Song of Erin

by BJ Hoff

  He stopped in the hallway at the sight of her, close enough to Samantha that she could see the searing blaze of fury in his eyes. A shock of black hair had fallen over his brow, and his face was an angry crimson. He stood there, legs astride, his black topcoat hanging open, his eyes wild, his face a dark thunderhead.

  For the first time, Samantha was afraid of him.

  He closed the distance between them in two wide steps, coming to stand directly in front of her. “Did you know about this?” he grated out in a tone Samantha had never heard from him before. “Did you?”

  “Know about what? Jack—what’s wrong?” Instinctively, Samantha reached a tentative hand to his arm. He shook her off with a violence that stunned her and left her trembling.

  At that moment, David Leslie came up the stairway, taking the steps two at a time.

  He hesitated at the top when he saw Samantha and Jack. “Samantha?” He looked from one to the other. “What’s happened?”

  Jack ignored him, his eyes boring into Samantha. “I asked you if you knew,” he said again with the same raw bitterness in his voice.

  “Knew what? Jack—”

  Suddenly, he uttered a low sound in his throat and shoved his way past her. When David Leslie would have stopped him at the top of the steps, Jack hurled him aside with such force Samantha thought the young physician would surely go hurtling down the stairway.

  She cried out Jack’s name, but he was already barreling down the steps.

  David Leslie turned toward her, his dazed expression mirroring Samantha’s own state of shock and bewilderment. At that instant, a long, chilling wail shattered their inertia and sent them rushing toward Terese’s room.

  36

  DARKNESS AND DECEPTION

  Why is it effects are greater than their causes…

  And the most deceived be she who least suspects?

  OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY

  It took well over an hour for Samantha and David Leslie to get the entire story of what had transpired between Jack and Terese. A large part of that time was spent simply trying to calm Terese enough that she could tell them anything.

  She seemed caught in the grip of near hysteria when they reached her. Indeed, Samantha feared that the girl might have suffered a kind of emotional breakdown. Although David seemed inclined to reserve his opinion, Samantha could tell that he, too, was deeply concerned.

  Because of the baby, he didn’t administer a sedative, but instead relied merely on smelling salts and a cold cloth. And prayer.

  Samantha quickly learned that David Leslie was one physician who relied as much—perhaps even more—on divine power as he did on his own medical skills, exceptional as they seemed to be. He bade Samantha to pray as he worked over Terese, and clearly he was praying, too. In truth, Samantha sensed he had not ceased praying since they entered Terese’s room.

  At first, much of the girl’s account had been almost unintelligible, even irrational. But after David finally got her to bed, applied the salts, and soothed her with a continuous stream of reassurances, she began to make herself understood. Even so, her disjointed, fragmented story seemed almost unimaginable.

  What Samantha did manage to glean left her reeling in confusion and disbelief. Much of it made no sense, but as she stood at the foot of the bed, watching David with Terese and listening to the girl’s ranting, she slowly, little by little, began to fit the pieces together.

  Whatever had transpired between Terese and Jack had obviously been ugly, even violent, and had left Terese convinced that he meant to take her baby away from her, once it was born. If she was to be believed, Jack had made a number of particularly vile accusations during the heated exchange, had even threatened her.

  As much as Samantha wanted not to believe what she was hearing, she had seen Jack’s face for herself. The man who had come charging out of Terese’s bedroom had been enraged, capable of anything.

  Incredibly, it seemed that Terese had not been assaulted after all—there had been no rape. Jack’s brother had evidently fathered the child during the course of an affair, and together the two of them—Brady and Terese—had woven a web of deceit that had fooled everyone, including Jack.

  But now that he knew the truth, he was threatening to take the child.

  Again Samantha found herself hard pressed to credit Jack with such unthinkable cruelty. And yet…there were the old stories, the rumors of his ruthless business dealings, his relentless and often merciless pursuit of anything he wanted. The men he had ruined. The corruption that shadowed him. And always, his vicious, fearful temper.

  Samantha could not forget the look in his eyes: the wildness, the explosive rage she had seen there when he confronted her on the landing. By now, she was more than bewildered and shocked by Terese’s account: She was heartsick and terrified that everything the girl had told them might be true.

  Without warning, Terese suddenly pulled Samantha back to her surroundings, pushing herself up from the pillows and, her eyes still glazed but more lucid now, calling out to her. Samantha hurried around to the side of the bed and took her hand. For a moment, she feared the girl was going to lapse into yet another fit of mindless weeping. Instead, she seized Samantha’s hand and began to repeat the same thing over and over again, like a frenzied litany: “He’s going to take my baby, Samantha! He’s going to take my baby away from me!”

  When Samantha tried to reassure her, Terese lifted herself even more, grasping Samantha’s arm and pleading, “Help me, Samantha! Please! You have to stop him!”

  Overcome by pity for the girl and her own feelings of helplessness, Samantha again attempted to comfort her. “Terese, I’m sure Jack didn’t mean anything he said—he wouldn’t—”

  Terese clutched at Samantha’s arm. “No, Samantha, you don’t understand! You didn’t hear him. He wants the babe for you! He told me so. He told me how you—can’t have children. He means for you to have my baby! He says you’ll marry him then. Oh, Samantha, please—don’t let him do this! Don’t let him take my baby!”

  Samantha stood staring at Terese Sheridan. So great was her shock, so brutal the pain that knifed through her, that she thought her heart would surely shatter to pieces.

  At the same time, a terrible anger began to surface in her. “Jack…actually said that? That he wants the baby for me?”

  Terese nodded. She was weeping again. “And when he found out about Brady and me—it only made things worse! He was furious! He was like a crazy man!”

  Terese’s hand tightened still more on Samantha’s arm. “You can reason with him, Samantha,” she said, her voice lower but her eyes still burning with desperation. “I’m nothing to Jack Kane! He doesn’t care what happens to me. But he does care about you, Samantha! Please—don’t let him do this!”

  The weight centered in Samantha’s chest grew even heavier. She patted Terese’s hand absently, all the while feeling as if she would be sick at any moment. She glanced at David Leslie, saw him watching her with something akin to pity.

  “It will be all right, Terese,” she managed to say, her voice sounding distant and strangled in her ears. “Just…you rest now. I’ll…take care of this. No one is going to take your baby from you.”

  Then she turned to David Leslie. “David—your buggy…may I use it, please?”

  He gave her a blank look. “My buggy?”

  Samantha nodded.

  “Well…of course, you can use it, but, Samantha, you can’t take a buggy out alone in this storm!” He stopped, glanced at Terese, and added uncertainly, “I don’t think I ought to leave—”

  “No, of course, you mustn’t leave. I can drive myself. Really,” she insisted at his dubious look. “I drove my mother’s buggy all the time when I was still at home. I’m quite capable.”

  “But it’s already dark, Samantha! It’s far too treacherous. At least, wait until tomorrow—”

  “David—please. I’ll walk if I must, but I have to do this. I have to see Jack tonight.”

  He stud
ied her, then, with obvious reluctance, gave a nod of assent. “I wish you wouldn’t, but—please, Samantha, be careful.”

  But Samantha was already halfway across the room, stopping only long enough to gather her coat and hat from the chair.

  Jack sat hunched over his desk, the dim light from the oil lamp on his desk casting shadows over the blank piece of paper in front of him. He was making no pretense of working. He could think of nothing else, indeed had thought of nothing else since leaving Grace Mission, but Brady’s betrayal.

  He had no doubt but that Terese Sheridan had finally spoken the truth. He had known it the instant the words left her mouth, in spite of his initial attempt to deny it. He hated admitting it, even to himself, but he knew that Brady was just irresponsible and selfish enough to be guilty of the girl’s accusations. It both infuriated him and sickened him that his brother had not been man enough to admit to his own child, had instead allowed the girl he had wronged—scarcely more than a child herself—to not only shoulder the entire burden alone, but to live a lie in the process.

  Not that the Sheridan girl was innocent. Apparently, she had been a willing enough participant in the affair itself. But as for the rest of it, he tended to believe her insistence that Brady had spun the lie, and she had simply gone along with it, not knowing what else to do by then.

  Jack shook his head. “Blood tells,” ’twas often said, and perhaps it was truer than anyone thought. Perhaps his younger brother was merely displaying the same craven willfulness of the British soldier who had sired him. For whatever the man had been who forced himself on their mother—and God only knew how many other women that hellish night—he had above all else been an ignoble, spineless brute. Was it possible for such a thing to be passed down from one generation to another?

  He expelled a harsh, ragged sigh. Perhaps he had been wrong all these years, to keep the truth from Brady. He wondered now if it would have made any conceivable difference, had he told him everything from the beginning.

  He had thought to give the boy an untroubled mind, to protect him from the painful truth about the vicious assault on their mother—the assault of which Brady was the fruit. Had he erred, then, in concealing the fact that his brother was not, after all, the son of Sean Kane, an allegedly fearless—or would that be foolish?—rebel leader, that he was in fact the seed of a drunken soldier of the Crown, bent on revenge? Revenge for a night raid led by Sean Kane and some of his cohorts. A raid for which their mother, God rest her soul—and others—had paid a terrible, obscene price.

  Would the truth somehow have made Brady stronger, more careful of his actions and their consequences? Or, as Jack had feared, would it have made him even wilder and more reckless than he was?

  If he were altogether honest, he would have to concede that Brady’s parentage was not the only unpleasantness from which he had shielded the boy over the years. Indeed, he was beginning to think he might have shielded his brother from too much, too long.

  When Brady got into trouble with the nuns at school, Jack had invariably intervened, playing on their sympathy for the “poor, motherless boy,” whose only home life consisted of a too-busy older brother and a housekeeper. And those times when Brady’s gambling debts soared above what his monthly stipend could cover, Jack had never permitted the thugs to take it out of his hide, but instead bailed him out, the only punishment a stern lecture—which was promptly forgotten—and some menial jobs about the house, which were likewise either forgotten or ignored.

  There had been a girl or two as well—summarily condemned by Jack as fortune hunters before he paid them off and sent them packing.

  Not so different a scenario as what he had thought to enact with Terese Sheridan, he thought guiltily.

  He had been holding a cigar between his fingers, unlighted and forgotten, and now he crushed it in his hand and tossed it onto the floor. After a moment, he propped his elbows on top of the desk and put his head between his hands, squeezing his temples in an attempt to blunt the brain-splitting headache that had begun on the frenzied drive back to the office.

  The pain in his head, however, was nothing as compared to the immense black pain in his soul. He felt as if the center of his being had been bayoneted, brutally ripped through.

  He would have thought he had known despair before tonight, but the raw, gaping hole that now opened somewhere inside him was as agonizing as any desolation he had ever suffered. He felt as if it might well tear him asunder before the night was done.

  And Brady’s deceit was only a part of it. Jack could still see the stark lines of terror engraved upon the Sheridan girl’s face, and the awful thing of it was that for a moment he had actually reveled in her fear of him.

  But the worst had been Samantha: the way she had looked at him, the unmistakable horror in her eyes that, at least at that moment, had not even moved him.

  By now the Sheridan girl would have told Samantha everything. No longer would she doubt the unsavory stories, the rumors that dogged him; from this night on, she would believe them and even worse.

  And she would be justified entirely. Oh, he had improved his behavior some over the years, modified his dealings to some extent, even played at being respectable. After meeting Samantha, he had taken his efforts even more seriously. But had he ever actually believed he could change?

  Perhaps for a time. A very brief time. No doubt that accounted for his rash promise to Samantha that he would attempt to be the kind of man she deserved, the kind of man she wanted him to be. A man she could trust.

  But while he might have been able to fool Samantha, he had never once managed to deceive himself. Inside, tenuously concealed, lurking just behind the facade he had erected, was the same man he had always been, the man he was reputed to be.

  Samantha knew by now that his promises were false. Unreliable. Worthless.

  His heart was as black and as cold as the pit itself. For a moment his mind raced back to the evening in Philadelphia when he had met with Edgar Poe. He remembered the decadence he had sensed about the man, the abhorrent darkness, and how shaken he had been when he realized that perhaps the reason Poe evoked such a conflict of feelings in him—feelings that ranged all the way from a reluctant sort of fascination to a chilling kind of dread—was the fear that the same darkness resided in himself. So eager had he been to get away from the man, to return to Samantha—the brightness and the goodness of her—that he had been almost rude.

  His light had been Samantha, and she was lost to him. Now there was no light left to him, only darkness.

  The old black melancholy draped itself over him like a shroud. At the back of his mind, he was aware that he was sinking quickly into a disgusting state of mawkishness. Only his fierce aversion to self-pity kept him from sliding the rest of the way down into the loathsome swamp of Irish despondency.

  At least he could do the humane thing for Terese Sheridan. He would go back to the mission tomorrow and put the girl’s fears to rest. There was no reason to terrorize her any longer. Without Samantha, why would he want someone else’s child—even his brother’s?

  No, Terese could keep her baby, and the Vanguard would keep the resettlement agreement intact. After all, the girl had been duped by a master, he thought bitterly. Brady was nothing if not the consummate confidence man.

  He would make sure she and the child were taken care of; that much, at least he could do. There would be Cavan to deal with, of course. The lad knew nothing as yet. Once his sister had bent his ear, no doubt he would leave the Vanguard’s employ. But he was a good enough reporter and writer to land a job on any other newspaper in the city—with or without a reference from Jack, though he would surely give him a sterling one if need be.

  It occurred to Jack that he would miss Cavan Sheridan, and he was saddened by the realization. Strange entirely, the things one recognized when it was too late.

  As for Brady…Jack glanced down at the blank paper in front of him, then reached for a fresh cigar. After lighting it, he took up his p
en and began to compose a letter to his brother. It struck him that he didn’t even have a current address. He supposed he would simply post it to the one in Galway in hopes the young fool had at least taken measures to have his mail forwarded, wherever he was.

  Jack had once thought that, should he ever decide to tell the boy the truth about his brutal beginnings, he would tell him face-to-face and be prepared to help him deal with the shock. But he was now convinced he had waited too long as it was, had protected Brady to a fault, perhaps had even inadvertently encouraged his lack of character. He would write him this very night with the whole story and let him take the blow on his own, to deal with it however he could.

  He would, of course, tell him he knew about the affair with Terese, the baby, and the lie Brady had fostered. He would also make it clear that from now on Brady would have to earn his keep—and he meant exactly that: He would earn it, whether from the Vanguard’s payroll or somewhere else. He would do the job, or there would be no pay.

  He would also suggest that, as long as he was being paid by the Vanguard, Brady would apply a portion of his salary to his child’s support.

  But Jack knew even as he wrote that he could not bring himself to do the one thing Brady apparently feared: He could not completely reject his brother. He was still Brady, the boy he had raised more as a son. And the bitter truth was that Brady’s deception, painful as it was, somehow seemed no worse than his own.

  37

  I WOULD GIVE YOU THE WORLD…

  This heart, fill’d with fondness,

  Is wounded and weary.

  FROM WALSH’S IRISH POPULAR SONGS, 1847

  Half an hour later, Jack finished the letter, sealed it in an envelope, and stuffed it inside his waistcoat pocket for posting.

  He stood, easing his shoulders and wishing he had a powder for the pain in his skull. He walked over to look out the window, but there wasn’t much to be seen. It was still snowing, though the wind seemed to have died some. The street was all but deserted, except for Whitey and Snipe. The two newsboys typically slept under the steps of the bindery across the street but at the moment stood warming themselves at one of the trash barrels.