The Irish Bride (13 page)

His brother’s name hung between them
like a tangible thing. He swallowed the rest of his whiskey. “Do
you miss him so much, then?” he asked in a low voice.

“
He was my intended. Of
course I miss him. We were to marry, come, well, spring, or perhaps
after the harvest.”

He gave her a pointed look.
“Or by Christmas, or maybe St. Patrick’s Day next year or the year
after. Liam
never
would have married you, I don’t think. Not even if all the
trouble hadn’t happened. He’ll stay at home and remain a bachelor,
and an old one, if God wills that he should live long
enough.”

Farrell stared at him. “What are ye
talking about? Of course he would have married me. We were promised
to each other.”

He shook his head and put down his
glass. “Nay. He’s my brother, aye? I lived with him for
twenty-eight years. He’s a good man, a kind one. But he’s as
serious as a priest and knows only two things, farming and how to
worry. It’s not in him to nurture a dream or plan for the future.
He doesn’t have what it takes to commit to a woman, to give his
body and soul to her, and he knows it.”

“
He did—he must have! Why
else did he ask me to be his wife?”

Putting his elbow on the table, he
leaned forward. “I’ll ask you one better—why did it take him so
long to do it? Da finally told him he’d better make up his mind
about ye, yea or nay, or let you go to a more deserving man. Liam
let Da talk him into offering for you.”

Farrell took another swallow of
“angel’s tears” and kept her gaze riveted on Aidan’s face. Over the
whiskey fumes, the male scent of him, of soap and saltwater,
mingled with the comforting aroma of food. Warmth flooded her limbs
but not her heart. “My, my, but ye know how to flatter a girl and
make her feel special, don’t you?” she asked with some
asperity.

“
I’m only telling you the
truth of it. The night we left, when you went outside with him,
what did he say to you?”

“
He said—he told me—” Liam’s
words came rushing back to her, and there wasn’t much good in
them.

“
I love ye, lass, but in
God’s truth, I don’t love you well enough.”

She’d told herself then that he said
those things only to make her leave for her own good. She could not
bear to think anything else, such as Aidan implied—that her love
for him truly had not been returned. That love still burned in her
heart. It couldn’t be extinguished as easily as a candle flame.
After all, her affection for Liam had grown over a period of years.
But it gave her no joy now, as love should. It felt like a fist in
her chest that squeezed hard enough to hurt.

She couldn’t admit any of this to
Aidan. It only rubbed salt in the wound that was her heartache. She
looked at her lap and murmured what she could. “He said that I
should go with you. That he was putting me in your keeping and
God’s, and both would treat me well.”

He poured himself another drink from
the stoneware flask. “He was right, Farrell.”

“
I never featured myself
married to you,” she said, still stung by his tactless revelation
of the truth. The whiskey also freed her tongue. “Ye aren’t the
type of man I wanted—wild as you are and with a scandalous
reputation to boot, always turning women’s heads with a look and
breaking men’s heads with your fists.” She paused. “After all those
years with my own da, with his drunken ways and cruel words, and
the b-beatings, I preferred Liam’s quiet ways and placid nature. I
wanted to be his wife. I didn’t want a man like my own
father.”

Aidan stared at her. “Do you think I’m
like Seamus Kirwan? Do you really feature me lifting a hand to
you?”

Farrell dropped her gaze. His eyes
burned like two dark stars, and she heard both indignation and
astonishment in his questions. “Maybe not now, not
yet . . . but someday,
when—if . . . ” She couldn’t finish the
sentence.

He didn’t respond, but after a moment
he sighed. Then he reached across the table for her hand. She
withdrew hers, so he gripped his whiskey glass and took a healthy
swallow. “Farrell, I swear you’ll have a good life, a better life,
in America. With me.”

She said nothing more, but pushed back
her chair and began gathering the dirty dishes to avoid the
possessive look she saw in his eyes again, the one that seemed to
say that she had always been meant for him. He rose as well, and
his hand on her arm stayed her.

His touch was warm and vital, almost
frightening in its vibrance.

“
Sit a moment.”

“
No, I’ve still work that
needs—”

“
Sit.” He took the plates
and put them back on the table.

The timbre of his voice altered
slightly, deeper, richer, almost angry. She chanced a look at him
and he filled her field of vision. All she saw were a strong mouth
and eyes that seemed alighted with a fire that burned deep within
him. He was so different from his brother. Not long ago she’d
believed the differences were only bad. Now, knowing him a little
better, she wasn’t so sure, and it was hard to accept.

He advanced on her, tall and menacing,
and she edged away until the backs of her thighs hit the side of
the narrow bunk. The poteen had made her a bit unsteady and she sat
down hard on the thin mattress.

“
What’re ye after, Aidan
O’Rourke?”

“
I mean to answer your
earlier question. Yes, I
do
know how to make a woman feel special. And it
hasn’t a damned thing to do with being quiet or placid.” He stood
over her and pulled her to her feet again so that only an inch or
two separated them. To her amazement he lifted her hand to his lips
and kissed it lingeringly. Fire and ice ran up her arm to her
shoulder. From her hand he moved to her chin and strung a line of
soft, hot kisses along her jaw line. When he reached her earlobe,
he took it gently between his teeth and ran his tongue along its
edge.

Farrell shivered with the sensations
he evoked in her. No one, certainly not even Liam, had ever kissed
her this way. She fought the urge to reach up and thread her
fingers through his hair. If merely kissing her jaw and ear made
her feel so, what would his lips feel like upon her own? As if
reading her mind, he took her mouth with his, demanding and fierce,
yet tender. Her legs seemed to be nothing more than boiled greens,
limp and weak.

Aidan cradled the back of her head
with one hand. The other he planted on her waist, pulling her close
to his work-toughened body. Had that soft moan come from her?
Shouldn’t she object to his behavior? she wondered, caught in a
muzzy fog of his touch, her escalating pulse, and the delicious
excitement of his kiss.

He hovered just above her mouth. “I’ll
tell ye what placid is good for,” he muttered, the angry note still
there. “Nothing. It won’t keep you warm at night, or put a babe in
your belly, or fight to keep you safe.” His lips, pleasantly
whiskey-flavored, covered hers again, and his hand reached for the
pins in her hair.

A ghost of Liam’s voice came back to
her then, faint and whispery, as if from a dream.

He’ll fight for you with
his last breath.

Then the thought was gone again as he
loosened her hair and plunged his fingers into it. A hot thrill
went through her like a bolt of lightning. Her arms went around his
neck as if they had a will of their own, and she found herself
kissing him back. He sat down on the bunk and pulled her with him.
She landed on his lap, and his arms went around her while he kissed
her again with a fiery urgency. When his tongue sought hers, she
responded. Her own voice in her head hissed that surely this wasn’t
decent and insisted that she’d lost her mind. But reclining in
Aidan’s lap and with him snaking a warm hand over the front of her
dress, she ignored the warning. No, this wasn’t placid. This was
dizzying and exciting and—

Suddenly, there was a heavy pounding
at the door. “Mrs. O’Rourke!”

Farrell froze.

More pounding. “Mrs. O’Rourke, are you
in there?”

She recognized Charles Morton’s voice.
Aidan lifted his head from her mouth and uttered a vivid profanity.
She looked at where she was sitting and realized what she’d been
doing, and was mortified. How could she have given in to his
caresses so easily? She felt foolish and worse, disloyal to
Liam.

Farrell leapt from Aidan’s lap and
went to answer the summons.

She smoothed her skirt and opened the
door a crack. “Mr. Morton?”

“
I’m sorry to bother you,
ma’am.” His gaze drifted from her unbound hair downward. Farrell
looked at her bodice and found the source of the man’s interest.
Four buttons were open. Blood rushed to her cheeks, scalding them.
She shot a venomous glare at Aidan, then clutched the fabric
together with one hand. Immediately, Morton returned his attention
to her face, and he seemed to be blushing as well.

“
It’s no bother. What can
I—we do for you?”

“
Um, well—they’re wanting
you below, ma’am. I was asked to fetch you to visit someone. Mrs.
Connagher, I believe her name is.”

“
Oh!” An icy sluice of worry
flew down Farrell’s spine. “She’s very bad, then?”

“
I don’t know. I think so. I
was told that she’s asking for you and to bring you right
away.”

Farrell felt Aidan’s approach and knew
he stood right behind her. She glanced at him. “I must be going. If
she asked to see me, I have to go to her.”

He nodded. “Go with Mr. Morton. I’ll
follow in a minute.”

She grabbed her shawl and hurried
after Morton. Behind her, she heard Aidan utter another curse that
would earn him extra time in purgatory, to be sure.

* * *

“
And so we commend these two
souls into God’s keepin’ and mercy, and hope they find peace in the
next world.” James McCorry, bristle-faced and unkempt, had been
roused at this early hour to say a few hurried words over the
subjects of his entreaty as they lay on a plank on the ship’s deck.
Those passengers who could, crowded around Deirdre Connagher and
her dead child in the rain, crossing themselves and murmuring
prayers. Farrell stood nearby, her throat aching from the
choked-back sobs and knot of grief lodged there, and her hand
closed upon her carved figure of Brigit. She felt the heat of
Aidan’s solid form behind her shoulder and she drew comfort from
it.

Farrell had not been able to do
anything for Deirdre, and though none of the other women in
attendance could help either, she bore a stinging guilt. The child
had been stillborn and Farrell held Deirdre’s hand until she drew
her last breath a few hours later.

“
A broken heart killed her,
sure,” one woman had whispered last night as they had stared at the
lifeless pair in the gloomy confines between decks. “First her
husband lost back home, then the babe. She couldn’t go on.” She’d
crossed herself and sighed. “They’re together now with the angels.”
A ripple of murmured agreement flowed through the group.

Farrell had helped the other
women stitch the grief-felled mother and her infant into some
burlap sacks they’d sewn together. The men had retreated to the
other end of the hold; preparing the dead was women’s work. The
guilt had come to lodge in her heart then. While she had been dizzy
with poteen and letting Aidan have his way with her—and
actually
enjoying
it—poor Deirdre had been suffering in the dank hold, trying to
birth a baby that could not live.

Now, with a nod from McCorry, Aidan
and several other men stepped forward to hoist the plank to the
gunwale. Mother and child, bound together in their burlap
winding-sheet, slipped over the side into the cold, indifferent
arms of the Atlantic. Farrell bowed her head as tears slid down her
cheeks. Not one among them was a newcomer to death and loss, but
she could not get accustomed to it. She’d not even seen Michael
properly buried. She felt it keenly that the matter was dispensed
with so easily.

This poor young woman and her baby,
with only strangers to mark their passing—no one would ever know
what had become of them. It brought home to her Aidan’s comment
that night at The Rose and Anchor: she was an orphan and he was as
good as one. She swiped the back of her hand over her tears, but
her own determination to survive was shaken by this burial at
sea.

The mourners began to drift away,
dispirited and solemn. The steady, cold rain had been falling for
hours, and now the wind had picked up. Farrell’s shawl was soaked
through.

She looked at the vast expanse of
gray-green water beyond the rail, searching in vain for some hint
of land but saw nothing but the same monotonous view of ocean,
rising and falling, rising and falling. Even the sea birds had
forsaken them several days earlier, as the ship ventured deeper
into the open sea. Overhead, the rigging creaked and groaned in the
wind.

During the hardest years of
her life, Farrell had wondered occasionally what it would be like
to sail the seas and visit distant lands. She hadn’t wanted to
leave Ireland forever. Mostly, she’d just wanted to see if there
was a place where existence wasn’t as dire. Now, as she stood on
the rolling, pitching deck of the
Mary
Fiona
, Farrell felt that it was not much
more than a barrel overflowing with humanity and all of the related
miseries that came with an ocean voyage. If there was a better life
somewhere, she couldn’t picture it. As far as he was concerned,
there was nothing left on earth but this ship and the
ocean.