Call Home the Heart

by Shannon Farrell

  She kissed him softly. "Then don't even try, just feel."

  As she settled against him, he asked, "Can I stay all night?"

  "Please, if you want to."

  He smiled broadly. "No ifs about it, my love."

  But all too soon the gray winter sunlight began trickling in through the window. Muireann eased herself from his side silently as he slumbered on, and washed herself quickly with her flannel and a basin of water. She got dressed hurriedly, putting on several layers underneath her burgundy woolen gown. Then she tied her cloak around her shoulders.

  She placed the small bag she had packed the night before on the step outside, and went back in to see Lochlainn for one last kiss. He stirred but did not open his eyes. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her warmly. Only when his hand strayed down to cup one rounded breast did he realize that she was fully dressed.

  "Damn, another day at work," he sighed, opening his eyes drowsily.

  "Not quite. Lochlainn, I hate to have to do this to you now of all times, when things are so confused, but I had bad news when the ship arrived yesterday."

  His lids flew wide.

  "My father is ill. He's had a stroke. I've left instructions for you on the desk, but I have to go."

  "What! Your father? Why didn't you say so yesterday? Wait, I'll come with you!" He began to swing his legs out of the bed and reached for his clothes in an instant.

  She shook her head sadly. "I would love it if you could, but don't you see, I really need you here."

  "You need my support. I know how hard this must be for you."

  She stayed him with her hand. "No, Lochlainn, I don't need you with me. I'll have my sister and mother. I'll be fine. I'll get through this one way or the other. I need you to look after things for me here while I'm gone, do you understand?"

  He paused in his hasty dressing and scowled at her. She could see his anguish simmering just under the surface of his grim expression. She had never seen him look more handsome, or more dismayed.

  "I suppose I should be grateful that you told me at all, and didn't simply slip away. You knew last night. You knew and never once told me! Now who is the betrayer, who the betrayed? You used me, didn't you, for you own selfish pleasure!"

  Her own anger boiled over. "I beg your pardon, but I seem to remember giving you more than your fair share when I-"

  "No! Don't say it!" Lochlainn held up a hand, and shook his head.

  Then he tugged on his shirt and sat on the edge of the bed staring at the floor, his elbows on his bare knees, his hands clasped as though praying, a picture of abject despair.

  Finally he raised his head and looked at her. "I'm sorry. I know you have to go. He's your father, and he needs you. I don't want us to fight like this. But be honest with me, Muireann. Do you ever intend to come back?"

  She knelt down beside him and took one of his hands. "Lochlainn, believe me, I want to. But I'm so tired. I can't make any decisions right now, because I don't know what's going to happen in the court case, with my father, anything. The only things certain in my life are that the mortgage has to be paid, Christopher is greedy enough to try anything to get Barnakilla, and Neil and Philip think I should cut my losses and sell. I don't want to, but if they withdraw all the support they've been giving us, we're done for."

  He cast aside her hand impatiently, and began to pace up and down in the tiny room like a caged panther. "That's all about the estate. I'm talking about us!"

  She blinked up at him in surprise. "You know how much you've meant to me all these months. I thought all we shared last night proved that. Please, don't let us part quarrelling. I don't want to fight you. I'm tired of fighting. I don't want us to end up saying things in anger which we might one day have cause to regret."

  "I don't want you to go," Lochlainn suddenly declared, pulling her up to him for a passionate kiss.

  "I must! My father! I have to go, Lochlainn. They're waiting for me. But I'll come back, as soon as I can. I will see you again, I swear," she vowed, stroking his cheek.

  She extracted herself from his tight embrace gently and turned towards the door to go.

  "Wait a moment. At least let me get dressed so I can walk you down to the dock."

  "No don't, please. It would be far too difficult. Let's just say goodbye to each other here, without a hundred other people staring at us."

  "Because you're ashamed of me!" Lochlainn accused bitterly.

  She shook her head. "No, because it is no one's business but ours. I don't want anyone to spoil things by criticizing the feelings we have for each other," Muireann said, gazing up at him lovingly.

  Lochlainn kissed her upturned mouth, and she clung to him like a drowning woman.

  "I'll be back, darling, I promise," she whispered against his questing lips. "Wait for me?"

  "‘Til all the seas gang dry, my dear.'"

  She smiled at the quote by Robert Burns. "I'll hold you to that promise when I next see you, Lochlainn."

  "And you, Muireann?" he asked gently. "Will you wait for me?"

  "Poor man, I'm beginning to think you never should have laid eyes on me at the Dun Laoghaire wharf," she tried to joke lightheartedly before she kissed him one last time, and fled from the room.

  Grasping her valise, she ran all the way down to the dock. Only as she stood squarely on the deck and they lifted the gangplank did she dare to look around.

  At the top of the hill she saw Lochlainn standing, his hand raised in a farewell salute.

  Muireann raised her hand high above her head to wave back. She kept on waving until the house was a mere speck on the landscape.

  Then she turned to the prow with a sigh.

  Her brother-in-law looked at her closely, and she shrugged. "It's been my home long enough. I shall miss it."

  "You're coming home now, Muireann," Neil insisted, placing an arm around her shoulder.

  She withdrew from his embrace and shook her head. "No, I'm not. Barnakilla is my home, Neil. Lochlainn and the people there are my family too. And I know you think you're arguing logically, but there are some things more important than logic. There's love too, and the knowledge of the heart. No matter what you say, I shall fight until the last breath in my body to save them."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Despite Neil's fears of wintry storms, the Andromeda made good headway, reaching the coast of Scotland in four days.

  For the first few days after Muireann arrived home at Fintry, all of her time was taken up in nursing her father. He had suffered cruelly from the stroke. He was paralyzed on his right side, and unable to speak. He had to have all his needs tended to day and night, and Muireann did all the chores the nurse indicated to her without complaint.

  Certainly her mother and sister noticed the huge change in her. Muireann was no longer the rounded, rosy, cheerful young girl they had last seen on her wedding day. She was more serious and sober now, with a wiry strength and determination that actually made them slightly in awe of her. She was as lean as a whippet, and twice as sharp.

  At first Muireann was convinced her father would get better, and she did everything to make his life more comfortable, and to help him recover. She read to him, chatted with him, and though he never did anything other than move his eyes, Muireann was certain he understood her.

  Always on hand to help were Neil and Philip. Philip in particular seemed to follow her around everywhere like a lovesick puppy, so that even Muireann, preoccupied as she was with Mr. Graham's illness, couldn't fail to notice his attentions.

  Since he was such an old friend, she did not feel any great alarm. It was mild admiration, nothing more, she told herself. Surely he couldn't think that she would ever… No, the thought of marrying Philip was too absurd, and she shuddered with dread, and prayed she was wrong.

  The few hours that Muireann did manage to get to herself were spent either sleeping, or writing lengthy letters to Lochlainn about the estate. She tried to keep her letters polite and formal, though
she longed to pour her heart out to him and tell him how much she missed him. But it was impossible. How could she be sure he loved her for herself, not for her wealth? She had been sadly deceived with Augustine, hadn't she?

  One day about a fortnight after Muireann had arrived, her father took a sudden turn for the worse. His breathing grew ragged, and he began to foam at the mouth. He thrashed about for a few moments, and then lay still. Muireann held his hand as it gradually went cold.

  The rest of the family, tired of being cooped up in the house for so long, had gone out for a short drive in the carriage. They returned several hours later to find her still sitting by the body, dry-eyed and silent.

  "It's all over. He's gone," she whispered.

  Her sister Alice immediately swooned, and Neil carried her away to her room. Her mother, silver-haired and rigidly dignified, went over and kissed Mr. Graham on the forehead, and then took his other hand and sat with him, stroking it gently as her tears silently fell.

  Muireann was surprised at her mother's response, for she had never seen her parents exchange any affection in public. She suddenly blurted out the question she had been wondering ever since she had been so cruelly deceived by Augustine.

  "Did you love Father?"

  Her mother blinked her damp eyes in astonishment. "Of course I did. He was the whole world to me. In our social sphere, marrying for love is considered the height of folly. But I did love him. We may never have shown it. He wasn't an affectionate man. But we admired and respected each other."

  "But aren't affection, hugging and kissing, the er, physical aspects of marriage, important?" she asked with a blush.

  "Really, Muireann, I thought I explained all this to you, about men and women!" her mother exclaimed impatiently.

  "No, that isn't what I mean. I understand the physical aspect. I've seen enough horses in my day, haven't I? I've been married. What I mean is, how do you know when someone really loves you?"

  Her mother frowned, suddenly worried by Muireann's persistent questions, her distraught expression. "Why on earth would you ask that? Surely you and Augustine were happy before he died?"

  Muireann was tempted for a brief second to lie automatically. But even though this was not the best time to choose, it was her only chance to confess the truth to at least one other person in the world. The secret she had kept bottled up inside her for so long just had to come out.

  "He never loved me, Mother, nor I him. It was all an act. He pretended to be the besotted swain in order to get his hands on my wealth. He used me cruelly. He was debauched, drunken and dissipated. I hadn't spent ten minutes alone with him on our wedding trip to Ireland before I realized what he really was. He deceived us all."

  Her mother stared at her, appalled. She had always been stern with Muireann, thinking her too headstrong and hoydenish, but now her love for her daughter came bubbling to the surface like a fountain.

  She sat down next to Muireann on the low couch and put her arms around her lightly. "My dear child, is that why you look so thin and wasted, because he was cruel to you?"

  Muireann shook her head. "Not really, though that was part of it. No, the estate was foundering and I was too ashamed of my own stupidity to admit what a mistake I had made. Perhaps I've compounded the mistake by staying in Ireland, but the people on the estate needed me. I just couldn't turn my back on them. Now we're on the brink of starvation because of the Potato Famine. I just don't have any more answers.

  "And it isn't just the Famine. It's Augustine's cousin Christopher, determined that I shall marry him so he can get his hands on the estate. Otherwise he shall take me to court to try to get himself declared the legal heir. Oh Mother, I think I'm about to lose everything I value most in the world part from you, Father and Alice, and I don't know how I shall bear it." The tears began to fall at last.

  Mrs. Graham felt a small burning of indignation that her daughter had obviously been keeping a great deal from her, but she tamped it down hastily. It was all too apparent that the child was at her wits' end if she was now confessing what she had taken great pains to conceal for almost a year from her beloved family.

  She did not inquire into Muireann's motives for having done so, as she longed to, but instead asked, "Why don't you tell me about it, so we can see if I can help? It's what your father would have done once he got over the shock, and what he would want me to do."

  Muireann opened her heart as she never had before, and explained all she had done at Barnakilla, mentioning Lochlainn once or twice as someone very important in her life, and recounting to her mother the horrors of the Famine.

  She left nothing out, even telling her all about her fateful trip to Dublin and her bargain with the devil, as Muireann referred to it inwardly the rare times she ever allowed herself to think about it.

  Anger gave way to disappointment and dismay. Mrs. Graham wished she could turn back the clock and offer her daughter whatever support she might have needed before she had come to such a pass.

  Yet deep in her heart Mrs. Graham knew as well that she and her husband would have insisted upon her coming home. Ig they had known one iota of what had been going on, they would never have supported the hard decisions she had made for the people of Barnakilla.

  At last, Muireann concluded, "I know how ashamed of me you must be, and I've hated every minute of the lies and deception. But what choice did I have? Those people would have died without me. They're good people. They deserve better than absentee landlords who are interested only in milking their Irish estates of every last penny so they can indulge themselves at fashionable resorts on the Continent while their tenants live on nothing but a handful of potatoes.

  "I know you and Father would never have approved, but I make no apology for the way I've chosen to live my life, only the way I've had to stoop to evil means to do so. I'll never forgive myself for that as long as I live. Even if you don't forgive me for what I've done, Mother, I don't care. I would do it all over again to save Barnakilla."

  Muireann stood up to leave, but her mother grabbed her arm and forced her to sit back down beside her. "I'm so sorry it hasn't worked out after all your efforts," her mother sighed, pushing a stray curl back from Muireann's brow. "Perhaps it's time to come home now? To admit you were wrong and let someone else take over?"

  Muireann stared at the older woman uncomprehendingly. "After what I've just told you, you can ask me that?" She shook her head. "I can't do it, Mother. I love it there. It's my home. I miss it every day that I'm here. There's nothing left for me here. Alice is married. You've always favored her-- No, don't deny it. She was always the obedient daughter, lovely, accomplished in all the ways it counted for a woman to be.

  :I don't blame you, Mother, I'm simply stating a fact. I would always be a disappointment to you. And after having known such independence, I couldn't bear to have my wings clipped. I need to use my intelligence, my skills, to be fulfilled. Marriage and society are fine for women like you and Alice, but I need and want so much more."

  Her mother looked as though she would argue, but then bit her lip and remained silent.

  "And then there's Lochlainn, of course," Muireann continued, sitting back in the seat more comfortably. "This isn't his world. He would never fit in. I couldn't ask it of him. He has too much pride to ever accept any charity. We've tried our best to make a good home for ourselves and the tenants at Barnakilla. I can't give that up. Not without trying every means at my disposal to defeat Christopher and protect what Lochlainn and I have built together."

  "But this is your home. Your father left it to both of you girls. I am to have the dower house, though I had thought to go live with Alice and Neil so I can see more of my grandchildren. She's expecting again, you know.

  "So there's no need for you to go back to Barnakilla. Sell it, and you can run your own estate here without any interference. Take this, and make us all proud. Your uncle would be so delighted. He and the boys were also thinking they might go to Alice and Neil's to help them, now t
hat the shipping industry is really beginning to expand and he needs a good manager, but..."

  "But what would I do here, apart from wait for the next fortune hunter to come along?" Muireann asked bitterly.

  Her mother shrugged. "Philip loves you. He hasn't stood by you all this time, done all the things you've told me to help you, for nothing."

  "But I didn't love Augustine, and I don't love Philip."

  Her mother continued to stroke her father's cold, limp hand. "Love, mutual respect, regard, they're all good foundations for marriage. Philip is of your class and breeding. You could do far worse, as I'm sure you realize."

  "I did realize that, once I had married the husband of my worst nightmares. But I don't love Philip. My heart doesn't leap into my mouth every time I see him. Do you understand?"