She stopped in the midst of “The Irishman’s Choice,” suddenly too overcome to play on. Emotions waged a war inside her. Loneliness, homesickness, and the joy of happier times mixed and melted together. Her throat thickened.
Try as she might, Katie could no longer picture her family together. She saw only her mother’s tired face, her father’s smile replaced with defeat. She saw Eimear, pale and thin. Then she heard from across the years the tune Father had always played at the end of each evening.
She took up her bow once more. She hesitated only a moment before allowing the plaintive strains of “Ar Éirinn” to step out of her past and fill the air around her. She felt herself very much as she’d been all those years ago when hearing her father play late into the night. ’Twas as if she again lay wrapped in a quilt tucked safely in bed, blissfully unaware of the pain that lie ahead of them all, free of the guilt she would carry the rest of her life.
As the last note died out over the river before her, Katie opened her eyes once more. The sun had long ago set, the fields cast in deep impenetrable shadows. She held her fiddle to her heart.
“I miss you, Father,” she whispered. “Do you miss me, I wonder?”
She would see him again one day, she’d vowed to herself she would. She’d see him again and tell him how sorry she was for all the wrong she’d done, for the pain she’d caused him. And she would play “Ar Éirinn” just for him. Between the tune and the restitution she meant to make, he just might welcome her back.
She would be home again at last.
Chapter Nineteen
Katie and Biddy sat on the Archers’ front porch Thursday afternoon taking turns at the butter churn and chatting about nothing in particular. Katie had developed something bordering on a talent for pointless gabbing, though she’d never done it before coming to Hope Springs. She found she enjoyed having someone to talk to.
“I’ve thought of something I can do when this job isn’t available any longer,” she said.
“Have you?”
There was something very comforting in knowing her new friend cared enough about her to be excited on her behalf.
“Well, as near as I’ve been able to tell, no one else in Hope Springs is looking to hire on household help.”
Biddy shook her head. “No one else can afford it. The ranchers out at the edges of the valley might be able to, but I’d not go there if I were you,” she added quickly. “They’re single men, every last one of them, and not terribly well mannered or civilized.”
Katie had heard all that herself. “I was thinking more along the lines of, well—” She found herself reluctant to confess her idea. What if Biddy laughed? What if she truly was a fool for even considering such a scheme? “I thought I’d start something of a business.”
Such relief surged through her when Biddy didn’t scoff. “What sort of business?”
Katie could breathe again. She had a supportive and listening ear in her new friend. “I haven’t many talents,” she said. “I can clean and I can bake, but that’s it.”
She wiped beads of sweat from her forehead. The day was hotter than any she’d yet experienced in Wyoming. A breeze blew, the only relief from the heavy summer air.
“So I thought I might try selling baked goods.” The idea was young, and Katie wasn’t fully sure of it yet.
Biddy’s eyes grew wide. “A bakery? Wouldn’t we be the fancy town?”
“I don’t mean a full bakery like in Baltimore or Belfast or any of the big cities.”
“Katie! Katie!”
She turned at Ivy’s voice. For reasons she couldn’t explain, the littlest Archer girl had become increasingly friendly over the past week. Despite her efforts to keep a distance, Katie couldn’t seem to manage it.
“Watch me, Katie. I can run so fast!” Ivy’s dress whipped hard against her legs as she ran with all she was worth the full length of the front of the house. Apparently finished with her demonstration, the little girl dropped dramatically to the ground, lying on her back with her arms and legs sprawled out.
Katie looked over the porch rail at Ivy. “I hardly even saw you pass by, so quick were you there and gone.”
“I. Told. You.” Her gasps for breath made the words choppy.
“Where did you learn to run like that?” Katie asked as she continued churning.
Ivy put a hand up to her eyes to block the sunlight. “Finbarr showed me. He says you have to watch where you’re going and then run like the banshee is out to get you.”
Katie smiled at that. Irish children would run for their lives at such a thought.
“What’s ‘the banshee’?” Ivy asked. She hadn’t yet pulled herself up off the grass. “Finbarr made it sound scary.”
“The banshee is an ill-meaning spirit,” Katie warned. “’Tis said the banshee will lead the unsuspecting into dangerous paths until they’re hopelessly lost forever and all time.”
Emma arrived at the porch’s edge in time to hear Katie’s words. Ivy seemed quite excited at the idea of a horrid specter, while Emma didn’t appear to like the possibility in the least.
“Then Finbarr wasn’t merely teasing us?” Emma asked.
“He was teasing you, sure enough. But tales of banshees have been around since before St. Patrick himself. Finbarr hardly made it up.”
Emma’s mouth twisted in thought. “Why do boys do that? They say things they know will scare us just to tease.”
“I have known Finbarr nearly all his life,” Biddy said. “He teases the girls he’s fond of. All the O’Connors do. My Ian, when we first met, called me Itty Biddy. ’Twas his way of teasing me.”
“Truly?” Emma looked unmistakably hopeful. “You think Finbarr is fond of . . . us?”
“I most certainly do,” Biddy answered.
Katie watched closely as Emma pondered that. Part of the little girl’s puzzle fell into place in that moment.
“Poor thing’s in the throes of first love,” Biddy whispered.
“Aye. I didn’t piece it together until this very moment.”
A look of absolute empathy entered Biddy’s eyes. “She’s been sweet on Finbarr since she was Ivy’s age.”
“Does he realize as much?”
Biddy smiled and nodded with emphasis. “Poor little thing doesn’t realize she’s too young to catch his eye.”
Ivy scrambled back to her feet. She waved enthusiastically to a wagon just making the turn at the fork in the road, this one destined for the Red side of things. Katie hadn’t met many people from that side of town, none she’d care to meet again at the very least. Still, the young family in the wagon offered a friendly “good afternoon” and returned Ivy’s wave without hesitation.
So Katie waved as well. They looked shocked and didn’t return the gesture. Apparently waves between roads was as forbidden as sitting together at church.
“Tell me about this bakery you’re opening up.”
Katie shook her head. “Nothing so grand as that. Only bread, and perhaps cakes for special occasions.”
Ivy ran alongside a pony cart as it turned toward the Irish Road. The little girl giggled, drawing a grin from the driver. Katie recognized him from the céilí, one Ryan Callaghan from Cork. Biddy waved, and he tipped his hat in return. The Red Road family hadn’t even acknowledged Biddy sitting there.
“’Tis a complicated place you’re living in, Biddy.”
She laughed lightly. “Aye, but isn’t every place?”
A great deal of wisdom lay in those words. “Troubles follow us wherever we go, it seems.”
Biddy nodded again. “But you don’t see a view like this one everywhere you go.” She motioned out over the sprawling horizon just in front of them.
Katie had quickly come to appreciate the stark beauty of the area. “That you don’t.”
A wagon crossed over the bridge. Ivy darted out as she had with the previous passersby. She drew too near for Katie’s peace of mind.
“Don’t run out in the road, Ivy dear!”
she called out. “You’ll get yourself run down, you will!”
Ivy’s shoulders dropped dramatically, as though Katie had singlehandedly ruined her entire life.
“So you can really make a living selling bread?” Biddy asked.
There was the difficulty. Katie wasn’t sure she could. “I can’t rightly say. I don’t know the proper way to figure those things. I hope so.”
“What’ll happen, Katie, if you can’t?”
She paused in her churning and rolled her sore shoulders. “I’ve no other ideas. If this won’t work, I’ll have to consider going back to Baltimore.”
“Pompah!” Little Ivy’s voice carried across to them.
Mr. Archer came around the corner from the direction of the barn, apparently on his way to the porch. What had brought him there? Generally during the day she saw her employer only at lunch time.
He didn’t come up the steps but stopped just on the other side of the porch railing. ’Twas to Biddy he spoke. “Finbarr has finished his work for the day. I’ll take you both back in the wagon, if you’re ready to go. It would save you the walk.”
“I thank you, Joseph. My sister-in-law is watching my little ones so I could have a good gab with Katie, here. But I’d best go relieve her.”
Mr. Archer nodded and turned to walk back the way he’d come. Biddy stopped him.
“Have you a moment, Joseph, to think on a problem?”
“Of course.”
Of course? Was this the standoffish, grumpy Joseph Archer Katie had come to know?
“You may have heard that our Katie, here, has found herself with only half the pay she’d come to Wyoming expecting.”
“Biddy,” Katie said urgently under her breath. Her friend didn’t so much as pause.
“She’s needing to find work after her heartless employer tosses her out to make way for her replacement.”
“Biddy.”
“She’s to be thrown into the hedgerow, you know. Had you heard anything like that, Joseph?”
Something very much like laughter shone in the back of Mr. Archer’s eyes. Katie found she couldn’t look away from the sight. ’Twas an unexpected change in him, one she liked very much indeed. He seemed a regular, approachable sort of man in that moment.
“I had heard that, actually,” he said. “Katie still spends her afternoons here, so I’d guess she hasn’t found secondary work.”
“Alas, no.” Biddy shook her head, her lips turned down in an expression of utmost sorrow. Her antics were enough to nearly bring a smile to Katie’s face. If not for Joseph Archer’s presence and her uncertainty about his opinions, Katie might even have laughed. “But she does have an idea,” Biddy added.
He was looking at her now. “Do you really?”
“Just the beginnings of one,” Katie replied. “I’m sure you’ve more important things to spend your time on, though.”
He didn’t take the excuse she handed him. “What is your idea?” He leaned against the railing.
“I thought of starting a business.” The idea sounded ridiculous spoken out loud to someone who actually knew about such things. “It’s likely a foolish idea.”
“What kind of business?”
“Baking bread and such.” She quickly added a bit of explanation. “Not a fancy bakery with its own building, just me and a stove.”
“How much would you charge for your goods?”
Katie couldn’t believe he was taking her idea seriously. “I never learned to do proper ciphering. I don’t have the first idea how to figure prices.”
“But I do.” Mr. Archer smiled at her then. Truly, fully smiled.
Katie felt a rush of heat steal over her face, something she hadn’t anticipated in the least. He stood too close to have missed the rising color in her cheeks. She couldn’t account for it and had no idea what he would make of it.
“There now,” Biddy said. “I knew Joseph could help. If anyone hereabout would know how to get a business off and running, Joseph would.”
Katie hadn’t entirely shaken off the impact of his smile. She did manage to give him what she hoped was a grateful look.
“Running a business takes a lot of investment, in time and money,” he warned. “Do you have savings you could tap into to purchase supplies?”
She did, indeed. An old biscuit tin tucked under her bed held several rolls of pounds and dollars saved over eighteen years. She could not, however, spend it all. “I do have some.”
He nodded. His expression had turned contemplative. That he hadn’t dismissed her idea offhand was comforting and encouraging. But she missed his smile, brief as it had been.
“I had planned to go into town on Monday,” Mr. Archer said. “I can check the cost of the goods you’ll need. We can use that to determine your prices.”
“Thank you for that, Mr. Archer.”
Something of his earlier smile reappeared, though not quite as bright as it had been. Why didn’t he smile more often, she wondered.
Mr. Archer turned toward the yard and called out to his daughters playing there. “Climb in the wagon, girls. We’re taking Finbarr and Mrs. O’Connor home.”
As the Archers made their way out of sight, Biddy paused beside Katie. She squeezed her hand. “I knew just as soon as I met you that we’d be friends, Katie. With this bakery, you’ll not have to run off looking for work elsewhere.”
“Don’t get your hopes too high yet,” Katie answered. “I can’t say any of my plans have worked out too well over the years.”
Biddy pulled her into an embrace. Katie froze. She’d not been hugged in years.
“I’ll be optimistic for the both of us, Katie. As the saying goes, ‘Hope springs eternal.’”
Chapter Twenty
Joseph sat at the kitchen table on Friday finishing his lunch. His thoughts were firmly on Katie. More often than they should have been, his eyes were on her, too. She sometimes wore a painfully heavy look on her face while she worked. He could see her thoughts were thousands of miles away and that those thoughts weighed on her. She’d worn much the same look the night before.
She’d excused herself just as soon as she cleared the table, insisting she had something important to see to. Joseph sat on the back porch and listened to the sound of violin music floating over the river. He knew Katie was the musician. Her talent was awe inspiring. He wanted to ask her where she’d learned, how long she’d played, why it meant so much to her that she would skip meals in order to play. He’d thought of her plan to sell bread and thought it a shame she couldn’t make her living playing music. Her talent was absolutely wasted in a town like Hope Springs.
Katie Macauley was a puzzle. She had a fiercely independent nature yet at times seemed painfully unhappy in her self-imposed seclusion.
He set his plate and fork on the worktop beside the sink as he’d taken to doing after his midday meal. Though Katie didn’t always talk to him while she washed the dishes, she did sometimes. He liked spending those moments in conversation with her. He looked forward to it all morning, if he were being honest.
“Did you ever have anything to eat last night, Katie?” It was, perhaps, not the most sophisticated beginning to a conversation.
“I’m afraid it slipped my mind,” she said.
He didn’t like the idea of her missing meals. Though he knew better than to say as much, she’d been too thin when she arrived, her face showing clear signs of having gone too long without regular, filling meals. That hint of gauntness hadn’t left her yet.
“Katie.”
“No need scolding me. I have had two meals already today.”
He’d learned within the first few days that she took offense easily. Joseph wasn’t sure if that came from past hurts or simple mulishness. His curiosity about that had only grown.
“Is there a reason you are so opposed to the idea of eating with us?” he asked. If she would only sit down to meals with them, as their last housekeeper always had, he would know she was getting the nourishment she needed
. “I assure you the girls are well behaved at the table, and I generally refrain from scraping my teeth with the tines of my fork.”
“Servants do not take their meals with the family they serve.” She spoke with utmost finality.
“Our last housekeeper took every meal with us.” He had fully expected his new housekeeper to do the same.
“I’ve heard the girls talk of your last housekeeper.” Katie gave him a look of exasperation. “They rather thought of her as a grandmother, I’d say. She was family to them. I am a stranger who arrived at the doorstep not two weeks ago. The situations are hardly the same.”
Joseph had never been one to be so easily distracted, though, especially from such an enormous mystery as she was. He’d more than once spied a deep-seated pain in her eyes. Yet her determination and fire spoke of an inner strength he couldn’t help admiring.
“You are accustomed to large households, where the servants far outnumber those they work for and the two worlds never intersect and seldom collide.” Joseph himself had grown up in just such a household. “Life isn’t like that in Wyoming. Towns and houses are too small to be divided up that way.”
“You’re telling me Hope Springs hasn’t divided itself along very real lines, are you?” The disbelief in her tone couldn’t have been more apparent.
He leaned against the worktop, warming to his topic. Here was the reason he enjoyed her company. Her conversation was intelligent. She had the confidence to state her opinions even if those positions differed from his own. It was a far sight better than trying to keep up a conversation with a quiet sixteen-year-old.
Longing for Home: A Proper Romance Page 16