Chapter Two
She had a great deal to think about. Erin sat through dinner at the inn, with her family talking on top of each other, with laughter rolling into laughter.
Voices were raised to be heard over the clatter of tableware, the scrape of chair legs, the occasional shout.
Scents were a mixture of good hot food and whiskey.
The lights had been turned up high in celebration.
The group filled Mrs. Malloy’s dining room at the inn, but wasn’t so very much bigger than a Sunday supper at the farm.
Erin ate little herself, not because one of her brothers seemed to interrupt constantly to have her pass this or that, but because she couldn’t stop thinking about what Burke had said to her that afternoon.
She was dissatisfied, though she didn’t like the idea that a stranger could see it as easily as her family had always overlooked it.
Years before she’d convinced herself it wasn’t wrong to be so.
How could it be wrong to feel what was so natural?
True, she’d been taught that envy was a sin, but. ..
Damn it all, she wasn’t a saint and wouldn’t choose to be one.
The envy she felt for Dee sitting cozily beside her husband felt healthy, not sinful.
After all, it wasn’t as if she wished her cousin didn’t have; it was only that she wished she had as well.
She doubted a body burned in hell for wishes.
But she didn’t think they grew wings for them, either.
In truth, she was glad the Grants had come back to visit.
For a few days she could listen to their stories of America and picture it.
She could ask questions and imagine the big stone house Dee lived in now and almost catch glimpses of the excitement and power of the racing world.
When they left again, everything would settle back to routine.
But not forever, Erin promised herself. No, not forever. In a year, maybe two, she would have saved enough, and then it would be off to Dublin. She’d get a job in some big office and have a flat of her own. Of her very own. No one was going to stop her.
Her lips started to curve at the thought, but then her gaze met Burke’s across the table.
He wasn’t wearing those concealing glasses now.
She almost wished he was. They’d been disturbing, but not nearly as disturbing as his eyes—dark gray, intense eyes.
A wolf would have eyes like that, smoky and patient and cunning.
He had no business looking at her like that, she thought, then stubbornly stared right back at him.
The noise and confusion of the table continued around them, but she lost track of it.
Was it the amusement in his eyes that drew her, or the arrogance?
Perhaps it was because both added up to a peculiar kind of knowledge.
She wasn’t sure, but she felt something for him at that moment, something she knew she shouldn’t feel and was even more certain she’d regret.
An Irish rose, Burke thought. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen one, but was certain they would have thorns, thick ones with sharp edges.
An Irish rose, a wild rose, wouldn’t be fragile or require careful handling.
It would be sturdy, strong and stubborn enough to grow through briers.
It was a flower he thought he could respect.
He liked her family. They would be called salt of the earth, he supposed.
Simple, but not simple-minded. Apparently their farm did well enough, as long as they worked seven days a week.
Mary McKinnon had a dressmaking business on the side, but seemed more interested in discussing children with Dee than fashion.
The brothers were fair, except for the oldest, Cullen, who had the looks of a Black Irish warrior and the voice of a poet.
Unless Burke missed his guess, Erin had her softest spot there.
Throughout the meal he watched her, curious to see what other soft spots he might discover.
By the time dinner was over, Burke was glad he’d let Travis talk him into an extra few days in Ireland. The trip had been profitable, the visit to the track at Curragh educational, and now it seemed it was time to mix business with a little pleasure.
“You’ll play for us, won’t you, Cullen?” Adelia was already reaching across the table to grip Erin’s oldest brother’s hand. “For old times’ sake.”
“He’ll take little enough persuading,” Mary McKinnon put in. “You’d best clear a space.” She gestured to her two youngest sons. “It’s only fitting that we dance off a meal like that.”
“I just happen to have my pipe.” Cullen reached in his vest pocket and drew out the slim reed. He stood, a big man with broad shoulders and lean hips. The fingers of his workingman’s hands slid over the holes as he lifted the instrument to his lips.
It surprised Burke that such a big, rough-looking man could make such delicate music. He settled back in his chair, savored the kick of his Irish whiskey and watched.
Mary McKinnon placed her hand in her youngest son’s and, without seeming to move at all, set her feet in time to the music.
It seemed a very restrained dance to Burke, with a complicated pattern of heels and toes and shuffles.
Then the pace began to pick up—slowly, almost unnoticeably.
The others were keeping time with their hands or occasional hoots.
When he glanced at Erin, she was standing with a hand on her father’s shoulder and smiling as he hadn’t seen her smile before.
Something shimmered a bit inside him—shimmered, then strained, then quieted, all in the space of two heartbeats.
“She still moves like a girl,” Matthew McKinnon said of his wife.
“And she’s still beautiful.” Erin watched her mother whirl in her son’s arms, then spin with a flare of skirt and a flash of leg.
“Can you keep up?”
With a laugh that was only slightly wistful, Erin shook her head. “I’ve never been able to.”
“Come now.” Her father slid an arm around her waist. “My money’s on you.”
Before she could protest, Matthew had spun her out.
His grin was broad as he held her hand high and picked up the rhythm of the timeless folk dance she’d been taught as soon as she could walk.
The pipe music was cheerful and challenging.
Caught up in it and her family’s enthusiasm, Erin began to move instinctively.
She put her hands on her hips and tossed up her chin.
“Can you manage it?”
Adelia looked up at her eighteen-year-old cousin. “Can I manage it?” she repeated with her eyes narrowed. “The day hasn’t come when I can’t manage a jig, boyo.”
Travis started to protest as she joined her cousins on the floor, but then he subsided. If there was one thing his Dee knew, it was her own strength. The depth of it continued to surprise him. “Quite a group, aren’t they?” he murmured to Burke.
“They’re all of that.” He drew out a cigar, but his eyes remained on Erin. “I take it you don’t jig.”
With a chuckle, Travis leaned back against the wall.
“Dee’s tried to teach me and labeled me hopeless.
I’m inclined to believe you have to be born to it.
” He saw Brendon go out to take his place as his mother’s partner.
His mother’s son, Travis thought with a ripple of pride.
Of all their children, Brendon was the most strong-willed and hardheaded. “She needed this more than I realized.”
Burke managed to tear his eyes from Erin long enough to study Travis’s profile. “Most people get homesick now and again.”
“She’s only come back twice in seven years.
” Travis watched her now, her cheeks pink with pleasure, her eyes laughing down at Brendon as he copied her moves.
“It’s not enough. You know, she’ll take you to the wall in an argument—half the time an argument no sane man can understand.
But she never complains, and she never asks. ”
For a moment Burke said nothing. It still surprised him after four years that his friendship with Travis had become so close, so quickly.
He’d never considered himself the kind of man to make friends, and in truth had never wanted the responsibility of one.
He’d spent almost half his thirty-two years on his own, needing no one.
Wanting no one. With the Grants, it had just happened.
“I don’t know much about women.” At Travis’s slow smile, Burke corrected himself. “Wives. But I’d say yours is happy, whether she’s here or in the States. The fact is, Travis, if she loved you less I might have made a play for her myself.”
Travis continued to watch her as his mind played back the years. “The first time I saw her I thought she was a boy.”
Burke drew the cigar out of his mouth. “You’re joking.”
“It was dark.”
“A poor excuse.”
His chuckle was warm and easy as he looked back.
“She seemed to think so, too. Nearly took my head off. I think I fell for her then and there.” He heard her laugh and looked over as she shook her head and stepped away from the dancers.
She came to him, hands outstretched. The jeweled ring he’d put on her finger years before still glimmered.
“I could go for hours,” she claimed, a little breathlessly. “But these two have had enough.” With her free hands, she covered her babies. “Are you going to try it, Burke?”
“Not on your life.”
She laughed again and put a hand on his arm with the simple generosity he’d never quite gotten used to.
“If a man doesn’t make a fool of himself now and again, he’s not living.
” She took a couple of deep, steadying breaths, but couldn’t keep her foot from tapping.
“Oh, it’s like magic when Cullen plays and all the more magic to be here, hearing it.
” She brought Travis’s hand to her lips, then rested her cheek on it.
“Mary McKinnon can still outdance anyone in the county, but Erin’s wonderful, too, isn’t she? ”
Burke took a long sip of whiskey. “It’s not a hardship to watch her.”