A Love by Any Measure (15 page)

Time Catches Up

M
aeve bounced down the street, leading August to wonder if his memories had been glossed over by an unrequited heart. Perhaps she did care for this blacksmith after all. If Murphy made her happy, then so be it; August would yield. It had been foolish to suppose anything would or could come about between them.

Maeve let out a long sigh as they turned up a street filling with evening strollers. What did she think of his joining them? Judging by the way Maeve’s eyes had bulged from her head, she was the most startled by the invite. Since leaving the bakery, however, she had put on a very impressive show of indifference. He couldn’t help but notice, somewhat arrogantly, how many times she glanced back over her shoulder to catch him in the corner of her eye.

“Lord Grayson,” Maeve finally said, falling behind to take up step next to him. “You’ll forgive my rudeness. I’m certain you didn’t come to the bakery in an attempt to get invited to the pub. Was there something you needed?”

You.

“Yes, actually. Caroline asked me to ensure that you were personally invited to the engagement party.”

“Wedding?”

The news seemed to take her off guard, and he realized that having the order for Caroline’s cake sent to the bakery hadn’t gotten to her yet.

“Last evening, with my blessing, Captain Schand proposed and Caroline joyfully accepted.”

He tried to gauge her reaction, but saw only confusion in her expression. “They haven’t known each other long. Whatever will be said in England of such whirlwind courtship?”

“What can I say? Perhaps when they realized how much they meant to each other, propriety didn’t matter anymore.” Oh, how the flush that filled her face brought back memories, but a public street with Maeve’s fiancé nearby was hardly the place to make a scene, so August adopted a more formal tone and continued. “She wanted me to inquire if you could come to tea tomorrow. We miss you at Shepherd’s Bluff, Miss O’Connor.”

At the pub doors, Maeve motioned for Owen and Rory to continue inside, which they did without delay. The wind gave a sudden push of bitter chill.

“Yes, I miss it as well,” she said nonchalantly.

“Do you? Do you miss anything else?”

Silence said as much as any words may have conveyed.

“Inviting you to the wedding is not the only reason I came, though a convenient excuse.”

“Oh?”

August took advantage of their momentary isolation to pull Maeve aside from the light cast off by the flickering lamp and into the shadows. His words were sincere, but somehow distant. “I wanted to make sure you’re well. I’ve been thinking of you and ... ”

His words tapered off as a couple strolled by too closely.

“And … ?”

For the briefest of moments, August’s face screwed in conflict. He hardly knew himself, it seemed, what he wanted, or if he really wanted anything. Finally, he began to stutter quietly, his eyes focusing on a shilling he rubbed between two fingers and the black leather of his riding gloves. “The shop, to see if the facilities are being kept in wise order.”

A momentary sense of crestfallen haze overcame her. “Of course. Later. I think we should join the others, don’t you?”

Pulling back the handle and opening the door, Maeve rushed for the shelter and warmth of the pub. August was not accustomed to a wholesome lady deigning to be seen in such an establishment. Certainly, those of English society would be quite shocked. He reminded himself yet again, however, that Maeve was no lady. Not in the noble sense of the word, that was. Yet her determination and perseverance proved her possessing of a nobility no other he had met could ever equal. She was walking into a marriage of convenience with her head held high and her shoulders squared. She had given the blacksmith her word, intending fully to make good on it no matter the taxation to her own dreams and soul. She was, in many aspects, the ideal woman bound by an honor and duty that Emmanuel had always ventured to seek for August.

The realization that one other held attributes exact in nature slapped him with sudden shock.

Inside, Rory, Owen, and a few others August vaguely recognized were seated around several small, circular tables, already with pints set before them. Maeve had meandered over to another table where a few other townswomen sat — perhaps Maeve knew them as customers, August thought, as her rather stilted posture told him she was not entirely at ease or comfort with their company.

Owen caught eye of August and waved him over to the only remaining empty chair.

“I’m disappointed, Mr. Murphy,” August opened as he sat himself down. “Would you forgo my hospitality so quickly? I offered to treat a round for everyone.”

“Aye, but no one said it had to be the first.” He laughed as he motioned to the barkeep to bring another pint for the Brit. “Pick up the third or fourth, if you can hold your liquor that long.”

Seated at a table with four Irishmen, drinking a toast to an engagement, August instantly felt a part of his mother’s homeland as he never had before. It may not have been acceptable to Emmanuel’s class, but his son was determined to be a proper Irishman for one night. One night to pretend, to imagine that life had come to him differently. That in a life such as this, he might have had Maeve …

Casting off the coat of nobility, he heartily grabbed the pint of frothy brew set before him and hoisted it high. “If we are to be friends tonight, gentlemen, then let us be true friends. I am Gus, not Lord Grayson, and to your engagement, Mr. Murphy! Sláinte!”

With a chipper smile, they all rang in unison, “Sláinte!” and raised their glasses in kind.

Then it was a race to finish. Whiskey was generally August’s drink of choice, and he would occasionally partake of other spirits in his travels across Europe, but the bitterness of the Irish ale hit him hard. It simultaneously burned the throat while tickling the tongue. As he set down the stein on the table, August worked every muscle of his face into submission and demanded that it not belie the fact that his eyes were watering and his throat was afire. These gentle blokes, however, could see right through the ruse, and August soon found the pointing and raucous wailing was directed at him. He jolted as Rory O’Connor’s flat hand made contact.

“A very fine downing of a pint for a first try there, boy-o,” he howled through his chuckling.

“Mary, set up our dear English friend here again!”

His shout drew the further stares of many others at nearby tables. With speed that would have challenged Hermes himself, their empty vessels were replaced with ones dangerously full. This time, it was another at the table who took up the toast.

“We drink to Owen Murphy.” He gestured upward with the brew. “May you love as long as you live, and live as long as you love, sleep in bed with the woman of your dreams, and dream the woman of your sleep into bed!”

It was rather a vulgar comment, August thought, but was taken in good humor by the others, so he made no indication of his surprise. Instead, he stole a look deftly across the expanse of the room to where Maeve sat, each woman beside her also hoisting a pint, though their words at that distance failed to reach over the hum of conversations filling the room. Maeve was veritably beaming and radiant, and August thought with some disappointment of how she once looked at him with such a glow. The fervent smiling made her cheeks blossom into pink roses, transporting him to the memory of her stretched across his bed as he led her body down a path to near ultimate fulfillment.

Her eyes dashed suddenly across the room. He saw her shudder and transform from darling pink to fiery red. His breath stopped before he realized that someone was speaking to his right.

“Did you hear me?”

August blinked a few times and recalled the air to his lungs. “Sorry, no. What?”

He followed the path of August’s abandoned fascination and saw there one of Maeve’s mates staring licentiously across the room. With a nod and a grin, the Irishman waved and the blond-headed beauty shied her eyes away.

“I said,” he ventured, turning his attention back, “why do you stay in Ireland? Not many of the lords do so.”

The ale he again nursed shot out his nose before he could stop it, bringing a hearty laugh all round.

“My interests lie here for now,” he answered shortly. “Also, I wanted to see the land my mother called home.”

“Your mother?” Owen asked with an airy tone. “She’s Irish?”

“Was Irish,” August corrected. “She died. Many years ago.”

Owen wasn’t from Killarney, it seemed, or surely he would have known this. The blacksmith’s face remained in stern contemplation, before burgeoning into an all-encompassing smile. “Then you really are our brother! Barkeep! This man’s a true Irishman! Don’t insult him with ale! Bring whiskey!”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, they’re calling out for whiskey,” Brocc Sharon laughed, crooning her neck back to get a full glance at Owen’s table across the pub. “I hope you weren’t planning on bedding him tonight, Maeve. Oh, he’ll be stiff all right. Stiff drunk.”

Brocc made little effort to cover the fact that she was well acquainted with a man’s body. Many men’s bodies, from what those who stationed themselves outside the confessional said. Maeve set down the emptied ale glass on the table and sighed.

“I’m not bedding him at all until our wedding night, like a proper lass,” she rebuked with a double-edged smile. “And if whiskey is my love’s choice, let it be mine as well! Barkeep! Whiskey!”

It would be the death of her, she knew. While no stranger to the occasional sip of brew, the hard stuff was likely to set her calling out for her long dead ma afore morning. Maeve didn’t care. She knew it would set her a bit at ease, as well. As she looked in Owen’s direction, it disturbed her to no end that August seemed just at home with the brood as he had once with her in private.

It made her feel unequivocally common, as well as more than a bit wary. It was as though the two planes of her existence were running straight forward like goats in a tussle. Maeve knew the alcohol being downed on the other end might very well loosen lips she’d rather stayed tight. She’d prefer to be numb herself if that did happen.

“He’s a lovely little ram, isn’t he?”

Brocc’s eyes were sizing up August as though she were thinking of making a cloak of him.

Maeve clicked her tongue in disagreement. “A horrid ferocious lion, him. I am living in town instead of Middle Lake because of Grayson.”

Brocc gave a mocking laugh. “Why wouldn’t you want to be here? After all, this is where Owen is. Wouldn’t a lass in love want to be near her beloved? Unless ... ”

She gave a quick look back over at the far table at an inconvenient moment and caught August and Maeve exchanging glances. From Maeve’s end, the stare was full of heat and loathing, but on August’s side, the look could only be described as crestfallen and forlorn. It left Brocc all too certain of her conclusion.

“You fancy Grayson!” she squealed, half-hidden behind her mug of ale.

“Curses, no, I don’t fancy August,” Maeve vehemently denied as she took from the barmaid a glass of golden whiskey.

Brocc still eyed her suspiciously as Maeve thought back on what she had said. Damn, I used his given name. She could see the anticipation building in Brocc’s bold brownies, eying Maeve like a hungry man to a sack of potatoes.

From the backside of the pub came salvation: a fiddler rosining up his bow.

“There’s talk about town regarding your sister marrying a Yank,” the man sitting next to August, whose name he had learned was Eric, said in an all too casual tone.

August suppressed his anger, remembering that a Killarney pub was hardly an appropriate place to expect proper social decorum. He polished off the last shot and let out a growl as the alcohol burned his throat.

In as gentlemanly a tone as he could manage, August answered, “Yes, my sister has recently announced her engagement to Captain Schand. They are to be married in March in Norwich.”

Owen’s voice was slurring, and no wonder of it. He had downed four shots of whiskey in the time it had taken August to finish off two. His eyes, too, became glassy as he leaned forward and put his hand on August’s shoulder, before it trailed down and dropped to his side.

“Dat’s wonderful news, Gus,” he said sloppily. “Aye, marriage is always ... always ... always ... great news. I am so happy for she ... for her ... for them. Maybe, you ... ? Ha, you’re a man with ... well, everything we Irish let you take from us, and that’s a good plenty ... You should get married, too.”

As he was clearly drunk —August never thought he would find the likes of a man who could not hold well his liquor in the whole of Ireland — he took no offense. Instead, August waved his hand dismissively.

“One needs to find the right match,” he offered with a smile, casting a quick glance over to the captivating brunette in the far corner of the room. “And one should never marry in less than ideal circumstances, if one has such options.” He took a moment to reflect on his own words before muttering, “Shouldn’t, anyway.”

Owen held up his hand as though some truth had just dawned on him. But then, the scratch of a fiddle pulled everyone’s attention to the back of the pub where the musician started a lively reel. When they turned back to the table, Maeve was standing beside Owen, staring at him intently.

Her mere presence made August’s breath catch and his mouth widen into a warm grin.

“Dance with me.”

It was a firm command directed at her fiancé. Owen’s face grew to a full grimace as he looked proudly to each of the men in turn.

“Gladly, mo chroi.”

Maeve’s head was a wee bit hazy, but Owen’s was thoroughly spun. She led him by the hand to the back of the pub, each step in full swing and sway. With a lively two step, they circled. A few hollers grabbed her attention and Maeve saw Brocc atop a table, lifting her skirts half way over her head. A good many lads circled, cheering her on. As Owen swung Maeve to face that direction, she saw August, now seated alone. Again, their eyes met, but this time she was not so easily able to remove her stare. His lips curled in a half smirk and Maeve stumbled.

“Whoa, there,” Owen laughed, bracing her around the hip and pulling her up. “It won’t do for us both to be drunk off our arses. That’s a man’s work.”

She kissed his cheek softly and slowly, knowing full well August watched with scorn. “Well, find me a man to do the work, and I’ll not tarry,” she teased.

Owen bellowed in laughter as he sloppily pressed his lips to her cheek. From the corner of her eye, Maeve saw August shift uncomfortably in his chair. Good, she thought, let him squirm. In fact ...

Maeve didn’t know if it was her drunken stupor or her need to set August’s mind straight, but suddenly kissing Owen Murphy in as scandalous a fashion as possible became the best idea she had ever had. She pressed her lips gently at first, then coaxed his open. For a moment, Owen seemed resistant, then either by will or by spirits, his lips parted and he returned the kiss. His feet planted firmly on the floor as he deepened the kiss, circling his arms around her and pulling her body flush to his. Within moments, every physical boundary achievable by the clothed and standing was crossed as hoots and hollers arose in every direction. Owen’s mouth moved against Maeve’s, tasting of whiskey, but no less than her own, she supposed. He pulled back a moment, his eyes full of lust and need. She thought he might pull her out of the pub right then to take her in the alley. His hand rose slowly to brush her cheek and he smiled coyly.