“It’s none so simple as that, men are men an’ they will want, particularly if they think they can’t have. Ye’ve been runnin’ around lookin’ as ye do long enough to know that.”
She ignored this statement, though he was right; however, he likely knew that already and didn’t need her confirmation of his opinion. She was finding his assertions somewhat annoying. She leaned down and picked a few more potatoes from the soil. It was companionable with the warmth of the sun and the snick of the spade in the earth. His voice, when he spoke, startled her slightly.
“Ye might want to think about it one day.”
“Think about what?” she asked putting one hand above her eyes so that she could see him properly.
“Havin’ a man in yer life. A man’s desire keeps a woman safe. If a woman accepts that desire, a man’s want puts a line around her, a boundary if ye will that keeps other males away. Men are predatory by nature, but they are even more territorial.”
“I’m doing all right on my own.”
“Ye’re not truly on yer own. Yer man on the hill would do anything he needed to keep ye safe. Yer husband kept ye safe to a certain extent when he was here with ye, an’ now Mr. Kirkpatrick does, no?”
“And you as well,” she said, meeting his gaze directly.
“It was part of the deal we made, you an’ I.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she said quietly. “The last man who came through said he knew I was your woman and that no man would dare touch a hair on my head, knowing what it would cost them.”
He shrugged. “If they believe I desire ye, what does that hurt? It keeps them clear of ye, does it not?”
“It does, though I am aware some men fear little when it comes to women.”
He leaned down to collect the seed heads off a few poppies which grew at the edge of the garden, and they worked in silence for a few minutes, the breeze bringing the soft sounds of the farm to them every now and again. There was a tractor trundling along somewhere in one of Noah’s fields, and the thin bellow of a calf sounded every now and again.
“Hand me that basket over there, would ye?”
She picked up the basket from the fence post where it was perched. It was filled with neatly-folded waxed paper, each labeled in a firm, squared-off hand that was unmistakably Noah’s.
“Seeds,” he said. “I gather what I can in the autumn. I’ve got strains of some things that haven’t been in circulation here since the last century. It was one thing my father taught me.”
He was a conundrum wrapped in a riddle, this man, she thought, watching as he carefully sorted through the papers until he found the one he was looking for and removed it, and then carefully poured the seeds he’d gathered into the small fold of paper. Thoughtful and careful with his land and his sister and yet she knew what else he did, what else he was—a man of blood and violence. It was hard to reconcile the two things sometimes, especially now as he handed the basket to her and pulled the weft of the conversation back to its original thread.
“I suppose ye will have experience of men who don’t like to hear no.”
“I think all women have experience of those sorts of men. Only in my own case it’s a bit more. I was raped by four men on a train,” she said. “I’m not a fool, I know a woman is never truly safe. I know I am kept safe by their own basic decency or else fear of you. Don’t think I’m naïve, I’m anything but.”
He looked at her for a long moment, gentian eyes thoughtful. “I’m sorry that happened to you, some people are pure animals an’ need to be dealt with as such.”
“They were, I believe,” she said quietly. “They are all dead, as far as I know.”
As usual, he understood what was not said, for he had lived in this country all his life and knew what forms justice took here.
“I would have done the same,” he said. “Such acts do not deserve understanding, nor compassion. I think ye’ll find, occasionally, that two wrongs do indeed make a right. Only blood answers for blood. Such men do not feel remorse.” He looked up at the sky and then back at her.
“Come away into the house, it’s goin’ to rain any minute.”
He was right for the clouds had come in swiftly, blotting out the sun and turning the bright green of the fields a dark emerald. The wind had picked up and she felt the chill of it on the bare nape of her neck. She followed him in, carrying the basket of seeds and waiting in the kitchen for him while he stowed his tools in the wee lean-to that was built onto the side of the house for that exact purpose. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove to heat and then wandered to the window that looked out over the fields to the dark hedges that bordered much of Noah’s farm.
Noah came in then and she turned from the window, putting a hand to her shorn head. She felt exposed to him in a way she had not before. He pulled out a chair for her at the worn wooden table where he sat to eat his solitary meals. He always seemed to sense her discomfort. She supposed he was well used to reading others and then using it to his advantage.
She sat and watched while he got the tea prepared, his movements swift and certain even in a task as small as this. He took out a tin and put a few biscuits onto a plate and brought it to the table along with the large blue teapot that looked like it had been through the wars, but was serviceable and made a hot and aromatic brew. The cookies were homemade and smelled strongly of ginger and brown sugar.
“Kate comes home once a week or so, an’ makes cookies an’ bread an’ such. She thinks I’ll starve to death without her to look after me.”
“Are you angry with her—for leaving?”
He took a moment before he answered, sitting down across from her first.
“I was at first—well, not angry so much as worried. She loves him, ye know. I hope he loves her just as well.”
“He does, he never would have agreed to her moving in with him if he didn’t.”
Noah nodded tersely and she understood that was as much conversation as they were going to have about Patrick and Kate. She felt a small frisson of relief on Patrick’s behalf. She had thought merely having a relationship with Noah’s sister had been an act of suicidal bravery on his part, never mind living in sin with the woman. Not that, Pat had assured her, he’d much to say about the matter. Kate had told him he needed looking after and before he knew it, he said, she was there cooking his meals, and ironing his shirts. He had said it with a fond exasperation in his voice that told Pamela he didn’t mind in the least. She had worried for him, after Sylvie’s death, that he wouldn’t recover enough to love again, but once she had seen him with Kate, she had understood that Patrick had met his match in more than one way.
She turned her attention back to the man at the table. He was pouring cream into a mug, then he filled it the rest of the way with tea and placed the mug on the table in front of her. It startled her to realize he knew how she took her tea.
They chatted away about the farm, about her own wee bit of land and the things that she needed to fix before winter set in and about the cost of hay and feed and what was the best remedy for the split hoof Paudeen had developed over the summer. From there, as was inevitable, they moved to the wider neighborhood and the events that had happened two days before.
There had been another killing—a couple on their way home with their teenage daughter, shot in their car as they turned into the drive leading to their farmhouse. The daughter had managed to escape by exiting the car and running across the field, even though she ended up in hospital with three bullets in her. Noah had his own theory on just why these murders were occurring.
“There’s a pattern here that’s maybe not readily noticeable in the midst of such tragedy but it’s there nonetheless. Everyone who’s been killed has been workin’ their way up into the middle class. Or had arrived there already. God forbid that a Catholic should aspire to get out of the muck of bein’ impoverished and uneducated.”
“You really believe that’s it?”
“Aye, well it’s part of it, it
’s not everythin’ entirely of course. Nothin’ in this country is ever that simple.”
“I suppose it’s fortunate for me that I’m running the construction company into the ground then and will soon bounce myself out of any hope of middle class membership,” she said gloomily.
“It’s not so bad as all that, surely,” he said. He leaned back in his chair, easy and relaxed and awaiting her answer. There was always the sense with this man that he listened carefully to everything that a person said and that he heard even more clearly what was not said, and tucked it all away like a squirrel storing nuts against a harsh winter, to be used for a future day.
“Yes, it is. People don’t have faith that I know what I’m doing, and they have a point there. I can’t fault them. I have a great foreman and he does know what he’s doing and he’s teaching me when he’s got the time. But it’s not easy securing new contracts. I’m pretty sure what I have gotten is Jamie somehow finding a way to send work my way. I still worry about those men coming back looking for more money, too.”
“None will touch ye an’ yours, ye needn’t worry about that.”
“How can you be so certain of that?” she asked and then realized the naïveté of the question even as it crossed her lips.
“Because as ruthless an’ awful as those men are, Pamela, they understand that I am more ruthless an’ awful still. They tested me on it a few times in the past an’ I taught them a lesson they are not likely to forget any time soon.”
It seemed that every time she forgot who she was dealing with in this man, he had a way of reminding her just whom she had gotten into the figurative bed with all those months ago. Despite all this she felt relaxed here in his home. It wasn’t necessary to talk around Noah to fill up empty space. He was comfortable with silence, though she supposed living on his own as he did that silence was a regular part of his life.
The light was fading in the kitchen and a vague chill heralded the approach of evening. It was time for her to go. Noah would have evening chores that needed his attention.
“Can I use your telephone?” she asked. “I need to call Pat to come get me on his way past.”
“I’ll take ye home,” he said easily. “Yer brother-in-law won’t be comfortable with ye bein’ here, so we’ll save him the worry, aye?”
“All right,” she said, “thank you.”
She stood and took the tea things to the big old stone sink. Noah had disappeared into another room, so she filled the sink with a bit of sudsy water and quickly washed the dishes. The smell of ginger still lingered in the air, along with the earthier scent of discarded tea leaves.
Noah came back into the kitchen, a bundle of papers tied with a piece of twine in hand.
“Here,” he said gruffly, “these are for you.”
She looked down to see that the papers were the small, waxen envelopes containing carefully collected seeds. Each envelope was labeled with its contents—lavender, hollyhocks, lettuce, beets, kale and so on. There were at least a dozen packets tied up in the twine.
“But,” she protested, “these are your saved seeds.”
“Aye, an’ ye’re one of the few people I know who will appreciate them. Grow somethin’ lovely for yer windowsills or plant them out in yer garden.”
She looked up at him, puzzled as she often was at the two faces of this man.
He laughed. “Pamela, ‘tis only seeds, not a sign of my goin’ soft. Take them or don’t. I just thought ye might like them.”
She flushed, feeling foolish. “Thank you, it’s very nice of you.”
He shrugged and grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair where it hung. She stood, tucking the packets of seeds into the pocket of her sweater. Despite the gruff tone, she knew it wasn’t something he would have given to just anyone and she was touched by the simple gesture.
He drove her home in the truck, quiet for the most part, focused on the narrow lanes. She was a little nervous with him behind the wheel, being that she was all too aware that the price on his head was higher than the price on any other head in Northern Ireland. It would be a coup of immense proportions for the security forces or any Loyalist paramilitary to kill Noah Murray. They would have no compunction about killing anyone in his company either.
He drove down the narrow lane to her home. She took a breath, as she always did when arriving home because the hope that one day Casey would be there, returned and safe, never completely left her.
Noah brought the truck to a halt, looking out over the yard, surveying the perimeter, as he always did in any new environment. It was something Casey had always done, too, and she recognized it for what it was. He looked casual; one arm draped lightly over the top of the steering wheel, but there was an energy coming off him that wasn’t casual in the least. He turned then and looked at her and she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, hand on the door, wishing she had leaped out as soon as he had pulled to a stop.
The gentian eyes made her prickly with unease; he saw too much, more than she was comfortable having a man see in her right now. Still, she didn’t expect the next words that came out of him, his usual forthrightness notwithstanding.
“Ye spoke before of not wantin’ a man’s desire, of wantin’ to be invisible to men,” he said quietly. “But I am a man, an’ yet ye seem to have no worries about me.”
“You’ve never said anything that made me think you even see me as a woman,” she said, feeling a blush rise hot in her face. “Not until today anyway.”
He looked long at her, his eyes cool and appraising. “Just because I don’t act on it, doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
She got out of the truck, and stood, feeling somewhat stunned, watching as he put the truck in reverse and backed it up her narrow drive. He waved in his abbreviated fashion as he pulled away down the lane, heading back toward his farm.
She stood for a moment longer, though she needed to get inside and start dinner before Pat dropped off Conor and Isabelle. They would be hungry and the evening routine would have to be gone through, even if it was started late. Conor was a stickler for those things, and she knew in part it gave his world a security since his father had disappeared and so they adhered to the routine at all costs because it was something she could give him to keep a boundary on his universe.
The sound of Noah’s motor died away into the evening light and his words echoed uncomfortably in her head. She wondered now if those words had been meant as an offer, rather than the casual comment they had seemed in the moment.
‘A man’s desire keeps a woman safe. If a woman accepts that desire, a man’s want puts a line around her, a boundary if ye will that keeps other males away.’
Chapter Thirty-five
Baptism of Light
“AND BEHOLD, a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot and cunning of heart. Because men by design will and do sin, and so women must be the example of good faith, of purity and morality. Women must help to guide men in the paths of righteousness for you are more innocent by your own design.”
The Reverend Lucien Broughton looked over the rim of his gilt-edged bible at the women clustered like a clutch of broody hens in the front pews. Elspeth sat alone, off to one side, keeping herself away and apart. She looked well tonight, she knew, and she didn’t want anyone wrinkling her new blue dress by crushing up against her or touching the material with their rough hands. It was silk, and by far the most luxurious garment she had ever owned in her life. She touched it now with a careful fingertip; it felt like a cloud, something light and airy and beautiful. She felt pretty in the dress. She pulled her attention back to what the Reverend was saying. He was, after all, speaking to her, which gave her no small thrill sitting here amongst all these women hanging breathlessly on his every word. And they were breathless, silly bloody cows with their tongues half lolling out, as if he would notice any of them. She realized suddenly that he was wrapping up his sermon and she ought to be listening closely in case there was an extra message for her in his final word
s of the night.
“I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified. And I am afraid, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness which they have committed.”
The Reverend Lucien Broughton closed his bible with a sorrowful air, his head bowed. Elspeth clasped her hands together until they ached, the bones singing with pain where her nails dug into the palms. Oh how she wished she could soothe his pain, the pain he carried because of the weakness of a man’s flesh, the pain caused by that whore with the dark hair.
“Let us pray,” he said. The light from the stained glass window above him fell in a bright shower of blue and gold all around him, limning his skin and hair with a delicate translucency. She closed her eyes, but then opened them a little to look around and see which women were watching him and not attending to their prayers properly. There was that little hussy, Sarah Taylor, who went through men like most women went through knickers, gazing at the Reverend—her Reverend—as if she was trying to forge a psychic link with him. She would eat him up and pick her teeth with the bones that one would, given half a chance. Well, she wouldn’t get the chance. What that strumpet didn’t understand was that the sermon tonight was for her. The message was a secret, a secret only she knew, told through bible verse.
After the prayer, he kept his head bowed for some little time as though in deep contemplation of his conversation with God. The women all held their breath, none moving until he brought his head up and gave them a weary smile. It was their cue to get up and move toward him. The usual crowd clustered around him, like flies to meat, Elspeth thought, narrowing her eyes at the lot of them. Half of them were married, too, but you’d not know it watching how they behaved. Like a bunch of gaudy parrots all trying to chatter away at him and get his attention for themselves. Imagine if they knew what he’d been up to and with a Papist whore no less. Yes, she thought with a wave of smugness, just imagine that.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 35
