Born in Ice

by Nora Roberts

  She nodded, not wanting to be sad, and set the roaster on the counter. "In July, you say."

  "Yeah. It's crept up on me. I've lost track. I've been here four months."

  "Sometimes it seems you've been here always."

  "Getting used to me." He grazed an absent hand over his chin, and she could see his mind was elsewhere. "How about that walk?"

  "I really need to get dinner on."

  "I'll wait." He leaned companionably against the counter. "So, what's for dinner?"

  "Leg of lamb."

  Gray gave a little sigh. "I thought so."

  Chapter Twenty

  On a clear day in the middle of May, Brianna watched the workmen dig the foundation for her greenhouse. A small dream, she thought, flipping the braid she wore from her shoulder to her back, come true.

  She smiled down at the baby who gurgled in the portable swing beside her. She'd learned to be content with small dreams, she thought, bending to kiss her nephew on his curling black hair.

  "He's grown so, Maggie, in just a matter of weeks."

  "I know. And I haven't." She patted her belly, grimaced a little. "I feel less of a sow every day, but I wonder if I'll ever lose all of it again."

  "You look wonderful."

  "That's what I tell her," Rogan added, draping an arm around Maggie's shoulders.

  "And what do you know? You're besotted with me."

  "True enough."

  Brianna looked away as they beamed at each other. How easy it was for them now, she mused. So comfortably in love with a beautiful baby cooing beside them. She didn't care for the pang of envy, or the tug of longing.

  "So where's our Yank this morning?"

  Brianna glanced back, wondering uneasily if Maggie was reading her mind. "He was up and out at first light, without even his breakfast."

  "To?"

  "I don't know. He grunted at me. At least I think it was at me. His moods are unpredictable these days. The book's troubling him, though he says he's cleaning it up. Which means, I'm told, tinkering with it, shining it up."

  "He'll be done before long, then?" Rogan asked.

  "Before long." And then... Brianna was taking a page out of Gray's book and not thinking of and them. "His publisher's on the phone quite a lot now, and sending packets by express all the time, about the book that's coming out this summer. It seems to irritate him to have to think of one when he's working on another." She glanced back at the workmen. "It's a good spot for the greenhouse, don't you think? I'll be pleased to be able to see it from my window."

  "It's the spot you've been talking of for months," Maggie pointed out and refused to be turned from the topic. "Are things well between you and Gray?"

  "Yes, very well. He's a bit sulky right now as I said, but his moods never last very long. I told you how he engineered a truce with Mother."

  "Clever of him. A trinket from New York. She was pleasant to him at Liam's christening. I had to give birth before I could achieve close to the same." "She's mad for Liam," Brianna said. "He's a buffer between us. Ah, what's the trouble, darling," she murmured as Liam began to fuss. "His nappie's wet, that's all." Lifting him, Maggie patted his back and soothed. "I'll change it."

  "You're quicker to volunteer than his Da." With a shake of her head, Maggie laughed. "No, I'll do it. You watch your greenhouse. It'll only take a minute."

  "She knows I wanted to talk to you." Rogan led Brianna toward the wooden chairs set near the blackthorns for which the cottage was named.

  "Is something wrong?"

  "No." There was an edginess about her under a forced calm that was out of character. That, Rogan decided with a slight frown, would have to be Maggie's department. "I wanted to talk with you about this Triquarter Mining business. Or the lack of it." He sat, laid his hands on his knees. "We haven't really had the chance to talk it through since I was in Dublin, then the baby's christening. Maggie's satisfied with the way things have shaken down. She's more interested in enjoying Liam and getting back to her glass than pursuing the matter."

  "That's how it should be."

  "For her, perhaps." He didn't say what was obvious to both of them. Neither he nor Maggie required any of the monetary compensation that might result from a suit. "I have to admit, Brianna, it doesn't sit well with me. The principle of it."

  "I can understand that, you being a businessman yourself." She smiled a little. "You never met Mr. Carstairs. It's difficult to hold a grudge once you have."

  "Let's separate emotion from legalities for a moment."

  Her smile widened. She imagined he used just that brisk tone with any inefficient underling. "All right, Rogan."

  "Carstairs committed a crime. And while you might be reluctant to see him imprisioned, it's only logical to expect a penalty. Now I'm given to understand that he's become successful in the last few years. I took it on myself to make a few discreet inquiries, and it appears that his current businesses are aboveboard as well as lucrative. He's in the position to compensate you for the dishonesty in his dealings with your father. It would be a simple matter for me to go to London personally and settle it."

  "That's kind of you." Brianna folded her hands, drew a deep breath. "I'm going to disappoint you, Rogan, and I'm sorry for it. I can see your ethics have been insulted by this, and you want only to see justice served."

  "I do, yes." Baffled, he shook his head. "Brie, I can understand Maggie's attitude. She's focused on the baby and her work and has always been one to brush aside anything that interfered with her concentration. But you're a practical woman."

  "I am," she agreed. "I am, yes. But I'm afraid I have a bit of my father in me as well." Reaching out, she laid a hand over Rogan's. "You know, some people, for whatever reason, start out on unsteady ground. The choices they make aren't always admirable. A portion of them stay there because it's easier, or what they're used to, or even what they prefer. Another portion slide onto a stable footing, without much effort. A bit of luck, of timing. And another, a small, special portion," she said, thinking of Gray, "fight their way onto the solid. And they make something admirable of themselves."

  She fell into silence, staring out over the hills. Wishing. "I've lost you, Brie."

  "Oh." She waved a hand and brought herself back. "What I mean to say is I don't know the circumstances that led Mr. Carstairs from one kind of life to another. But he's hurting no one now. Maggie has what she wants, and I what contents me. So why trouble ourselves?"

  "That's what she told me you'd say." He lifted his hands in defeat. "I had to try."

  "Rogan." Maggie called from the kitchen doorway, the baby bouncing against her shoulder. "The phone. It's Dublin for you."

  "She won't answer the damn thing in our own house, but she answers it here."

  "I've threatened not to bake for her if she doesn't." "None of my threats work." He rose. "I've been expecting a call, so I gave the office your number if we didn't answer at home."

  "That's no problem. Take all the time you need." She smiled as Maggie headed out with the baby. "Well, Margaret Mary, are you going to share him now or keep him all to yourself?"

  "He was just asking for you, Auntie Brie." With a chuckle, Maggie passed Liam to her sister and settled in the chair Rogan had vacated. "Oh, it's good to sit. Liam was fussy last night. I'd swear between us Rogan and I walked all the way to Galway and back."

  "Do you suppose he's teething already?" Cooing, Brianna rubbed a knuckle over Liam's gums, looking for swelling.

  "It may be. He drools like a puppy." She closed her eyes, let her body sag. "Oh, Brie, who would have thought you could love so much? I spent most of my life not knowing Rogan Sweeney existed, and now I couldn't live without him."

  She opened one eye to be certain Rogan was still in the house and couldn't hear her wax so sentimental. "And the baby, it's an enormous thing this grip on the heart. I thought when I was carrying him I understood what it was to love him. But holding him, from the very first time I held him, it was so much more."


  She shook herself, gave a shaky laugh. "Oh, it's those hormones again. They're turning me to mush."

  " 'Tisn't the hormones, Maggie." Brianna rubbed her cheek over Liam's head, caught the marvelous scent of him. "It's being happy."

  "I want you to be happy, Brie. I can see you're not."

  "That isn't true. Of course I'm happy."

  "You're already seeing him walk away. And you're making yourself accept it before it even happens."

  "If he chooses to walk away, I can't stop him. I've known that all along."

  "Why can't you?" Maggie shot back. "Why? Don't you love him enough to fight for him?"

  "I love him too much to fight for him. And maybe I lack the courage. I'm not as brave as you, Maggie."

  "That's just an excuse. Too brave is what you've always been, Saint Brianna."

  "And if it is an excuse, it's mine." She spoke mildly. She would not, she promised herself, be drawn into an argument. "He has reasons why he'll go. I may not agree with them, but I understand them. Don't slap at me, Maggie," she said quietly and averted the next explosion. "Because it does hurt. And I could see this morning when he left the house that he was already walking away."

  "Then make him stop. He loves you, Brie. You can see it every time he looks at you."

  "I think he does." And that only increased the pain. "That's why he's in a hurry all at once to move on. And he's afraid, too. Afraid he'll come back."

  "Is that what you're counting on?"

  "No." But she wanted to count on it. She wanted that very much. "Love isn't always enough, Maggie. We can see that from what happened with Da."

  "That was different."

  "It's all different. But he lived without his Amanda, and he made his life as best he could. I'm enough his daughter to do the same. Don't worry over me," she murmured, stroking the baby. "I know what Amanda was feeling when she wrote she was grateful for the time they had together. I wouldn't trade these past months for the world and more."

  She glanced over, then fell silent, studying the set look on Rogan's face as he came across the lawn.

  "We may have found something," he said, "on Amanda Dougherty."

  Gray didn't come home for tea, and Brianna wondered but didn't worry as she saw that her guests had their fill of finger sandwiches and Dundee cake. Rogan's report on Amanda Dougherty was always at the back of her mind as she moved through the rest of her day.

  The detective had found nothing in his initial check of the towns and villages in the Catskills. It was, to Brianna's i thinking, hardly a surprise that no one remembered a pregnant Irishwoman from more than a quarter of a century in the past. But Rogan, being a thorough man, hired thorough people. Routinely, the detective made checks on vital statistics, reading through birth and death and marriage certificates for a five-year period following the date of Amanda's final letter to Tom Concannon.

  And it was in a small village, deep in the mountains, where he had found her.

  Amanda Dougherty, age thirty-two, had been married by a justice of the peace, to a thirty-eight-year-old man named Colin Bodine. An address was given simply as Rochester, New York. The detective was already on his way there to continue the search for Amanda Dougherty Bodine.

  The date of the marriage had been five months after the final letter to her father, Brianna mused. Amanda would have been close to term, so it was most likely the man she had married had known she'd been pregnant by another.

  Had he loved her? Brianna wondered. She hoped so. It seemed to her it took a strong, kind-hearted man to give another man's child his name.

  She caught herself glancing at the clock again, wondering where Gray had gone off to. Annoyed with herself, she biked down to Murphy's to fill him in on the progress of the greenhouse construction.

  It was time to finish dinner preparations when she returned. Murphy had promised to come by and check over the foundation himself the following day. But Brianna's underlying purpose, the hope that Gray had been visiting her neighbor as he often did, had been dashed.

  And now, with more than twelve hours passed since he'd left that morning, she moved from wonder to worry.

  She fretted, eating nothing herself as her guests feasted on mackerel with gooseberry sauce. She played her role as hostess, seeing there was brandy where brandy was wanted, an extra serving of steamed lemon pudding for the child who eyed it so hopefully.

  She saw that the whiskey decanter in each guest room was filled, and towels were fresh for evening baths. She made parlor conversation with her guests, offered board games to the children.

  By ten, when the light was gone and the house quiet, she'd moved beyond worry to resignation. He would come back when he would come, she thought, and settled down in her room, her knitting in her lap and her dog at her feet.

  A full day of driving and walking and studying the countryside hadn't done a great deal to improve Gray's mood. He was irritated with himself, irritated by the fact that a light had been left burning for him in the window.