Chapter 18 #2
Phinn laughed. “You have no idea, con-considerin’ my humble beginnings.
I grew up in the country in Count-County Cork.
The village of Ballybrook to be exact. Me da …
” He paused. “My father man-managed a public house, The Bally-Brook Arms, that was actually owned by his uncle, the last Marquess of Kinsale. At least until his lordship decided to sell it off—maybe it wasn’t as prof-profitable as he would o’ liked.
So … so then we moved to Dublin … when I was nine.
And o’ course, like most folk, our fam-family fell on hard times during the Fam-Famine. ”
A shadow of concern crossed Miss Davenport’s features. “We can choose a different topic if this one causes you too much pain.”
“No. It’s all right.” Phinn mustered a smile, even though sadness welled in his heart. “I’d like to talk about my fam-family … to you. I-I don’t want to for-forget them.”
Mina nodded. “You’ve spoken of your mother and sister before.”
“Aye …” He smiled, recalling them both in his mind’s eye.
Their dark hair and bright green eyes just like his.
His mam’s caustic wit and his sister’s kind heart.
“Me sister was older than me. By two years. Brigit was her name. Me mam—I mean my mother—her name was Maureen. She was originally from Derry in the north. And my father’s name was Colin.
Like me, he … he was an ox of a man. We’d been happy in Ballybrook.
I recall it was as pre-pretty as a picture—all those rollin’ green hills and woods and the River Bride run-runnin’ through it.
It wasn’t even so bad in Dublin when we all had reg-regular work.
Me mam worked for a fancy milliner, and …
and when she was old enough, Brigit found employment as a maid-o’-all-work with a well-to-do merchant family.
When I was twelve, I began to work along-alongside me da, down at the docks.
” Phinn’s mouth twisted with a wry smile.
“Then the Famine arrived and o’ course, the work dried up and no one in Ireland was happy except for …
except for the absentee landlords and their rent collectors o’ course. ”
“That must have been so very hard,” the governess remarked, her tone gentle.
Phinn’s chest rose and fell on a heavy sigh. “Aye. It was. When jobs became scarcer than hen’s teeth, I took up boxin’ pro-professionally. It-it was the only sort of work I could find. It paid enough to keep some f-f-food on the ta-table. And to pay the rent for our … for our lodgings.”
A delicate furrow—the sort of line Phinn wished he could smooth away with his fingertips—appeared between the governess’s delicate brows. “Fighting for a living must have been so very difficult, my lord,” she said, her voice soft with compassion. “Both physically and mentally demanding.”
“It’s not the sort o’ work I would have chosen for meself, that’s true,” he said.
“But-but I’d been fi-fightin’ in amateur matches at a handful of the dockside taverns for a few years.
Doin’ physical labor from mornin’ ’til night when I was a dock worker had tough-toughened me up.
And havin’ a stammer—being the sub-subject of taunts for so long—had made me learn how to stand up for meself. It … it wasn’t so very hard.”
“All the same,” said Miss Davenport, “it can’t have been easy. I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through.”
Phinn didn’t mention that it wasn’t until he was an adolescent when he’d sprung up and started to fill out with muscle that things began to change.
That he stopped being teased so mercilessly—labelled an “eejit” by all and sundry.
“I … I survived those years. If I’m being to-totally honest though, losin’ me f-f-family—me da and mam and sis-sister—to typhoid fever, which swept through our quarter o’ Dublin—was far, far worse. ”
“I’m so sorry. To lose them all at once must have been truly devastating.” Sadness clouded Miss Davenport’s eyes. “A terrible fever—our physician called it typhlitis—claimed my father’s life as well,” she added softly. “Five years ago.”
“I’m-I’m sorry too,” said Phinn. And he meant it. “Does … does your family—you’ve mentioned your mother and sister—have every-everythin’ they need? Do you and Christopher?”
Miss Davenport nodded. “They do. They are content.”
“If they ever need anythin’—if you and your son ever need anythin’, Miss Davenport—you only need to ask. All of this”—he gestured about the room—“is far too much for one man.”
The governess plucked at her blue woolen skirts as though something was bothering her.
But after a minute, she lifted her eyes to his.
“I can understand why you want to do something for your fellow countrymen and -women—to lend them a voice in Parliament—so that sort of suffering never happens again.”
“Aye. I’m glad you understand,” he said.
Phinn had told the governess about his family.
But he’d only shared the barest of details about their lives, particularly after they’d moved to Dublin.
He hadn’t told Miss Davenport about his father’s descent into deep melancholy and drink when he’d suffered a terrible shoulder injury and had been laid off and then couldn’t find work anywhere else.
Or how his mother and sister ended up taking in odd mending and laundry jobs, working their fingers to the bone, often ironing and darning by the weak light of a single tallow candle into the wee small hours for just a few pennies.
He certainly wouldn’t share what it had been like to be a fighter.
How ghastly it truly was. How he’d hated profiting off the violence he could deliver so effectively with his fists.
He didn’t tell her about the pain, the blood and bruises, or the terrible injuries he’d suffered—the cuts and broken ribs and knuckles and a broken nose and cracked cheekbone and jaw and several cracked back teeth.
Or the bone-deep feelings of self-loathing when he beat another boxer because he, Cutthroat O’Connell—the name his uncompromising manager had given him to draw in the “crowds”—only made money when he won.
The brutal daily training schedule he was put through, even though he barely had enough food to drag himself out of bed let alone put one foot in front of the other.
But then the ravening guilt when he did manage to procure some food for himself and his family, when so many fellow Irish folk around them had nothing at all.
Phinn didn’t tell Miss Davenport any of this because he didn’t want to make her sad.
He liked to see her lush mouth curve into a lovely smile and her eyes glow like a glass of whisky held up to the firelight.
So like then, back in Ireland, he absorbed the pain of his difficult memories, keeping the ache deep inside him, pushing through it, burying it.
Taking it like he’d take a gut punch in the boxing ring.
By sheer force of will he ignored how much it hurt. He would not let it take him down.
The clock suddenly struck eleven and Miss Davenport barely stifled a yawn.
Phinn cast her a compassionate smile. “You-you should go to bed, Miss Davenport. The lads keep you busy enough during the day. I don’t … I don’t want to keep you up all night.”
Well, that was a blatant lie. Phinn would love to sweep the gorgeous young woman up into his arms and convey her to his bed, where they’d stay for the rest of the night doing things that had naught to do with sleeping, but some thoughts were best kept to oneself.
It was only after Miss Davenport had quit the library that Phinn realized she’d never told him whether she had all that she needed.
Had she avoided his question deliberately?
He sensed the young woman had secrets. Of course, she’d already disclosed to him that Christopher was her son out of wedlock.
And he, for his part, felt so very honored that she’d trusted him enough to share such a private, and no doubt potentially incendiary piece of intelligence.
But he was so very sure there was something else going on.
Sometimes Hermina Davenport looked … troubled. On edge.
Guilty?
But of what? Phinn really had no idea.
He picked up Jane Eyre.
He still hadn’t worked out what had happened in Hatchards a fortnight ago.
He could have sworn Miss Davenport had been hiding from something or someone, but he hadn’t been able to work out what or who.
There had been a fair-haired man looking in the bookstore window at the time she’d ducked down in apparent alarm and accidentally hit him in the “goolies” as Tom had boldly declared.
What had first made Phinn suspicious that something wasn’t quite right was when he’d handed Miss Davenport back into his carriage and he’d seen that her boots had a neat row of three buttons along one side.
Not laces. So either the governess had misspoken when she’d claimed she was tying her bootlace, or she’d needed to hurriedly drop down low behind a bookcase for an entirely different reason that had nothing to do with laces or buttons.
Whatever the case, Phinn hoped that if she really was in some kind of trouble, she’d take him into her confidence.
And then it struck him. The well-dressed gentleman had had blond hair.
Just like Miss Davenport’s son, Christopher …
Of course, there were countless blond gentlemen in London. But had Miss Davenport been avoiding this particular gentleman?
Phinn frowned into the fire. Miss Davenport never spoke of the boy’s father.
Of course, she had no reason to, especially to her employer.
And perhaps she simply didn’t want to because it pained her to do so.
Three weeks ago when Phinn had first discovered Miss Davenport and her son had stowed away on the Kinsale Cloud—and he still didn’t know why she had (not to mention there was something decidedly peculiar about how she’d “magically” ended up on his ship to begin with)—she’d mentioned she didn’t wish to talk about Christopher’s father. That he’d passed away a year ago.
Unless he hadn’t …
Whoever Christopher’s father had been, he clearly hadn’t done the right thing and asked Miss Davenport to marry him.
Phinn couldn’t help but wonder if Christopher’s da had been an absolute bounder of the highest order and had taken advantage of Hermina Davenport.
Christopher was seven, so she must have only been eighteen when she’d found herself in the “family way.” Had a young Miss Davenport fallen in love with that man? Had the cad broken her heart?
Phinn’s hands curled into tight fists on his thighs as he revisited the memory of the man peering through the front window of Hatchards and Miss Davenport’s reaction.
Her fear. Yes, she’d been afraid. In the moment before she’d dropped down, Phinn had seen her eyes widen with fright.
He’d wager his soul that the golden-haired, mustachioed and bearded fellow had had something to do with her sudden need to hide.
But Miss Davenport was no longer alone. Phinn had money and some degree of power now he was a marquess.
And he genuinely liked the woman. He’d never judge her like polite society would for being an unwed mother.
Heaven knew, he was far from perfect. He’d made his fair share of mistakes and had a prizefighting past he’d rather forget.
Yes, he’d help Miss Davenport in whatever way he could. If only she’d trust him enough to ask.
With a sigh, Phinn opened up Jane Eyre and found the page he’d been reading.
He might be clueless about many of high society’s rules and customs, but he wasn’t clueless about class barriers and where the lines were between sharing too much and too little with his employees.
From what he’d read so far of the book he held in his hands, Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester was certainly crossing all kinds of lines with Miss Eyre.
And somehow, she’d fallen in love with the man, despite his physical imperfections and myriad personal flaws.
But Jane Eyre is a book, Phineas O’Connell.
And despite the fact you’re a marquess, you’re not a broodin’ Byronic hero or a knight in shinin’ armor—the sort of man who’s likely to snag the interest of someone as fine as Miss Davenport.
Deep down, you’re a simple man from County Cork with a scarred physiognomy and a heart that’s been bruised and battered by far too much loss.
You can barely even say the woman’s name without makin’ a mess of it.
And then he gave himself a mental shake as he cast the romantic novel aside. What was he thinking? What was all this talk of falling in love? Was the brutish former boxer “Cutthroat O’Connell” really beginning to harbor such finer, tender emotions?
No, he was just “in lust” with pretty Miss Mina Davenport, he reminded himself as he pushed to his feet and crossed to the drinks tray by his desk.
There was nothing “fine” or “tender” involved when he had visions of whisking the governess up to his suite.
Or what he thought about doing with her in his bed when he was alone at night and couldn’t fall asleep.
It’s the reason he’d been avoiding dancing lessons with her, even though he desperately needed them.
He kept making excuses—that he was far too sore after another riding lesson, or he’d strained his muscles during a far too vigorous boxing session.
The truth was, he was worried that if he held the gorgeous governess in his arms, when he stared down into her beautiful face, when he fantasized about sliding his fingers through her glossy chestnut hair and mussing it up, or cupping her smooth-as-satin cheek in the moment before he tasted her mouth, she’d sense how much he wanted her. And then he’d scare her away.
And he couldn’t do that. He would never take advantage of her or hurt her like Christopher’s father clearly had.
Besides, this stammering oaf of an Irishman needed this woman’s expert tuition to turn him into an articulate, self-assured gentleman, who, even though he might never pass for an English nobleman, would command attention and respect next time he stood before his “peers” in Parliament.
That’s what he needed to focus on. That was all that mattered.
At least that’s what Phinn told himself as he poured himself an Irish whisky and compared the glorious deep amber hue to a particular someone’s stunning hazel eyes.