He flexed the fingers of his right hand, remembering all too well the feel of her soft face as he’d touched her. It wouldn’t do. He was her employer. She worked and lived under his roof without a single relative about to look after her. She was a young, unwed woman living in the same house as a young, widowed man. There was a certain inherent vulnerability in her position.
“You are her employer,” he firmly reminded himself under his breath. “So long as that is true, you have to keep your distance.”
He would do all he could silently and out of view to keep the peace for her sake as much as his family’s, but no hint of his affection for her would ever show in his face or deeds.
There were some lines that simply could not be crossed.
Chapter Twenty-One
Katie sat in the elder O’Connors’ home listening in on the hastily called family meeting. All the O’Connor children, except Finbarr, and their spouses sat discussing Bob Archibald’s earlier threats and just what ought to be done about it.
She slumped down in her chair feeling all sorts of a fool. Ian and Tavish had warned her that she’d cause problems in town. Joseph had warned her. Even Biddy had hinted at it. She hadn’t believed any of them, not really.
Joseph hadn’t given her the scolding nor the “I told you so” she thoroughly deserved. He’d been kind and understanding. His touch had been so gentle and tender. And entirely unexpected. Heat spread through her at the memory.
Biddy took a seat beside her and squeezed her hand. “Chin up, Katie. ’Tisn’t nearly as bad as it likely seems.”
“Mr. Archibald said the Red Road would ‘do what they must.’ And he said it in such a way—” Katie felt unsettled all over again at the thought. “He was so angry.”
“This is nothing we haven’t dealt with before.” Biddy didn’t look overly shaken. Katie took some comfort in that.
“You think your family can calm things down, then?”
“Certainly.”
But the expressions on every other face weren’t nearly as comforting. Katie had only ever seen Mr. O’Connor smiling. At that moment, though, his mouth was pulled in a tight line, his eyes narrowed beneath his creased brow. Katie heard none of the lighthearted banter they’d shared at the céilí.
“We’ll need to get around and talk to the others before Seamus Kelly spreads his own ideas on how to handle it.” Thomas Dempsey, husband of the O’Connors’ oldest daughter, spoke with such wariness Katie knew Seamus Kelly must have caused difficulties before.
“I’d say watchful waiting is best,” Mr. O’Connor said. “And showing the Reds that our Miss Katie is looking to leave Joseph Archer’s employ.”
That caught Katie’s attention. “I what?”
“You told Biddy that your situation at Joseph’s is temporary. Is that still true?”
“Aye.” Katie nodded. She’d accepted that she’d be leaving, but the idea felt almost wrong all of a sudden. “Though I won’t be leaving for another two months or more. He’ll not have a new housekeeper for at least that long. And I’ve no other means of supporting myself.”
Looks of hesitant relief passed over all their faces.
“We just need word to spread down the Red Road that your position at Joseph’s is not permanent.” Mrs. O’Connor nodded again and again as she spoke. “But it’s equally important that the Irish know you’re not turning tail and running.”
“But if I were to go entirely, wouldn’t that calm everything? The Red Road couldn’t complain then.” She didn’t like the idea of leaving immediately but couldn’t help wondering if, at least in the long run, it might be the right answer.
Clearly no one else thought so. Katie looked from one of them to the next, wondering what about her suggestion had them worried. She was, after all, really only passing through on her long road home.
Biddy answered for them all. “The Red Road has managed to run a few of the Irish out of town. If they manage to force you out—you who have stood up to them already and found employment with a man they’re desperate to call their ally—they’d see that as a sign they could push out the rest of us. They’d only be encouraged to try that much harder.”
Katie let that thought roll around in her mind a moment. “So if I stay where I am, the Red Road will declare war. But if I leave town, they’ll come after you still?”
“Aye,” Mr. O’Connor nodded. “That about sums it up.”
What would happen when she eventually left? She had no intention of staying forever.
The discussions continued. Biddy leaned in and whispered. “’Tis a shame to spend your afternoon like this. I know for a fact Tavish, there, planned to take you on a picnic.”
A picnic. The idea fluttered about within her. “I’ve never been on a picnic.”
“Haven’t you?”
Katie shook her head.
“Well, it would have been a treat, let me tell you. He even had his mother pack up your meal so it’d be edible. Tavish hardly cooks, you know. Takes a lot of his meals with his parents or siblings. We take pity on the man, seeing as he can’t make anything apart from eggs and frying up a bit of meat.”
Katie looked over at Tavish. He sat deep in discussion with his family. He’d meant to treat her to a picnic. Though he teased and flirted a great deal, she couldn’t say he wasn’t thoughtful. “This picnic seems to have been a great deal of trouble to go to.”
“Aye, but worth it to him, I’m certain.”
Katie nearly laughed at the conspiratorial look on Biddy’s face. “You’re playing matchmaker, are you?”
Biddy shrugged, quite obviously holding back a grin. “Only saying what I’m seeing.”
“You think he fancies me?” She filled her voice with all the doubt she felt.
“I think he’s beginning to.”
Katie looked over at him in the exact moment he looked up at her. Tavish gave her one of his smiles that never failed to make her heart pound a bit.
“Now what say you to that?” Biddy whispered.
Katie lowered her eyes and shook her head. “I say men are too confusing for any woman’s good.”
Biddy only laughed. “Put on your best smile, Katie dear. One of those ‘confusing men’ is headed directly for you.”
Sure enough, Tavish reached her side in the next moment. He spoke to Biddy first.
“You and Mother have been assigned to go speak to a few of the ladies up the street.”
Biddy seemed to have been expecting that. “We’re to go begging for patience, then?”
Tavish nodded. Biddy moved to her mother-in-law’s side.
“What’ve you been assigned to do?” Katie asked.
“I have been given the very trying task of spending the afternoon with a certain mischief maker newly arrived from Baltimore.”
Mischief maker. “That would be me, then?” She tried to sound unbothered by how they all thought of her.
Tavish gave her an apologetic look. “A poor choice of words, I’m afraid.” He held a hand out to her. “Will you give me a chance to redeem myself, Sweet Katie?”
“I told you not to call me that.” She objected more out of embarrassment than true indignation.
He sat down next to her in the seat Biddy had vacated. “Does the name really bother you?”
“It doesn’t make a lick of sense is all.” She dropped her gaze to her clasped hands, hating that she was about to admit a failing in herself. “You can’t honestly say I’ve been ‘sweet’ to you.” Or to anyone else.
“I’ve a feeling, Katie, that underneath it all, you really are sweet.”
She vaguely remembered her mother calling her “sweetie” when she was a little girl. She even thought the endearment might have suited her once. But she’d not been that way in a very long time. Not since The Famine. A sweet little girl wouldn’t have refused to save her family’s home. A sweet little girl wouldn’t have cost her sister her life. She might once have been tender and loving, but life had made her hard.
&nbs
p; In that moment, she hated that about herself.
“Katie?”
She took a deep breath. Until she had composed herself again, she wouldn’t look up at him.
“Saints, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
She shook her head. “I don’t cry.” Emotion burned at the back of her eyes, even shook a bit in her voice, but there were no tears.
Tavish slipped his hand around hers. Katie held fast to him, finding an odd, unsettling kind of comfort in his touch.
“I’ve not made a very good start of it, but I hope you’ll still spend the afternoon with me.”
The house sat quiet and empty except for the two of them. The entire O’Connor clan had gone out to talk with their neighbors. Katie sat there, her hand in Tavish’s, taking in the peace of that moment.
Perhaps in his company she might find some respite from the worries always at the back of her mind. For that one afternoon she could pretend to be carefree.
She looked up at him and offered a smile that felt a touch uncertain. “I’ve never been on a picnic.”
He sighed a bit dramatically. “Biddy told my secret, I see. What a bunch of gossips I’m related to.”
“She also told me you didn’t cook a single bit of the picnic fare, a promising thing, seems to me.”
Tavish chuckled quietly. He stood and pulled her up with him. “Never mind my cooking skills. I’ve picked out the second finest view in all of Hope Springs.”
“Second finest?” She followed along willingly. That he still held her hand went a long way to soothing her tumultuous feelings. Her heart skipped about, to be sure, but his company mostly proved calming, reassuring. She’d never have guessed as much having seen what a shameless tease and flirt he was.
“Aye, the second finest view in town. I have to save something to build up to.”
“You mean to spend another afternoon with me?” She liked the idea very much indeed.
He tipped her a crooked smile and wiggled his eyebrows, a sight that made her smile in spite of her general tendency not to.
“There’s that smile I’ve been waiting for,” he said.
Two men had touched her in a matter of a couple hours. Yet, how different her reaction to the two. Joseph’s touch was confusing, upending. With Tavish, she simply found her smile growing along with her sense of contentment.
So which was preferable and which was best avoided?
They walked down the road, back toward his house, but didn’t turn in there. He led her up to a humble house situated not quite directly across from his. He waved as they passed. From the front window, a silhouette waved back.
“Whose house is this?” Katie couldn’t make out the person inside.
“My Granny Claire’s,” he answered. “When I asked if I could shamelessly use the view from the back of her land to impress a certain hard-to-impress lass, she agreed rather eagerly.”
Katie had met Mrs. Claire, a woman who couldn’t have had fewer than eighty years to her credit. She hadn’t realized until that moment that Mrs. Claire was Tavish’s grandmother.
He walked with her past the house and out among the fields. He held her hand in one of his, their picnic basket in his other hand. “How am I doing so far, Sweet Katie?”
“How are you doing at what?”
He looked across at her, the twinkle in his eyes as evident as ever. “In general.”
“’Tis hard to say, Tavish. You are sort of gazing into my eyes. If you start whispering, you’ll be breaking every promise you made to me about this outing of yours.” Light replies and hints of laughter came easier with him than they ever had before. ’Twas like the weight of life lifted for just a moment.
His gaze grew more intense. “If you didn’t have such beautiful brown eyes, Katie, I might be able to look away more easily.”
Heat crept over her cheeks. “They are quite an ordinary shade of brown, as you well know.”
But he shook his head. “They are nothing of the sort.”
“Flattery, Tavish?” She leveled him a look of reprimand.
“I swore off longing glances and whispered words, Sweet Katie. I said nothing about compliments.”
They stopped near the banks of the same river that ran past the Archer farm and the town itself. The buildings of Hope Springs were distant enough to be small but near enough to add color to the view. Hills stretched out beyond the town. Above, the sky was an uninterrupted swath of clearest blue.
“This is only the second finest view?”
Tavish laid out a woolen blanket on the rough ground at the water’s edge. “Aye. Someday I’ll show you the finest.”
“‘Someday’?” She sat on the blanket, though not directly beside him. She wasn’t yet that comfortable with him. “Seems I should tell you now, I’m only passing through this town. Add up enough tomorrows, and you’ll have run right past someday.”
He gave her a quizzical look. “You’re not really considering leaving, are you?”
She was more than considering it. Leaving was an unavoidable eventuality. “I’ve always intended to go back home, to find my family. I only came here to earn what I need to go back.”
“To Ireland?”
How could an Irishman sound so shocked at that? “My family is there.”
He looked almost troubled. “I don’t think you realize it, Katie, but you’ve become a rallying point for the Irish here. You’re like a promise of possibilities.” His usually jovial expression had disappeared behind a look of earnestness. “You’re the first of any of us to live off the Irish Road. You’ve crossed a boundary no one else has managed. And you stood up to Reverend Ford like a regular warrior.”
Katie had never blushed so much in her life as she did when Tavish took to complimenting her. “That was a fit of temper, not an act of heroism.”
Tavish leaned closer until she had no choice but to look directly into his intense blue gaze. “I’m not going to say the Irish have been saints in all this, but we’ve taken more than our share of beatings. Then you arrived, strong and determined and refusing to be cowed by any of it. Word is you’re even looking to start your own business, to make your own way.”
“But that’s not—”
“Katie.” He took her other hand. “Sweet Katie. You have no idea what you’ve given your countrymen here in this tiny corner of the world.”
“What have I given them?”
“Hope.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Katie’s thoughts roamed all over creation that night as she sat in the corner of the Archers’ parlor seeing to the family’s mending. She smiled at thoughts of the pleasant afternoon she’d spent with Tavish. Thoughts of the Red Road’s threats hung about as well. Perhaps louder than that, even, was Tavish’s insistence that she had become a point of pride for the Irish there, a reason to look on their own future with optimism. Katie didn’t want to be anyone’s banner.
Watching the Archer girls pass an evening with their father only refreshed in her mind how desperate her need for home truly was. The girls sat on either side of him on the sofa. Ivy listened to her father reading aloud. ’Twas a child’s fairy tale, from what Katie gathered. Her own father had told her many such tales of banshees and fey ones and leprechauns. She cherished the memory of those moments.
Emma sat reading a book of her own. Nine years old and she could read. At nine, Katie had been scrubbing floors and pots and dreaming of going back to a home that no longer existed.
As if sensing Katie’s gaze, Emma looked up at her. Had someone told her the day she arrived that seeing distrust in the face of either of the Archer girls would prick at her heart, Katie would never have believed it. Yet, she didn’t like the fact that she worried the girl as much as the girl worried her.
“Are you enjoying your book?” she asked from her chair just off to the side of the family.
Emma nodded.
“What’s the story about?”
“A boy in Holland,” Emma said, voice as quiet as ever.
“He and his sister want new skates, but their family is too poor.”
“Does he get a job, then?” That was always her father’s solution. When money grew tight, another of her brothers left to find work.
Emma held the book open against her. “They both already have jobs, but there still isn’t money for skates.”
Katie knew that situation well. Every cent she earned, she saved. There’d never been fancy things like skates, not even a ribbon for her hair that wasn’t second-hand.
“Have you read the book?” Emma asked. “Do you know if Hans gets his skates?”
Katie had never read a book in all her life. “I haven’t. But he seems like a fine lad. I’d like to think everything will turn out well in the end.”
Emma’s expression turned earnest. “He works hard, and he’s nice.” Her brow creased even as her arms tightened around the book. “Like Finbarr, except Hans lives in Holland and Finbarr lives here.”
Bless the child’s heart, she certainly fancied Finbarr O’Connor. “You’ll have to tell me how the story ends.”
Emma nodded and took up her book once more. What must that be like, to take any book or paper in her hand and be able to read it, to know just what it said?
Katie let her mending sit unattended in her lap. “Where did you learn to read, Emma?”
“My papa taught me.”
A fortunate girl she was. Katie looked over at Ivy, leaning so carefree against her father as he read to her. Two happy, healthy girls, free of the hunger and pain and fear she’d seen all around her as a child.
Joseph closed the thin book he’d read to little Ivy. He pulled her closer, resting his cheek against the top of her head.
She’d once sat cuddled against her father on quiet evenings such as that. Love and pride shown in his eyes while he’d taught her to play the fiddle. She’d once had a measure of the happiness she saw in the Archer family. Saints, but she wanted that back.
Longing for Home: A Proper Romance Page 18
