“Is there anything else we can do while we’re here, Mrs. O’Rourke?” Tom asked.
“No, not that I can think of. Would ye like some hot tea or coffee before you go back? Cakes? Maybe a sandwich. It’s a raw day outside.”
Tom shifted uneasily. “Um, no, ma’am. But thank you. Mr. O’Rourke said we weren’t to dawdle.”
“Oh. Well, thank you for your help. I hope all of you and your families have a happy Christmas.”
As they went down the front stairs and climbed back into the wagon, she heard one of them say, “She’s a sight nicer than her old man, that skinflint bastard. Too bad he ain’t got the kindness that old Mr. Brother had. Firing Jacob just for taking a little drink—”
There was a shushing sound when one of them turned and realized she was still standing in the open doorway. Slowly, she closed the door, embarrassed and disappointed that her husband was viewed so poorly by his own employees. Just from things Aidan had said to her, she suspected that they had good reason to grumble, and that bothered her even more.
She wandered into the dining room to look at the new furniture. It was beautiful and she knew it must have cost a lot of money. But there had been nothing wrong with the table and chairs they’d bought with the house. The table hadn’t been as big but it was a nice piece. What was Aidan up to? she wondered. What compelled him to spend money on these trappings and drive his workers so hard that they called him names and complained bitterly about him?
Remembering the burlap-wrapped bundle left in the parlor, she went down the hall and untied the cord that held the rough covering in place. “Ohhh,” she said aloud, and sat on the floor beside it, her annoyance forgotten. Inside was a lovely cradle with a soft feather tick and a satin blanket. She ran her hand along the edge of the dark, polished wood, wondering again about the man she’d married. “Oh, Aidan.” Tears filled her eyes when she imagined their sweet child sleeping in this cozy bed. She did love him, she realized, she loved him so. And she was happy being his wife, happy with everything, except the way he worked himself.
The note, he’d sent a note. She reached into her apron pocket and opened the envelope.
Dear Farrell—
I hope ye Enjoy the early Christmas presents I am sending to the house. I think the Cradle will fit nicely next to our bed.
And since I Have delivered you some nice gifts, I am hoping you will not Be too angry with me for missing supper tonight. I have a meeting with one of my Customers about a rush order. Please know that it is important, for nothing else could take me from your side.
I will Make every Effort to be home before you are asleep. I love you, céadsearc.
Your Husband,
Aidan
Important. Farrell lowered the note to her lap and she sighed. He loved her, he said, but that accursed mill took him from her. It even prevented him from expressing his love for her to her face. She was beginning to detest it. It took Aidan away from her at night, it had made him acquisitive, and although he was good to her, his employees him found to be an unkind taskmaster. Of all people, Aidan, who had suffered under the yoke of another man’s oppression, should know better and have empathy.
“Sometimes he makes me think of old Lord Cardwell himself. Maybe he bought that blasted table and chairs so we can have grand parties, the kind we all sneered at back home,” she muttered aloud, then realized what she had said and how disloyal it was. But what was she to think? His obsession with work and success was growing worse with each passing week.
She hoisted herself from the floor, a task that had become more difficult lately with the shift of her weight. That stew she was cooking wouldn’t go to waste as had some of her other suppers. She’d finish it and if Aidan got it for breakfast, he’d damned well better not complain.
* * *
Just as Farrell sat down to eat, she felt the first twinge. Ah, it was just the babe settling more comfortably, she thought. She took a bite of the stew and was pleased with the way it had turned out. She smiled to herself. Maybe Aidan wouldn’t mind having it for breakfast. Looking down the length of the lovely dining room table, she thought of the men who had brought it. Aidan was driving them, but who or what was driving Aidan? What made him want to buy all of these—
She felt another twinge, followed by a pain sharp enough to make her drop her spoon. Dear God, what was that?
She got up from her chair and felt a flooding warmth between her legs. When she looked down, she saw a large bloodstain on the upholstery of the new chair.
“Oh, no,” she mourned, “oh, please no!”
She tried to remember if she’d heard of any practical cures to prevent miscarriage, but nothing came to mind. All she could think of was to lie down.
She worked her way up the stairs, carrying a candlestick in one hand and gripping the railing with the other. In the bedroom, she took off her clothes and was horrified by the amount of blood she found. After a frantic search for her carving of Brigit in her skirt pocket, she left her clothes in a heap on the floor, pulled her nightgown on over her head, and climbed into bed to lie on her back with her feet propped up on the footboard, hoping and praying that she could stop this.
Frightened and yearning for a familiar face, a hand to hold, for the first time since leaving, she wished with all her heart that she were back in Ireland. In the clachan they’d been poverty-stricken and they’d had nothing, except each other. Yet, in that they had been rich. What good was it to lie on fine white sheets, only to live through the loss of her child alone?
Another wrenching cramp twisted her womb and another. She prayed to Brigit, she prayed the rosary, she appealed directly to God. Tonight, though, she felt truly forsaken. The prayers did not comfort her and they did not stop the bleeding or the cramping.
Tonight, she was utterly deserted.
* * *
Aidan rode up the drive at about ten o’clock. He hadn’t seen the perfidious Seth Fitch since the night at Dr. McLoughlin’s and he was glad for that. Maybe it had been his imagination that the man was up to no good. Maybe he’d done whatever business had called him here and was gone. But Aidan doubted it.
The lights still burned in the house, which surprised him. These days Farrell could barely stay awake beyond half past eight. He hoped that the furniture he’d sent up this afternoon had appeased her. He’d promised to spend more time with her, but he’d yet found a way to do so. He didn’t worry about her health—she had convinced him that she was strong. But he knew that she would be lonely here with no one to talk to most of her day. Visitors were not that frequent and except for church on Sundays, the mill kept him so busy, he usually didn’t have time to take her out.
After stabling his horse, he went up the back stairs and into the kitchen. What he found stopped his heart in his chest. Farrell’s wooden laundry tub sat in the middle of the floor, filled with blood-red water and what looked like sheets. A bloody trail across the floor, smeared and diluted as if someone had tried to mop it up, led out through the hallway to the stairs. He ran toward the staircase but paused at the doorway to the dining room. There he found the new table and chairs, a plate of unfinished stew, and a chair seat also soaked with blood.
Panic dried his throat to chalk and his heart pounded back to life, banging against his ribs. “Farrell!” He flew up the steps two at a time and pounded down the upper hall toward their bedroom. “Farrell!” he called again.
He didn’t see her at first. The bed was stripped and empty, the tick bloodstained. Then he saw a bundle on the floor wrapped in blankets, huddled like the most unfortunate wretch he’d ever seen trembling in a Skibbereen doorway during the famine. He dropped to his knees and took her by the shoulders. “God, Farrell, what happened? Are ye alive?”
Her face was the color of cold ashes in the fireplace. Next to her was the cradle he’d sent her. And in the cradle, under the satin blanket lay a little figure with just its head showing. A cross had been drawn on its forehead with what looked like oil.
He sat back on his heels, aghast, feeling as if a horse had kicked him in the chest. He couldn’t breathe, and though he groped for words, none would come. “Oh, Jesus,” he intoned at last. “Jesus and God and Holy Mother Mary.”
“I tried them all,” Farrell croaked. “None of them helped.” The sound of her voice frightened him. It sounded like someone else’s, an old woman’s, hoarse, papery, bitter. “None of them.”
“Come on lass, ye can’t stay here on the floor. You need to lie down.”
She turned slitted, furious eyes on him, like those of a cornered mother cat. “You leave us alone,” she fairly hissed. He wasn’t sure if it was a demand or an accusation. “I’ll do, and it won’t be any different than usual.”
He pulled away and stared at her. “Are ye blaming me for this, then?” he asked quietly.
“I’m blaming you for always doing exactly as you’ve pleased, and never mind what I wanted. I blame you for leaving me to suffer through this by myself because everything you have to do is so much more important than what little I’ve asked of ye. Yes, you’ve given me fine china, and furniture, and useless stuff I have no need for. What I needed was you!” Her voice broke and her gray face crumpled. “And where were you when our child died? You were out being Mr. High-And-Mighty.”
“Farrell—”
“You shut up! You’ll listen to me this time, by God, you will!” she screamed at him. “Can ye not see what you’ve become? You’re no better than Lord Cardwell, the man you cursed often enough. Well, your workers curse you and rue the day that you bought out Mr. Brother. Did you know that? It’s true. I heard it myself.”
Her accusations were like knife slashes to Aidan’s heart. “Farrell, let me help you to bed. You’re tired and sick.” He tried to take her arm to help her to her feet, but she yanked it from his grasp.
“No, I’m sick and tired of the way we’ve been living! And be quiet, damn you, because I’ll have my say. You give me a note that says you love me, yet you leave me alone night after night, telling me that somehow it’s all for my own good. For someday. But I don’t need all the fancy trappings you’ve given us—I need you and I’ve told you so. Should I have written it on my forehead?” She gestured at the dead child. “This baby needed you here, not chasing around the countryside, grubbing every dollar you can get your hands on. You must choose, Aidan. You must choose me and a simpler life, or the mill. Because you can’t have both.”
He looked at the tiny little soul under the satin blanket and tears blurred his eyes. It was impossible to tell if the child was a girl or a boy, but it didn’t matter. His heart ached for all three of them. He tried to take her into his arms, but she pulled away again. “Come along, céadsearc,” he said in a low, reasonable voice. “Ye must lie down and rest. I’ll see to the babe.”
She looked at him with wild, grief-filled eyes, and for a moment he feared for her sanity. “You must choose, Aidan,” she insisted.
He sat beside her on the floor. “I should have hired someone to help you. To stay with you when I had to be out.”
Suddenly she slumped against the wall and stared at him. “Have you understood nothing I’ve said? Nothing? Go away, Aidan. I don’t want to be under the same roof with ye.”
He understood why, but her words lacerated him. He considered her, the color drained from her face, almost from her hair. This was the worst thing he’d ever experienced, and he’d seen a lot of suffering and death. The woman whose heart he’d tried to win despised him, and the child they had conceived was lost. For the first time in his life, his hope, the one thing that had sustained him through good times and bad, had burned out.
“I’ll take you to Dr. McLoughlin,” he offered quietly. “I know he’ll let you stay for a few days, and though he’s getting on himself, he and his wife can look after ye till you’re feeling better.” It was the last thing he wanted, to be away from her, but he knew they couldn’t stay together right now. She would have none of it. “Are you agreeable to that?”
She dropped her gaze to the cradle again, her chin quivering, and with a shaking hand, tucked the blanket around the child. “All right.”
Allowing Aidan to help her to her feet, she leaned against him. For all her strength, she felt as frail as a child. He helped her to gather a few things, but when he stooped to pick up her little figure of St. Brigit, she snapped, “Leave it. I don’t want it anymore.”
Aidan knew with a sickening certainty that if she’d ever loved him, even just a little, she surely hated him now.
* * *
“Drink the beef tea, child. You’ve had a fearful shock and this will give you strength.” Dr. John McLoughlin loomed over Farrell’s sickbed, a giant of a man at six-feet-four. He picked up the cup from her bedside table and put it into her hands. “No matter what the future holds, you must be well enough to meet it.”
His snowy mane, which was rumored to have turned white after an accident that occurred when he was a young man, had earned him the nickname Great White Eagle from the Indians he’d dealt with in the territory. Farrell could see why.
She had been here at the McLoughlins’ house for two days, most of which she had slept through. Although she was beginning to recover physically, her spirit was crushed. But dutifully, she took a sip of the beef tea, not because she wanted it, but because the doctor and his wife had been very good to her and she didn’t want to disappoint him.
“Will ye sit for a minute, Doctor?”
He pulled a chair up to her bedside. “You’re young and strong. You come from good, sturdy stock. You will get better. And there will be children in the future.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I want to thank you for your kindness, taking me in and all. Aidan—my husband is always busy and it would be too hard for him to look after me.”
“Yes, he’s a very determined young man. Very ambitious. But he’s been by here every day to check on your welfare.”
“He has?”
“Oh, yes. You were sleeping, though, and he didn’t want to bother you.” He paused. “He looks worse than you feel, you know. If he doesn’t take better care of himself, I’ll have two patients to see to.”
Farrell gazed out the window next to her bed. “He works too hard. He works everyone else too hard.”
The doctor sighed. “As I said, he’s ambitious. But he’s not ruthless. Sometimes those two go together and make an ugly pairing. Aidan has a good heart.”
“I know he does.”
“And he’s scared.”
She turned to look at his piercing gray eyes that were nearly as pale as his hair. “Scared? Aidan? And sure but he didn’t tell you that.”
“No, no, he didn’t have to. Misfortune can drive a man to desperate acts. I was Canadian-born, but my grandfather was from Ireland so I know about her history. And of course, we heard about the potato famine here. News like that travels. Aidan is fearful of the two of you starving again.” He tapped a finger on his chin. “Something else is bothering him, too, but I don’t know what. Whatever it is, he’s determined to succeed at something.” He reached out and patted her hand. “You just get well so you can go back and help him understand what that something is. He needs you.”
She thanked him and he left her alone to ponder his words. Aidan needed her? In this, she thought the doctor was wrong. Yes, Aidan had been kindness itself at times, tender and thoughtful. He’d even told her that he loved her, a hurried scribble on a piece of paper. But she had never sensed that he needed her.
She loved him, and worried that just as in all other aspects of their lives, she was in love alone.
* * *
“This is Jacob Richards, your lordship. He used to work for O’Rourke. He was the mill foreman.” Seth Fitch made the introductions at the back table of a Linn City saloon where the three men sat. Fitch had decided it was best to meet on this side of the river, just for security’s sake. Noel had concurred.
God, Noel thought, if he had to frequent one more of these din
gy places and rub elbows with ignorant rabble—well, it was for a good purpose, and if luck was with him, this entire country and his visit to the common side of life would soon be behind him.
“Richards,” Noel acknowledged. “How is it that you don’t work for O’Rourke any longer?”
“The egg-sucking son of a bitch turned me out.”
Noel lifted his brows at the vehemence of the statement. “Really? What reason did he give you?”
“He claimed I was drinking on the job.”
“And were you?” Noel pushed the whiskey bottle to him that stood on the sticky table.
“Hell, no! It was a filthy lie. I barely touch the stuff.” Richards poured himself a healthy measure. He had the bloodshot eyes and telltale bloated, red face of a man who had a long-standing association with the drink.
Swirling the contents of his own brandy glass, Noel said, “I see. Would you be interested in getting some of your own back?”
“How do you mean?”
“I have a job that needs doing, and I need a man with your connections and knowledge of O’Rourke’s operation to accomplish it.” It wasn’t true—Noel’s purpose in involving Richards had nothing to do with those blandishments. But my, my, didn’t Richards just bask in Noel’s line of bunkum.
The man leaned back in his chair. “Well, I might be able to help you,” he agreed expansively. “It all depends on what you have in mind and how much you’re willing to pay.”
Noel smiled. “And isn’t that the crux of any agreement, Richards?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Farrell was dressed and sitting by the fireplace in the McLoughlins’ parlor when she looked out the window and saw Aidan pull their wagon around to the front of the house. Her heart gave a joyful leap at the sight of him. She had missed him these past four days, although she had not forgiven him for anything. Watching him come up the walk, she still admired the broad shoulders and straight back, but he looked as pale and drawn as the leafless December trees. The thin winter afternoon sun settled over him like an old gray shroud.
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