The Irish Bride (21 page)

Farrell lost all track of time. The
days and nights blended into a nightmarish blur of chilling
darkness and dusty heat, the humidity of the east soon giving way
to a blistering dryness that sucked every bit of moisture from the
passengers’ skin and throats, leaving their lips cracked and
bleeding.

Late one evening during a brief stop
at a stage to change horses, Aidan left her to speak with the stage
keeper’s wife. When he returned, he held a small tin canister in
one hand. “Look up, little red one.”

When Farrell complied, he carefully
smeared a greasy, nasty-smelling ointment over her smarting lips.
“What—” She reared away to sputter, “What is that awful
stuff?”

“
Never mind that. The stage
keeper’s wife tells me it will heal your dry lips.”

“
It’s awful.”

He sniffed at the tin. “Aye, it is,”
he agreed with a smile, then put it on his own lips. “But it might
help.”

Then he accompanied her into the brush
to relieve herself. While she fumbled with her skirts, she heard an
odd rattling sound. The next instant, Aidan snatched her, none too
gently, into his arms, his body colliding so sharply with her that
she would have been knocked off her feet if not for the strength of
his grip.

“
God’s teeth!” he
shouted.

With a vicious push he shoved her
aside, grabbed a rock, and threw it with all his strength at the
ground. Then, with another profanity, he began dancing about like a
Skibbereen lad gone daft on poteen at a wake, his boots violently
pummeling the dirt.

“
Ye poisonous bastard, and
Satan take you!” he yelled, still stomping around. “Jesus, Mary,
and Holy St. Joseph! Stand back, Farrell! It’s a viper.”

Farrell staggered back a step, her
heart up so high in her throat, it bumped the back of her tongue.
“Take care with the thing, Aidan!”

She saw the snake strike at him. Aidan
barely avoided the deadly fangs. “Spawn of the devil!”

She shrieked a wordless
warning.

Terror flooded her body, turning it
ice-cold. She’d understood before they left St. Louis that there
were dangers galore in this godforsaken wilderness, venomous snakes
and marauding Indians, to name only two. But somehow, until this
moment, she’d never honestly considered the possibility that she or
Aidan might die out here.

Now the reality of it struck home.
Aidan. With one cruel stroke of fate, she could lose him. For
reasons she hadn’t time to consider, the thought nearly took
Farrell to her knees. She didn’t know if it was mere cowardice on
her part, because she would face terrible circumstances, indeed,
should she lose him. Or was it a deeper, more powerful emotion that
made her fear from him so?

“
Get away from it, Aidan!
Stand clear of the thing.”

Finally Aidan stopped leaping about
and stomping his boots. “It’s dead, lass.” His chest heaved with
exertion. “It’s dead, and they devil take it.”

A sob erupted from her chest, and she
pressed violently shaking hands to her face.

“
Farrell! What is it? Did it
bite you, then?” He strode to her and took her by the shoulders.
“Answer me. Did the thing bite you?”

She didn’t know what came over her,
but suddenly she was angry. She doubled her right fist and swung at
Aidan’s shoulder.

“
No it didn’t bite me, ye
great addlebrained fool! How dare you risk life and limb that way?
How dare you?” She hit his chest with her second swing. “You’re not
a strutting cock without a care. You have a wife and
responsibilities! You have no right—no right, do you hear?—to put
yourself at risk that way, without a thought for me.”

He caught her wrist just as
she attempted a third blow. “Farrell, now, nothing happened. It’s
all right,
céadsearc
, I’m fine. The filthy thing tried, but it didn’t get me.” His
arms came around her, hard and warm, leaving her no choice but to
press full-length against him. He clamped a hand over the back of
her head to push her face to his shirt. She inhaled the scent of
him; neither of them were particularly clean after all these days
on the road, but it was a smell she recognized and it comforted
her.

Pain moved into Farrell’s chest,
cutting off her breath. She made fists on Aidan’s shirt, her body
shuddering. He stroked a big hand over her back.

“
Whisht, now,” he whispered
near her ear. “Tis over. I’m here. Just a wee snake, is all. It’ll
take more than that to get the best of Aidan O’Rourke. Don’t take
on so, please.”

A sob tore up her throat, and suddenly
she was weeping. Not softly, not delicately ladylike. The dry,
wracking sounds she emitted were so awful that they startled even
her. It wasn’t like her to fall apart and carry on. Fits of crying
were for infants and the elderly. But somehow, she couldn’t seem to
stop. All the tension and trials of the last months had finally
caught up with her.

Aidan let her cry, swaying softly in
the moonlit darkness with her cradled against his long body.
Occasionally he murmured to her, but she was crying so hard, she
couldn’t make out his words. Dimly she was aware of other voices
and Aidan barking out a husky reply.

When exhaustion finally calmed the
storm, Farrell leaned limply against him and said, “You frightened
me half to death, Aidan O’Rourke. Half to death, do you hear? Don’t
ever do anything so foolish again. Promise me.”

He pressed his lips to her hair.
“Foolish! Should I have let thing sink its fearful fangs into you,
then? I’ll protect what’s mine. You’ll be waiting a long time
before you wrest such a promise from me.”

With that, he turned her toward the
coach and ushered her back to her seat. Once inside, Farrell was
strangely glad that he kept one strong arm clamped around her
shoulders—strangely glad that she could remain pressed against his
strength and count on him to hold her erect. Once Liam had assured
her that Aidan would die for her.

Now she’d seen the proof of that with
her own eyes.

Shortly thereafter, the stagecoach
resumed its pitching race across the vast expanses of nothingness,
the horses hooves sending up constant billows of dust. Farrell lost
track of time, her mind closing down to the misery. When she looked
into the faces of the other passengers, she saw her numbness
reflected in every expression. They stopped to drink, eat, and
attend to personal needs, but those brief moments were the only
reprieve. Otherwise, the punishment was relentless.

If a person had unwittingly used
grease or pomade in his hair, the dust stuck to it and grew to
patch rich enough for cultivation. There were no washing facilities
at all, no bathing, and they could do little more than wet a
handkerchief in a horse trough to wipe faces and hands.

The other passengers complained about
the primitive stage stops—one-story sod huts with dirt floors—but
they weren’t much worse than the cottages where Aidan and Farrell
had grown up.

Part of the time, Farrell wished to
God that she’d never agreed to make this trip. The people she’d met
along the way had strange, twanging accents, except for the Germans
and Swedes, who struggled with English even more.

Still, despite the trials of the
journey, as the days turned into weeks, Aidan’s hope began to rub
off on her. His family had always thought that his constant desire
to see beyond the next day was his biggest failing. If he didn’t
know how to make due with what he had, he’d never be content, his
brother Tommy had said. Yet, something inside Farrell stirred at
the possibilities that Aidan raised when they talked. There had to
be something beyond the abysmal poverty they knew in Ireland,
poverty that ate away at her pride and her soul. If Oregon proved
to be half as grand as Aidan hoped, she would have a life where her
children wouldn’t starve, and she’d have clothes, not rags, to
dress them. That, almost more than anything else, gave her
determination to go on. As they jounced along, she realized that
this was the first time she’d envisioned having Aidan’s
children.

The closer they got to Oregon, and the
more breathtaking the open plains, the more she felt the heat grow
between them. With even less privacy than they’d had on the ship,
the yearning only seemed to grow stronger. Sometimes weeks passed
when she forgot about Michael’s death and Aidan’s part in
it.

She caught herself watching him,
fascinated by the shape of his brows and the thick, dark lashes
that framed his eyes. His hands were big and callused from years of
hard work, and could probably punch a hole in a wall. But she had
felt their gentleness too, when his fingertips grazed her cheek,
her hair, the tender underside of her breast. Remembering that, her
face flushed as hot as flatiron.

Aidan studied Farrell, as well. It
took his mind off the lardy, stinking traveling salesman wedged
next to him, and the screaming child who sometimes occupied his
lap. Everyone took a turn with the child, especially when the
mother rode on the roof. When he’d planned this trip, he’d had no
idea how difficult it would be. He kept waiting for his wife to
begin complaining, and God knew she’d have every right. But just as
on the walk to Queenstown, she uttered not one protest. He wasn’t
sure if she was saving up every grievance for one great venting of
her spleen at the end of the trip, but he didn’t think so. She sent
him no poisonous looks and though she occasionally appeared
distressed, it wasn’t directed at him. There was a strength in her
that awed Aidan, and sometimes even surpassed his own, though he
would be hard pressed to tell her so outright.

They passed through the Great Plains,
grassy, rolling wilderness that stretched from horizon to horizon
with no fences or boundaries. The vistas only stoked the fires of
his hope until it flamed into impatient ambition. Unlike in
Ireland, where a man was trapped in his station and could not
escape, out here he had a chance to build an empire in this new
land and raise fine, strong sons to inherit his holdings. With a
woman like Farrell beside him, he could accomplish just about
anything. For all her grit and determination, she was as fair and
fresh as a rosebud. And, he imagined as he studied her firm curves,
as ripe as that rosebud on a summer morning. His few teasing tastes
of her had challenged his resolve to wait for their consummation
more times than he wanted to think about. Of course, now, he had no
choice.

At last the landscape began to change
subtly. From vast seas of rolling grass, to mountains the likes of
which they had never seen, they arrived at a town in Oregon called
The Dalles.

“
We’re in Oregon?” Farrell
asked, sitting up straighter on the seat. The town looked busy and
prosperous, and from the blue-uniformed riders they passed on the
road, it seemed to include some kind of military
installation.

“
Yes, indeed, ma’am,” Frank
Pittman, the salesman replied. “We came into Oregon Territory miles
and miles ago. We’ll be pulling up to the stop in a bit. This is my
third trip out here, so I know what I’m talking about.”

Sure, and didn’t he know about
everything? she wondered irritably. He’d been talking almost
nonstop since they boarded in St. Louis, and seemed to be an expert
on nearly any topic someone brought up.

“
Where will you folks be
going from here?”

She exchanged a glance with Aidan, who
sat opposite her. He had warned her not to discuss their planned
destination, Oregon City. There was no telling who might overhear
them and repeat it to someone else.

He interjected, “We’re going to stay
in town a few days and consider our options. We’ve nothing special
in mind.”

Off Pittman went again, relating his
opinion on the subject from a seemingly inexhaustible source of
hearsay and personal experience, when they pulled up to the
stop.

Stiff and feeling far older than her
twenty-two years, Farrell followed Aidan out of the coach, grateful
for the support of his hand at her elbow to keep from
falling.

“
Will ye look at this,
Farrell?” he said, looking at the churning waters of the Columbia
River and the high rock walls that bracketed it. “Have you ever
seen anything like it? Didn’t I tell you it would be
grand?”

* * *

Aidan didn’t realize
just
how
grand it
would be until an early morning two days later, when he and Farrell
stood on a barge that two burly ferrymen piloted through the
churning waters of the Columbia River. It was a treacherous ride,
but they had an advantage, one of the men told them, because they
weren’t trying to take a wagon full of goods downstream, like those
who would be coming by wagon train later in the summer. “Those
things are lost in the river all the time, and so are them trying
to keep the stuff on the rafts.”

When their barge entered the place
where the river breached the Cascade Mountains, Aidan could hardly
believe his eyes. From the desertlike conditions of the eastern
part of the territory, the terrain turned misty, green, and cool,
reminding him so much of Ireland, he was filled with an
overwhelming sense of homecoming. The sky grew overcast and the
temperature dropped to a gentle degree.