Land of a Thousand Dreams (10 page)

“Mmm. Perhaps.” He dabbed at a spot of pudding on the lapel of his coat. “Michael's stopping by later, did I tell you?” he asked casually. “To discuss the subcommission.”

“Tonight?”
Sara jackknifed to her feet, banging the leg of her chair against the table.

Eyes glinting, her father nodded. “Why, yes,” he said, getting to his feet, “he should be here within the hour. We'll take care of business first, and then you can have him all to yourself.”

“I must change!” Sara nearly pulled one end of the dinner cloth off the table as she whirled around to leave.

Laughing, her father offered his arm and escorted her from the dining room. They stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “I don't suppose you two have set the date yet?” he asked casually.

Instinctively, Sara glanced down at the ring on her left hand, a small diamond chip Michael had paid for by working weeks as a night security guard at the pipe factory. Sara thought it quite the most beautiful ring she had ever seen.

Looking back at her father, she saw that he was waiting for an answer.

“No, we haven't,” she said, her voice low. “Not yet.”

Half-irritated with his good-natured probing, Sara nevertheless understood. She and Michael had been engaged for two months now, with still no word of a wedding date.

“We'd thought to give Tierney time,” she answered unhappily. “He still…resents me, I'm afraid.”

Her father's dark eyes searched hers. “Sara,” he said, shaking his head, “that boy is almost a man. Indeed, for all practical purposes, he
is
a man. Don't get your hopes up for any real changes there. You and Michael need to plan a life
without
him, not
around
him, it seems to me.”

Sara looked away, troubled as always by the thought of Michael's rebellious son. “I know you're right, Father. But it's difficult. Michael had so hoped we could all be a family. I hate what Tierney's disapproval is doing to him. Yet, I think I almost understand why the boy resents me. I represent everything that Tierney dislikes and distrusts, just by the fact of who I am.”

Again her father shook his head. “The boy's disapproval of you is only a part of the trouble between him and his father. There were problems there long before Michael asked you to marry him. He told me as much.”

Again Sara nodded. “That's true, but—”

“Some things don't change, daughter,” he said softly, taking her hand. He seemed hesitant, as if he weren't quite certain he should go on. “So the delay is your doing, then?” he asked gently. “I thought as much.”

Sara avoided his gaze. “I don't want to make things worse between Michael and his son. I couldn't live with that. Tierney is his only child—”

“Tierney Burke is no child!” Her father's hand tightened on hers. “Listen to me, Sara. Allow me, just for a moment, to be an interfering father.”

Surprised, Sara turned back to him. Over the years, her father had made it a point to reserve his advice for only those matters of great importance. A man who had an opinion on almost everything, more often than not he kept his feelings about Sara's personal life entirely to himself.

“Courting you can't have been easy for Michael,” he said in his characteristically direct manner. “The man is no fool. He knows there's every likelihood he'll be marked as just another fortune hunter—”

Sara bit her lip, stung by his words.

“Now don't take on,” he said quickly, clasping her shoulders. “Anyone with half his wits can see the man is in love with you! Still, I'm sure it's no easy thing for him to deal with the assumption and speculation. There's no
ignoring the truth, after all: Michael is an immigrant policeman who presumed to ask a millionaire's daughter to change her entire life for him. The fact that he believes you love him enough to do so—and the fact that he believes in you enough to think you can manage it all—is a real tribute to you. But don't think for a moment it's easy for him.”

He silenced Sara's renewed protest with a wave of his hand, then went on. “It seems to me the man has quite enough to handle without worrying that you might be having regrets. Your reluctance to set a date is bound to trouble him.”

Smarting from the undercurrent of criticism she sensed in her father's words, Sara stood looking down at the floor, not trusting herself to answer. At the back of her mind lurked the discomforting awareness that he was right. He usually was.

His words followed her all the way upstairs into the bedroom. As soon as she entered the room, she sank down onto the vanity stool. With unsteady hands, she loosened the thick twist of hair at the nape of her neck, smoothing it and repinning it in place.

Michael was fond of teasing her about what he called the “proper little knot on her neck.” Once they were married, he said, he was going to insist that she let her hair down. “We'll create a scandal,” he would say. “The proper Miss Sara Farmington lets her hair down at last. Ah, the shame of the woman!”

In truth, he had tried more than once to coax her into doing just that—letting her waist-length hair down for him. Invariably, he found Sara's flustered refusals a matter of great amusement. “I believe the woman is deceiving me,” he would say, his eyes dancing with fun. “The proper little knot is nailed to her neck and will not budge.”

But then, as was so often the way with him, his mischievous mood would suddenly turn. His eyes would darken, his mouth soften, and the teasing note in his voice would disappear. “Sara
a gra
,” he would say softly against her cheek, “promise me this, that once we are man and wife before God, you will allow me to take the pins from your hair and let it fall free, in all its glory. Promise me that you will take your hair down for my eyes alone when you are my wife.”

The instant the predictable blush spread over Sara's face at this promised intimacy, he would smile into her eyes, then gently kiss her.

Sara closed her eyes, hugging her arms to herself at the memory.

Was
she making a mistake in delaying the wedding? Just last week, while discussing the date yet again, Michael had become almost cross with her, had even hinted that her reluctance might not be entirely due to Tierney.

She could still see the uneasy question in his eyes as he searched her face. “You are sure it's Tierney, Sara? You'd not be having second thoughts about marrying me?”

Dismayed that he would even think such a thing, Sara had made every protest she could think of. Still, when they parted soon after, she wasn't at all sure she had managed to convince him.

Laying her brush on the vanity, she stared into the mirror. There was nothing she had ever wanted more than to be Michael's wife. Nothing! The very thought of being married to him made her heart leap like a spring.

That she could be so foolish over a man still amazed her. She stammered like a schoolgirl every time Michael walked into a room. And when he gave her that special, caressing look she knew to be just for her, the world around them simply faded away.

Even now, months after he'd made his feelings known, she found it nearly impossible to take in the fact that he loved her—really loved her—that he had actually asked her to be his wife. Her, with her too-wide mouth and her turned-up nose with its unladylike freckles, and her hateful lame leg.

She knew her father was right. There were those who would undoubtedly accuse Michael of being a fortune hunter. Why else would such a handsome, vital man give her a second look, they would say? Just as certainly, there were others who would think her mad for marrying a man like Michael.
Common,
they would call him.

They would not believe what she had found with him, the wonder, the splendor, the pure exultation of their love. Why, if it had not been for Tierney, she would never have
thought
of delaying the wedding! She smiled briefly at her reflection in the mirror. On the contrary, she would more than likely have set the date indecently soon!

The smile faded as the thought of Tierney came to mind. Michael had been at his wits' end about his son even before their engagement, openly admitting he did not understand him, could not fathom what drove the boy.

“I never know what to expect from him,” he had told her one night, long before asking her to be his wife. “One minute he's a shooting star, bright, happy—lighthearted, even. The next he's a dark stone, hard and cold—a mystery.”

That same night he had confessed his fear for Tierney. Even now, the memory of the terrible pain in Michael's eyes sent a shudder of dread pitching over Sara. “It's almost as if the boy has some sort of wildness whipping him on, driving him away from me and all I've ever held holy. Sometimes, Sara, I have a fierce terror for my son: that the part of him I know to be good will eventually be overcome by this other thing…this dark side of his soul. Sometimes I feel he's being driven straight down the road of destruction.”

Remembering Michael's taut face, his tortured words, a cold shadow passed over Sara's own spirit. The truth was that, even in her few brief encounters with Michael's son, she had sensed the same darkness, the same portent of some awful destiny.

It was more than an awareness of Tierney's resentment of her, although he made no attempt whatsoever to hide his animosity. What she felt in him was a kind of compressed heat, a strain of savageness that, even controlled, burned through him, searing everything he did—everything he was—with the same wildness that gave a panther its fury and made it deadly.

Sitting there, staring into the mirror without really seeing herself, Sara was suddenly gripped by the conviction that her father was right: She should marry Michael as soon as he would have her, not put things off in hopes Tierney would change.

Michael needed her now…would need her later…as his wife, as his friend. He needed her by his side—in case Tierney
didn't
change.

It was another half hour before Tierney spied Ferguson and Bailey. They were nearly impossible to miss. Sweet Bailey's youthful, choirboy face would have charmed a nun, while Ferguson's ugly mug looked like a doughy, half-baked loaf of bread. They were a fine pair, those two.

Leaning against the wall of an abandoned warehouse, Tierney watched the two runners lead a dozen or more immigrant families off the ship. He knew right away something was amiss, for had they been doing their job for Walsh, they'd be herding a far greater number down the gangplank.

Pushing himself away from the wall, Tierney started off behind them, being careful to keep his distance so he wouldn't be seen. Two or three rods back of the runners and their entourage, he slotted himself in with some rowdy dock workers. Following at this distance, he was able to catch bits of the runners' conversation.

“Sure, and don't we do what we do as a service for Irish families?” Sweet Bailey was saying as he shepherded his charges away from the docks. “Us being Irish ourselves, we take it as a serious matter entirely, finding respectable lodgings for fine families from the ould sod.”

“Now that is the truth,” offered Ferguson. “'Tis lucky we thought to check the manifest of your ship as we did. There are some, don't you know,” he went on with an exaggerated shudder, “what would take advantage of good, trusting people like yourselves. Swindlers and thieves, the lot of them!”

Tierney ground his teeth together, wanting nothing more than to throw a punch at the swine's lumpy face.

Most of the dock workers had broken up by now, starting for Front Street. The runners and their victims were almost in the clear on Maiden Lane, and Tierney had to fall back, slowing his pace so he wouldn't be noticed.

“Sure, and you'll be liking the Porter's Inn just fine,” Bailey was saying. “'Tis a decent dwelling, with water-closet facilities and lockers where you can store your belongings. We'll be there in a shake, it's that close by.”

Tierney's eyes narrowed. Porter's Inn wasn't one of Patrick Walsh's boardinghouses. It was owned by Chance Porter, a minor thug who ran several rackets on the docks.

So Walsh's suspicions about the two runners had been sound. More than likely they were plying their trade with both Walsh and Porter, reasoning that they could easily cut a few families from Walsh's list without him ever being the wiser. All prearranged with Porter, of course.