Chapter 9 #3
Fiona fluttered the back of her hand to her forehead in a dramatic pose inherent in her Gaelic forbearers.
“That’s right. I’ll be picking my own man.
He’ll be handsome and rich and never argue.
I don’t tolerate men especially those Irish blokes who fight or drink or find cause for for endless debates.
I’ve had a lifetime of those Irish squanderers.
I want a man who will cook and wash dishes.
My man will look at me and say that no matter how I shined, he would see me as the glitter of a single star in a universe of constellations. That’s the man for me.”
“That’s a very special animal to acquire. Like finding a unicorn,” said Zachary.
The Chinaman and the enormous giant with bull-buffalo, broad-high shoulders joined them. Elizabeth took a step back to get the breadth of him.
He slapped Zachary on the back. “Looks to me like you swallowed a horned toad backward, Zachary. The lass has a great swing. Not every day my boyo gets hoodwinked. I’m Daniel O’Reilly, and you must be Miss Spencer,” he said in a thick Irish brogue mixed with a western accent.
He squeezed Elizabeth’s hand in a bear hug of a hearty shake that forced her to step forward to regain her balance.
Fiona advanced between them, fire in her eyes. “You don’t greet my lady like that.”
Bemused, O’Reilly curled his thumbs beneath his suspenders. “I did nothing wrong. I was polite.” He muttered under his breath to Zachary, “She looks mean enough to fight a rattler and give the snake the first bite.”
Fiona glared at him. “You don’t think I have ears, you big lout?”
Elizabeth faced her maid before she could work herself into her famous Irish temper. “Fiona, we need to show–”
O’Reilly’s mouth was the very assertion of humor, uncurbed mischief, and jocular self-will. “And if she isn’t from the old sod, herself. And the prettiest thing I’ve seen east of the Mississippi.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr. O’Reilly.” She turned her back on him.
“A temper to boot. I’m in love.” He scratched his big head, set defiantly on a thick neck, and with his cornflower blue eyes twinkling, he said, “How do I woo such a woman?”
“You don’t,” said Fiona over her shoulder. “Not unless you are rich.”
“I’m poor as a sparrow.”
“Then you are a thick-headed gobshite. I have no interest in the likes of you.”
“I’m a great cook and I do the dishes.”
“That’s what they all say.”
O’Reilly looked her up and down. “Bless your little Irish heart and every other Irish part.”
“Oh, you barbarian.” Fiona stomped off.
“Now you’ve done it O’Reilly,” said Zachary.
O’Reilly tipped his hat. “Pardon me, Miss Spencer. As I slide down the banister of life, pray for me the splinters never point in the wrong direction. Off to pursue my future bride.”
“Doesn’t look like you have a chance,” chuckled Zachary.
“She doesn’t know it yet.”
The children surrounded the Chinaman and pulled him away.
Like a social curiosity he was. He possessed high cheekbones and stood a head taller than Zachary, his height unusual for a Chinaman.
He had long, ink-black hair tied at his nape with a leather thong, a dusty hat, and all-seeing monolid eyes that seemed to hold a thousand years of wisdom.
He didn’t smile, remaining impassive. He bowed to her and that was the greatest form of communication she received from him.
“I tend to pick up strays,” Zachary explained to Elizabeth.
Her gaze drifted to where Fiona and O’Reilly fought like the hounds of hell. “I don’t know if Mr. O’Reilly’s charm will work on Fiona. I’ve never her seen her so worked up.”
“He has his ways but is brilliant and true as the hills of Donegal.”
“If you say so. Does he court all women the same way?”
“He’s never had any interest in females until he clapped his eyes on your lady’s maid.”
Elizabeth blinked. “You mean, she’s the only one?”
“Positive. I’ve never seen O’Reilly in the company of any woman. He’s too busy working on engines. He has one third share of my company. I do the designing and together we build and make our product work.”
When the sun was nearing its descent, the Fitzgeralds retired early making their goodbyes. Zachary and Elizabeth were left to load the exhausted children on the wagons where drivers carted them to the orphanage.
“Oh, Miss Spencer,” Fiona said. “Do you mind if I take the night off? Mr. O’Reilly is kind enough to escort me home.”
Elizabeth did an about face. She would have been less surprised if her maid had announced to waltz off with the Lakota Chief Crazy Horse.
How long had Elizabeth been harangued with Fiona’s unbound condemnations of Irishmen?
The mystery pleaded for answers—anything that aimed at the absurdity, contradiction and mind-boggling irony.
Who was she to nip a blossoming romance in the bud? “Of course.”
In the Spencer carriage, Caroline nestled in Elizabeth’s arms. How sweet her daughter smelled, of daisies and sunshine. “I had a wonderful day, Miss Spencer. Do you know what I dream about?”
Elizabeth smoothed the hair back from her daughter’s forehead, relishing the moment to hold her daughter, feeling her warmth and drowning in a sea of maternal love. “What do you dream about?”
She yawned. “I dream that you are my mother.”
Elizabeth chest hitched. Her vision blurred. Zachary’s cobalt blue eyes gazed into hers with all the hypnotic intensity she remembered.
Caroline lifted her deep violet eyes to Elizabeth. “What do you suppose happened to my mother and father? Didn’t they want me?”
Elizabeth held her daughter’s face in her hands.
How she wanted her daughter to love and to hold and to be near Caroline all the time.
How her child held her heart in the palm of her little hand.
Elizabeth would walk through the gates of hell to keep her sacred gift safe.
Elizabeth’s voice cracked with emotion. “I’m sure your mother wanted you very much. ”
Elizabeth drowned in guilt. Her soul lay scarred, and her heart despaired wild with regret unable to claim her child.
Her precious daughter turned from her, beckoned Mr. Rourke with her finger. He leaned down while she whispered loudly her secret into his ear while glancing at Elizabeth. “Make sure you bring Miss Spencer with you when you come to the orphanage.”
Elizabeth could feel heat rushing to her face from her daughter’s bold matchmaking.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that decision to Miss Spencer…if she dares.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth and closed it with his challenge. She lowered her eyes, pretending to be busy with Caroline’s wiggling to find a comfortable position, and then tucking the child in the crook of her arm. Elizabeth glanced up beneath her eyelashes, and he was still looking at her.
The child fell limp, asleep instantly. This was how it was supposed to be with mother and daughter. She looked up to Zachary across from her. He smiled.
When they pulled up in front of the orphanage, Zachary took Caroline from Elizabeth’s reluctant arms and carried her daughter into the orphanage.
Joseph followed, his eyes fixed on them. Satisfied that Caroline was laid safely to bed, he stared down on her. “She’s mine, you know.”
Elizabeth turned. Had she heard right? “Pardon me.”
“We’ve made a pledge to each other, and it can’t be broken.”
“How’s that?” Zachary asked, tamping down his amusement from the nine-year-old’s
bravado.
“We swapped our blood with our pinkies and swore on it.”
“I see,” said Elizabeth not understanding the elements of their crude courtship.
“When I came here, she adopted me when no one else wanted me,” he choked, raising his chin, and hardened from the past. “I was small and didn’t know how to read. The other boys made fun and picked fights with me. She stopped those boys, and then taught me how to read.”
Elizabeth burst with pride for her daughter’s defending the scapegoat. Other than Elizabeth’s visits to the orphanage that gave her few glimpses of her daughter, Joseph had afforded her an inside view to Caroline’s character.
“I’ve saved her several times. She is reckless,” said Joseph, looking down on Caroline, avoiding long looks as if he were looking at the sun, yet seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking at the sun.
Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open. Reckless? This side of her daughter alarmed her. “How is she careless?”
“She climbed up on the painter’s platform. I yelled at her to get down. She kept going higher and higher. She fell. I caught her. She could have broken her neck.”
Elizabeth gasped. Her daughter was a hurricane. “There’s more?”
“One night, that bad headmaster lured her into his office. I warned her to stay away from him. I knew something was up. When I heard Caroline cry, I got two older boys. Together we rammed a bench into the locked door and kept on ramming it until the door splintered wide. The headmaster was naked. We beat the hell out of him and would have killed him if the other teachers hadn’t pulled us off. ”
“Dear God!” Elizabeth grabbed Joseph, held him close to her. She had no idea her daughter had been attacked. “Thank you for protecting her. I’m infinitely in your debt.”
The boy thirsted for the hug, and then reddening, remembered himself, and pushed away. “The best protection for her is me. I never rely on chance or other people.”
After an emotional and enlightening report, Zachary assisted Elizabeth in the carriage.
“I could walk home,” he insisted.
Unescorted and to be with a man outside familial representation might bring scandalous ruin.
She bit her nail, and then tugged it away.
An awful habit her mother browbeat her for and one she longed to eradicate.
She sat shaking from Joseph’s revelations and wanted someone solid to be nearby.
To the devil with societal dictates. “It’s a long way to Shawn’s.
For all you’ve done, the least I can do is give you a ride home. ”
“I know what you are thinking.”
Her laughter came with an edge. “Do you? Please enlighten me for it would be a new experience for me.”
“You want your daughter with you.”
She spoke between gritted teeth. “Yes.”
“Then fight for her.”
Rage blistered through her veins. How dare he even suggest an outcome when she had researched every avenue to escape her present circumstances.
“That is not in the cards. My parents would not allow it. They’d banish Caroline to the tenements, overfilled buildings, eaten away by time, oppressive like a sunken ship underwater.
I could not send her into that rat-infested hellhole. ”
“Are you sure?” A barely controlled hostility simmered beneath his formality.
Her nostrils flared. His attack was like a choreographed dance of destruction.
“How dare you insinuate I have any choice in the matter? My parents think they’ve rid themselves of my problem by casting my daughter off to the frontier.
Can you imagine their machinations to cover up her existence, and then for her to reappear?
Don’t you think I’m sick and tired of my peers looking down their noses, searching for any scandal and then pecking that person to death?
To exist without laying ownership to Caroline. ”
“You need to fight for her and to protect her,” he said carelessly.
Right now, he was at the top of her lunatic list. The insensitive, hypercritical tyrant.
How she itched to slap him. “Oh, the na?ve Mr. Rourke. My mother would not allow one small infraction. My father is very powerful and has the means to execute any coverup necessary. Can you imagine what would happen if they discovered I hid my daughter in the orphanage?” Her voice rose, so incensed she was and sounding shrill.
“I apologize, Miss Spencer. I was out of turn.”
“You are not. I’m angry with myself, the world and the way it is. I want my daughter. Do you know how it feels to be powerless? To maintain a life of circumspect and emotional numbness?”
“I do.”
She jerked her head up. Those two simple words said so solemn and grave. He was a master at hiding his pain. If she hadn’t glimpsed a momentary vulnerability of sadness and anger, she’d have missed it. Had he been talking about himself?
Instantly, she knew Zachary Rourke.
Because she knew herself.
Pushed behind a wall of painful emotions, trapped in the churning waters of his subconscious, existed a fear of feeling…and being vulnerable.
When the coach stopped at the Fitzgeralds, he bent to her. Elizabeth widened her eyes, with the intensity of his gaze. A deep hunger stirred to life in her midsection. She wanted to cross the chasm that separated them.
The night noises swirled around them like a throbbing haze of sound as he grasped her by the wrist. Raising her hand, palm up, he pressed his lips to the soft place at the base of her palm where the blood beat closest to the skin’s surface.
For a second, she felt hot blood coursing up, up through her veins.
It was too immediate a gesture to give her a warning.
Then he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, murmuring a soft, “Miss Spencer.”
She stared back, feeling a curious streak of vibrations at his touch and a hint of sentimentality. Heat rose to her face. She slowly lowered her gaze to where his lips hovered just over hers. She took a deep breath against the panic. Waited. Was he going to kiss her?
He straightened, tipped his hat and flashed her a wicked smile. “Goodnight, Miss Spencer. Oh, remember your debt.”
“Debt?” she said breathlessly.
“Did you forget the opera?
She pulled back the curtain and watched him mount the steps with a surge of longing and regret. The man was mercurial. Damn him for leaving her in a trembling pool of yearning.