Chapter 24
For several taut, horrified seconds, Maggie simply stared at Patrick O’Malley, lounging back in his chair, his eyes glinting with devilish amusement, his mouth curved in that awful, smirking grin. She could not think of a single thing to say.
“We aren’t married?” Brendan finally exclaimed, doing a creditable imitation of sounding both surprised and amused, although his face was pale. “What a strange thing to say, Mr. O’Malley. I couldn’t possibly know what you mean—”
“Is it so strange?” Patrick O’Malley challenged, a steely note entering his voice.
“Because I’ve been married myself for twenty years, and I’ve never seen a young couple act the way you two do, especially since you say you married for love.
No parents pushing the match, no reason to be wed unless you cared for each other.
” He glanced between them again, as if waiting for an answer.
Maggie swallowed hard. So that was the reason for all the questions.
When had he started to suspect? She opened her mouth to refute Mr. O’Malley’s claims and insist that she and Brendan loved each other, but she found she couldn’t do it.
She could not admit her feelings—feelings she’d fought against for so long—in front of a breathlessly waiting crowd, pretending she was lying to Brendan and telling the truth to everyone else, when the reality was, she didn’t know how she felt.
“I resent your accusations,” Brendan stated with dignity. “I’ve barely met you, and yet you come here, casting such aspersions? It won’t do, sir.” He made as if to stand up from the table, and Maggie choked a horrified laugh. Was he going to challenge the man to a duel? The whole thing felt absurd.
Patrick O’Malley waved him back down with one meaty hand. “And I can’t help but notice,” he remarked, “your wife isn’t wearing a wedding ring.”
Maggie glanced down at her bare-fingered hands.
She’d taken off her ring for the tea party and forgotten to put it back on again.
It wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened, but it was the first time anyone had noticed.
“I take it off sometimes,” she said in a shaky voice. “It catches on my glove—”
“The thing I’m wondering,” Mr. O’Malley continued in a ruminative voice, completely ignoring what she’d said, “is what kind of woman shares a room and a bed with a man she’s not married to?
” He paused to give the question its full, awful import as his smirking gaze rested heavily on Maggie.
“Not one I’d have in this house, I’d reckon. ”
“Patrick…” Harriet protested weakly. She looked pale, no doubt shaken by the potential trickery that had taken place under her nose.
Maggie could already sense that they were not going to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes any longer—and she was the one who would suffer for it. She, the loose woman, the brazen hussy, while Brendan was simply a man, absolved of any responsibility or wrongdoing.
“This is outrageous!” Brendan stated, standing up. “I will not have you insulting my—my wife any longer.”
“Your—your wife?” Patrick O’Malley mimicked, catching his unfortunate stumbling over the phrase that should have sprung readily to his lips. “Is that right?”
“Brendan,” Maggie said quietly. With a flash of insight, she realized she didn’t want to continue this exhausting charade any longer.
God willing, she’d have enough money soon to find her own lodgings.
In the meantime, perhaps they could come to some arrangement with the O’Malleys.
Perhaps she could take Danny’s room, or…
That faint, frail hope died a swift death as Harriet finally found her voice—and her outrage.
“This is scandalous!” she proclaimed, her voice thrumming with self-righteous fury.
“I can see it written plainly on both your faces that what Mr. O’Malley has said is true.
An unwed couple living bold as brass under my roof!
I’m sick with the shame of it, and so should you be.
You’ll leave our house at once. Pack your bags and be gone tonight, and your brother as well.
” She glanced at Danny, who had remained silent and watchful throughout this whole exchange.
“I was doing you a kindness, giving you that room,” she scolded him.
“And you kept up the charade along with the pair of them! Shame on you.”
“A kindness?” Danny exclaimed, his eyes sparking with anger. “To fetch and carry for you all evening long after I’ve worked ten hours? I’d hardly call that a kindness.”
“Oh!” Harriet cried in shocked dismay, pressing a hand to her heart.
“Surely we can all be sensible about this,” Sarah intervened, but her gentle voice was overridden by Mr. O’Malley.
“Upstairs!” he barked. “I want you both out of here in ten minutes, and the boy as well!”
Ten minutes… Maggie stared at him in horrified incredulity. It was night, and dark, and he had to know that no decent landlord would accept a tenant at this hour. They would have to go to a hotel, which would be ruinously expensive, and even then they might not be allowed in.
On shaky legs, she rose from the table, avoiding Harriet’s baleful gaze and her husband’s smug one. She could hardly believe everything had come tumbling down so quickly—why had Mr. O’Malley turned against them in such a disastrous way? How had he suspected so swiftly?
Upstairs, Maggie stared around the room they’d called home for four months with a sense of growing despair.
She needed to focus on her work and fulfilling these commissions—without them, she would never have a chance at a career, or even a livelihood.
And yet now, just as before in New York, she was cast out into the darkness without any place to go, and this time Brendan with her.
It felt horribly unfair, and yet she wasn’t even surprised.
No matter how hard she worked, how much she strived, life always had a way of sending her sprawling backwards.
“I’m sorry about this,” Brendan said in a low voice as he came into the room behind her. “I have no idea how that man got the wrong idea.”
“You mean the right idea,” Maggie replied with a ragged laugh. “Don’t you?”
Brendan sighed. “I suppose we should have expected this to happen someday,” he said ruefully. “We can’t playact as husband and wife forever, at least not convincingly.”
For some reason, this remark stung, and Maggie forced the hurt feeling away. “No,” she agreed as she began to take her few dresses from the hooks on the wall. “But where do we go now?”
Once again, a vast and unknown city stretched before her, full of strangers. At least, that was what it felt like. There was no one to whom she could turn for help, no one who would welcome her—as well as Brendan and Danny—in with loving arms and an accepting smile.
For a second, stupidly, Maggie found herself missing her father. He had been loving in his own way, but she’d fallen low indeed if he was her best hope!
“Dr. Holmes has space in his building,” Brendan told her as he started packing up his own clothes.
“We’d have to make our own meals, and I suspect we’ll have to come clean about not being married, and have separate apartments.
” He grimaced. “But I think he’d charge a reasonable rent, and it’s somewhere to go for now.
In the morning, or whenever you’ve gotten your bearings, you and Danny can look for lodgings elsewhere. ”
“Dr. Holmes…” Maggie thought of what Patrick O’Malley had said about the man earlier in the evening.
Did she really want to trust such a person as her landlord?
And yet why should she trust Mr. O’Malley?
“I suppose we’ll have to, for now,” she said glumly, and then added, a regrettable afterthought, “thank you.”
“I don’t suppose Mrs. O’Malley will give us half a week’s rent back,” Brendan said ruefully. “But never mind that. Why don’t I speak to Dr. Holmes while you finish packing? I’ll be back in a jiff.”
He hurried from the room as Maggie continued packing. It didn’t take long and, within a few minutes, everything she possessed, including the belongings Mrs. Stein had returned to her, were in the trunk she’d brought from Ireland. Nothing else remained.
Maggie slumped onto the bed, reluctant to go downstairs and face her former fellow lodgers, as well as her landlords. She didn’t think she could bear Harriet’s scandalized self-righteousness or her husband’s smirking smugness. Why had the man turned against them so?
She heard a creak on the stair and rose, expecting Brendan to come in with his light step and quick smile, assuring her it had all been arranged.
Instead, the door opened and Patrick O’Malley stood there, smirking just as he had been before, only now there was an ugliness to his grin, as well as a lasciviousness that sent ripples of ice racing down Maggie’s spine.
“We’re just about to leave,” she told him, and was both infuriated and humiliated by how her voice trembled. “Brendan is arranging our accommodation right now.”
“Yes, he’s gone over to that smarmy Dr. Holmes’ place,” O’Malley replied, and closed the door behind him.
Maggie eyed the closed door with a growing alarm. She knew all the others were just downstairs, and if she screamed they would almost certainly hear her. She didn’t need to be afraid, even if the intent and avaricious look in O’Malley’s dark eyes scared her.
“I would ask that you leave my room,” she told him, and now she sounded stronger. “It isn’t appropriate for you to be in here.”
O’Malley chuckled indulgently. “Oh, and you, a light bit of skirt, are going to tell me what’s appropriate… and what isn’t?” He took a menacing step toward her, and Maggie had to force herself not to step back.
“Whatever your intentions, sir, I advise you not to come closer,” she told him severely. “I doubt your wife would enjoy knowing about this little scene!”
He laughed again, this time the sound tinged with malice. “And you think she would believe you, brazen hussy that you are, and a known liar?”
Before Maggie could blink, he’d crossed the room in two long strides and grabbed her by her arm, pulling her toward him. Her body collided with his as he twisted her arm behind her back and walked her toward the bed, with her stumbling backward, too shocked to cry out.
“Don’t!” she finally managed to yelp, as he pushed her onto the bed, her arm now pinned above her head. Maggie stared up at his flushed face, his eyes bright with purpose and anticipation as he reached for the hem of her skirt.
She could hardly believe this was happening, that she was about to be assaulted, maybe even raped, with everyone downstairs and Brendan expected back any minute… but would he come in time?
O’Malley pulled her skirt, ripping the fabric, up past her knees before Maggie’s dazed mind finally kicked into gear and she started to struggle.
She screamed, a single high note before his hand clamped over her mouth and nose, so she couldn’t even breathe.
She stared at him with wide, panicked eyes as, slowly, seeming to enjoy the deliberation, he pulled her skirt all the way up to her waist.
Tears of mortification and pain blurred her vision.
With her free hand, she tried to hit his head, but he grabbed it with his other so both her arms were pinned above.
She kicked out at him, her shoe connecting with his shin, but he shrugged off the attack, seeming barely to feel it as he reached for her again.
“I know what women like you want,” he growled while Maggie struggled helplessly. With both arms pinned and his body resting heavily on hers, she was completely imprisoned. Worse than that, with his hand over her mouth and nose, she was unable to breathe, and spots began to dance before her eyes.
He’s going to kill me, she thought in incredulity. She would suffocate—but not before he’d gotten what he wanted.
Her vision began to blacken at the edges, the world shrinking to a pinpoint as O’Malley wrested with his own clothes.
Maggie felt herself go limp as unconsciousness began to overtake her, and it almost felt like a relief.
Then, in the next instant, O’Malley’s body was hauled off hers, and she blinked up, the world coming back into focus as she gasped and choked.
Brendan stood panting above her, his face flushed with exertion, his eyes sparking with both fury and concern, O’Malley stumbling to his feet behind him.
“Maggie, Maggie…” He reached for her, hauling her up and holding her in his arms. “Dear heaven… are you all right?”