The Last Bride in Ballymuir (16 page)

“
I was arrested with the
others in the house. When
I was
interrogated, I asked them to contact my family.
The message came back that I now had none.
No
money, no family, no hope of any help. I
kept thinking
that the authorities would
come to see I was telling the truth, that I was a bystander to
whatever Dervla and her friends were doing.”

“
But they
didn’t?”

“
No. It seems I’d been
helping Dervla smuggle materials used to make bombs. Brian was more
than happy to implicate me. They impounded my car. Taped inside the
boot was enough Semtex to put a huge, fucking crater into the
earth. The authorities were amazed that we hadn’t managed to blow
ourselves up well before that. I spent the next fourteen years
wishing I had.”

“
And were you
guilty?”

“
I was responsible. And
because I had no one left, I admitted association with Dervla’s
group. You see,
in the Maze—where they were
going to put me—you
were either on one side
or the other if you wanted to
survive. I
picked the poison I knew. Family,” he said,
practically choking on the word. “I was jailed with my new
family.”

And the rest, he should have
practiced saying. Words came to him in jagged chunks that ripped at
his soul as he tried to force them out. “When they were questioning
me, I learned that a family living above
a
Belfast pub had died in a bombing
attack... a little boy and girl. They’d connected the explosion
back to the group Dervla and Brian belonged to. It happened a week
after we’d paid a visit there. Two children died,” he repeated,
then mentally finished the
thought that
hadn’t
left him
since that night:
They died because I
was a fool who
couldn’t tell love from
deception.

Steeling himself for the contempt he knew
he’d see on Kylie’s face, he looked at her. And what he found was
even more shattering. He saw her tears, and it nearly killed him.
Michael was out the door and down a dark road before his own tears
came. Fourteen years, and finally they came.

Chapter Ten

God between us and all harm.

—
Irish Blessing

If the man had to bolt out of the place, at
least he could have had the common sense to take his car, Kylie
thought. But no, Michael Kilbride had gone on foot, and left his
jacket hanging beside the door, too. Three cold hours he’d been
gone. And here she stood peering out into dark swallowed by more
dark.

“
Come back,” she whispered.
She ached for him, for what he’d been through, for the burdens he
carried. He’d been a fool, people had suffered ... and
died.

Kylie pushed aside the image and sorted
through what she knew of the man. He felt remorse, this much was
true. Beneath the impassive, damned-if-I-care mask he wore, it
weighed into his every word, his every action. He needed to heal.
If forgiveness were hers to give, she could forgive him his youth
and stupidity. She wondered, though, whether he would ever forgive
himself.

“
Home, Michael,” she
urged.

She knew he couldn’t hear
her, of course, wherever he was, tangled in his knot of guilt,
grief, and
self-hatred. As much as she
wanted to search for him,
there was no
point in having two fools wandering in the dark. Eventually, Kylie
changed into her nightgown, combed her hair, brushed her teeth,
then curled up on the couch to wait. And later—much later—she fell
asleep.

A beacon in the darkness, Michael wearily
thought as he closed in on the soft, glowing light at the top of
the hill. Numb from the cold and wrenching night, he willed himself
forward. Just a few more steps and he would retrieve his jacket and
car keys, then never see Kylie again.

Never again.

The confines of his old cell were more
welcoming than the sentence he’d just given himself. He could have
done his full bird of twenty-five years standing on his head before
he could do this.

Feet making crunching sounds
on the hard dirt path, he walked to the front window and peered in
the smudged pane. The light next to the couch still shone, but
everything else seemed still. He went
up on
the balls of his feet, trying to see over the back
of the couch to the fireplace. If the peat was no
longer smoking, he’d know she was asleep. But even at his height,
he couldn’t see clear of the couch.

Figuring that trying his luck at a quick
escape was better than freezing to death, he edged toward the door
and lifted the latch. Like everything else in Kylie O’Shea’s house,
it worked only halfway. Jiggling it a few times, he finally got it
to open. One hand feeling the wall just inside the door, and the
rest of him shivering outside, he finally touched the worn canvas
of his jacket. Lifting it slowly from the hook, he froze when a
soft hand settled on top of his.

“
Are you going
somewhere?”

He leaned his forehead against the hard,
stuccoed side of the house, feeling it press sharply into his skin.
He closed his eyes. There was no denying it; God had it out for
him. Showing him the way to Kylie, then taking her away, but only
after one last, tantalizing touch.

“
I’m going home.”

The hand pulled at him. “Then come
inside.”

It was the cold—it had slowed his brain until
even the simplest words were too much for him to understand.

A second hand reached out
and grabbed at the neck of his sweater. “I asked you to come
inside, and
do it before
the last bit of heat escapes, if you
please.”

One hard tug had him stumbling over the
stoop. The door closed behind him before he even knew what
happened. Michael steadied himself, then looked down at her. He’d
never thought of flannel as a sensuous material, but he’d never
thought of it caressing Kylie O’Shea, either.

“
I knew never to wager
against you in a fight,” he said.

“
Leverage, nothing more.
You’ve had me worried.” She gestured at the couch. “Sit
down.”

He didn’t consider disobeying. In a matter of
minutes, she had stoked the fire, ordered him out of his shoes,
buried him in a blanket, and tucked a mug of tea into his
hands.

“
You thought to just leave,
didn’t you?”

“
Didn’t see much in the way
of a choice,” he said before taking a scalding sip of the tea.
Gasping, invoking a few of the saints, he set the mug down on the
lamp table.

“
Too hot?” At the concern in
her eyes, he eliminated torture as a possible reason for being
brought back inside.

“
It’ll cool,” he managed to
get over his burnt tongue.

She sat next to him on the
couch, slipping her slen
der bare feet under
one corner of his blanket. “While it does, let’s get to my part in
that little talk we were having.”

He supposed it was better to be done now,
while he was still numb and wrung empty from the grief he’d finally
set free.

Kylie wasted no time in getting in her first
blow. “You didn’t have much sense back in those days. But then
again, most young people don’t.”

“
Most aren’t lethally
stupid, either,” he pointed out.

She raised one hand in an
abrupt arc. “You’ve had
your say. It’s my
turn now. The choices you made, I’m
not
saying they were right, or even wholly understandable to me. But I
don’t think you made them meaning to hurt others, did
you?”

Lord, he was bone-weary.
He’d asked himself these
questions
countless times. And the answers never changed. “They were hurt
just the same. Children no different than the ones you see in your
classroom every day—”

Her eyes closed as if she tried to force back
tears. He wondered if she was putting a face to the children,
giving them identities. God knew he had, down to the minutiae of
their budding lives. Long before he’d seen their photos at the
trial, he’d known them. And tonight he’d finally mourned them. And
himself.

“
But did you know you were
smuggling—” She trailed off with a wince. He could almost see her
mentally picking up then dropping ugly, truth-laden words like
“explosives” and “bombs” before she finally settled on,”—the things
that you were?”

“
No, I had no idea I was
carrying anything at all. But—”

“
A no will do,” she
directed, sounding very much like a prosecutor he’d had the bleak
fortune to meet. Kylie leaned forward to tug a bit more of the
blanket off him and over her legs. “You were led, Michael, and far
too easily. But you’re no youngster anymore, and you’ve paid a
heavy price for your poor choices. Don’t you think it’s time you
let it go?”

This was not the kind of
thing one could get free of.
He could never
grant himself absolution for his acts. Lives had ended, and his had
changed irrevocably.
But tonight, in the
midst of the ache and chaos, he had
felt
something shift deep inside. A door rustier and
more ill-sprung than even Kylie’s had begun to open.
He saw now that he could learn to move on.
However
horrible his mistakes, he had a
life to pick up. One on
the fringes, but a
life nonetheless.

“
Even if I do let it go,
others won’t.”

“
You can only take care of
yourself.” He wondered if she recognized the irony of those words
coming from a woman who did nothing but care for others. “As for
the rest of the world, they’ll come around in time.”

She spoke with such
sincerity, such utter trust in a
universal
good he simply didn’t believe in. There was nothing he could say in
return without hurting her.

Color rose in her cheeks.
Tugging the blanket the rest of the way off him, she cocooned
herself in it. “You left it to me, whether I want to see you again.
Nothing tonight has changed my answer. I-I want to
be with you.” She let out her breath in a relieved
sigh.
“There now, I’ve said it.”

A profound relief rolled through him. He
hadn’t lost her yet. “I want to be with you, too,” he said, then
shook his head over the embarrassing inadequacy of his words. “I’ll
treasure you, Kylie, I swear I will. I’ll see you don’t come to
harm.”

She reached out and traced the line of his
jaw. He fought not to show how much her simple touch affected him.
Showing too much, caring too much, meant one day hurting too
much.

“
I’m safe with you. I’ve
always known that,” she said softly.

He didn’t mean to pull her to him, any more
than he meant to close his mouth over hers. Or to demand that she
give her all. He didn’t mean to, but even while knowing he couldn’t
give the same in return, he did.

At the first taste of her, the first touch of
tongue to tongue, he was lost to his need. The feel of Kylie’s
lithe body in his arms only fed the hunger, as did the low moan of
pleasure that drifted from her throat. Her throat... vulnerable,
white as a virgin’s thighs, and tasting sweet, so sweet.

It was physical, this wanting, slamming
through him and leaving him breathless. But it was more. So much
more that he couldn’t understand it. Pushing aside the blanket, he
cupped her breast in his hand, and took her surprised gasp into his
mouth. Her fingers clenched tighter into his back, then relaxed. He
didn’t move, just felt her heartbeat— a flight of startled
birds—beneath the thin fabric of her gown.

He fought the need, relentless though it was.
He would not frighten her.

“
My treasure,
ma stor,”
he whispered,
trailing kisses down to the tender curve where her neck met the
sweep of her shoulder. At her sigh, he shifted their position just
enough that he could turn his attention to the soldier row of tiny
buttons marching down the upper part of her nightgown. Their eyes
met, hers wide, smoky blue, and trusting, so trusting. His fingers
fumbled and shook, but finally he slipped his hand against her
skin.

“
Like silk,” he
murmured.

Her eyes drifted closed. He caressed the
valley between her breasts, then gradually feathered outward.
Kylie’s breath came fast and shallow, and she said something in
Irish he couldn’t understand. He stroked her, dusted the night with
kisses and nonsense words. He honored her.

Soon it wasn’t enough, this touching without
seeing. The last few buttons gave way with ease. He pushed the
fabric aside. Transfixed, he gazed at her lush beauty. After a
moment, she made an embarrassed sound and tried to cover her
breasts.

“
No, you don’t,” Michael
said, taking her hands and spreading her arms wide. “It would be a
sacri
lege. And a near impossibility,” he
added with a quick
smile. He dropped a kiss
on the pulse still fluttering madly at her throat. “You’re
beautiful, you know.”

“
I’m just...me.” Her voice
was thready with self-consciousness.

“
Beautiful,” he reaffirmed,
then brought his mouth
to one
peak.