Banner O'Brien (15 page)

When the pain came back, he endured it.

*  *  *

The Corbin Christmas tree was a shimmering thing, though there were no candles in its boughs. It was covered with intricate, fragile ornaments and shiny spirals of gold and silver foil. Ribbons graced it, as did the magnificent star at its top.

Banner tucked her carefully wrapped gifts into the branches, with the others that were already hidden there, and stepped back to admire the effect. It felt good to celebrate the holy birth again, to have someone to give presents to.

“Have your toes thawed out yet? Mine haven’t.”

Banner started. She’d thought that she was alone in the parlor, but now she saw Keith sitting in a chair near the fireplace, his bare feet stretched out toward the blaze.

She smiled. The house was very quiet, now that the party was over and the family had gone off to hear midnight mass. “I’m quite warm, thank you.”

He stood in a mannerly fashion and then sat down again, indicating the chair next to his with a gesture of invitation.

Banner took the chair and folded her hands in her lap.

“Why didn’t you go to church with everyone else, Dr. O’Brien?”

Even though she ached inside—no matter how she tried not to notice, Adam wasn’t back from the mountain yet—Banner shrugged offhandedly.

“Are you an infidel, like me?”

Banner considered her divorce from Sean. “I guess I am,” she said.

“Aren’t you going to ask how I managed to grow up in a fine Catholic family and end up as a Methodist?”

Banner smiled. “I’m sure it’s none of my business. Why is it that there are no candles on your Christmas tree?”

Keith laughed at the deft change of subject. “Adam won’t allow it. Too much danger of fire.”

Adam. Now, how had
he
gotten into this conversation, when she had been trying so hard not to think about him? “Does he always dictate such things?”

“Usually. Despite her modern thinking, Mama often defers to him. For all intents and purposes, he’s the head of the family.”

“Adam is something of a tyrant, I think,” Banner said gently, her mind straying up the mountain again, in search of her heart.

“I’ve never heard anyone condemned so tenderly,” observed Keith. “What do you really think of him, Banner?”

“You won’t tell?”

“You know I won’t, Banner.”

“I think I love Adam.”

Keith gave a startling shout of joy and bounded out of his chair to face Banner. “If he asked you to marry him, would you accept?”

Banner blushed. She’d never intended to love again, let alone marry, but she hadn’t counted on Adam Corbin, either. “Yes,” she said miserably.

Keith shouted again and then bent to kiss her forehead soundly. “Tell Adam how you feel, Banner.”

“I couldn’t!”

“Why not?”

“It would be
fast!
And suppose he said—”

“You might be surprised at what he’d say, Banner. Adam cares for you.”

“But it’s only been a week since we met!”

Keith turned away, took a small package from the mantelpiece. After a glance at the clock there, he came and placed the gift in Banner’s lap. “Adam asked me to give you this if he wasn’t back by now.”

Banner’s heart surged into her throat and thumped a mad cadence there. Her fingers trembled as she undid the narrow ribbon and the tissue paper, and tears burned in her eyes when she lifted the lid of the wooden box inside and saw the pendant.

It was a shamrock formed of gold filligree and suspended from a delicate chain.

Keith kissed the top of her bowed head and discreetly left the room.

For a time, Banner was too overcome to rise out of her chair. Presently, however, a distant metallic clamor brought her out of her dreamy state.

After clasping the beautiful pendant around her neck, the skirts of her blue taffeta dress rustling musically, Banner made her way through the house to the walkway. There, she quickened her step, for she heard another clatter followed by a thundering, continuous crash.

Clarence was snoring in his bed, undisturbed, so Banner hurried on.

She found Adam in one of the examining rooms, and the sight of him made her forget the lovely shamrock at her throat. His shirt was open to his midsection, his hair was rumpled, and there was a stubble of a new beard darkening his face.

He weaved unsteadily and grinned. “Hello, O’Brien,” he said, in the singular slur of the hopelessly inebriated, “and Happy Christmas to you.”

Banner looked at the variety of surgical instruments scattered over the floor. “What happened?”

Adam shrugged. “Spilled the damn things. Will you sleep with me tonight, O’Brien?”

Banner was grateful for the task of gathering the
instruments; it gave her a means of hiding her flaming face. “No, I will not.”

With rather a lot of difficulty, Adam knelt, facing her. Had it not been for the pain shifting in his ink-blue eyes, she would have been furious.

“Why not?”

“We aren’t married,” replied Banner, setting instruments on the tray that had obviously been dropped with them.

He caught his hand under her chin, forced her to meet his gaze. “Is that your price, O’Brien? Marriage?”

Banner wanted to cry, but instead she nodded her head, knowing all the while that she should have said she didn’t have a price.

The awful truth was that, where this man was concerned, she did.

Adam gripped her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. “O’Brien, I need you. I—”

Banner closed her eyes, but the words she had hoped to hear were not spoken. After a time, and against her better judgment, she lifted her hands to his face. “You need coffee, Adam. And sleep.”

“Marry me.”

Banner sighed. “You’re drunk. We can’t—”

Adam’s powerful shoulders moved in a disjointed-looking shrug. “Why not? Do you already have a husband, O’Brien?”

She stood on tiptoe, kissed the beard-roughened cleft in his chin. “No, I don’t have a husband. But I did once, Adam. His name was—is—Sean.”

Adam swayed, looking benignly puzzled. “Sean?”

Banner nodded. “I’m divorced, Adam.”

“I don’t care.”

“But the church would. They wouldn’t recognize a marriage between you and me.”

“I don’t care,” he repeated.

“You will when you’re sober.”

He shuddered, and a soft, soblike sound escaped him. “Hold me, O’Brien,” he said.

Banner held him, longed to draw the pain from him, into herself. “I love you,” she whispered.

“Then marry me.”

Banner could only hope that the cold night air would sober him. “All right, Adam. All right. But where is this marriage to take place? We haven’t a license, or—”

Adam found his suitcoat, which smelled of brandy and pine pitch, and draped it over her shoulders. “Stop worrying, O’Brien,” he said. Then he dragged her out into that cold, snowy night.

“Adam—”

He was holding her hand, dragging her toward the stables. There, he hitched up a horse and buggy with surprising dexterity, considering his state of drunkenness.

This done, he lifted a wide-eyed Banner into the buggy seat and scrambled up beside her.

It didn’t look as though the night air was helping.

“Adam, please,” she pleaded as they started down the slippery, rutted hill. “We can’t do this! You’re drunk.”

He belched.

Banner sank back in the seat and knitted her fingers together. What if Adam didn’t sober up before they reached their destination, whatever it was? What would she do then?

“Suppose I say I won’t marry you after all?” she asked, testing the waters.

Adam shrugged and his white teeth flashed in a grin. “Then I’ll take you anyway, O’Brien. Right here in the buggy.”

Banner blushed with fury and a scandalous measure of anticipation. “You wouldn’t.”

He moved to draw the buggy to a stop alongside the road. “Want me to prove that I would?”

“No!”

“Then you’d better marry me.”

It was then that Banner O’Brien faced the distasteful facts. She hadn’t been hoping that Adam would get sober at all. Insane as it was, she did want to marry him, to share his life and his bed, to bear his children.

She said nothing until she realized that they were headed into Water Street. “Wait a minute! Where—”

Adam laughed. “You can tell our grandchildren that we were married in a brothel, O’Brien.”

“A
brothel?”

The buggy was jostling down over the hillside that led to the
Silver Shadow.
The converted ship’s many windows were merrily alight in the snowstorm, flinging soft-edged golden squares onto the ground, and the raucous voices aboard rose in an exuberant rendering of a carol.

“Adam!” Desperately, Banner caught his unshaven face in her hands. “Adam Corbin, are you listening to me? No. Do you hear me? No!”

He climbed out of the rig and dragged her after him, and she struggled as he carried her up the boarding ramp. Onto the decks of Water Street’s finest bordello.

“Adam!”

He nuzzled her neck, nibbled at her earlobe. “One way or another, O’Brien,” he vowed, “I’ll have you tonight. You might as well have the paper to make it legal.”

Banner was dizzy; her head swam and her blood sang and her womb was melting within her. She’d tried to reason with Adam, hadn’t she? She’d told him about her previous marriage, she’d pointed out his drunken state. What more could she do?

He carried her to the end of a long, dark hallway and set her on her feet. She trembled as one of his hands came to cup brazenly over her right breast.

A low chuckle rose from Adam’s throat and rumbled in the cold, dark air. He pushed back the suitcoat he’d
put over her shoulders and tugged at the front of her good blue taffeta dress. Her nipples hardened as he drew down her camisole, baring her.

“Make your choice, O’Brien. Marry me, or I’ll take you here.” He bent his head, tormented one distended nipple with warm lips.

She should have struggled, she knew that. But she couldn’t, for Banner’s wanting was as great or greater than his. She arched her back and gasped with delight as he made a banquet of her swollen breast.

And Adam was pressing against her; she could feel the hardness of him. He turned to plunder the other breast while caressing the first with his hand.

Banner whimpered. Would he take her here, as he’d threatened, against the wall?

She must have spoken the question aloud, for he left his feast to nibble at her earlobe again. “Here,” he said.

Banner was in agony—sweet, tumultuous, irrational agony that drove her on toward something she didn’t understand, for all her learning. Something she had never experienced before.

Adam bent again, slowly, and softly kissed each of her pleading nipples. Then he pulled the camisole back into place, along with the upper part of her dress, and knocked on the door that was inches away.

“Who’s there?” demanded a raspy, aged voice.

Adam yelled his name, causing Banner to wince.

“Come in then,” came the brusque answer.

Inside the spacious, well-lit room, a grizzled old man sat at a table with a tassled cloth, playing a solitary game of cards. He wore a frayed suit and spectacles, and his hair was combed to cover a bald spot.

“Well?” barked the elderly gentleman.

“I want to marry this woman,” Adam replied flatly.

The old man took in Banner’s mussed hair and rumpled dress and grinned, revealing two gold teeth.
“Looks like you’d better. All right—you fill out the paper, and I’ll say the words.”

Adam and Banner both signed a remarkably ornate form that even had places for their photographs, should they wish to add them.

“Who is that man?” Banner whispered, as the fellow went out to recruit the necessary witnesses.

Adam smiled fondly. “He’s a justice of the peace. Usually, he marries sailors to prostitutes.”

“Wonderful,” wailed Banner, who was having second thoughts now that her blood was almost back to its normal temperature and her insides were solid again. “Adam, we can’t do this.”

He lifted one ebony eyebrow. “Must I convince you again, Shamrock?”

Banner had no doubt that he would, there and then. “I’m convinced!” she said quickly.

The justice returned, followed by a prostitute and a man wearing a ruffled shirt and a diamond ring. After clearing his throat and marshaling everyone into position, he opened his black book and began the ceremony.

Within five minutes, it was over.

Adam grasped Banner’s hand and strode out, dragging her along the hallway and out onto the deck. There, he swung her up into his arms again and carried her down the ramp to the buggy.

Banner didn’t open her eyes until he thrust her onto the seat. She looked up at the
Silver Shadow
and down at her ringless hand and wondered what had possessed her to do such a stupid and impetuous thing.

The drive back to the dark, slumbering house on the hill was passed in a daze. Banner alternately rejoiced and despaired, smiled and wept.

Inside the stables, Adam lifted her from the buggy and drew her close. Again, she felt the warm granite of his need, the power of his thighs. Within minutes,
perhaps, he would be moving upon her, claiming her as his wife.

He kissed her at leisure, his hands cupping her bottom, pressing her to him.

At last, however, Adam broke away and unhitched the horse. When the animal had been led to its stall and fed, he gripped Banner’s elbow and propelled her out of the stables, across the snow-swept expanse of the backyard, and into the kitchen.

They traversed that room and the back stairway in silence and, on the second floor, Adam again lifted her off her feet. Without preamble, he carried his wife into his bedroom and thrust the door shut with one heel.

A fire had been lit on the hearth, but there was no other light in the room. Shadows danced on Adam’s face as Banner looked up at him, and he might have been either an angel or a devil, this husband of hers.

Adam’s hands came to remove the suitcoat she wore; it floated silently to the floor.

He undid the catches at the back of her taffeta dress, reaching around her to do so, and she let her head fall back in wanton surrender, felt the heat of his gaze through her camisole as the dress slid away. The undergarment came gently over her head, the pins were pulled from her heavy hair.