Hot Whispers of an Irishman (16 page)

“In
Duncarraig?
”

Vi’s da nodded. “In Duncarraig. If all goes well, we should think of selling this place and moving that way. Costs will be less, and with money from this house freed up, we could be of more help to the children.”

“What help have they ever been to us?” Mam snapped. “And don’t think I’ll let you sell my house from under me, Michael Kilbride. It’s more mine than yours, and you’ll not do it! If you’re moving to Duncarraig, you’ll be doing it alone.”

“Tempting,” Da said, then pushed away from the table and walked through the archway into the front room. He took his jacket from the back of his armchair and put it on, then was nearly to the entry before Vi could even speak.

“Da, don’t—”

“Oh, let him go,” Mam said with an angry wave of her hand. “He’s spoiling my meal.”

Damn you,
Vi thought.
How can you be so without feelings?
But then she saw a brief hint of something startling in her mam’s eyes. Were she to name that something, Vi would call it fear. She tried to let go of her anger toward her mother. Life would be so much easier if it were made of absolutes.

Freed from his prison when Da left, Roger trotted to his usual spot at Vi’s feet. She wanted to hold him and find some comfort, but knew a dog at the table would send Mam the rest of the way round the bend.

Her mam went to the sideboard, where she picked up a cut crystal goblet and filled it with liquid from a matching decanter.

“Sherry?” her mam asked, sounding as though they were at a cocktail party and not at another fine supper Kilbride.

“No, thank you,” Vi replied with equal politeness.

Mam returned to the table, had a deep swallow of her drink, then said, “Ridiculous man. I don’t know why he’d think I’d ever move to Duncarraig.”

“It’s not ridiculous. He was born there, after all, and if he can find work, would it not make sense?”

“Duncarraig.”
Again, her mother had said the word as though it was a form of plague. “What has it ever gotten me but ill?”

“You’ve scarcely been there.”

“Not that it’s mattered, with his mother there and you wandering off all the time.” She swallowed the rest of her sherry, then stood to fill her glass again. “So, was this Liam the one?” she asked while her back was to Vi.

Vi’s heart skipped a beat. “The one?”

Her mother turned about. “You know,” she said impatiently. “Is he the one who got you pregnant?”

They had never spoken of it, not once since she’d been forced to call her home from the hospital in Kilkenny. She’d been underage, terrified, and in pain from what had turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy. It was Nan she’d wanted to call, but had slipped up in being too honest and admitting that her parents were her legal guardians. Da had been at work, and Mam had answered, which had been the beginning of the end between them.

“It was fifteen years ago,” Vi said. “Why bring it up now?”

“I saw the two of you out by his car. I’m no fool.”

“And I’m nearly thirty-three years old. Leave it alone.”

Her mother took another swallow of drink, and Vi began to regret not having one of her own.

“I’ve left it alone for fifteen years,” her mother said. “I didn’t tell your father, just as you begged, and bore it on my own. It has hurt, Violet, all of it. Have you no idea what it’s been like, a son in prison and a daughter turned up pregnant?”

“I’ve a very good idea, as a matter of fact.” Vi pushed back from the table. “I apologized for letting you down when I was seventeen and apologized time and again after the fact, too. And I’ve done my best to forgive you for the hurt you’ve left me with.” She bent down, scooped up Rog, and held him close. “All the time you spend at church, you’d think you’d have picked up a word or two about forgiveness, as well.”

Her mother said nothing, just held tighter to her sherry glass and stared out into the front room. Again Vi saw it—that closed off fear in her mam’s eyes—but she couldn’t begin to find the desire to deal with it.

“I can’t do this anymore. I’ve tried to hold us together even when no one else would, but I’m tired and out of the energy it takes to deal with you,” she said, waving her free arm at the organized-unto-death house. “If Da asks, tell him I’ve gone to Duncarraig.”

Vi took her dog, climbed the stairs, packed her bag, and got the hell out. It was, she was sure, what her mother wanted of her, too.

Sunday night, Liam sat at the dining room table, pen in hand, marking spots on the results graphs from his stroll with the ground-penetrating radar. To say that it was Greek to him would be an understatement, as he could find his way round Athens better than he could these jagged scribbles and dips. He rubbed his forehead and blinked dry eyes.

He knew that sneaking about in Castle Duneen appealed because it was adventure, not half-understood science. But he was the disciplined sort, or at least he used to be, before the business fiasco. Liam cut a bargain with himself: he would persuade his way into the castle once he’d at least investigated this portion of Nan’s field.

A knock sounded at the kitchen door. Liam took off his reading glasses, set them on the table, then rose. He knew damn well no family member was out there, for they’d not bother with the formality of knocking.

At the kitchen entry, he flipped on the porch light, then felt his pulse jump, for Vi stood in the rain, not even bothering to shield her head. He opened the door and found that he was admitting both wet woman and dog.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

His teasing question went unanswered. Head tipped down, Vi worked the buttons on her waxed jacket, then shed the garment, settling it over a chair at the table.

When she finally looked at him, his worry grew. “Vi, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, but her expression hardly matched her words.

He tipped up her chin and looked at her in the light from the fixture over the kitchen table. “Have you been crying?”

“Have you ever seen me cry?” she asked, and he knew the question for the evasion it was.

“I know we’ve been at odds since last night, but you can talk to me. We’re friends, Vi.”

Liam nearly winced after speaking.
Friends.
What a tepid word, worse than watered-down whiskey.

Vi looked equally unimpressed. She ran her hands through her rain-wet hair, then said, “You’d offered me your carriage house the other day. Might I use it?”

“Of course you can,” he replied, for he would give her anything but control of the gold. “And for as long as you need it, too.”

She shrugged, a flat, diffident, un-Vi-like gesture that amplified his worry. “A week, no more, then I have to be back to Ballymuir.”

Words of leaving weren’t what Liam wished to hear. Turning from her, he walked to the stove. “Tea?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, “And maybe some water for Rog?”

“Of course.” Liam busied himself switching on the gas beneath the kettle and rattling about in the cupboard for a clean mug and bowl. “I’ll ask again, do you want to tell me what happened?”

Vi took the bowl he’d retrieved and filled it at the sink. As she set it on the floor for her dog, she said, “The standard row, is all.” She stood and met his eyes. “Mam and I have never done too well beneath the same roof.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t sure where he wanted to go with her answer, if anywhere at all.

Roger finished lapping his water and issued a wet, satisfied belch.

“Wee pig,” Vi said to her dog.

“They do have a resemblance about the belly,” Liam offered.

Something near to a smile briefly appeared on her face. “Meghan will have no problem with me using her tower?” Vi then asked.

“None that will be permitted to stand. I’m sorry for the way she acted this weekend,” he said.

“She’s a child yet. I wasn’t expecting gracious when I was stealing her da from her, even for a moment.”

“Life was easier when we were young,” he said.

She fully smiled then. “You’re mad.”

“And glad for it,” he said, then reached for the kettle, which had begun to whistle. He had no desire to wake his young bodyguard sleeping upstairs.

Vi settled in at the kitchen table while he made her tea. He handed her the mug, along with a sugar and a spoon. Then he sat opposite her, thinking how domestic this felt, and how he—the lifelong nomad—was actually enjoying it. Pretty bloody amazing stuff.

They sat in silence for a time, except for the sound of Roger snoring at his mistress’s feet. Liam thought about the vagaries of his mind, how he could look at Vi and still see the seventeen-year-old just beneath the skin. At the same time, neither did he miss the fine lines of stress playing about the outer corners of her eyes.

This was not the woman he’d dropped off earlier in the day. Something very specific and very painful must have brought her, damp of spirit, into his kitchen on this wet night. He wasn’t a man for prodding emotions loose, or handling it well when others did it to him—a product of too many siblings nosing about in his life. But for the first time ever, he was sorely tempted to do the same. Twice he’d offered to talk, and twice she’d turned him down. If he were one of his brothers, he’d be threatening to kidnap her dog until she spoke.

Still, he wasn’t yet like his brothers. He could afford at least one night of patience.

“Have you bags in your car?” he asked Vi.

She nodded. “The one on the front seat I need tonight, and the rest can wait.”

“Finish your tea, and I’ll bring your bag round to the carriage house.”

“Thank you,” she said.

A quick check upstairs on Meghan found her sound asleep, no doubt worn from the weekend’s excursion. If Liam could have found a clear pathway through the clutter to the bed, he would have pulled the duvet over her. As it was, she’d have to continue to sleep face-down and still in the clothes she’d been wearing all day.

Then Liam was off to Vi’s car, where he retrieved an overstuffed blue-and-green silken patchwork bag from her front seat and brought it into the larger of the carriage house’s two bedrooms. He hesitated a moment, as this was the room with Meghan’s favorite lookout, but surely she wouldn’t be so adolescent as to object to Vi using it?

Decision made, he switched on the bedside lamp and dropped Vi’s bag on the bed. He was downstairs fiddling with the little house’s thermostat when Vi came in, water dish in hand and her dog trotting behind her.

“Your bag’s upstairs,” Liam said. “You’ll find towels in the cupboard in the bath, and I’d like you to let me stay until I’m sure you’re settled.” He’d slipped in the last bit quickly, hoping she’d not object, for Vi had always been the sort to go off alone when hurting. He’d seen it enough before and could not live with himself if he were to let it happen tonight.

He watched as she sorted through his words, a frown settled between her brows.

“I’m going to be fine, Liam. I’m just a bit tired is all,” she finally said.

As he’d expected. “I’m being selfish. Do this for me, please, if not for you. I’ll rest better knowing that you’re comfortable.”

She sighed. “I’m going upstairs to ready for bed. If you’ll feel better seeing me tucked in, then grand.”

“I will.”

One corner of her mouth curved grudgingly upward. “Sometimes I understand you even less than others.” With that, she started upstairs. Roger, naturally, trailed after her.

Liam settled in to wait in one of the two flowery armchairs in the small sitting room. From above, he heard the sounds of water running, doors closing, and then, finally, Vi calling his name. He toed out of his shoes and padded upstairs.

She was abed already. Liam paused in the doorway, a sense of something akin to déjà vu slowing him. Vi leaned against the headboard, two pillows plumped behind her. Her hair was down, a tumble of deep red against the milky-white skin of her shoulders. She wore a deep blue nightgown of some sort, whether it was long or not he couldn’t tell, as she had the sheets pulled up to her waist. He knew he hadn’t seen her like this before, but he had wanted to. God, how he had wanted to.

“Do I look comfortable enough?” she asked, a measure of her usual tartness back in her voice.

“I’ll need to come closer to be sure.” Without waiting for her consent, he moved to the other side of the bed, turned back the sheet, and climbed in beside her. “Now, my fire, you’re looking much closer to comfortable…but you’re not yet there.”

She obligingly moved into his open arms, resting on her side so that her head was pillowed against his chest and one of her legs was draped over his.

“And now?” she asked.

Liam closed his eyes, letting the feel of her against him fully register.

“Perfect.” He was rousing to her, of course, for he’d have to be six months dead before having Vi Kilbride in his arms would have no effect. Still, much as his body hungered, he wished to give her intimacy of a different sort.

It was time for a confession, one that he’d been far too arrogant to make fifteen years ago. He smoothed his hand over her hair, then traced the soft curve of her shoulder, all the while wondering what marvelous thing he’d done right in life to be given this quiet moment.