They made several deliveries in silence. Katie tried to digest what she’d heard. The accusations she’d thrown at Joseph that first day haunted her. She’d accused him of harboring hatred toward the Irish, of being petty in his dismissal of her. But he had been right all along. She’d brought to his doorstep the very trouble he worked hard to prevent.
The second basket was empty and the cart turned back in the direction of Biddy’s home before Katie took up another topic. Theirs had been an outing for heavy conversation.
“Why is it Joseph and Tavish don’t get along?”
“Honestly?”
Katie let her tone turn dry enough for humor but not offense. “No, I’d rather you lie to me.”
Biddy smiled for what seemed like the first time all afternoon. “The two of them are mad jealous of each other, though neither would ever admit it.”
“Jealous?” Katie wouldn’t have guessed that. “What is it they envy in the other?”
Biddy lightly laughed. “If we make too many of these journeys every week, you’ll have me spilling every secret I know.” Still, Biddy indulged her. “I am sure you’ve been given ample opportunity to discover Tavish is a flirt of the first water.”
Katie grinned. “I have, indeed.”
“But you’ve not yet seen that he is the hardest working man you’ll likely ever meet.” A sisterly fondness touched Biddy’s expression. “He was among the first to buy land from Joseph. He knew just what parcel he wanted, but he wasn’t content to take up farming purely for feeding himself and any family he might have. Tavish planted berries.”
“Berries?” She’d certainly not heard that.
“He knew there were no berry farmers anywhere near here, perhaps none in the entire territory. Yet berries grew wild, so he felt certain they could be cultivated. He has worked himself to the bone in the years since building on that dream. He bottles preserves, cordials, and, though we don’t mention it to the preacher, some of the best berry wine you’ll taste anywhere.”
Katie was impressed. It seemed Joseph and she were not the only business-minded people in town.
“Tavish has eager customers all over the territory, south of the railroads, even. His crops are as good, perhaps even better, than anything found back East. He can ask an impressive price for what he produces.” Biddy guided the horse around a rut in the road. “Yet, for all Tavish’s work and long years of saving, he still lives in a one-room house on a farm he does not yet own outright. All his work has not gained him a drop of water in the ocean of wealth Joseph was handed at birth. I think that is a hard pill for Tavish to swallow.”
“I can see how that would be difficult.”
Biddy flicked the reins. “And Tavish puts that same tireless determination into calming tempers and arguments among the Irish. He wants so much to see this feud put aside. He’s often spent all night long talking sense into some stubborn, hotheaded Irishman, only to have the lot of them at someone’s throat again in a few days’ time. That would wear on any man. I think he envies Joseph’s ability to stay out of it, because he knows that is impossible for him.”
“What does Joseph envy in Tavish, then?” The scale seemed decidedly tipped in Joseph’s favor.
“Tavish has an easy and effortless way with people. He makes friends almost without trying. He hasn’t a bit of shyness about him. Tavish is quick with a smile or a quip. People are drawn to him.”
“Joseph doesn’t strike me as shy.”
Biddy shook her head. “No, but he strikes everyone he meets as standoffish.”
Katie could solve that riddle. “Likely because he is standoffish.”
Biddy laughed right out loud. “Aye. Standoffish. Grumpy. Often everything but sociable. Part of that is the result of his need, his determination, to keep out of the town argument. He needs to be in a position to help, but that means he is often lonely. He sees friendships and connections come so easily to Tavish, and I suspect it eats at him.”
Biddy pulled the cart to a stop at her father-in-law’s house.
“Do they know how the other feels about them?”
“I doubt it. Men can be terribly thickheaded.”
’Twas Katie’s turn to laugh at that.
Biddy put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, a gesture that had become surprisingly commonplace between them. How quickly they’d become friends. “You just keep in mind what I’ve told you when next you see those thickheaded men. Know there’s more inside than they let on.”
“That’s true of all of us, I daresay.” Katie had her share of complications and secrets.
She thought on it all as she made her way back to the Archer home. These two men she’d come to care for were so mired in the feuding, though in drastically different ways. Both had told her they believed she could make a difference in it. She and her bread could help.
That, she found, was as strong a motivation as the promise of enough money to one day go home.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Two hours after the start of the céilí Saturday night, Katie was doubting the wisdom of coming. The words of gratitude offered to her at every turn were overwhelming. What would happen to these people if her venture failed? They had come to see so much more in it than a few loaves of bread.
Katie breathed a sigh of relief when the company gathered about the fire, sitting as families to listen to the stories. Though she enjoyed a bit of blarney, she didn’t care at all for open flames. And she was feeling acutely the weight of her neighbors’ faith in her.
Where was Tavish when she needed someone to tease her from her heavy mood? He’d not come to the gathering. Katie told herself she cared little, that she hadn’t been counting on his company. She didn’t believe a word of it.
With the attention of the gathering firmly rooted elsewhere, Katie thought it best to take her leave. She’d return to the quiet of her own bedroom and get an early start on her night’s sleep. She had to be up in the morning to cook the family’s breakfast and see to the girls’ hair before they left for services.
As she walked away from the party, her thoughts returned to Biddy’s startling revelations. Hope Springs had caught itself in a complicated web. She’d come to know the families there. They were good people. Good people who seemed so very trapped.
The homes down the Irish Road were generally dark during the céilí—no one was at home after all—but a light shone under the door of the barn Katie was steps from passing. She counted back from the elder O’Connors’ house where the party was always held. She had passed the oldest sister’s house first, then Ian and Biddy’s. This, then, was Tavish’s home. From the look of things, he was in his barn.
Why hadn’t he come to the céilí?
She ought to continue on, go about her own concerns without bothering him. But she’d missed him more than she’d expected to. Katie stood on the road facing his barn for long, drawn-out moments, debating.
“What would you have me do, Eimear?” Talking to her sister had seen her through many difficult times. But in that moment, knowing she had no one but her long-dead sister to turn to, the conversation only drove home how very lonely she was. Even with every Irish family in town greeting her, she felt alone.
She stepped off the road and onto the path leading to Tavish’s barn door. She needed a friend.
Katie rapped lightly on the door before opening it the tiniest bit. She stepped inside but didn’t immediately see anyone. “Tavish?”
From the far reaches of the barn, hidden in a shadow, echoed a voice. “Is that you, Sweet Katie?”
Tavish stepped out into the light cast by a lantern hanging from a peg on the center post of the barn. He held a metal bucket in his hand.
“I thought I’d come by and see where you lived,” Katie said.
Tavish’s smile tipped. “This here’s the barn, dear. I live in a house like a right regular person.”
Ah. There was the teasing she’d missed. “Do you, now? I’d heard rumors you were born in a barn.�
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“Why is it you aren’t at the céilí?” he asked.
She came the rest of the way inside, stopping not far from the post where the lantern hung. “I might ask you the same thing.”
“I haven’t finished my chores.” He set his metal bucket down beside the cow stall. “The workday never ends during harvest.”
“I thought harvest wasn’t for another month or more.”
“For the sane farmers, yes. For those of us raising berries, which I might point out is only me, this is the busy time.” He stood with one hand on the door to the stall. “Would you like to stay a bit? Talk to me while I finish?”
“I would, actually.”
“‘Actually,’ she says, as though it’s a great shock that anyone might enjoy chatting with me.”
“Aye. It is something of a shock. Seeing as I haven’t chatted with you in nearly a week now, I can’t quite recall if it was an enjoyable thing or not.”
“Oh.” His eyebrow arched and his mouth opened in a wide circle, even as laughter twinkled in his blue eyes. “Could it be you’ve missed me, Sweet Katie?”
“Not at all.”
“Not at all?”
She shook her head. He matched the movement precisely. After a moment, Katie was fighting a smile.
“Perhaps a wee little bit.” ’Twas more of a confession than she’d meant to make. “But only a wee bit. And only because there hasn’t been anyone else to talk to.”
“Your very last choice, was I?” The cow lowed in the stall behind them, pulling Tavish’s attention away. “Hush, you troublesome beast. I’ll get to you in a moment.” His was a look of sorely tried patience. “The cow’s rather fond of me.”
“Someone ought to be.”
His laughter rang out again. “I’m right pleased you dropped in, Katie. You’ve brightened my day already.”
Was he sending her away? She’d begun to enjoy talking with him.
“Put away the puppy dog eyes, dear. That wasn’t a good-bye.”
“I wouldn’t want you to neglect your cow.” Katie thought she managed not to sound overly anxious to stay. “She’d grow terribly lonely.”
“I’m about to go talk sweet to her, I am. She’ll be fine enough.” Tavish took a three-legged milking stool off its hook near the stall door. He leaned a touch closer to Katie, lowering his voice. “If you stick around long enough, I’ll come back out and talk sweet to you.”
Katie just smiled. Though she’d never tell him as much, she would enjoy hearing a few sweet words from him. She felt happier in his presence than nearly any person she knew.
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “No objections this time?”
She shrugged. “Best see to your chores, Tavish.”
“I haven’t a fine seat to offer you,” he said. “But a woolen blanket set on the pile of straw just there would make a comfortable spot.”
Katie glanced over at the straw. “Would I offend your friend by sitting on her next meal?”
Tavish picked up his metal bucket once more and opened the stall door. “Hay is for feeding the animals, Sweet Katie. Straw is for them to lie down on.”
Too much time had passed it seemed since her days on a farm. Katie hadn’t remembered there was a difference between the two.
“You’ll find a pile of blankets in the corner not far from the straw.”
Katie nodded and searched it out. She took the thick, gray blanket on top and spread it out on the straw. Behind her she could hear Tavish speaking in low tones to his cow, though she couldn’t make out his words. She looked around as she sat herself down. This barn was not the monument to crippling poverty she’d seen time and again in Ireland, the working men bent under the weight of want and struggle. Here was a measure of prosperity in the hands of a man who obviously took pride in what he’d built for himself.
She thought of Biddy’s words a few days earlier. Tavish worked hard, tirelessly even. The barn was nothing fancy but was sturdy and cared for. Katie liked knowing that about Tavish.
A moment passed before she realized someone was speaking her name. A moment more and her mind wrapped around the obvious.
“I’m sorry, Tavish. My thoughts were wandering.”
“Wandering far, it would seem.” Katie could hear him, though she could barely make out his silhouette through the slatted stall wall that separated them.
“I was only thinking that my father would very much have liked a barn such as this.”
“He was a farmer, was he?”
Tavish sat on the stool beside the cow. Katie could see enough to tell that much. And she could hear the still-familiar sound of milk splashing into a metal bucket. She found an added measure of comfort talking to someone she didn’t have to look in the eye. It was almost like talking to her own self.
“He was a farmer,” she answered. “Until The Famine.”
“Aye.” ’Twas a sound of complete understanding. Tavish’s family had themselves fled Ireland during the height of The Hunger. “The Bad Times drove many people from farming. I suspect your history has a landlord in it somewhere.”
“It seems every poor Irishman’s history involves a landlord,” Katie said, then thought on Joseph and his role in this valley. She liked knowing he at least tried to be fair-minded and merciful. “We hadn’t money enough to pay our rent. The landlord sent his agent along with the local lawman to our home late at night after we’d gone to bed.”
“In the middle of the night? I’d imagine your father argued against that.”
“He wasn’t given the chance.” Katie breathed deep, telling herself she’d not be overcome by yet more memories. “They came with torches and set fire to the roof. They didn’t even wake us first.”
The milking stopped. Tavish muttered a Gaelic curse, the very one Katie had heard from her father that night.
“Something woke Mother. The fire must have been burning for some time. The whole roof was glowing, and the smoke so thick I could hardly see the rungs on the ladder when I climbed down from the loft. She and Father grabbed blankets as we rushed out. I—” She’d been given charge of Eimear. She nearly said as much to Tavish, but the words would not come. Katie hadn’t admitted to a living soul since leaving Cornagillagh that she’d ever had a little sister. She’d run with Eimear to a tree at a safe distance from the burning house and told her strictly to stay put. Then she’d turned back. “I went back inside.”
“Begorra, Katie! What were you thinking?”
“I went back for my father’s fiddle.” She’d been foolish to do so, but she’d also been panicked, frightened clear out of her mind. “He played it every night. Every night. Leaving it behind would have . . . would have felt like leaving a bit of him behind to burn up in that house.” Her throat thickened and her heart ached at the thought of those terrifying moments. “’Twas foolish, I know, looking back, but I had to. He played that fiddle every day. He taught me to play on that fiddle. I simply couldn’t leave it there.”
“You’re fortunate you got out with your life.”
Every time she allowed her thoughts to dwell on that night, Katie swore she could smell burning thatch again. It filled her even as she sat there in the calm of Tavish’s barn. Once more she felt the heat of the fire. She ran with bare feet across the dirt floor, glowing embers dropping like shooting stars from the roof above. Her eyes stung. Her heart punched a fearful rhythm against her ribs. Katie grabbed the fiddle from its usual place beneath her parents’ bed. For just a moment she’d thought to climb under there as well to escape the fire raining down.
She ran, fiddle case clasped to her. Thatch dropped in burning heaps on all sides of her. Mounds of it covered the only path out. So she ran through the fire itself. The flames seared her feet and set the back of her nightgown smoldering. Huge clumps of the roof came down as she rushed out of the house. The heavy thatch blew cinders and smoldering bits of itself out the open door in an enormous explosion of sparks, knocking her to the ground.
She’d la
in there, crying as she listened to the merciless crackle of fire consuming her home, gasping for air as pain radiated from her feet and legs and back. She’d saved her father’s fiddle, but the deed had left deep scars.
“Is that the same fiddle you had when we rode into town with you?” Tavish asked.
“Aye. The same.”
He’d begun milking again. The rhythmic thwank of each stream of milk set a soothing tempo her heart tried to slow enough to meet. ’Twasn’t rushed nor forceful but quiet and constant. Katie focused on the sound.
“Do you carry it as a reminder of your father or as something to play?”
Katie hadn’t given it a lot of thought. She hadn’t allowed herself to. “Both, I suppose.” She did, in fact, think of her father every time she played.
She wove her fingers together, setting her clasped hands on her lap. Though she’d shared more of her history lately than she ever had before, the telling hadn’t grown easier. “My father was a fine fiddler. One of the best in all of Donegal, many swore.”
Tavish stepped out of the cow stall and poured his bucket of milk into a tall, metal can sitting not far distant. He crossed close to where she sat and leaned against the nearest stall, facing her. “Did your father give you the fiddle because it meant so much to you?”
Katie tried to take in a breath, but it stuck. Father hadn’t given her the fiddle as a token of her bravery or her love of the music he played on it. He hadn’t given it to her in memory of the hours he’d spent teaching her to play.
Truth be told, he hadn’t given it to her at all.
“I’m sorry, Katie.” Tavish sat down beside her. “I should have realized speaking of his fiddle would make you miss him.”
If only that was what weighed on her heart. It seemed every memory of home and family came tinged with regrets and guilt.
“I have my grandfather’s pocket watch,” Tavish said. “He gave it to my oldest brother when we left Ireland, and my brother gave it to me.”
Katie grasped at the change in topic, hoping her mind would make the shift as well. “That was kind of Ian to give it to you.”
Longing for Home: A Proper Romance Page 22