Chapter 12
Slowly, Maggie walked up the stairs to her room, her heart, once so light with hope and happiness, now oddly heavy.
She would have to beg for some leftovers, or at least a piece of bread and butter, from Mrs. O’Malley, who would no doubt be disapproving of a wife coming home to her husband so late in the evening.
With a sigh, Maggie opened the door to her room—and stopped at the sight of Brendan bent over the washbasin, the water in it tinged pink with what she feared was blood.
“Brendan!” His name burst from her lips. “What’s happened? Have you been injured?” She thought of the stories she’d heard of men in the stockyards who’d had all their fingers sliced clean off, and everything in her quailed with fear. She realized she couldn’t bear it if he’d been seriously hurt.
“Not really,” Brendan replied, straightening. He tucked his hands behind his back, but not before Maggie got a glimpse of them—chapped and reddened, with what looked like painful open sores all along his fingers.
“Your hands!” she exclaimed. “What has happened to your hands?”
“It’s just from the pickling solution,” he told her with a dismissive shrug. “The chemicals in it are terribly harsh, and we have to work with our bare hands. All the picklers get hands like these, or even worse.”
“But you’re bleeding,” Maggie protested, and instinctively reached for his hand.
Brendan stepped away, but when she reached again he stopped, and passively allowed her to take his roughened hand in hers and examine it.
It was terribly red and sore, the fingers swollen with open cuts that ran with pus and blood. “Brendan,” Maggie exclaimed softly, her heart aching at the sight. “This is dreadful. We should get some ointment or medicine—something—”
She looked up at him, her breath drying in her throat as she saw the intent look darkening his hazel eyes.
Her fingers instinctively clenched on his, and her heart started beating hard as words sprang to her lips—words she didn’t know how to say, and yet she felt.
She felt so very sorry for the way things had unfolded painfully between them, and strangely, almost wildly, hopeful that they might change.
She might change, and maybe she already had, for looking at him now, distressed to see him in pain, knowing how much she cared whether she wanted to or not…
Brendan caught her free hand with his other, holding it there between them while the very air tautened between them and Maggie opened her mouth to say something of what was bursting in her heart.
Then Brendan spoke first.
“Maggie… I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “For… for before. I should have said something sooner about the way things happened between us that day. I’m sorry that I did not.”
“Brendan…” Slowly, Maggie shook her head. She did not know what else to say. She didn’t even know what he was sorry for—getting angry with her for her own feelings? Trying to kiss her? Or something else entirely?
And what was she sorry for? She did not know the answer to that, either, but the words that had been about to spill from her lips now dried—and died—in her throat.
“I was ashamed, Maggie,” Brendan confessed in a low voice.
His hands clenched on hers and then, slowly, deliberately, he let go, his own falling to his sides while hers remained limply in front of her, as if she did not know what to do with them.
“I was ashamed because what you said before was true. I was enjoying pretending you were my wife. I liked introducing you that way, even… even feeling like I had the right… to touch you.” His face colored and he looked down.
“Just my hand on your back or holding your hand in a way that was familiar. Like I had the right. I think I convinced myself I had.”
“Brendan…” Once again, she had nothing more to say.
She felt helpless in the face of his own guilt and misery, and she didn’t want him to feel either.
Not when she’d been feeling something else entirely!
All the resentment she’d once felt, Maggie realized, had burned away in light of his own confession—and her own jumbled feelings.
She’d known her feelings had been petty before, but now she felt the deep shame of it.
How could she have resented such a good man loving her?
Loving her even when she hadn’t deserved it?
How had she not appreciated his love for what it was?
Brendan shook his head, his face full of recrimination. “I’ve unmanned myself, by behaving in such a way. By coercing you—”
“You didn’t coerce me,” Maggie protested. “I agreed to the charade, after all.”
“Only because I insisted.” His voice was full of a self-loathing that made Maggie want to cry. “I am thoroughly ashamed of myself,” he continued, his voice turning strident. “For taking part in such a… sham.”
She flinched at the harshness of his words, even though she knew they were directed only at himself. “Brendan,” she protested in little more than a whisper, “you don’t need to be ashamed—”
“But I do,” he insisted. “I thought I could convince you to love me, to want to be my wife, if we just playacted the parts. You would see how good it could be between us, when we were pretending.” His mouth twisted in self-derision, his eyes dark with pain.
“How pathetic a notion that is!” he exclaimed.
“How utterly feeble. I cannot believe I convinced myself of it for a moment, never mind a full month.” He shook his head, his face hardening with resolve in a way that made her stomach flutter with fear.
She didn’t like seeing him so steely, especially in relation to her. To them.
“At least I’ve come to my senses now,” he stated heavily.
“At long last, and none too soon, I’m sure.
” His tone softened, although his face still looked hard.
“I know how you’ve suffered these last weeks, Maggie, and how much you’ve resented our situation, but I need you to know, I would never force you to do or feel anything, ever.
” His voice caught before he resumed stonily, “From now on, I consider myself your friend, and your friend only. As soon as we can end this miserable charade of husband and wife, the better it will be… for both of us.” He nodded, clearly resolved in the matter, while Maggie swallowed hard and forced a smile to her lips that felt funny and stiff.
“Thank you for your… kindness,” she said after a long moment, the words coming painfully.
Her voice sounded as stiff as her lips felt.
“I do appreciate all you’ve done for Danny and me, Brendan.
I want you to know that. To believe it. And I…
I am grateful to be able to call you a friend.
Truly.” She paused, wanting to say something more, more of what she’d been feeling, but she struggled to put it into words, especially when Brendan seemed so settled on the matter.
In any case, he didn’t give her the chance. “I’m glad we’ve cleared the air,” he said in a tone of finality. “And from now on, we can be at ease with each other, knowing we are friends, and friends only, and that is all we will ever be.” He smiled. “It is a relief, to tell you the truth.”
“A relief…” Maggie knew she had absolutely no right to feel stung, and yet she did. Terribly.
“For you,” Brendan clarified, “but also for me. It’s both humbling and exhausting, trying to make someone love you.” He shook his head, managing a smile while Maggie could only stare. “I am grateful to be done with it.”
“I… see,” Maggie replied. The complicated jumble of her own feelings felt humiliating to her now, for her to still be wondering what she felt for Brendan, convincing herself she felt something more, might even give in to the feelings she’d been fighting for so long…
and all when Brendan had quite finished with the matter.
“Shall we go downstairs and see if Mrs. O’Malley might rustle up some supper for you?”
“Only if you sweet-talk her into it,” Maggie replied, trying for a wryness she didn’t feel. Her heart was heavy, and her lips felt funny and stiff as she tried to smile and failed. “She is still a little put out with me being a working woman.”
“Then I will do my best to charm her,” Brendan promised. He smiled and stuck out one reddened hand. “Friends?”
Maggie felt she had no choice but to take it, gently due to his sores, her lips trembling before she finally forced them into a smile, even though it hurt. “Friends,” she agreed.
They were just heading downstairs when Mrs. O’Malley called up to them, her voice full of excitement. “Oh, Mr. and Mrs. O’Donaghue, there you are!” she exclaimed. “You’ll never guess what has happened.”
“Oh?” Brendan’s voice was warm and friendly while Maggie lagged a little behind, trying to enter into the moment, even though she felt like running upstairs, closing the door, and falling onto her bed in a tearful heap.
Brendan had said nothing objectionable, she told herself, quite the opposite.
She should be as relieved, as he obviously was… but she wasn’t.
She wasn’t at all.
“You’ve had a visitor,” Mrs. O’Malley said in the same tone of suppressed excitement. “Dr. Holmes, from the drugstore. He saw your advertisement in the newspaper, and he says he knows your father.”