Conor's Way

by Laura Lee Guhrke

  Wanting complete possession, he thrust deep, then deeper still. The rhythm caught him in a burning ten­sion that built upon itself, growing stronger, until she shuddered beneath him and made the startled, gasping cries of feminine release. He felt the heat, the flash, and the explosive climax like gunpowder set alight.

  He lowered himself onto her and buried his face in the curve of her neck, his arms closing tightly around her. He did not move for a long time, savoring the feel of her fingertips gliding across his back in hypnotic cir­cles, until he felt himself sinking into that blissful lethargy.

  He realized it and stirred. "I must be smothering you," he murmured, and shifted his weight, slipping free of her, raising himself on his arms as if to leave her. But her arms tightened around him almost fiercely, and he knew she guessed his half-formed intention. She lifted her head and kissed him. "Don't go," she whis­pered against his mouth. "Stay with me."

  Her embrace he could have broken with no effort at all, but her voice and her kiss conquered him, and he eased slowly back down, moving to lie on his back beside her. He slid his arm beneath her and pulled her to his side. She settled herself comfortably within the embrace and rested her cheek in the dent of his shoul­der with a contented sigh.

  "Go to sleep, Olivia," he said. "I'll not leave you, a mhuirmn. Just go to sleep."

  Conor knew the moment they strapped him down. He felt the leather bands across his body, and he struggled until they broke. Free, he jerked sideways with a savage movement and a curse, rolling to the edge of the table, his only thought to get away, to escape. But then every­thing shifted, changed, and he was in a darkened room, there were no guards, and what he'd thought was a table was the soft down of a feather mattress. Disor­iented, he sat up, blinking at the soft moonlight that fil­tered in through the window. The only sound was his own harsh breathing.

  He turned his head and saw her and remembered where he was.

  She sat huddled at one corner of the mattress, knees against her chest, the sheet drawn up around her and bunched in her fists, her long hair tangled around her shoulders—utterly still. She was watching him, her expression one of dismay. And fear.

  Oh, Christ.

  He slumped forward with a groan, cradling his head in his hands. "I thought they tied me down again. I thought—" He stopped abruptly.

  "It was me," she whispered. "I had my arms around you."

  He shook his head. "Didn't want you to see me like this," he mumbled, not looking at her. "Didn't want you to see."

  The mattress dipped with her weight as she moved to his side. She touched his shoulder. "Conor, I already have seen. I tended you for four nights, remember?"

  "I didn't know you then," he cried, anguished, yank­ing away from her touch. "I didn't even know you were there."

  He felt everything crumbling, every illusion, every wish, every vision of a future with her, a future that was peaceful and safe. Nothing was safe. Nothing. "Did I—" He took a deep breath and lifted his head to stare at the closed door across the room. "Did I hurt you?"

  "Of course not."

  "There's no 'of course' about it, lass," he said, despising himself. "I could have."

  "But you didn't." She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed her lips to his back. "I love you," she said against his skin.

  Inside, he began to shake. He flung back the sheet, slid off the bed, and retrieved his clothes. "You don't love me."

  "Yes, I do."

  He began to dress. He pulled on his socks and his linen, then reached for his trousers. He jerked them on. "No, you don't. You can't."

  "Conor, I'm not going to argue with you about this. I love you. I can't help it if you don't believe me."

  He turned his back to her and buttoned his trousers. "You don't love me," he said and crossed the room. Keeping his back to her, he added, "You can't. You don't even know me."

  "I know you better than you think."

  The shaking inside him grew more intense, and he took refuge. "Really?" He turned on her savagely, all his defenses rising, wanting to shock her, repel her, push her away. "What do you know? Do you know that I've stolen, I've cheated, I've lied. I've even killed. And you love me, do you?"

  She did not look shocked, nor repelled. She did not even look slightly horrified. She just looked at him with patience and infinite tenderness.

  He could not bear it. He closed his eyes, refusing to see. She could not know, she could not understand and still look at him like that, as if she loved him. It was impossible.

  Shame. No matter where he went or what he did, it was always with him. The taint of it was a permanent stain nothing could remove. He turned away and stared at the moonlit window. "Olivia, you have no idea what I am, what I've done."

  "Then why don't you tell me?"

  He drew a deep breath and faced her, faced the moment of truth. "All right," he said flatly. "I'll make my admhaim."

  "Ah-veem," she said, pronouncing the word care­fully. "What is that?"

  "Confession. It's supposed to be good for the soul, isn't it?"

  28

  ADMHAIM

  "It was all because of the guns," he began. "They wanted to know where the guns were hidden. Sean's American rifles. We'd been smuggling them in for two years, right under the noses of the British customs officials. Hiding them all over Ireland, a hundred here, a hundred there. We were planning a war, you see. Training camps and warfare tactics and weapons, all that. We didn't know then it was a war we couldn't win."

  He spoke almost tentatively, and Olivia knew he had never talked about this to anyone before.

  "We'd smuggled in nine hundred rifles and a thou­sand rounds of ammunition before they caught us. Adam and I were arrested for attempting to pull guns off a train north of Dublin. They put us in the bridewell. They'd arrested Sean at a safehouse in Dublin. Someone had informed on us—we never found out who it was." She felt herself being pulled into a world she knew nothing about; he was leading her into the dark, twisted paths of his nightmares, where there were safehouses and informers, prisons and torture. Olivia bit down on her lip and listened, knowing she had to follow him so that she could bring him back to her world, where there was safety and light.

  "They gave us a trial," he went on. "But Sean had gotten word about the informant and managed to get the guns off the train. He tried to let us know the guns weren't on the train, but his man didn't reach us in time. Anyway, because they couldn't find the guns, they could only convict us of attempted robbery. They sent us to Mountjoy Prison."

  He sat motionless in the chair, hidden in the shadows.

  "It was only the three of us who knew where all the guns were hidden, Sean and Adam and me. But Sean was useless to them. They knew he wouldn't talk. He'd been in many a prison before, our Sean, and the British knew he wouldn't break. So they killed him. Right in front of Adam and me. He was grinning at me when the guard pulled his head back and slit his throat."

  Olivia closed her eyes briefly, prayed for strength, and opened her eyes again. She didn't want to hear this; she didn't want to see what he saw in his mind. But she had to. Her fingers curled tightly into the sheets as she listened, bracing herself for the rest.

  "The man let him go, and his body collapsed, all the blood pumping out of him. He looked up at me with these dead, sightless eyes and his blood spurting out of the artery in his throat, but he was still grinning."

  Suddenly Conor leaned forward in the chair, his arms curling protectively over his head as if he were try­ing to hide. "Oh, God," he moaned. "Oh, God."

  Olivia waited, but he said nothing more. She knew she could not let him stop now, not before he had told it all. His inner torments had to be forced out into the open. It was the only way for him to begin to heal. "What happened then?"

  At the sound of her voice, he jerked himself upright, stiffening. "They were so stupid," he said, his voice flat, with only a hint of the contempt that lay beneath. "They thought killing Sean would intimidate us, frighten us into
talking. All it did was make us hate them more, if that was possible. They realized then that they'd made a mistake, that one dead martyr was worth a dozen rebels. They separated us, Adam and me. I never saw him again. They put me in a cell, with shackles on my hands and feet, and kept me chained to the wall, except when they brought me food. They made me eat on my hands and knees from a plate on the floor, like a dog. Fish guts, it was. Raw, stinking fish guts, for days and days. But I wouldn't tell them where the guns were hid­den. I wouldn't tell them."

  He shook his head blindly. "Then they wouldn't let me sleep. They walked me round and round the prison yard, doused me with water if I fell asleep standing up. I saw the sun rise and fall three times before I col­lapsed. Then they flogged me. But I didn't break. I didn't tell them."

  Olivia heard the defiance in his voice, but with his next words, the defiance left him, and his voice changed to one of bewilderment.

  "I started to hear voices in my head. My sisters'. Ta ocras orm, Conor. Ta ocras orm, over and over. It never stops . . . a tide that never ebbs. I still hear it. Oh, Christ," he moaned, curling himself tightly in the chair again, "they're so hungry, and there's nothing to eat. They're begging me to find food. Brigid and Eileen and Megan. I could hear them, but I couldn't help them. There was no food."

  He slammed his hands over his ears as if to shut out the voices.

  "I knew they were dead," he mumbled, "but I could hear them in my cell, see their faces as if they were there. And Michael, too, screaming for help, and I couldn't help him. And the guards. 'Tell us, Paddy, tell us where the guns are. Tell us. Tell us."'

  He lifted his head, staring straight at her across the room, but she did not know if he recognized her. The anguish was in every line of his face, every movement of his body. She wanted to run to him, soothe him, tell him to hush, to stop, but she knew she could not. She remem­bered her days at the hospital and the soldiers who screamed about the cannon fire and the blood, and she had learned to let them be, to let them pour it all out.

  "I cursed them, I sang, I shouted, but I didn't tell them. I didn't break. So they took me to Arthur Delemere, the warden." He rubbed a shaking hand across his jaw. "I thought I'd already felt all the pain there was in this life," he whispered, "but I was wrong."

  Oh, Lord, she thought desperately, how do I help him? What do I do?

  "They strapped me down on a table." He closed his eyes and a shudder rocked him. "Some things are beyond description. They can't be put into words."

  She pressed her clasped hands to her mouth. Deep down inside, she began to shake.

  "I would pass out from the pain," he said, "and when I would awaken, the guards would be gone, and Delemere would talk to me. Tell me how he understood what I was going through, and how he would like to help me, but he couldn't unless I told him where the guns were hidden. He'd tell me to think about it for a while, and he would leave. But then the guards would come back, and we would go through it all again. . . . I lost track of time. One moment blended into the next, one day into the next. I would lie there and count back­ward from one thousand, focusing on remembering the next number, making it the most important thing in the world, trying not to feel the pain. It worked for a while. I even tried to pray, if you can believe that. I said the rosary, but I couldn't remember it all. I couldn't remember."

  He raked a hand through his hair. "It didn't matter. God wasn't listening. Not Mary, nor Jesus, nor all the saints heard me screaming. No one heard but Delemere. He became the only thing that seemed real to me. He brought me food and water. He sat beside me after the men were done, and he talked to me endlessly. He bathed my face with cool rags, wiping away the tears and the vomit and the blood. He kept telling me that he was my friend, that if I would help him, he would help me. I don't know how long it took, but I started to believe him. I started to rationalize it all in my mind. I made up places, thinking that wasn't really telling. So, Delemere would have me taken back to my cell, and have the doctor come to patch me up as best he could, while he sent men out to find the guns. Of course, they'd come back empty-handed a few days later, so they'd have me in, and we'd have another go."

  He folded his arms across his knees, hunching for­ward as if he wanted simply to curl into a ball and never move again.

  "It took three, maybe four rounds," he said dully, staring at the floor. "I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted him to kill me; I begged him to kill me. When we were alone, he would whisper to me. He kept promising me that he would make it all stop if I would just tell him the truth. There came a point when I believed him." There was a long pause. "So, I told him."

  He lifted his head and the moonlight hit his face as he looked at her, the agony in his expression far beyond memories of physical pain. "He laughed when I told him. Laughed. It was all a joke, you see. They already knew where the guns were; they'd confiscated all of them days before. Adam, Delemere told me, had been much more cooperative than myself. It had taken only two days to break him."

  Suddenly, he straightened. His hand slammed down on the tiny drop-leaf table beside him with such force, Olivia jumped.

  "They took everything I was!" he cried. "Everything I believed in. They destroyed what I thought myself to be, and remade me into what I despised most. They made me an informer against my own people. I tried to stop them. God, I tried." His voice broke. "I fought so hard. But I couldn't stop them. And it was all for a joke."

  He shoved at the table and sent it skidding across the floor. It crashed into the wall. "Delemere didn't care about the guns. He wanted to break me just to prove that he could. And the worst of it was, the bastard didn't keep his promise. He didn't kill me."

  All his rage evaporated as quickly as it had come, and Conor sagged in the chair. "Delemere died that same night. There was a riot, some of the prisoners escaped, and one of them got Delemere. Prime Minister Gladstone found out about it and heard about the tor­ture, as well. There was a hue and cry about it; people protested, marched, rioted in the streets, demanded that the Fenians involved be released. It took nearly a year, but I was eventually given amnesty, along with several others. It was too late for Adam. Word had got­ten out right after the guns were confiscated that he'd informed, and the Fenian Council had one of their men on the inside execute him. Stabbed him in the prison yard with a piece of a bed frame a week before Delemere died. I wish to hell they had done the same to me."

  The mocking cast returned to his face, the same harsh expression that she had seen the night he'd gotten drunk.

  "People knew what had happened to me, but no one knew that I had told Delemere about the guns. My friends all shook my hand, and gave me pats on the back, and bought me drinks. I hadn't broken, they said. I was a hero, they said. They cheered me; they boasted about me; they were proud to know me. Proud, for God's sake! I didn't have the guts to tell them the truth, and I couldn't face the shame of knowing I didn't deserve their praise. That's why I left and came to America. That's why I can't go home. I'm not their bloody hero. I'm a sham. And I'm a coward."

  Olivia felt his self-hatred and his shame, and she spoke very gently. "You did what any man would have done in your place."

  "No. There were men stronger than I. Men who suf­fered more than I, who had more courage than I. Men like Sean." He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. "Why didn't Delemere just kill me?"

  Olivia did not know what to say. She did not know how to reach him, she did not even know if she could, but she had to try. She rose to her feet and began to walk toward him very slowly, speaking to him very softly.

  "Conor, I want you to listen to me. If you were a coward, you would not even be here. A coward would have killed himself long ago."

  He wasn't looking at her. He sat with his head hung low, staring at the floor. She didn't even know if he heard her, but she went on. "I'm not sure I know what true courage is," she said as she continued to approach him. "But I think it must be the ability to endure. Perhaps it's selfish of me to be glad those men did n
ot kill you or put you out of your pain, but I am. I'm glad you had the courage to endure. So very, very glad." She came to a halt in front of him. "I love you."

  He stiffened and sat up in his chair. He still would not look at her. "Just as well to love a shell then, lass," he said, his voice weary. "'Tis empty I am. I have no purpose, no ideals, no honor. They took all of that from me. I am a shell of a man. I have nothing left to believe in. I have no honor to hold on to."

  She reached out to touch him, tentatively laying her hand against his cheek. He flinched, but he did not pull away, and that gave her hope. Slowly, she moved closer to him. With infinite care, she wedged herself between his knees and moved closer still. "Hold on to me, then," she whispered. "Even if you can't believe in yourself, I'll believe in you. I'll be your anchor. Hold on to me."

  He took a choked, panicky breath, turning his face away from her touch, arid she thought he was going to push her away again, retreat again into his self-made prison. But suddenly his arms came up around her naked hips, and he pulled her toward him. He buried his face against her and held her fast, as if she were a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea.

  She felt his massive frame shudder, and his cry of rage and pain nearly broke her heart. She cradled his head and she stroked his hair, as all the anguish of a lifetime poured out of him, and she sought to replace it with all the love she had to give. She prayed it would be enough.

  29

  Conor knew by the rhythm of her breathing that Olivia was asleep. He listened to the soft, even cadence of each breath and told himself it was impossi­ble. She could not love him. But she did.

  She loved him. It was hard to believe it, harder still to trust it.

  He had never told anyone about Mountjoy before. By telling her, he'd thought to drive her away, make her see what he was. But he hadn't driven her away. She had seen what he was and she didn't care. She had told him to hold on to her and he had. Then she had led him back to bed and curled up beside him.