Ruella thrust her cut into the pocket of her overalls and reached for Liam’s arm, which she threaded through hers.
“That’s what I’ve come to tell Clara, innit? Walk with me.”
They set off like two drinking buddies, arm in arm, toward Clara’s house.
“You’ve discovered something at the jail?”
“Friend of mine did, lad by the name of Fagan—new to the force. Wants to get into me knickers.”
Liam drew away and shot her an incredulous look.
“Don’t knock it,” she scolded. “It’s a fierce ride, one you might like to try yourself. But no; it’s only Clara for you, innit?”
“Only Clara,” Liam confirmed.
“I might give young Fagan a try,” Ruella reflected. “Would have already, if he weren’t Irish.”
Liam stiffened.
“Now, don’t go getting your arse up in the air. I have to be true to meself, see. But he does have a pretty pair of eyes. And he’d do anything for me. Loves me scones.”
It began to rain, cold drops laced with sleet. Liam hunched his neck down into his collar.
“What did you find out?”
“That’s for Clara’s ears.”
Liam squeezed Ruella’s arm against his side. “But it affects me. It’s a piece of my life you might give back.”
Ruella said nothing.
“I want what’s best for her.” Liam drew a breath. “I love her.”
“Think I don’t know that? Think I’m simple or somefink?”
“I’m just not sure you believe it.”
“Hard thing to believe. You’re a man without a past; you could be anything. And I’ve a responsibility in this, as I’m the one dragged you to her door and all your complications with you.”
“Then help me make it right.”
“How?”
Liam shook his head. “Help me find a way. I’d feel better with you on my side and not against me.”
“I’m not against you, despite everything.” She began to recite, “You were arrested on October the eighteenth for battery on a man in the White Owl tavern. Hauled in and charged with drunk and disorderly—not assault, quite interestingly.”
“Why’s that interesting?”
Ruella stole a look at him. “Man you fought was also Irish, and you failed to kill him. They should have let you dry out and serve five days—that’s the usual sentence for D and D. As it was, you never appeared before a justice for sentencing and, on the evening of November second, you were dragged into the jail yard and hanged.”
A wave of black sickness washed over Liam; he fought it down.
Ruella went on, “Now, the motive’s interesting. Damn me if I can think of a strong enough one.”
“Maynard’s addicted to the good life at places like the Sterling House—I saw him there.”
“That’s as may be. But he wouldn’t receive enough for your keep to make it worth his while. There must be more to it. Anyway, Fagan’s interested now. I kept as much of the story from him as possible, but he’s a bright lad, and he’s curious about the reason I’m chasing down an Irishman. A lot of Irish in the Buffalo police force—could have some possible allies there.”
“You think they’d all rise up against Maynard? It would be worth their jobs.”
“So it would, and decent, respectable jobs aren’t easy to come by. There’s a mystery here, right enough. But I did find out one thing.”
“What’s that?”
Ruella paused and dragged Liam to a halt. She peered at him through the rain and darkness.
“They wrote down your name on October eighteenth, when they dragged you in drunk. And that I can give to you now—Mr. William T. McMahon.”
Chapter Thirty
“Liam, we need to talk.” Clara dropped the words into the silence that filled the parlor even as Liam sat brooding into his glass of brandy. Ruella had gone, as had Collwys, who had been with Clara when Liam arrived. The children had been put to bed, and now Liam and Clara were alone with the knowledge Ruella had shared with Clara, over again.
Liam, sporting a whole new crop of bruises and abrasions from the fight on the way home, ached from head to toe and felt desperate to touch Clara—take her in his arms, draw her fast against his heart, and ease the great gulf of need that filled him. But Clara, tense as a fiddle string, paced the room. She’d perched nowhere since he reached home; her face looked pale and drawn.
Without waiting for him to reply, she went on, “What do you think it means?”
“Which bit?” Liam raised his eyes to follow her quick, fierce movements. The situation, prickly as a damned thistle, had too many points to grasp.
She paused long enough to return his look, her eyes burning. “Your name. The fact that you remembered your name. Are things beginning to come back to you?”
“I don’t think so.” She, after all, had come up with “William.” The rest had just floated into his mind when she tried to label him a Fitzgerald. “I’ve recalled little else.”
She resumed pacing. “That doesn’t mean you won’t.” She drew a difficult breath. “Cassie—Cassie has stopped coming round so often. She’s recalled some things—not her accident, but details of her life before it.”
“That’s good, surely?”
“It’s not the way it’s supposed to work.” Clara’s face twisted. “She’s stopped needing me.”
Liam did not know what to say. This, of all the tangle, worried Clara? Remembering?
Carefully, he asked, “How can you be sure how it’s supposed to work? How many people did you say you’ve raised?”
“Two, you and Cassie.”
“Me and Cassie.”
“And now she’s beginning to remember. Pulling away from me. Mollie never seemed to remember.”
“Mollie was a dog. Could you ask her what she remembered?”
“No, but I saw her learn to love me all over again. She didn’t pull away from me.”
“She wouldn’t, would she? For you put her back where she belonged. Clara, what is it bothers you so?” He could feel her emotion scuttling along his own nerves and skin. Fear. “Of what are you afraid?”
She stopped pacing abruptly and turned her eyes on him. “You will pull away from me too. I’m going to lose you.”
“Is that it?” Hastily, Liam set his glass aside and got to his feet. He gathered Clara in with careful hands and drew her close against him. “Ah, lass.” He crooned the words as he might to a child, but there was nothing childlike in the effect she had on him. He wanted to bury himself in her, reach so far inside she’d never let him go. He wanted to pull her inside him also, engulf her in a place of safety where no harm—no fear—could ever touch her.
His pulse began to thud faster, and he pressed his lips against her temple. “No need to worry about losing me. I’m yours—yours forever, for better or worse. Isn’t that the vow we made when we wed?”
She tipped her face up to look at him, great gray-green eyes swimming with tears. “But you made that vow first to someone else, Liam. And no matter how I want you in my life—in my bed—you belong to her.”
Liam caught her face, framing it with his hands. “Listen to me, Clara: what I feel for you goes beyond the laws of man or even those vows we spoke to each other. It goes beyond all reason. I might be married to ten other women. By God, I want you.”
“Those feelings may pass, they may be a by-product of the raising. Once you remember your past, it may fade, just as it did for Cassie.”
“Clara, no.”
“Once you remember her.” Pain flooded Clara’s eyes. “And your child. I’ve seen her, Liam.”
“Who?”
“Your wife.”
Liam reeled. “What?”
“Theodore and I went today and saw her. She’s in the women’s hospital on Porter Avenue. It’s an asylum for women.”
“She—”
“Mad, mad with grief, I think, over the loss of your son.”
Wildl
y, Liam shook his head. “I don’t remember her, or the child.” But there’d been that dream of fire, grief, and darkness. Nancy.
As if to confirm his thought, Clara said, “Nancy. Her name’s Nancy McMahon. Theodore’s investigators found her. That means my grandfather’s will, too, if they haven’t already.”
“Your—your plan…” he stammered.
“My plan is in pieces. It never was very good to begin with, was it? I should have known that. There were far too many factors I couldn’t control. Like you. Maybe you were right about me, Liam.”
“Right, how?”
“When you accused me of being like my grandfather.”
“No.”
“It was abysmally arrogant of me to think I could pluck you from the nothingness of death and use you to my own ends.”
“I was wrong. You’re nothing like that old bugger.”
“And now just look where we are! You, pursued quite literally by your past. Me, pursued by the results of my ill-advised actions, and with poor Nancy to consider.”
She looked him full in the eyes, her tears flown. Another bright emotion replaced them: determination. “I want to rescue her, Liam.”
“Eh?”
“Nancy. I want to take her out of that awful excuse for a hospital and bring her here.”
“What!” His wife wanted to bring his other wife to live with them? “Now, lass, think on this a moment.”
“Do you suppose I’ve thought of anything else since I laid eyes on her? You didn’t see what it’s like, Liam. I wouldn’t leave a stray cat there. I wouldn’t even leave my grandfather there.”
“I see you’re all fired up, and it’s a kindhearted impulse, but—”
“I’ve already talked to Theodore about it. Once someone’s committed to one of those wards, it’s very difficult to get her out again. The doctors will never release her to me.”
“So, then,” Liam huffed, half agonized and half relieved.
“That’s why you, as her husband, have to get her released.”
“You’re mad! I can’t go walking in there. I’m supposed to be dead.”
“But you are quite manifestly not dead, are you? And as you’ve said, my plan is already in pieces. I’ll not put my welfare or happiness ahead of someone who needs my help.”
“No?” Liam wanted desperately to step away from her, but couldn’t let go of her even now. “And what about the welfare of all those already under your roof—those on whose behalf you were after acting in the first place?”
Her chin raised a notch. “I’ve already failed them.”
“You want to bring a madwoman in here, as well? I suppose she truly is mad? With grief, you say.”
“I fear so.” Clara barely breathed the words.
“If I’m married to her”—this woman he couldn’t even recall—“and if we were married in Ireland, it will be vows we took before a priest. There’s no divorce in the Catholic Church. What does that do to you and me?”
“I refuse to put myself first.”
“I’ve no need to put you first, Clara—you’re already there. You’re first and last with me, don’t you see that? Vital as breath! Are you asking me to put you aside for her? For that I can never do.”
“I am asking you to do what’s right.”
“And what’s right about living beneath a roof with two wives? What of the fact that once your grandfather acts on what he’s learned we’ll be put out in the street—children, madwoman, and all?”
“I know I’ve made disastrous choices, but I can change none of that now.”
The impact of her words went through Liam like a knife. “That’s what you feel, is it? That ’twas disastrous to raise me? To kiss me, to lie with me?”
“I never said that.”
Liam’s emotions rose in a crashing wave. “You’d rather I’d gone in the river and you’d never known me.”
“Not that, no. But I must take responsibility for what I’ve done. We don’t know what kind of past you’ve lived, nor where your scruples lie.”
“Oh, so now I’m beyond redemption, am I? Just some six odd feet of Irish you raised, with no morals and no expectation of them.” Truly angry now, he lowered his voice. “Well, you didn’t mind that when you had me between your legs!”
“I know, and you’ve every right to be angry with me. But I can honestly say taking you into my bed was the only time throughout this tangle I acted on my own behalf.”
And even now Liam wanted her—even angry, more so because he was angry. The pure craving for her rode his blood like that for drink. He wanted his tongue in her mouth, tasting her sweetness. He wanted her heat.
“Come with me to the hospital and see Nancy,” Clara beseeched. “If you can see her and leave her there, you’re not the man I believe you to be.”
“You don’t know who I am. You’ve just said that.”
“Perhaps not.” Her eyes held him, inescapable. “But I’ve felt you in my soul. Despite all the evidence, I believe in you, Liam McMahon.”
And, agonized, Liam bargained, “I’ll go with you to see her tomorrow, lass, but you’ll have to go upstairs with me tonight.” He lowered his voice and whispered in her ear, making her shiver, “I can’t go on living without a taste of you, and I’m your responsibility, after all.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Clara lay staring up at the ceiling of her father’s room, a broad expanse of shadowed gray, and marveled at herself. She could still feel the imprint of Liam’s fingers all over her body, a wild tingle; the taste of him lingered in her mouth. Touching him solved nothing, and only made her want him more.
She’d never considered herself a stupid woman. Above-average intelligence, she would have said, without arrogance. But she’d been a fool in all this. Dead foolish, as Ruella would say. And the plan of which she’d initially conceived now lay around her in ruins.
She couldn’t even walk away. As Liam said, she had responsibilities to him, to the children, and to Nancy now that Clara knew about her.
But she didn’t think she could give Liam up. What had just passed between them proved that. She could try, but she’d suffer for it—they both would—and whatever this force that connected them, it would draw them together again.
So what to do? Abandon Nancy who, at best, could only be considered an inconvenient complication? No. Forsake the children who relied upon her? See them go back into service, where they would live perilous and miserable lives? No. The desire to protect them had got her into all this.
Was there any way to keep her grandfather from tossing them all out? He sometimes moved slowly, but always inexorably. She could go to the old man and beg; he’d enjoy that and might well string her along for a time, to savor her humiliation. But would that have an ultimate, beneficial outcome?
She’d go and efface herself in an instant, if she thought it meant she could keep Liam. Upon that thought, her fingers stole toward him, encountered his, and clung tight. He returned the pressure. So he did not sleep, then, any more than she.
“Liam, what are we to do?”
“I am going to meet Nancy McMahon, since I promised. And whatever you think of me, I’m a man of me word.”
“I don’t know what to think of you.” She rolled on her side and looked at him. He lay like an effigy on a medieval coffin—a handsome effigy—his profile a dark outline in the dim room. Her heart twisted in her breast; she knew she might look at him forever, the proud prow of his nose, the pleasing sweep of his jaw, the black hair mussed from her touch, and not have enough. “My mind tells me you’re a rascal. My heart…”
“Have I your heart, Clara?” He rolled toward her also, and his fingers threaded through hers with magical ease. “Do I possess you, or do you just possess me, a man you created on that table in your workroom where I awoke? Admit it—’twas what you wanted, an obedient creation.”
“I admit it.”
“Do I affect you one part the way you affect me? Only look.” His fingers drew h
ers lower down to press against a pertinent part of his body. “I already want you again.”
Clara freed her hand from his grasp, but only to caress him, helpless to prevent herself. She wrapped her fingers around the hot, great length of him, all velvet and steel.
“You affect me,” she whispered. “Need you even ask?”
“Do I own you?” He leaned into her, and his breath caressed her lips an instant before his mouth found them. Lightning flared in the darkness as heat speared all the way to Clara’s toes. “I want to own you, as you own me.”
“Liam,” she began, and got no further. His tongue filled her mouth; it wooed and danced and tasted so sharply of his essence all else fled her mind. For an instant she knew only existence, the two of them together, utterly complete.
This feeling she craved, this wild, hot, and sweet wholeness that came only when they joined. With a shuddering sigh, she guided him to the opening between her thighs. Pleasure spiked when he slid in, a knife going into its hilt, smooth and tight. She reached up to bury her fingers in the long silk of his hair then, and hung on for the wild, familiar ride.
When it was done she wept hot, inelegant tears for the beauty of this thing they shared, the impossibility of it, and the desperation. He cradled her against him in silence and let her cry as a child might, one with a broken heart.
After a long time, the light outside the windows began to gray. The new day approached, invading even this, Clara’s one refuge.
“Now, now,” Liam whispered then, his brogue a soft, beautiful melody. “How can you cry when I love you so?”
Love. But it was so much more than that.
She splayed her fingers across his cheek, caressed the roughness of beard there, the soft strength of his lips, and the indent of a dimple beside them. Dead handsome, he was, but she couldn’t say that was the only reason she loved him.
She certainly hadn’t sought for love when she began all this. Neither had she sought this searing, scorching pleasure.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she admitted, giving him the truth.
“You won’t, lass.” He turned his face and pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand. “I go to meet this Nancy McMahon because you ask it. But she means nothing to me.”
Dead Handsome Page 18