Spellbound

by Jeanette Baker

  He’d opened the door thinking it was his housekeeper reminding him of a forgotten appointment. He remembered the tiny surge in his brain, signaling alarm when he saw who it was. Patrick Tierney rarely left the island.

  “Welcome, Pat. What brings you here?”

  “I’ve bad news, lad.”

  He waited.

  Patrick nodded toward a chair. “I’ll sit if I may.”

  Sean knew the man was functioning on nerves alone.

  Without a word, he motioned Patrick to the only extra chair and sat down across from him. “It’s Kerry, isn’t it? There’s something wrong with the baby.”

  Patrick shook his head. “The baby survived.”

  Dawning awareness crept through Sean by degrees. First he heard the words, then his mind understood them. The room swayed. He leaned his head back until he felt the wall. “What happened?”

  “Blood clot in the brain. The birth brought it on.”

  The lines around Sean’s eyes deepened. “Was she at home?”

  Patrick nodded. “Mabry did all she could. She managed to save the baby after Kerry stopped breathing.”

  Sean dropped his head into his hands. “Holy God, Patrick. What happens now? What about the children? Danny can’t—” He stopped. Even at the high point of his grief he remembered that Danny was Patrick’s son.

  Patrick reached out and gripped Sean’s shoulder. “We’ll tell the girls together, and then we’ll sort out what to do.”

  Why did it haunt him so, over and over, the same dream never changing, never reaching its conclusion? Kerry had been laid to rest. He’d taken in the children. Why did he never dream of that?

  He turned the alarm to see its illuminated face and groaned. Luke would be up soon. Damn Susan O’Meara. The last thing he needed was a housekeeper for a vacant house. If she wouldn’t come to the island and help care for the children, he would find a replacement. Sean hadn’t the knack for making a home. Unbidden, the image of Mollie’s cozy cottage came to mind. It was a woman thing, the making of a home. Perhaps it was time to look around for a wife, a woman who required little attention, who would take on three children and make no demands. The very thought brought a smile to his lips. Such a paragon didn’t exist, and, if she did, no one would want her.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sean stared down at the freshly hewn headstone, the dark soil indicating a new grave and the two small bouquets laced lovingly at its base. For a thousand years O’Malleys had been buried here, first in family crypts and then individually, in single plots with markers gone black and thin with age. Danny was buried on the other side of the church with the Tierneys. Blood, according to the traditions of the islanders, had always been thicker than water or marriage. A man could have many wives but only one mother, one father.

  Sean closed his eyes, shutting out the sight of Kerry’s name etched on the pale gray stone, “Kerry Tierney, beloved wife and mother.” And sister. The words leaped to his brain. Kerry had loved and been loved deeply. Who could ask more of life than that?

  Opening his eyes again, he looked out at the ocean lapping at all sides of the island, swallowing the land bit by bit. Geologists said the island would disappear in three thousand years, gone the way it had come, a volcanic accident supporting an ecosystem. This was where Kerry had wanted to raise her children, an unfulfilled dream left to him, or perhaps not.

  Perhaps they would go to Danny’s mother. What had they thought, Danny and Kerry, to leave their children to strangers? What could have possessed them?

  Mollie stopped abruptly in the middle of the path, telling herself it was to give him a moment to collect himself. But it was more than that. She wanted to look at him when his emotions were honest and undisguised.

  It was too late to turn back. He would see her and know she’d retreated, and he would think the worst. She knew enough about him to know that. Minutes passed. Gulls screeched above her. Waves lapped at the shoreline. And still Mollie stood there, silent, waiting. Finally she could wait no longer. “Hello, Sean.”

  He turned quickly, too quickly to mask his dismay at the untimely interruption.

  It was Mollie Tierney, elegant and poised, her hair spilling gold over the dark wool of her long coat, carrying an arrangement of flowers.

  He nodded. “Good morning.”

  She smiled. “I didn’t want to startle you. Now that you know I’m here, I won’t bother you. I just came to bring these to Danny and Kerry.” She held out the flowers.

  “You’re no bother,” he said politely.

  She didn’t contradict him, but he knew what she was thinking, this woman who had on more than one occasion read his mind, who moved in a tireless rhythm, ministering to her mother, to Patrick, to the children, and to him. Where did it come from, that endless reserve of strength and compassion, of knowing exactly when they needed food or rest, conversation or silence?

  For a moment Sean allowed himself his fantasy, a woman like Mollie, children well adjusted, cared for, a cottage neat because Mollie was organized, warm because she exuded warmth, loving because she had love enough in her to spare, and if anyone could bring life back into his severed family, she could.

  Christ. He rubbed at the headache he couldn’t lose. He was insane, weaving hallucinations that were humiliating as well as absurd. He missed having a woman in his life. His stomach clenched. He wouldn’t go there, not with this woman, not yet, not ever. He wouldn’t take advantage of her, not when she was alone in an unfamiliar place where a woman like her would never be found under normal circumstances.

  She was far too accommodating. He wasn’t accustomed to caring for children. His mother was too old to be of much help, and as for Patrick, one never knew when there would be a recurrence of his drinking. Mollie would be a habit Sean could fall into far too easily.

  Across the space that separated them, he smelled a hint of floral perfume. If only she wasn’t an American and Emma Tierney’s daughter. Suddenly he was consumed with gratefulness. “Thank you,” he said abruptly, “for the flowers and everything.”

  Mollie looked surprised. “You’re welcome.”

  Just like that. No explanations, no question. Some of the grimness left his expression. He smiled, and she smiled back. The defensive, arbitrary wall he’d built against her because of who she was came crashing down.

  She must have felt it, too. Horrified, he watched the tears well up in her eyes, spill down her cheeks, and run into her mouth, an onslaught of them, raining down, bathing her face in salt and warm water.

  Unsure of what to do, he reached out. She must have moved, too. Somewhere, at a place in between, they met, arms reaching, bodies straining, blood pounding loudly enough to drown out the words, comforting words, dangerous words, words that neither would remember when the moment was safely behind them.

  “My goodness,” she said at last, pulling away and laughing shakily when the worst of her outburst had passed. There were no more tears left, and her insides felt like mush. She couldn’t look at him. “I’m a mess.”

  He lifted her chin, and the warmth in his eyes reassured her. “You’re a grand lass, Mollie Tierney. But you’ve too much on your shoulders, and I’m to blame for it.”

  Mollie shook her head. “I’m worried about my mother. She seems so bitter. I’ve never seen her like this.” Her voice broke.

  “Will she be staying on with you?”

  “Not for long.”

  He surprised her. “Perhaps you can convince her. It will give her a chance to know Luke and the girls.” And me. The unspoken words hung between them. Perhaps if Emma came to know him better, she would leave the children with him.

  Mollie’s brow wrinkled. Her mother had rarely said anything positive about her life on Inishmore. Still, Sean was right. There was more to consider now. “If only she would.”

  Sean smiled encouragingly. The bleakness was still there. Mollie could see it around his eyes. But there was strength, too, and determination. His sister’s loss had taken its toll. B
ut he would come about, sooner rather than later. The thought brightened her spirits. “I’ll suggest it to her.”

  “You’ve held up well under all of this.”

  She bit her lip. “For now. I do well under pressure. My low points are still to come.”

  He looked down at her hands, slim, with long fingers. The urge to touch her was strong. He decided against it. “For what it’s worth, I think you’re the most capable female I’ve ever met,” he said instead.

  She smiled. “Thank you. I’ll leave you alone now.”

  He nodded and watched her walk away, a woman out of the ordinary with the manners of a lady. His play-wright’s mind conjured up the adjectives: a hybrid, sophisticated but warm, a cross somewhere between wholesome and elegant. Once again he was conscious of a fleeting wish that she was someone else, someone other than Emma Tierney’s daughter.

  Patrick Tierney picked his way through the long grass and around the headstones to where his son lay buried under the verdant soil. Cut flowers, artistically arranged, lay at the foot of the fresh grave. Emma, or perhaps it was Mollie, had already come and gone. In death as in life, Danny was surrounded by women who loved him, a circumstance unfamiliar to his father.

  As always, when attempting to reconcile the direction his life had taken, Emma and their last painful years together came to mind. Patrick racked his brain to analyze exactly when it had all gone wrong.

  Emma was intelligent and strong-willed by nature, not an unusual combination but a difficult one for a man like Patrick, an islander steeped in the traditions of his ancestors. She thought and moved and spoke quickly— American qualities, he’d thought at first, but he later came to realize that quickness of mind was a personality trait rather than belonging to any particular nationality. When Emma disagreed with him, and she did more often than he cared to remember, she’d fought him every step of the way. Fighting with Emma was like hooking a hundred-pound tuna on twenty-pound test. He would think he had her only to feel her pull away again, take the line and run with it, while he slowly, methodically, worked to reel her in. In the beginning he managed fairly well, but after the first few years he lost her every time.

  Patrick was a patient man. Few who searched the seas for schools of fish and boats in distress in the long, dark winter mornings could be anything else. In the beginning he refused to admit his marriage was over. When he could no longer deny it, he braced himself for what he knew would be their final argument, the custody of his only son. His daughter, Mollie, the child born ten years after Danny, would go with Emma.

  At first Emma resisted him, claiming that a ten-year-old boy needed his mother. But when Danny flatly refused to consider leaving his father and Inishmore, Emma gave up all talk of leaving the island. But she wasn’t the same. Her spirit, that impulsive wild joy that had intrigued him from the beginning, was gone.

  His family and friends believed he had fallen in love with Emma for her striking beauty. They were wrong. It was the life force within her that captured his imagination. Never before had he found a woman so lit from within. The simplest of pleasures filled her with happiness. Quite simply, she expanded his heart. Patrick knew what he wanted. He wanted that joy with him forever. He wanted Emma.

  For weeks after his refusal to give up Danny, she’d crept about their home like a fearful ghost, lifeless, jumpy, afraid of creaking branches and cracks of thunder. It was as if the wind and rain of that terrible winter had leeched the energy from her body. Patrick believed her restlessness was finished and what he was seeing was a grieving process, an acceptance of the real world to which she now belonged, his world.

  For a while he was grateful, willing to take a shadow of the former Emma, a subdued, distant silhouette of the woman she had been. Anything, he’d thought, was better than having her leave him for good. But as the weeks became a month and then two, and the distant, netherworld quality she carried about her continued, he became anxious and then angry and, finally, resigned. She’d turned against him. He had no doubt that she thought of him as the enemy. There were moments when he feared that her mind had become unbalanced.

  One morning when she looked across the table at him and said, “This is killing me,” he felt nothing more than a quiet relief that it was over.

  His relief had been temporary, an anesthetic, replaced by years of aching loneliness, a shortness of breath whenever he happened upon a fair-haired woman of Emma’s build, and days and nights of drunken forgetfulness when he could bury himself in a world where pain did not intrude.

  Hunching his shoulders, he turned, thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket, and climbed the hill toward the cottage where once his family waited for him. His lungs ached more now that he was older, and the climb was harder on his back. Mabry had warned him. He shouldn’t have married an outlander. The price had been more than dear.

  Patrick opened the door and stepped inside. He hung his coat near the fire and added several more squares of peat to the flame. What was Emma’s life like now with her rich American husband? He searched deeply within himself to see if he cared and found that it didn’t matter. Emma had ceased to matter a long time ago.

  Oddly, the thought depressed him even more. What had he to live for? He had no woman in his life. His only child left was an American, a stranger, who would leave when the school year was over, and his grandchildren— for an instant Patrick paused. What of his grandchildren, serious, motherly Marni, fragile Caili, and the baby, Luke? Sean O’Malley was a decent lad, despite his differences with Danny, but he’d left the island long ago. With Kerry gone, there would be no reason for him to return with the children.

  Patrick was done arguing with himself. He wanted a drink. He wanted more than a drink. He wanted to step back, to bow out of his life for a bit, to forget. If only for a moment, he wanted to feel the ebbing of his pain. Reaching into the farthest corner of the sideboard, he pulled out a bottle of whiskey and poured himself a deep glass. The first swill burned his lungs and brought tears to his eyes. The second went down more smoothly. By the time he refilled his glass, the glow, the familiar glow that colored the air amber, was in full effect.

  Mabry O’Farrell couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling in her middle. It wasn’t a pain or even an ache but the kind of emptiness one feels when hovering on the edge of wakefulness, when the mind knows something is very wrong but the fuzziness of sleep masks the source. Mabry knew it would come to her in time. She would wait and let fate work its own magic on the future.

  Meanwhile she would visit Patrick. He had a penchant for soda bread as only she could make it. A pint of her blackberry jelly and a pat of sweet butter would round out their tea.

  The day was a fine one, clear and cold but sunny, with a crispness that stung the delicate tissue lining the inside of her nose. Patrick’s cottage looked unusually desolate. Although it was mid-afternoon, the window shades were already pulled against the night and no welcoming curl of chimney smoke drifted across the sky. Mabry frowned. Perhaps he wasn’t home. But there was his trap in the shed and Brownie chewing on good limestone grass behind it.

  She tapped on the door. No answer. She tapped again and this time nudged the door open. He wouldn’t mind if he came upon her halfway inside like a thief, but he would mind a great deal less if he was passed out somewhere with a stroke and she happened to find him in time to save his life.

  “Patrick.” His hat and walking staff were in their usual places. She walked into the sitting room. “Patrick?”

  The smell of thick, uncirculated air hit her immediately. She wrinkled her nose. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, why didn’t the man open a window? She pushed aside the curtains, struggled with the sash, and lifted the window, drawing in deep gulps of ocean-fresh air. Reluctantly, she turned back to the stuffy room. Despite the airlessness, it was cold, the fire long dead. Summoning her resolve, Mabry walked through the sitting room, down the miniature hallway into the first bedroom. Patrick lay stretched out on top of the bed, fully clothed, an empty quar
t of whiskey beside him. Just out of reach was another, barely touched.

  Her mouth twisted with pity. Poor man. His body was failing him. She could remember a time when he could empty more than two without passing out. But that was years ago before his self-imposed dry spell of the last decade.

  Gently, she pressed her fingers against the inside of his wrist and then at his throat. His pulse was strong. She relaxed. It would take more than a bottle to finish Patrick Tierney. This time she wouldn’t wake him. Neither would she search the house for more spirits. She’d lived long enough to know that no woman could stop a man from drinking, not unless he wanted it for himself. After draping a blanket over him, she walked back to the sitting room, found the fire starter and matches, and banked the fire with turf from a wicker basket. She waited long enough for the flame to burn steadily and then closed the door behind her.

  Her pace down the hill was filled with purpose. Mollie Tierney had two parents on Inishmore, and the one she was attending at the moment needed her considerably less than the one Mabry had just left sleeping it off in an icy bedroom.

  Mollie lifted the hair off her neck, pulled the sides away from her face, and secured the thick mass with a claw clip. Then she looked in the mirror and winced. A week of sleepless nights had taken its toll. Her eyes were rimmed with red, and the shadows beneath looked like giant purple bruises against her skin. She needed a full eight hours of sleep and a decent meal.

  She hesitated at the foot of the stairs. Directly above her she could see the door to her mother’s room. It was closed. Sighing gratefully, she walked into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, and began rummaging through the refrigerator. A soft knock on the back door startled her. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. Every Irish family on Inishmore would be hungry for their tea.