After the Storm

by Jo Ann Ferguson

  Samuel followed, trying not to jostle the woman. Not the woman, but Mrs. Rafferty. He murmured his thanks as he met Megan and Lottie by the stairs. Telling them he would come up and get them as soon as their mother woke up, he watched Megan lead her sister to their room.

  Samuel looked from Lottie’s confused face to the woman in his arms. Had Lottie even recognized her own mother? She had been so young when she had last seen her. He grumbled a profanity under his breath. Why had this woman deserted her children and now obviously come searching for them?

  More questions he needed answers for.

  He carried her into the extra bedroom. Placing her on the bed, he lit a lamp and set it on the table by the bed. He grimaced when he saw how her wet clothes were soaking into the coverlet. If he left her in those clothes, she could take a chill that might be fatal in her weakened condition. If he started to remove them and she woke, she could cause all kinds of trouble for him. A woman who left her young children to fend for themselves in New York’s slums might have come after them only because she had heard they were with him and wanted to extort something from him in exchange for not hurting the children again.

  It was not easy to believe that pretty face could hide such a horrible intent. She was not beautiful, but her face, which resembled Megan’s would, if she was smiling, offer a warmth that would draw people to her. Was she as stubborn as Brendan? Could she be as silly as Lottie? Were Megan’s easily hurt feelings a legacy from her mother?

  “What are you thinking?” he asked himself. He should not be letting his gaze linger on her features when he needed to be thinking about other things. Things like getting her out of those wet garments, and things like how stupid it would be to trust her.

  He picked up her bag and tilted the contents onto the floor. Nothing but a change of underclothes and another surprisingly clean apron. Not even a hairbrush. Why had she traveled with so little? That was another question he would not get an answer to until she regained her senses.

  Samuel drew back her soaked hair and undid her collar, watching her face to make sure she did not come awake with a screech that would upset the children more. A collar button fell off in his hand. Tossing it on the table by the lamp, he hoped the rest would not follow suit. Her dress was ragged from long wear, but he had nothing for her to wear. On the morrow, he would send Brendan to the Baileys’ farm and see if their daughter Rhea could bring some clothes when she next came to clean the house.

  As he carefully drew the apron and dress from her, she did not awake. But the sight of her curves hidden so sparsely beneath a chemise and petticoat nearly as shabby as the gown awoke something in him that he had not expected. He tried to ignore everything but undoing her shoes and setting them on the floor. His gaze kept slipping again and again to the length of lissome leg revealed by rips in her single petticoat. A sensation he had thought he had submerged for good when he left Cincinnati blasted through him as he put his arm around her waist to lift her enough so he could pull the covers out from beneath her. Her breast pressed against his arm while he tugged the bedding aside. He cursed. He did not want to find her appealing. Not her or any other woman. Hadn’t he learned how a woman could use her seductive ways to persuade a man to do just as she wished until she tired of the sport?

  His fingers glided up her back when he leaned her onto the pillows again. A simple, commonplace motion, but again the heat spread through him, compelling and demanding.

  As he drew the covers over her, he released the breath ready to burst from his lungs. She was certainly not the first woman he had met since he had come to Haven, but none of the others had caused this unwanted reaction. Although the children had not said much about their father, he knew their parents were wed.

  So why was he acting like this?

  He was spared from having to answer that question by a knock on the door. He looked over his shoulder to see Brendan with Doc Bamburger. The doctor was much thinner than the last time Samuel had seen him, but his steps were firm when he came to the bed.

  “How long has she been senseless?” the doctor asked, setting his black bag on the floor.

  “Since just after she got here. About five minutes before I sent Brendan for you.” Samuel stepped back to let the doctor do what he could.

  “Hmm … nearly an hour, then.”

  An hour? Had a full hour passed since she had dropped into his arms at the front door? A mere hour that had changed his life far too much.

  He went to where Brendan stood in the doorway. He put his arm around the boy’s trembling shoulders.

  They said she was dead. Brendan’s words resonated through his head. Who had told the children their mother was dead? And why had the children been put on the orphan train to Haven? He hoped the woman would wake and be able to explain.

  Cailin Rafferty did not want to open her eyes. As long as they remained closed, she could pretend the last year had been a nightmare. She could believe she was on the small farm in southwestern Ireland where she had been born, and where her children had been born.

  She drew in a deep breath. A smile teased her lips as she savored the fresh, green scent of ripe fields after a rain. It had been one of her favorite smells each summer. She had lived on the few acres all her life, first with her parents and then, after her mother died, with her father, and then with her husband as well.

  The slow roll of the hills rising from the sea would be glistening beneath the sunshine, and the children would be outside, their light voices sounding like birds in the trees. She would bring them in for their evening meal and a tale of the little people. The raw dirt floor would be warm at summer’s end as they curled up on their cots, pulled from beneath the bed she had shared with Abban.

  Abban Rafferty … She could remember the day she had first seen him at the tavern around the bend from the farm her family had tilled for generations. He was a tall man with no extra flesh on him. He might be less muscular than the other men she had seen all her life, but he had a refinement about him that intrigued her. He was not a farmer or a fisherman. When she heard he had come from America to see the lands his grandfather had left before the Great Famine, she had listened, enrapt as he described his journey with such an odd accent. Then he had delighted her in other ways. Abban had asked her father for her hand. The wedding had been a grand one, as fine as the wool coat Abban had worn when they spoke their vows to love each other and only each other until death separated them.

  Their love had blessed them with three children, the youngest born after Abban had to return to America. He had received a letter from his family in New York, requesting that he come back immediately. He had told her that he would send for her and the children and …

  Cailin moaned as fingers brushed against her forehead, sending a debilitating pain through her. She gripped the bedding. With a gasp, she opened her eyes to stare at a quilt far fancier than anything she had ever had in Ireland.

  She did not recognize this room that was as magnificent as the quilt. She looked for anything—even a single thing—that was familiar. The whitewashed ceiling was bright in the sunshine, and the pale yellow walls glowed with warmth. A double window was raised. Filmy curtains floated in and out with the vagaries of the breeze. A tall dresser was set between two doors. Next to a washstand containing a beautiful pitcher and bowl both painted with blue flowers, a mirrored table had a small stool set beneath it. Before she had left Ireland, she would not have known what the marble-topped table with small shelves set on either side of the mirror was. She had learned it was called a dressing table.

  She winced, recalling the shame heaped on her when she had not known enough about the furnishings the rich who lived in New York surrounded themselves with. The other servants had laughed at her mistakes while she struggled to earn money for herself and her children. Yet she had learned being belittled was not the worst thing she could endure and survive. Not by far.

  “Can you talk?” asked a tenor voice not far from where she was lying.

&n
bsp; Cailin turned her heavy head to look at the man. The lower half of his tautly sculptured face was darkened with whiskers. As she raised her gaze past his nose, she could not keep from staring. His eyes, behind gold-rimmed glasses, were as green as Abban’s. She had not thought she would encounter another green-eyed man here along the Ohio River, so very far from Ireland.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice little more than a croak as she pulled the quilt up to her chin.

  “Samuel Jennings.” He held a cup up to her lips. “And I hear you are the Rafferty children’s mother.”

  She did not take a drink as she clasped her hands in front of her and closed her eyes in fervent thanksgiving. Even though her head ached so hard she could have believed she had been struck by a horse trolley, she summoned up the energy she had left and whispered, “The Rafferty children? My children? They’re really here?”

  “Yes.”

  His answer was so reluctant she looked up at him again. “I was told when I arrived this afternoon in Haven that they’d been placed out with you.”

  “When you arrived this afternoon? It’s long past ‘this afternoon.’”

  “What? How long have I been here?”

  He put the cup back onto its saucer so hard it rattled, and the tray beneath it almost tipped off the table by the bed. “I think the better question would be—where in hell have you been?”

  She stared at him. Her first impression of him having a kind expression must have been wrong. His eyes glittered with a hot fury that added blue sparks to the emerald.

  “Are you just going to lie there and say nothing?” He crossed his arms over the front of his stained cotton shirt. “Or are you trying to devise some lie to make me think better of you? Don’t waste your time. Any mother who abandons her children on the street—”

  “I didn’t abandon them!” she cried. She moaned and put her hand to her throbbing head. Her throat burned with her outcry. Weak tears seared the corners of her eyes, but she would not allow them to fall and let Samuel Jennings discover how his words lashed so painfully at her.

  “They thought you were dead.”

  “Dead? They were told I was dead?” She snarled her father’s favorite curse under her breath. How dare Mrs. Rafferty lie to her children when she knew very well how much it would hurt! Or had that been the reason for the lies? She had learned the hardest way a Rafferty cared nothing for another’s feelings, unless it got that Rafferty something he or she wanted. “You must believe me. I didn’t know they had been sent out of New York until a couple of months ago.”

  “Months?”

  “It took me this long to earn the money to follow them. Trust me. I recall every day they weren’t with me.”

  “The Children’s Aid Society would have arranged for the children to be returned to New York, if you’d asked,” he said, but the fury in his eyes tempered a bit. “They told me when I first met the children that any child could be sent back to them if the placement didn’t work.”

  She shuddered, then groaned as the motion thudded again across her forehead. “I didn’t want the children traveling back to New York alone.”

  “They would have sent someone to escort the children back.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” She struggled to sit, then halted. She wore too little to slip out from beneath the covers. Heat slapped her face when she wondered if this stranger had undressed her. She looked past him. Surely he would have let his wife tend to her. Where were his wife and the children?

  “Here.” He held out a white shirt. A man’s shirt, she realized. “It’s the best I can do for you right now.”

  “Can’t I borrow something that belongs to your wife?”

  “I’m not married, Mrs. Rafferty.” His expression became even colder. “This shirt is the most appropriate garment I have for you to wear.”

  She stuck one arm in the fine linen sleeve but was stymied. She could not put it on without first sitting up, and she could not sit up without putting it on first.

  When he offered to help, she almost said no, then faltered. He cared about her children. That much was already clear. She had to let him assist her when she was unable to do anything herself.

  She nodded and found herself cradled against his strong arm beneath the sleeve of his simple dark green cotton shirt. It had been rolled up to his elbow, and the warmth of his skin brushed her nape. He slowly raised her. When her head spun, a groan escaped her lips. He paused, holding her against his chest. Something crackled beneath her ear. Papers. She ignored them as the manly scents of hard work and bay rum filled her senses. She closed her eyes, once again longing to turn back time to when she had believed those aromas would be part of each night.

  She had been wrong.

  “I can manage alone,” she said, pushing herself away from that strong arm before she could let herself be seduced again by something unreal, something coming only from her silly, lonely heart.

  He released her, and she fell back against the mattress. Renewed pain sliced across her forehead as the empty sleeve struck it. Propping her heavy hand on her brow, she waited for her eyes to focus and the room to stop spinning. She had not guessed she was so weak. How ill had she been?

  As if she had asked that question aloud, Mr. Jennings said, “Maybe now you’ll admit that you need help.”

  “Yes.” Her voice was as shaky as her hands. She added nothing else while he leaned her back against the pillows he had plumped and helped her put on the shirt. She hastily pulled it closed in front of her. She would button it when she was alone.

  He stood, and she found herself staring again. He was shorter than Abban, but taller than she was. She had become accustomed to being the tallest woman, her head rising over even some of the men’s. Athair had despaired of her every finding a man to wed, so she guessed her father had been as pleased as she was when Abban asked her to wed.

  If Athair ever learned about what had happened in the past year … She did not have to think about that long. She knew what her father would have done. He would have seen Abban dead, but he would have been too late.

  “Are you all right?” asked Mr. Jennings.

  He leaned toward her again to straighten the quilt. Beneath his cotton shirt, his shoulders were well muscled and moved with a lithe ease. His shirt was tucked into worn denims, so she guessed he was a man accustomed to hard work. When he smoothed the quilt around her, as if she were a babe, his fingers were calloused. Yet, they were not stubby and possessed the same grace as his other motions.

  “Tá mé go breá,” she replied when he stood as straight as a soldier again. Before he could ask, she repeated in English, “I’m fine.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Yes.” Arguing about what was obvious would gain her nothing, and what little pride she had left was useless. “I feel like my head is going to explode at any moment.”

  Handing her a cup of water, he waited until she had taken a sip. Then he asked, “What else have you being lying to me about?”

  “Nothing!” She moaned at her own raised voice and rested her head against her palm as the pain swirled through it.

  The cup was plucked from her fingers as her hand trembled. Closing her eyes, she sagged into the pillows. She had never been this weak. She had to overcome whatever had sapped her, because she needed to be strong now. Stronger than she had ever been.

  “Maybe you should try to sleep,” Mr. Jennings said.

  Cailin opened her eyes, not wanting him to leave before she had answers to the questions haunting her. “My children—my children … how are they?”

  “They’re well, and they’ll stay well if you haven’t brought some sickness into the house to infect them.”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed with horror.

  His frown eased, but not completely into a smile. “They’ve shown no signs of becoming ill since your dramatic arrival in the middle of that thunderstorm. Why did you come out in it? The children aren’t witless, so I wouldn’t have expected
their mother to be. You proved me wrong.”

  “It wasn’t storming when I started out from Haven.”

  “The walk isn’t long, no more than a few miles.”

  “I got lost or …”

  “Maybe you lost consciousness along the way?”

  Cailin whispered, “It’s possible. How long have I been here?”

  “You arrived two nights ago. It appears your fever has broken.” He put the back of his hand against her forehead as if she were no older than Lottie.

  The thought of her youngest sent anticipation flowing through her. “May I see the children?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Mr. Jennings, they are my children, and I want to be certain they’re all right.”

  His mouth became a straight line. “You may rest assured, Mrs. Rafferty, I haven’t been beating them daily since their arrival.”

  How many more things could she say to insult this man who had opened his house to her children … and to her? Telling her empty arms to be patient for a few more hours, she said, “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have spoken so. It’s only that I haven’t seen them in so long.”

  He sat on the side of the bed, startling her because he had been the model of propriety since she had opened her eyes. She tried to keep from thinking about him undressing her down to her smallclothes. Locking his hands around one knee, he said, “I have some questions of my own if you believe you’re well enough to continue this conversation.”

  “Yes … yes, of course.” She clasped her own fingers together.

  Mr. Jennings spoke with obvious education, more than she would have imagined a farmer to have. Then she reminded herself how little she knew of American farmers. So little in America had matched the eager expectations she had enjoyed while she sailed across the stormy Atlantic and into New York harbor.

  “I take it from your words,” he said, “you’ve known where the children were for some time.”

  “I went to the Children’s Aid Society a couple of months ago.” That was stretching the truth a bit, because she had gone more than three months before, but she could guess, even when her head was hurt so badly, what his next question would be.