by BJ Hoff
On the other hand, perhaps he was expecting too much. Given Susanna’s earlier suspicion of him—induced in part by Deirdre’s blatant lies, but also by his own attempts to conceal the truth—perhaps the fact that they had progressed as far as they had was no small achievement. At least she no longer seemed to mistrust him, no longer openly avoided him. At times, in fact, he could almost bring himself to believe that she was becoming…fond of him.
Of course, that might be nothing more than wishful thinking on his part. Or self-delusion.
Or abject foolishness.
Why should Susanna be even remotely attracted to him? He was blind. Years older than she. And as best he could recall his own shaggy reflection in the mirror, not exactly the stuff a young girl’s romantic dreams were made of.
Worse, he had been her sister’s husband, in a marriage that had been disastrous. When Susanna first arrived at Bantry Hill, Michael had attributed her coolness not only to her distrust of him, but also to the difficulty of her position. She was the sister of his deceased wife, yet she had been separated from Deirdre for years and had never even met him—her brother-in-law—until her arrival in America. Even her relationship with Caterina was complicated by the fact that she was not only the child’s aunt and companion, but in addition functioned as a kind of nursemaid and governess.
Susanna had been thrust into a household of strangers in a foreign country, to live under the same roof with a man she didn’t trust, a man who, for all she knew at the time, had made her sister’s life one of unhappiness and tragedy. Such a situation would have strained the endurance of the most rugged, intractable personality, much less that of one so young and—unless he was badly mistaken—so unsophisticated and tenderhearted. And yet she had endured, and had come to trust him.
But even if she no longer suspected him of being the monster Deirdre had apparently made him out to be, Susanna might never be able to feel more than a passionless regard for him. A sisterly affection, at best.
The very idea brought up a swell of revulsion in Michael’s throat. The role of elder brother might be more appealing than that of barbarian, but it was most definitely not the role he would choose to play in Susanna’s life.
And what about Paul? Was it possible that Susanna and Paul might be attracted to each other? Paul could not speak of Susanna with anything less than admiration and warmth. And as for Susanna, even without the ability to see them together, he could sense that she held Paul in extremely high regard, that she genuinely liked him.
Everyone liked Paul, he reminded himself. How could they not? Pauli was lively, quick-witted, sensitive. What was there about him not to like?
Young girls seemed always to find Paul appealing, with his boyish charm and courtly manners, his zest for life. His youth…
Michael shook his head. Santo cielo, he himself was only thirty-seven! Not yet ready to be put out to pasture!
Then another thought occurred to him. Perhaps Susanna’s awkwardness in his presence had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her own background. Because of her steady nature, her considerable education, and the maturity that seemed to far outdistance her actual age, Michael tended to forget just how sheltered Susanna’s life must have been. As the youngest daughter of parents who made their living from a small farm, she had no doubt lived a rustic existence—simple, quiet, and remote.
He had the impression—mostly from Deirdre—that their early lives had centered primarily around church and immediate family. The rebellious Deirdre apparently had broken out of that vacuum, managing to escape the isolation of the dairy farm.
Hadn’t she often taunted him with tales of her various wild escapades, her many beaus, and the libertine company she’d kept, unbeknownst to her family? These stories might have been overblown, even fabricated, but Michael had no doubt that Deirdre would have found a way to create an active social life for herself.
The opposite was probably true of Susanna. He suspected she had stayed close to home, ill at ease with most people—especially men—and he doubted she had ever been romantically involved with anyone, at least not seriously.
If he was right, might that not account for at least some of the uneasiness he sensed in her when they were together? Granted, things were better between them now, but there were still times when she seemed uncomfortable, as if she couldn’t wait to get away.
For his part, Michael sensed a major battle going on between his brain and his heart. He wanted to protect her, to shelter her. He wanted to know her better. He wanted to encourage her, to build her confidence, to help her realize her natural gift for music.
He wanted to hold her.
At various times, Susanna displayed the curiosity of a child, the idealism of a young girl, the reasoning of a scholar, and the bedrock steadiness of a saint. She had a way of laughing that made him wish for more, an enthusiasm that could strip away his well-placed defenses, a joy that lifted his heaviness of spirit, and a quiet faith that seemed to have been tried both by intellect and experience. She was guileless but not naive, agreeable but not complacent, practical but never predictable.
She could exasperate him one minute with a noncommittal remark about a piece of music, only to disarm him a moment later with an unsolicited but surprisingly insightful observation about the composer’s intention for that music.
In spite of her youth, she was far more complex than any woman he had ever known. She was as fascinating as she was complicated, as frustrating as she was delightful.
The truth, rather than striking him like a thunderbolt, had been creeping in on him for weeks now, a stealthy but insistent shadow. He didn’t know whether to moan with despair or sneer at his own foolishness.
For the first time in years—and against any common sense his infuriatingly romantic, Tuscan-Irish spirit might claim—he was falling in love.
In love with Susanna.
5
BLACK BEAST OF BEAUTY
Opportunity often shows its face in an odd and most unlikely place…
IRISH PROVERB
The wind blew raw with winter riding on it when the word came down once again: no jobs today.
Conn was cold and sore discouraged, yet could not bring himself to leave the harbor. The thought of the worry in Vangie’s eyes kept him ambling about the docks long after he had an excuse for being there. She was doing her best to keep their spirits up, but Conn knew too well the look of desperation that would greet him when he walked through the door again with empty pockets.
Hands shoved inside his jacket, he stood staring at the big ships rocking in the water. Crewmen roamed the decks: laughing, shouting, cursing, herding passengers aboard, or slinging their gear over their shoulders as they prepared to disembark. Nearby, a raggedy child wailed, clinging to the skirts of a mother wasted from starvation or illness. At a blast from a ship’s horn, the child squalled even louder, but the mother turned her face away, paying no heed.
The usual assortment of immigrants milled about, anxiously searching for a familiar face or someone who would show them where to go. A dozen different languages could be heard, but—Irish was the most prevalent—here a Kerryman’s sharp accent, there a Donegal lilt.
Conn knew he ought to go into the city and try some of the factories again, but hopelessness settled over him like a sodden blanket, thwarting his intentions and draining his strength. After countless weeks of trudging the streets and haunting the warehouses, hadn’t he tried every possible place where work might be found? And all in vain. There was simply nowhere else to go.
The sound of a loud commotion farther up the docks caught his attention. He looked, but could see only a raucous crowd gathered near the pier. He turned to go, but stopped again when he heard a sound that chilled his blood.
A horse, screaming, wild with panic and pain. He had heard the sound too many times not to recognize it.
He shouldered his way through the crowd and saw two men trying to lead a big, powerful-looking stallion off a rusting, bli
stered ship. The great beast was savage in his resistance. He was a magnificent brute, midnight black and strongly muscled, but the fine, elegant head was encased in an iron muzzle, which the horse was fighting with a vengeance.
As Conn watched, the stallion reared, striking out with deadly hooves when one of the men attempted to restrain him.
Conn looked around. Close-by—but not too close, he noticed—stood a slender young fellow seemingly intent on the goings-on. He had the dusky skin and features of an Italian, but was dressed too fine for any Italian immigrant Conn had ever met up with.
At the moment, the lad looked a mite pale. Once he opened his mouth as if to call out something to the men struggling with the stallion, but the words seemed to die in his throat as he stood gawking at the scene before him.
Conn turned his attention back to the horse. The crowd was heckling the two men, shouting and jeering at their lame efforts to subdue the stallion. The handler was about to lose control, while the other, a thickset, middle-aged fellow with a drooping mustache, was clearly out of his element as he attempted to calm the animal. The poor beast was crazy with fear, no mistake about it. He wanted nothing more than to free himself, and he would kill anyone who happened to get in his way.
The jibes and catcalls, the confinement of the muzzle, and the inept efforts of the men trying to handle him had obviously served to fire the stallion’s madness. When the fool hauling on the lead rope turned to bring a whip crashing down on the animal’s lathered flank, Conn felt the beast’s primal rage explode inside himself.
Every muscle in the horse’s body seemed to knot with the effort to break free. He reared and hammered the boards with his mighty hooves. Ears pinned flat against his head, he swung toward the man on his left, then the other.
Scarcely realizing what he was doing, Conn wedged his way to the front of the crowd, stopping when he saw the stallion throw the handler off balance with a furious shake of his head. The ferret-faced man bellowed a loud curse as he jumped sideways. “I’ll have no more truck with that black devil!” he roared. “This is as far as I go!”
Turning, he flung the whip down and stomped away, leaving the older man nearly helpless to control the stallion. As if he sensed the man’s fear, the horse exploded in fresh fury, giving a vicious scream, lunging and heaving as he tried to wrest himself free.
Conn didn’t think, but merely reacted. He threw himself past the crowd, yanked the lead from the gray-haired man, and shoved him out of the way. Gleaming with sweat, the stallion lashed out with his powerful hooves at this new adversary. But Conn gamboled around him, staying out of his way, giving him no target as he continued to grip the lead rope.
The stallion shook his head, spraying saliva through the muzzle, but in spite of the animal’s resistance, Conn managed to keep a firm grasp on the rope. The great black beast eyed him with raw malice as Conn began to speak in broken fragments of the old Irish tongue. He kept his voice quiet but steady, dropping it lower still as he coaxed and murmured to the enraged animal. When the horse dipped his head toward Conn as if to threaten him, Conn drew a step nearer to let the stallion catch his scent.
The sight of such a magnificent beast in that cruel iron contraption was a grief in itself, and Conn burned to free the animal from its confines. But for the moment, he had no choice. Trying to remove the muzzle would likely cost him a hand or an arm.
His shoulders ached from the strain, but he managed to retain his hold. By now the two were engaged in a deadly dance of power, each intent on forcing the other to capitulate. And all the while, Conn continued his low Irish drone, his eyes locked with those of the stallion.
Finally, the horse’s wildness began to cool. Conn breathed a little easier as he saw the bunched muscles relax a bit. But those malevolent eyes followed his every move as he slowly and ever so carefully moved one hand to the horse’s crest.
Immediately, the stallion froze, ears flattened, eyes glinting.
Conn stopped, then tried again. And again. On his third attempt the horse, though still guarded, seemed to realize this man meant him no harm, that he could tolerate his touch. For several minutes, Conn stroked him, first one side and then the other.
With his hand resting on the horse’s withers, he stood, quietly waiting, until the stallion’s skin ceased rippling and the dark eyes lost their wildness. Slowly, then, Conn unlocked the muzzle and carefully peeled it away, groaning to see the damage that had been done to that elegant head.
Ugly, seeping sores had formed from weeks of constant chafing. The animal had to be in absolute misery.
Conn felt the blood rush to his own head, pain hammering at his temples as he beheld what had been done to this noble beast. He could almost feel the animal’s relief, to be finally shed of his torment.
Keeping a firm hold on the rope, he turned to the middle-aged man and his younger companion. “This horse needs attention right away. Those sores are infected.”
The older man nodded and stood regarding Conn with a speculative expression. “We’ve lost the handler, as you saw for yourself,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I’ve no idea how we’ll get the animal upriver.”
Another Irishman, Conn realized the moment the man opened his mouth. But, then, was there anyone in New York City who was not Irish?
He continued to stroke the stallion’s back. Though still guarded and tense, the animal was at least standing quietly enough for now and no longer seemed bent on killing him.
“You work on the docks, do you?” asked the Irishman.
Conn shook his head. “There’s no work to be had on the docks of late. At least, that’s what we’re told.”
“So you’re needing work then, are you?”
“Aye, that I am. Needing it in a bad way,” Conn admitted. “I’ve found no job since we arrived, other than a bit of day labor, nothing that lasts.”
“Dublin born, are you?”
“Not at all,” Conn replied. “We’re from the country—at least we were, until we had to move into Dublin City to survive. The wife and I were both born and raised in County Kildare.”
The man nodded. From under his heavy eyebrows, his gaze traveled from Conn to the stallion, and then back to Conn. “You know horses.”
It was a statement of fact, not a question. Conn nodded. “I do. I was a stable hand for a time, when I was a boy, and later I handled and took care of the stables for a fine trainer. One of Ireland’s best.” He glanced at the stallion. “This, now, is surely a magnificent beast.”
The other man turned to look at his younger companion, who raised his eyebrows.
The Irishman turned back to Conn. “You would be well paid if you were to go along with us upriver and handle the horse.”
Conn stared at the man. “Now, d’you mean? Today?”
The older man nodded. “We need to be leaving right away. And this lad and myself are no match for that devil.”
Conn’s hand must have tightened on the stallion’s back. The animal snorted, head lifting as his ears flattened again.
Instantly Conn gentled his touch, and the horse settled down again.
Conn looked from the stallion to the Irishman. “I expect I could go,” he finally said. “But I’d have to be letting the wife know. She’ll fret something terrible if I don’t turn up before dark.”
“Send one of the boyos with a message,” the other man suggested, jerking his head toward a group of young boys playing along the pier. “I’ll pay.”
The Irishman watched Conn with an expression that seemed to indicate he had more to say. After a moment, he tipped his cap forward a little and crossed his sturdy arms over his chest. “ ’Tis not for me to be offering anything for certain, you understand, but you might give a thought to talking with my employer when we arrive. We lost our trainer and stableman some time back, and he’s in need of a man he can count on.” He stopped. “He wants a good man with the horses as soon as possible, especially with this spawn of the devil arriving. There might be a job for you if
you’re interested.”
Conn’s heart leaped to his throat. “Is that so now?”
“ ’Tis. As I said, I can’t make any promises, but after seeing the way you handled this ill-tempered beast, I’d be willing to vouch for you.”
He paused, eyeing Conn for another second or two, then added, “My employer won’t stand for a drinker or a scrapper.”
“Man, I am neither.”
The older man’s eyes held Conn’s for a moment more. Then he raised a hand and gave a sharp whistle to hail one of the boys at the pier. Three came running, and he dispatched the quickest of them with a coin and the message Conn repeated for Vangie.
“All right, then,” the man said, turning back to Conn. “Do what you must with that black pooka and let us be on our way.”
“How do I call you?” Conn asked.
“The name is Dempsey. And this here is Paul Santi. He’s cousin to my employer, Mr. Emmanuel.”
“And the horse, does he have a name?”
“Aye, as I was told, he’s to be called ‘Amerigo.’”
Conn turned away from the other two and looked at the stallion straight on, deliberately masking his sympathy for the animal, which was still a grand piece of horseflesh in spite of the evident abuse. The black beast eyed him in turn, his ears pricked.
“So, then—Amerigo—” Conn said, “will you come with me like a gentleman or must we be having it out again?”
The dark eyes shifted, and for a moment Conn braced himself for yet another skirmish. But finally the black stallion gave a princely toss of his head, snorted, then quieted, as if in concession to Conn’s authority.
Conn watched him, strangely moved and even saddened to see the horse’s grudging submission. “I know, big fella,” he said softly in the stallion’s ear. “I know how this must gall you. ’Tis a bitter thing to have no say in your own welfare, to be treated as nothing more than a piece of meat, your only value the strength of your back and what you can earn for your greedy master.”