Comfort and Joy (2 page)

His diminutive wife stood above him, her head held high, her raven curls tumbling in provocative disarray about delicate, creamy shoulders. A sweet, captivating smile parted her lips, and for a fleeting moment Charles thought her the most ravishing creature he’d ever seen. A powerful silence fell across the room as his eyes met hers.

Maeve forced her gaze away. Suddenly feeling shy, she pulled her dress from the peg, a dark-blue silk hand-me-down from the Deakinses’ daughter, Pansy.

“Would ye be turnin’ your head for the sake of me modesty?” she asked.

“You were just lying in bed naked with me,” he pointed out.

“That was when ye were Charlie.”

Maeve had fallen in love with the man she called Charlie the moment she saw him wiped clean of blood and dirt. It was love at first sight and she knew it to be foolish. She thought him a gift from above, from her sweet mother who promised always to watch over Maeve.

From the moment Charlie regained consciousness he’d been a sweet and gentle man, a curious blend of vulnerability and strength. But Maeve knew amnesia to be a temporary condition, more than likely brought about by the beating. She understood that when his memory returned, the man she called Charlie might not be to her liking, or more likely that he would reject her out of hand.

From the time he first spoke, Maeve realized her Charlie wasn’t Irish, which might be a problem. Irish immigrants were not welcomed or accepted by many of Boston’s long-time residents. But Maeve chose to believe all would be well. It was the season of love, after all. She’d even speculated that the striking man she’d found in the alley might never regain his memory.

So much for that shamrock wish.

She dressed hurriedly, splashing cold water on her face from the basin and quickly sweeping her hair up to the top of her head. She fastened a bright red grosgrain bow in the center of her dark curls, paying no heed to the untamed locks that tumbled from their pins. She could not see them so they mattered not. The small wall mirror had fallen and broken several months ago and Maeve could ill afford to replace it.

“Tea will be ready in just a few minutes,” Maeve told her plainly disturbed husband. “Best be dressing now. Ye’ll find your clothes on the peg.”

She scurried from the room without a backward glance. Charles Rycroft was a stiff sort. But she felt that beneath his starch lay a more affable man.

“What was all the shoutin’ about?” asked her irascible father, who slouched at the small table in the center of the room.

“Never you mind. ‘Tis none of your affair.” Maeve set the kettle on to boil.

“As long as yer livin’ under my roof, all that happens here is my affair,” he insisted.

The O’Malleys lived in a three-room tenement flat on the first floor of a dilapidated brick building in South Boston. Her father and brother shared one room, she another, and the cramped kitchen served as their living area. A table with four spindly chairs, a small bookshelf, and a worn gold velvet sofa discarded by the Deakinses were the only furnishings.

The halls of the building smelled of cabbage and onions. The odor seeped under the doors, permeating every room and seemingly every pore of the tenement residents. Maeve imagined the awful aroma clung to her hair and adhered to her skin. She constantly sprinkled herself with her favorite violet fragrance, the only luxury she allowed herself.

“Me husband has remembered his name.” Maeve set a chipped cup and saucer before her father.

Mick O’Malley looked up at her. His vivid blue eyes held the mischievousness of a leprechaun but the fringe of snowy white hair around the bald dome of his head was all his own.

“Aye? And has the fellow remembered what he did for a livin’? We could use another paycheck, me darlin’.”

Maeve’s father worked a block away at Rosie Grady’s Saloon. Often as not, he drank away most of his salary.

“Saints above! How could I ask such a thing when the man does not even remember marrying me?”

“Did he try to disavow ye?” The red-bulb tip of the old man’s nose deepened to a fiery shade.

“No. But...”

The door of her room opened then and Charles’s towering form filled the frame. She must become accustomed to calling him Charles. He regarded them silently—a bit warily, she thought. As Maeve gazed up at him, her heart fluttered like the wing of a startled bird on the branch, that commanding a figure he was. A restless, raw energy flowed from Charles Rycroft like sizzling lava from a volcano, stirring an ancient heat deep inside of her.

The teakettle whistled.

“Good morning,” he said, barely moving his lips.

From the start, Maeve suspected her husband might be a wee bit priggish, an endearing trait she nevertheless meant to help him overcome. But she could clearly see now, what she’d refused to recognize before. Rycroft’s refined way of speaking and poker-stiff posture spoke of good breeding. The man she’d rescued came from a different world than hers, one of wealth and privilege.

He stood well over six feet and exuded an air of authority no one could deny. His dark good looks radiated a power and masculinity Maeve found riveting. Clean shaven, she had taken the liberty of trimming his abundant side whiskers while he was still unconscious, his strong, square jaw revealed a man of power and potency.

Tearing her gaze away, Maeve motioned to the nearest chair. “Sit ye down. I’ll have your tea in—”

“Regrettably, I cannot stay.”

“Just where do you think ye be goin’?” Mick growled.

Charles arched an eyebrow. “Sir? I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Maeve raised a hand to cover her racing heart. Her father could be a hard man.

“Me name is Mick O’Malley, as well ye know.” The old man’s eyes narrowed.

Charles did not blink, although from Maeve’s viewpoint, his jaw appeared to tighten. He extended his hand. “How do you do? I am Charles Rycroft.”

Only five feet four, Maeve’s father was strong for his limited stature. She knew he could crush a man’s hand. Eyeing the tight clasp and the squeeze he gave Charles’s hand, she held her breath.

Her husband did not flinch. Maeve felt a gentle heart swell, a fresh surge of respect for him.

“Where are ye from, Charles Rycroft?” Mick asked.

“My family has lived in Boston for years,” Charles replied.

The old leprechaun’s blue eyes lost their luster as they narrowed once again. “Ye one of those?”

Charles glanced at Maeve. All she could do was lower her head, shaking it slightly in warning.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Look.” Mick turned to Maeve. “Ye can tell by the new way he’s carryin’ himself. By the mask he wears and the dull color of his eyes.”

“What is that you can tell, my good sir?” Charles lifted his head and drew himself up to his full height.

Maeve knew instinctively that Charlie was a proud man despite the lowly workingman’s clothes he wore. He must be ill at ease and uncomfortable in her brother’s worn garments. More than that, he was at a dreadful disadvantage, finding himself in strange surroundings with a cranky old man and a wife he did not know nor want.

Her father, however, had no concern about Charles’s discomfort. “I can tell by the looks of ye that you’re one of those blueblood swells who have no use for little people like me. Ye make your fortunes off the backs of poor immigrants like us who—”

“Da!”

“Quiet, lass. I’m speakin’.”

“Ye don’t know what you’re saying.”

Her father turned his angry gaze on Maeve. “Ye be mindin’ my words or it’s sorry ye’ll be.”

Charles Rycroft cleared his throat. “I shall take my leave now, but I will be contacting you—”

“Do ye be thinkin’ to leave without your bride?” Mick growled.

Charles turned his attention to Maeve. Silver-gray eyes, the shade of fine pewter, met hers. He raked a hand through his hair, straight and thick; the rich, dark-walnut strands fell to the nape of his neck in helmet fashion. Maeve had taken her scissors to her husband’s head as well as his whiskers, and so much the better he looked for her efforts. If she didn’t say so herself.

Rycroft stood with his shoulders squared regarding Maeve as if she were a dilemma he must resolve. Although he might not be handsome in the chiseled manner some women preferred, with his aquiline nose and deep-set eyes Charles Rycroft made Maeve’s heart feel a bit lighter, beat a bit faster.

“Come, then.” Rycroft took her arm and hustled her to the door.

She snatched her worn woolen coat from the peg.

Once out on the street, Charles reacted with annoyance when she told him carriages for hire did not abound in South Boston. Maeve patiently explained they must walk to the horse-drawn trolley stop. Every day save Sunday, Maeve took the trolley to Boston and then walked across the Common to the Deakinses’ brownstone residence.

The early morning air encouraged a swift pace to keep warm. Boston winters were long and brutal. The city was regularly beset by violent northeast storms. Between nor’easters, the sky seemed to remain a permanent grizzly gray and the temperature rarely rose above a piercing, arctic cold. Like today.

Puffs of white smoke rose from the three-story brick dwellings into the somber gray sky. Predominately Irish, the South Boston streets bustled with activity as the residents left the area to fill their positions as servants and street mongers in Boston proper. Dressed in poorly fitting and worn layers of clothing, men, women, and children greeted each other in their musical accents.

An accent Charles found pleasing to his ear although he knew it to be a lower-class distinction. He’d been raised with a mind to class, schooled to treasure his heritage and uphold the tradition of the class to which he’d been born. As his mother often reminded him, his ancestors came to America aboard the Mayflower.

“Maeve, I want you to show me where you found me.”

“Aye, but first I must let Mrs. Deakins know why I will not be workin’ today.”

No one ever objected to Charles’s orders for any reason. “I will take care of the Deakinses. Now, do you remember where you found me?”

If he was not mistaken, Maeve slanted an irritated frown his way before hurrying on. “Aye. We found ye not far from here. Follow me.”

Charles allowed her to take the lead, wondering fleetingly if she was warm enough in the thin wool coat she wore. His own unfamiliar garments did not protect him from the chill. They had only gone two blocks when he noticed Maeve’s ears and the tip of her nose were red. Her slender fingers extended bare beyond the scratchy mittens that reached only to her knuckles. His heart went out to her, his wife, a poor Irish immigrant. A woman who’d taken him in and shared what little her family had with a him, a complete stranger. Charles had never met such a woman and he admired the courage she showed in taking in a man she thought to be a “bummer.”

Maeve stopped and looked up at him.

Charles sucked in his breath. Her blue eyes were as deep and sparkling as a sun-swept sea. Arresting. He was momentarily blind to anything else but those startling blue orbs fixed on him.

“In there.” She pointed to an alley filled with rotting trash. “Ye were propped against the wall midway.”

“Why were you in this alley?” he asked, suddenly suspicious.

“Me brother Shea meets me at the Boston side and walks me home every night when ‘tis dark. Shea’s a boxer, you know, and he is not afraid to take shortcuts when it will take us out of the cold sooner.”

Charles nodded and moved into the alley. He searched, kicking through unidentifiable trash, not quite knowing what he expected to find. Maeve O’Malley hummed.

“Is this the spot?” he asked.

“Aye, more or less.”

“And you took me home from here?”

“You would have frozen to death if we had not. And ‘twas Thanksgiving eve, a day we are happy to observe, countin’ our blessings and all. With a roof over my head, and food left over from the Deakins table, it was only right we should take ye home and share our bounty.”

Bounty? Charles found Maeve’s outlook plainly astonishing. While he wished to explore her intriguing thought process further, he concentrated on the subject at hand. “When you found me, I had nothing? No money? Not even a pocket watch?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Shea said you looked as if you were done over by a professional, a boxer like himself.”

“I know no boxers, and I have never been to this part of town.”

“Where was the last place you remember being?”

“If I knew that—” he stopped abruptly in mid-sentence. A memory, a fuzzy picture, floated up from the depths of Charles’s subconscious. He recalled leaving Edgar Dines’s gallery on Warren Street in the heart of Boston proper. Slowly the picture in his mind cleared. He’d carried a painting beneath his arm wrapped in brown paper. It was a valuable sketch, an irreplaceable rendering of St. Nick by an artist no longer living.

Dear God, he’d been robbed of his most precious possession.

A flood of pictures flashed through his mind in lightning-like fashion as the memory of the attack on him returned full force. Charles had been heading toward his carriage, which waited half a block away in front of his tailor’s shoppe. Previous to his appointment with Edgar Dines, he had been fitted for a new suit and several other garments for the upcoming holiday festivities. But he’d not gone more than six feet from the art dealer’s gallery when a blow to the head from behind felled him. All was blank after that.

For the following five days he’d apparently existed without memory or will. For five days he’d done whatever he was bid—including marrying the girl by his side. Maeve, who stood silently, regarding him with wide, wondering eyes as he searched his memory.

Surely he’d been missed by someone. A man of his standing did not simply disappear.

“Were there no posted notices that I was missing?” he asked her.

“Perhaps. I hardly ever read notices.”

“You do read?” he intoned, aware for the first time that she might very well not. His wife could be illiterate.

Maeve reacted with an angry stomp of her foot. Her eyes sparked with indignation. “Of course I know how to read! What do ye take me for? Do ye think me dumb because me name is O’Malley and I’m Irish? And a woman?” Her fists dug into her hips and her midnight curls bounced atop her hatless head. “I’ll have ye know—”