The Irish Bride (15 page)

“
Will
monsieur
require anything more?” The
snotty tone made Aidan long to grab the man’s greasy forelock and
smash his head on the counter. He forced the impulse into a small
box in his mind and closed the lid on it. Someday soon, he vowed to
himself, no man would dare to look down his nose at Aidan O’Rourke
or his wife. Certainly not some froggy who was dressed little
better than they were.

He replied, “Aye, laddie. I’d like
meals for my wife and me, and a bath brought to our room.” He
pushed a gold half-eagle across the counter. “This should cover
everything.” Five dollars was far too much to squander on luxury,
but Aidan thought they deserved it after what they had been
through. From the corner of his eye, Aidan caught Farrell’s
expression of surprised delight, and decided it was money well
spent. He smiled and picked up the key to their room, leaving the
clerk to goggle at the coin.

After a climb to the second floor,
Farrell’s sea legs felt as thick and shaky as a brick of
headcheese. Aidan unlocked the door and ushered her into a room
that held a big iron bed, a chifforobe, a small desk, a washstand,
and an upholstered chair and footstool, all far past their prime.
The late afternoon sun was dimmed by shutters on the windows that
cast stripes of bright light across the pine floor.

He crossed the floor to open
the shutters and looked out. “Hotel
Grand
View, eh?” he commented, his
hands braced on either side of the window frame. “It looks like an
alley down there to me, and it smells like a privy in this heat.
Must be the chickens someone is keeping.” The sound of enthusiastic
clucking drifted upward through the window, along with noises from
the street and neighboring businesses.

She dropped the bundle of her
belongings on the floor and sat on the bed. “Ohhhh,” she uttered,
unable to stifle a sound of pleasure. “A real bed to sleep in. Even
in Clare’s house I slept on a pallet with the children. This will
be like heaven after—”

She glanced up suddenly at Aidan, who
had turned to look at her. His gaze upon her felt like two hot
coals burning through her chest.

There it was again, that look in his
eyes, unsettling, possessive, hungry. She wished she’d been able to
demand a separate room, but she couldn’t defend the cost. Besides,
she didn’t believe that her husband would agree to such an
arrangement, although he had made no other advances after the night
in Morton’s cabin. She was glad of that, she told herself. Yes,
glad. Her heart still belonged to Liam, even if he hadn’t loved her
as she’d have wanted. She thought of him every day and she didn’t
know when that would end. Or if it ever would.

Of course, Aidan had had no real
private moment with her on the ship, although she knew that some
couples had contrived to find hiding places in the cargo hold to be
alone. Thank heavens he hadn’t suggested something like that. Yet,
a contrary part of her wondered why he hadn’t. There had been
nothing—not one more kiss, not a peck on the cheek. He hadn’t even
tried to hold her hand. After that one display of passion, she
might have expected . . .  Perhaps he’d found
her lacking or displeasing that night, compared to the other women
he’d known. The possibility vexed her in a way she didn’t care to
analyze.

With another glimpse at his eyes,
gleaming blue and feral, she jumped up from the bed as if it were
on fire. Sitting there might suggest an invitation that she hadn’t
meant to extend.

“
You’ll take the bed,” he
said gruffly. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

The tension in the room was as thick
as the humidity. “N-no, t’would not be fair. I shouldn’t have the
bed every night. You must share it with me—I mean we can take our
turns.” She could imagine him watching her in the darkness from
that chair. But more shameful still, she had a guilty curiosity
about what it would feel like to have him lie beside her in the
night.

“
I’ve slept in worse
places,” he insisted. “The chair will be fine for me.”

“
No, maybe we can cast
lots—”

A brewing disagreement that had little
to do with fair play and everything to do with a man and a woman,
disguised with excruciating courtesy, was interrupted by a knock at
the door. Aidan reached it in two long strides. In the hallway
stood three African serving women wearing white aprons over their
plain dresses and colorful turbanlike scarves on their heads. They
all bobbed quick curtsies upon seeing him. Between them they
carried a round wooden tub and pushed a cart bearing a tray of
redolent food, all of which they brought in without a word. The tub
was put in a corner behind a dressing screen.

In a moment another serving girl
followed, carrying two heavy buckets of steaming water which she
poured into the little tub. She made another trip downstairs to
refill the buckets. When she’d emptied these, she said to Farrell,
“This water right off the stove, Mistress. You let it cool some,
else you look like a boiled crawdad.”

Farrell didn’t know what a crawdad
was, but she supposed that it must be red.

“
Yes, thank you,” she said,
peeking behind the screen at the tub. She dipped her hands in the
hot water and washed them with a bar of soap tucked inside a folded
towel that sat on the floor. As soon as she ate, she would finally
have a chance to wash from head to foot, including her hair, which
was stiff with salt spray.

Just as the women left the room, she
emerged from behind the screen with red but clean hands. She and
Aidan prepared to eat the first really nourishing food they’d had
in months.

“
Well, now, what would we be
having here?” Aidan asked, pulling up the footstool to the cart.
Farrell brought the chair from the desk. He lifted napkins and
looked into covered dishes, inhaling all of the aromas. “Some kind
of rice with other bits mixed in, I think, bread, butter,
wine—”

Just as he was about to fall upon the
meal, Farrell interjected. “Shame on ye, Aidan. Don’t you think it
would be fitting to give thanks for getting here in one piece and
for the food?”

Aidan gave her a sheepish smile,
feeling a trifle guilty. “Aye, of course.” Women, he’d recognized
long ago, were probably all that kept men from living a mean, crude
existence in caves, and going about unshaven and
unshriven.

“
Bail na gcúig arán agus an
dá iasc,”
she began in a low, clear
voice
, “A roinn Dia ar an gcúig mhíle
duine, Rath ón Rí a rinne an roinn, Go dtige ar ár gcuid is as ár
gcomhroinn.”
The blessing of the five
loaves and two fishes that God shared with the five thousand, the
bounty of the King who made the sharing, come upon our food and all
who share it.

She spooned the spicy-smelling rice
dish onto their plates while he poured the wine.

“
What d’ye think this is?”
she asked, piercing a crescent-shaped pink morsel with her fork.
She nibbled on it and smiled. “Mmm, it’s very good. Would you like
a taste?” she asked, holding out the fork so that he could pluck
the remainder from it.

Instead, he leaned forward and took it
directly into his mouth, craving the taste of both her and the
unknown delicacy. “Aye,” he said, holding her gaze,
“delicious.”

A tiny smile, as fleeting as a fairy
in the mist, crossed her face before she turned her attention back
to her plate.

“
I’d have no trouble getting
used to this,” he said as he slathered butter on a chunk of soft
white bread. “Servants to cook and wait on us—I’d like that
fine.”

She paused with a large, pink shrimp
speared on her fork. “Ye can’t mean to say you’d want to own
slaves!”

He frowned. “God, no! I
wouldn’t want that on my conscience. It’s just not right. No one
can own another person.” He took a swallow of wine. “But a body
can
hire
servants
and pay them. Like—well, like Lord Cardwell.”

Farrell stared at him. “Like Lord
Cardwell! Mother of God, that’s no better than owning slaves.
Aidan, have you taken leave of your senses altogether?”

He wondered the same. Why in hell had
that name come to mind? “I meant it only as an example. After all,
he was the only one in our part of the county who had enough money
for such a luxury. I didn’t mean like Lord Cardwell
himself.”

Her green eyes flashed fire. “Do ye
know what life was like at Greensward Manor for the servants? Noel
Cardwell was always grabbing at me, a pat on the rump, a tweak on
the chin. Twice he tried to coax me into his bedchamber before that
day I ran away. With hard work and a smile, he said, I would gain
privilege and move up the servants’ ranks. Oh, I knew his drift,
well enough. A smile. Bah! I guess I found out what he meant by
that.”

No, Aidan hadn’t known the details of
that day at the manor house. A rumble of anger stirred in him like
a sleeping wolf disturbed. “Did ye tell Liam about it on your
visits home?”

She looked away. “No. I mean yes,
but . . . ”

“
But it didn’t trouble
him?”

“
It did,” she insisted, and
made a great fuss over polishing her teaspoon with her napkin. “But
he didn’t think it was worth getting into a state over. He didn’t
think Noel would actually—” She stopped, obviously realizing what a
bad light she cast on Liam.

“
I don’t suppose he could
get into a state over anything. Did ye tell anyone else about
it?”

“
Michael knew.” Now she took
to serving him more food from the dishes on the tray. “He said we’d
all benefit from, well, from the association.”

Aidan felt his blood begin
to simmer in his veins. He drummed the side of his thumb on the
edge of the cart. “Oh, he did, aye? Did no one defend your honor?”
His own brother had shrugged off Cardwell’s degenerate proposition
and
her
had
brother encouraged it.

She looked up at him. “My honor
doesn’t need defending. I’m not a timid milkmaid, ye
know.”

“
No, you aren’t. But now you
know how black some men’s hearts can be.”

“
We’ve left that all behind
in Ireland, haven’t we? The Cardwells and then Michael is—well, he
no one’s problem any longer.” There was no accusation in the
statement. Instead, Aidan heard resignation and regret.

They finished their meal without much
more conversation. Aidan pushed the footstool back into place and
said, “I’m going to find out if there’s a place to get a bath
around here.”

She stood and stacked the dishes on
the tray. “Oh, but there are just the two of us. The water will
hold.”

He knelt beside the small
bundle of his belongings and found the clean clothes he’d saved for
their arrival in America. “That’s all right, lass. You’ll want your
privacy, and I just want to soak my old bones.” What he
didn’t
want was to sit on
the other side of that dressing screen, listening to her splash
water over her pale, slender limbs while he imagined the damp
warmth of her body as she soaped and rinsed. Just thinking about it
sent an aching desire shooting through him to settle in his
groin.

When he caught her gaze, he thought he
saw a glimmer of something in those clear eyes that mirrored his
own craving. But, no, that wasn’t possible. He was just being daft.
Farrell barely tolerated him as it was. On top of that, she was an
untried lass who would be shy and innocent of the ways of men and
women together.

In any case, it didn’t
matter. He’d made a promise to himself and he intended to keep it.
He would not bed Farrell until they reached the place that would be
their home. It might be modest in the beginning, but soon they’d
have a wonderful house, just as he’d promised
her
.

“
Will ye put the cart in the
hallway on your way out?” she asked.

He gave her a smile and a little
salute. “Keep the door locked until I get back, aye? And don’t
answer it if someone knocks. I’ll come back as soon as I
can.”

She nodded as he pushed the cart out
of the room. He heard it close behind him, and the lock click into
place.

That was good, he thought, turning
away with a gusty sigh. Knowing that she would be stripped to the
skin and lounging in a hot bath would most certainly make him
forget his manners and his good intentions if he
remained.

* * *

This was the closest to heaven that
Farrell had ever been. Long after she’d scrubbed off the dirt and
washed her hair—and wasn’t it a joy to feel clear water sluicing
through the strands?—she lingered in the tub.

At Clare’s house, bathing had always
been a hurried event, with the whole family using the same water
because toting and boiling it was so much work. A person had to get
in and get out as soon as possible.

But this—she let the water cascade
from her cupped hand—this bath was just for her. From beyond the
open windows, faint music floated up to her, and the last of the
evening sun, golden and mellow, gave everything a warm
glow.

The clean, white cake of soap she’d
been given was embossed with some kind of writing, French she
thought, and it smelled wonderfully sweet. She didn’t know that
soap like this existed, she was so accustomed to the harsh,
homemade lye soap they’d always used. Sometimes they’d even had to
barter for it because they didn’t often have pork or beef fat to
render. The lye soap took off the dirt, but it often took off a
layer of skin as well. This made her feel sinfully
pampered.