Song of Erin

by BJ Hoff

  Samantha glanced from Kane to Cavan Sheridan, vaguely aware of the similarity in height between the two. But whereas the latter’s was as yet the undeveloped lankiness of youth, Jack Kane’s stature was that of a mature man—and a supremely confident one.

  Cavan was watching her intently, his expression a plea for her to hear Kane out. But after his awkward confession of the previous week, Samantha was only too well aware of his reasons for wanting her to accept the position. She had already decided she would be foolish to even consider the idea.

  Turning back to Kane, she said, “I’m sorry you’ve gone to so much trouble, Mr. Kane, but as I explained to Cavan—Mr. Sheridan—I’m really not qualified for this sort of position.”

  “Nonsense,” Kane said dismissively. “Cavan here believes otherwise, and I’ve come to trust his judgment.” He darted a quick look at his driver, then turned again to Samantha. “Fifteen minutes?” he said, his brows lifting a fraction in appeal.

  Samantha felt herself being drawn into the field of those compelling dark eyes. With an irrational sense of panic, she stepped back from him. “I—no, I’m sorry, but I’m…simply not interested.”

  His gaze narrowed, and Samantha felt herself examined with a bold directness that somehow stopped just short of being offensive. After the slightest hesitation, Kane again turned to Cavan Sheridan. “I summoned Ransom out of retirement to drive me here this evening. Why don’t you take the buggy and go on along? I’ll see Mrs. Harte safely home after we talk.”

  Samantha tensed, suddenly angry. Kane was obviously accustomed to bullying his way past anything and anyone, but she was having none of it. There had been a time when she might have been intimidated by his bravado, but after enduring Bronson’s tyranny, it would take more than a swaggering Irishman to cow her.

  A quick glance at Cavan Sheridan only served to fuel her resolve. The boy was looking from Kane to her with a gaze that held both confusion and disappointment. Samantha thought there might also be a spark of anger in his eyes, anger at his employer.

  “Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,” she said, speaking directly to Jack Kane. “I have other plans for this evening, so I really need to be leaving. As for seeing me home, that won’t be necessary.”

  Kane was regarding her with a wry expression. “Five minutes?” he said. His tone was deceptively meek, not at all in keeping with the intensity of his gaze. “Surely you won’t refuse me five minutes, Mrs. Harte?”

  Disgusted with herself, Samantha felt her resistance slip a notch. Years of her mother’s coaching in “good manners and proper behavior” now threatened to overcome her common sense.

  As if he had seen her waver, Kane moved to seize the advantage. Once again he turned to Cavan Sheridan with a word of instruction. “You might as well be getting along now, lad. And mind the streets—you’ll find a lot of ice on the way.”

  Cavan’s face flamed, and for a moment Samantha thought he might challenge his employer. But at last, clearly demoralized, he bade them a hasty goodnight and left the room.

  Anger surfaced anew in Samantha—anger at Kane for his insufferable arrogance, and at herself for faltering even momentarily in the face of this presumptuous barbarian.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Harte?” Kane said. Samantha didn’t miss the fact that, when issued by Jack Kane, even a simple suggestion seemed more a demand.

  She hesitated, and he grinned at her, his dark eyes warming with amusement. The man was so infuriatingly insolent. “May I?” he asked, shrugging out of his topcoat before Samantha could reply.

  Dismayed, she realized that he almost certainly had no intention of limiting himself to the five minutes he’d requested. Her exasperation with the man boiled higher, and in an attempt to make her own statement, she went to the coat closet, retrieved her wrap, and draped it very carefully and deliberately over the back of the chair.

  She took her time in lifting her gaze to meet his. When she did, she found him grinning at her as if he found her incredibly entertaining. “Point taken,” he said with another low travesty of a bow. “I’ll be brief, my word on it. But won’t you at least sit down? And if at all possible, Mrs. Harte, stop watching for me to sprout horns. Despite what you may have been told, I’m not all that dangerous—certainly not to a respectable lady like yourself.”

  Samantha caught her breath. His insight into her thoughts seemed almost uncanny. It had struck her only a moment earlier that Kane didn’t seem quite as outrageous as the myriad rumors purported him to be. Oh, he was brash, certainly, his bearing impossibly arrogant, even imperial; probably he could be ruthless and autocratic, and she sensed a coarseness in him somewhat at odds with his darkly urbane good looks.

  Nevertheless, he was almost certainly not the dragon she would have expected, based on his reputation. Once or twice she even thought she might have glimpsed a hint of something behind those hooded dark eyes—some fleeting glimmer of a lingering sorrow, an old, not yet healed pain—that belied the mocking air of amusement from which he appeared to view his surroundings. She might have been mistaken, of course. She had only just met the man, after all.

  In the end, it was that totally unexpected perception of his humanity, that vague sense of a basic decency in the man, that—combined with her own ingrained code of conduct—caused Samantha to relent. Even then she might have hesitated had she not caught a glimpse of his hands when he removed his gloves. There was no explanation for the peculiar feeling that swept over her at the sight of those large, callused hands with the sturdy, blunt fingers—not carefully manicured as she would have expected, but instead stained with traces of news ink.

  Why it should move her so, she couldn’t say. But something about the possibility that Jack Kane might actually dirty his hands by working at his own trade struck a chord in her that was still resonating when she sank down into the chair behind her desk, waiting for him to begin.

  Jack’s instincts about Samantha Harte had proved sound. Within minutes of first meeting her, he had sensed a fundamental spirit of fairness and the innate good manners of one who had grown up in a gracious, civilized environment. As he watched her sit down, then lift her face to him with a cool stare, he was struck by the woman’s almost regal bearing.

  She was a princess in a dusty schoolroom, a patrician in a city of Philistines. Blast it all, he almost felt as if he should bend his knee and call her milady!

  Confronted by her slender elegance, her quiet composure, Jack felt himself very much the rough-edged lout and infidel she probably believed him to be. For the first time in years, he found himself at a loss in the presence of a woman.

  And what a woman she was! She was nothing like what he had expected, that much was certain. Despite the smitten Cavan Sheridan’s accolades to her shrine, Jack would have been surprised if Samantha Harte had been anything more than pleasant looking—perhaps even attractive in a mousy sort of way, but hardly memorable.

  He realized what he had done, of course. Because she had been married to one of the more recognizable clergymen of the day, and because she apparently gave much of her time and effort to the impoverished immigrants of the city, he had fostered an image of her as virtuous but rather drab.

  So much for supposition. The woman was anything but drab. She was absolutely exquisite. Jack suddenly found himself wondering to what length that lustrous chestnut hair would fall if released from the fussy little knot in which it was trapped or how it might feel to have those magnificent amber-flecked eyes turned on him in something other than suspicion or distaste.

  He was completely unprepared for the sudden stab of shame that ripped through him, as if by merely speculating about her—however innocently—he might somehow sully the cloak of decency she seemed to wear.

  She was sitting on the edge of her chair, regarding him with that same dignified calm that was beginning to rankle Jack for some reason. He had seen her poise slip, ever so slightly, when he’d first come into the room, but it hadn’t taken her long to recover it
. Now it was his turn to grope for control. What was it about the woman that put him at a disadvantage and made him feel like such a great, ponderous dolt?

  But he had started this, hadn’t he? He had no choice but to get on with it, though he had been a fool to come here, he knew that now. He felt a sudden sting of resentment at Samantha Harte’s ability to evoke such an uncommon defensiveness in him. Peevishly, he reminded himself of why he had come. Wasn’t she the one who stood to benefit most from this meeting, after all?

  “Let me get right to the point, Mrs. Harte,” he said, his tone sharper than he’d intended. “I came here for one reason, that being to offer you a job.” When she would have interrupted, he stopped her with an upraised hand, crossed his arms over his chest, and went on. “Our lad Cavan has a great admiration for you—but no doubt you’re already aware of that.” Jack watched her closely, saw a faint flush creep over her features, and smiled to himself.

  “He tells me that in addition to your teaching in the settlements—a most admirable vocation, for which you’re to be commended, I’m sure—you also work part-time as a proofreader. You’re employed by a local textbook publisher, I believe?”

  She nodded, her gaze still fixed steadily upon him.

  Jack hesitated only a second or two. “That publisher wouldn’t happen to be Josef Stein, would it?”

  The change in her expression was dramatic. It had been no lucky guess on his part, of course. Jack had made it his business to learn the place—and the status—of her employment before ever coming down here tonight.

  He gave her no chance to reply. “I expect you know they’re about to close their doors.”

  He saw the slender throat tighten as she made an effort to swallow. “How—how would you know that?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  She frowned, then shook her head. “No, I try to ignore rumors.”

  “It’s no rumor, Mrs. Harte,” Jack said, softening his tone.

  “You can’t—how could you know something like that?”

  Jack dropped his arms away from his chest, putting his hands in his pockets. “Stein came to me not long ago with the idea that I might want to buy the company. He knew I’d bought out Perriman and Ware last year and thought he might interest me in acquiring his house as well.”

  Jack had deliberately given her no warning, meaning to catch her off guard. Clearly, he had. What he hadn’t expected was the regret that coiled through him as he watched her composure seem to slip beyond her grasp.

  “And…are you—buying him out, that is?” Her voice was so low Jack had to step closer to make out her words. When he did, he saw that she had gone deathly pale.

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Nor, I suspect, will anyone else. Stein’s son has run the company to ruin. They’re desperately overextended, thanks to young Joey’s excesses. There’s nothing for them to do but sell off what they can and close the doors. Quite frankly, there’s not enough there to make it worth my while.”

  Her expression was more than confused. It seemed to border on despair.

  Self-disgust whipped through Jack, and he almost wished now he’d let her learn of the situation for herself, rather than from him. “I’m sorry you had to hear this so abruptly,” he said, meaning it, even though he knew the situation might work to his favor. “I thought you should know before you summarily turned down my offer.”

  He pretended not to notice the slight trembling of her hand, which now gripped the leather case on her desk. “You’re…quite certain?” she said, her voice sounding strangled. “I don’t suppose you could be mistaken?”

  “Mrs. Harte,” Jack said softly, “it’s no mistake.” He waited only a second or two, then said, “In light of this situation, am I correct in assuming that you’ll be needing a new position?”

  He saw her stiffen, watched the play of conflicting emotions dart across her features. The bitter look she turned on him made Jack feel as if he had ripped the job away from her himself. “Mrs. Harte, I don’t mean to take advantage—”

  “Of course you do,” she said icily, the challenge catching Jack completely off guard.

  He blinked, not quite managing to stop a smile at this blunt assessment of his motives. “Yes…well, perhaps you’re right. But before you sling that book bag at me, won’t you at least allow me to tell you a bit about the job I have in mind? I think you might be interested, if you’ll just hear me out.”

  Her expression never wavered, but she inclined her head ever so slightly to indicate that she would listen. The princess grants an audience to the pirate, Jack thought with some amusement.

  In that moment, he wanted more than anything to convince her to take the job. He liked this woman, he realized—not merely because she was exceedingly attractive, though she was that, all right—but it was more than that. He sensed that Samantha Harte was an admirable woman, probably an exceptional woman—a woman he suddenly wanted to know better, even have her know him, although the very idea would probably send her running from the room.

  “May I sit down?” Not waiting for a reply, Jack lowered himself into one of the student chairs closest to her desk. “First off, I want to assure you that you could work from your home. If you have any concern at all about that, let me put your mind at ease.”

  Pretending not to notice the way her eyes lighted with interest ever so slightly, Jack went on. “I believe I can also promise you that I’d be offering you a considerable increase in wages. And,” he added, leaning forward, “a much more interesting variety of duties as well.”

  Yes, he definitely had her attention now, he thought, watching her. Contempt, at least for the moment, seemed to have given way to curiosity.

  Even so, she voiced a protest. “Mr. Kane—what makes you think I’m the right person for this position? Or for any other position with your newspaper, for that matter. You haven’t the faintest idea of my qualifications or—”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Jack interrupted, brusquely professional as he acted to convince her of his sincerity. “Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

  She frowned as if she hadn’t expected this. “I…well, I suppose not, but—”

  “Good,” Jack said, not letting her finish before firing a rapid barrage of questions at her, all very businesslike and timed so as not to give her a chance to do more than catch her breath between replies. He resisted the temptation to toss in a few queries of a more personal nature, knowing instinctively that Samantha Harte would be offended and more than likely driven away by even the slightest attempt to breach that carefully erected bastion of self-defense.

  Even so, he was intensely curious about this woman with the steel backbone and soft eyes. For starters, Jack wondered what might account for the apparently precarious state of her finances. Her distress at the prospect of losing her job with Stein had been almost palpable, and unless he was sorely mistaken, she was now leaning toward serious consideration of his offer.

  He was also fascinated by a certain duality of nature he thought he perceived in her. The face she presented to him—and to the world, he suspected—was that of a quiet, almost rigidly composed, virtuous widow. Yet in the flinty edge of anger that had earlier sparked in those magnificent eyes, as well as in the sudden, unexpected glint of challenge that had shone out at him for just an instant, Jack had caught a glimpse of something else—an intensity, a vitality, carefully banked but glowing somewhere behind the wall of her control.

  Increasingly, he found himself wanting to know more about the woman behind that wall.

  He would warrant that Samantha Harte came from a good family, perhaps a privileged family. By her own admission, she had received a better-than-average education for a woman. Clearly, she had been a young bride, for she didn’t look as if she could be much past her early or midtwenties.

  He wondered how she had ended up needing two jobs to subsist. Even though Bronson Harte had apparently given his life to the ministry, the man shouldn’t have been
entirely without means. As Jack recalled, Harte had been the only son of a wealthy family—textile-mill wealthy—from somewhere in Massachusetts. A controversial, highly visible clergyman, he had also been widely published and sought after as a public lecturer. Surely he would have managed at least a comfortable living.

  He turned his attention back to Bronson Harte’s widow. Just as Cavan Sheridan had said, she seemed more than qualified for the proofreader’s position—and unless Jack was badly mistaken, Samantha Harte would also be perfect for the additional responsibilities he had in mind.

  Indeed, she seemed ideal, exactly what he needed, and Jack offered her the job on the spot.

  19

  QUEST OR CONQUEST

  I have spun the fleecy lint and now my wheel is still…

  ETHNA CARBERY

  “The job is yours if you want it,” Kane said. “You’ll want to know what’s involved, of course.”

  “You said it was a proofreading position. I’m probably familiar with most of the requirements—”

  “Ah, but I’m thinking it may likely develop into more than that for the right person,” he interrupted. “Let me explain.”

  He leaned back in the chair—which was too small for him—stretched out his long legs, and crossed them neatly at the ankles. Samantha realized anew what a big man he was and was surprised that she no longer felt quite as…overwhelmed by him as she had at first.

  Bronson had not been a large man, yet being in the same room with him had often given her a sense of being restricted…confined.

  She shook off the thought and returned her full attention to the man across the desk from her. How quickly he had adopted an informal, casual stance with her. She couldn’t help wondering if it might be merely a ploy to make her relax and throw her off guard.

  Did he really think her that gullible?

  Again Bronson came to mind. He had played that sort of game, not with her, but with others, especially those he considered inferior. He would feign a kind of camaraderie to gain their support—or their adulation—then cast them aside after they had served their purpose.