The Last Bride in Ballymuir

by Dorien Kelly

  “Well then,” she said as she pushed away from the table, “here’s your chance to meet some new mates. I’m going visiting, and I’ll be happy to drop you wherever you want in town. That is, if you’re ready.”

  She jingled her car keys and started to the door.

  “Of course, if you’d like to sit and reminisce with Breege, I’m sure the walk to town would be relaxing. It’s not raining that hard, after all.”

  Breege didn’t bother hiding her amused chuckle, nor did her da his displeasure.

  “We’ll be on our way, now,” Kylie said to Breege. “I’ll be back to get supper going.”

  “Don’t be bothering yourself. Edna’s coming for a visit and I expect she can open a tin of soup as well as any of us.”

  “Right, then. If you need me, I’ll be at Vi’s,” Kylie said to her friend, then left. She wasn’t especially worried whether her da followed. He did, of course, and they were no sooner in the car than he started.

  “Visiting someone named Vi, you say? Anyone I’d be knowing?”

  She snorted. “I couldn’t begin to keep up with your list of acquaintances.”

  “You’re really seeing that Kilbride man, aren’t you?”

  “If I am, you don’t need to concern yourself with it.”

  Johnny was silent for a few minutes, then said, “I haven’t been the ideal father, have I?”

  That he’d even ask the question shocked Kylie. She took a moment to gather her thoughts. “You haven’t been all that horrible. You never raised a hand to me, and kept a roof over my head. Well, most of the time, anyway.”

  “I’ve failed you often enough,” he muttered.

  Flashes of his drunken sprees hovered at the edges of her memory. As did a ghost of a face at the window on a night she would never forget. She pushed it back into the realm of the dead.

  “If you’ve failed me, it’s in the past.”

  “I’d be failing you now if I didn’t tell you to stay away from Kilbride,” he said after a few false starts.

  She smiled, though it tasted a bit bitter. “You’re standing at the end of a long queue with that advice.”

  “He’s—”

  Kylie cut him short. “Be careful what you say. I love him, Da, just as Mam loved you. It’s as simple as that.” And as horribly complicated, an internal voice whispered.

  Johnny sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ll be changing your mind?”

  “I don’t suppose I will.”

  When Kylie arrived at Vi’s house, neither Michael’s nor Vi’s car was in sight. She rapped on the door anyway. After a few moments a redheaded giant in sawdust-covered clothes answered. Kylie couldn’t help but smile at the sight.

  “Danny Kilbride, your sister will cook you alive when she sees the mess you’ve tracked through her house.”

  He grinned as he stepped aside and ushered her in. “She won’t leave her studio long enough to cook me, and you’re forgetting she’s a vegetarian, anyway.”

  “Lucky for you,” Kylie replied as she glanced around. “Is Michael here?”

  Danny scratched his head, releasing a shower of wood shavings. “You mean he didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That he’s off to Galway City for a day or two. Said he had a business prospect to visit.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “You’re not to worry. We promised Michael we’d finish up the Village Hall for you. You’ll be open for business come Monday.”

  The student art show had been nowhere in her thoughts. The idea that Michael would up and escape without offering to take her along was too enormous to leave room for anything else.

  “I don’t suppose he left a number where I might ring him?”

  “Uh, yeah, he did.”

  Kylie’s lips curved into a smile as Danny riffled through a stack of paper by the phone. She’d more than call, she’d show up at his door. It was either that, or lose what bit of sanity the citizens of Ballymuir hadn’t already prized away from her today.

  “Found it!” Danny crowed.

  Kylie copied down the needed information, flew home, and told Breege of her plans, then drove north to her future. Dark cloaked the city by the time she arrived at the hotel.

  She stewed up an absurd broth of marital lies for a hotel clerk who had neither asked nor cared, then shut her overnight bag in the lift door. Now she was confronting an ancient hotel room door that had no intention of giving way. Biting back a frustrated hiss, she leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door and slowly counted to ten. From the other side, she could hear the sounds of running water and what must be Michael singing.

  Singing? Now, there was a miracle, and she was ready for one. She’d sooner run naked through Galway’s Spanish Arch than face that clerk’s superior smirk if she had to tell him she couldn’t get into the room.

  She rattled the key again, then turned the knob and butted her hip into the door. It flew open. She staggered into the entry, overnight bag clutched in one hand, key fob left behind, clanking against that godawful door.

  She hadn’t even righted herself when Michael, towel slung low about his hips, burst from the bathroom.

  “What the—” he snarled with a fury that made her drop her bag and take an alarmed step backward.

  Her “I’m sorry—” collided with his oath in midair.

  She’d never had the experience of being greeted by a mostly naked and thoroughly enraged male. Despite the jolt of fear that shot through her, she couldn’t seem to tug her gaze from the dark line of hair arrowing down his abdomen into the towel.

  “God, Kylie, I’m the one who’s sorry for scaring you half to death, but what can you expect breaking into a man’s room?” He paused long enough to draw a breath. “And what exactly are you doing here, anyway?”

  Now that was the wrong question to ask a woman who’d just driven hours in a dying car.

  “I could be asking you the same question, disappearing like you did. I stopped over Vi’s for a visit and Danny told me you’d gone. Silly me, with all your talk of getting away, I thought you’d like it if I surprised you—”

  “I do like it. Really, I do,” he said, re-anchoring his towel.

  Transfixed, Kylie’s eyes followed his hands. It had been so long, so very long since she’d had him to herself.

  “When I heard the noise in the entry, I thought—” he was saying. “Well, it doesn’t really matter what I thought, now does it?”

  He walked around her, retrieved the room key, and closed the door. “Fine greeting I’ve given you. Shall we try this again with more kisses and less shouting?”

  At his words, Kylie’s gaze drifted upward to his mouth, and her heart tumbled. His mouth—his beautiful mouth—was swollen and had a nasty split at the corner. Her cry of distress sounded sharp in the quiet room. “Whatever happened?”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks. A little fall, nothing important”

  But she was the daughter of Johnny O’Shea and had patched cuts and bruises from any number of brawls. She took Michael’s hands in hers, running fingers over his puffy and scraped knuckles.

  “And I suppose you caught yourself on these when you fell.”

  When he nodded, she was thankful that at least he couldn’t give voice to such a ridiculous lie. She traced her fingertips to either side of the bridge of his nose. He winced.

  “Well, judging by your nose, you didn’t do a very good job of catching yourself.”

  “Really, love, it’s nothing.”

  Kylie let out her exasperation in a long breath. She turned away and busied herself by settling her overnight bag on a chair in the corner. “So you’re asking me to believe that you did all of this by tripping over your own feet.”

  He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m asking you to trust me.” His voice was deep and low in her ear. The sound washed through her, bringing comfort even when she knew it shouldn’t.

  She wanted to trust him
, but couldn’t let go of this. Not without the risk of stepping into the same role she had held for her father. A role she’d been able to see through unclouded adult eyes upon her father’s return. She wouldn’t aid another man down the road to disaster.

  “Trust comes through honesty,” she said.

  His arms left her. Kylie faced him. She watched as he turned away, dug about in his duffel bag, then pulled out a pair of denims. He dropped the towel, exposing a somehow vulnerable stretch of muscled buttock and haunch. After pulling on the denims without consideration for niceties such as underwear, he turned back to her.

  “And you’re thinking I’m not honest?”

  Ripe that was, considering the way he was hiding the truth. “Tell me who hit you.”

  He scrubbed his hand through still-wet hair, leaving it wild. “I happened across an old acquaintance.”

  “Happened across?” she echoed, weighing the words with her vast disbelief.

  “Fine, maybe I was doing a little research. But let’s not get bogged down in details.”

  “And this—ah—friend, would he be looking much like you do?”

  A smile hovered at the corners of his bruised mouth. “A bit worse, I’m hoping.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and patted its white tufted spread. “Come sit.”

  She hesitated. It was too hard thinking clearly when Michael was close, and her terrible day had left her feeling muddled enough.

  “Please.”

  Against her better judgment, Kylie joined him. He took her hands in his. Staring down at their clasped fingers, he began.

  “I told you once about Brian Rourke, about what he and Dervla had done to me.” His throat worked with the obvious difficulty of getting this out She couldn’t help but feel for him. “He’s been calling Vi’s house and saying things. Ugly things. Anyway, our friend Gerry Flynn’s been dropping word for the past several weeks that I might find Rourke up this way.”

  He bloody well was trying to fix the world, and at the risk of his own life. “God, Michael! You might as well have served yourself up on a platter—”

  He squeezed tighter on her hands. “Let me finish, love.”

  She swallowed her frustration and alarm, but still rugged her hands free. “Go on.”

  “I was doing what I had to. Rourke knew about you, Kylie. He’d been to Ballymuir and seen you. I couldn’t let him...let him do what he said he was going to.”

  “And you couldn’t have called the authorities, either?”

  He snorted. “Flynn? And said exactly what?”

  “Not Flynn, but someone else.”

  He stood and began to pace the room. “And still said what?”

  At her silence, he wheeled on her. “What, dammit? That a man who might or might not be Brian Rourke and might or might not be in Galway was making threats? They’d have laughed themselves sick at that one, and I couldn’t blame them. Don’t you see? I needed to know for sure.”

  She nodded, for she did see. Through hard experience, Michael Kilbride had been led to believe that absolute truth was no defense, and sometimes an impediment.

  He looked down at the floor, then back to her. “You want honesty, so I’m giving it you. He threatened to kill you, so I came here to kill him.”

  She was left feeling empty, old, and hopeless. “And did you?”

  The pause before he answered stretched out endlessly. “I didn’t, but I wanted to, which I figure is pretty much the same thing.”

  She tipped back her head, allowing her tears to track down the outer curves of her cheeks. “It’s not the same thing at all. It’s what separates you from Rourke and the rest of them, knowing the end never justifies the means.”

  He made a sound close to a laugh. “I’m not so different as you’d like to give me credit for. Sure, I felt good for a few hours, but now that it’s night and I can’t protect you from the shadows, I’m regretting not having killed him.”

  “I think we’ve all known a few regrets.” She drew in a ragged, teary breath. “We’ll call the authorities. Let them take care of this. Please, Michael. They won’t fail us.”

  “I already called anonymously from a pay phone. With luck, they’ll have some reason to hold him. And once we’re back home, we’ll try the Gardai in Tralee, where hopefully saner minds prevail.” He paused, cleared his throat, then said, “As long as we’re going for honesty, I’ve never told you this straight out like I should—partly because I couldn’t believe what I was feeling and partly because I was bloody terrified—but I love you, Kylie. I think I have since that night you almost ran me down on the road, then called me a damn fool for being there.”

  He knelt at her feet. She closed her eyes to hold back the tears she’d just tamed.

  “I know I’m no great prize, and it’s a world of grief I might be bringing you, but I can promise you this—no one will ever love you more than I do.”

  She was crying now, no more able to stop than she could stop loving this man. She wiped at the tears with her fingers, then tightly clasped her hands in her lap—holding some small part of herself together.

  “Dammit,” Michael muttered, then patted her knee. “I’ll be right back, love.”

  He stood and dug around in his bag again. “There, now!” she heard him say triumphantly. He settled in front of her and nudged her hands with a tissue. She took it and wiped her eyes. Through a lingering sheen of moisture, Kylie could see that he was still holding a small box. Her heart pushed against her breastbone like it wanted to escape.

  “I never thought I’d have the courage or the freedom to do this,” he said as he fumbled with the box between his two strong—and usually steady— hands. He pried the lid open, crumpled a tiny square of paper in one hand, and tossed it aside.

  “Will you stay with me for the rest of our days? Will you marry me, Kylie O’Shea?”

  She had never known so many thoughts to fight for precedence. Was this the right thing to do? What about this Rourke person? What if she lost her job? How would they get by until his business grew? And finally, how would she ever live if she tossed aside this chance at happiness?

  “Kylie?”

  “Yes,” she said, pushing back everything but this moment.

  “Yes?” The uncertainty in his eyes battled with the smile beginning to tug at his mouth. “Are you saying yes, you’ll marry me, or yes, you just noticed that I’m still kneeling in front of you like some kind of fool?”

  “I’m saying, yes, I’ll marry you.” Joy whirled through her like a cloud of white doves. “Yes, I’ll love you forever.”

  Michael’s hands shook as he slipped the ring on her finger. “It fits perfectly,” he said, sounding a bit surprised.

  “Of course it does. As do you and I,” she added before framing his face between her hands and settling her mouth over his. “Now do you think that you could possibly make love to me?”

  She took his hungry growl for a “yes.”

  The sky was still a pale wash of early light when, wrapped in her old robe, Kylie pushed aside the drapes and gazed out the window. She turned back to Michael. Totally comfortable with his nudity in a way that made her just the tiniest bit jealous, he lay on top of the rumpled sheets. In his hand was a note that had been tucked beneath the door sometime during the night.

  “It’s not like Vi to call unless something’s happened,” he said. “And it bothers me the way no one’s answering the phone. I keep thinking Pat or Danny might have been fool enough to head out to the barn and tangle with the table saw or...”

  She hushed him, and came and sat beside him. He tugged her down until she was curled into his side, her head pillowed by his broad shoulder. “I’m sure nothing’s wrong, or Vi would have called again. But if it’s worrying you this much, perhaps you’d best head home.”

  “You wouldn’t be angry?”

  She stroked her hand over his chest and felt the tension seep out of him. “Because you love your family? Never. You do what you have to.”

>   “I want you to stay here,” he said, resettling her next to him before sitting up. “I’ll order up breakfast to be delivered to the room.” He settled a kiss on her mouth. “And I want you to promise you’ll at least take a peek at the city.” He stood and began riffling through his duffel bag for clothes. “And Kylie, I love you.”

  Smiling, she snuggled into the covers. “Of course you do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Every cock crows on his own dunghill.

  —Irish Proverb

  As Michael drove past Ballymuir’s shops and homes, he worried. The boys were bright enough to work unsupervised, he told himself. He’d spent enough hours drilling safety rules into them. But then came the memory of what it was like to be nearly seventeen, all-powerful, and most assuredly immortal. His stomach rolled. This business of caring for youngsters wasn’t for the weak.

  Michael parked the car, grabbed his duffel bag, and dashed up Vi’s front walk. Ironic how fourteen years in prison seemed inconsequential when compared to a few hours’ drive agonizing over loved ones. It was time to rethink his objections to modern inconveniences, like cellular phones.

  “Vi,” he bellowed, stepping inside. Once in, he considered popping back out just to be sure he was in the right place. The house was empty, and cleaner than he’d ever seen it. Eerily so. There was obviously no great crisis afoot if his sister had found time to clean her home from top to bottom. As he was busy wondering what had become of her stock of half-finished projects, Roger came flying at him.

  “ ‘Lo, guy. Miss me?” Michael bent down and scratched the creature behind his ears; he’d take what companionship he could, to ease the coming hours. He leaned closer, then shook his head. Odd ... even the dog smelled antiseptic.

  When he would have made for the upstairs shower, Roger rugged at his shoelace, trying to haul him in the direction of the kitchen.