After the Storm (24 page)

“You can learn, too.” He leaned against the railing.

“Me? I'm too old for school.” She flung out her hands. “Can you imagine me sitting in that schoolroom with the children?”

He smiled. “That's an interesting image.”

“I'm glad you're amused. I don't find this in the least bit funny!” She came to her feet.

He put his hands on her shoulders to halt her from leaving. “Cailin, you need to stop being ashamed.”

“I can't help it.”

“Why? Because your mother-in-law made you ashamed of your life?” He could feel her breath catch before her shoulders shook again.

“She's so elegant, with her nice home and fancy furniture. The children and I didn't match her grand house.”

“Would you have wanted to?”

Cailin stared at him, her eyes widening. As Samuel's hands shifted on her shoulders, she was glad he did not draw them away. She needed this connection and this compassion.

In a near whisper, she said, “No, I didn't want that hypocrisy. I'm proud of what I am and how, all by myself, I brought these three children across the sea to America. I kept my promise. Not like Abban, who married another woman after he left—”

“He married here in the United States while he was wed to you?” Anger laced the question.

“Forget I said that. Please. Please forget it, Samuel.” She pulled away. She had let his comforting words make her speak without thinking … because she trusted him.

“How can I forget something like that?”

“I'm trying to.”

He walked toward the door. She bit her lower lip to keep from calling out to him not to abandon her—as Abban had.

He slammed the flat of his hand against the wall and demanded, “The children don't know, do they?”

“Of course not.”

“Are you trying to protect them or their father?”

Cailin took a step back from his fury, then snapped, “That's the silliest question I have ever heard! There's no need for the children to know how their father betrayed me.”

“And them.”

“Yes!”

He shook his head as a frigid smile settled on his lips. “So their father can remain a saint to them.”

“They barely remember him.” She looked up at the porch roof, imagining the two rooms at the top of the low-slung house. She could hear Brendan reading now to his sisters. As long as she and Samuel kept their voices low, the children would not hear what was being said on the porch. “Lottie has no memory of her father. When I showed Megan Abban's picture, she didn't recognize him. Brendan said he did, but I think he wasn't certain. They don't talk about him unless I bring up the subject, so I don't believe they have any attachment to him any longer.”

He walked back to her, but her hope that he would hold her faded when he asked, “Do you love him still?”

“He was my husband, and I can see him in our children. There weren't just bad times, Samuel.”

“Except when he beat you and married another woman.”

She sank to the chair again. “Yes.”

“So answer my question.” He rested again on the railing next to her. “Do you love him still?”

“No.”

“That was a quick answer.”

“I've had more than a year to consider it. When we were married, he told me how he longed for a big family because he had been an only child. I had no idea that he intended to have children with another woman.”

Samuel put his foot on the arm of her chair, halting it from rocking. In a tone she had never heard him use, he asked, “There are children from his second marriage?”

“Two. It's because of them, as well as my own children, that I agreed with Abban's mother's plan for me to work in another house to earn the money I needed to support my children until we could leave New York.”

“The same offer I made you.” He leaned forward and stroked her cheek. “I'm so sorry, Cailin. Now I know why you were reluctant to agree to what—to me—seemed an obvious solution to our problems.”

“You didn't know.” She wove her fingers through his. “One thing I know is that I want nothing more to do with Mrs. Rafferty.”

“Nothing? Your children are your husband's heirs.”

“His other family—”

“Are, in the eyes of the law, without a legitimate claim to a single penny of his estate.” He laughed, warning her doubt must have been apparent. “You can definitely trust me on this, Cailin. I know the law.”

“I know you do, but I don't want anything from Mrs. Rafferty.”

“Your anger is making you shortsighted. Your children deserve a part of their father's estate.”

“How do you know Abban had an estate?”

He laughed coldly. “If you were wearing that naïve expression when you met your mother-in-law, she must have been delighted. Didn't you just say Abban was an only son?”

“Yes.”

“You've mentioned his mother, but not his father.”

“Abban's father is dead.”

“When his father died, some part of his estate must have been set aside for his son. Now it should belong to his children, but it seems his mother was determined it would go to his children by his other wife.” He laughed again, the sound even icier. “No wonder your mother-in-law was so eager to put you into service and send your children somewhere where no one would know about them. That you went compliantly and were willing to protect all the children from their father's sins made you the best ally his mother could have wished for.”

“I never guessed.”

“That's exactly what she hoped.” He chuckled. “I think I'll write to a friend in New York. He's an attorney, and he'd enjoy calling on your mother-in-law and her attorney.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” she repeated. “I don't want money or anything else from her.”

“But you could give your children a very comfortable life if even a portion of what you saw was theirs.”

“I know, but the price of their souls would be too high.”

“You're still thinking of taking them back to Ireland, aren't you?”

She heard the anguish in his voice at the thought of the children leaving. Just the children, or would he regret her going, too? If she told him how she wanted to take the children—and
him
—to Ireland, what would he say? He had made it clear he liked the haven he had found here. Even though she had no idea what he was running from, she had seen how he valued the friendships and roots he had here.

“Cailin, are you? Are you planning to take them back to Ireland?”

She discovered that keeping her hand from settling on his knee was as impossible as not yearning for him to take her into his arms. She saw, in the light from the parlor lamp near the window behind her, the shadow of loss in his eyes, and wondered again whose leaving had left this pain upon his heart. “I'm thinking about it.”

Snarling an obscenity, he stood.

“Just thinking,” she said, rising. “Who knows when I'll ever be able to afford passage?”

“All you need is enough to pay your way back to New York City.”

“I don't want to go there unless I'm about to embark on a ship from the harbor. There's nothing for us there.”

“Yes, there is. You want passage for you and the children to Ireland. Your mother-in-law would gladly give it to you.”

Cailin looked up at his taut face. “Are you out of your mind? She wants nothing to do with us.”

“That's true, so she'd see the cost of shipping you back across the Atlantic as a small price to pay for never seeing or hearing from you again.” He folded his arms over his chest and gazed toward the river. “You probably could get even more if you reminded her how bad it would be if it became known that she'd sent her own grandchildren away from New York on an orphan train. Then you could live very comfortably in Ireland.”

“Is that what you think I should do?”

He leaned forward to put his hands on the railing. “Yes.”

“You want us to leave now?”

“Whether you leave now or later, you plan to leave.”

She raised her hands to put them on his shoulders again, then drew them back before she touched him. “Samuel, I don't know what I plan to do. Not any longer.”

“Let me contact my friend in New York.”

Sliding between him and the railing, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I don't want to resort to blackmail.”

“It could be amusing,” he murmured as his arm curved around her waist.

“That's not how I want you to amuse me.”

“No?”

She framed his face with her hands and said, “Samuel, I don't want to talk about leaving or Mrs. Rafferty or anything else tonight.”

“What do you want?”

“To spend the night with you.”

He chuckled, but she heard the craving barely hidden beneath his humor. “Are all Irishwomen like you? Playing coy, then going after what they want and not mincing words?”

“I don't know. I just know what I want.” Stroking his cheeks where a day's growth of whiskers tickled her fingertips, she said, “And what you want.”

“Are you so sure of that?” He pressed his lips to her neck.

“Yes. I've been lying to you—and to myself—for too long. I want to be completely honest tonight … with you.”

She closed her eyes as he sprinkled kisses across her face before capturing her mouth. With a moan, she answered his hunger with her own. Sliding her hand beneath his shirt, she delighted in the smooth skin over his muscles. She moaned against his mouth as his finger etched a heated path across her breast. She wanted him to hold her, to be part of her, to give all of her being to the ecstasy she could find with him.

When he stood and reached for the door, he held his other hand out to her.

She put hers in it, then paused. “Your meeting!”

“Forget my meeting.”

“Forget it? But you came back because you needed something, and it must have been something very important.”

“I did need something, but it had nothing to do with the meeting. When I saw the longing in your eyes as I was leaving, I'd hoped you would come to your senses.” He chuckled. “As you have.”

“You came back for that? Were you so certain?”

“I was so hopeful.” He drew her inside. Closing the door, he said, “Tonight and every night.”

“Don't ask more of me than tonight,” she said.

“I won't promise that.”

“I don't know if I have more to give.”

“Then I'll take tonight, but tomorrow, I'll ask for another night with you.”

She tried to copy his single arched brow. When he laughed, she did as well, overjoyed at how easy it was to jest with him.

“Maybe you won't want another night with me,” she said as she put her hand on his again as they moved along the hallway. The children calling good night to each other added to her joy. For a moment,
this
moment, she could not imagine any other place they belonged.

“I don't think you need to trouble your head with that thought.” He opened the door to his room.

She stared in amazement at the splendid room that seemed more out of place than any of the others in the farmhouse. Beneath her feet, the thick carpet had an abstract pattern of red and blue and green, but her gaze was riveted on the bed set in its middle. Four tall posts of dark wood supported an uncovered canopy that was carved in an intricate pattern of spirals. Starlight reflected on the ivory satin coverlet and the black marble tops of the tables set on either side of the bed. He lit a lantern to burn softly on the closer one.

“One bedroom tonight,” he whispered as he drew her into the room. “One bedroom and one bed.”

He captured her lips, daring her to surrender to her own uncontrollable need. As he pinned her against his firm body, her fingers inched up his back, holding herself to him, wanting to be a part of his fantasies as he was part of hers. A fantasy that, tonight, could be made real.

Gasping into his mouth, she shivered as his tongue delved deep past her lips to inflame her with its fiery touch.

“Tell me this is what you want,
a stór
,” he murmured as he loosened her hair to fall in a ruddy storm around them.

She drew back.
“A stór
?”

“It means darling, doesn't it?”

“Yes.” Her breathless voice faded beneath the pounding of her heart as his hand moved along her breast. With his fingers' inviting caress, he lured her into his arms and into rapture.

“Then let me call you that tonight.” He gave her a roguish smile as he took off his glasses and put them on the table beside the bed. His eyes were an even more brilliant shade of green without them. “Or for however long.”

“For however long.” She was willing to promise anything as long as he continued enthralling her with his eager touch. It created a tempest through her, fired by every heated breath.

His fingers sought the buttons closing her dress, but he did not undo them. He whispered her name against her lips, and she knew he was offering this last chance to stop from further entangling her life with his. She wondered if any other man could be so tender and yet so enticing. She wanted more than to entangle her life with his. She longed to entangle herself with him.

Her hand stole along his chest to find the first button on his vest. She said nothing as she loosened it. As silently, she released the next and the next, until the front of his vest fell back.

When he bent to taste her lips, she held up her hands with a soft smile. He frowned, perplexed, then grinned as she began to loosen the buttons on his shirt. When her fingertips swept along a chest bared by his gaping shirt, his mouth covered hers.

She quivered when the powerful surge of uncontrollable craving washed over her as her fingers swept across his chest. The firm muscles beneath his skin reacted to her touch, inviting her to discover more. When he shrugged off his loosened clothing, she admired his strong body above his well-worn denims, which outlined every masculine angle. She wanted to uncover and explore every bit of him.