Morna's Legacy 04 - Love Beyond Measure

by Bethany Claire

  “Ok, thank you.” I kissed Jeffrey on the cheek and Cooper on the top of his head, holding open the door for Jeffrey so he could carry Cooper through it.

  “Hey, Grace.” He paused at the base of the stairs, looking at me over his shoulder. “Good on you. It’s good to see you smile—get out a bit. It’s time.”

  *

  He didn’t answer on my first knock so I hollered at him as I rapped my knuckles against the door a second time.

  “Eoghanan. Look, I know all that didn’t make me look so good. Will you open the door so I can explain?”

  The handle turned slowly to reveal a stone-faced Eoghanan. He stood blocking the doorway. Clearly, I wouldn’t be permitted inside.

  “I am angry with ye, Grace. I doona think there is need for explanation. ’Twas verra apparent.”

  “No, believe me, there’s a great need for explanation. It’s a complicated situation.”

  He made a noise that lay somewhere between a groan and a laugh. A noise that gave away just how truly hurt and angry he was. “I doona doubt that lass, but I doona wish to hear it. Goodnight.”

  He shut the door.

  The breeze that followed froze my face.

  Chapter 14

  “Good morning.” I entered Jeffrey and Cooper’s room bearing coffee and orange juice. Although I didn’t much feel like it, I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of Cooper and his dad coloring together.

  Jeffrey stood as I entered, reaching desperately for his coffee. “You’re amazing. Thank you. Last night didn’t go so well, huh?”

  “Why do you say that?” Setting Cooper’s orange juice down on the floor next to him, I started in on my own cup of coffee.

  “Give me some credit, Grace. I know you. I know that,” he pointed to my forehead, “the large vein that runs across the top of your head bulges with you’re stressed or upset. It’s bulging big time this morning.”

  “Great.” I rubbed at the vein and then stopped, knowing it would only aggravate it more. “You’re right though. He wasn’t in the mood to let me explain. I don’t know if he’ll ever be.” Waving a hand dismissively, I took a large gulp of coffee. “Just as well, I guess. It would be a bad idea to get involved. Ya know, since he lives in Scotland and we live in New York.”

  “What a load of crap, Grace.”

  He was absolutely right, but if I admitted that, I knew I’d get all sad and mopey. I had too much work to do for that.

  “No, it’s not. It’s practical. This is a work trip, and that’s what I plan on doing today. Coop and I are going to be gone taking photos this afternoon. Want to join us?”

  “No. I think I’ll hang around here.” There was an expression on his face that made me nervous. An expression that said, ‘I have definite plans, but I’d just rather you didn’t know about them’.

  “Are you sure? What is there for you to do around here? You’re not planning on saying anything to Eoghanan are you? Because there’s no point. Please don’t.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I plan on sleeping most of the day, not meddling in your dating life.”

  Dating life. He said it like I usually had one. I didn’t think that one date could be considered equivalent to my having a dating life—dating incident, perhaps. “Sleep is the worst thing you could do for your jet lag. You’ll never get adjusted that way.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m adjusted. I’m just exhausted and want to spend a lazy day doing nothing but sleeping and eating.”

  “Okay, fine. Just don’t say anything to him, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Grace. Sure thing.”

  *

  Eoghanan slept fitfully, visions of Grace’s face as her husband walked up on them kissing, floating up behind his eyelids each time he tried to shut his eyes. He thought over the events of the previous evening repeatedly, each time all of it making less sense than the last.

  He’d seen it on her face, the guilt, the regret she felt at kissing him. She’d not been pleased to be seen with him. It had been his mistake really, to assume Cooper’s father was dead. He didn’t understand enough of the customs of today’s times to have another explanation for why the lass and her son would have traveled such a great distance alone.

  How ironic that he would be accused of having an affair once when he was innocent only to be guilty in a different one without his knowledge. It was unfair of Grace to treat him thus, to pull him into such a situation. Surely, he’d not behaved in such a way to make her think he was the kind of man who would kiss another man’s wife.

  One aspect of the evening confused him more than any other. Why had the man Grace had called Jeffrey not knocked him on his arse for placing such intimate hands on his wife? He certainly would have had it been him. Instead, the man had smiled at them both, with no show of anger in his eyes.

  As if summoned by mere thought, Eoghanan opened his door to the rough knocking of the very man he’d been thinking about.

  The man held the same unsettling smile. Surely it wasn’t a common thing for men to share their women so leisurely in this time. The man extended his hand toward him. Ignoring the painful pull of his shoulder, Eoghanan met the man’s hand with his own.

  “Uh, hello. I didn’t get to properly introduce myself last night. Name’s Jeffrey. Do you mind if I talk to you a minute?”

  “I’m Eoghanan. Aye, come in.” Eoghanan stepped aside to allow the man entry, wondering if now would be when the man might swing a fist in his direction. Perhaps he’d only refrained from doing so last night so that young Cooper wouldn’t see the altercation.

  “Listen.” Jeffrey faced him just as soon as he’d stepped inside. “I need to talk to you about Grace.”

  Of course, why else would this stranger need to speak with him? “Aye, I believe I owe ye an apology. I willna lay the blame on Grace, but I dinna know that ye were married. I wouldna have…I wouldna have kissed her if I had.”

  “What? Grace and I are not married. I’m not the one you need to apologize to, not at all. As long as you don’t hurt her, you go ahead and kiss Grace all you want to. I imagine it would do her some good.”

  Jeffrey clasped him on his injured shoulder, and Eoghanan had to clamp down on his teeth to keep from groaning with pain. His head hurt. He’d not felt such an overwhelming lack of understanding in a very long time.

  “So ye are no Grace’s husband, but ye are Cooper’s father? Forgive me, I doona think I understand the situation.”

  Jeffrey shrugged and started to make his way back to the doorway. “Yes, I’m Cooper’s father, but not Grace’s husband. It’s a weird situation. Look, I already told Grace I wouldn’t say anything to you, so I’m not going to say anything else. I just wanted you to know that whatever conclusion you jumped to last night is undoubtedly wrong. Talk to her.”

  Eoghanan nodded, unsure of what else to say. Nodding in return, Jeffrey turned his back to him, retreating two steps toward the doorway before twisting to speak to him once more.

  “Oh, and one other thing. Grace may not be my wife, but she’s my family. I have a strong feeling that you made her cry last night. I didn’t see her do it, but this morning her head was all veiny and her eyes all red. That is not okay. You make her cry ever again, and I’ll knock you flat on your ass. I don’t care if you’re eight inches taller than me. Got it?”

  Eoghanan repressed a grin. Stranger or no, anyone who would rise to Grace’s defense in such a manner had his respect and admiration. “Aye.”

  “Good. Well then, have a good day. See ya around.”

  Jeffrey turned and left, leaving Eoghanan smiling in the doorway. He’d gather more explanation from Grace later. He’d already heard the most important part—the lass wasn’t married and so his own hope could remain.

  Chapter 15

  After I’d spoken with Jeffrey, I spent the rest of the day working. I drove down the road to Conall Castle, allowing Cooper to show me the best places to take pictures after he’d told me he’d looked around especially for them during his tr
ip there with Jerry and Morna. While not the first places I would have chosen to photograph, it thrilled me that my son was so thoughtful. I gladly followed him around, letting him lead for the day.

  By the time we returned to the inn, Coop was more than ready to spend some time with his dad, which gave me the evening to work on the article. I worked steadily, determined to keep my mind off of Eoghanan and my frustration at him for not allowing me to explain myself. As much as I wanted to hash things out, I’d spent too much of my childhood around a man who wouldn’t listen to what I had to say whenever I needed him to hear me the most. Though, I didn’t believe this was a common character trait of Eoghanan, his refusal to listen made me feel like the repressed child, teenager, and then young mom that I’d once been. I was through trying to reason with someone who didn’t want to hear it.

  Jeffrey knocked on every door, every time he did so, in just the same way—three knocks, brief silence, followed by three more knocks. Cooper never knocked and neither did Morna or Jerry, so as soon as I heard a knock on my door, I knew who it was. Part of me had known that Jeffrey wouldn’t keep his promise. Subconsciously, I think that’s why I asked it of him. I didn’t want him to.

  Taking a breath, I stood, closed my laptop, and readied myself to give Eoghanan a full explanation, not that I believed it would make any real difference, no matter how much I wanted it to. Still, I couldn’t bear the thought of Eoghanan believing me a liar or a cheat. My little family—Jeffrey, Cooper, and me—was unusual and difficult for anyone outside it to really understand. It was part of the reason I’d avoided the dating scene since Cooper’s birth. I didn’t want to have to explain how it worked, to promise over and over that nothing was going on between Jeffrey and me, that nothing ever had.

  “Grace, I need to speak to ye if ye will allow it, lass.”

  “Of course I will,” I answered him as I swung the door open, stepping aside so that he would enter. I closed the door behind him, and to my surprise, turned right into his arms.

  He hugged me tightly, apologizing with his chin against the top of my head. “I am no a good man, Grace. I dinna know what to think when wee Cooper and Jeffrey walked up on us, but I should have allowed ye to explain. ’Tis only that I’d no felt as happy as I did when I held ye in me arms for ages. When I saw them, believing that ye’d lied to me…it hurt me more deeply than I’d like to admit. I dinna behave as I should have.”

  I rubbed his back gently with my hand, speaking against his chest. “I’m sorry, too. It just seemed a bit early to explain everything, and I never thought Jeffrey would show up here. He talked to you, I guess?”

  He nodded, and his chin felt much more boney against my head than it truly was.

  “What did he tell you?”

  I couldn’t see Jeffrey getting into too deep of an explanation. While he spoke to me about everything, he wasn’t that way with most people. I imagined he would have told Eoghanan only what was necessary to convince him to let me explain.

  Eoghanan released me and paced around the room a bit, confirming what I’d already guessed. Jeffrey had told him little. Eoghanan still appeared quite confused by the entire situation.

  “No verra much. He said that ’twas yer story to tell, and he’s right. I should have allowed ye to do so. All Jeffrey told me was that ye are no married to him, which is what I thought when Cooper called him Da.”

  “Well…” I moved to sit on the end of my bed, patting the mattress so that he would join me. Before last night, I would have worried about Cooper walking in and seeing a man in his mother’s room but, now that his father was here, Coop had gleefully moved into his dad’s bedroom to spend his nights there. “I almost was. Just last week, actually.”

  “Ah.” I watched as Eoghanan’s body tensed slightly, but he still moved to sit next to me. “So ye are no married to him, but ye are his?”

  Placing Jeffrey inside any sort of context where I belonged to him made me squirm internally. I shook my head, reaching for both of Eoghanan’s hands. “No. If you don’t hear anything else I say, hear that. Jeffrey and I are not an item and we never have been.”

  His thick brows pulled in tight. He was trying to see, to understand what I meant, but understandably, he was having trouble. “But ye have a child together?”

  “Yes, but we didn’t…Jeffrey isn’t Cooper’s real father.” I looked down at our hands, mine squeezing his tightly, his thumb moving back and forth as he’d done last night.

  He exhaled loudly, as if he’d been holding his breath for a long time. We sat there, each of us avoiding the other’s gaze, our heart rates slowly escalating, the tension between us building once again.

  Eventually, he pulled one of his hands away, moving it to my chin as he lifted my face to make me look at him. “I still doona think I understand all there is to know, but ye are saying that ye and Jeffrey are no married and willna ever be. That ye are no spoken for by anyone else, aye?”

  I couldn’t help but smile. ‘Spoken for?’ It seemed archaic language. Why didn’t he just say, ‘Are you dating anyone else?’ Regardless, Eoghanan said many things in such a way, and he made it sound charming every time. “Yes, that is what I’m saying.” I held eye contact, determined not to break it so that he would understand that point. “I am entirely single.”

  “I am pleased to hear it, lass.”

  “Do you want to hear the rest?” I pulled away a bit so that I could kick off my shoes, standing so that I could pull my legs beneath me, settling into a more comfortable position.

  “Aye. Verra much so.”

  “Okay. Settle in.”

  And so I began. I told him about my father’s job, the old money that he came from, not to mention the mounds of money he made on his own, all of it combining to create our family’s New York estate. How I’d grown up around unimaginable, disgusting wealth and that Jeffrey, along with his father, had been the primary grounding force throughout my entire life.

  “I met Jeffrey when I was four. My father hired both his parents, his mother to work as a maid in our household and his father to manage our grounds. The family moved into one of the small cottages on our estate and, since Jeffrey and I were the same age, we just took to each other.” I paused, checking out Eoghanan, to see if he grew bored. It wasn’t the shortest of stories. He couldn’t have appeared more attentive.

  He patted my hand gently. “Go on, lass. I wish to hear everything.”

  So I continued. “I fell in love with Jeffrey and his family, spending more time in their cottage than our mansion because I felt wanted there. I was close to my sisters, and to a lesser degree, my mom, but we were a house divided. All of us girls versus my dad. It made for a cold, stressed, disingenuous environment.

  “Jeffrey’s family did everything under a canopy of the love they felt for one another and it was contagious. Jeffrey’s mother died when we were eight, and it was the most devastating event of my childhood. I remember thinking that I was more heartbroken at her death than I would have been at my own father’s because I knew that Maggie loved me. To this day, I don’t know that about my father.”

  I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat.

  “Anyway, Jeffrey and I leaned on each other a lot during that time. He became my brother, my best friend, and we’ve just always stayed like that. In college, I started dating this guy, an exchange student from Australia. He was a real loser, and deep down I knew that. But after years of trying to be perfect, I wanted something wild, fun. The Aussie definitely was that. Jeffrey couldn’t stand him, but he did end up giving me the one thing I care most about in the entire world—Cooper.”

  I sighed, the memory never a pleasant one.

  “When I told him I was pregnant, he bounced, as in, he actually left and flew back home to Australia. I never heard from him after that. Jeffrey stepped in even before I told my family. And now…” I was ready to finish my explanation. Talking about myself wasn’t my favorite thing to do by any stretch of the imagination. “Jeffrey is Cooper�
�s dad in every way that matters. But, Jeffrey and I, he’s my best friend, not my lover. Never has been.”

  I breathed deeply. It was a relief to tell him. As much as I tried to busy myself with work, I’d remained anxious all day wanting to talk to him and explain.

  “Thank ye for telling me, lass. May I ask ye one more question?”

  I nodded, feeling sleepy now that my previous anxiety melted away.

  “Then why did ye and Jeffrey almost marry?”

  “Oh. Gosh.” I rubbed my eyelids with my thumb and middle finger. My almost-marriage to Jeffrey seemed so much like a bad dream that it still didn’t seem real to me. “My father had taken a liking to Jeffrey once he saw what a great father he was to Cooper and talked him into going to law school. He even paid for it. Once Jeffrey graduated, he made him a partner at his law firm. And then he decided that just wasn’t good enough, so he blackmailed us. He said it wasn’t right for a partner at his firm to have a child and not be married. We went along with it, right up until the wedding day. But we couldn’t do it. The real kicker is that Jeffrey doesn’t even want to be a lawyer. He did that for me, too, because my father expected it of him.”

  “I doona think I am fond of yer father, lass.”

  I snorted. “Join the club.”

  Eoghanan stood, moving toward the door. It wasn’t what I expected, for him to hear my explanation and leave so soon, but I was quickly learning that he was anything but predictable. “Can ye stand up for me, lass?”

  I did, stepping toward him. “Why?”

  “We were interrupted last evening, aye?”

  Hesitantly, I moved closer. My chest all fluttery once again. “Yes.”

  “Do ye think we should be interrupted again?”

  I closed my eyes for a long second, allowing the trickle of anticipation to travel along my spine. “No. Cooper’s with his dad.”