Longing for Home: A Proper Romance

by Eden, Sarah M.

  Katie looked over to see just who Tavish was speaking to. There stood Joseph, halfway out his door.

  “Our Katie has decided to stay!” Tavish shouted loudly enough that even the Red Road must have heard him.

  Joseph certainly did. He smiled back at them. Even from that distance, Katie fancied she saw honest relief in his eyes. Who could have imagined she would ever have found a place where she was wanted as much as she was in Hope Springs?

  “Come on, then, Sweet Katie.” Tavish tugged her by the hand, pulling her across the bridge.

  “Just where are we going?”

  “I’ve an enormous family, love, and they’ll all be dancing jigs of joy to hear you won’t be leaving us.”

  Jigs of joy. Good heavens, what a lovely thought. She joined her free hand with the one he held, clasping his warm, strong fingers. He meant to court her. To court her properly. Tears mingled with her contented smile, but they were tears of relief and happiness this time.

  He looked back at her and, on the instant, halted his steps. They’d not even traveled as far as his granny’s house. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  She smiled ever broader. “Not anything. I am simply very happy.”

  “As am I, my Sweet Katie.” He put his arms around her, his hands resting at the middle of her back. “Very, very happy.”

  Katie put a single hand to his cheek, relishing the feel of his face beneath her fingers. She could grow used to such a thing. Tavish held her close, filling her with warmth and flutterings.

  She smiled from deep inside, happier than she remembered being in a long time. Something in his sparkling eyes brought heat to her cheeks.

  “I’ve thought about kissing you for weeks and weeks, Katie Macauley.”

  Her heart made a valiant attempt to jump straight out of her ribs. Her gaze dropped of its own accord to his upturned lips. “I wish you’d just done it, Tavish, rather than merely thinking on it.”

  The mischievous grin he wore grew. “Take a moment, then, to prepare yourself sweetheart, because I’m done thinking.”

  He leaned close, his lips as near to touching hers as possible without actually doing so. He kept very still. She could feel his breath against her mouth. She brushed her thumb along his cheek, closing her eyes as she memorized that moment.

  His fingers splayed across her back, holding her to him. He lightly brushed his lips once over hers, then again. Her pulse strummed through every inch of her.

  At last he kissed her quite thoroughly, and she melted into him. Her arms wrapped about his neck as naturally as anything.

  Tavish trailed kisses from her mouth to her temple before resting his cheek against hers. “Courting you, my Sweet Katie, is going to be a pleasure, indeed.”

  She turned her head a bit, just enough to look into his face. His gaze met hers. The smile he gave her turned her knees weak all over again. She kissed his cheek, then leaned her forehead against his jaw.

  For the first time since her childhood, perhaps in all her life, she felt truly and deeply hopeful. She’d spent the past eighteen years so entirely alone. Home had ever been a distant goal, something she only dreamed of finding again.

  But it was there in a town torn by its own history. It was there among people who had embraced her as family. And it was there in the arms of a man who had willingly given up everything for the chance to have her in his life.

  Her troubles were far from over, life far from settled. Hope Springs hadn’t found the way of peace. She yet had a father to mourn and a past that in many ways still haunted her, perhaps always would.

  But in that moment, Katie knew she had, indeed, found home.

  Chapter One

  However long the day, night must eventually fall. Katie Macauley knew that truth well. For every bit of joy she’d known, life had served her an ever-increasing portion of pain and grieving. Her Irish heart was just stubborn enough to keep going despite it all and just foolish enough to believe someday the balance would tip in her favor.

  Finding a home amongst her displaced countrymen in a tiny town far from nowhere in the dry and unforgiving vastness of the American West seemed a fine argument in favor of optimism. Logic told her the odds of that happening were far too slim to be anything but a gift of fate. And yet the town of Hope Springs wasn’t without its problems, a great many problems, in fact.

  “Michael, bring the butter crock, lad. We’re eating without your father if he’s not here in another five minutes.” Biddy, Katie’s dearest friend in all the world, gave her a look of utter exasperation. “I can’t imagine what’s kept that man in town so long. He and his brother had best return with a broken axle or a three-legged horse to explain their lateness.”

  Katie set out the last of the dinner plates. She’d been invited to have her evening meal with Biddy and her family, an offer she appreciated more than any of them realized. Though she worked for a family who treated her with kindness and had the heart of a wonderful man—Biddy’s husband’s brother, in fact—she often felt alone.

  “Put the spoon in the colcannon, Mary,” Biddy told her little girl. “Then fetch the soda bread, if you will.”

  Colcannon and soda bread. ’Twas a bit of the Emerald Isle thousands of miles from Ireland.

  Biddy crossed to the narrow front window. “What is keeping that man?”

  Katie joined her there, looking out at the dimming light of dusk. “Ian realizes he’s late and knows you’re likely cross as a bag of cats. I’ll warrant he’s staying away out of fear of you.”

  Biddy gave a firm nod. “And well he should, the troublesome man. My supper’s a full thirty minutes late from waiting for him. He’ll need to butter me up sweet if he means to be forgiven for this night’s troubles.”

  Katie smiled. She knew her friend too well to believe she was truly angry. Indeed, Katie could see Biddy was more concerned than anything else. She and her Ian had the happiest marriage Katie had ever seen, though her experience of such things was admittedly limited.

  “Never fear, Biddy. Tavish’ll round him up and bring him home to make his apologies.”

  “And not a moment too soon, it seems.” Biddy looked back toward the rough-hewn table, where little Mary was carefully setting down the plate of soda bread. “Thank you, love. Now you and Michael go wash your hands.”

  “With soap?” Mary clearly hoped the answer was no.

  “Aye. Soap and plenty of it.” Biddy eyed both her children. “On with the two of you, then.” She shook her head at their retreating backs. “I swear to you, Katie, they’d eat out in the muddy fields if I’d let them.”

  “And return to the house so filthy you could toss them against a wall and they’d stick,” Katie added.

  Biddy smiled, as Katie hoped she would. But just as quickly as the lightness appeared, it faded. Biddy turned back to the window. “Where is that man? It’s not his way to be late.”

  Katie set a reassuring hand on Biddy’s harm. “He and Tavish likely ran into Seamus or Eoin or Matthew and are busy telling wildly exaggerated tales of the glories of their pasts.”

  Biddy gave a single, quick laugh. “Men. I swear they’ve tongues that could clip a hedge, so sharpened are they on their own teeth.”

  “Indeed.”

  Biddy set one hand on her hip and rubbed at her forehead with the other. Her gaze lingered at the window.

  “I am certain all’s well.” Katie spoke with all the conviction she could muster, but Biddy’s worries were beginning to settle heavy on her as well. Tavish had left over an hour earlier and could easily have gone to town and back in that time.

  As if making a finely timed entrance, the turning of wagon wheels and the pounding of hooves sounded from the yard.

  “At last,” Biddy breathed and made her way to the door. She pulled it open. “The two of you had best—” Biddy’s eyes opened in shock, her words ending abruptly.

  Katie moved swiftly to the doorway. Tavish was climbing over the back of the wagon bench to the bed. His mo
uth was drawn in a tense line, his eyes snapping with something very much like anger and also a great deal of fear.

  “What’s happened?” Katie called out.

  “Come help me,” he answered. “Quick, Katie.”

  Biddy stepped out with her.

  “Just Katie.” Tavish’s voice was insistent, sharp. “Just Katie.”

  Alone she moved quickly over the short distance to the waiting wagon. Tavish had made his way to the back and offered a hand to help her up.

  “What’s happened?” she asked again, her voice low.

  Ian was nowhere to be seen. The wagon was empty except for a few crates and a messy pile of blankets.

  “Why’ve you returned without Ian?”

  “I haven’t.” He spoke too solemnly for Katie’s peace of mind.

  Tavish took hold of the nearest corner of the blanket and tossed it back.

  Heavens above. ’Twas Ian beneath the blanket. Ian, bloodied and bruised and unmoving. Katie’s very breath rushed from her. Saints preserve us.

  “Keep calm, Sweet Katie. Biddy’ll need you to be strong.”

  Katie struggled to find air enough to speak. “Is he dead?” she whispered.

  “He was still breathing when I found him. But he’s in a bad way.”

  He was, indeed. The man’s face was swollen, discolored. She’d never seen anyone lie so utterly still. “Had he an accident with the wagon, or was he thrown from a horse or something?”

  Tavish shook his head. The man generally wore smiles and mirthful twinkles in his deep blue eyes. Katie was not at all accustomed to seeing him somber.

  “I’d wager my entire farm he was set upon by a mob.”

  Katie’s heart fell clear to her feet. “A mob? Good heavens. Who’d do such a thing?”

  And yet, she knew the answer. Hope Springs was ten years deep in a feud. Half the town was Irish. The other half hated the Irish with a passion. So, the Irish had opted to return the sentiment and hate their neighbors with equal fervor.

  She set her hand lightly at Ian’s heart. His chest rose and fell faintly, as though his breath was hardly there. “I’m afeared for him, Tavish.”

  “And it’s right you should be. He needs doctoring.”

  Katie glanced quickly at the doorway. Little Mary and Michael had joined their mother. The three of them looked on with fearful expressions.

  Merciful heavens. Someone had beaten the father of these children to within an inch of his life. Beyond, perhaps.

  “This is more of the feud, then, is it?”

  “Aye.” Tavish sounded neither surprised nor horrified. Clearly this sort of thing had happened before.

  “How bad is it likely to become?”

  He set his hand lightly on her arm, his eyes heavy with worry. “How bad? Oh, Sweet Katie, this is only the beginning.”

  Discussion Questions about

  Longing for Home

  1. Katie firmly believes her refusal to go to England to work in the factories led to her sister’s death and her family’s losing their land. In what ways is she correct? In what ways is she wrong? How might her life and that of her family have turned out differently if she had gone to England as her father wanted her to?

  2. Katie began working as a servant at the age of eight and spent the eighteen years that followed very much alone. She didn’t have family or anyone else to truly care for her and help her make sense of the terrible tragedies she had passed through. How might her perspective on her losses have been different if she hadn’t been left alone to sort through all that had happened?

  3. Katie wonders, when watching Emma’s aching need for her father’s affection, if any father realizes how important his opinion of his daughter truly is. How can a daughter’s relationship with her father influence the woman she becomes and the choices she makes? What other people play a crucial role in shaping the lives and beliefs of children? How can we be better influences in the lives of the children we interact with?

  4. In recounting her reasons for keeping her father’s fiddle, Katie confesses she hoped he would come back for it so she could see him again. What reasons, whether noble or ignoble, might her father have had for never returning? What reasons might he have had for remaining so silent over the years, not even sending so much as a greeting?

  5. Katie says, “No one was a child after The Famine. We were nothing but cobbled-together pieces of the children we once were.” Why, and in what ways, can traumatic experiences be more devastating to the children who pass through them than to the adults? Conversely, why and in what ways do children often prove to be more resilient than adults?

  6. When Katie was a child, starving and homeless, she was told that bad things wouldn’t be happening to her if she were a good person. Why do some people believe that bad things happen only to bad people despite enormous evidence to the contrary? What might convince someone to say such a thing to a person in the midst of struggles? How do such unfeeling and unkind declarations add to a person’s suffering?

  7. Tavish and Joseph each view the other as having the advantage in courting Katie. In what ways might each of them be correct about the other? In what ways might each be incorrect? Is Joseph right not to let his feelings for Katie show, or ought he to tell her what is in his heart? Why do you think Tavish doesn’t talk about his late fiancée? What might that tell us about his internal conflicts?

  8. Tavish and Joseph are both vying for Katie’s heart, though she doesn’t fully realize it. What does each have to offer that she needs? Who do you think is the better match for Katie? Why?

  9. Katie has spent her life in pursuit of her father’s forgiveness as well as that of her dead sister. Yet Tavish tells her that the person whose forgiveness she needs most is her own. Why is the act of forgiving ourselves often the hardest of all? How might the restitution Katie has always planned to make help her find the forgiveness she seeks? Would making those sacrifices be enough for her to find peace?

  10. In her mind, Katie has always been on the road back to her home in Ireland in search of forgiveness and the family and home she lost there. What else has she been looking for over the years, perhaps without even realizing it? In what ways has she actually found in Hope Springs what she has been seeking?

  11. In the end, Katie chooses to remain in Hope Springs but reaches out to her father in a letter. Why was this the best choice for her? What difficulties or regrets might this decision cause for her later on? Do you think her father will respond? In what way?

  12. Music has always been a balm for Katie. It is a reminder of home and happier times, as well as a soothing and calming influence. What things in your life give you comfort in times of sorrow or struggle?

  Let’s Talk History

  Land in Ireland in the nineteenth century was owned and worked under a centuries-old tenant system. The families who worked and lived on the land didn’t own it. Though many had lived in the same home on the same plot for generations, they could be evicted with little or no notice. The crops produced on all but the tiniest pieces of that land belonged to the landlord. As a result, the poor in Ireland depended almost entirely on the potatoes they could grow in the small plot allowed them for their personal use.

  When potato blight spread throughout Europe in the 1840s, only in Ireland did the loss of this single crop lead to widespread starvation. The suffering of the Irish, more or less ignored by the government, combined with the abundance of healthy crops shipped out of Ireland to foreign markets, a death toll estimated at over one million, and a desperate exodus of more than a million Irish in the few short years of The Famine made this time in Irish history a rallying cry, one recalled decades later in the uprising of the twentieth century that would eventually lead to Irish independence.

  1. How might feelings of resentment toward the indifference of their government, the perception that the Irish, as a people, were not heard by their own government, and the seemingly unreachable goal of freedom have influenced the decision of the Irish fleeing the f
amine to settle in the United States rather than in other destinations?

  2. How might the tenant system in Ireland have influenced the desire of Irish immigrants in the United States to seek out land in the American West?

  When the starving and desperate throngs of poor Irish immigrants arrived in the United States, they found themselves in a country unprepared for such an enormous and sudden influx of people. Their sheer numbers (by 1850, more than half the people of Boston’s North End were Irish-born), extreme poverty, lack of resources, and constant new arrivals led to widespread resentment, discrimination, and even hatred.

  For the newly arrived Irish, jobs were scarce, housing conditions were often unsanitary and inhumane, and communicable disease claimed lives at alarming rates. The immigrants worked the most menial jobs when they could find them, earning wages that could not possibly lift them from their desperate poverty. The story of the Irish in America during this time was all too often lacking in hope.

  3. America had long been seen as the land of opportunity, where a person could overcome hardship and poverty to live a life of comfort. What must it have been like for the Irish immigrants, having just escaped starvation in their homeland, to find waiting for them across the Atlantic harsh conditions and fewer opportunities than they expected?

  4. Irish uprisings during the many centuries of British rule were plentiful, though unsuccessful. The Irish viewed their American counterparts as sympathetic comrades who had shared their feeling of being oppressed by a government in which they were not truly represented. No doubt Irish immigrants who arrived during the nineteenth century, having suffered under what they clearly felt was the cold indifference of their government, expected to find empathy and a welcome acceptance among those who had overthrown the very rule they themselves were suffering under. Instead, they felt generally unwanted, unwelcome, and often despised. What kind of responses and feelings must this reception have engendered in the Irish?

  5. The United States was a relatively young country at the time of the mass exodus from Ireland. How might the sudden and then constant arrival of so many people in such desperate need have alarmed citizens of the United States?