Song of Erin

by BJ Hoff

  Samantha couldn’t look at him, instead made a pretense of smoothing the glove on her right hand. He had thrown her emotions into a turmoil. She was puzzled by his behavior, puzzled even more by her reaction to it. She thought she’d caught a glimpse of some sort of change in him this evening, at least in regard to his treatment of her. Not that she wasn’t used to these unexpected shifts in character. The gentlemanly conduct Jack was usually so careful to maintain with her sometimes reverted to a lighter, almost roguish—and blatantly flirtatious—guise.

  Although she continued to discourage it, Samantha had reached the point where it no longer annoyed her—or flustered her—as it once had. This was just Jack…being Jack. She had come to suspect that the role of a rake he sometimes affected might be little more than a kind of protective veneer—that at the same time he seemed to be playing bold, he was actually withdrawing, instinctively arming himself against any genuine closeness or the threat of a serious relationship.

  She sighed inaudibly. There were so many contrasting facets to Jack, she never quite knew what to expect. He could be droll or somber, carefree or intense. She was told he could be an impatient taskmaster, harsh and demanding. But according to Rufus and Amelia, he was also a model of friendship and something of a philanthropist. He had a relentless sense of humor, yet often seemed given to dark fits of melancholy. He loved flowers and the opera, and she had never seen him in a suit that wasn’t impeccably tailored. Yet, on occasion he seemed altogether oblivious to the fact that he reeked of cigar smoke and his shirtfront was stained with news ink.

  Jack had an iron reserve, she knew, a hardness about him that almost certainly would have warded off anyone who dared to come too close. He was distrustful, occasionally arrogant—at least on the surface—and openly contemptuous of society in general, New York’s elite in particular.

  He almost always had the last word, and it was more often than not a sharp-edged one. Samantha suspected he had a defense for any occasion, and even after months of working for him and spending more time with him than was wise, she was never quite sure when she was seeing the “real” Jack.

  But it was at those rare times when he seemed to drop all the masks, like now, that she found him the most unsettling. These were the times when he seemed almost vulnerable, and in that very vulnerability, he somehow became more of a threat to her emotions.

  In any event, something was definitely different about him this evening. And whatever it was, it was sending up warning signals at a dizzying rate.

  “Samantha?” His voice was soft, and when Samantha turned to look at him, he was watching her with the same tenderness, the same softness she had seen in his gaze earlier.

  Her throat tightened, but she couldn’t seem to look away from him.

  “Are you in a hurry for supper?”

  “Jack, I really don’t think—”

  “I thought we’d drive around a bit first,” he interrupted.

  She knew she ought to go home. She had work waiting: papers to grade before her next night class, an article to proof before tomorrow’s edition, and a number of other tasks that lately kept getting brushed aside.

  “A drive would be nice, but—”

  “Good,” he said, his pleased expression clearly indicating the matter was settled.

  Samantha didn’t know whether to be annoyed with him or with herself.

  After another second or two, he took her hand on top of the lap robe. Surprised, she almost pulled away—but didn’t. For a time, they rode along in silence. Samantha wondered that she no longer felt threatened, as she once had, when Jack touched her. To the contrary, she found his touch strangely comforting, the strong clasp of his hand almost reassuring. Yet she would have thought that in light of his recent proposal—and her rejection—she would have felt distinctly ill at ease in such an intimate setting.

  Darkness drew in on them now, and in the shadowed interior of the cab Samantha felt the strain and tension of the past few hours begin to drain away. When Jack again turned toward her, this time with a studying look, she was able to meet his eyes and even smile at him. “What?”

  “I’ve always been somewhat intrigued with how comfortable you apparently are with silence,” he said, his tone thoughtful. “That’s unusual, you know. Most people seem to think they have to blather incessantly, as if they always have to be amusing.”

  “I don’t amuse you?” Samantha teased lightly.

  Something glinted in his eyes, then banked. “I would hardly describe your effect on me as amusing, Samantha.”

  Still puzzled by his odd behavior, Samantha frowned and turned a little to study him more closely. “Jack? Is something wrong?”

  He didn’t reply for a moment. When he did, Samantha was completely caught off guard. “What exactly do I mean to you, Samantha?”

  She stared at him, her mouth suddenly going dry. “I—don’t understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  His expression was unreadable. “Samantha—am I wrong in thinking that you have feelings for me? That you care for me?”

  Samantha saw that he was deadly serious. Her heart slammed against her ribs, and she couldn’t seem to get her breath. “I don’t…I can’t—”

  She broke off, instinctively edging away from him a little.

  “Tell me the truth, Samantha. Do you care for me at all?”

  Samantha’s gaze went to his hand on hers. Even through their gloves, she could feel the warmth of his touch. “Of course I do. You’ve—been a wonderful friend to me.”

  His clasp on her hand tightened, and his tone turned unexpectedly hard. “Don’t do that, Samantha. Don’t dissemble. I’m not talking about friendship, and we both know it. I’m not going to hold you to anything or expect anything of you—I give you my word. But I think you feel something more for me than friendship, and I need to hear you admit it.”

  Somehow he was clasping both of her hands now. He sat there, watching her, dwarfing her with his dark, powerful frame, and Samantha felt as if his eyes were searing layer after layer away from her soul.

  She drew in a ragged breath. “I don’t know…how I feel. Not really.”

  “Then will you permit me to say what I need to say,” he asked quietly, “before it burns a hole in my heart?”

  Samantha’s head roared with warning, but something in his eyes told her that with or without her consent, he intended to speak.

  She saw the rigidity of his shoulders relax, but he retained his firm grasp on her hands. “Just—let me speak my piece, if you will, before you answer me.”

  His jaw tightened, and although Samantha again felt a panicky urge to stop him, she hesitated too long.

  “You already know that I’m in love with you,” he began, holding her gaze. “I suppose if you hold the more common opinion of me, you might question whether or not I even know what it means to be in love. But I assure you, Samantha, I do.”

  Samantha’s pulse began to hammer as he went on.

  “I expect I’ve employed every known device to not love you,” he said with a self-mocking smile. “But the fact is that I find myself in a hopeless state entirely.”

  “Jack, please—”

  He shook his head to quell her interruption. “Let me finish. Please. I know you must think I have a colossal nerve. If I offend you, Samantha, I’m truly sorry. But I can’t stop now. I have to finish this.

  “Samantha—I’ve asked you once to marry me. And I confess that I had high hopes—unfounded, as it happened—that you would say yes.”

  His words were coming faster now, as if he felt compelled to say everything at once to allow her no chance to interrupt. “Well, I’m asking you again, Samantha. And this time I’m going to predicate everything else by saying what we both already know—that admittedly, I’m no great prize. To the contrary, you might just have reason aplenty to laugh in my face—or slap it—for my even thinking you might marry me.”

  Now Samantha did try to stop him, but again he cut her off. His wor
ds continued to spill out in a rush. In the darkness of the cab, Samantha’s head was swimming, her ears thundering, and for a moment she had an insane urge to leap from the cab into the street. She hadn’t expected this, not again, at least not so soon. Indeed, after she’d turned him down the first time, Jack being Jack, she thought his pride would have stopped him from raising the subject of marriage ever again.

  Samantha thought she would strangle. Shaken, she had to stop him before he went any further, but she couldn’t seem to get the words past the swollen knot in her throat. In fact, she couldn’t seem to do anything but sit and stare at him as if she had suddenly been struck dumb.

  This wasn’t going the way he’d intended, Jack realized with a swell of agitation. Samantha was staring at him in what could have been either utter incredulity—or abject misery.

  He had set out to deliberately make himself vulnerable, to appear less confident, less in control. He had already decided he would grovel, if necessary—though the thought made him grind his teeth—if that would help him win her trust and make the idea of marriage more appealing to her. Or at least less loathsome.

  Obviously, he had been wrong. He seemed to have succeeded only in making himself appear pathetic and perhaps making an already awkward situation for her even more impossible.

  He swallowed down his impatience with himself. He had to think. He’d been careless with both attempts to convince her to marry him; he saw that now. In short, he had assumed too much. Even if his instincts had been right, and she really did care for him, why had he been foolish enough to think a woman like Samantha—the very epitome of virtue and respectability—would willingly subject herself to marriage with a middle-aged Irishman with a sordid past and the presumption of a fool?

  Small wonder she looked as if she might jump screaming from the cab at any instant.

  He had made a blunder, and he knew it, blurting out his feelings like an adolescent and presenting himself as an importunate bumbler. He stared down at their entwined hands, watching with increasing annoyance at himself as she slowly withdrew from his grasp. He fiercely wished he could somehow retract everything that had happened during the last few minutes, but what was done was done.

  Once again, it seemed, he would have to change courses. Fast.

  Not looking at her, he uttered a short, dry laugh. “Well, perhaps the third time will be the proverbial charm.”

  He was surprised to feel a light touch on his sleeve. His head snapped up to find her watching him with those magnificent, shining eyes that never failed to make him go weak.

  “Jack, I’m sorry.”

  He heard the distress in her voice and could have kicked himself for putting her in such an untenable position. But at the same time his hopes rose when he saw the way she was looking at him. “I apologize, Samantha. The last thing I wanted was to offend you—”

  “Offend—” She seemed genuinely bewildered. “Oh no—no, you haven’t offended me, Jack!” She gave him a tremulous smile, and he could almost feel the effort it took for her to manage even that. “Stunned me, perhaps, but not offended me.”

  Jack studied her. “I can’t help the way I feel about you, Samantha. Believe me, I never expected this. I meant only to be your friend.”

  She shook her head, averting her eyes. “I never thought of anything like this either. Perhaps if I’d only realized sooner—”

  She let her words drift off, unfinished.

  Jack pulled at his fingers, cracking his knuckles. He suddenly felt coarse and common—a feeling he would have thought long forgotten, but one that occasionally tore at him when he least expected it. A feeling that never came without an accompanying wave of self-disgust.

  “Well,” he managed to say with a lame attempt at a smile, “there’s no help for it now. It seems to me that the entire city must know how I feel. I can’t look at you without gaping like a lovesick schoolboy.”

  She turned back to him, her expression one of dismay. “Oh, Jack! I’m sorry. But I thought you understood.”

  Jack groped to recover his control of the situation, which he felt rapidly spinning away from him. “Samantha, let me be altogether honest with you. I have no illusions about myself. I’ve never tried to deny what I am, and I’ve never tried to lie to you. I’m bitterly aware that you could have your choice from all number of respectable fellows—the veritable cream of society, I’m sure—who would be far more in keeping with your background and station.”

  He took a breath, then hurried on. “But for all I lack in that regard, I believe I could more than compensate in terms of—well, to be blunt, Samantha, I can give you just about anything you’d ever want! And it would be my greatest pleasure to do just that! Isn’t that worth anything at all to you?” He paused, “Isn’t it?”

  To Jack’s dismay, he saw that she was trembling, a look of extreme distress settling over her features. “Oh, Jack! Please try to understand! This isn’t about you or the kind of man you are—and it certainly isn’t about what you can or can’t give me! This is about me!”

  Jack stared at her in bewilderment. She looked absolutely miserable, and for the first time since he’d launched tonight’s campaign, he began to realize that he might have done a terrible thing. Clearly, he had put her in an utterly wretched position. She looked as if she were about to weep.

  “I was wrong to do this,” he said, trying to ignore the painful tightness in his chest. “Somehow I thought—”

  “I can’t possibly marry you, Jack,” she interrupted, almost as if she hadn’t heard him. “Don’t you see—I can’t marry anyone!” She stopped, and the look of raw anguish that lashed her features hit Jack like a hammer blow. “That doesn’t mean I don’t love you—”

  She stopped, her hand going to her mouth, her eyes widening as if she were stunned by her own words.

  For an instant, Jack felt a surge of hope, and he reached for her again.

  But she drew back, shaking her head. “I can’t allow myself to…love you. I can’t! Not after—Bronson.”

  Jack stared at her, understanding finally dawning as he saw the torment in her eyes. “Samantha—I would never—never—hurt you! Whatever happened between you and Harte, you can’t think it would be like that with me. Surely you know me better than that by now!”

  Jack was totally unprepared for the blast of bitterness that met his words. “I thought I knew Bronson Harte, too! But I couldn’t have been more wrong!”

  She fairly hurled the words at him. “You don’t know what it was like for me! You couldn’t possibly imagine what it was like! No, I can’t believe you would ever hurt me. But then I never dreamed that Bronson would hurt me either.”

  She stopped, her voice breaking as she added, “As it was, he would more than likely have killed me—if he hadn’t killed himself first!”

  20

  SAMANTHA’S SECRET

  Too long a sacrifice

  Can make a stone of the heart.

  W. B. YEATS

  They sat staring at each other in what was clearly mutual astonishment. Jack saw that she had been taken as unawares by her extraordinary disclosure as he had been, hearing it.

  “Harte committed suicide?” he said softly.

  Samantha nodded. He saw her bite her lip, obviously struggling to keep her emotions in check.

  “I’m sorry, Samantha. I didn’t know.”

  Pain, sharply drawn, constricted her features and made her appear suddenly older. “No one knew,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper as she looked away.

  She had knotted her hands into fists, and Jack longed to cover them with his own. But he hesitated, not certain she would welcome any attempt to comfort her.

  “How?” he finally said.

  “Bronson had suffered from a heart condition for years.” Her words sounded strangled. As she spoke, she began to clasp and unclasp her hands in a strange, awkward rhythm. “He took quite a lot of medicine. The note he left for me indicated that he’d deliberately taken a massive over
dose with the express aim of ending his life.”

  Finally, she looked at him, and her stricken expression tore at Jack’s heart. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her. He wanted to heal her.

  Instead, he sat unmoving, feeling utterly, miserably helpless. “You said no one ever knew. What about his doctor?”

  She shook her head. “Ethan Carter—Bronson’s physician—was also a close friend. If he suspected anything, he kept it to himself. He continually tried to convince Bronson to retire, to live a more sedentary existence, but Bronson ignored him.” She glanced down at her hands and for a moment ceased wringing them. “In fact, during the last few months of his life he seemed to push himself even more relentlessly. When he died, the assumption was made that his heart had finally given out, and it probably would have, had he continued on as he had been. But it wasn’t exertion that killed him.”

  She drew in a long, ragged breath, as if the disclosure had completely drained her of all her strength.

  Jack studied her, sensed the effort she was making to keep from falling apart. “Why didn’t you tell anyone, Samantha?”

  She raised her eyes to his.

  “Why the secrecy?” he said gently.

  Her eyes flickered with what might have been painful memories. “At first, I suppose I meant to protect his reputation, his…name. Bronson was held in high esteem by a great many people. And there were his parents to consider. They were good people, and getting on in years—they’re both gone now—and Bronson was their only son. The truth would have devastated them. Losing him was a terrible blow in itself, but at least they were able to find comfort in…the kind of life he’d led, the good he’d done.”

  Jack felt an unreasonable stab of anger that she would go to such lengths to protect the memory of a man who had caused her such incredible anguish. Apparently, she sensed his resentment, for she shook her head slightly as if to ward off any objection he might make.

  “Bronson did accomplish quite a lot of good, Jack. There are countless numbers of people who might never have found faith without his preaching, his writings—his attention to their needs.” Her voice trembled as she added, “I’ve never understood how he could be such a saint to so many and yet be…as he was with me.”