He'd wanted to court her; he'd offered to marry her. And Samuel Maitland had laughed at him. Laughed. A corrosive anger rose within him at the galling memory, burning away any notions of being softhearted about Olivia.
Vernon scowled and crushed the telegram in his hands into a ball. He now had all the wealth, respectability, and power he'd ever wanted, and nothing was going to take those things away from him, especially not memories of a time when he'd had a stupid hankering for Samuel Maitland's daughter. That was all in the past, he told himself firmly. Once he got back from New York, he would do whatever he had to do to force her out.
While Conor spent the afternoon taking a much-needed nap, and the girls cleaned the chicken coop, Olivia took a walk through her orchard. She cleared away the fallen leaves and rotting fruit from the half-dozen trees that were dying; but as she worked, her mind was not on Vernon and his petty, obvious schemes to intimidate her. Instead, another man, a man more complicated and far more compelling, dominated her thoughts.
During their reading lesson that evening, Olivia watched him out of the corner of her eye as she poured tea for both of them. He was seated at the kitchen table, bent over the slate, frowning with intense concentration. Dissatisfied with his first awkward attempts at writing, he'd been practicing on that slate for several hours, writing the alphabet over and over.
Olivia was surprised to discover that, beneath his surface impudence, Conor was extremely disciplined, and even was a perfectionist.
She thought about his comment that afternoon that he couldn't go home, and she wondered what he had meant by that. He obviously missed his homeland a great deal. She also wondered why a man who could be both gentle and patient when dealing with her pesky nine-year-old daughter's stalling tactics at bedtime would choose to make his living hitting other men in a boxing ring.
She brought the two cups of tea to the table and set one before him.
He glanced up briefly. "Thanks."
She took a seat across the table, watching as he wrote on the slate, and she smiled when he made an exclamation of frustration and rubbed out the line of Gs he had just written.
"You know," she murmured, "sometimes it's possible to try too hard."
He looked at her across the table and saw her smile. He tossed down the slate pencil with a sigh. "You're right. It's time for a break."
She shook her head and pulled the slate away from him. "No, it's time to stop for this evening. You've done enough for one night. Drink your tea."
Deprived of the slate, he had no choice. He leaned back in his chair, taking a swallow of the tea she had made. It was hot and strong and sweet, just the way he liked it. "This is very good tay, by the way."
"Thank you. My aunt Ella sends it to me. She knows I'm fond of it."
"Sends it? Where does she live?"
"Boston. My uncle Jarrod has a position there in a bank. They moved there from Alabama after the war."
He took another sip of tea. "Boston was where I landed when I came to America." He smiled. "Fresh off the boat, I was, so poor I didn't even have lint in my pockets."
Olivia laughed, and he gave her a frown of mock censure. "Don't you be laughing, lass. 'Tis no less than the truth."
"Of course," she said gravely, trying to assume a serious expression.
"So, there I was," he continued, "standing on the docks with my pack over my shoulder, when this grizzled old Donegal man came up to me. His name was Dan Sweeney. He said I looked a strong, strapping lad, and he asked if I wanted a job. I said I did, and he took me to this pub in Boston's Irish district. When we got inside, he pointed to this hulking brute and said, 'He's the champion, undefeated for a hundred and twenty fights running. Think you can send him down to the floor?' I said that would be no problem at all. Everyone in the pub laughed at that. They thought I was crazy."
Conor paused and grinned at her across the table. "They all bet against me. Ten minutes later, they weren't laughing anymore, and I had five dollars in my pocket. Only in America an hour, and I decided this was a fine country, indeed. A few months later, Dan and I started touring the boxing circuit."
"You've seen a great deal of the country, I imagine."
"I like to roam."
Olivia tried to understand how that might appeal. "I guess it must be exciting, in a way, traveling from place to place," she said. "But doesn't it become a bit tiresome after a while?"
"No. Dan and I travel the circuit five months a year. The rest of the time, I'm on my own. I'm free to go where I want, when I want."
"It sounds like a lonely life," she said softly.
His lips tightened, and he looked away. "Sometimes," he admitted.
Olivia studied his hard profile, thinking about what he had told her about his brother and sisters, and her heart went out to him.
When she'd first seen Conor lying in the road, he had seemed like the answer to her prayer. But his appalling language and frank confession about prison had convinced her she'd been mistaken. The past two days had given her reason to think again, and Olivia suddenly found herself in a quandary.
What if she asked him to stay on?
He was not what she would have chosen for a hired hand. He was irreverent and caustic, cynical and sinful. He cursed, he drank, he was a hard man.
Yet, she was coming to realize that he might be what she needed. He seemed to have no obligations that would force him to leave. The way he'd handled the birth of the calf told her he knew about farm animals. He was strong, he was capable of hard work. Maybe he'd be willing to stay.
Her decision made, Olivia broke the silence that had fallen between them. "Mr. Branigan, I've been thinking about what you did with Princess and her calf, and I thought . . . that is, I was wondering if you might consider staying on after your ribs have healed."
"What?" He seemed startled. "Stay here?"
"Yes." She took a deep breath. "I could use some help around here, and you said yourself that you don't have a home of your own to go back to."
He stared at her in disbelief. "Are you offering me a job?"
"I've been wanting to hire someone to work on my place for months now," she went on in a rush, "but I haven't been able to find anybody. I'll need help bringing in my peach crop come September. I want to plow the south pastures and plant cotton in the spring. If I had two cash crops, there would be less risk. And someday, I'll put in another orchard. Pears, maybe."
"I make twenty-five dollars for every fight I win, and I usually win. What are you offering?"
Dismay clouded her face. "I can't afford to pay wages. My peaches bring in enough to pay the taxes on my farm, with only a bit left over for living on. But I can give you room and board. I know it's not much to offer, but at least you'd have a home, a place to hang your hat."
Conor didn't tell her a home was the last thing he wanted. A place to hang his hat meant facing the past, looking to the future. He couldn't do it. All he knew how to do was get through the days, one by one.
"The fact is, Mr. Branigan, that I can't run this farm by myself. I need someone to help me."
She looked up, staring at him with those soft brown eyes. She needed him, she was asking for his help. It was the kind of look that was both imploring and proud, the kind of look that could stir a man's conscience, provided he had one. Conor didn't, of course. He slowly shook his head. "No. Thank you for the offer, but I can't stay."
She bit her lip and looked down at the table. The silence lengthened as he stared at her lowered head, and he suddenly felt like a bastard. His defenses came up.
"I like my freedom," he said. "I like to be able to pick up and move on when I choose."
"It wouldn't have to be permanent," she said without looking up. "You would be free to leave whenever you wanted to, of course."
"Right. What if I felt like leaving the week before your harvest? Or in the spring, just before you wanted to plant that cotton of yours? Do you think I wouldn't feel obligated to stay?"
Sh
e didn't answer.
Irritated with her for needing his help, and angry with himself for feeling guilty about refusing to give it, he shoved back his chair and rose.
"I won't be tied down. I'm no good at commitments, I'm not dependable, and I'm not staying here. I can't. I'm sorry."
He strode across the kitchen to the back door without a backward glance, but he could feel her gaze follow him.
"I understand," she murmured as he walked out the door, but he knew she didn't understand at all.
12
NEAMH
Belfast, Ireland, 1862
Conor leaned sideways, and the light brush of air against his cheek was the only part of the punch that touched him. He responded with a hard-knuckled right that sent Angus O'Farrell stumbling backward into the tables and chairs of the pub.
Laughing, the onlookers pushed Angus back into the open space that served as a boxing ring, hoping for a bit more sport than that, but Conor wasn't going to give it to them. Not tonight. Mary was waiting.
He could see her lovely face peeking through the doorway of McGrath's, and he decided it was time to stop tormenting poor O'Farrell. He evaded Angus's last swing, and hit him again, sending the fighter from Carrickfergus to the floorboards. The crowd gave a groan of disappointment that it was over so quickly. Conor made his way to the bar amid approving pats on the back, and grabbed his shirt, yanking it on but not bothering to button it.
He leaned against the bar, blood pumping through him like the pistons of a steam engine. He felt alive in every part of himself and genuinely happy for the first time in years.
He accepted a shot of paddy and a pint of ale from Colm McGrath, who looked even more grim than usual. Colm was sweet on Mary and knew that Mary was outside waiting for Conor. But Colm also knew that Conor's boxing brought people into the pub and made him money. The two men had been friends almost from the day Conor had arrived in Belfast seven years before, but Mary had changed that.
Conor downed the paddy and slammed the glass on the bar. He chased it with a long draught of the ale, but didn't finish the pint. No drink was worth keeping an angel waiting.
He made his way toward the door, pausing to shake hands with poor O'Farrell, who was slumped over a pint and looking a wee bit dazed still. Conor waved good-night to the lads and stepped out into the street.
She was right beside the door, and he pulled her into his arms for a quick, hard kiss, then glanced around for someplace more private. "Come on."
He put her arm through his and led her around the corner, down the side street, and into the alley behind McGrath's.
They turned to each other. He cupped her face in his hands, pulled her close, kissed her. The touch of her lips sent waves of pleasure through him, and he could tell by her response that she felt it, too. But it wasn't enough. He slid his hands down to her waist and pulled her closer; he opened her mouth with his and deepened the kiss.
Mary was a good Catholic girl, but Conor had already made her forget everything the priests said. More than once. They played a dangerous game, and the fires of passion had gotten out of control. More than once. But neither of them could stop it. He broke the kiss with a groan and a desperate gasp for air. "We can go to my flat," he said raggedly. "My mate's gone to England. Football tour."
"I can't." Her hands closed over his forearms, and for the first time ever, she pushed him away. "Not tonight."
Something in her voice caught him, tugged at his heart. Dread seeped into him like the chill of a damp Belfast winter. "Mary? What's wrong?"
She shook her head and drew a deep, steadying breath. "Nothing," she said and gave him a reassuring smile. "I just can't tonight. That's all. I'm sorry."
"It's all right, lass. I'll survive the night without you. If I get drunk enough."
He took her hand in his, and they leaned back against the brick wall of a tenement dingy from years of accumulated coal dust. Silence fell between them as they both tried to bank the fires inside themselves.
"I watched you fight," she said. "You're very good at it, you know."
He shrugged. "It's a job. That's all."
"You already have a job. Boxing is much more than that."
He did not reply, and both of them were silent again. In the distance, drunken laughter floated to them from McGrath's, mingling with the hacking cough of a flax mill worker from the broken window above their heads. Mary was right. Being a carpenter was his job, but boxing was something else. "'Tis the challenge of it, I suppose. The competition."
"That's not it," she murmured with a shake of her head. "There are things inside you, Conor, feelings that rage and seethe and strive to get out, passions that drive you that I don't understand, that I can't reach. You're seeking something, and I don't know what it is. Sometimes, you frighten me."
Startled, he looked at her, and he saw the apprehension in her face. He turned and reached out to touch her cheek, pale and translucent in the moonlight. "Christ, Mary, what does that mean? You afraid of me? I love you, lass. I'd never hurt you."
He brushed his thumb across her lips, felt her tremble. "No, it's yourself you hurt," she said against his hand. "I heard about the meeting."
Conor lowered his hand and looked down at the ground between them. "It was all just talk. You know how it is. A few pints and all the lads get worked up, start singing about dear Ireland with tears in their eyes and start talking freedom. It's harmless enough."
"The Brotherhood isn't harmless, and you know it. If you follow the Fenians, they'll destroy you."
"You've been listening to Father Keenan again."
"Irish Republican Brotherhood." Her voice rose, suddenly filled with an anger so unlike her. "It sounds sane enough, but it's not."
"And this is?" He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, his own anger rising at the dung heaps, urine, and raw sewage of the Belfast slums surrounding them, Catholic and Protestant ghettos that were the bastard children of Britain's industrial revolution.
Mary refused to look at the squalor. "The Church will excommunicate you," she whispered. "You'll be barred from Neamh."
Conor looked into her lovely face. Sweet Mary, who worried more about the destination of his soul than he ever would. "Mary," he murmured, curling the tendril of hair at her cheek around his finger, its beauty a sharp, sweet contrast to the bruises on his hand. It was the hair of an angel, a gloriously rich mixture of red and gold that when loose could cover him like sunlight. He pulled her closer. "Mary," he said against her lips, "Neamh is not where I'll be going when I die. You're the closest thing to heaven I'll ever see."
She gave a tiny sob against his mouth and pulled back. "It doesn't have to be that way."
"What would you have me do? Put the British yoke on my shoulders and work their stolen land like some dumb, mindless animal? Or toil in the factories they've built, live in the wretched slums they've made, and pretend that I'm very happy to be a subject of the Crown?"
"I'd have you make a life for yourself, man. A hearth, a home, a family. I'd have you leave the past behind and think of the future."
To Conor, it was the same thing. "I can't forget. I won't forgive."
"I know," she said on a soft sigh of resignation and pain. She turned and sagged back against the wall. "But you can't win this fight, Conor. They'll break you." She paused, then added softly, "I can't bear to watch it happen. Not to you."
From the pub, the drunken laughter faded away, and a song began.
I wish I had you in Carrickfergus, if only for nights in Bally grand. . . .
Angus had obviously recovered enough from his defeat to raise the lads in song.
I would swim over the deepest ocean, the deepest ocean, to be by your side.
"Colm asked me to marry him."
Six words, and the world opened beneath his feet.
He felt himself falling into a dark abyss. "What did you say?"
Straightening away from the wall, she faced him. "Are you going to stay in the Brotherhoo
d?"
He looked into her face, and he knew what she was thinking. "Mary, don't. For God's sake, don't make me choose."
"I have to, Conor!" she cried. "I can't live with the uncertainty. I can't spend my nights pacing the floor, wondering if you're going to come home, knowing that one night, you won't." She paused and took a deep breath. "If you stay in the Brotherhood, I'm going to marry Colm. It's that simple."
He felt all his joy slipping away, leaving him more empty than he'd ever thought he could be. He should have known this would happen; he should have seen it coming. He'd thought he could have both, but he could not. Even O'Bourne, who had recruited him into the Brotherhood two years before, had warned him that women and causes did not mix. He hadn't believed him then. He looked at Mary, pale and resolute, and he believed him now.
He had to say something. "Colm's a fine man."
"You're not even going to try to stop me, are you?" she asked. There was no surprise in her voice, but there was pain. He heard it, he felt it, but he could not ease it.
Colm was a good man. He wasn't. Colm could offer Mary something. He couldn't. Colm owned a pub, the only business in a Belfast slum that ever prospered. He had enough money to support her, to give her the hearth, home, and children she wanted. She would always know that at dawn Colm would be lying beside her, not dead in some alley or ditch with a British bullet in him. Life was hard enough, and she deserved at least that much. Conor knew he could never give it to her.
He couldn't give it to any woman. He'd been a fool to ever dream otherwise.
His lips tightened and he shook his head, a movement that tore his heart in half. "No," he answered. "I can't give up what I believe in, Mary. Not even for you."
"I love you, Conor." She reached up and touched his cheek. "Good-bye," she murmured, and stood on tiptoes to kiss him quickly, then she turned away. "God bless."
He watched Mary as she walked down the alley, picking her way carefully on the cobblestones that were slick from years of accumulated filth. Mary, who was a slender and graceful flower that had somehow grown out of the Belfast dung heaps. Mary, who was the only truly good and beautiful thing in an evil and ugly world. She paused at the corner, and he thought for a moment she would turn and look at him one last time. But she went on, disappearing from his view, and he had the sick feeling he had just thrown away his only chance at heaven.
Conor's Way Page 12
