He crossed his arms over his small chest and said, with a stubbornness that sounded like an echo of Casey, “I am not goin’, I’ll go stay with Uncle Pat. He said I can come visit his office one day.”
She sighed. Conor was about an inch shy of staging a full-scale mutiny, or just detonating in spectacular Riordan fashion. She was all too familiar with the signs. “Uncle Pat can’t take you tomorrow, he’s in court this week. I promised Noah we would come visit. He said he’ll bring the horses in from the pasture so you can ride. Just wait until you see Khamsin, he’s beautiful, and he’s our horse, Noah gave him to us for a gift.”
Noah had left it to her to name the colt and she’d chosen the name Khamsin, which was the Arabic word for a warm wind which blew through the desert in the spring.
“He gave him to you,” Conor said, still mutinous, though with a small gleam of curiosity in his expression. Like her, Conor had a great weakness for horses and was hard-pressed to resist such riches as an afternoon of riding.
“Yes, he did, but he meant the horse to be for all of us, as a family.”
“He is not my family,” Conor said, the stubborn fury back full force.
“No, not yet, but he will be once I marry him,” she said. “He will be your stepfather.”
Conor just shook his head. “No, he won’t. I have a daddy.”
She took a deep breath and marshalled her patience. Conor had a right to be angry, but right now she did not have the time to deal with it. When she had explained to him that she was engaged to marry Noah, he had glared at her and then went up the stairs and shut his bedroom door with a resounding thump. He had refused to talk to her about it since.
“Yes, sweetheart you do have a daddy. Me marrying Noah will never change that. You can only have one daddy, but as he’s not here to be with us any more, I have decided to marry Noah.”
There was a long silence, during which she kneaded down the bread she had rising and separated it into its loaves, then covered the dough for its final rising before Conor deigned to speak.
“Can Vanya come with us?” he asked, still clearly angry, but willing to make the sacrifice if he could have the comfort of Vanya with him. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his eyes were still a bit grey, though she could tell he was no longer in danger of going off like a pressure cooker with a loose bolt.
“You can ask him if he would like to, but he might say no, Conor.”
Much to her relief, Vanya agreed to come along with them, though he wasn’t in much better spirits about it than Conor. “I am not,” he said, looking down his beautifully patrician nose, “liking him, as you know, but I am loving you and the children, so for that reason only, I will go.”
She threw her arms around him in gratitude. “Oh Vanya, I am loving you too, thank you for making this whole thing easier.”
“Just be certain of what you are doing, moy podrooga. I wish for you to be happy, not just secure.”
“I’m sure I will be happy,” she said, with a forced jollity to her tone that didn’t fool Vanya in the least. If anyone understood that what a person wanted and what a person got were two totally different things, it was this sweet friend of hers, whom she was going to miss terribly when she moved into Noah’s house.
“We have a saying in Russia, Happiness is not a horse; you cannot harness it.”
And that, thought Pamela, was only too true. Damned Russians and their honesty.
The next day dawned sunny and bright, and she was grateful for the fair weather, because the idea of all of them being penned up together in Noah’s house didn’t bear thinking about. She tried not to think about the fact that in a couple of very short months, they would be living there as a family. Conor’s mood had been somewhat ameliorated by Vanya accompanying them. Vanya kept everyone distracted with silly tales and songs in the car, while she drove. She looked at her baby girl in the rear-view mirror. Isabelle’s dark curls were bouncing madly around her tiny face and she was singing to herself, blissfully out of tune as she kept time with tiny thumps of her hand on the car window. Conor was sitting beside her, quiet, a carved horse clutched fast in his hands. She frowned; she hadn’t seen the carved horse before, even though it looked vaguely familiar in some way. She turned her attention back to the road, as it didn’t do to get too distracted when traveling on such narrow roads where people drove like they were on a six-lane freeway.
Noah was outside with the horses when they arrived. She appreciated that he had chosen to greet them in this way, casually, as if they dropped by often and it was not the sort of visit that made her stomach feel as though it was rife with angry butterflies.
It was an idyllic day to be here. The land unrolled around them in a blanket of stinging green growth and the sheep were out of their paddock and in the pasture with wobbly balls of white wool at their sides. The horses were milling around near the stable, sun gleaming off their coats. Ruby, a beautiful chestnut which Pamela had ridden a few times, gave a long whinny at the sight of her and trotted over to them.
Noah dug in his pocket, where he always kept a few sugar cubes for his horses. He held them out to Conor.
“Would ye like to give these to the horse? Her name is Ruby.”
Conor gave Noah a wary side eye, but took the sugar cubes and held them out in his hand. Ruby took them gently, her lips just barely grazing Conor’s palm.
“When ye live here, laddie, ye can ride her every day if ye care to, she’s nice an’ gentle.”
“I don’t want to come live here.”
“Conor,” Pamela said, voice stern.
“’Tis all right, Pamela, the laddie is allowed his own opinion.”
“Don’t call me laddie! Only Jamie can call me that,” Conor said hotly and Pamela opened her mouth to reprimand him for his rudeness, but Noah shook his head. They were all saved then by the arrival of Khamsin trotting up, beautiful neck arched and his coat as bright as freshly-polished glass. The colt went straight to Conor and nosed his velvety little muzzle right into Conor’s neck, and Conor laughed out loud. Pamela breathed a sigh of relief. Noah smiled at her over the heads of the colt and child, and shrugged as if to say, ‘It will take time.’
Kate took Isabelle by the hand, and Vanya said, “Come, Conor, your mama tells me there are new lambs in the byre, let’s go see them.” Khamsin trotted quite happily along with them, clearly as taken with Conor as her son was with him. She was about to follow, when Noah spoke.
“Pamela, can ye stay back a minute?”
She turned in surprise, halted by the tone in his words. Conor and Isabelle were already halfway down the path to the byre with Kate and Vanya. They would be fine for a few minutes without her.
He had something in his hand, and when she realized what it was—a tiny blue velvet box—she felt a rush of panic. Noah stepped toward her and opened the box.
“I wanted to get ye a ring, because without it this doesn’t seem entirely official, an’ I would just as soon that it did. The ring will formalize things.”
“I…but you gave me Khamsin instead of a ring,” she blurted out, her throat dry.
“Aye, the more I thought on it, though, the more I felt a ring necessary. It’s maybe more for me than you, come right down to it. Will ye wear it?”
She found she couldn’t respond, the panic that had started in her chest washed through her body down into her legs which felt like they might give out at any second. Noah opened the box and held it out to her.
It was a tear-drop sapphire, a deep and glowing blue and it was rather shockingly large. She swallowed. Casey’s silver band was still on the ring finger of her left hand. The thought of taking it off made the bottom of her stomach drop out and she clenched her hand around the narrow band, knowing that if she was to find the courage to take it off, it would have to be done privately. Noah closed the lid and handed her the box. Clearly, he had seen the reflexive clutch of her hand.
“When ye’re ready,” he said gently and leaned over to kiss her on th
e cheek.
“Thank you,” she looked up at him. She appreciated that he understood, she only hoped that he wasn’t hurt by her inability to put his ring on this minute.
“Pamela, I know this is not a love match for the two of us, but we can make our own rules as we go along, aye?”
She nodded. “Thank you for being patient with me, Noah, it means a great deal.”
“Ye’re welcome,” he said gruffly. “Now let’s go out an’ see those lambs.”
Viewing the lambs, and even having Noah tell him he could choose one for his own, had done little to soften Conor’s attitude toward the man. He had eaten his supper when they arrived home, but he hadn’t spoken much, not even when she tried to draw him out about Khamsin with whom he was in fast and furious mutual love. When it came to horses and the ocean, Conor was her son; when it came to pure undiluted stubbornness, he was his father’s through and through. She allowed him his space and let him go about his business in silence for the evening. He told her he didn’t want his bedtime story, but he said it politely, if a touch frostily. Like his Uncle Patrick, Conor needed time to think things through in his own manner, without being pushed to an opinion or answer. She understood his anger, and his confusion, she felt a bit that way herself most days. She wasn’t certain how to fix it for him, but she did want to speak with him before he went to sleep, so that there was peace in the house tonight. Both for his sake and for hers.
It was cool in the children’s room and Isabelle was snuggled up under her red quilt, her curls a wild halo around her tiny face. Conor’s eyes were shut but she had long known the difference between her sleeping son and her awake son and knew he was pretending. He was lying on his back with his blankets clutched firmly under his chin. She raised an eyebrow, if he was truly asleep the blankets would have been on the floor and he would be sprawled on his tummy.
She leaned down and kissed his forehead. His eyes remained firmly shut.
“Conor, I know you’re awake, sweetheart. Sit up, mama needs to talk to you.”
She sat down on the side of the bed as Conor sat up and looked at her with the familiar stubborn set to his chin that he’d had since birth.
“We have to talk about moving, Conor. We have to talk about me marrying Noah.”
“Uncle Pat talked to me about Noah.” His little face was flushed, and she could tell he was using all his resources so that he would not cry.
“Did he then? What did Uncle Pat have to say about Noah?”
“He told me that my daddy would want me to be good, an’ to be s-sup-su-”
“Supportive?”
“Aye, that’s the word he said. He told me what it means, too,” Conor said, somewhat defensively lest she was about to cast aspersions on his understanding. “I don’t think Daddy would like Mister Noah, an’ I know Jamie doesn’t like him,” he added, as if the mention of Jamie ought to underscore his own opinion as being true and just.
Pamela sighed. Certainly that was true. Conor remembered Casey well enough to know that, and he didn’t need to be extra sensitive to know how Jamie felt about Noah.
“No, Jamie doesn’t like him, but I do and I think, Conor, if you give it time and are fair with him, you might learn to like him, too. I don’t expect you will right away, but you do need to give him a chance. He wants to have a good relationship with you, and so you need to meet him at least part way—do you understand what that means?”
“Aye,” he said, small face still troubled. “It means you want me to be nice to him. If you have to get married, I wish you would marry Jamie. He loves all of us, not just you.”
“Jamie is already married, Conor, he can’t have two wives.”
He swallowed, looking down at the blue squares of his quilt. “I know that, Mama, I just miss him.”
“I do too, Conor. I think we might always miss Jamie. We’re going to be all right, though, we have each other and that’s enough.” And it would have been enough, had she not been terrified of the letters that continued to come to her home. She would have married Beelzebub himself to keep her children safe. Noah was hardly Beelzebub, though she supposed Jamie and Conor might dispute that. No one really understood it, but she was fond of Noah and she did enjoy his company. It was enough to begin a marriage.
“Mama, I love you,” Conor said, his eyes bright with tears. He threw his arms around her neck, squeezing her hard, his little body straining with emotion. He’d had to face so much for someone still so young, and he had already shown a depth of character which told her that one day he would be a very fine man.
“I love you too, baby, so much,” she said, burying her face in his hair and holding him as tightly as she could to her. He smelled of all the things that were home to her—green growing things and horses and baking bread and the rough and tumble little boy that he was.
She stayed with him until he fell asleep, too troubled in mind herself to rest. There was something she had to do, and until she did there would be no ease for her. She had put the ring on the mantle of the hearth, hiding it behind the carving of a bird. Hiding it had done little good, for through dinner and baths and bedtime routine, the ring had been a small coal burning through her consciousness.
After Conor fell asleep she went downstairs and tidied up the kitchen and turned off all the lights, except the one over the stove that she had left burning every night for nearly three years. She went upstairs with Noah’s ring, beautiful and shimmering in its velvet bed. It was ironic that he had chosen a sapphire because it was a long ago memory of seeing a sapphire in the window of a jewelry store in Dublin which had caused Casey to call her Jewel.
She sat on the side of the bed and took a long and shaky breath. She had a dull headache setting up house behind her eyes. Sometimes it felt to her like her life had assumed a strange shape she was never going to fully understand. Because things had been so natural with Casey, because she had loved him so, their daily life had possessed a fluidity where the borders moved and changed, but it was a natural movement. Now, it felt as if she moved from fear to sorrow to anger and then back again. This was not a natural country to live in, though, and therefore different rules applied. Everywhere in the world people married for all sorts of reasons, and love wasn’t always part of the equation.
She put her hands on her knees, the low flame from the hearth sparking off her wedding ring. She remembered the day Casey had put it on her hand, and how hard he had worked in order to buy it. They hadn’t had two pennies to rub together at the time and so he had put in extra shifts so he could get it for her. Their wedding had been such an impromptu affair that he gave her the ring two months later. In bed, no less. She smiled at the memory. She had been lying in the crook of his arm, while they chatted about the day, the night as soft as navy silk around them.
“Give me yer hand, woman,” he said, just when he had been quiet so long that she thought he must have drifted off. “Not that one, the other.”
She had given him her left hand then and he had held it up so that the light that drifted through their bedroom window outlined it in a soft ivory-blue. And then he had slid the ring over her finger and kissed her hand, softly.
“We’ve been married the two months today, I thought it was past time I put a ring on yer hand.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, tears pricking at the back of her eyes. They had very little money and she hadn’t thought about a ring.
“No, it’s not, Jewel, it’s a plain little band, an’ one day I hope to replace it with somethin’ much nicer an’ fittin’ for that lovely hand of yers.”
“I won’t ever take it off, you’ll just have to add on to it.”
“Aye, I can do that,” he said and kissed her. “For now I just wanted ye to have somethin’ tangible about ye each day to remind ye that I am yers an’ ye’re mine, for the rest of our lives.”
“I don’t need reminding of that, Casey. I know it in my cells, you’re my mate.”
The words came back to her now. They had been tr
ue when she had spoken them, and they were true now. His absence did not lessen the veracity contained therein. Sometimes love seemed like a luxury which her present life could no longer afford. Noah had said when she was ready, but she would never be ready, not really, so there was no use in putting it off for a day that would not come.
She looked at the small blue velvet box. The ring was beautiful, even if it would never look as right on her hand as this narrow silver band. She put her fingers around Casey’s ring. It was just a little piece of metal and yet it felt like she was about to rip away some vital part of her own body. She tightened her grip and pulled it up the finger and off. The pain of it was visceral and it took her breath away for a moment. This longing, this wanting more and all of a man who had long been dead—yes, she had to admit it—dead, was akin to slowly bleeding to death. Except that if she were actually physically bleeding she would eventually die from it, whereas this figurative bleeding would never end. It might, one day in the far future, slow to a trickle but it would never fully stop. She had to live with that and accept it was part of who she now was.
She got up and put the ring inside a scarf that Casey had given her when they lived in Boston, because he said it matched her eyes. And then she sat back down on the bed they had once shared and cried until, exhausted, she fell asleep.
Part Nine
Cosan na Marbh
August 1978-November 1978
Chapter Seventy-seven
The Country of Shadows
“I SHOULD LIKE TO KNOW what the fock ye think ye are doin’?”
“Please come in, Patrick,” Pamela said and stepped aside. He came in, the steam fairly puffing from his ears, despite the rain running in rivulets down his face and his coat. He took his jacket off, and hung it on a hook to dry. He followed her into the kitchen and she could feel him behind her, like a steaming kettle about to go off in an eruption of boiling water. She had a good notion why he was here, for Gert had seen the ring on her finger the day before. She had hoped to tell Pat about the engagement in a much gentler fashion, not that it was likely to help.
In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4) Page 87
