by Jane Henry
And then the night of our wedding…
The brutal memories I’ve kept hidden come pouring back with relentless, vivid clarity.
Lying over the table while he punished me to tears.
The bloodied sheets on our wedding night.
I remember. Oh, God, I wish I could forget.
It must be an hour later when I hear the shower turn off. I sit up and look around the room. It’s darker, now, storm clouds rolling in overhead. I shiver, suddenly cold.
I need to get out of here to clear my head. I don’t want to see him. These past days I’ve spent getting to know him, I thought he could be a good man. But I didn’t remember what he did to me before.
Today, he beat his very own brother in punishment.
What will he do with me?
I open the door to the bedroom and walk blindly into the hall, barefoot, my eyes blurry. We’re alone up here, all the men gone, Caitlin and Maeve gone as well. I wanted to talk to Cormac by myself, but now I hate the very thought of being alone with him.
I walk down the stairs and see a few servants. One gives me a curious look, but it’s not out of the ordinary for me to be walking about alone. I feel a slight wave of nausea again, but the ginger biscuits and the medicine I took help. I pause and the nausea passes.
I walk quickly. I don’t even know where I’m going or what I’ll do when I get there, but I need to be away from Cormac for a little while. I walk out to the garden, forgetting that the clouds rolled in.
“Miss, it’s raining out—” someone says behind me, but I let the heavy front door bang closed behind me. I don’t care that it’s raining. I don’t care that within five steps of the house, I’m soaked to the skin. Lightning crashes in the sky above me. I probably should go back inside, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I make it to the trellis in the garden and sit under the leaves that shield me from the torrent.
What am I doing? What will I do next? But above all, there’s one question that has plagued me ever since I hit my head, and can’t remember all that I need to.
Who am I?
I can’t deal with memory after memory. My mother, my father, my sisters given away. Me, as a little girl, begging to go on a playdate and my mother sending me to my room for even asking. How I shunned all boys at school after seeing what my father did to the boys who came near my sisters. How I earned the name “bitch” because they thought me cold and detached.
I remember everything now, everything with such awful clarity I wish again for the lapse in memory. I had somehow built a resistance to the pain that tormented me, and now… oh, God. Now that it’s flooding me at once, I can’t handle the waves of pain and helplessness.
I jump to my feet when a large branch falls to the ground beside me. I step out of the trellis and let the rain cascade down my face. I close my eyes to it, but welcome the cold lashes of wind and water. They mingle with my tears, and I don’t feel so alone. The only sound out here is the howling of wind and the slashing of rain on the ground. I’m frozen to the bone, but don’t want to move. I belong here, right here, with the sodden earth beneath my feet and the sky above me.
I walk past the garden, down the stone steps that lead to the estate, to the large, wrought-iron fence that surrounds us. Several men stand in all black by the gate, wearing slickers, and their eyes immediately come to me.
“You can’t be out here, miss,” one says. “Mr. McCarthy will have my head if I don’t bring you back inside.” He steps toward me, but I’m half-crazed. I hold a hand up to him.
“Mr. McCarthy will have your head if you touch me,” I warn him.
He holds both hands up in surrender. “Not goin’ to touch you, ma’am. Just makin’ sure you’re okay.”
The other man pulls out his phone and makes a quick call.
“Don’t you dare,” I tell him. He’s going to call my husband. I know it.
But he dials anyway, ignoring my protest.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” I scream. Nausea rolls through me in a sudden torrent that makes the world swim before me. Damn it.
“Christ, woman.” I open my eyes and shield them from the rain when I see Cormac heading to me, wearing nothing but a pair of sodden jeans. He’s barefoot and bare-chested, and he looks like he did in the bedroom, ready to throttle me.
“Go ‘way.” I say petulantly. “I don’t want you right now.” He waves his guards away to give us privacy, and they scurry like mice.
“Leave me alone, Cormac! I don’t want you right now. I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Aileen!” he has to shout my name to be heard above the roaring wind.
“Cormac!” I throw back at him.
“Get in the damn house!”
“Make me!”
We square off in the garden like that, my hands on my hips and his eyes shooting daggers at me, until he reaches me, yanks my hand, and pulls me to him.
“Let me go,” I say, but it’s fruitless. He’s already got me wrapped in his arms.
“Impossible woman!” he seethes. “What the fuck am I going to do with you?”
“You could—” I begin, but his mouth slams down on mine and silences me. He slams his hand on my lower back and shoves me to him as he claims me with his mouth, his tongue sliding against mine. Goddamn him, my body flames beneath the onslaught of his mouth, and I can hardly stand. He reaches down and hoists me up until my legs wrap around him. He kisses me until I’m melting, until I can no longer feel the rain at my back, and my whole body’s light and warm with the feel of his lips on mine.
We’re panting when he pulls away. I drop my forehead to his.
“It’s fucking raining,” he says.
I laugh out loud. “Good thing I’ve got you to enlighten me,” I tell him. “Not sure what I’d do without that.”
He playfully smacks my arse straight through the sodden fabric and holds me to him.
“I love you, you crazy woman. You know that?”
“How can you?” I ask him. How can you love someone you just met? How can you love me all crazy and unpredictable like this?
“You’re my wife. You bear my child. How could I not?”
“Pretty easy,” I say. “I mean, I could list five reasons right off the top of my head.”
He shoots me a lopsided grin that does wicked things to my heart, for he never grins like that.
It feels good to be held like him, good to be kissed, but I know I’m just being weak. I’m letting him seduce me.
Don’t fall for it, my mind warns me. But I’m cold and lonely, and I want him to love me. I want someone to.
“Come back inside,” he says. “And I’ll warm you up.”
With a sigh, I nod. What choice do I have? I’m surrounded by guards, and if I tried anything foolish, he’d stop me.
Where would I go, anyway?
I go in with him, and he does just that, warms me up.
He takes off my wet clothes and helps me into clean ones, tucks me back into bed when the nausea overtakes me again, and when the queasiness passes, we make slow, beautiful, languid love until the sun sets and it’s dinnertime.
I didn’t tell him I loved him back. I accept that he loves me. But my heart is guarded.
Am I so weak that I let him bring me back to him? That a kiss, an orgasm, and the promise of protection makes me fold like a cheap tent in a gust of wind?
No, I tell myself. I’m not weak. I have to get through this early stage of pregnancy, get my bearings and my feet under me. I can’t make any moves until then.
Chapter 17
Cormac
I don’t know what to do with the woman.
I take the best care of her I can. She sleeps for long hours, but she’s troubled even then. When she wakes in a cold sweat, or worse, in tears, I hold her. I get her the medicine that helps her nausea, feed her the food she craves that keeps her at an even keel.
But she’s closed off to me. She doesn’t open up.
I wish she’d let the
demons that plague her out. That she’d tell me what it is that torments her. She’s a troubled soul, but I can’t do anything to slay her dragons if I don’t even know what they are. And hell, I’m so busy with my work that I can’t devote every minute to her like I wish I could.
We still haven’t found who’s responsible for nearly killing her and the others. Keenan’s convinced the O’Gregors had something to do with it, but I’m not so sure myself. I wouldn’t put it past her brother.
I wake before she does most days, and this morning it’s my phone that wakes me. I grab it off the table beside me. The door to the bathroom’s closed and she isn’t in bed. Sometimes she still gets queasy, poor lass. I answer the phone.
“Yeah?”
“Mornin’, Cormac.”
It’s Tully. We’re good now. Hell, in some strange way, I think we’re closer than we were before, as if what we went through solidified us.
“Morning.”
“Saw something strange last night at the club.”
“Did you?”
He’s gone back to the club with Boner and Nolan, but I haven’t been in weeks. I’m a married man now. And even though Aileen and I have a ways to go, I’m determined to remain faithful to her.
“Can you come down to breakfast today?” he asks.
“Aye.”
I hang up the phone and call out to Aileen over my shoulder. “Heading downstairs for breakfast, need to meet with Keenan. Call me and I’ll bring up what you like.”
I leave the room, and something troubles me. I don’t really know what it is, but my instincts are warring with me. To stay with her. Not to leave. But I can’t be with her every second of the day, so I appease my conscience by making sure the guard is outside the door, and my phone is on.
I go downstairs to the dining room, my mind elsewhere, and nearly run smack into mam at the foot of the stairs.
“Y’alright, son?” she asks, her brow furrowed in concern.
“Aye,” I tell her, leaning in to give her a kiss on the cheek. I don’t want her to share the concern that bothers me. “Just distracted is all.”
“How’s Aileen?” she asks. She gathers freshly-picked flowers in her arms from the garden. She likes to put them around the house in little vases.
“Fine,” I say, too quickly. “Still nauseous but she’s getting along now. Got to go, mam.”
I turn to walk away, but she stops me. “Can I take her to the shops today, Cormac?”
No.
I don’t want to let her out of my sight, not when whoever’s responsible for hurting her’s still at large.
I shake my head. “Not today.”
Mam purses her lips. “Ya can’t keep her under lock and key and expect her to be happy, you know.”
Happy. Goddamn it.
I didn’t ask her advice, and I’m not in the mood to take it. I shake my head. “True, but I’m also not letting her out into the wild with people out there who still want to hurt her.”
What I don’t tell her is that a part of me fears if I let her go, she won’t come back. She isn’t happy here, and I know it.
“Cormac, she’s come from Irish mafia and married Irish mafia. There will always be a time when someone wants to hurt her.”
I stare at her for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Does she feel that way, even now? That her life is always endangered? I’d be a fool to say she doesn’t speak truth.
“No shops without me,” I insist.
Mam frowns. “Then come with us.”
I groan. “To the shops?”
“Aye.”
“Could use a new bag that goes with yer outfit, brother.” I turn to see Boner, bouncing on the balls of his feet, prepared to duck my blow. I fake one with my left, and when he ducks, I get him with my right. He doubles over and howls with laughter, even as he gasps. I smack the side of his head before he dodges another smack and races off to the dining room.
Mam rolls her eyes and doesn’t even wince.
“Right, then, I’ll see she’s ready to go and we’ll head out after breakfast,” she says.
“Mam,” I say with a groan. “I’ve got business to attend to.”
Her voice is laced with steel when she responds to me. “And part of that business you’ve got to attend to is seeing to the needs of your wife, son. Now what’ll it be? You can come with us or double the guard.” She smiles pleasantly.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re meddlin’?” I mutter.
Keenan comes around the corner, baby Seamus tucked up to his chest. “Wait ’til you’ve got a baby.”
“Go on with you,” she says, flushing, but I can tell with the smile she hides that she’s pleased. It’s the highest of compliments to tell her she’s meddling.
“Go,” Keenan says. “We’ll discuss what we need to at breakfast, and you’ll have the day ahead of you.”
Mam beams.
He leans in and says in my ear. “And she’s right. There’s something to be said for bein’ sure you’ve tended to the needs of your wife.”
“By going to the feckin’ shops?” I groan.
Keenan nods with chagrin. “Tell me about it.”
“Alright, then.”
With a smile, mam trots upstairs to see to Aileen.
I head to the dining room and find most of the inner circle of the Clan waiting. Tully and Sullivan, Lachlan, Nolan, and Boner. Even Carson and Brady, Clan bookkeeper and detective, sit at round tables, drinking steaming cups of tea and eating scones, eggs, and bacon.
“Full house here, today,” I say to Keenan.
“Aye. Haven’t had a proper meeting in a while.”
I take my place beside Keenan at the table. Nolan hands me a full plate of food, and one of our waitstaff fetches me tea.
“What is it, lads?” I ask Tully. “You mentioned the club.”
“Aye,” Tully says. “I’ve been looking to see if Blaine would show his damn face again.”
I grunt in response. Fucking Blaine.
“And?”
“And he showed up last night with a woman.” I frown into my tea.
“Oh?”
“A redheaded woman,” Tully says, looking with interest toward Nolan, who suddenly sits up straighter.
“Did you see her face?” he asks.
“No. She was masked.”
“Sheena?”
“Don’t know, but she was with her mate.” We all know who he’s talking about, the one who snuck Sheena onto our property.
Nolan can’t mask his fury. Nostrils flaring, eyes blazing, he glares at Tully as if he’s responsible. “What the fuck was she doing with that prick?”
Tully shakes his head. “No idea, mate. But Blaine had his way with the pair of them, right there where anyone could see.”
Nolan looks as if he wants to whip his cup of tea across the room.
“Anything else?” Keenan asks. He stands at the head of the table, rocking the baby, who’s fussing and squirming in his arms.
“The girl passed us and said something about the paper,” Lachlan says.
I look at him sharply. “Since when do you frequent the club?”
His eyes darken and he purses his lips. “Ages ago,” he snaps. “Why?”
I think of him as my younger brother, too young for the shenanigans at the Craic.
“He’s of age, Cormac,” Nolan says with a note of pride in his voice. “Needs a bit of a mentor.”
“And you fancy yourself his sensei, do you?”
“Aye,” Nolan says with a grin.
“Right.” One word, and Keenan’s got the attention of everyone. “Lachlan’s plenty old enough to be going to the Club. In fact, he’d be an asset if these two ever get their arses in a sling again.” He tips his chin to Nolan and Boner.
Boner grins. “True, that.”
Keenan turns to Lachlan. “What’d you see, Lachlan? You notice anything?”
“Noticed lots, sir,” he says to me. “Noticed the redhead speaking into her phone and us
ing an earpiece. Her mate kept looking at Nolan, and Blaine seemed happy as a pig in shite.”
Nothing new there, then.
“Thought you taught Sheena a lesson?” Keenan says to Nolan, who gives him a grim smile.
“Seems the lass is a slow learner.”
Boner snorts. “Feckin’ crime, you’ll have to teach her.”
But Keenan doesn’t smile. “She’s interfered enough,” he says. “If she were a man you know what we’d have already done.”
Nolan narrows his eyes. “Aye. Not sure why you’re warning me. The lass means nothing to me.”
Keenan holds his gaze. “See to it that’s true, Nolan,” he warns. “Wouldn’t want any of your feelings to get in the way of what must be done.”
His words hang in the room while we all sit in silence for long moments. We may be brothers, and we may have a code we abide by. But spies aren’t allowed to interfere, be they woman or man.
“Aye,” Nolan grunts. “I’ll reach out to our friendly reporter today, make sure she’s behaving herself.”
Mam and Caitlin enter the room. Mam walks to Keenan, and reaches for the baby.
“Sorry to interrupt, boys,” mam says. “Cormac, where’s Aileen?”
I blink in surprise and shake my head. “She’s in the room. She was in the jacks when I came downstairs.”
Mam rocks the baby on her hip while the men talk about what they need to do. Nolan and Keenan are in a bit of an argument, but I hardly hear them.
“She wasn’t there when I went up, son,” she says. “Guard says she went for a walk.”
I’m on my feet. Tully and Lachlan look my way.
“Relax,” mam says. “Likely just needed a bit of fresh air is all. Did you see her in the bathroom before you came down?”
I shake my head. God, I’m a fuckin’ idiot. I assumed she was in there because the door was closed, like a goddamn novice.
I call my guard. Pat answers on the first ring.
“Where’s my wife?”
“Said she was going to the library early this morning, sir.”
“And you let her?” I’m exiting the dining room. Mam’s beside me and Caitlin follows.
“Yes, sir. Didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to, sir.” He’s right, but I still want to throttle him. She’s allow to roam the premises. She lives here, for Christ’s sake.