew in her memory. The venom in his voice had shocked her then. Little about the hatred in Hope Springs surprised her anymore. It still hurt. It hurt deeply, but it was no longer unexpected.

  She took a deep breath, then another. She opened the door, a bell sounding overhead. She held her chin at a confident angle, determined to prevent Mr. Johnson from seeing that he intimidated her. Some of that confidence slipped, though, upon seeing he was not alone. Nearly any other customer, except perhaps Mr. Archibald, would have been more welcome than Reverend Ford. Her one and only encounter with him had not ended well either.

  “Good day.” She managed a smile, though she knew it didn’t precisely ring with enthusiasm.

  The reverend seemed surprised to see her. Mr. Johnson simply loo
ked annoyed.

  “I am a busy man,” the shopkeeper said as he stood behind his counter doing, as near as Katie could tell, absolutely nothing.

  She nodded. “I’ve come to make a purchase, whenever you’ve time to see to it.”

  Mr. Johnson’s attention shifted back to the preacher. Katie hung back a step or two. She’d give them room to conduct any business they had, but she’d not allow herself to be completely forgotten.

  “How long before your wife is likely to deliver?” the reverend asked.

  Katie hadn’t heard Mrs. Johnson was in a family way, but she didn’t interact with anyone on the Red Road, nor did she attend Sunday services.

  “Another two months or more,” Mr. Johnson said. “But she’s already finding her chores here too cumbersome.” He shrugged, though the gesture seemed more resigned than dismissive. “No one here is looking for work. I haven’t had a single inquiry since putting the sign up, and it’s been months.”

  Katie muscled down a smile at the irony of his words. She’d been trying to find a permanent job since her second day in town. She’d been told the sign he hung in his window specifically said he wasn’t hiring Irish, otherwise he might have filled the position long ago.

  “Have you hired a teacher yet?” Mr. Johnson asked.

  The reverend shook his head.

  Katie let her thoughts and eyes wander.

  The mercantile was not quite so tidy as she remembered it from when she’d last stepped inside months earlier. Perhaps she was only looking about with a more critical eye now that she knew just how much she didn’t care for the man. Or, more likely still, Mrs. Johnson’s now-cumbersome chores involved straightening and sweeping and dusting the shop, and those things simply weren’t getting done as often.

  “What is it you want?”

  She realized with a jolt that Mr. Johnson was addressing her. “I’ve come to purchase medicinal powders.” She spoke with a steady, confident voice.

  Something like a laugh entered his eyes. “A popular inquiry for y’all today.”

  Katie gave a small nod.

  “You’ve heard the price is five dollars?” Mr. Johnson clearly doubted she had the money.