“I need someone to look after the girls while I’m taking my crop to market. The girls love you and have missed you a great deal since you left. I know they would jump at the opportunity to spend a few days with you again.”
“I’m not qualified to look after children, Joseph. You know what happened to my sister, and you know it was my fault.”
“Katie.” He gave her a stern look. “What I know is that it wasn’t your fault, only that you blame yourself for it. And I further know that you can be trusted despite your misgivings. And I do trust you, enough to have no qualms about leaving the two most precious things in my life to your care—if you are willing to look after them. I have full faith in you, Katie.”
He watched her take a deep breath. She gave a quick nod. “Well, I do speak two languages, you know.”
Joseph squeezed her fingers, smiling at her humor. Her history haunted her, and it pained him to see her still hurting. That she was trying to keep her optimism through it all was commendable. “You plan to end every sentence with that from now on, don’t you? ‘Why, yes, I do make very good sweet rolls, and I speak two languages as well.’”
Katie laughed, swinging their arms between them. “I’ll need to ask Granny Claire if she can keep an eye on the girls while I’m working at the mercantile.”
That difficulty had occurred to him, but true to form, Katie had tackled the problem head-on.
“Emma will be in school many of those days,” Joseph pointed out. “That should relieve some of the burden.”
“Oh, the girls are never burdensome. The children in the first house I worked in were positively demons compared to Ivy and Emma. Demons, Joseph.”
He smiled at her forceful tone. “I am relieved my angels have proven themselves better than their predecessors.”
“Vastly better.”
They turned back in the direction of Mrs. Claire’s house.
“Now are you certain,” she asked, “the Red Road won’t take exception to your girls staying down this road while you’re gone?”
“They will a bit,” he admitted. “But oddly enough, the fact that you work at the mercantile seems to make the Reds find you less threatening.”
Katie looked equal parts annoyed and frustrated. “Probably because they have seen for themselves how firmly I am under Mr. Johnson’s thumb while I’m there. A caged enemy is hardly a dangerous one.”
“I don’t know about that, Katie. Cage any creature long enough and it will fight back.”
Katie shook her head. “Either fight back or curl up and die.”
“Don’t you dare curl up and die.”
His vehemence clearly surprised her. Indeed, it surprised him. He tried to cover his outburst with a shrug and a half smile. But there was no explaining away the thread of panic woven into his words at the thought of Katie and all her fire and determination dying under the weight of Hope Springs’ hatred.
“I don’t intend to give up, Joseph Archer. Complain a great deal, certainly—especially when you’re so willing to listen—but I’ll not give my troubles the satisfaction of beating me.”
That’s my Katie.
By the growing look of surprise on Katie’s face, he’d said the words out loud. Her surprise turned to a blush. That was encouraging.
The visit was a quick one. Katie returned Joseph’s jacket, kissed the girls good-bye, and with a smile acknowledged she would see them all in the morning. He would have Katie’s company twice in only a few hours. Joseph could easily grow accustomed to that.
Ivy was still half asleep, but Joseph needed to be on his way and couldn’t wait for a later hour. So he’d arrived at Katie’s door before sunrise, with Ivy heavy in his arms and Emma only slightly more awake beside him.
Katie let them in with her usual command of any task, despite the early hour.
“I’ll just lay this sweet one down on my bed.” She took Ivy out of his arms.
“Thank you.” Though he wanted to bid his tiny girl farewell before he left, he knew Ivy would be impossible the rest of the day if she didn’t get the sleep she needed.
Emma clung to his hand, looking about uncertainly. “Why can’t we sleep in our own house, Papa?”
“Because that would inconvenience Katie. She needs to keep close to Mrs. Claire. And all her baking things are here.”
Emma nodded in understanding, though her brows still turned down with worry.
“You’ll enjoy being with Katie again,” he reminded her. “I would guess she’ll play her violin for you—I know how much you’ve missed that.” They all had.
“Why can’t I go with you, Papa?” Emma looked up at him, a threat of tears in her eyes. “I could help. I am a very hard worker.”
Joseph pulled her up against his side. “You are a very hard worker, dear. But you need to be in school.” That argument would likely sting less than a reminder that she was far too small for a trip to the grain markets. “And Katie will need your help with Ivy.”
“I don’t want to be left behind.” That had been Emma’s constant worry for too many years. She wanted to go everywhere he did, needed reassurance that when they were apart, he would return.
“I’ll come back in a little more than a week,” he reminded her. “Sooner, if things go really well. And I’ll bring you back something as I always do. Plus I’ll have our new housekeeper with me, so you won’t be eating burnt toast and runny eggs in a messy kitchen every single day any longer.”
That earned him the tiniest, most fleeting of smiles. “Will she be nice, Papa?”
“The new housekeeper?”
Emma nodded.
“I am sure she will be.” She had better be.
Katie emerged from the hallway, her arms now empty. The house was quiet with both Ivy and Mrs. Claire sleeping and night not yet entirely fled outside.
Emma’s grip on his hand tightened. “You promise you will come back?”
“I give you my solemn word.” He tried to convey with a look just how sincere he was, but she still looked worried.
Joseph tried very hard not to think ill of his late wife, but at this time each year he found himself cursing her in frustration. She had planted these fears in Emma. She had cruelly taught Emma to expect abandonment.
“I always come back, Emma.” He always had.
“But you always leave too. You always leave me here.”
Katie came and stood beside him, standing so close he could smell the flowery scent that had once filled his home while she lived there. He’d missed that about her as well. He’d missed everything.
She motioned him over to the side. Emma stayed where she was, a look of forlorn grief on her face. What was he going to do? He couldn’t break the girl’s heart again.
“Why is she so upset?” Katie asked. “Other than missing you, of course. It seems more than that.”
“She doesn’t want to be left behind.”
“Because she’ll miss you? Or she’ll worry about you?”
He shook his head. “Because her mother left her behind.”
Katie laid her hand gently on his arm. “When she died?”
If only it were that. “No.” He dropped his voice to the smallest of whispers. “Not long after Ivy was born, Vivian decided she’d had enough of Hope Springs and Wyoming and farming, and she ran off with a cowhand from one of the ranches here in the valley.”
“Merciful heavens.”
“It wasn’t a ‘romantic’ connection. She simply wanted to return to Baltimore, and she offered him a small fortune if he would help her get there.” He hadn’t confessed this to anyone but Ian. How was Katie pulling this from him with nothing more than an empathetic look? “She took all her clothes and prized belongings and Ivy, and she left.”
“Wait. She took Ivy?”
Joseph sighed. “Yes. Ivy—and not Emma. Poor Emma didn’t understand the reasons her mother left; she only remembers that she was left behind.”
Katie said something in Gaelic. From the tone and inflecti
on, it was not a flattering reflection on Vivian’s actions.
“My thoughts exactly,” he muttered.
“How could any woman do that to her child?”
“I tracked Vivian down and brought her back, but she died of the fever not long after. There was no time for Emma to feel secure again.”
Katie glanced briefly in Emma’s direction. She pulled Joseph a single step down the hallway.
“I have a suggestion.”
“For Emma?”
“For the both of you.”
“What do you have in mind?” He’d listen to any suggestion Katie had.
They took another step away from Emma—not far enough to cause the girl alarm.
“The poor dear is worried out of all reason that you’re not coming back for her. That is a fear I know all too well.” A flash of pain crossed Katie’s face. “I know what it is to watch my father leave me behind. But he never looked back; he never returned.”
He took her hand. The stories she’d told him of her past returned with force to his mind. She’d known too much heartache in her life.
“The thing that pulled me through those days was having my father’s fiddle,” she said. “’Twas a part of him I had with me to touch and to hold. So long as I had something of his, he didn’t feel completely lost to me.”
Her suggestion became instantly clear. He needed to give Emma something of his to cling to while he was away. “That is a brilliant idea.”
He stepped around her and knelt in front of Emma. He pulled from his jacket his pocket watch. “I need you to look after something for me, Emma. Do you think you could?”
She nodded, some curiosity sneaking into her worried expression. He set the watch in her hand and wrapped her fingers around it.
“I need you to keep this for me, hold on to it until I return.” He gave her a most serious look. “I know you’ll take very good care of it.”
“Oh, I will, Papa.” Her grip on the watch tightened. “I won’t lose it or anything. I’ll still have it when you get back.”
He leaned in very close and whispered, “I will always come back, Emma. Always.”
Emma pressed the watch to her heart. He ran a hand along her still-messy hair.
“Pompah, this isn’t our house.” Ivy tottered in from the hall, one eye closed, the other heavy with sleep. She rubbed a fist against the eye she hadn’t opened. “This is Mrs. Claire’s house.”
Joseph looked up at Katie from his position kneeling in front of Emma. “She will be difficult today if she’s tired.”
“She will be fine.” Katie spoke with a confidence that contrasted sharply with her full-bodied uncertainty the first day she met the girls. “Let her have a good-bye.”
He had to drop his gaze away from her beautiful brown eyes. She distracted and tortured him, and she had no idea.
Katie knelt beside Ivy, wrapping a protective arm around her. Ivy leaned her head on Katie’s shoulder. Emma wandered to Katie’s side, her gaze continually dropping to his watch.
There they were, side by side, the three people in all the world he would miss more than anyone else over the next week. A quick good-bye seemed best. Ivy would be too sleepy for protests. Emma had found some solace in keeping his watch with her—the tears that hovered in her eyes seemed to have dried. And Katie was there beside them both. She would offer them the comfort they needed.
“Good-bye, sweet girls.” Reminding himself to be quick and on his way, he pressed kisses to their cheeks. “And thank you, Katie.”
She nodded. He flattered himself that she looked sad to see him go.
He stood and stepped out. Emma and Ivy gathered in the doorway, with Katie right beside them. Joseph made his way up the walk.
Still within sight, he turned back one more time, wanting a last look at his girls before he left. They waved. He waved as well, and set himself firmly back on the path.
He’d only gone a step or two when the sound of swishing fabric and quick footsteps stopped him. He turned back. Katie reached him and, without warning, threw her arms around his neck.
His heart lodged in his throat, pounding painfully. His mind couldn’t settle on a single thought, couldn’t focus on anything except Katie, in his arms, embracing him.
He stood a moment, too shocked to move an inch. But she didn’t pull away. He slowly wrapped his arms around her, fully expecting her to object. She didn’t. He wasn’t complaining; he was only very, very confused.
He somehow managed to find his voice. “What has brought this on, Katie?” Whatever it was, he’d make certain to do it again and again.
She pulled away enough to look into his face. He kept his arms close about her.
“You looked back.” Her voice quivered a bit. “The girls were standing there, missing you already, and you looked back.”
She’d tossed herself into his arms because he’d glanced back over his shoulder? But the answer came in the next moment. Her father had left her, never intending to return. And he hadn’t so much as looked back at her one last time.
Joseph rubbed her back, remembering with clarity the heartache in her eyes when she’d first told him of being left behind. How long had she been waiting for someone to regret leaving her? The painful longing lingered in her eyes.
He let his mind memorize the moment. Loving her was sometimes a physically painful thing—it too often felt pointless.
“Thank you, again,” he said, “for watching the girls while I’m gone.”
She smiled at him, and his heart cracked that much more.
“Have a safe journey, Joseph Archer,” she said. “Come back to us whole.”
He lightly touched her face. He couldn’t help himself. Color touched her cheeks, but she didn’t flinch.
“I’ll see you in about a week,” he said.
She gave a small nod. Her eyes never left his face. He thought he saw a question there, but he couldn’t be sure.
He stepped back. She dropped her gaze. An odd tension pulled between them, an awkwardness that was not usually there.
A week. In another week he could begin making his case in earnest. Maybe, just maybe, he would be permitted to hold Katie Macauley in his arms again.
Chapter Sixteen
Katie was a mess.
She’d bid Tavish farewell, his good humor turning what would have otherwise been a painful departure into a morning of smiles and laughter. Even the girls, still longing for their father, had giggled a great deal. Tavish brought joy everywhere he went. She missed that about him when he was away, and he was often away.
Why, then, in the two days since the men had left to take their crop to market, had her thoughts turned as often to Joseph as to Tavish? What kind of woman had a heart so fickle it felt pulled by two men at the same time? Tavish had been willing to give up so much for her. He had touched her heart, and that heart, she’d firmly believed, had chosen him. So why was there suddenly room in her thoughts and longings for Joseph?
There had been a time not long before when she’d admitted to growing feelings for both men, but she thought she’d put that confusion behind her.
What was she to do?
“Quit daydreaming and get back to work,” Mr. Johnson snapped.
Katie jumped at the interruption.
“Lazy foreigners,” Mr. Johnson muttered.
She quickly set back to sweeping the floor. Wind had driven dust in under the door the day before. Katie had been at work two hours and had done nothing but dust off tables, counters, baskets. She’d only just turned her attention to the floors. Two hours of working dirt out of the narrowest grooves of the furniture and still she was labeled lazy.
But I can speak two languages. That had been her silent response to all Mr. Johnson’s complaints lately. It never failed to calm her mind and set her at peace again. She found she could even smile.
Katie passed the tidy display of ankle boots. She’d taken to brushing her fingers along the leather upper-soles, letting herself dream for the mos
t fleeting of moments that she could afford to buy herself a fine pair of new shoes.
“Don’t even think about stealing them.”
She looked back at her employer. “Stealing them? The shoes?”
“Did I say you could talk?”
Katie managed not to roll her eyes as she turned back to her work. He’d been very particular the last few days about her not speaking. The man was even more grumpy than usual of late.
“I’m making you shake out your shawl before you go,” Mr. Johnson said. “I can only guess how many things you’re planning to sneak off with.”
Katie didn’t comment. Didn’t defend herself despite the unfairness of the accusation. Ignoring Mr. Johnson and focusing on her work had seen her through many difficult mornings at the mercantile. It’d do again.
Marykate Kelly stopped to talk to her on her way home from the mercantile that day, thanking her for all she had done for the Irish. Katie had not had many conversations with Seamus’s wife, finding her a touch too embittered by the feud and their difficulties.
“’Tis more than merely keeping prices down,” Mrs. Kelly said. “Mr. Johnson is . . . well, not exactly friendly, but he seems easier to deal with.”
“I don’t know that I can take credit for that.” She’d not really noticed such a change, but hoped it was there just the same.
“Well, I cannot deny you’ve done something.” For the first time since Katie had known the woman, Mrs. Kelly’s expression lightened, as if the tiniest glimmer of hope was beginning to break through years of darkness. “Mr. Johnson’s changed a bit. More than that, even, the Irish are doing better.”
“Because of the prices?” They walked side by side down the Irish Road.
Mrs. Kelly half shook her head, half nodded. “You’ve given them reason to keep fighting. For the first time in memory, we’re not losing this battle.”
Those words stayed with her through the frustrations of working at the mercantile. Keeping in mind the difference she was making helped her survive. She put on a brave face every day before returning home. The girls didn’t need to know of her troubles. They were doing well, considering they still missed their father. Katie had warm biscuits ready for Emma when she reached the house after school each day; she walked to and from with Michael O’Connor and a few of the other Irish children.
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