A Woman's Heart

by JoAnn Ross

  “I’ve got it!” Rory said. “See?”

  “Got what?”

  “The leprosy.” Rory pointed the torch up at his face, giving him the threatening look of a devil. Or perhaps an evil sorcerer.

  “People in Ireland don’t get the leprosy.”

  “Perhaps that’s because we’re not told about them,” Rory suggested. “Perhaps they’re sent away to leper colonies before anyone can learn about it.” He picked at the loose skin. “See?”

  “That’s sunburn, you daft eejit. Your face saw too much of the sun today, that’s all.”

  “But it always begins with the nose.” Rory wiggled his own nose, which felt less rigidly attached to his face than usual. “First the peeling. Then before you know it your nose falls off. And your fingertips, as well.” He held up his hand palm inward in front of him, looking for signs of decay.

  “It’s sunburn,” Jamie repeated. “Now will ya turn off that bloody light and shut up so I can be getting to sleep?”

  Within minutes the soft snores coming from the other sleeping bag told Rory that Jamie was sleeping soundly. But Rory lay awake long into the night, moving his hand to his nose every few minutes, checking. Worrying.

  He kept picturing the chapel window, and the statue of the Virgin Mary who stood guard over the playground at school. The statue that showed her bare toes peeking out from beneath her blue robe and her horribly chipped nose. Although Rory knew the damage had been done when Tommy Doyle had accidentally hit the statue with the ball during an energetic hurling match, for the last week, every time he’d looked at that statue, all Rory could think about was that was what leprosy looked like.

  He lifted his hand to his nose—just to check—and screamed when it came off in his hand. A hand that was dripping off him like wet seaweed. He shook it, shocked as he watched two fingers go flying. The sound of laughter behind him had him whirling around, and he was suddenly face-to-face with hundreds of rag-clad people, men, women, children—it was impossible to tell which, since all their features were oozing down their faces like custard that had yet to set.

  They were laughing and pointing their leprosy-torn fingers, and when he tried to run away, they took off after him, their rags and their putrid flesh flapping.

  He didn’t wake up until he was out of the tent, standing in the darkness beneath the razor-edged shining slice of a moon, his chest heaving, the pajamas his mother had insisted he wear soaked with sweat.

  He moved as quietly as he could to the tent nearest his, slid open the zippered front and slipped inside. “Mr. Gallagher?”

  Quinn had always been a light sleeper. Probably, he’d once thought, because for the first seven years of his life he’d never experienced a night when his parents’ fights hadn’t kept him awake. He’d also learned to wake up fast in order to have half a chance to escape his father’s brutal fists. That was why the faint whisper instantly jerked him from the erotic dream in which he’d been making love to Nora.

  “Rory?” He blinked, focusing on the small form huddled beside his sleeping bag.

  “I had a dream that lepers were chasing me.”

  “Leopards?” Quinn wondered if Rory knew how fortunate he was that his nightmares were born of fiction. “Don’t worry, kid, there aren’t any leopards in Ireland.” Understanding night fears all too well, he unzipped the bag, folding it back. “But it’s damn cold out tonight. Why don’t you climb in with me for a while?”

  Rory didn’t need a second invitation. “Not leopards,” he said, his voice a bit steadier. “Lepers.”

  A bit of fright from the nightmare lingered, like fog not yet burned off. But as he cuddled closer, Rory felt comforted. It was good to have Quinn in his life. Almost like having a da.

  That thought was the last to slip through his mind before he drifted off to sleep.

  Lepers. Jesus Christ, what had put that thought in the kid’s mind? Looking down at this small imaginative boy Nora had carried in her womb, Quinn realized it felt good to have Rory here with him. It was almost, he thought, like having a son.

  That idea gave birth to another stir of something that felt frighteningly like love. And as Rory slept the sleep of innocents, it was Quinn who now found sleep an impossible target.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Mills Are Grinding

  As Nora had feared and Quinn had expected, their budding love affair quickly became grist for Castlelough’s eager gossip mills.

  Except for those times he’d spent with Brady at The Rose, when his enjoyment of the old man’s company and tall tales allowed him to lower the barricades a bit, Quinn’s aloof aura had kept most of the other Castlelough residents at a distance. Being linked with Nora, who was obviously much beloved in the village, had changed all that.

  Farmers driving their milk and cream to the dairy waved greetings to him as he drove from the farm to the lake each morning, as did the housewives hanging their sheets out to dry in the fragrant spring air. The Irish members of the crew all seemed more friendlier than usual. One of them, a caterer brought in from Kinsale in County Cork to provide lunches for the cast and crew, had even admitted to having a roaring crush on Nora in high school.

  “But her heart belonged to Devlin Monohan back in those days.” There’d been an air of lingering regret in the handsome young man’s voice. “It’s a lucky man you are, Quinn Gallagher,” he said, telling Quinn nothing he hadn’t already figured out for himself.

  As soon as class got out in the afternoon, Rory and Jamie would arrive on location, each day bringing more and more of their schoolmates with them until the wardrobe mistress had laughingly dubbed Quinn the Pied Piper of Castlelough. There’d been a time when no one, with the possible exception of Laura, would have so openly teased him. But then again, Quinn was forced to admit as he laughed along with the others, that was before the trip to Ireland. Before Nora.

  He was sitting on a moss-covered rock—eschewing the canvas chair with his name stenciled on it that he’d always found pretentious—revising some dialogue for the afternoon’s shooting, when a tall reed-slender man in a black cassock came walking toward him. He recognized the parish priest, Father O’Malley.

  Quinn’s only experience with Catholicism was when he’d turned fourteen and been placed in a Catholic home for nine months. The man and woman had been nice enough, he supposed, albeit harried from trying to control eight children—three of them adopted and the others fosters like him—under the age of sixteen. All the children of school age had received a parochial education with nuns and priests who’d possessed a flair for discipline and a taste for corporal punishment.

  “Good day to you,” the priest greeted Quinn easily.

  “Afternoon, Father,” Quinn responded.

  Appearing oblivious to the coolness in Quinn’s tone, the priest sat down on a nearby rock. “I’ve been meaning to get out here to see what all the excitement’s about,” Father O’Malley said, looking around at the commotion with interest. “But the May day celebrations have been taking up a great deal of my time.”

  “I imagine it’s a tricky balance, juggling the Church’s celebration of the Madonna with a day lifted from Celtic mythology.”

  “Ireland has always required a balance of beliefs.” The priest ignored Quinn’s sarcasm. “Didn’t Saint Patrick understand that all too well? You, yourself, in coming down to this lake today, had to pass by a burial site thousands of years old, and right in our view are the stones of a castle dating back to Norman times. It’s impossible to walk anywhere in this beautiful tragic country without stumbling over tangible reminders of our overlapping layers of human history and belief. A wise man keeps that in mind.”

  Although the priest’s tone had remained mild, Quinn felt sufficiently chastised. “Touché,” he murmured, looking at the brooding dark castle ruins. “That’s a very pragmatic view. Do you also believe in the Lady?”

  The priest’s eyes drifted past the crowds of villagers, beyond the crew, to the glassy blue water. “I believe
in the Immaculate Conception, the virgin birth, the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit and myriad other mystical unseen things. I also believe in dinosaurs, the Ice Age, the Milky Way and life on faroff planets. That being the case, I wouldn’t be one to say that the Lady couldn’t exist.”

  It was as typical a roundabout Irish answer as Quinn had heard since his arrival. He laughed and felt himself relaxing. Something he seemed to be doing more and more often.

  “As much as I’ve been curious about the filming, it’s you I really came here to see,” the priest divulged.

  “Oh?” Quinn braced himself for a lecture about his lust having put Nora’s immortal soul at risk.

  “I’ve been wanting to thank you for taking Rory Fitzpatrick on the father-and-son trek. It was a kind and generous thing to do.”

  Quinn shrugged, uncomfortable as ever with a compliment that was at such odds with how he’d always seen himself. “I had a good time. It wasn’t any big deal.”

  “Ah, but it was to Rory. And to Jamie O’Sullivan, who has himself his own cross to bear, I fear.”

  Quinn was even more uncomfortable discussing people whose lives had nothing to do with his own. At least that was what he kept telling himself. With lessening degrees of success.

  “Kate O’Sullivan should leave her husband,” Quinn said. “While she still can.”

  The priest sighed. His eyes were touched with sadness. And the same frustration Quinn was feeling himself. “I pray every night that God will give her the strength to do what she must to keep herself and her family safe.”

  His gaze drifted over the lake again. “I see you’ve gotten John and Mary work on the film.”

  “Just as extras, after school.” Since she’d scraped the heavy makeup off her face, Nora’s sister had, as he’d suspected, turned out to be a beauty. And although thus far Mary had only appeared in group scenes, the camera loved her in a way that had made her pale poet’s face jump out of the crowd.

  Watching the dailies last night, an uncharacteristically excited and optimistic Jeremy had immediately decided to give her more scenes this afternoon, making Quinn wonder if the attention would cause the teenager to give up her plans to become a teacher and pursue acting, instead, and if so, if Nora would blame him. He also decided to have another little warning chat with Parker Kendall about keeping his hands off the middle Joyce daughter.

  “They seem to be enjoying themselves immensely,” the priest said. “And of course the attention has to be beneficial to dear Mary. Especially after what Jack Doyle’s been putting her through this past month.” It seemed there was little in Castlelough that escaped Father O’Malley’s sharp eye.

  Quinn was wondering if the priest had finally worked his way around to the subject of Nora when he suddenly stood and brushed off his black cassock. “Well, I have a meeting with the ladies’ guild about the maypole, of all things. There seems to be some dissension among the ranks concerning the colors of the ribbons and the flowers for the May crown. I’ve been called in to cast the tiebreaking vote.”

  “I don’t envy you that, Father.”

  “I have my own trepidations, as well. Any prayers for my surviving the meeting unscathed would be welcome.” His blue eyes twinkled as he held out his hand. “I’ve enjoyed our chat, Mr. Gallagher. Perhaps we’ll be seeing you at mass with the family one of these fine mornings before you leave Castlelough.”

  “I’ve enjoyed talking with you, too, Father,” Quinn said. He did not add that if the priest was waiting for him to show up inside a church, he’d definitely learn the meaning of eternity.

  “Well, well,” Quinn heard the familiar female voice behind him drawl after O’Malley left. “Surely that couldn’t have been Quinn Gallagher I saw passing the time of day with a man of the cloth.”

  “He was curious.” Quinn refused to rise to his former lover’s teasing challenge. “About the filming.”

  “Well, he’s certainly not alone there.” Laura’s eyes skimmed the surrounding hillsides. “The crowd gets bigger every day. It’s a wonder anything is getting done in the village.”

  “It’s not every day the circus comes to town.” One of his few pleasant childhood memories was when Clyde Beatty had brought his growling lions and roaring tigers to Dunsmuir, California. Quinn had gotten up before daybreak to go down to the railroad yards to watch the circus crew unload the animals from the boxcars. Later that day he’d managed to sneak into the tent to see the dazzling show.

  “Especially this village. Why, there are times I feel as if I’m in the cast of Brigadoon. I doubt if it’s changed all that much in two hundred years.”

  “Change isn’t always for the best.”

  She patted his cheek. “Watch out, darling. If you’re not careful, pretty soon you’ll find yourself trading in your computer for a milking machine.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Not as ridiculous as the crew taking bets on whether or not you’ll be on the plane with us back to the States.”

  “I’ll give you a tip,” he all but growled, irritated yet again that his private life was providing so much fodder for public consumption. “Put your money on me sticking to the original itinerary. The day after this film wraps, I’m out of here. On my way home.”

  Even as he said the words, Quinn found himself wondering why the idea of leaving Castlelough—and Nora—held scant appeal.

  Part of the reason was, of course, that he didn’t have a home. Just a house. And a leased house at that. There wasn’t a single person or thing, not even a cat or parakeet, waiting for him to return from Ireland.

  But since arriving at the Joyce farm, for the first time in his life he had something that had begun to feel a lot like family. Something that, whenever he thought about it, scared him to death. Because he wasn’t the family type. How could he be, coming from what he did? he asked himself silently as Laura sashayed back down to the lake to shoot a pivotal scene with Kendall.

  Later that evening he and Nora were finally alone again, parked beside the little nameless lake in what Quinn had come to think of as their own private place. Even though he told himself that he was getting too damn old to be making love in the back seat of a car like some horny teenager, he understood her reluctance to make love to him under the same roof as her family. It would be different if they were married. But since that was out of the question, this was the only solution.

  “Lord, I’d love to spend the night with you again.” He was holding her on his lap, nuzzling her neck. In the pale silvery moonlight, her skin appeared as white as swan feathers.

  “I know.” She turned her head and kissed him on the mouth. “And I’d like that, as well, but—”

  “It’s okay.” It wasn’t her fault that the fever he’d felt for her from the beginning hadn’t burned off. That the more of her he had, the more he wanted. “I didn’t want to make you feel guilty.”

  She laughed at that. A light musical sound he knew he’d still be able to hear in his head when he was a hundred. “Ah, but isn’t that what we Catholics do best?” she asked, punctuating her self-deprecating words with quick sweet kisses. “Feel guilty?”

  “Speaking of Catholics, I had a little chat today with Father O’Malley,” Quinn said with more casualness than he felt.

  “Oh?” She tilted her head back and looked up at him. “Was it about us?”

  “No.” He ran a soothing hand down her back. “I think he just dropped by to see the filming.” He did not mention the priest’s comment about Rory. And not wanting to spoil a lovely spring night, he didn’t bring up Kate’s problem, either. “But it got me thinking…” He combed his hands through her hair, pulling it back from her face. “Does what we do bother you? Do you feel guilty about being with me this way?”

  “Of course not,” she said promptly.

  “Yet you refuse to let me make love to you in your bed. Where we could wake up in each other’s arms.”

  Nora took heart from the fact that he’d used the L-word. Perhaps not in
the context she wished for. But at least he was no longer referring to what they did as just sex.

  “I’m not ashamed of what I feel for you, Quinn. Nor of how I share my love for you.” Having already admitted to loving him, Nora refused to back away from the word, even if it was obvious it still made him uncomfortable. “But John and Mary are at a dangerous age. I don’t want to set the wrong example.”

  She’d turned so damn earnest he wanted to kiss her again. And that was just for starters. “You know they don’t believe that we’re running into the village every night for ice cream,” he said.

  “I know. But what they suspect and what they know are two different things. And although I admit that makes me a bit of a hypocrite, I can remember being that age well enough to know that I wouldn’t have understood the difference for what I was feeling for Devlin back then to what you and I have now.”

  It was the second time today he’d had Devlin Monohan tossed up at him. And it was two times too many. Disliking the way just hearing the man’s name could make him jealous, Quinn decided it was time to change the subject.

  “Did Kate tell you about our plans for tomorrow?”

  “No. She’s been so busy getting ready for the horse sale at Clifden, we haven’t had time for a proper sit-down talk.”

  “I thought I’d tag along with Brady.”

  “To Clifden? Why?”

  “I’d like to see Connemara. And both Kate and your father assure me that I haven’t truly experienced Ireland without attending a horse fair. And, more importantly, I thought it might be a fun way to spend the day with you.”

  He felt her reaction before she’d said a word. Her body, warm and soft, turned to ice and stiffened. “I’m sorry, Quinn.” Her strangely tight tone said otherwise. “But I won’t be going to Clifden with you.”