“I didn’t mean for it to happen. ’Twas an accident. You were there; you saw. You know!”
“I do, Nancy. Quiet yourself now, or you’ll become ill.”
He ached to ask her questions. She was the one person from whom he might conceivably get the answers he needed about his past, their marriage, where he’d come from, and who he truly was. But the poor, mad creature remained so fragile he dared broach none of that. Just the sight of him sent her into this state.
“Where were you?” she asked piteously now. “Where, when I was in that terrible place?”
Ah, and this made a slight departure from the constant lamenting.
He resisted the impulse to smooth her fair curls. A bonny thing she was, right enough. But the woman he’d have chosen for his wife?
His heart hurt anew for Clara, who was just downstairs and who centered his life.
“I had a mishap. Remember I told you that? It’s why I recall so little of what happened to us.” He added very gently, “We sailed from Ireland, right? And before that we were in Dublin, but we’re not from Dublin, correct?”
“We had Tommy with us then. So sore hurt! The fire! Oh, Tommy…”
The lamenting began again, a circle of the same sorrows Liam had heard all the night long. He sighed deeply and tried to ease his hands, into which Nancy’s fingers had dug. Of one thing he could be certain: he had traveled with her from Ireland and was a firm presence in this nightmare she inhabited.
His head dropped over their joined hands, and despair flooded his heart. He ached to remember, but would remembering do him any good?
A whisper of sound from behind told him the room door had opened. Nancy hated the light, so he kept the drapes drawn and the lamp low, but he knew without seeing her that Clara stood behind him.
“Liam, if I might steal you for a moment—”
He got to his feet and strove to free himself from Nancy’s grasp. She protested and began to weep harder.
“Just for a moment, Nancy, and I’ll be right outside. Only give me an instant, love, before I’m back.” He felt the impact of that word—love—go through the woman who stood behind him. Could Clara truly doubt his feelings for her?
Nancy wailed when he left her; Clara never looked at him as they stepped outside into the hallway.
He drew a breath. “Listen to me, Clara—that was an endearment, only.”
“I know.”
“The poor, pitiful thing—”
“You don’t need to explain.”
He lowered his voice and whispered fiercely, “She means nothing to me.”
Clara did look at him then, a measuring glance. He wondered what she saw. His weariness? His desperation? “She’s your wife. She should mean something.”
“She should, but she doesn’t. Christ, do you think I’m proud of that? I’m in there with her clinging to me as to a life raft, and all I can think of is you.”
Compassion flooded Clara’s eyes. Maybe that made one of the things he loved best about her—her ability to not only sympathize with others but to act upon it. But no, he adored everything about her, each hair, each fleck of green in those great, gray eyes.
“Do you think you can persuade her to settle?”
“Cursed if I know—she hasn’t yet. There’s a good reason she was in that place, vile as it was. She blames herself for whatever happened to the child, though clearly ’twas a terrible tragedy.” He remembered again the garish dream—Nancy coming out into the dark after him, arguing. Fire and screaming. “If only I could recall it. This wall in my mind is like a physical pain.”
“But”—Clara voiced the truth that lay between them—“she remembers you.”
“Yes.” He couldn’t deny it. “Have you something in your father’s surgery that might calm her for a spell, just so I might catch my breath?”
“I’ll look. But we can’t keep her sedated long. It’s what I came to tell you; I have news.”
Liam had hoped she’d come to hold him in her arms, or at least touch him, and help to save his sanity.
Woodenly, she went on, “Georgina will be going to live with Theodore, and taking those of the children as will be happiest with her, such as Jimmie and probably the rest of the littlest ones.”
“Eh? She’s agreed to live in sin with the man?”
“No, they’ll be married as soon as Theodore can wrangle a license. He’s gone to arrange that now.”
“Well, good for him. He’s a man to stand by his principles, that I will say. And lucky to win her.”
“She loves him, and he loves her. That’s what truly matters.” Disconcertingly, Clara’s eyes filled with tears. “It won’t be easy for them, but better, better than—”
“Than us? God, you’re right.”
Behind the closed door, Nancy called Liam’s name.
“Please,” he whispered at Clara, “please tell me we’ve some hope.”
She lifted her hands. “Right now, it’s hard to see any.”
“Tell me you’ll be with me tonight, so my heart may go on beating.”
She shook her head. “Not a good idea. I must go and see my grandfather tomorrow—ask him for mercy.” Her face twisted in repugnance. “I don’t expect any, so meanwhile we plan. It will help to split the household. Theodore may be able to find us lodgings. He thinks I should set you, Nancy, and some of the older children up somewhere safe. He also thinks I should reside with him and Georgina.”
“You won’t do that.” Wild denial arose in Liam’s chest. “You won’t leave me that way.”
“It may be best. And”—she gestured at the door—“it’s not as if you’ll be alone.”
“Ah, Clara!” He nearly fell to his knees. “You speak about responsibility—to the children, to her.” He jerked his head at the door. “But what of your responsibility to me?” That wasn’t fair, but he no longer cared. “You raised me from the dead; you can’t abandon me.”
“Do you think it’s what I want?” Pain flared in her voice. “Do you think my agony is less than your own?”
“I don’t know, is it?” He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting worse than he did. “Tell me, Clara, tell me.”
“I still love you.” She confessed it the way a woman would confess to murder. “God help me.”
He had to close his eyes for an instant; his relief felt so sharp it hurt. “Then there must be hope for us.” He argued against her silence, “Love can accomplish most anything.”
Clara nodded at the door behind him. “Have you remembered anything? I thought seeing her, being with her, might bring things back from behind that wall you say is in your mind.”
“Nothing yet. Her sorrow is like a third presence in the room with us. I can barely think for it.”
“Does she speak of your son?”
“Of little else.”
“Yet you still don’t remember him?”
“No, and how do you think that makes me feel? There was a fire—started by accident, so she says. The child must have been badly burned and died later, during our journey. She blames herself. She says we argued.”
“About what?”
He shrugged. “Me boozing.” He smiled bitterly. “You chose a real gem for your husband, didn’t you, Clara? A drunk, a criminal, and already married.”
Clara refused to rise to that bait. “You need to remember so we can get at the truth, all of it. Stay with her tonight.”
“No.”
“Lie with her, sleep with her, and perhaps then you’ll remember.”
“Clara, please.” He did reach out then, seized her hands. Slowly he sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to her hands, like a man at prayer. “Don’t turn from me.”
“I’m not. But your wife—your true wife—needs you now. And you need to find out who you are.”
“Clara, take pity on me.”
She bent to him then. He felt her lips on his hair, quick and fierce and, when he tipped his face up, on his brow, his cheek, his lips. Raw hunger ripped t
hrough him from her mouth to his, and the taste of her penetrated to his soul.
The fleeting taste. She drew him up by his hands onto his feet and backed away, pain, desire, and regret in her eyes.
“Find out what you can,” she bade. “Do that for me.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Well, Granddaughter; two visits in the space of a month. To what do I owe this unprecedented attentiveness?”
Clara regarded her grandfather with open dislike. She’d not slept all night, cold in her father’s big bed and thinking of Liam across the hall in hers with Nancy. Torture, she’d reflected, would surely be no harder to bear.
She presented herself now, at the specified hour, filled with misgivings. This time tomorrow Georgina and Theodore would be wed. Clara wanted to be home with the friend dearest to her heart, planning the occasion. Instead she knew Georgina to be engaged in frantic packing while she, Clara, was here.
She tipped her chin up. “How are you, Grandfather? Well?”
His sharp gaze moved over her from head to toe. “I am dying. And I imagine you’ll be glad to hear it.” He smiled grimly. “But I have to admit, I wondered if you’d call on me before your allotted time was up. Come to beg, have you?”
In truth, Clara had. At home and desperate, she’d believed she could do or say whatever she must, and grovel if necessary. Now she did not feel so sure. “I have come,” she said, “to ask you a question: why are you so determined to toss me and my entire household out into the street? How will it benefit you to have that house standing empty?”
He twitched a thin eyebrow at her. “What makes you truly think the place will remain empty long? I have a prospective tenant, a doctor. He wishes to use the surgery.”
That knocked Clara back on her heels. Her grandfather smiled wryly. “What, girl? Did you think your father the only doctor in the city? He wasn’t even the best but made a poor excuse for a professional, giving his services away more than half the time.”
“My father championed something of which you have clearly never heard: mercy.”
“He was a soft fool. I told your mother so before she ever married him. Would she listen?”
“She chose for the sake of another commodity to which you are a stranger, Grandfather—love.”
“Ah, and now we get to the crux of it, do we? The heart of the discussion.” He waved a hand so frail Clara could almost see through it. “Will you sit, or would you rather do your begging on your knees?”
Clara experienced a sharp, painful flashback to Liam on his knees before her in the hallway outside her room. She struggled to dismiss it and then decided not: what she did now, she did for love, for him. He would be her strength.
She sat very carefully on the edge of a chair, her chin still high.
“Now, I imagine,” her grandfather said, “you will reproach me and cite your adherence to your father’s supposed high morals—you who took for husband a man straight out of the county jail, a common street brawler, a bigamist, and Irish to boot, and presented him to me.”
“I do not believe all of what you say about him is true.”
“Then you’re as much the fool as your father.”
“The information you have about my husband is not complete.”
“If you suppose that, you’re a silly chit.” Van Hamelin’s gaze prodded her cruelly. “I expect you are going to say you love him.”
Clara hesitated. How many weapons did she want to place in this old man’s hands? Instead of answering, she asked in turn, “Did you love my mother?” Was he even capable of the emotion?
Van Hamelin sat back. “Of course I did, at least until she defied me.”
“Not much strength in a love that could be destroyed by so small a thing as defiance.”
“Would you love a dog that bit your hand?”
“My mother was not a dog. She was a good and honorable woman.”
He sneered. “What is honorable about tossing away the excellent opportunities I worked to provide her? I came to this city, girl, with nothing. I struggled, bargained, and yes, lied and cheated, to gain what I now have.”
“You must have wished for her to have the house on Virginia Street, despite her defiance, or you wouldn’t have entailed it to her—and me. Why take it from me now?”
“This isn’t about the house.”
“It most certainly is, and it’s about my responsibilities. I’ve a dozen people under that roof.”
“Including your bigamist and his mad wife?”
Clara swallowed hard, then leaned forward and fixed him with her gaze. “Listen to me. You can fault me all you wish for failing to toe your line and grovel at your feet. But if you’ve one jot of honesty in you—honesty, for I don’t expect love—you’ll see that what I’ve done is bargain, lie, and, yes, cheat, to hold what I need.” She sprang to her feet. “And if you can be proud of that, so can I!”
For the first time her grandfather looked taken aback. He stared at her with cold blue eyes, and his spotted hands clutched the arms of his chair.
Clara turned to the door, then paused and lifted her chin another notch.
“As for begging—I’d rather do my begging on the streets with my bigamist husband.”
She sailed out of the room and through the big foyer with its marble floor, propelled by something beyond anger. The steamie sprang to open the door for her, and she went through it. Not until she stood on the front walk facing Delaware Avenue did the trembling in her knees catch up with her and make her pause.
She’d done it now. She’d truly cooked her goose.
****
“Tell me where I can find the sexton, Old Tim.”
Ruella, sleeves rolled up and arms buried to the elbows in bread dough, looked up, startled, when Liam spoke. She blinked at the sight of him leaning in through the door of her kitchen and said, “You shouldn’t be here. By gaw, what if you’re seen?”
Liam tugged the brim of his cloth cap lower over his forehead, though he already had it pulled well down. He’d walked here from Virginia Street, wondering if he retraced the path along which Ruella had trundled him the night he died, and reconnoitered well around the building that stood at the corner of Delaware and Eagle. He’d circled around back and through the jail yard, trying to ignore the prickles that crept up his spine at being where they’d hanged him that night, and waited till a tradesman came out the back door to slip in and find Ruella’s kitchen.
“Had to see you, lass,” he said simply. “It’s desperate.”
He doubted many men called Ruella a lass, unless her pretty-boy copper did. What had she called him? Fagan.
She straightened and scraped the dough from her muscular arms and hands. “Dangerous way to go about seeking my help, innit? Couldn’t you have sent a messenger? One of the kiddies?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t want Clara to find out.”
“Get in here, then, and shut the door.”
Liam obeyed, his nose twitching at the scents that filled the kitchen, of new-baked bread and rolls.
Ruella fixed him with a stern eye. “I’d never lie to Miss Clara.”
“I’m not asking you to lie. Just keep your trap shut.”
“My what?”
“Your lovely trap.”
“She’s been a good friend to me, Clara has.”
Liam grimaced. “And you’ve been a good friend to her, dragging home dead men.”
“Just the one.”
“You think you’re not involved in this? Listen—we’re out of the house on Virginia Street in five days.”
“What?”
“Four, now. Clara’s gone to see her grandfather, but you can guess how much kindness she’ll win from him.”
“None.”
“None,” Liam repeated. “She’s breaking up the household. Wee Georgina’s going to the lawyer, Collwys.”
“Bloody hell! To live in sin?”
“No, they’ll be married.”
“Well, well.”
“And Clara wants to set me up in another, smaller household with me wife.”
“Your what, then?”
“We liberated her yesterday, from the hospital for the insane.”
“You have brought some news, haven’t you?” Ruella studied him frankly. “And what of Clara?”
“What, indeed? She’s planning on going with Georgina.” Liam swallowed a lump of raw, hot pain. “I can’t live with that, Miss Ruella. I have to be with her.”
“Quite the pickle, innit? What do you want from me, big Irishman?”
“Clara told me to find out who I am. Not until I break down this wall in my head and remember will I be able to set Nancy aside.”
“The wife, you mean? Is that what you want to do?” Ruella clicked her tongue. “And her mad.”
“I’ll provide for her any way I can. But I can’t live like this, without Clara. Better I’d ended out there in the yard.”
Ruella’s eyes narrowed. “Have you remembered anything?”
“Snippets here and there, as well as a few things seen in a dream. Clara believes I will remember, because Cassie did, or seemed to.”
“Cassie wasn’t dead as long as you were, though, was she? Minutes, as I understand it, rather than well over an hour. What do you want with Old Tim?”
“I want to find out what Maynard’s about with these hangings, and why he chose me. There must be a reason, but so far it makes no sense. I’ve seen what Maynard gets up to at Sterling House, and I understand his need for the ready. But taking pennies for my keep won’t finance those habits. I’m missing something.”
Ruella shook her head. “That’s as may be, but you won’t get much from Old Tim. He’s confused on his best days.”
“Still, I’ve nowhere else to begin.”
Ruella chewed her lip. “Look—you’re in a bit of luck. Me boy Fagan’s just come off a shift, and he’s hanging round cooling his heels till I’m done here, so we might…” Incredibly Ruella blushed.
Liam blinked at her.
“Don’t go looking at me that way. A woman’s entitled to a bit of a tumble, and he’s a fine, big lad even if he is Irish. And why should Miss Clara have all the fun?”
For the life of him, Liam could think of nothing to say.
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