The Hungry Heart Fulfilled (The Hunger of the Heart Series Book 3) (32 page)

 

 

“If they haven’t
already,” Charlie
said.

 

 

“At least we
haven’t found her lying
in some ditch,” Captain Jenkins sighed.

 

 

“That’s not to say
that she isn’t,”
Charlie said glumly.

 

 

“She’s alive, I
tell you, I know she
is,” Dalton snapped, the weeks of waiting taking their toll on
his nerves. “We
have to find her before the winter
sets in, it’s as simple as that.  
So I propose that we split up and meet again in three
days’ time at
Kilkenny.”

 

 

“I’ll ride north,
you go east, Mrs.
Jenkins, west, Captain Jenkins, and Charlie, you stay here and
work your way up
to Kilkenny town itself.
Ask the
police, and also the priests.
Someone must have seen a cripple on a crutch with a
broken jaw,” Dalton
said, his exasperation evident.

 

 

But another
fortnight of fruitless
searching yielded no result until Dalton and his friend
arrived in the town of
Thurles, and were told that a young person of that description
had been
arrested at Ballingarry several weeks before, and transferred
to Clonmel
prison.

 

 

“Damn,” Charlie
muttered. “We
didn’t check there because it was
too far east.”

 

 

“Well, the good
news is that she's
alive so far as we can tell, and that's the main thing. So we’re
going
there now, and with any
luck, I’ll show them warden there the pardon, and Emer will be out
of there by
nightfall,” Dalton
predicted optimistically.

 

 

“Do you want us to
come with you, or
would you rather be alone with her for a while?” Mrs. Jenkins
asked.

 

 

Dalton blushed.
“Oh, no, we should
all go to see her. So let’s pack our things. You can secure some
hotel rooms, while I
go to the jail to
speak with the warden and with any luck, get to see her. At
least she's had a
roof over her head and food. It's as good as we can expect, I
suppose. So yes,
by all means, let's go together.”

 

 

He had longed to
see her for so long
and hold her in his arms, it was almost too much to take in.
Suddenly, at the
prospect of seeing Emer again, Dalton was as nervous as a
schoolboy, and had to
force himself to concentrate on the road as he rode along
numbly on the back of
his mount.

 

 

The journey seemed
to take forever,
but at last, Dalton got down in front of the prison gates, and
in a trembling
voice asked if Emer Dillon were there.

 

 

“Aye, she’s here. Try the infirmary
down to the right, or
her small room on the left.
I’ll
have to search your pockets, though, before I can let you in
to see her.”

 

 

Dalton submitted to
the search
willingly, and forced himself to take deep breaths. He wanted to be
prepared to see her, but
so many fears
teemed in his brain.

 

 

Was she still badly
crippled? Ill,
starving, badly treated in the
rank-smelling jail? No
matter what
she looked like, he didn’t want to allow his face to betray
any horror or
revulsion.

 

 

But such was
Dalton’s love for Emer
that he never once imagined that he would find her with
another man.

 

 

Yet that indeed
seemed to be the
case when he entered the small cell, and saw Emer sitting side
by side on the
bed underneath a ragged blanket with a tall lanky young
gentleman a few years
older than herself.

 

 

Emer was looking
over some papers
concerning the proposed prison farm when she heard the door
open. Though she
never looked up, she became conscious of a pair of eyes on
her, and she could
feel a telltale prickle on the back of her neck.

 

 

Lifting her head to
focus her eyes
on the door in the murky light of the smoking oil lamp, she
saw only a pair of
golden eyes gazing at her with a mixture of love, relief and
anger.

 

 

Emer leapt off the
bed and straight
into Dalton’s arms. "You've come," she half sobbed in relief.

 

 

Dalton stiffened as
the handsome
young stranger rose from the bed and declared, “I’m sorry, I’m
in the way here,
I can see.”

 

 

“No, don’t go
Terence, not until
you’ve met Dalton. Dalton,
this is
Terence McManus, one of my friends in here, from Liverpool. Terence,
this is
Dalton Randall, whom
you’ve heard so much about.”

 

 

Dalton shook hands
warily, and
Terence moved to the door.
“No,
I’ll go out into the yard to chop some wood, and then I’ll
start dinner for us,
shall I? I’m
sure you and Dalton
have a lot to discuss.”

 

 

Once they were
alone again, Dalton
told himself not to be so absurdly jealous of Terence. He ought to
be
grateful that Emer had a
strong protector in the prison, and as he bent to pick her up
and hold her
against his chest tightly, he practically wept for joy.

 

 

“My love, you’re
walking! And
your jaw, it’s mended?”

 

 

“Just ask Terence. He probably regrets
it ever healed, for
I’m as argumentative as ever,” Emer joked bravely, as the
tears began to fall.

 

 

He kissed her then
like a starving
man, hungrily, desperately, their mouths not even trying to
speak the words of
love and longing on their lips, but conveying them with every
caress, until
they finally had to break apart shakily before things went too
far.

 

 

“William, where is
he?” she pleaded
when she could speak again.

 

 

He shook his head.
“I don’t know,
Emer. I’m so
sorry,” Dalton
breathed against her hair.

 

 

“I know I shouldn’t
have given up
hope, so easily, but I had a feeling you were going to tell me
that,” Emer
sighed, and began to weep anew.

 

 

“My love, I don’t
wish to distress
you so. Sit
down, love and drink
this,” he ordered, proffering a small flask of brandy, which
Emer took a long
pull from to steady her trembling limbs.

 

 

She tried to hand
it back to Dalton,
but he insisted, “You keep it for now. You certainly need it more
than it do in here. It’s freezing!”

 

 

“That’s why I’ve
been sitting here
under the blankets with Terence. Here, come sit under it with me,
and tell me everything
that’s happened
to you since I last saw you in Quebec, and then I’ll tell you
all my news,”
Emer suggested, as she made room for Dalton on the bed, and
held him close.

 

 

“No, you should go
first. And before
you start trying to lie to me again, Emer, to protect my
feelings, let me just
say that I know all about what my father and Madeleine did to
you.

 

 

"When you
disappeared, Adrian,
the Bishop, and all your friends told me everything. My dearest
love, how could you have
remained silent for so
long, and why didn’t you tell me the truth in the first
place?” Dalton
reproached her gently.

 

 

She snuggled closer
to him, soaking
in his presence as the barriers between them fell away at
last. “I
couldn’t tell you, not after I had
given my promise to renounce you. So you know then that it was your
father who had me
arrested, and took
baby William away?”

 

 

He nodded. "It was
a terrible
thing to have done."

 

 

Emer sighed. “He said that I was
an unfit mother,
and that he would have him adopted by a family who would treat
him well.”

 

 

“I’m afraid that
was a lie, my
love. He gave
William away to a
stranger on a ferry bound for Toronto for five pounds, and the
babe hasn’t been
seen or heard from since.”

 

 

“A stranger? Oh my
God. My son, my
son!” Emer wept frantically.

 

 

Dalton held her
tightly as she tried
to get up from the bed.

 

 

"Emer, there's
nothing you can
do at the moment. We're in Ireland, remember?"

 

 

He held her close
until her weeping
subsided enough for her to hear him say, “We've left no stone
unturned, put up
posters, offered a reward.
Joe and
Myrtle are looking for him out west. They're married now, and send
all their love. If any one can find him, they can.”

 

 

“But it’s been six
months! He can’t
still be alive after all this
time,” Emer sniffed. “If
he were,
then surely someone would have come forward to claim the
reward by now.”

 

 

“We mustn’t give up
hope. God has
spared you all this time, and
we have to believe he will do the same for our innocent little
son,” Dalton
said.  “Now,
tell me what
you’ve been doing since I last saw you.”

 

 

“No, you go first,
I’m too upset to
think clearly at the moment.
Your
father, Madeleine, where are they? Cathan, Saoirse and the
other children? Are
my family safe from them?”

 

 

Dalton told her of
all that had
happened since he had returned from the cholera epidemic in
Toronto, and how
shocked he had been to realise that he had been completely
fooled by his father
and Madeleine.

 

 

“They're both dead
now, and can’t
harm us any more. They’ve
paid for
their mistakes, and though I might wish it otherwise, since
you and your family
have suffered so much, at least some good has come out of his
whole
affair. I’ve
learned the truth
about my father, and become the wealthiest business man in
Canada now that I
have the Lyndon fleet as well.

 

 

"I also discovered
before it
was too late that my mother is still alive and well and living
out in
Vancouver. Joe
and Myrtle are
going to go visit her, to see if she might be well enough to
come back to
Quebec to spend the rest of her life allowing me to get to
know her,” Dalton
revealed.

 

 

“So you’ve lost a
father and son,
but gained a mother,” Emer said with a sigh.

 

 

“I know how you
must feel, Emer,
really, I do, after everything you've suffered, but truly, we
will find our
son, and no one will ever separate us again,” Dalton said,
hugging her more
tightly. 

 

 

“The only thing
that has made all of
this bearable, the only vision I’ve clung onto during the
darkest days, was the
fantasy of holding you both in my arms again. Of you and I
being together once
more, the same as on the
Pegasus
, only better, happier,
because of the
friends we've found,
and the miracle of life we created together."

 

 

“It’s been the same for me too,” Emer
admitted as
she snuggled closer to him under the blankets, and lapsed into a
thoughtful
silence for a time. "I've longed for you so."

 

 

He kissed her then,
and for a brief,
blissful second, the years and their cares seemed to fall
away, leaving them
only man and woman in the throes of the most passionately
urgent need.

 

 

But a drunken song
from the common
cell and the ringing of the dinner bells brought their
intimate explorations
under the blanket to an end before they gave in to the
ultimate temptation.

 

 

The lovers broke
apart with a shaky
laugh, and they gazed up at each other with naked desire
burning in their eyes.
But now was not the time, they both knew, not in this fetid
cell when anyone
could walk in any second.

 

 

A few moments later
she said, “I
love you, Dalton, but now that I know William is gone, I
wonder if I haven’t
just been deluding myself all along. What’s been lost simply can’t
be restored. The dream is over. We have to wake up to
reality now, that
we've lost him, and I don't know how I'm going to go on,” Emer
said bleakly.

 

 

“No, you're wrong,
there's still
hope, and in any case, this is just the beginning. You’ll come home
with me to Canada, we
will
find our son, and
be happy.”

 

 

Emer pulled herself
out of Dalton’s
arms, and paced up and down in the tiny cell like a caged
animal, unable to
subdue her miserable thoughts.

 

 

“Emer, I know you have every reason
to be angry with
me for taking so long to find you, but I had to try to find our
son, and I
needed to get you acquitted of the arson charges, which meant
taking Madeleine
to court.

 

 

"Plus, I lost all
my money
thanks to my father. Our friends helped me with every penny
they had in order
to pay back the debts I owed because my father refused to pay
the bills for the
refurbishment of the fleet I had undertaken on my last trip to
Dublin.

 

 

“Yet out of that
disaster, some good
has come for us all. Now
I'm head
of the company, and rich again, with all the debts paid, and
all our friends
reimbursed. At
the time, I had to
sell everything. Adrian
even sold
his own house to help me.

 

 

"But I have a
wonderful new
home for all of us, right near the fever hospital and the
orphanage. As soon as
you come home, we can pick up just where we left off before
the fire and
everything else.”

 

 

Emer shook her
head. “How can we
without William?”

 

 

He gripped her hand
hard, growing
desperate at the sensation that she was slipping away from him
again even
though he had finally found her.