“I’ve slept in worse places,” he insisted. “The chair will be fine for me.”
“No, maybe we can cast lots—”
A brewing disagreement that had little to do with fair play and everything to do with a man and a woman, disguised with excruciating courtesy, was interrupted by a knock at the door. Aidan reached it in two long strides. In the hallway stood three African serving women wearing white aprons over their plain dresses and colorful turbanlike scarves on their heads. They all bobbed quick curtsies upon seeing him. Between them they carried a round wooden tub and pushed a cart bearing a tray of redolent food, all of which they brought in without a word. The tub was put in a corner behind a dressing screen.
In a moment another serving girl followed, carrying two heavy buckets of steaming water which she poured into the little tub. She made another trip downstairs to refill the buckets. When she’d emptied these, she said to Farrell, “This water right off the stove, Mistress. You let it cool some, else you look like a boiled crawdad.”
Farrell didn’t know what a crawdad was, but she supposed that it must be red.
“Yes, thank you,” she said, peeking behind the screen at the tub. She dipped her hands in the hot water and washed them with a bar of soap tucked inside a folded towel that sat on the floor. As soon as she ate, she would finally have a chance to wash from head to foot, including her hair, which was stiff with salt spray.
Just as the women left the room, she emerged from behind the screen with red but clean hands. She and Aidan prepared to eat the first really nourishing food they’d had in months.
“Well, now, what would we be having here?” Aidan asked, pulling up the footstool to the cart. Farrell brought the chair from the desk. He lifted napkins and looked into covered dishes, inhaling all of the aromas. “Some kind of rice with other bits mixed in, I think, bread, butter, wine—”
Just as he was about to fall upon the meal, Farrell interjected. “Shame on ye, Aidan. Don’t you think it would be fitting to give thanks for getting here in one piece and for the food?”
Aidan gave her a sheepish smile, feeling a trifle guilty. “Aye, of course.” Women, he’d recognized long ago, were probably all that kept men from living a mean, crude existence in caves, and going about unshaven and unshriven.
“Bail na gcúig arán agus an dá iasc,” she began in a low, clear voice, “A roinn Dia ar an gcúig mhíle duine, Rath ón Rí a rinne an roinn, Go dtige ar ár gcuid is as ár gcomhroinn.” The blessing of the five loaves and two fishes that God shared with the five thousand, the bounty of the King who made the sharing, come upon our food and all who share it.
She spooned the spicy-smelling rice dish onto their plates while he poured the wine.
“What d’ye think this is?” she asked, piercing a crescent-shaped pink morsel with her fork. She nibbled on it and smiled. “Mmm, it’s very good. Would you like a taste?” she asked, holding out the fork so that he could pluck the remainder from it.
Instead, he leaned forward and took it directly into his mouth, craving the taste of both her and the unknown delicacy. “Aye,” he said, holding her gaze, “delicious.”
A tiny smile, as fleeting as a fairy in the mist, crossed her face before she turned her attention back to her plate.
“I’d have no trouble getting used to this,” he said as he slathered butter on a chunk of soft white bread. “Servants to cook and wait on us—I’d like that fine.”
She paused with a large, pink shrimp speared on her fork. “Ye can’t mean to say you’d want to own slaves!”
He frowned. “God, no! I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. It’s just not right. No one can own another person.” He took a swallow of wine. “But a body can hire servants and pay them. Like—well, like Lord Cardwell.”
Farrell stared at him. “Like Lord Cardwell! Mother of God, that’s no better than owning slaves. Aidan, have you taken leave of your senses altogether?”
He wondered the same. Why in hell had that name come to mind? “I meant it only as an example. After all, he was the only one in our part of the county who had enough money for such a luxury. I didn’t mean like Lord Cardwell himself.”
Her green eyes flashed fire. “Do ye know what life was like at Greensward Manor for the servants? Noel Cardwell was always grabbing at me, a pat on the rump, a tweak on the chin. Twice he tried to coax me into his bedchamber before that day I ran away. With hard work and a smile, he said, I would gain privilege and move up the servants’ ranks. Oh, I knew his drift, well enough. A smile. Bah! I guess I found out what he meant by that.”
No, Aidan hadn’t known the details of that day at the manor house. A rumble of anger stirred in him like a sleeping wolf disturbed. “Did ye tell Liam about it on your visits home?”
She looked away. “No. I mean yes, but . . . ”
“But it didn’t trouble him?”
“It did,” she insisted, and made a great fuss over polishing her teaspoon with her napkin. “But he didn’t think it was worth getting into a state over. He didn’t think Noel would actually—” She stopped, obviously realizing what a bad light she cast on Liam.
“I don’t suppose he could get into a state over anything. Did ye tell anyone else about it?”
“Michael knew.” Now she took to serving him more food from the dishes on the tray. “He said we’d all benefit from, well, from the association.”
Aidan felt his blood begin to simmer in his veins. He drummed the side of his thumb on the edge of the cart. “Oh, he did, aye? Did no one defend your honor?” His own brother had shrugged off Cardwell’s degenerate proposition and her had brother encouraged it.
She looked up at him. “My honor doesn’t need defending. I’m not a timid milkmaid, ye know.”
“No, you aren’t. But now you know how black some men’s hearts can be.”
“We’ve left that all behind in Ireland, haven’t we? The Cardwells and then Michael is—well, he no one’s problem any longer.” There was no accusation in the statement. Instead, Aidan heard resignation and regret.
They finished their meal without much more conversation. Aidan pushed the footstool back into place and said, “I’m going to find out if there’s a place to get a bath around here.”
She stood and stacked the dishes on the tray. “Oh, but there are just the two of us. The water will hold.”
He knelt beside the small bundle of his belongings and found the clean clothes he’d saved for their arrival in America. “That’s all right, lass. You’ll want your privacy, and I just want to soak my old bones.” What he didn’t want was to sit on the other side of that dressing screen, listening to her splash water over her pale, slender limbs while he imagined the damp warmth of her body as she soaped and rinsed. Just thinking about it sent an aching desire shooting through him to settle in his groin.
When he caught her gaze, he thought he saw a glimmer of something in those clear eyes that mirrored his own craving. But, no, that wasn’t possible. He was just being daft. Farrell barely tolerated him as it was. On top of that, she was an untried lass who would be shy and innocent of the ways of men and women together.
In any case, it didn’t matter. He’d made a promise to himself and he intended to keep it. He would not bed Farrell until they reached the place that would be their home. It might be modest in the beginning, but soon they’d have a wonderful house, just as he’d promised her.
“Will ye put the cart in the hallway on your way out?” she asked.
He gave her a smile and a little salute. “Keep the door locked until I get back, aye? And don’t answer it if someone knocks. I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
She nodded as he pushed the cart out of the room. He heard it close behind him, and the lock click into place.
That was good, he thought, turning away with a gusty sigh. Knowing that she would be stripped to the skin and lounging in a hot bath would most certainly make him forget his manners and his good intentions if he remained.
* * *
<
br /> This was the closest to heaven that Farrell had ever been. Long after she’d scrubbed off the dirt and washed her hair—and wasn’t it a joy to feel clear water sluicing through the strands?—she lingered in the tub.
At Clare’s house, bathing had always been a hurried event, with the whole family using the same water because toting and boiling it was so much work. A person had to get in and get out as soon as possible.
But this—she let the water cascade from her cupped hand—this bath was just for her. From beyond the open windows, faint music floated up to her, and the last of the evening sun, golden and mellow, gave everything a warm glow.
The clean, white cake of soap she’d been given was embossed with some kind of writing, French she thought, and it smelled wonderfully sweet. She didn’t know that soap like this existed, she was so accustomed to the harsh, homemade lye soap they’d always used. Sometimes they’d even had to barter for it because they didn’t often have pork or beef fat to render. The lye soap took off the dirt, but it often took off a layer of skin as well. This made her feel sinfully pampered.
It was a completely new sensation.
A little guilt crept into her heart that Aidan had left to go find his own bath, but not so much that she couldn’t enjoy this. It was probably just as well that he’d gone. She would have felt very inhibited and self-conscious, knowing that he waited on the other side of the painted screen, and she would have been compelled to hurry through her washing, as she had at Clare’s.
But more than that, tonight he’d caught her looking at him, considering him in a way that confused her. She didn’t love him. She still loved Liam, foolish or not. But there was something so very male about Aidan O’Rourke that she simply could not ignore. Other women had fallen prey to his charms, but not her. At least not until recently. Even now, she felt a restless awakening within her that made her long for his return and wish that he could join her in the tub. It was an immodest thought, one that popped into her head without warning or invitation. Lord, he might have that effect on other women, but she hadn’t expected to feel it herself.
At last, when the room had purpled with shadows and twilight, and her fingers were as wrinkled as a dried-out potato, she rose from the cold bath water and dried herself with the towel. After she wrung the water from her hair, it hung in long damp plaits down her back.
Then she realized that her nightgown was tied in the square of old sacking that served as her bag, and she’d left it beside the bed. She peeked around the edge of the dressing screen, as if expecting to find someone there. Of course that was silly. She was still alone. Wrapping the towel around her torso, she lighted the two lamps in the room. Then she walked to the bedside and bent to rifle through her things. It wasn’t as if she owned so many possessions, but she had to take everything out to find the blessed thing. The towel worked its way loose and fell in a puddle around her feet. At last, she spied the nightgown’s long sleeve and pulled on it.
At that moment a key turned in the lock and the door opened. She looked up to see Aidan standing in the doorway. For a moment they were frozen in the tableau: she poised beside the bed, and he still gripping the doorknob. At last she let out a squeak and made frantic grabs for both the towel and the nightgown, but couldn’t seem to catch either. He stood there, an expression of almost comical surprise on his face, staring at her as if she were a leg of lamb at Easter dinner and he had not yet broken his fast.
“For the love of St. Patrick, turn around!” she snapped.
Jolted into action, he leaped back into the hall and shut the door.
Farrell pulled the nightgown over her head, and a thin thing it was too. On the ship, she’d always slept in her clothes, so modesty hadn’t been so much of a problem. Now she grabbed her shawl to throw around herself. The night was far too warm for it, especially with the furious blush scalding her face and head, but she had nothing else to put on.
“All right,” she called, cinching the shawl tight. “You can come in now.”
Aidan poked just his profile through a narrow crack in the door as if expecting a shoe to be thrown at him. “Ye’re sure.”
“Yes, yes, come in.” He edged his way in and closed the door behind him. She stood rooted to the spot beside the bed, feeling as awkward as she ever had in her life.
She had trouble looking him in the face, but when she did, she saw that he was blushing too, scarlet all the way to his hairline. He was washed and shaved, his hair still damp.
“I’m sorry I didn’t knock. At least ye didn’t scream. I don’t know how we would have been explaining that.”
She faced him with her arms crossed over her chest and her chin out. “Aye, well, I guess you’ll think to knock next time.”
“I’m glad ye didn’t have a pistol. I’d now be searching the corridor for my brains or my manhood.” He gave her a wry grin. “Although you might be thinking both reside in the same place.”
Her arms dropped to her sides. He was impossible! she thought, unable to stifle a hoot of laughter. He laughed with her, and for the moment, the tension was broken.
“Ah, it’s good to hear you laugh, Farrell, lass.” He walked around the bed to take her upper arms in his big hands. “It’s like music, ye know?”
“Is that more of your blarney, Aidan?” she asked, trying to ignore his clean, soapy smell, mixed with a bit of bay rum and the scent of him that she’d come to know so well.
He gave her another smile, a soft one, and said, “Nay, girl. It’s the truth.”
Whether it was or not, it was nice to hear.
* * *
And wasn’t this the finest form of torture God had ever visited upon one of His mortals? Aidan wondered in the warm darkness. Here he sat in a chair with his feet propped on a stool, dressed only in his underwear and listening to the night sounds of New Orleans—a distant piano, soft laughter from the street, a carriage rolling past. Meanwhile, his wife—a wife in name only—lay in a bed not more than three steps from him, and he dared not touch her. God was truly having a fine joke at his expense because he’d been allowed to see this wife, a woman he’d craved for years, wearing nothing but her long russet hair. Those creamy arms and legs, full, rounded breasts with rose-pink nipples, and a dark copper triangle at the apex of her thighs— He pounded a closed fist on the arm of the chair, once, partly from frustration, and partly to distract his thoughts. The promise he’d made to himself the morning of Deirdre Connagher’s burial at sea had come back to test his resolve as soon as he and Farrell first set foot in this room.
Maybe it would be all right if they made love. Women didn’t get pregnant every time they lay with their husbands, he tried to reason. Then ruefully he had to admit that Irish women seemed to. The street lamps below provided enough light for him to make out her soft silhouette in the bed. He wished he had the right to share it with her. But beyond his promise, he knew that if he was ever to win her regard, it must happen in slow steps. Farrell was not a woman who would take to being bullied, and that wasn’t his way to treat women in any case.
At the public bath he’d visited earlier, he was asked if he’d be requiring more than just the bathing facilities. Had he been a single man, he would have taken advantage of that offer. Even now he wondered briefly why he’d chosen to remain faithful to this marriage when he knew that Farrell was, in her heart, married to his brother.
He shifted in the chair, trying to find a more comfortable position so that he might forget the hard, heavy ache low in his belly. Finally, he got up and searched quietly through his kit and located the flask of his da’s poteen. If he couldn’t satisfy his hunger for Farrell, maybe he could put it to sleep with a dose of whiskey. He uncorked the bottle, took a large swallow, and welcomed the merciful fire of the “angel’s tears” as it slid down his throat. Tomorrow, he vowed, tomorrow he would learn about getting them to New York or Boston, somewhere permanent where they could put down roots.
Eventually, his tight muscles began to loosen and he dozed, drift
ing in and out of a hazy landscape of half-dreams, where a woodland goddess with a flowing gown and two yards of red hair succored the land with grace and goodness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The next morning, Aidan woke in the chair as sore and stiff-muscled as an old man. The day already seemed hot, and then he realized that Farrell’s shawl covered him from waist to mid-calf.
She was up and dressed, and sat at the little writing desk, scratching a pen across a sheet of paper. Obviously, she had covered him, not wanting to look at a man in his drawers. He watched her for a moment as her hand moved busily across the surface. Now and then she paused to dip the pen in the inkwell.
“What are you writing there?”
She glanced up at him, a bit startled. “I’m sending a letter to the family back home to tell them we’ve come safe this far.” She paused to look at the lines she’d written. “I wish there was a way to learn what has happened to them. With us moving around like Romanies, it will be months and months before we know.”
“We did the best thing we could for them.” Absently, he smoothed the nap of the worn upholstered chair arm with the palm of his hand. “We did the only thing we could. All we can do is hope that they’re well, and have faith that they are.” Hope was what had sustained Aidan through the dark times and even now kept him looking forward instead of back. But he was more inclined to action than to trust in wishing. Still, it was all he could think of to tell Farrell, and it was all either of them could do now.
She tapped the end of the pen against her chin. “I suppose you’re right. But I’ll feel much better when I’m someplace where I can have a letter from them.”
“Then I’d best be up and about. We’ll find a place to get breakfast, then I’ll start asking around about passage North.” He threw off the shawl and Farrell returned her attention to her letter, carefully keeping her eyes on the paper. Her cheeks had bloomed with a very becoming pink, and he smiled as he passed her turned back.
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