Chapter Thirty-Six
Only an hour or so remained before dawn broke, and out of the direst necessity they made good use of that time. The key to
not becoming the target of every member of the Crown forces in the country, Owen told them with no small degree of bite, was
covering up any trace of what had really happened to the Tans on that dark road in the middle of the night. Tim and his friends
were a little bruised, a little shaken and more than a little upset with Owen for shooting out the Model T’s tire. But once
the situation was bluntly spelled out for them they were no longer upset but profoundly grateful, as Owen told them they damned
well should be. By that time James had been freed of the handcuffs when the key was found in a dead Tan’s pocket and had joined
Alfie, who had managed to haul himself upright by hanging on to the Vauxhall’s door and was standing outside the car. Tim
walked over to be reunited with his brothers, and the three of them embraced, sharing a moment so emotional that Rynn, for
one, had to look away.
But they had only that moment, and then there were things that had to be done. They changed the tire on the Model T and got
it back on the road and loaded all the Tans’ bodies into the saloon car. With Rynn behind the wheel of the Vauxhall, the three
cars drove together to Lough Gill, where Owen and the older boys pushed the saloon car with the Tans’ bodies inside into the
lough. It sank without a trace.
With Owen once again driving the Vauxhall and James and Alfie sitting so close together in the back their shoulders touched, and Tim driving his two friends in the Model T, they journeyed on through the night.
They were still on the road when dawn broke.
They encountered an increasing amount of traffic the closer they got to Dublin, which was their destination, but no one bothered them, and eventually they arrived at Owen’s house in Belgravia Street.
It was an elegant brick town house in a fashionable neighborhood. Pulling into the alley that ran behind the row of houses,
the cars stopped outside it just long enough for Owen to escort Rynn inside and yell to his housekeeper that they had a visitor.
Mrs. Yardley was her name, and she hurried downstairs in time for Owen to tell her to give his guest a room and meals and
whatever else she wanted.
Having already instructed Rynn to stay inside the house no matter what, Owen left as unceremoniously as he’d arrived. A moment
later, both cars pulled away.
Mrs. Yardley did everything she could to see to Rynn’s needs, and in short order Rynn was provided with a bath and food. With
no clothes to her name except the ones on her back—after her bath, she wrapped herself in a borrowed robe—and nothing in the
way of other necessities such as tooth powder and a toothbrush, Rynn’s next order of business would have been to take a taxi
to first her bank, and then a department store had it not been for Owen’s warning and her own fear that the Tans might be
hunting her. The murders of Moira, Joseph and the others terrified as well as haunted her, and the burning of Ballyshannon
Court had her picturing a wanted poster with her face on it.
The prospect gave her the shivers.
Was this, then, the catastrophe the Black Pig had warned against?
Or was there more to come?
She didn’t know. There was no way to know. Which meant there was no way to prepare, or to stop anything that might be heading their way.
That was the true curse of the Sight.
Exhausted, she lay down on the bed in the lovely bedroom that had been provided for her use and tried to think through the
ramifications of all that had happened and decide what was best to do going forward. Using her own common sense, with no hint
of precognition to it.
And somewhere in the middle of all that thinking, she fell asleep.
When she woke, it was to find two dresses laid out across the end of the bed, and several wrapped parcels on the dressing
table. Both dresses were slim and black, with fashionable dropped waists and short hems that reached only a little below her
knees. One was of silk, one was of crepe and they bore labels from Arnott’s, the biggest department store in Dublin. The wrapped
parcels contained undergarments, stockings, night things and a selection of toiletries and cosmetics. In addition, her shoes
waited on the floor in front of the dressing table. They’d been cleaned.
It was late afternoon by that time, so Rynn put on one of her new dresses and went downstairs.
Mrs. Yardley must have heard her, because she came bustling into the entry hall just as Rynn reached the bottom of the steps.
“I’m that pleased to see that dress fitting so well. I took your old dress with me, but still, you never can be sure,” Mrs.
Yardley said.
“Did you buy those things for me? Thank you.” Rynn smiled at her.
“Major Maguire telephoned and asked me to. He told me you’d lost your things in a fire.”
“I did.” Rynn didn’t elaborate, and after a bit more conversation Mrs. Yardley showed her to the parlor and brought her tea.
“Did Major Maguire by any chance say when he would be back?” Rynn couldn’t help but ask as the housekeeper turned to leave.
“He did not. I’m sorry, miss. Sometimes he’s gone for weeks at a time, but with you here . . .” Her voice trailed off. The
obvious implication was that Owen was expected to return at some point in the not-so-distant future because of her presence.
“I see. Thank you,” Rynn said, and the housekeeper took herself off.
There was nothing to do but wait.
Confined to the house, Rynn passed a restless few hours waiting for Owen to turn up or at least send word. Finally, when it
got dark and then grew late, and he still hadn’t come, she went upstairs to bed. But every time she closed her eyes, images
of Moira and Joseph lying dead in the grass intruded, so finally she turned on the bedside lamp and sat up in bed to continue
reading the book she’d borrowed from Owen’s study. It was the true story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s harrowing trek across
the Antarctic continent. Very interesting, she was sure, but she found it difficult to concentrate when she was so heartsick
and worried and on edge. Truth be told, its primary attraction for her was the hope that it would put her to sleep, but that
didn’t seem to be happening, either.
When somewhere downstairs a clock struck one in the morning, she gave up, put the book down and padded over to the window
to look out. Late as it was, there wasn’t much to see. It was a quiet residential street in a prosperous neighborhood with
a single streetlamp on the corner that illuminated a row of neatly kept gardens bordered by wrought-iron fences, stone steps
leading up to finely carved front doors and mullioned windows marching across each house’s three floors. She was just reflecting
on how far Owen had come from his beginnings in Killybegs when a muffled crash from downstairs startled her.
Though she listened intently, she heard nothing more. But the sound had seemed to come from somewhere in the vicinity of Owen’s study, and the thought that he might have returned prompted her to get dressed again, hastily, in the black dress she’d been wearing earlier, and go downstairs.
A single lamp was on in the entry hall—and a light was on in the study.
The study door was ajar.
Owen was in the room.
Minus his coat, wearing a white shirt and dark trousers, he stood in front of the fireplace where only the glowing embers
remained of the cheery fire that had burned there earlier. His back was to the door, his hand holding a glass of what looked
like whiskey rested on the mantel, and his head was bent as if he were contemplating the smoldering logs that remained.
Suddenly shy of invading his privacy, Rynn knocked on the open door.
He glanced around, saw her. His face told her nothing.
“Come in,” he said. “And close the door.”
She did. Without altering his posture, he watched over his shoulder as she approached. To her shock, she saw that his desk,
which took pride of place in the middle of the room, had been flipped on its side, its contents scattered across the carpet.
That, then, had been the cause of the crash she’d heard.
She had no doubt whatsoever that he was the one who’d flipped it.
Eyeing him carefully, she stopped beside him.
“I would have come earlier, but I’ve been busy,” he said. “You’ll be glad to know that a message has been sent to your granny
and sister to let them know you’ve survived.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“Alfie’s been seen by a doctor. The bullets are out, his wounds are treated and I’ve shipped him, Tim, James and their friends, including Jack, off on one of my ships that left tonight for Boston.
My nephews have orders to stay there. Tim can work for my operation in Boston, and I’ll be enrolling Alfie and James in boarding school there.
The rest are welcome to stay or come back as they please—they’ll have jobs at my warehouse there if they stay—but I told them it’s in their best interests to keep well out of what’s coming.
They can return home when it’s done. But that’s up to them. ”
Rynn finally managed to put her finger on what, exactly, was alarming her about Owen. He seemed perfectly calm, collected
and in control, but there was a distance to him, a kind of dispassionate detachment to his voice, that seemed wrong under
the circumstances.
“Sending them to America is a good idea,” she said.
“I thought so. Tim especially is hell-bent on revenge, and his brothers are on board. As I told them, living is the best revenge.
Dying means the other side won.”
The barest hint of savagery colored that last sentence.
He continued, “I also made arrangements for Moira and Joseph. With Father Doherty. They’ll have a joint funeral, on Friday.”
Once again with that emotionless voice.
“Owen . . .”
“What?” Straightening, he threw back the contents of his glass in a single gulp, set the glass on the mantel and turned to
face her. “What words of comfort do you have for me, my beautiful Rynn?”
The savagery was back, now laced with mockery.
But it wasn’t his words, or his tone, that wrung her heart. It was his eyes. Red rimmed and bloodshot, they were the eyes
of a man who had endured a soul-deep wound and was still suffering. Set in a face that could have been carved from stone for
all the expression it revealed, his eyes, like the overturned desk, told the truth of it.
“None,” she said, and took the two steps necessary to reach him. With a hand on his chest to steady herself, she went up on tiptoe to kiss him.
The sound he made as her lips touched his was animallike in its ferocity, and then his arms came around her and he was kissing
her, fiercely, desperately, like she was his only hope of salvation in a ravaged world.
After that, what happened, happened. He made love to her there, on the carpet in front of the dying fire, as fiercely and
desperately as he’d kissed her. His need awakened her own as he took his own heart-stopping brand of solace from her body
and she responded with a passion that she never would have suspected herself capable of. This was a different kind of loving
than she had experienced before, darker and deeper and wilder, culminating with a shattering intensity that changed her view
of love, and men, and herself, forever.
Afterward, after they’d regained their breath and, for Rynn, her sense of perspective, she went upstairs and fell into bed
with him and they made love all over again.
“So.” Owen propped himself up on an elbow to look down at her. Supremely conscious that she was naked beneath the sheet that
she’d pulled over herself when he’d first stirred in a laughably late effort to preserve her modesty, and that her hair lay
in wild tangles against the pillow and that the cold daylight pouring in through the open curtains was certain to be less
than flattering, she narrowed her eyes at him.
“So?” she repeated.
“So are you going to ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“What every woman in the world asks a man after a night like the one we just spent.”
“And what would that be?”
“Do you love me?” He assumed a mocking falsetto.
For a moment she simply looked at him. He was far better at hiding his emotions than she was. His stoic facade was nearly
perfect.
But she knew him. The pain he was keeping inside was soul deep.
“Actually, that wasn’t the question I was going to ask you,” she said. “Although I do have a question.”
“Oh? In that case, please, ask away.”
“What’s for breakfast? I’m starving.”
He stared at her for a second, then broke into a wide smile. And she was so glad to see him smile that she could feel the
warmth of it penetrating clear through to her heart. Then he rolled on top of her and kissed her breathless and—well, what
came after was a revelation. Finally, he propped himself up on his elbows in an apparent effort to keep the bulk of his weight
off her. Looming above her, he met her eyes and said, “You don’t have to ask me, you know. I do. Quite madly. I have done,
I think, since the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life tried to blackmail me on the deck of my own ship.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It wasn’t blackmail. Paying was only fair, since you were keeping the guns. And I’ll wager
you made a nice profit on them, too.”
He smiled, and once again she felt the impact. “As I believe someone once said to me, only a fool doesn’t take advantage of
opportunities.”
She smiled back at him. Then she stopped smiling, looked at him very seriously and said, “Just so we’re clear, I love you,
too.”
“Ah,” he said by way of acknowledgment. Then he kissed her again.
And kept her in bed until noon.