Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  His voice slipped a bit on the first few words and then found itself and continued on, gaining in strength as the notes slid off his tongue.

  ‘I am a young sailor,

  My story is sad

  For once I was carefree

  And a bold sailor lad

  I courted a lassie

  By night and by day

  But now she has left me

  And gone far away.

  In the dark around him another voice joined, soft and tuneless, and then another low and rough, rising into the chill air like ghosts and memories unbound by the night.

  Oh if I was a blackbird,

  Could whistle and sing

  I’d follow the vessel

  My true love sails in

  And in the top rigging

  I would there build my nest

  And I’d flutter my wings

  O’er her lily-white breast.

  Casey closed his eyes and allowed the music to work its magic, to feel as he had not allowed himself to in the many weeks past, since he’d been torn from his wife and home. Music had always allowed him release, the notes, pure as a thrush’s warble, giving him permission to feel, a brief moment where he didn’t have to count the cost against tomorrow.

  The voices gathered around him in the dark, as good a promise as an oath. These men would stand by him, these men, for reasons he himself did not understand, had chosen him as their leader.

  He finished the song alone, the notes singular and lonely, absorbed into the skin and breath of each man there.

  Sleep came then for others, there was the rustle of men settling in, the faltering rumble of early sleep snores. Casey stayed awake for a long time after, watching the sky through the cracked porthole, feeling strangely at peace. In the music he’d felt the last lingering of his father’s presence that had clung like smoke since the dream. In an odd way he knew his Daddy had said goodbye. Not goodbye forever, but for now.

  He settled himself, drawing the blanket over his still tender shoulder and closed his eyes.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Midnight Secrets

  IT WAS THE MOANING OF THE WIND that woke her. A storm had been threatening all evening, black clouds boiling up over the hills and laying low across the city. It had finally broken near bedtime, though the wind had built considerably in fury since she’d fallen into her troubled sleep.

  Pamela came to with a start, as though someone had clapped their hands by her ear. She was tangled up in the linens, heart pounding, an old jersey of Casey’s rucked up above her waist.

  At first she thought she was in her own bed and reached out instinctively to touch Casey. But the pillow beside her was empty, as it had been for months now.

  She put her hand automatically to her stomach, a slight mound beneath the soothing of her cupped palm. It was tight now with the residual spasms of her dream. Christ, her whole body was thrumming, her skin taut and fevered, heart pounding and flesh still arching up toward a man who was not there. She blew out a breath of pure frustration, still feeling the smooth callused touch of his big hands, floating along the surface of her body like water over smooth stone.

  “Damn it!” She scrubbed her hands through her hair, pulling the sweaty strands away from her face, where it clung to her skin like seaweed, clammy and cold. The man, dream or no, might have had the good grace to finish things before she awoke to a bed empty of his presence.

  She tugged the jersey down and untangled her legs from the sheets, remembering where she was. Jamie’s house, with Lawrence only a door down the hall.

  It was her old room, still with the same bed and luxuriant linens. Her fingers traced the graceful scrawling ‘K’ that denoted the House of Kirkpatrick upon the pillowcases.

  Her stomach rippled again, this time with the movements of its occupant, though. She felt a wash of relief go through her. She was worried that the baby didn’t seem to be growing as it should at this stage of pregnancy, so every movement was a reassurance that the child was still thriving. Still, the size of her belly hadn’t increased markedly in the last month and a half, and it was scaring her.

  She sighed and swung her legs over the side of the bed. It was becoming all too familiar, this hour of the night. She glanced at the clock, though she hardly needed to do so. It was just after two o’clock, a time she seemed incapable of sleeping through.

  She stood. The room was warm enough to walk about bare-legged. The peat fire in the hearth had been built before she retired to bed, as it had been every night since she’d arrived here. Jamie, as always, saw to their every comfort and need.

  She put her hand to the window and shivered. It was icy to the touch. Outside the sleet lashed at the trees, bending them over so that it seemed they must snap. Away from the muffling comfort of the bed, the wind was louder, the wail in the chimney chill and mournful like the screech of a banshee. She shuddered—all that was missing was a great black coach rumbling up the drive, pulled by six headless horses.

  At least the spooky aura of the rain-lashed night had taken away the last remnants of her dream, the third such dream she’d had this week alone. Deprivation dreams—frustrating as hell, unfulfilling as all get out. And then she’d awaken guilty, wondering if Casey slept, was he warm, was he well? Did he too dream of her, in the crowded berth of the ship among men who also dreamed of absent girlfriends and wives? She half hoped he was as frustrated as she, that even dreams could not give him release, that he needed the tangible presence of her to find completion, as it seemed she did with him.

  Not all people shared her current state, though. Some people were not lonely, it seemed, in the least.

  Kirkpatrick’s Folly, basking in the chill mists of late November, should have been a bastion of peace and quiet. Rather it seemed to be the crossroads of all Ulster at present. And at the center of the swarm of travelers, all looking for instruction, direction and comfort, stood his Lordship of Ballywick and Tragheda, James Kirkpatrick. There were many people who sought his attention, and to all of them he gave a courteous listening ear, rendered what help he could, and then politely showed them the door.

  With children, however, he was pure magic. He understood how to talk to them, but more importantly how to listen, and he gave their concerns the same serious consideration he would give the MPs he sat with in the House. And to none did he accord more of his magic than small Nelson McGlory, for in this young boy Jamie had found the stalwart knight to his own role of king.

  Nelson, whose father had been killed when the brakes on his milk truck had failed on a steep incline, had found the father figure of his dreams in Jamie. Nelson was small, with a leaky nose, messy brown hair and glasses that distorted his large brown eyes to mad scientist proportions. He was an intensely smart little boy, with a fiercely loyal heart that he had given in its entirety to Jamie. And Jamie, being who he was, treated Nelson with all the gentle respect that a true knight deserved, but did not make promises his heart was no longer capable of keeping. Three sons lay under the cold earth of the Kirkpatrick land, and with them lay a part of Jamie’s very soul that he counted forever lost.

  Nelson, though very young in body, seemed possessed of a much older spirit and only took what Jamie could manage to give. He was a half-permanent fixture in the house and was often underfoot in the stables, pestering the grooms. Or he could be found in the kitchen, tucking into one of Maggie’s savory stews or the endless stream of baked goods that came from her oven at all hours of the day.

  Twice weekly he played chess with Jamie, who accorded him the respect of never letting him win unless he’d done it fairly. Pamela had come upon them during one of their games just two nights ago. She’d been wanting something to read, and had gone to the study to browse Jamie’s shelves. She had halted in the spilling light of the study doorway, transfixed by the scene before her.

  Jamie’s fair head was bent over the game, gleaming more brightly than the quartz-inlaid board. Nelson had said something and suddenly Jamie leaned back an
d laughed—loudly and with a complete abandonment that he rarely allowed himself. It lit the room, that sound, and pierced her heart through like a needle. She had fled back up the stairs without a book, unable to understand what had so bothered her about the scene in the study.

  And then an unpleasant thought had struck her—it was because she was no longer part of his inner circle. He was always kind to her, caring and solicitous of her every need and want, and yet it was the care one took for a guest. Not the easy relationship she had once enjoyed with him when she had last lived under his roof. Not that it had always been easy. He’d disapproved of her relationship with Casey from the start and they had both, at different points, declared their love to each other only to have it thrown back in their respective faces. No, not always comfortable, nor easy, but still something had changed and she knew that she stood slightly outside the charmed circle of golden light that Jamie allowed only a very chosen few to enter.

  With Lawrence, who was suspicious of anyone whose last name wasn’t Riordan, it was a different kettle of fish altogether. Jamie, knowing this, was careful with the small inroads he made, and slowly but surely Pamela saw small signs that Lawrence was thawing in his attitude. That the boy could not trust easily was something Jamie respected. He also understood that Casey stood ten feet tall in Lawrence’s eyes, and his current incarceration had served to make that estimation grow another foot or two. And so with Lawrence, Jamie trod very carefully. His method appeared to be working, for the frostbitten glares that Lawrence had once served to Jamie regularly were now warming to a grudging respect and liking.

  With small Nelson McGlory attached like a limpet to his person, Jamie managed to sort out the household, directing things smoothly, leaving the nuts and bolts to Maggie who, after all these years, deferred to no one in neither the kitchen nor in her protectiveness of the master. Jamie understood what served him well in such matters.

  Though Pamela had not forgotten his preternatural competence in dealing with twenty matters simultaneously, it was still a wonder to behold him in action. He was charged with an inner fire, had the energy of five men, and seemed to shed this light upon all in his wake. Somehow, though, that light, which had once warmed her, now left her only chilled and lonelier than ever.

  And then, of course, there was the matter of Belinda.

  There was, rather unfortunately, no denying that she was lovely. Possessed of flawless pink and white skin, dulcet blue eyes and hair of a burnished bronzey-gold, she also had ownership of charm, wit and a sense of humor, and she was entirely enamored of Jamie. It showed in the way she was always touching him, the way she watched him as he entered and exited from the room, and the low, throaty tone she most often used when speaking to him.

  Pregnant, pale and dealing with a teenager with more than his normal share of angst, anger and general attitude, Pamela was predestined to find Belinda incredibly maddening. Not that Belinda was in any way charmed by her own presence in Jamie’s house. In fact, it would be fair to say that the two of them had hated each other on first sight. Yes, Belinda was definitely a woman in love, and Pamela, having stood in her shoes, could hardly blame her. It was something else that bothered her. For Jamie had every appearance of being a man in love.

  It was what she had wanted for Jamie, that he find someone to love who loved him in turn. And yet the emotion she felt every time the two of them were in a room with her didn’t feel a great deal like happiness on Jamie’s behalf. It felt rather a lot, unfortunately, like jealousy.

  A flicker of movement in the grounds below caught her eye, snatching her from her ruminations. A man was moving through the shrubs near the house. She stepped back from the window, knowing the white stripes on the jersey would make her stand out against the darkness like a neon bumblebee.

  Before she could think about what she was doing, she was in the dark hall outside her room heading toward the stairs. She hesitated on the landing, hearing the house breathe around her. It was quiet on the upper floor, but she’d the sense that below someone was still awake. Not that that was unusual; Jamie was a night owl and often read or did paperwork in his study until the wee hours of the morning.

  She slipped down the stairs in the watery half-light that crept up from the bottom of the stairwell. There was a draft coming from the lower floor that chilled her instantly, peppering her legs with goosebumps. Though the house was old and large, normally it kept its heat well. The draft told her that someone had opened a door or a window, and the cold November air had rushed into the house.

  So not an intruder then, but a guest? But what sort of guest showed up in the pre-dawn hours? One that couldn’t risk being seen, or one with whom Jamie couldn’t risk being seen.

  The study door was oak, heavy and ancient, nothing short of a scream could be heard through it, except that it possessed a keyhole, that while narrow, was always kept carefully oiled and through some freak of acoustics, amplified the noise within the study.

  She held her breath, wondering why she didn’t just very sensibly go back up the stairs, get in her warm bed, and mind her own business. All the while positioning her ear toward the small stream of light that pooled through the arc of the keyhole.

  Jamie was speaking, the flowing cadences of his voice instantly recognizable, spiked with the occasional sardonic or sharp note. She frowned when the other man spoke. Despite the heavy thrump of her pulse in her ears, she could make his words out more clearly than Jamie’s. The voice was without a doubt British, upper class, and Oxford in its modulations, lacking only the rich buttery undertones of Jamie’s vowels. Those vowels were the only thing that betrayed the Irish origin of Jamie’s tongue.

  And then two words were spoken that would have frozen her to the spot, were her feet not welded like chunks of ice to the flagstones already. The two words were spoken by Jamie, and it was then she understood just how dangerous a game he was playing.

  “If you’ll forgive my saying so Lord Kirkpatrick, you’d be a fool to attempt it.”

  She strained forward, hearing only a low laugh and a murmur from Jamie, but was frustratingly unable to make out his exact words. A fool to attempt what, exactly? What was the bloody man up to now? And with whom? These cogitations were rudely interrupted by the feel of tiny, freezing cold paws running across one of her feet. She jumped back, clapping a hand to her mouth to stem the shriek that rose instinctively.

  She looked down and saw a small gray mouse up on his hind legs, looking inquisitively at her. She glared at him, silently cursing his timing. The mouse, however, merely blinked bright black eyes at her, and being obviously in possession of a wisdom far superior to her own, scurried off to his warm dark hole somewhere in the wainscoting.

  After an exclamation from inside the study, a deadly silence filled the narrow keyhole along with the flickering firelight. She stepped back, not even daring to breathe. Jamie would be furious if he found her lurking out here in the hall.

  “Nothing I’m sure,” she heard Jamie’s tone, soothing and reassuring the man in his study, “I’ve been having a wee problem with mice snooping about for crumbs—rather large mice.”

  She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the door, knowing that the last remark had been for her benefit and that Jamie was fully aware of her presence on the freezing flagstones.

  She waited a moment for the conversation to resume inside the study, then she slowly crept back to the stairs, her legs numb with cold, feet aching from the bare stones.

  She climbed partway up and sat in the curve of the stairs, where shadows clustered thick and deep enough to hide in.

  The Trustees—those were the two words Jamie had spoken that had sent a shock through her system. Words that were enough to chill the very blood to ice in her veins. She had, of course, heard the rumors—a group of affluent and highly placed men, all Protestant, lawyers, bankers, accountants, clergy, and CEOs that funded and directed a Loyalist assassination squad in a campaign of terror and murder. Though it would now seem that
it was more than a simple rumor. She was suddenly terrified for Jamie. He was walking on a knife-edge precipice where one mis-step would result in certain death.

  She tucked her arms tight around her body, as if she could quell the fear that welled up dark and cold from her depths by the mere act of doing so.

  Her head was spinning with too many questions that didn’t seem to have any easy answers—the mysterious notes with their dark-inked rings, the Trustees and all the other innumerable splinter groups that had split off from the main bodies of idealism, and its flip side—hatred. There were too many to keep track of, some half rumored, some acknowledged, some existing only in the hissed whispers and dark corners of seedy pubs and cold meetings in the empty countryside.

  She shivered, thinking of the meeting she had agreed to two days hence, in a very lonely corner of the countryside. She hadn’t told Pat that it was on, as the low voice on the telephone had told her to come alone or there would be no meeting at all. Pat would be furious when he found out, but she would deal with that later.

  A hand gripped her knee hard. Her hand flew to her chest, heart going like a trip hammer. “Christ! You scared the bejesus out of me!”

  Jamie, standing three stairs below her, lifted a sardonic eyebrow.

  “You didn’t do a great deal for me either. What the hell are you doing sleeping on the stairs?” His eyes raked over her, and she flushed hotly, aware suddenly, that in her curiosity, she’d not paused to pull extra clothing on, and that the jersey rather inadequately covered her thighs, which were glowing milkily in the dim light of the stairwell.

  She pulled the jersey down as much as possible, unable to meet Jamie’s eyes. His sharp tone had not only startled her, but had rather hurt her feelings as well. Jamie rarely got annoyed with her, and so when he did, it always came as an unpleasant surprise, like being flicked with a leather strap when you weren’t expecting it. She looked up, meeting the chill green of his eyes, and realized suddenly that not only was he angry, he was also afraid.