Hot Whispers of an Irishman (22 page)

“It was a long time ago,” she said.

He nodded. “I hate to be asking this, but are you using birth control?”

Vi grasped for neutral words. “It’s well controlled.”

“Well, that’s one less matter to be worrying over, at least,” he said.

“True.” As far as it went.

He brushed a kiss on her cheek, then rolled away from her. Vi began to wriggle her clothing back in place, anxious to be gone from the library. She glanced over to see Liam tucking in his shirt, and it suddenly occurred to her that he would be returning to the same room as she. The thought led to panic.

“I think I’m going to take a walk around the grounds,” she blurted.

Liam paused in his dressing. “In the middle of the night and with no coat?”

Her fingers fumbled on her trousers’ button when she realized how mad she’d sounded. “It was just a thought.”

She continued dressing and was quickly as together as she could get.

He came to her and tipped her face up with the backs of his fingers. “Vi, are you all right?”

“Fine.” The word had scarcely come out at all, so she cleared her throat and tried again. “Just fine, though I could use a moment to myself. Would you mind…” She waved her hand about the room. “Would you mind waiting here just a bit so I can settle?”

Without waiting to hear his answer, Vi unlocked the library door, stepped into the broad hallway, and closed the door behind herself. Her memories, gray wisps that clung to her more tenaciously than cobwebs, wouldn’t be so easily escaped.

Man to the hills, woman to the shore.

—I
RISH
P
ROVERB

L
iam didn’t pretend to understand women. Not only were they softer and far more fragrant than he, they thought differently, too. He’d call the process byzantine, though never to a woman’s face—especially Vi’s, as he valued his life. Being no fool, he was well aware that their lovemaking in the library had shaken both of them. Even he, a man cursed with linear thinking, knew that something more than regret over poorly governed impulse had kept Vi sleepless once they were both back in their room. When he’d offered his comfort, she had moved to the edge of the mattress. Her rejection had hurt him, and deeply, too.

Waking and showering had occurred in silence, a state with which he was generally comfortable. Not so today. At breakfast, Vi had seized Astrid’s suggestion that she stay about Castle Duneen for the day and soak up the atmosphere she’d need to complete the commission she’d officially accepted. There was a chance he suffered from paranoia, but Liam believed that Vi’s enthusiasm had had nothing to do with an artist’s desire to get to work and everything to do with escaping him. And the way that made him feel, he might as well have a fist squeezing the blood from his heart.

So here he was, alone on the road home, as tired as though he’d drunk a half bottle of whiskey last night, when he’d had none at all. The bugger of it was that even if he wanted to, the night’s events weren’t the sort of thing he could rehash with one of his sisters in order to get a female’s perspective. He was on his own to untangle this knot and knew he was doing an idiot’s job of it.

Liam pulled near the front of his house, then braked. A woman he’d never before seen was standing at the door. She was middle-aged and had the look of a businesswoman about her, with neat tweed slacks, a dark jacket, and a small briefcase. He knew on a rational basis that she could have nothing to do with Alex and the ugly mess in America. Still, tension made his hands grip the steering wheel tighter. She waved as he pulled round to the courtyard behind the house. By the time he’d retrieved his overnight bag from the car’s boot—and ignored Vi’s, for she could get it herself—the woman had joined him.

“Mary O’Sullivan from the
Kilkenny Courier,
” she said, one hand extended.

Her grip was strong, and he knew she’d not be the sort to be left long on anyone’s stoop.

“The newspaper?” he asked, then locked his car.

She nodded. “Aye, and a friend told me the town’s gone wild with news of buried treasure.”

“Wild might be overstating the case,” Liam said. At least he was hoping so.

She shifted her briefcase from her left hand to her right. “Whatever the degree, it will be a fine local interest story. I’ve already heard from your father about the family legend and from others about your recent activities. So now I was wondering if you might consider being interviewed?”

“Not a chance.”

“A few quotes, then,” she said. “Just a bit to spice up the piece before I turn it in?”

“You won’t be getting any,” Liam said again, wondering exactly why his da would have been inclined to talk to the woman. That, though, was a matter to be addressed after he was rid of the reporter.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to have your fate in your own hands?”

He laughed. “I’ve no illusions on that front, thank you. You write your story as you see fit, and without cooperation from me. I’ve greater matters I need to pry free from fate.”

“If that’s the way it’s to be,” she said, then gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “Have a grand day, Mr. Rafferty.”

Odds were declining. Liam waited till the reporter was gone from sight, the tapping of her heels against the sidewalk the only evidence she’d been there. That, and his sure knowledge that what small peace he’d had in Duncarraig was about to end. He made his way into the house, dropped his bag in the kitchen, and considered what to do with himself for the day. Barring the door seemed a fair idea, as his siblings might visit. Meghan had gone straight to school from Catherine’s, where she had spent the night, so he was otherwise free till three-thirty.

Solitude, though, remained elusive. At not quite eleven, his phone began ringing. The first call was from a local radio presenter nearly panting for an interview about Liam’s fabled missing fortune. As far as Liam was concerned, the man could pant himself dry. The second call was from a purported “old mate” whom Liam could not recall, seeking treasure hints. The third was the most ominous of all—a request for an immediate appearance at Meghan’s school.

Liam arrived at St. Brigid’s minutes later, where he was ushered into the principal’s office. Meghan sat opposite the principal, her face a pale mask of repressed anger. He knew the look well, for he’d worn it often as a youth, when taking the slagging of his larger and older cousins.

Mrs. McCormack, the school’s principal, looked none too smooth around the edges. She rose as Liam came in, and then fussed with her watch as they exchanged greetings. He took the seat offered next to Meghan and waited to be told the reason for his summons.

“As you’re aware, Mr. Rafferty, we’ve had a number of incidents with Meghan over the past weeks.” She looked over the tops of her glasses at a file on the desk in front of her. “Multiple events of truancy…disrespect to teachers, failure to complete required work….” Apparently done with the shopping list, she cleared her throat, then pressed on. “I’m afraid we’ve reached the point where we must expel your daughter.”

Liam was sure he’d misheard. “Expel?”

“Ask her to leave,” the principal provided in helpful tones.

Right, then. “I know what the word means, Mrs. McCormack. What are the grounds?”

“Fighting.”

He glanced at Meghan and saw no physical evidence. “With whom?”

“A classmate in the library,” the principal replied.

He looked more carefully at his child, who still wore that preternaturally composed expression. “Any reason?” he asked her.

She didn’t respond, and merely kept staring at some fixed point on the wall behind the principal’s desk.

“Meghan?” he prompted in a voice that generally scared the shite out of diving crews. She was made of sterner stuff than those work-and-life-hardened souls. She didn’t even blink.

“Meghan claims she was verbally provoked,” Mrs. McCormack said. “We’ve discussed the matter, and I believe she now understands there’s no excuse for flinging a classmate from her chair and bloodying her nose.”

Liam thought he might have seen the corner of his daughter’s mouth curve upward for a ghost of an instant.

“I agree,” he said to the principal while keeping an eye on his child. He also fully intended to get Meghan’s side of this nose-bloodying tale.

Mrs. McCormack pulled a sheet of paper from her desk and offered it to Liam. “I don’t wish to see Meghan fall behind in school. These are the names of instructors who might be willing to help her keep abreast of her studies on an individual basis.”

“Thank you,” he said, pocketing the names. He knew he could fight this, and might well do it, if he was convinced that staying at St. Michael’s was in Meghan’s best interests. At the moment, though, he had doubts.

“One thing, Mrs. McCormack, the girl who provoked Meghan, will she, too, be expelled?”

The principal puffed up, reminding him of a certain fish he’d encountered in tropical waters. “Her situation is a confidential matter.”

“I’d expect the same courtesy for my child,” he said.

“We’d do nothing less.”

“I’m pleased to hear that,” Liam replied. The principal had said the right words, but he doubted the substance behind them. He knew too well how the gossip apparatus worked in Duncarraig.

“Do you have your belongings?” he asked Meghan.

“No.”

“She can go round them up now,” Mrs. McCormack said.

“After school,” Liam replied, then motioned for Meghan and walked to the door. “Confidentiality, you know?”

And with that, he had a schoolless daughter and not a clue what to do next. In what he considered one of his greater triumphs of parental responsibility over rashness, Liam waited until they were home and seated in the kitchen to begin to question Meghan.

“Care to tell me what happened?” he asked.

Her gaze skittered somewhere over his left shoulder. “Nothing.”

“You hit someone. I’d consider that a very large something.”

She shrugged. “She’s a bitch.”

“Language, please.” The comment got him a full eye roll in return. “Meghan, you’ve been on the planet long enough to know that hitting someone is wrong. And you’ve also been around me long enough to know that I’m not so very skilled at this being a da thing. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t care, or that I’m not wanting to find some way to help you.”

“Help me what?” she asked in a voice disquieting for its flat lack of tone.

“To talk about this and then to let go, lesson learned. I’ve seen that look you’re wearing, and can tell you that bottling it all up will do you no good.”

“I’m not bottling anything.”

Maybe if he gave a bit of himself. It wasn’t natural or comfortable to do so, but he was without other ideas. “Did you ever ask yourself why your mother and I found each other in America?”

He took her diffident shrug as reason to go on.

“It’s because I couldn’t live here. I always wanted more or bigger or different and I never could get anyone in Duncarraig to understand that about me. I’d grow angrier and angrier until—”

“Until you hit someone?” She’d asked the question with such obvious hope that he hated to deflate her.

“No, except for eejit Cullen when he was doing his best to provoke me. Most often, I’d let the anger go by climbing something like the side of Castle Duneen.”

“Heights suck. They make my knees all rubbery.”

Well, that was a start on sharing, though not an especially helpful one. “I expect you’ve a great many things you’re hating right now, like me for bringing you to Duncarriag.”

A glint shone in her eyes. “I hate Kathleen Moriarty, for sure.”

“Who?”

Meghan sat straighter, hands pressed hard on the table. “Kathleen stupid snotty Moriarty. She runs that school. Mrs. McCormack and the teachers are her total tools. I hope I broke her nose. I hope she never gets all the blood out of her shirt. I hope—”

Liam raised his hand. “I’m getting the picture. What did this Kathleen do?”

“We were in the library for history class. I found the book I needed for my paper on Charles Parnell, and when I wanted to sit down, the only open chair was next to her. She’s always been a bi—”

Liam loudly cleared his throat, and Meghan had the good grace to cut the word short before continuing.

“Anyway, she said I couldn’t sit there. I was like, ‘You don’t own the library,’ and she asked me why I’d want to sit where I wasn’t wanted.”

Meghan’s mouth compressed into a small rosebud, reminding Liam so much of her as an infant that his throat grew tight.

“I expect there’s more?” he asked.

She nodded and her mouth worked for an instant before more words escaped in a torrent. “She said that none of them wanted me and then her friends started whispering and snickering. And then she said that even my own mother hadn’t wanted me since she’d left me with you. And—And—”

Her shoulders began to shake, and that hard mask of anger she’d been wearing started to erode.

“And what?” he quietly prompted.

“And I tackled her and hit her,” she finished.

“Good for you” was what he wanted to say, but settled for “A bold move, to be sure.”

A choked sound escaped her, the sort that Liam recognized as a warning.

“I hate it here,” she said, her voice tight to breaking. “I’ve tried to be good. I’ve tried so hard for you.”

She crossed her arms on the table, rested her forehead on them, and then the tears began in earnest. It was the sort of weeping that seemed to come from the very bottom of her soul, then work its way out, wrenching and awful.

“We’ll make this work, Meggie,” he said, using the nickname he’d given her as a baby, and then put away as his life grew distant from her. “We will.”

“How?” Her voice was muffled, but Liam could still catch it. “You don’t want me, either.”

God, now there was a blow to bring a man to his knees. He was ready to cry with her. “Not want you? I’ve always wanted you, from the moment I knew you were growing inside your mother.”

This in so many ways was his fault. He’d not thought long enough about all the departures from his daughter’s life, beginning with his, four years earlier. Beth had told him that he’d hardly be missed, and he’d chosen to believe her because it had salved his conscience. Fat, hideous mistake that had been.

He stood and rounded to Meghan’s side of the table, then awkwardly settled a palm between her heaving shoulders. He’d wanted communication, and he’d bloody well gotten it.

“It will be all right,” he said, leaning closer and smoothing his other hand through her hair.

She no longer smelled like a little girl, all baby shampoo and filched cookies, his Meggie. No, now she smelled of too liberally applied perfume and pockets full of mint candies. He’d missed the transformation from child to this awkward in-between adolescent state, and knew there was no reclaiming the lost time. But he had made her a promise. He would make it all right. It was the very least he could do.