Call Home the Heart

by Shannon Farrell

  Muireann tugged out the lilac nightdress and matching robe from her valise and went behind the screen. Soon Lochlainn could hear her happily splashing, and the sounds of her lathering herself all over.

  "Go on, read to me," she encouraged.

  Lochlainn did as he was told.

  She sat back in the tub with a satisfied sigh and soaked, adding a bit more hot water from the cans the servants had left, until at last she felt cleansed after her terrible journey from Scotland and the dreadful ordeal she had endured the day before at the hotel.

  It's like it all happened in another lifetime, she reflected in surprise. She decided that that was as it should be. It was better for her to pretend her past life had never happened if she was to face the hardships of Barnakilla.

  She was no fool. Lochlainn had been very sparing with the details about circumstances there, but she had got to know him well enough over the past three days to sense the fear lurking just below the surface.

  She certainly couldn't blame him for being frightened. She had learnt for herself about the tragedy caused by a bankrupt estate when her Uncle Arthur had made some unwise speculative ventures.

  Her father had bailed out Uncle Arthur, but not without issuing a stern lecture about his foolishness, and frequent reminders ever since about his own largesse in having helped, for which her father felt Arthur should be suitably grateful for the rest of his life.

  Muireann was determined that that would never happen to her. She loved her father, but his smugness from his superior position as a person who had never know a day's want would be more than she could ever bear.

  All the same, Muireann knew she would have to tell the truth to someone back home, if only to prevent her family from coming over once the news of her widowhood reached them.

  The only effective ally she was convinced could be trusted was her brother-in-law, Neil Buchanan. Over the years he had always defended Muireann's actions while her mother and sister had denounced them as unfeminine.

  Neil had four sisters, all talented, beautiful and well educated. He had always been impressed with her head for figures, and had carefully explained investments and other financial matters to her. He had been pleased at how apt a pupil she had become.

  As their family's lawyer after the early death of his father, Neil would be as familiar as anyone with her father's affairs. He would be able to tell her whether there might be funds she could get her hands on easily without her father discovering that Augustine had frittered away her entire marriage portion. And as a landlord himself, he might have a few good ideas about the estate.

  Neil was also a fine judge of livestock. He had taught her a great deal about that as well during her visits to his family's estate at Dumbarton, and lately at his new home just by Dunoon on the Firth of Clyde.

  He had always loved living near the water, and had purchased the estate from a bankrupt laird. He would no doubt sympathize with her plight, and admire her for trying to do the right thing by the poor wretches who were dependent upon her prosperity for their own.

  Neil and Alice had been married the previous year, and had been insistent that Muireann visit often. Muireann knew it was because Alice wished to show off how well she had done for herself in the marriage stakes.

  Though Neil was fairly handsome in an earthy sort of way, his deciding point had been his wealth. Muireann sometimes felt sorry for Neil for having made such a poor bargain. She was certain that the only person her icy sister loved was herself.

  Muireann's visits at Dunoon House would have seemed interminably long if Neil and his much younger brother Philip, a few years older than herself, hadn't taken it upon themselves to entertain her. She had been allowed the run of the estate, and there had been a conspiracy of silence regarding what she had got up to whenever she hadn't been under the sharp eyes of Alice or her mother.

  Muireann was an excellent horsewoman, a good cook, and had assisted at the births of many calves, lambs and foals. She had little fear of men, for she had practically grown up with Neil and Philip as part of her family, and her Uncle Arthur and his large family of six boys had come to live in the gate house at Fintry many years before.

  Muireann had been a terrible hoyden in her younger days, she knew. But at least the boys had been given a good education. Her father had emphasized this as the only way the penniless lads would ever be able to make a living for themselves. Muireann had insisted so intently that she be allowed to take lessons with their tutor that she had eventually been allowed to join them in the school room, and possessed Latin, French, German, and an excellent grasp of mathematics.

  Three of the boys were now in business in London, Paris and Edinburgh, in jobs with financial institutions and trading houses. Muireann wondered if they might not be able to give her some advice. The three youngest were still at Fintry, working in various positions to help their uncle run the mighty estate.

  Neil's brother Philip might also prove a potentially useful ally, since he was the owner of a fleet of small trading schooners which plied the coast of England and Scotland. But Philip was in Canada at the moment, although Neil was looking out for his business interests while he was gone.

  "Are you all right in there?" Muireann suddenly heard Lochlainn inquire.

  "Fine, fine. I'm sorry, I was just making some plans in my head, that's all," she replied quickly. Giving her hair a last rinse, she put down her flannel washrag and stood.

  "Anything for me to worry about?" Lochlainn teased, for in truth, he wondered what went on in her mind all the time.

  "Not at the moment, though you'll probably worry anyway," Muireann called as she rose and began to dry herself off. She wrapped the towel turban-like around her dripping tresses, and hastily rubbed herself down, before pulling the nightdress over her head. Then she did up her robe, and came out from behind the screen.

  "Do you have a pair of scissors handy?" she asked as she towel-dried it and then ran her brush through it quickly, impatiently tugging out the worst of the knots.

  Lochlainn nodded and then watched in horror as she took her whole hank of wet hair in a huge handful and snipped off nearly three feet of it, causing it to curl up just above her shoulders. Then she looked at herself in the mirror and trimmed the remainder until it was completely even.

  "There was no need for that!" Lochlainn protested when he was finally able to speak. "Your lovely hair!"

  Muireann waved aside his objection with a flourish of her delicate white hand. "It will grow back in time. Besides, it will be easier to keep clean, and it's still long enough to wear up, so no one will know, now will they? I can even sell it to a wig maker." She smiled up at him, and enjoyed the shocked look on Lochlainn's face.

  He scowled. "Really, Muireann, this isn't some sort of game!"

  Her eyes flashed. "I know it isn't! I'm doing the best I can to maintain my optimism in the face of such terrible circumstances, Lochlainn, that's all. I'm sorry you don't approve. But frankly, I don't need your approval, just your loyalty to me as your employer!"

  Muireann marched across the room stiffly with the long plait, which she hung on the arm of one chair, and then sat down by the fire to dry what he considered to be the pitiful remnants of her once glorious ebony hair.

  Lochlainn had been stung by her words, and stood uncertainly in the center of the room, staring at her as she deliberately ignored him.

  At last he approached her chair, and knelt down next to it. He raised one hand tentatively and stroked her hair down to her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I had no right to criticize or complain. But your hair was so lovely."

  "It still will be. It gets very curly when it's this short. Mother and Alice used to complain about it being like a bird's nest all the time. They have completely straight hair, you see. And don't worry about the criticism. I'm accustomed to never doing anything right," she said quietly.

  "That's a sad thing to say," Lochlainn remarked, as he stroked her tresses again and sat down in front of her, curious to learn as much
about Muireann as possible. "Why would that be?"

  "Because my mother and sister are incredibly beautiful. I'm the ugly, unfeminine one in the family. I have dark curly hair, dark heavy brows, my skin is too pale. I'm too tall for a woman, not shapely enough where it matters, and I have large hands and feet. Even my eyes are a funny color," Muireann recited by heart the litany of criticisms she had been subjected to.

  Lochlainn laughed long and loud, until he saw Muireann's eyes fill with hurt tears.

  "Is THAT what they told you?" he guffawed, unable to help himself.

  "Well, it's true. They have blond hair and blue eyes, and are small and dainty. Why, their rings couldn't even fit on my little finger."

  "My dear girl, not every man admires blonde hair and blues eyes, you know," Lochlainn found himself saying, making an unconscious comparison between Muireann and his former fiancée Tara, and discovering that he was suddenly unable to recall what Tara looked like all that clearly.

  "As for being too large, well, you're certainly quite small compared to me, " he said, pulling her out of the chair so that he towered over her by at least a foot.

  Then he took Muireann's hands and placed both of them in his own. He had a signet ring old Douglas Caldwell had given him as a young man. Tugging it off his own little finger, he placed it on her thumb, where it hung off and nearly rolled onto the floor.

  "Now, no more nonsense about there being anything wrong with you, do you hear?" Lochlainn scolded, playfully chucking her under the chin.

  Then he sighed as he looked at the ring. "I suppose I should have sold it," he said, squeezing her hands tightly before putting it back on his own finger, then moving to get his things ready for the bath, which was rapidly growing cold.

  "Not if it had sentimental value. It looks very old."

  "How can you say that to me when you sold your wedding band?"

  She shook her head, and sat back down by the fire to dry her hair. "I don't need any reminders of Augustine. Now go on, get in that tub before it all goes cold."

  "Will you read to me?" Lochlainn asked, not wishing to argue with her again, and wondering why he felt as though he had been punched in the guts. He picked up his toiletries, a fresh shirt and pair of trousers.

  "Of course, if you like."

  Lochlainn poured the rest of the hot water into the tub, quickly stripped off his clothes and sat back with a sigh as the steam swirled softly around him.

  Muireann read aloud the latest agricultural prices, which Lochlainn assumed she would find very boring.

  "What about something more exciting, like the court circular?" he suggested. Then he thumped himself in the head soundly with the heel of his hand. Idiot! The last thing she needs is to be reminded of her aristocratic lifestyle back in Scotland.

  "No, thank you, the price of wedders and lumpers will do me just fine."

  "How much for the wedders?" Lochlainn asked quickly, in an effort to cover up his silly blunder.

  "Seven and a half shillings per pound at the moment. I must say, that seems very expensive. At my brother-in-law's estate, when we went to market last, they were only six shillings the pound for top pedigree beeves, let alone sheep."

  "It's transport costs, isn't it, as well as people trying to get as much money as they can for their cattle," Lochlainn explained.

  "The lumpers are two pounds per tonne. That's not too bad, but it's still more expensive than we're accustomed to."

  "Everyone eats lumper potatoes here. They have the best yield from the seed, you see, though I myself think they're very watery. Pinks or Queens, now they're a fine spud. But the people eat nothing but potatoes here, because it's so hard to grow grain, with our harvest season being quite late here compared to the rest of Europe."

  "So what do you eat then?"

  "As I said, plenty of potatoes, plus a bit of milk and butter if we can get it, and vegetables."

  "It sounds a pretty poor lifestyle. Why so many potatoes?"

  "It's the only crop that will feed a whole family in a growing season on the small pieces of land that the tenants get in exchange for their rent. It is also easy to grow, being underground, so that the crop doesn't require a great deal of tending. The men can work at other things like hunting, building and fishing."

  "Or to work elsewhere, and then home to their families," Muireann remarked, snugging closer to the fire.

  "That's right."

  "It's beginning to make sense to me now. We've had Irish laborers working at our harvests before. I always did wonder how they were able to manage to be spared by their own families at harvest time."

  "But why are their landholdings so small?" Muireann ventured to ask a few moments later.

  He paused in his scrubbing. "Because people in Ireland value land as wealth. Everyone wants his or her own wee plot. A man will pay the most exorbitant rent to get one to support his family. Then he'll subdivide the plots too amongst sons, so the holdings over the years have become smaller and smaller.

  "And I have to say, the landlords have become much more greedy. They rent out to middlemen, who subdivide, and thus make more profit from people who can ill afford the exorbitant prices. Even if you deal directly with a landlord, he may rent the property at a lower price, but charge for improvements. So if you build a cottage on the property, you immediately owe more rent.

  "Thus the vicious cycle of debt starts, and continues, tying the people to the land and the landlord like serfs from the Middle Ages. It traps them on the estates, and they end up facing debtor's prison if they don't pay up."

  She shook her head pityingly. "My God, I had no idea!"

  "That's all right, Muireann, there's no reason why you should know," he said, before ducking down to rinse his hair. "Many people do know and simply don't care. I'm convinced that Ireland will always have unrest until the system is more fair. But with absentee landlords who don't worry about their estates, and simply bleed them dry to support their extravagant lifestyles in England and Europe, the problem has only become worse. Greedy agents can rob both tenant and landlord blind, and no one is any the wiser."

  "I see."

  "I suspect that's what happened after I left Barnakilla. My predecessor became ill and eventually died. While he was ill, Augustine asked my sister to send for me. I left Australia as soon as I got the letter. By the time I got back, the old man was dead. I haven't yet been able to make heads or tails out of the accounts that have been left."

  "Well, we'll just have to try to sort them out together when I get there," she said in a firm tone.

  Muireann lapsed into silence as she digested the information she had gleaned from the newspaper and Lochlainn's replies to her questions.

  Lochlainn, thoroughly refreshed after his bath and feeling much more optimistic, dried himself and then dressed behind the screen, emerging clad in his trousers and shirt.

  "I do have Augustine's small strongbox in my bag," he informed her quietly.

  "We could look through it then," she said, averting her gaze before she stared in too obvious a manner. She remarked to herself how handsome Lochlainn was when dressed less formally.

  A tap at the door signaled that supper had at last arrived. Muireann rose from the chair and threw a shawl around her shoulders. The maid entered, put down the tray and left.

  "Do you want to dress before we eat?" Lochlainn asked suddenly.

  Muireann glanced up at him in surprise. "There's no need, is there? I mean, it's late, and I'm warm enough like this. If you don't mind--"

  "No, not at all." He shook his head, thinking how curious a woman she was. Tara had never allowed him to see her at anything less than her best. Though their relationship had been remarkably passionate for the first month or so, in the ensuing two years Tara had always complained about him mussing her hair or gown, and their acts of intimacy had become fewer and further in between until they had finally stopped altogether.

  Later, Lochlainn had put it down at the time to her infidelity with Christopher Caldw
ell. Now he wondered if there hadn't been more to it. That Tara had been essentially a cold woman who didn't really relish physical contact.

  She had come from a good family fallen on hard times. Above all else she had made sure the little money she did have from her work as seamstress in Enniskillen was spent on her appearance. It had certainly got her what she wanted in the end. A rich if frivolous lover, he thought bitterly, once again unconsciously comparing Muireann to his former fiancée and finding Tara sadly wanting.

  "Come and eat, Lochlainn," she coaxed, taking his hand when she saw he had gone off into the dark little world of his he visited whenever he stared off into space.

  She heaped his plate and then took smaller portions of everything for herself and sat down. All the dishes were simple but tasty. Lochlainn could see that while she had ordered the cheapest things on the menu, they were nourishing. They finished the vegetables and most of the potatoes. With the remaining bread and meat, Muireann made sandwiches for them to eat in the coach the next day, which she wrapped up in a clean napkin along with the leftover potatoes.