Hot Whispers of an Irishman (18 page)

Beth sighed. “This whole situation is so hard. I knew it would be bad, being away from her, but I can’t stop worrying. I know you’re right about this dating thing, but—”

“Then keep doing your work, and trust me to do right by Meghan. Everything is going as well as it can, given the circumstances.”

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“Careful with my ego, if you please. I wasn’t the best of husbands, but I was an honest one, right?”

He smiled at the sound of her soft laugh. “It was your sole saving grace, Liam,” she said.

He felt a lucky man to have had at least one. “Will you be by your phone later today?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll have herself call you when she’s home from school and tell you that the house has been tidy and orgy-free.”

Vi looked up from the bag of dog kibble at that. He sent a smile her way.

“That would be nice.” Beth was silent for a moment, then added, “So this woman friend…is it serious?”

Liam didn’t know how to answer that. It was joyful, hot, confusing, and impermanent. He would return to America and salvage his life, and Vi would no sooner leave Ireland than become a nun.

“Complex,” he said. “It’s complex.”

“I see,” Beth replied, and he thought it an amusing thing that someone could voice understanding when he had none.

He glanced over at Vi, who had fixed her attention on Roger snuffling about in his kibble. Roses of color blossomed on her cheeks, markers of understanding that she was the conversation’s topic.

Liam said goodbye to Beth, then set the phone aside and worked the edge of the spatula beneath Vi’s eggs.

“More bad reviews for me on the kiddie front?” she asked when she’d joined him at the stove.

“I wouldn’t be taking it personally.”

“Oh, I’m not,” she said with a serenity that raised her even higher in his estimation. “Now what’s this bit about orgies?”

He scooped her eggs one by one onto a plate. “Nothing. Just trying to get a rise from Beth.”

Vi brushed a kiss against his mouth, then took the plate from him. “Pity,” she said. “And I’d had such hopes for the Rafferty profound appreciation of sex. Could be that you’re past your prime, all right.”

Liam laughed, digging out a fork from a drawer for Vi’s eggs. “We’ll see if you’re singing the same song tonight, once I’ve gotten Nora to keep an eye on Meghan.”

She took the fork. “Oh, I’ll be singing, but not quite the notes you’re thinking. It’s
sessiun
night at the pub, and I’m Nora’s date.”

Sessiun
night, complete with the O’Gormans, and he’d nearly forgotten! The woman at his table eating eggs as though she’d best do it before they ate her was proving a distraction from a distraction. Liam smiled. Aye, she was complex, indeed.

At nearly two-thirty that afternoon, Vi hit her “I can clean Nan’s no more” limit. After three-and-a-half hours of nonstop toil, the house was nearly presentable, and Vi was a dirt-smudged mess. All that could be dumped in the rubbish tip was there, and the rest of the house was orderly, if not precisely the perfection she craved.

After cleaning her hands and face with the bottle of non-rusty water and bit of soap she’d brought from Liam’s house, Vi looked out the back bedroom window to see what man and hound were about. Liam was still trekking over the field, GPR rig in place, as he’d been since soon after they’d arrived this morning. Rog strolled behind him, likely glad to have finally found a human whose pace matched his stumpy legs. Vi shook her head at the sight—odd and even more oddly poignant.

Since it seemed that she’d be at the house a while longer, Vi sought reading materials. Three boxes remained next to Nan’s little desk. In them were more journals and some ancient art supplies that Vi couldn’t bring herself to pitch. She sorted through the journals and chose one simply because she liked the sketch of a wee bird on its cover. Vi was more abstract in style than Nan had been, but still she could see whispers of her grandmother in her own work. When she did any, that was.

Vi took the bird-journal to Nan’s painted desk, then sat. With her eyes closed, she thought of Nan. She didn’t picture her as she’d been near the end of her life, but as she’d been when Vi was small. Nan had never sat still, moving from one task to the next, and Vi had trailed after her…watching, learning, and in time, helping.

Vi let her hand hover over the journal for a moment, then chose a spot at which to open it, and began to read.

Throat tight with emotion, Vi paged forward.

Riveted by what she was reading, Vi paged on. There was chat of what Michael, Vi’s da, was doing, and even a few words about young James Rafferty taking over the town’s pub.

And on Vi read:

Vi turned the page looking for more, but Nan’s words had come to an end. The last third of the book was nothing but blank yellowed paper. She closed the thick cardboard cover and said, “So it was time for a new book, was it?”

After a glance out the window to see if Liam and her hound were closer to the house, Vi let her hand hover over the stack of journals and clipped papers in front of her, then plucked out the one that most drew her.

This one’s cover was of faded yet thick green felt-like material with a detailed concentric circular design worked in orange and yellow thread. After running her fingertip gently around the outermost circle, and feeling nearly a hum vibrate up her arm, Vi opened the book. The pages were so worn that a bit of one crumbled between her fingers, drawing a gasp of dismay from her.

“Careful, now,” she warned herself, then began reading Nan’s notes.

Vi smiled at the last, knowing it was the woman and not the man who would have approached out-spoken Nan for the cure. She turned the page and stilled. Or perhaps they weren’t after Nan at all, but Nan’s mother, instead, for the page held a note dated 1905. That this book could have survived one hundred years of damp, dust, and chill was nearly a miracle.

Vi gingerly turned the pages, reading bits about births, deaths, and illnesses in the village. Matters as simple as the number of chickens brought to market or how much Nan’s mother had saved from her wages at the castle took up most of the text, but to Vi it was a link to an era she was sure would have far better suited her…well, except for the washing of the Dunhills’ linens and the toting of their fuel. She expected that she’d have been far too uppity for that, even if born in a more female-subservient time.

“What have you there?” asked a male voice from directly behind her.

When she’d recovered from nearly leaping from her chair, Vi said, “Most who’ve snuck up on me haven’t lived to tell the tale.”

Liam kissed the top of her head. “Then I’ll count myself lucky.”

Vi’s answering smile was involuntary yet most heartfelt.

“So what are you reading?” he asked.

“Bits of life, really. Notes from my nan and her mother. I can tell you the price of a chicken at market and the silver pattern at Castle Duneen.”

“The silver pattern?”

Vi nodded. “Nan’s mother worked as a maid there, and her mother’s mother before that.”

He settled his hands on her shoulders, his fingers softly massaging. “Perhaps I could have a read?”

Seducer,
Vi thought, and hid her smile. He had that smooth tone at work, the same one in which he’d say “Aren’t you warm with all those clothes on?” that long-ago summer.

“Here you go,” she said, handing the journal up to him. “But have a care, for it’s fragile.”

He took it, and Vi began the countdown to what she knew she’d hear next.

Three…Two…One…

“But this is all in Irish,” Liam said, sounding most surprised.

“That it is.”

“I can’t follow this.”

She did smile. “It’s almost enough to make you wish you’d paid better attention in school, isn’t it?”

He handed the book to her. “I’d tell you that smugness isn’t becoming, except that on you, it is.”

“And flattery won’t get me translating for you.”

“How about this?” He swept her hair aside and kissed her neck.

Vi smiled as pleasure danced though her like fairy dust on a summer breeze. “Now, there you stand a chance, Rafferty.”

His hands closed over her shoulders again, this time with a grip of pure possession.

“I shouldn’t have kissed you,” he said, “for now I want you naked. I’ve been thinking of little else all day while I walked that bloody field.”

Vi drew a sharp breath as her own hunger shot through her. She closed her great-grandmother’s book, starting as her fingers brushed the cover design and that sense of recognition again nipped at her.

Patterns…

She looked more closely, doing her best to push away more lustful thoughts.

This pattern was identical to the wax cast of the gorget’s round pieces that she’d seen in the National Museum. Vi was certain of it. She subtly moved a piece of paper over the stitching. Aye, she’d translate for him, but this book very last.

And sooner yet, she’d take the hot distraction he offered. Vi stood and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“How long do we have?” she whispered, her lips nearly touching his.

She knew his answer before he spoke, for he moved marginally away.

“Not long enough,” he said.

She glanced toward the books she’d just covered. No, they would never have long enough.

Speed and accuracy do not agree.

—I
RISH
P
ROVERB

L
iam knew that life was filled with grand mysteries. It had simply never occurred to him that knowing for certain whether his daughter had completed her schoolwork would be one of them. Meghan said she had. Then again, Meghan had also said she’d cleaned her room, and any rational man could see that she had not.

It was hardly seven o’clock in the evening, and already he and Meghan had survived a burned supper (entirely his fault), a minefield of a conversation regarding Vi, a call to Meghan’s mother, and a battle over the bedroom. They weren’t quite done yet, either. For the first time since they’d arrived in Duncarraig, she was expressing an interest in meeting up with her cousins at tonight’s
sessiun.
Studies, though, had to come first.

“So how do I tell if you’ve done all your work?” Liam asked his daughter, who was sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor with books and most of her wardrobe strewn about her.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ve told you this before. I write all the assignments in this notebook, then I check them off when they’re done,” she said, holding up a black wire-bound book decorated with a pink skull-and-crossbones.

“This is where your system fails me. How am I to be sure you’ve written everything down in the first place?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. I guess you have to trust me.”

And therein lay the rub. They had no mutual trust, and hadn’t been permitted to begin building it in the normal way.

Liam scrubbed his hands over his face. “Just clean the fire hazard you’re living in, and yes, you can come to the pub for the
sessiun.
”

“I knew you’d come to see it my way,” she said in a voice that was deadpan yet somehow flip at the same time. A very scary talent, indeed, for a female just twelve years old. He knew he should give her a word or two about respecting one’s elders, but he couldn’t take another trading of barbs.

“We’ll be leaving after I make a phone call. Be sure you’re ready,” he said, then retreated downstairs.

Once there, Liam took the phone from its base, pulled a notebook and a pen from his canvas briefcase and settled in at the dining room table—his designated office. Thus prepared, he dialed Stuart, his attorney in Boston. The haste with which he was put through by Stuart’s assistant was unsettling.

“Liam…good timing,” Stuart said by way of greeting.

“Why’s that?”

“Alex has gone missing.”

Liam found little solace in knowing his instincts were good. He leaned back as far as the stiff dining room chair would permit and tried to relax. “You’re sure of this?”

“Positive. I’ve been trying to work through the rest of the termination details with his attorney, who finally admitted that he hasn’t heard from Alex in a week and a half. It gets worse, though. Your offices were raided by the FBI about two hours ago—”

“This makes no sense. We were cooperating with them.”

“We were. Alex wasn’t. His house was their first stop.”

Liam’s pulse quickened, and not in a pleasant way. “How about my town house? Any visits there?”

“Yes.”

You’re innocent,
Liam reminded himself. Innocent yet so implicated—and violated—that he felt sick. He focused on what he could fix.

“Could you perhaps send someone over to clean before I return? I expect they weren’t too worried about putting things back where they found them.” It then struck him that he’d heard nothing about the office raid from Cami, his secretary. She had to have been there.

“Have you talked to Cami?” he asked Stuart. Cami knew that since Alex was
persona non grata,
Stuart had been designated to handle all crises while Liam was in Ireland.

“She’s pretty shaken,” Stuart said. “She asked me what was going on, but I thought you should handle that with her. I also told her to go home for the day.”

It would be an interesting conversation when Liam did reach her. Cami had taken the job because she wanted something quiet in order to concentrate on her evening college classes. “Quiet” had clearly gone straight out the window.

“So what now?” he asked Stuart.

“Things with the government are going to roll faster than I first thought.”

Liam would have responded with a good obscenity, but the well had run dry at a very poor time. He was teetering between survival and utter failure, and had hoped to thoroughly clean the company’s image of Alex before news of his thefts became public. It appeared that the opportunity had passed. If the small bit of work still coming Liam’s way dried up, he was finished.

A few weeks before gathering up Meghan and leaving for Ireland, he’d met with his banker to see if there was any way to extend the company’s line of credit a bit farther. Their answer was no, and Liam and his accountant had then worked their way down the banking food chain until they were lodged with a lender of last resort.

In addition to pledging all of the company’s assets, he’d been required to provide a personal guarantee and a mortgage on the Boston town house. The only reason the Duncarraig property had escaped was that the bank didn’t feel like spending the money to get its claws properly sunk in. Ironic, the one thing he’d be left with was what mattered to him least.

“So what happens next?” Liam asked.

“Probably the subpoena I’d warned you about.”

“Should I return to Boston?”

“Not yet, but I want to get another of my partners involved. She usually handles our criminal cases.”

The headache that had been forming when he was dealing with Meghan was an all-out killer now. “I’m no criminal.”

“
We
know that, but it’s going to take the government a while to reach that conclusion. The faster we can help them down that road, the better for you.”

“I understand.”

“So hang tight for now, and make sure we always have a phone number for you. The last thing you’re going to want to appear is uncooperative.”

“Agreed.”

“And Liam, we’ve got one more thing to discuss.”

“And that would be?”

“Bankruptcy,” Stuart said as bluntly as only a business lawyer could. “I want you to be thinking about it before it’s shoved down your throat.”

“Grand,” Liam said. “I’m thinking my first drink at the pub this evening should be arsenic.”

“It’s just business. Don’t forget that.”

“Right. I’ll be talking to you soon,” Liam said, then hung up.

Just business?

It was his life, and moment by moment he was losing control of it.

He looked at the notepad to see what he’d been scribbling while he talked to Stuart. It was nothing he’d want Meghan to see, that much was sure. Liam had had no idea that his subconscious could spew out so many variations on one key theme:
you’re utterly screwed.

It was a good thing that Vi was in Rafferty’s Pub, for she needed a pint…or three. Of course, being there was precisely what had precipitated the need for drink. In agreeing to come sing at the
sessiun
with Nora, she’d overlooked one wee, well-dressed nit, and that was Una Rafferty.

Liam’s mam wasn’t being rude, exactly. In fact she had said nothing at all to Vi and was studiously not even looking Vi’s way from her perch behind the bar. It had to be exhausting for Liam’s mam, managing to be that oblivious to a soul’s presence. Surely one brief hello would be much less painful.

Vi and Nora had already pulled two stools into the circle of musicians forming in front of the fireplace, where three bricks of peat flickered and smoked. While Nora turned away from the group and began tuning her fiddle, Vi glanced over at Una, determined to be done with the tension.

Vi briefly touched a hand to Nora’s back. “Can I get you anything from the bar? I’m wanting a pint before we start.”

“Raspberry vodka on ice,” Nora replied, head tilted and bow drawn.

“Raspberry it is,” Vi said, then went to face down the maternal presence behind the bar.

“Hello…having a fine night?” she first asked Jamie, who immediately stood taller, not that as the shortest male Rafferty, he’d manage to outstrip her in height.

“Now I am, and it’s time you got up to the bar. I was about to risk the wrath of Mam for slipping away to see you,” he said with a tip of his head toward his mother. In what Vi considered a sadly evasive tactic, Una was having an animated though one-sided discussion with an elderly man napping at the end of the bar.

“Brave, indeed,” Vi said, then ordered her drinks. Jamie started the pint, then while it half settled, poured the vodka, and turned his attention to other customers.

Vi worked her way down toward Liam’s mam. “Good evening, Mrs. Rafferty,” she said once Una had given up on chat with the sleeper.

“Violet,” Mrs. Rafferty said in answer.

Vi could nearly hear her nan counseling her that patience would eventually bring its own reward. “I much prefer being called Vi.”

Liam’s mam made a noncommittal sound in response.

“You’ll be playing tonight, I hope?” Vi asked. Mrs. Rafferty had taught Nora the fiddle.

The older woman’s expression softened marginally. “I might. And you’ll be singing, I suppose.”

Vi smiled. “It’s true I can’t help myself,” she said.

Mrs. Rafferty’s firm nod was as close to cordiality as Vi could expect. It was also short-lived. A hand settled on the small of Vi’s back at precisely the same moment that Una’s expression grew more guarded.

“Mam,” Liam said. “You’re looking glorious indeed in that pink jumper.”

“Don’t be wasting your flattery on me,” his mam replied, but Vi could see that she’d been pleased with the compliment.

Liam brushed a kiss against Vi’s cheek. “I’ve brought a date of my own since you’ve taken up with Nora,” he said, then cast a smile to Meghan, who was on his other side.

Vi stepped away from the bar just far enough to get a clear view of the girl. “Is that one of your Dublin purchases?” she asked.

Meghan glanced down at her hooded sweatshirt bearing the caricature of a wee monkey on a large green tractor.

“It’s Paul Frank,” Meghan said. “Cool, huh?”

Vi decided the best course of action was to nod knowingly, even though she had no idea if Paul might be the stern faced monkey or perhaps the garment’s designer.

“Grand,” she said. “Very imaginative.”

The girl looked to be about to say something else when her grandmother cut in. “Meghan, your cousins are in the back office playing on the computer. Come round and join them.”

Without so much as a look in her father’s direction, Meghan scooted around the bar and then down a short hallway to a closed door beyond.

Liam laughed. “Fickle female.”

Jamie returned with Vi’s drinks. She dug into her patchwork bag, seeking the cash to pay him, but Liam retrieved his money faster.

Vi shook her head, having caught a brief downturn in Una Rafferty’s mouth. “I’d rather pay.”

“And I’d rather you didn’t.” He slid the money across the bar to Jamie. “Are the O’Gormans here yet?” he asked his brother.

“I’ve not seen them,” Jamie replied, and Liam muttered a quiet curse.

Vi gathered her drinks and headed back toward Nora. “Who are the O’Gormans?” she asked Liam, who’d fallen in step beside her.

“They own Castle Duneen, and Da says they come to most
sessiuns.
”

Vi’s heart beat faster. She’d brought her great-grandmother’s cloth covered journal to the carriage house and finished paging through it in the quiet of the early evening. What she’d found had made a visit to the castle more than desirable. It had become necessary.

“The O’Gormans…” Vi rolled their name over in her mind, imagining how she might wheedle a tour where she could slip away unsupervised. Unfortunately, all that quickly occurred were drugs and handcuffs, neither of which suited her pacifist’s soul.

Liam hooked his hand into the crook of her elbow, slowing her pace. Vi moved her pint away from her body so that if it was to slosh over the glass’s edge, it wouldn’t be onto her.

“Have you something you want to say?” she asked Liam.

“I was about to ask the same of you. I’ve seen that look on your face before, Vi, and it’s always meant that trouble’s afoot.”

“No trouble,” she said. “Just a wish to see the inside of the castle now that it’s done.”

“That’s all?”

She wiggled her elbow a bit, hoping to loose him and move forward. “Of course that’s all.”

They were back to the circle of musicians. Vi handed Nora her drink, then sat on the tall stool beside her. Liam was still giving her a speculative look, and she needed him gone. “Unless you’re going to favor us with a song, I’d suggest you join the spectators.”

Liam left, as she’d expected. There had never been enough persuasion in the world to wring a song from that man.

The circle of musicians was nearly filled now, and Nora introduced Vi to everyone. Concertinas were elbow-to-elbow with bodrhans, guitars, and even a pair of spoons held by an elderly woman named Lizzie who could be sister to Breege Flaherty, Ballymuir’s own silver-haired spoon player. Vi smiled at the sight, happy to have an image of home so close to her.