by Lila Dubois
Naked, he ran for the first floor hot press—the closet with the water heater in it. Clothes were kept there to keep them warm in the cold winter, and nicer items were hung there to keep them crisp.
He bypassed stacks of his clean farming clothes and pulled on a pair of slacks and a button-down shirt. After he put it on, he saw that there were oil stains on the cuff. He’d stopped by the barn on his way home from Mass last week but had thought that he’d managed not to damage one of his only good shirts.
Sorcha had seen him looking worse, he was sure, so this would have to do. He told himself that the only reason Sorcha was here was to get her away from the castle. This wasn’t any kind of social call.
And yet he was nervous. He’d never brought a woman home and it was strange, knowing that Sorcha was up there, in the bathroom where he brushed his teeth, naked and wet…
He jerked his thoughts away from her naked body. What she needed now was comfort and protection, not sex. Then again, what she’d said before she closed the bedroom door made him hope that despite what she’d said this morning—had it only been this morning?—what was between them wasn’t over.
He heard movement upstairs and hurriedly finished getting dressed. He filled the kettle and cut slices of the fresh brown bread his mother had cooling on the rack, hoping it wasn’t meant for something else.
“Séan?”
He went to the kitchen door. He opened his mouth to say something but the words caught in his throat. She looked soft and touchable in the long, lacy dress. Her hair hung in damp waves around her face and her face looked different—her eyes wider, her skin freckled and pretty. Her feet were bare, her toes curled against the hall runner.
“Séan?”
“I, uh, almost have the tea ready—if you go into the front room, I’ll bring it.” The formal front room, with its oiled, antique furniture and paintings, was where they entertained important guests.
“I’m happy to sit in the kitchen. I’d rather do that, if you don’t mind.”
Séan relaxed a little. “I’ve brown bread too.”
“That sounds wonderful.”
She joined him in the kitchen, taking a seat at the same battered wooden table his family had used for generations.
It was both strange and exciting to see her there.
He set a basket of bread on the table, then gave her a small plate. He hesitated, tub of Kerrygold cream butter in his hand. Should he put the butter into a nicer dish?
Sorcha took the butter from him and set it on the table.
“You look as if you’re trying to defuse a bomb,” she teased.
“I’ve seen my mother serve tea a million times and can’t remember what all I should do.”
“You’ve already done more than enough. I don’t expect you to serve me.”
He brought over mugs of tea and only sighed when Sorcha then got up to get a pitcher of milk and bowl of sugar, which he’d forgotten.
She laughed at his expression. “I promise not to tell your mammy that you’ve no domestic skills.”
“You wouldn’t be telling her anything she didn’t know.”
“Your home is lovely.”
Séan looked around the large kitchen, with its turf-burning stove, battered cabinets and calendar covered in notes and bits of paper. This room hadn’t changed much through the years. They’d remodeled some to add an electric stove and larger refrigerator, but the copper turf bucket sat in the same place it always had. The upper cabinets with their glass insets revealed the same pretty painted serving bowls and crystal jugs that had always been there.
“My mother would love it,” Sorcha said, mug to her lips as she looked around.
“Where’s your mother?” He knew very little about her family, or where she came from—her “people”, as his mother would say.
“Athlone, that’s where I grew up.”
“Not too far at all.” Séan was surprised. Athlone was less than two hours from here, and less as the crow flies. “Do you get home much?”
“No, it’s been a few years.”
“Why?” It wasn’t until she looked at him, eyes flat and unreadable, that he realized how terrible a question that was. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”
Sorcha put her mug down and fiddled with the claddagh ring she wore. The tip of the heart pointed away from her hand—a sign that she wasn’t taken. He’d checked that ring more than once over the years.
“There’s no reason for you to apologize. It’s an odd thing, my not going home.” There was a moment of silence, then the corner of her mouth quirked up. “Funny, but I’m not sure which I’m more frightened to talk about—what happened today or why I don’t go home.”
“Then we won’t talk about either one of them.”
“And what will we talk about?”
“I’m happy to just sit here with you.”
Sorcha laid her hand over his. “I wish I deserved someone like you.”
Séan frowned. What did that mean? “Surely you aren’t trying to say that…” Séan trailed off, trying to unravel her seemingly simple statement.
“I’m saying that you’re a good man, Séan Donnovan. A very good man who deserves a very good woman.”
“And you’re…not a good woman?”
“Not good enough.” Her hand slipped off his. She broke a corner off a slice of bread, toying with it.
She must be joking. She was the most beautiful, kindest, smartest, funniest woman he’d ever met.
“Wait now, is this that thing women do to leave men by pretending they’re not good?”
She smiled, but it was sad and didn’t reach her eyes. “‘It’s not you, it’s me?’ Yes, it’s something like that.”
“Then you’re not as smart as I thought you were and it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”
That startled a laugh out of her, which is what Séan wanted. There was sadness hanging over her, and he hated to see it.
“Well, maybe I am a fool, but what I’m saying is true. I’m not what you think I am.”
“I’ve seen you naked, so unless you’re very good at hiding, I’d say you are exactly what I think you are.”
“Not in that way, you daft man.”
She popped the piece of bread she’d been toying with into her mouth, and for some reason that made Séan feel better. She looked around the kitchen again, focusing on the window over the kitchen sink. “Do you know why I stayed away from you for all these years?”
“No, and it’s a question that’s tormented me.”
“It’s because you’re the kind of man that a woman should marry and have babies with. You’re this—” She motioned around the kitchen. “—history and family and not happy ever after, but the more important love that lasts and endures a lifetime.”
“And you don’t want that. You want…” He trailed off, thinking of the times he’d seen some visitor eyeing her, only to notice moments later that both Sorcha and the man were gone. “You don’t want to be tied down to one man.”
“No. I don’t want one man to be tied down to me.”
Séan shook his head, looking down at his tea. She was trying not to say it, but her meaning was clear—she wanted excitement and adventure, not the life of a farmer’s wife. She’d go back to Dublin and have all the excitement that living in the city offered. He was, and always would be, a country man, his life no more exciting than that of his cows.
“Séan.” She put her hand on his again, and he both wanted to grab her and never let go and to pull his hand away.
“Séan, do you know why I screamed when I saw the bodies?”
The shift in topic had him looking up. “That was a terrible thing, and I’m sorry you saw that.”
“That was a mother and her children.” Her lip trembled and when she lifted her mug of tea, her hand did too. “One of them was a baby.” She closed her eyes and slowly put her mug down without taking a sip. Fisting her hands together on the tabletop, she looked at him.
“One of t
hem was a baby, a baby like the one I lost.”
Chapter Eight
An Old Pain
Sorcha watched his face, saw the moment he understood what she’d said. “Sorcha…”
He swallowed hard, seemingly wanting to say something more, but no words came out.
She could feel tears in her eyes and dug her nails into her palms to center herself. “I had a baby. He didn’t live more than a few minutes and died in my arms.”
“God rest and protect your child.”
They were words she’d heard before, simple comfort, but from Séan they seemed to mean more.
“I didn’t know you’d been married.”
“I wasn’t.”
She watched him absorb that, imagined that with each word she said any feeling he had for her died a little. Best to get it all out.
“My mother owned a guesthouse in Athlone. My father passed away when I was small, and that was how we survived. I remember hating her when she turned our home into a guesthouse, stripping away all the things that mattered to me to make it suitable for strangers. I lost my pretty attic room, moving downstairs to a little cramped space off the small sitting room that was our only privacy.
“I got up with her every morning to bake fresh bread and prep the breakfast. We served a full, traditional breakfast every day.” Her lips quirked in a smile. “I hate the smell of sausage and rashers. The kitchen always smelled like cooking meat, even in the evening.
“The guests loved it when I helped serve the breakfast. If they were foreign they’d say I was so pretty, so Irish with my red hair, and if they were Irish they’d say I was a good traditional girl, helping my mother.”
Sorcha remembered the feel of the tray in her hands, the way she’d have to stand there, smiling, as they talked about her as if she were a pretty piece of furniture.
“As I got older, I no longer wanted to scream at them for coming into my home. I learned that the people who came to our house told wonderful stories about the places they traveled, the people they’d met and the things they’d done. Soon I thought of the guesthouse as our business—mine and my mothers’—rather than just this horrible thing my mother had done.
“When I got to secondary school, I stopped caring about my studies. I already knew what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to open a guesthouse in Dublin or Galway, someplace where I would get even more interesting guests. My mother didn’t want me to leave, but she started putting away some of the profit into an account just for me—the money to buy my own place.”
Séan rose from the table, picking up their mugs. He emptied them out, getting rid of the now-lukewarm tea, and put the kettle on for fresh. She examined him, looking for his reaction to her story, but even when he turned, mugs in hand, there was no hint of his thoughts on his face.
“It was a good plan,” he said as he handed her the mug.
“It would have been,” she agreed. “The year after I graduated, a man started coming to our house. He was a businessman from Northern Ireland. He owned a company that exported furniture. Our house was not far from the workshop where he got some of the best pieces. He once told me that he was able to charge five times what he otherwise would have simply by putting pictures of the men in their workshop on the label.”
“People will pay well for handmade.”
“They will, and he was making a pretty penny.”
“What was his name?”
Sorcha took a gulp of tea, letting it burn the inside of her mouth. “Peter York. His name was Peter.”
“And was he the father of your child?”
“He was.” Sorcha smiled a little. “You figured out the story, have you?”
“Only guessed.”
“I talked to Peter, the way I did to all the guests, but he talked back. He asked me about my life, my plans. He gave me advice on starting a business and showed me how to make a business plan. After a life of being treated as the pretty innkeeper’s daughter, it was…marvelous…to be seen as smart and interesting.
“On my nineteenth birthday, he gave me a diamond necklace. I hid it from my mother and would take it out to wear at night in my room. Six months later, he came to stay for a few days before saying that he had to go to London to attend a business event. He told my mother about how it was a shame because he had no one to take with him. I asked if I could go with him, to meet business people.
“It was a show we put on for my mother, though we hadn’t arranged it. When she finally agreed, I remember being so excited and so scared. You see, I was in love with Peter and wanted to spend a night in Dublin with him. He got me a separate hotel room, showed my mother the confirmation and said we’d be back in the morning. I left with him that night.
“If there was an event, we missed it, because we went right to the hotel.”
“He seduced you.”
Sorcha stared into her tea. “We seduced each other. He was—is—a good man, if a fool for getting involved with a woman young enough to be his daughter. When he showed me to my room, I asked him if he was going to come in. He said no, that he was too old for me, that I needed to find someone my own age, that he really did just want to help me.”
Sorcha looked up, wanting Séan to see the truth in her face. “I took his hand and pulled him into my room.”
Séan’s gaze was steady on hers.
“I was a virgin, but I knew what I wanted and I was going to get it. That night I lost my virginity to him, and I discovered that sex was not this terrible thing to be feared, but a wonderful, pleasurable thing.”
“He was a kind lover, then.”
“He was. But I was ignorant in many ways, and I think he was too shocked by what we were doing to think clearly, because we used no protection.”
“Protection?”
“Birth control.”
“Ah.”
“He told me later that he assumed I was on it, that he’d never met a woman who wasn’t, but who was I to need something like that?”
Séan’s face went a little gray. “We, uh, I mean...”
Sorcha couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, we used protection. I learned my lesson and now take the pill.”
He nodded in understanding. “What happened, when you got pregnant?”
“It was another while before that happened. Every time he came, we’d find a way to sneak off to be together. When I finally noticed that I hadn’t had my period, I was already three months pregnant. Somehow it had never occurred to me that that could happen, as if the only way for babies to be made was if there was a marriage first.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be—I was a fool.”
“Maybe,” he agreed, and she appreciated that he didn’t try and deny it. “But young, which gives some understanding.”
“I told Peter. He was horrified. Part of me thought he’d be glad, that we’d get married. That’s when he told me that he was divorced and already had children who lived with his ex-wife in Belfast. He said that he’d pay for me to go to England, to get an abortion. I said I wouldn’t, that I couldn’t believe he’d say such a thing. He was angry with my decision but said that he’d support me financially.
“There I was, pregnant by a man I loved, who clinically started discussing financial support for the child rather than saying he’d marry me as I thought.”
“Ah, my sweet Sorcha.” Séan picked up her hand and kissed it.
“I was foolish, stupid and selfish,” she said, refusing to accept his sympathy or understanding.
“You were young, sheltered and maybe a bit foolish.”
“When I told my mother, she cried for days.” Sorcha pulled her hand from Séan’s pressing it over her belly. “I hadn’t realized until then how hard it had been for her, raising me on her own, finding a way to support us.
“We couldn’t move away, because our home was our business, and as the months passed I couldn’t hide that I was pregnant. There was talk, as there will be, but people were kind, blaming Peter. I was
ashamed, so I let them blame him, pretended I’d been taken advantage of.
“But then something strange happened. As I reached my sixth month of pregnancy, I…” She struggled to find the words to express the overwhelming feelings that had come over her. “I felt…whole, strong.
“I no longer pretended that Peter had taken advantage of me. I told everyone that I’d been foolish, but that I was as much to blame as him. I took some of my savings and had the house remodeled so that there was a nursery in our private quarters. And my mother, who had been so sad, came back to life. We took my baby furniture out of the attic, we sewed baby clothes.
“I’d been hiding away from the guests, but now I went back to helping and they all wished me well. If anyone got nosy and asked about my husband or the father, I’d only smile sadly and walk away, finding that people would assume what they liked and I wouldn’t have to hurt our reputation.”
“That sounds more like the Sorcha I know.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’re strong and smart. It always seems as if there’s nothing you couldn’t do, even if the Devil himself tried to stop you.”
“Thank you, Séan Donnovan.” She could feel the tears in her eyes.
“Ah, don’t cry.”
“I won’t, but I’d better finish this sad tale.” She took a sip of tea, letting the heat melt away her tears. “A few months before the baby was born, I went to the doctor. They found a problem with his heart. It hadn’t grown enough, one of the ventricles wasn’t there.” She swallowed. “It’s called hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
“They said that I needed to make a choice—either he’d have to have surgeries once he was born, and even then might not make it past his fifth birthday, or we’d do palliative care, to make him comfortable until his little heart couldn’t do it anymore.”
“That’s a terrible thing to go through. I’m so sorry.”
“In the end, it didn’t matter. A few weeks before he was supposed to be born, I went in and his heart wasn’t beating right.” That was, and always would be, the worst moment of her life—watching the doctor’s brow furrow, listening for that little thump, thump, thump and hearing nothing. “The baby was dying inside me.”