A chorus of enthusiastic agreement from the girls followed.
Olivia turned to her oldest daughter. "Becky, would you set a place for Mr. Branigan, please?"
Conor did not step forward. He hesitated in the doorway, uncomfortable. He didn't belong here, he was the stranger, the outsider who looked in.
But then Carrie jumped up and came over to him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the table. "You can sit next to me," she announced, gesturing to the empty chair beside her own with all the majesty of a queen bestowing a favor upon her favorite knight.
Left without a choice, Conor pulled out the offered chair as Becky left the table to fetch him a plate.
"I see the clothes fit," Olivia commented.
Conor turned so that she could see where both shoulder seams of the shirt had ripped apart. "They do now."
He turned back around in time to see her smile. It caught him by surprise, and he realized that he'd not seen her smile before. He had thought her to be passably pretty at best, but when Olivia Maitland smiled, some undefinable shift of light and shadow occurred, some subtle rearrangement of her features took place, and she became suddenly beautiful. It was an unexpected and magical transformation.
He was staring at her. He quickly looked away, and realized Becky was standing beside him with a place setting. He sat down, and Becky put a plate and utensils before him. Once she had returned to her chair, Olivia spoke again. "Becky, it's your turn. Would you say the blessing?"
"Perhaps Mr. Conor would like to do it?" Becky suggested, smiling at him across the table.
Conor froze in his chair, staring at the laden table. Memories of a girl's grateful, whispered blessing flashed vividly across his mind, and he felt suddenly suffocated. Thank God for food? He wouldn't do it. He couldn't. The words would choke him.
"I'm not really hungry." He rose to his feet so abruptly it hurt. "I think I'll go outside and get some fresh air." He turned his back and walked out of the kitchen as fast as his battered body would take him, leaving Olivia and the girls staring after him in bewilderment.
8
OCRAS
Derry, Ireland, 1847
"Ta ocras orm, Conor," Megan murmured.
"I know. I'm hungry, too." Conor sat down beside his little sister and wrapped her emaciated body in the ragged blanket he'd stolen, glad he'd found it, not caring that he'd taken it off a body still warm. He was long past caring about things like that.
She leaned back against the brick wall of the alley with her head on his shoulder. "Did you find anything?"
He hesitated, his hand at the pocket of his coat, unwilling to bring out what he'd found in the fish market. But Megan looked up at him, and the moonlight plainly showed the ravaged hollows in her once-round cheeks. He pulled out the fish scraps and held out the largest piece to her.
Megan lifted her eyes to heaven and whispered a
grateful blessing on the food, made the sign of the cross, then stuffed the fish into her mouth.
But her stomach was unable to tolerate the putrid fish after a week of nothing at all. She turned her head to the side and vomited what had taken Conor hours to find. Too weak to sit up any longer, she curled into a ball beside him with her head in his lap. "I'm sorry," she whispered miserably.
Conor swallowed hard. "It's all right. Just go to sleep. I'll find something better tomorrow."
But there wasn't anything better, and both of them knew it. Conor ate slowly, fighting back his own nausea with every bite, and thought about the ships he'd seen sailing out of Lough Foyle that afternoon—ships bound for England, ships he knew were loaded with Irish butter, grain, pigs, and poultry that would soon grace the tables of rich British households.
His mouth watered. He closed his eyes, picturing those ships, and he forced himself to stop thinking about ocrds. He focused his thoughts on only one emotion, the one emotion that had kept him alive this long. Fuathaim.
"I can't see." Megan's frantic whisper interrupted his thoughts, and she groped for his hand. "Conor, I can't see."
Fear gripped him. "I can't see either," he lied. "'Tis black as pitch out here."
"No. There was a moon, but I can't see it now. I think I'm dying."
"No, you're not. You're only nine. How would you know if you was dying?"
"You'll be all alone now. I'm sorry."
"You're not dying," he answered roughly, jerking the blanket up around her shoulders. "Stop blathering on about it like a peahen."
"I'm scared, Conor. There's no priest for confession." Her voice became weaker with every word she spoke. "If I don't confess my sins, I could go to hell."
Conor didn't tell her both of them were already there. "You haven't committed any sins, and you'll not go to hell, Megan. I promise. I've never broken a promise to you, have I?"
"No."
"Well, then. You're not going to die, and if you was to die, sure and the angels'd be waiting at the gates of heaven to greet you."
"That would be nice." Her fingers entwined with his, then tightened with a strength he didn't know she possessed. "Make me another promise."
"What?" He looked down into her pale face, watched with frantic denial as her eyes slowly closed. He suddenly wished he'd told her about the ships. He wanted to grab her and shake her, he wanted to shout at her to think about the housewreckers, her sisters, and Michael. Anything that would make her hate as he did, make her want to live for vengeance as he did.
But Megan wasn't like him. She couldn't hate anybody. It just wasn't in her.
"Please don't let the rats get me," she whispered, letting go of his hand. "Or the dogs. Find a graveyard and bury me proper in the ground. Promise."
He felt as if hands had closed around his throat, choking him. "I promise."
Megan died that night. Conor decided he hated God almost as much as he hated the British, and it was hate alone that gave him the strength to keep his promise.
9
Olivia found him on the front veranda, sitting on a bench and staring into the twilight. Lost in thought, he didn't seem aware of her presence, and she took a moment to observe him unnoticed.
He was such an unpredictable man, with moods that could change quicker than the weather. She recalled how he'd jumped up from the table and hightailed it out of there when Becky had asked him to give the blessing, and she could find no explanation for his abrupt exit.
She walked toward him, and he glanced up as she approached, but his expressionless face gave her no clue to what he was thinking. "I saved a plate for you," she said. "When you want it, just let me know."
He didn't reply.
She sat down on the bench beside him. "I'll get a few more of my brother's shirts out tonight and see if I can't piece them together into a shirt that'll fit you."
That caught his attention. "These clothes belonged to your brother?"
She nodded. "Stuart. He died in the war." She paused, then added, "So did my brother Charles. Both of them were killed at Gettysburg."
A long silence fell between them, and she was surprised when he spoke. "I'm sorry about your brothers," he said, without looking at her.
She was surprised. Sympathy was the last thing she would have expected from this man. "Well, that was eight years ago," she murmured.
Leaning back, she studied the gnarled oak trees, gardens, and lawns that had once made Peachtree a place of beauty and grace. The oak trees were shapeless now, the gardens overgrown, the lawns unkempt. "You know, when I was a little girl, my brothers and I used to sleep out here on summer nights. Sometimes, I find myself thinking about those days, and I get to missing my brothers, and I come out here with my pillow."
She looked over at Conor. "Sounds silly, doesn't it?"
"No." His lips tightened slightly, and he looked away, staring out at the gardens. "It isn't silly at all."
He fell silent, and she wondered if perhaps she ought to just go back in the house and leave him be. But then he spoke again.
"When I was a lad, my brother, my sisters, and I all slept in the hayloft."
He'd never mentioned his family before. In fact, when she asked him, he'd said he had no family. Curious, she turned toward him, wanting to know more. "In the loft? You didn't sleep in the house?"
"Well, an Irish cottage isn't like what you've over here. At home, the barn is part of the house, with the loft over the top." He glanced over at her and grinned. "Hay makes for great pillow fights."
She laughed, noting the mischief in that smile. "Most of them started by you, I reckon."
"I never did. It was my brother, Michael, who always started it." He laughed softly. "He was my older brother, and I wanted so much to be like him. Everything he did, I had to do. The result was that we were always in trouble, the pair of us. He taught me how to box when I was barely eleven."
She caught the yearning in his voice. "You must miss him very much."
His smile vanished, and he looked away. "I miss him every single day."
Olivia knew he was a private man, but she was unable to stop herself from asking questions. "Where is he now? Still back in Ireland?"
He stiffened, and she thought he wasn't going to answer her question. When he finally spoke, his voice was so low, it was almost a whisper. "The famine hit Ireland when I was eleven. When I was twelve, I watched a British landlord's men beat my brother to death with sticks." He paused, then added, "For stealing one of their cows."
She was stunned, but she didn't show it. "What about your sisters?"
She could almost see a wall close in around him, shutting her out. Conor looked over at her, and it was as if their brief moment of companionship had never been. "They died," he answered in a voice that chilled her. "They starved to death."
The sun was just peeking over the horizon the following morning when Olivia went down to the orchard. Although the sky to the east was tinged with the delicate pink and gold of a gorgeous sunrise, she didn't notice its beauty. Olivia walked amid the peach trees, still preoccupied with the troubled thoughts that had kept her awake much of the night.
Lord, he was a hard man. Hard and bitter, with a wall around him a hundred feet high. But once, he'd been a boy who had pillow fights with his brother and sisters, who had gotten into mischief. He'd been a boy who had watched his brother beaten and his sisters starved, a boy who'd grown up only to be tortured in prison. No wonder he was bitter.
In her mind, she relived again that moment when he'd told her about his family, his voice so calm, his eyes so cold. He still carried the scars, and her heart ached for him.
Olivia leaned against a tree, staring with unseeing eyes at the trees along the next row. Caught up in her thoughts, she didn't notice anything odd at first, but when she did, she straightened abruptly, and thoughts of Conor Branigan's past fled from her mind.
The leaves of one tree were wilted. She walked over to the tree to examine it more closely, but she couldn't find anything wrong. She saw no sign of insects or disease that could be responsible. But the tree was ailing. She couldn't figure it out, until she glanced down and saw a gash in the bark. Frowning, she bent down for a closer look.
Olivia ran her hand along the cut that circled the entire trunk, dismayed. This tree had been girded with a knife, to prevent water and nutrients from reaching the leaves. It was dying.
She turned away and began looking for other trees that might have been damaged in the same way. Within minutes, she found half a dozen more.
Who would do such a thing? Even as she asked herself the question, Olivia knew the answer. Vernon was behind this. She recalled their conversation after church the day before, and his words of warning. I can make things easy for you, Olivia. Or I can make them a whole lot harder.
She stared down at the fatal wound at the base of one of her trees, and she noticed the cigarette butts that were scattered around it. She bent down and pinched one between her thumb and forefinger, holding it up with a thoughtful frown. The two Harlan boys and their father all smoked cigarettes. And all of them worked for Vernon over at the sawmill. Maybe Vernon had given them another job on the side. She dropped the cigarette back in the dirt.
She'd known Vernon all her life, she knew he was full of big talk. After returning from up North two years after the war, he'd bought up just about every piece of land round these parts, and most of the businesses in town as well. Now he wanted Peachtree.
So far, she'd been able to hold her own against him. She had refused his offers to buy her out, she had ignored his threats to force her out. She knew how he'd always felt about her and how deeply her refusal to defy her father so long ago had wounded him, but she'd never dreamed he would do anything like this.
She felt certain Vernon was behind the damage to her trees, but there was no way she could prove it. Vernon was powerful and he had powerful Yankee friends. She left the orchard and walked back toward the house, firmly banishing her worry. Slashing her trees was a warning, meant to shake her up, intimidate her into selling. It wasn't going to work.
When Conor awoke, he found a pitcher of fresh water and two neatly folded shirts outside his door. He bent down, one arm around his sore ribs for support, and scooped up one of the shirts. Olivia had promised to piece together some shirts that would fit him, and she had. He discarded the torn shirt from the day before and donned one of the new ones. It fit perfectly.
He used the water in the basin, then left his room, following the scent of something sweet and luscious to the kitchen. Olivia was there, standing at the kitchen table, using a spatula to scoop what looked like sweet biscuits off a tin sheet and onto a plate. "Whatever it is you're making," he said from the doorway, "I want a taste of it."
Olivia glanced up at him and smiled. "You're as bad as the girls," she said, "always wanting the cookies right out of the oven."
He walked to her side and grabbed a "cookie," as she called it, off the plate. She gave him a warning look, and began to drop spoonfuls of dough onto the sheet.
"Where are the girls?" he asked, taking a bite of the cookie.
"They went over to the Johnson place for the day to visit."
He finished the cookie and reached for another, but she snatched the plate away. "Cookies are no breakfast for a grown man," she told him sternly. "Give me a second and I'll fix you a real breakfast."
"Thank you." Conor sat down at the table and watched as she moved about the kitchen, vaguely remembering the last time a woman had offered to make him breakfast. Somewhere in Maryland, he thought it had been, or maybe Virginia, and she'd come to one of his fights. Afterward, she had approached him with a whispered offer of herself for supper and eggs for breakfast. He'd taken her up on the first part of her offer, but not the second. After it was over, she'd fallen asleep and he'd left town. She had smelled of cologne and tobacco, and she'd had red hair and a pink silk dressing gown. Funny how he could remember details like that, but he couldn't remember her name.
He watched Olivia, and it struck him how different she was from the redhead in pink silk. Olivia Maitland was a woman who wore dresses buttoned up to her chin. A woman who smelled of cloves and vanilla and had eyes like chocolate. Good enough to eat, he thought, and wondered what the hell was wrong with him.
Women like her were not for men like him. He vastly preferred easy redheads who took his money and left him his freedom, women who didn't give a damn if he swore and whose names he didn't have to remember, women who didn't need what he couldn't give and who didn't have daughters who wanted a daddy.
Olivia walked over to the table and set a plate of food in front of him. He stared down at it for a moment, then looked up at her. "What's this?" he asked curiously, pointing to one side of his plate.
"Grits," she answered. That did not enlighten him, and she seemed to realize it. "I don't suppose you've ever had them, but here in Louisiana, we eat grits all the time. They're delicious."
He continued to eye her with some skepticism. "I'm not sure I trust the opinion of a woman who
makes me green tay," he said, and picked up his fork.
"Well, if you don't like my cooking, you can do it from now on."
He grinned at the challenging lift of her chin. "I'd be happy to. But I'm afraid we'd all starve."
She laughed and walked away, leaving him to his breakfast. But Conor noticed her watching him as he lifted a forkful of grits to his mouth and he knew she was waiting to see what he thought of them. He took a bite, and he wondered why anybody, in Louisiana or anywhere else for that matter, would eat them. A person might just as well eat buttered wallpaper paste. But food was something Conor never took for granted. "Delicious," he said.
Pleased, she gave him that astonishing smile, a smile well worth a few mouthfuls of wallpaper paste.
"You wouldn't say that if you'd come round here about eight years ago," she said, pouring him a cup of coffee. "Old Sally—she was our cook—had died, and I started doing all the cooking. I'd never cooked a meal before in my life. My mama never thought it was an appropriate skill for a young lady of quality," she added with a wry smile.
"My first meal was a disaster," she confessed, as she brought the cup of coffee to him. "Thank goodness my grandmother collected recipes and wrote them down in a journal. If I hadn't found that journal, I would never have learned how to cook."
While Conor ate his breakfast, Olivia finished baking cookies. When he pushed back his plate and rose from the table, she did not miss his grimace of pain.
"Ribs still pretty sore, I imagine?"
He didn't reply, but he didn't have to. She walked over to the pantry to get her medicine box. "I've got a camphor liniment that'll do wonders."
"Don't bother. I'm fine."
"It's no bother," she replied, and emerged from the pantry with a fresh roll of binding and her medicine box. "I want to have a look at your ribs anyway to make sure they're healing properly," she said, crossing the kitchen to stand in front of him, "and I ought to put a fresh binding on them."
Conor's Way Page 8
