Sweet Fire

by Jo Goodman

“Can’t I?” he asked. He raised his gun and leveled it at Irish’s head. “Don’t think I won’t do it. There’re people enough at Ballaburn who’d believe Irish would blow out his own brains. That’s the kind of pain he’s been in since the bushrangers put him in that chair.”

  Suddenly Lydia knew the truth. It was so clear to her in that moment she wondered why she hadn’t known, or at least suspected, long ago. “It was never bushrangers,” she said. “It was you. You’re the one who put Irish in that chair.”

  Irish saw the truth of it in Brigham’s face and in the reflexive jerk of his head that he could not control. “You bloody whoreson!” Irish’s hands gripped the arms of his chair and he raised himself up, pain twisting his features. “I’ll kill you myself!” Forgetting his infirmity, one of Irish’s arms shot out to wrest the gun from Brig. Immediately he fell backward against the chair. It began to roll away from him and before he could steady it or himself, Irish collapsed helplessly on the floor.

  While Brig made no move toward Irish, Lydia ran for him, skirting the desk and dropping to her knees beside him. There were tears in his eyes, more humiliation than pain, and Lydia realized that Brig had broken the proud spirit that was Irish.

  “Get away from him,” Brig told Lydia. “Leave him. He needs to remember how helpless he’s really been all these years. Even before he was a cripple in body he needed others to do his work for him. He couldn’t have found you without me, Lydia. I was the one he meant to send in the beginning and I should have gone alone.” He gestured to Lydia to move aside again, waving his gun at her this time. When she didn’t move quickly enough to suit him, Brig leaned forward, grabbed her forearm, and forcibly dragged her toward him. She tripped, the toe of her shoe catching Irish in the thigh as she was pulled across his body. Wincing at the thought of causing him more pain, Lydia struggled with Brigham as she tried to attend to her father again.

  Brig hauled her against him, securing her with one arm held tightly beneath her breasts and making it difficult for her to draw a breath. His gun was once more leveled at Irish. “See?” he asked, kicking Irish hard in the thigh. “It doesn’t hurt him at all there.” He kicked him again, this time in the side just above his waist. “He can feel that. Can’t you, Irish?”

  Lydia jammed her elbow into Brigham’s middle and heard him suck in his breath. “And you can feel that!” She struck him again before he could recover.

  “Bitch!” He pushed Lydia away from him so that she fell against the desk. He removed the gun that was wedged between his trousers and his abdomen before it jabbed at him a third time or fired accidentally. He tossed it away, saw it land harmlessly on the deep leather armchair, and hauled Lydia back in his arms. “Let’s discuss our wedding plans upstairs, shall we?”

  Cursing, Irish pushed himself to a sitting position. “Don’t you touch her, Brig!”

  One corner of Brig’s mouth lifted in a parody of a pitying smile. “Or what, Irish?” He waited for a reply and when none came, he laughed softly and prodded Lydia out of the room at gunpoint.

  He was still smiling when he forced Lydia into his old room at Ballaburn. He didn’t bother to shut the door, believing the threat from his gun was enough to keep Lydia precisely where he wanted her. “There’s no reason you shouldn’t be comfortable,” he said, pointing toward the bed.

  “Go to hell.”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to condemn me,” he said. “You haven’t heard half of what I want to say to you.”

  “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

  “Don’t you?” He reached in his vest pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I was going to read this to you, but then...” He shrugged, starting to put the letter back.

  Even at the distance she stood from Brig, Lydia recognized her father’s handwriting on the envelope. The letter was addressed to her. “That’s mine,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give it to me.”

  Brig shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But if you’ll do as I want, I’ll tell you what it says.”

  Lydia hesitated, looking from Brig to the letter and back to Brig again. She cared far less about the letter than she did about the gun, but nothing was served if Brig should realize it. Moving with obvious reluctance and fear that was not entirely feigned, Lydia went to the four-poster and sat down on the very edge of the bed. “You took the letter from the coach,” she said.

  His tawny eyebrows lifted. “You knew?”

  “Nathan suspected. I wasn’t as certain.”

  “You should have trusted him. He knows me better than anyone. It was difficult to hit on something that would draw him away from Ballaburn without making him suspicious at the outset. The fire worked well.”

  A blessed numbness settled over Lydia. It touched her heart first, which thudded with a dull, steady beat, then her eyes, where there were no tears to blink back. The ache in her throat disappeared as the heavy lethargy spread to her arms and legs and finally her head, weighing her down so that it seemed impossible to move or even want to. It was hard to remember that she wanted the gun. “You’ve always used Nathan to get what you want. Even when you were boys.”

  “He told you how we came to be here, did he?” He laughed shortly, shaking his head at the memory. “Poor Nath. He wasn’t so wise then. He never would have agreed to set out on this adventure if I hadn’t forced it.”

  “So you killed that woman in London.”

  “One whore more or less doesn’t matter. No one mourned the passing of my mother when she took her own life—including me. She left me to make my own way when I was eight. I found her, you know. Her wrists still had ropes on them. I was much older before I realized her last lover had tied her to the bed before he used her. She didn’t bother to take them off before she slashed her wrists.”

  Thinking of the twisted manner in which Brig later honored his mother’s memory, Lydia shivered. “You allowed Nathan to take the blame for what you did.”

  “More than that, actually,” he said without remorse. “I made certain he was arrested. Put the evidence in his shoe that placed him at the whore’s home the night of her death. The truth is, I never meant the whore to die. She came upon me as I was looking over her property. She thought I was a beggar and invited me inside. I didn’t want or need her pity.”

  “So you killed her.”

  For a brief moment a look of helplessness passed across Brig’s face. “It just happened.”

  “Oh, God,” Lydia moaned softly.

  Brig blinked suddenly and the small action seemed to jerk him into the present. “It wasn’t like that with the others,” he said. “I got better at it. No one’s ever known the other suicides were murders.”

  “Nathan knew.”

  “But he couldn’t say anything, could he? Not with his past.” He held up the letter. “It’s important you hear this from me, Lydia. Samuel writes about it, of course, but I wanted you to hear it from me. Your mother killed herself.”

  The numbness Lydia felt everywhere finally extended itself to her brain. She fainted.

  Irish was sweating hard by the time he pulled himself back into his chair. His skin was cold and the gray pallor of his face had deepened. Wheeling himself around the desk, he searched for the gun Brig had tossed and found it on the chair. His hands trembled as he picked it up and checked to be certain it was still loaded. Wiping his brow with his forearm, Irish pushed himself to the staircase, feeling each breath he took as a heavy burning in his chest. At the bottom of the stairs he paused and looked up. The steps rose above him as the face of a mountain might to an able-bodied man. Tucking the gun in his trousers at the small of his back, Irish reached for the newel post and raised himself out of the chair. Using the banister rails and the steps themselves, he began the ascent with his hands and arms, dragging his useless legs behind him.

  Lydia was only unconscious a few minutes, but it was long enough for Brigham to secure her wrists to the posts at the head of the bed. Her initial struggle merely tighte
ned the scarves that had been used to bind her. Her eyes settled on the gun lying on the bedside table, completely out of her reach now.

  Brig leaned forward in his chair, his forearms resting on his thighs. “I know it’s a shock,” he said quietly. “That’s why I wanted to be with you when you heard.”

  Lydia tried to sit up. Her bonds prevented her. “You killed her.”

  “Samuel wrote it was suicide. Perhaps she missed me. I think you suspected Madeline and I were lovers. Apparently she killed herself shortly after my departure. I was sorry to learn of it.”

  Tears gathered in Lydia’s eyes now and Brigham’s face blurred. Her hands curled into fists.

  “You’re probably wishing you had killed me at the Silver Lady,” Brig said. “That’s understandable. It’s difficult to know what’s to be done about you, though. I’m not usually indecisive. For instance, it was not hard at all to know what to do about George Campbell.” Lydia’s short gasp told him that she understood. “Your father didn’t completely trust me, I think. He sent George with me to bring you back to Frisco.” His palms turned upward in a gesture of mock helplessness. “There was an accident during the voyage.”

  He stood and went to the bed, sitting down near Lydia’s waist. For the longest time he didn’t touch her, simply studying her features instead. “You have such an odd little face,” he said. “So plain sometimes, almost beautiful others. But your eyes…your eyes are always magnificent. When you look at me as you’re doing now, I don’t think I mind at all that you hate me.” He lifted one hand and grazed her cheek with the back of it. “Madeline had skin like this. Soft and pure. She was a whore, though. You knew that about her, didn’t you?”

  Staring back at him, refusing to look away, Lydia said nothing.

  “I’d kill you now if I thought I could get away with it,” he said. “But everyone for hundreds of miles knows about Mad Irish, his wager, and his bloody will. I can’t have anything if I’m not married to you.”

  Lydia’s mouth was too dry to spit. She told him to go to hell instead.

  “Irish’s life hangs in the balance,” he said. “Think about that. He’s the last person whose life you can save. You couldn’t help George or your mother or Nathan, but you can help Irish. I have nothing to lose, you see. If you don’t marry me, I can’t have Ballaburn. It doesn’t matter to me then whether Irish dies now of a new wound or later of an old one. I think, though, that it matters to you.”

  Irish pulled himself to the open doorway and drew his gun. He was breathing hard and his heart hammered in his chest. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Untie my daughter.”

  Lydia strained to see Irish. He was lying on the floor, his gun raised with remarkable steadiness. “Brig’s gun is on the table,” she called. “Don’t let him—”

  Irish fired as Brig tipped the table and rolled to the floor. The bullet missed and the gun skidded a few feet. Using the table for cover, Brig reached the revolver. A bullet splintered the wood directly above his head and imbedded harmlessly in the wall behind him. Lydia’s fingers worked frantically on the knotted scarves. She felt one give a fraction just as Brig returned Irish’s fire. The bullet caught Irish in the shoulder and he fell on his back. His entire body shuddered once before he was still. Brig stood up cautiously, his gun held in front of him, and approached Irish slowly.

  The scarf that secured Lydia’s left wrist slipped another knot. She forced her forefinger through the opening, widened it, and when she found she could grasp the loose tail, pulled hard. She saw Irish blink suddenly, and knew that Brigham had seen it, too, when he pulled back the hammer on his gun. With her free hand she flung a pillow at Brigham’s head, screaming to distract him. His hand jerked up, the bullet went wild, and Irish had the moment and range he needed. Grunting with the sheer pain of his effort, Irish raised his revolver and fanned the hammer in quick succession, sending three bullets powerfully into Brigham’s chest.

  Brig staggered backward and collapsed, dead before his body sprawled at the foot of the bed.

  Lydia pulled her feet up sharply as the bed jarred with Brigham’s weight. Only the hem of her gown was caught under him. Bile rising in her throat, Lydia yanked it loose, then worked quickly to free herself from the bedpost as Irish called her name.

  Her eyes wet with tears, Lydia sank to her knees in the hallway beside Irish. She ripped part of her gown to make a bandage for his wounded shoulder.

  “It’s a hell of a thing,” Irish said weakly, trying to raise a smile. “He could have shot me in the leg and I wouldn’t have this pain now.”

  “Hush. Don’t talk. I have to get help for you.” Her tears slipped past her cheeks and fell on Irish’s ashen face. Blood was pumping steadily from his wound and she couldn’t stem the flow.

  “There’s no help for me.” His dark cobalt eyes were sad but resigned. “I’m sorry for most of it, Liddy, but not for wanting to know you. I can’t be sorry for wanting to know my child.”

  Lydia slipped an arm under Irish’s shoulders and raised him so that his head was in her lap. Her fingers stroked his iron-gray hair. “I’m proud to be your daughter, Irish...” She paused. “Father.”

  “Thank you for that,” he whispered. Another of Lydia’s tears touched his face. He smiled because he knew he was forgiven. “I love you.”

  Lydia said the same words and she believed in her heart that he heard them. When her vision cleared the pain was gone from her father’s eyes. She wept softly for her own.

  It was much later that there was noise in the yard, the sound of doors opening and closing, and the rapid tattoo of feet on the staircase. The arms that came around her were strong and steady and familiar. They smelled pungently of smoke. She didn’t ask how or why they were suddenly there, reaching for her, holding her. She accepted them, turned in their loving circle, and leaned against the solid wall of Nathan’s chest.

  Epilogue

  December 1869

  The sun had set on Christmas Day but heat still hovered over Ballaburn. Samuel Chadwick patted his forehead with a handkerchief and marveled that his daughter and son-in-law hardly seemed affected by the temperature. Even Pei Ling looked comfortable. Kit was a little subdued, but Samuel didn’t know if it was the weather or the dinner in his belly that had finally quieted the boy.

  A cross breeze swept the parlor. The delicate, wax-like red-and-yellow blooms on the potted Christmas Bells swayed gently. The fringe of hair on Lydia’s forehead was ruffled. Nathan raised his hand and with just the tip of his finger brushed back a strand that had fallen across her cheek. Samuel watched his daughter turn to Nathan and smile and he was struck once again by the depth of love Lydia and her husband shared.

  “So,” he said, addressing the room at large. “Is anyone going to show me this medallion I’ve heard so much about? If it saved your life, Nathan, I’m surprised Lydia hasn’t built a shrine around it.”

  “Oh, Papa,” Lydia chided. “Don’t be blasphemous. Kit, it’s in the jewelry box on my dresser. Would you get it for me? I can’t believe I haven’t shown it to Papa and Pei Ling yet.”

  Glad for the opportunity to do something, Kit hopped to his feet and disappeared into the hallway.

  “That’s a good boy you have there,” Samuel said when Kit was out of earshot. “Very earnest.”

  “And bright,” said Lydia. “Father Colgan says that Kit has nearly caught his classmates. Nathan and I discussed letting him stay on here. I could tutor him while Nath taught him about the station, but we agreed he also needs to be with other children. He stays with a good family in Sydney and visits us now and again. Father Colgan has visions of Kit going into the priesthood, but I think he’ll settle here at Ballaburn someday.” Lydia leaned into Nathan’s shoulder and laid her hand across his. “God knows, he’s welcome.”

  “Because of the medallion?” Pei Ling asked.

  Nathan shook his head. “The medallion was a miracle. None of us, least of all Kit, take any credit for what happened, or didn’t hap
pen because of it.”

  “Nathan was sponsoring Kit at the school,” Lydia said. “Though he’d never admit it outright until after the shooting at Collabri.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Nathan explained. “Lydia gave me a package from Kit just minutes before the bushfire was sighted. I pretended she was wrong about who sent it and put it in my shirt pocket. I remember thinking it was a little heavy, but I never gave another thought to what might have been in it.” Nathan saw Pei Ling’s dark eyes lift toward the doorway and realized Kit was standing on the threshold. “Bring it on in, Kit, and show it to Samuel.”

  Kit ducked his head, embarrassed, but the smile he couldn’t quite hide was proud. He crossed the room to Samuel’s chair and held out the medallion. It was the size and thickness of a sovereign. The edge of the medal was ridged and the face was engraved with a portrait of Christ; the obverse had Kit’s initials. The portrait and the initials were difficult to make out because the center of the medallion was misshapen now, dented by the bullet it had stopped.

  “Father says it’s the medal of Saint Jude,” Kit said as Samuel passed the medallion to Pei Ling. He watched her turn it over in her hand, touching it with delicacy and awe. “He’s the patron saint of hopeless causes. Father Colgan gave it to me when I won the class spelling bee.”

  Samuel smiled. “A hopeless cause, eh? And what was your winning word?”

  Kit straightened smartly and became the model student at attention. He said clearly, “Lugubrious. L-U-G-U-B-R-I-O-U-S. Lugubrious.”

  “That’s very good,” Sam said. “But what the hell does it mean?”

  “Papa! Your language.”

  “Excuse me,” Samuel said. “But what the bloody hell does it mean?” Everyone laughed, including Lydia. “Well?” Sam asked.

  “It means very sad or mournful,” Kit said, and added for good measure, “We shall all be lugubrious when you and Pei Ling return to California in the New Year.”