Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (88 page)

She looked down, away from him, her hands nervously twisting a tea towel between them.

“Darlin’ can ye not even look at me? I’ve spent months imaginin’ this moment an’ now I can’t even get ye to look me in the eye.”

She glanced up quickly and he caught a quicksilver glitter of tears before she dashed them away with her hand.

“Ye cut yer hair off,” he said softly.

“I had to. We used Jamie’s secretary as a decoy and her hair only comes to her shoulders, so mine had to go.”

“It looks well on ye,” he said, for it did. Released from its weight it curled untamed up around her face, lending the glass bones and green eyes a wild beauty. He noticed other things, though he didn’t mention them. She was too thin; her skin lay tight against her frame and she seemed older, not so much the girl he’d lost his mind over in another time and place, but the woman their life together and apart had made of her. ‘These things—you did,’ a little voice said accusingly in his head and yet still his body, every bone and cell and pulse of it, longed to touch her, to tumble her soft into the bed and tell her anything, any lie, no matter the cost, that would make her able to meet his eyes with faith again.

Small things impressed themselves upon his consciousness, the beginning rumble of the water boiling in the kettle, the lick and hiss of flames, the rosy bronze light that flickered and roiled about the room. The flecked Wedgwood blue of the cupboards, the pearled knobs of her wrist bones with the tiny blue veins shadowing them, the arcing line of her lashes held over the disillusion she did not want him to see. It seemed to him in the silence that he could smell the soul of her, the salt of all the tears, hot and dammed, that she held back for the both of them.

“I’m drownin’ here, darlin’,” he said, voice trembling, “an’ I need ye to throw me a rope.”

There was a long silence, terrible in its weight, that spread itself between them like a cloud of fine and cloying sand. Casey didn’t even dare to breathe for fear he’d choke on it.

One step, and then another, her hand extended, red-gold in the shifting light and then the words of salvation.

“Let me take you home, Casey.”

In the bed they had to relearn each other, gestures once familiar now made awkward by the anger and pain that insinuated itself between them even here, where words had no dominion. Limbs tangled and parted, breath came hard with frustration, bone met bone and found resistance.

Casey, poised at the brink of renewing their physical bond, stopped, resting his forehead against her own, feeling the tension under her skin as though the two of them were connected by fine and invisible wire.

“Let me in darlin’, let me in so that I may go with ye.”

Under him she took a small breath, a sound of struggle, of air drawn through tears.

“I’m trying,” she said and he heard, with relief, the sound of anger in her voice.

“Be angry at me, rage if ye need to, but take me with ye,” he said, and moved against her in question and felt her body rise in demand.

Her hands held his shoulders, nails digging into the soft skin. “For God’s sake, Casey, just do it.”

He moved his head, caught her face between his two hands, and held her eyes in the frail, flickering light with the force of his own, her ribcage heaving with frustration beneath him. “Ye promised me once,” he said roughly, “that ye’d always take me with ye. I’m holdin’ye to it, just let me feel ye, Jewel, let me breathe one breath with ye. I want to feel all of ye—heart, mind, soul. It’ll not be right any other way.”

“You bastard,” she said furiously, “why does it have to be all or nothing?”

“A starvin’ man can’t settle for half a loaf, it’ll only take the edge off the ache in his belly. Ye said ye’d bring me home, darlin’, don’t leave me standin’ outside a locked door.”

Her eyes met his, shimmering with tears, and he saw there in the cut-glass depths, not anger but fear, and further down emotion so boundless that he understood again that love held no earthly parameters.

“Then come home,” she said, as much in challenge as invitation.

And home he went with heart, mind, soul, and body and in rediscovering her, found himself as well. Broken down in the strong places, mortared in the weak, made whole in the fires of love.

“YOU’RE TERRIBLY THIN,” SHE SAID QUIETLY, one hand gliding down his ribcage with careful fingers.

“Aye well,” he yawned extravagantly, “my dietary requirements were not high on the list of the British army’s priorities.”

He lay full length on his stomach, quilts thrown back to his waist, the grooves of his back a faint, quivering silver. One large hand rested gently on the side of her face, his thumb trailing soft as a moth’s wing along her jaw.

“I could stay here forever,” he said, eyes heavy-lidded, with only the soft glow of borrowed firelight reflected in his irises, to let her know he watched her.

“We’ve time,” she said, “and I intend to feed you at every opportunity, make love to you after breakfast, lunch and dinner and watch you sleep the rest of the time, and somewhere in there give you a good hot bath.”

“An’ will ye peel my grapes before I eat them as well? I’ll be after thinkin’ I’m one of them sultans, be purely debauched by week’s end.”

“You look as though you could use a little debauchery,” she said lightly, but her face was taut with worry.

“Yer lookin’ a little frayed around the edges yerself,” he said softly, “an’ even at that ye still take the breath from me, just to look at ye so.”

“I was so afraid,” she whispered quietly, “that they would kill you.”

“Well they didn’t,” he said, then added dryly, “though it wasn’t through lack of tryin’.”

“There were terrible rumors floating through the neighborhood, things the men who’d been released were saying. About the torture—” she let go a shaky breath and with it the flood of tears he’d sensed in her.

He gathered her close, offering the comfort of his body, warm and sound against the darkness of her fear, his tongue making soft, soothing noises, his hands stroking her body as she shook uncontrollably in his arms.

She subsided slowly, her grief and anger bleeding down to snuffles and hiccoughs. “Y—you can t—tell me what happened,” she said, “it might help to t—talk about it.”

“Hush darlin’, it’ll keep for another day,” he said gently, “tonight I just want to hold ye, an’ sleep knowin’ yer there in the dark.” He rested his cheek in her hair, smelling salt and wind and water trapped within its silken skeins. His wild Irish girl.

“I was so lonely,” she said, voice the slightest bit bleary with exhaustion, “I’d wake in the middle of the night and there was no one to tell my dreams to, no one to chase my nightmares away.”

He stroked her hair back from her face and kissed her softly on the forehead. “Sleep now, darlin’, an’ I’ll keep watch over yer dreams. I’ll chase yer demons away. When ye are lost an’ afraid in the dark, take my hand an’ I will lead ye home.”

He watched her then as she fell slowly toward sleep, face flushed, eyelashes still glittering with tears, felt her breath come deeper and slower, as if she breathed in tune with some far greater force that lay beyond the night and the sea and the stars. Then felt himself begin his own slow, heavy tumble toward deep and anonymous sleep. And wished for a moment, before the darkness, vast and silent, claimed him, that he knew how to chase his own demons away.

IN THE MORNING THE COTTAGE was shrouded in a thick gauze of fog. Casey, walking out for a load of coal, couldn’t see beyond the doorstep and had to feel his way along the whitewashed stone to the coal shed and creep back in the same manner.

Pamela was up when he came in, preparing a breakfast of oatmeal, leftover scones and piping hot tea.

“Fog’s thick as cotton out there,” Casey said, depositing the coal by the fire and wiping droplets of mist from his face.

“We were shut in a good part of yesterday as well,” she said, giving the porridge a vigorous stir and wrinkling her nose over it. “Damn, I’ve scorched it.”

“Drench it in cream an’ a spoonful of sugar, I’ll not notice the difference. I could eat a moldy sheep this mornin’ an’ not complain, I’m that famished.” He gave his hands a quick wash then settled himself at the table.

She ladled him up a healthy serving, dropping a kiss on his head as she placed his bowl in front of him. “Speaking of moldy sheep,” she said, “you’d best give me that sweater, it stinks to high heaven.”

“’Tisn’t the sweater,” he said, pouring cream over the steaming oatmeal and adding a dollop to his mug for good measure. “It’s me. Did my best to scrub the butter off but the damn stuff must of leaked into every crevice an’ crease I’ve got. I’ve only had cold washes, in a couple of streams an’ such. I think I need to steam it off.”

“Butter?” she asked, pouring his tea and then her own.

“Aye, we all slathered ourselves with butter packets to keep from freezin’ when we took our swim.” He cut two scones, covered them both thickly with butter, and took a long swallow of tea.

“Ah, that’s heaven, I could inhale the stuff. Ye may not be the world’s greatest cook, darlin’, but ye have a hand with tea like nobody else.”

This compliment earned him an arched eyebrow. “Tell me how you all managed,” she said, topping up his mug and tipping another scone onto his plate. “The telly was non-stop with the story, but the details weren’t too clear.”

She busied herself with spooning up porridge and re-filling the cream jug, but Casey knew her well enough to understand that she was avoiding his eyes for fear he’d see what all those news reports had cost her.

“’Twas a bit mad, really,” he said quietly, “the papers an’ such made it sound a lark, but it wasn’t. We were sittin’ in a pub in the Murph when the report came down that the British had us in custody. We’d a bit of a laugh over that. I called ye from there but no one answered. After that we were on the run an’ there was no opportunity to call, an’ I was afraid to risk it. I’d no idea if they were watchin’ ye or if the phone might be tapped.” He reached across the table to take her hand, but she curled her fingers under, tight around the butter knife, head down over her untouched breakfast.

“Don’t,” she said, still staring fixedly at her plate, “just tell me what happened, don’t make excuses for why I didn’t know if you were dead or alive for the last two weeks.”

He nodded, withdrawing his hand, knowing they’d lost whatever small ground they’d gained last night. How to explain to her what these last months had been like? How he’d been certain several times that he’d never see home, nor hold her in his arms again. How he’d written a phantom letter in his mind many nights, telling her goodbye, then written another to Jamie asking him to care for her—how much the thought of asking
that
of the man galled him. It was purely impossible and seemed slightly unreal, sitting here with food and hot tea, and her across from him in his shirt, hair tousled, skin still sleep flushed, like any normal morning.

So he told her the facts, without embellishment or embroidery. The capture, the beating, the arrest by the British soldiers, his time on the ship, the men who’d become friends over the dark, stagnant weeks. Under his tongue, bald as he tried to make it, the men came alive for her. Roland’s religious fervor, Declan’s taciturn nature, Matty’s care of him after the beating, Shane’s foolish innocence.

“How do you do that?” she asked quietly, after he’d finished telling her of the escape off the ship, the flight on the stolen bus and the heart stopping journey that had finally landed them all in Dublin.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Gather a bunch of ragtags around you and turn them into a cohesive group.”

He shook his head. “All most people need is a little direction. Maybe I’m a bit more clearheaded in a crisis an’ can see my way through things. That’s all it is. My Daddy taught both Pat and I to think on our feet.”

“Damn you,” she said, tears bright in her eyes.

“What have I done now?” he said in bewilderment.

“Made it impossible to be angry or resentful with you.”

“Well I don’t know what I’ve said or done, but if it’s made ye feel kindly towards me I’ll not regret it.”

She stood and walked to his side of the table, taking his head to her breast and laying her cheek upon his hair. “You break my heart, Casey Riordan, and the worst of it is you don’t even know that you’re doing it.”

They stayed thus for several moments, grateful for the peace and warmth that surrounded them.

“I am sorry, Pamela.” His hand came up and wrapped tightly around her own, “For all of it.”

“I know,” she replied, and found that in the morning light, with him here solid and real, it was enough. “Casey.”

“Aye?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

It was enough.

THE WESTERN SHORE OF INISHMORE bore little resemblance to the eastern side. Worn limestone cliffs soared skyward, glistening blackly in the odd light of the sea. The light seemed possessed with a life of its own, breaking stone into rainbow parts, shattering the sea into infinite patterns that changed every second. It was an empty wind-scoured world, where one could not help but be completely aware of the elements.