Chapter 27
Ireland must in return behold her best flour, her wheat, bacon, her butter, her live cattle, all going to England day after day.
I woke with a start, heart and head pounding, surrounded by the haze of incense, and threw off the duvet. Nausea roiled low in my gut as I sat upright, and I slapped a palm over my mouth to keep from retching.
Did ye remember?
Tears stung the back of my eyes as Michael’s gentle voice ebbed next to my ear, and I squeezed them shut before nodding.
“I lived it again, all of it. Aye,” I whispered, slowly removing my hand as the nausea steadied to a dull emptiness. I lived it again, but not what happened in the summerhouse, not that it mattered. The outcome wouldn’t change, nor would what I felt, both then and now.
Then why are ye just sitting there?
My eyes opened and realization squeezed my chest.
“Cormac!” I exclaimed, scrambling from the bed. I’d slept in my underclothes—thank goodness—so I hurried to the chest at the foot of the bed and pulled out the gray day dress.
Dressing quickly, I crossed to the drawn curtains and parted the seam with two fingers. It was full night and raining fit to drown the sea, but this could not wait ’til morning.
With a final adjustment, I crossed the room, plucking my riding cloak from the armchair, and hurriedly threw it over my shoulders afore leaving the bedchamber.
Down the hall, down three flights of stairs, behind and left toward the kitchen, and out the back door. My mind had a single purpose as I stepped into another storm-tossed night.
Thunder rolled in the distance, promising a night awash with sorrow. But thunder meant something else entirely to me, a person who’d lived through the worst years this country might have ever seen: thunder meant heat, a humid summer, and the arrival of yet another blight come October.
I shook my head. Mayhap I had needed to replay it all from beginning to end, to face what once was, in order to fully understand. To grieve. To finally greet the dawn with arms wide open.
My shoes crunched over gravel as I ran through the bower and into the garden. But I cared not a whit about waking the house. I saw, I lived, I remembered.
And Maggie O’Shaughnessy—me, myself, not Wilhelmina—owed a debt so great I’d never be able to repay it.
I set my sights on the gardener’s cottage and, without a single thought, turned the knob and stormed right in, to find a startled Cormac, dressed in naught but a sleep shirt.
Lightning flashed somewhere close by, setting the gardener’s cottage alight for the space of a breath.
Within, a blazing fire roared, dispelling all chill, and I finally drank in the décor.
Instead of the stools and rough-hewn table I might expect in a normal cottage, great, fabric-stuffed chairs—with arms—lounged before the hearth.
An immaculately sanded and stained table sat behind, a set of finely crafted chairs gathered ’round its beveled edges.
White-washed walls and a rug that covered most of the wooden—not slate—floor.
Under other circumstances, I might have complimented the luxury of the home—rungs above even my family’s own lauded residence. But now? I couldn’t possibly be looking at the son of Conor and Kitty O’Dea, the people who’d saved us miles outside of Clareabbey … could I?
I stared at him, open-mouthed, rain dripping from my sleep-mussed, drenched braid.
“It’s … you?” A crack of thunder rattled the windowpanes, and Cormac startled, eyes widening as he suddenly realized what he wore—or didn’t. My cheeks pinked as I suddenly realized. “God forgive me, apologies!”
Without a word, he hopped toward a door next to the fireplace as I cursed myself for a fool. A knock would have been courteous, at the very minimum.
He emerged within the space of five breaths, tucking his night shirt into a worn pair of knee breeches, expression awash with both horror and surprise.
“What … what is it ye need?” he asked. “What’s amiss?”
I shook my head before throwing it back to stare at the ceiling, hands firmly planted on my hips. “Jesus, Cormac. I’m sorry.”
“Nay, ’tis grand,” he said, taking a step forward as I drew my head back down to look at him. “What has happened?”
“Is it ye, Cormac?” I asked, taking two steps toward him.
He furrowed his brow. “Aye. ’Tis me. Myself.”
“I knew it’s ye, but is it ye? Are ye him?” I asked, frowning as I squinted—as if a narrowed gaze might discern fact from fiction.
His lips curled at the edges as my words sank in, and he gestured for me to join him by the fire. “Tea?”
“I—” Tea? “Nothing stronger?”
He laughed then, a joyful kind of mirth that found purchase deep in the belly.
“Sit down there, my old friend, and get yerself warm.”
“I—” Brows furrowing, I pursed my lips as Cormac’s clear amber gaze met mine above the rim of his teacup. “That … I mean … I would have never suspected. Why didn’t ye say something?”
“I thought about it, mind. Alas, ye were so weary when under our roof, I didn’t expect ye to remember me. But, it is I, the handsomest man in the parish.” His lips quirked into a sad smile.
The scoff working its way up my throat converted into a chuckle somewhere between lungs and lips, and I returned his smile. “I have so many questions, but I’m so very glad to meet ye, officially, again. There was so much I wanted to say to ye, yer parents too.”
He waved away any thought of thanks before running a rough hand over his face. “Little good any of it did. And I fear my good intentions might have brought ill to ye.”
I shook my head and settled into my chair.
“Back then, ye gave me more time with my Da and my brother, so thank ye. Our fortune had been ill from the beginning, so think nary of it.” I straightened, struck—and not for the first time tonight.
“The position in North Clare? It was here? But I thought ye had said it was with yer aunt?”
“And it is,” he said with a shrug. “Lady Catherine is my aunt—the one who married a little too well. Me mam mentioned it while ye were at our home, but I was setting off in a fortnight to come here. Her ladyship needed the help, and my parents needed the rent money, or they’d have to take ship. Worked out for everyone.”
I nodded, turning my attention to the cooling teacup. Heaving a breath, I knocked back its contents.
“Mayhap ye really did need something stronger.” Cormac laughed and pushed to his feet. “I have a small jar of poitín here somewhere.”
I shook my head before swallowing and replaced the teacup on the lovely mosaic-tiled end table. “No, really. I’m fine. I just … what a strange coincidence. All of this.”
Amber eyes glittered as flames licked and sparked in the hearth, trained on me. On my very soul. A muscle flickered near his jaw, and he sat back in the armchair.
“Maybe ye don’t know, for ye were fair out of it when ye arrived at our home.
But yer da was somewhat sharp during yer stay,” he began, averting his gaze.
“Yer da told mine of all that had troubled ye, so I know more than ye might be comfortable with me knowing. But me mam spoke a bit about her family in return. Connors, that’s me mam’s family name. ”
He paused and glanced at me, brows raised and lips thinned. ’Twas the stare of someone expecting a reaction, but I simply looked on and nodded when the pause continued. I’d seen the name mentioned in Lord Browne’s journal.
“I suppose ye wouldn’t have heard of them, coming from Kilrush yerself.
” He took a deep breath and leaned forward.
“Me grandmother, Ellen, was an Early afore she wed into the Connors. And the Earlys are touched with the Sight, ye know? Mam wanted none of it and wed my father as soon as she could, to escape the stigma of the family legacy. See, everyone knows everyone’s business up here, as much as they did in Kilrush, I’m sure.
So Mam met Dad at the matchmaking there in Lisdoonvarna, and off she went to his farm in Craggykerivan. ”
Wondering where all this was going, I picked up my teacup and sipped.
“Thing is, they were dirt poor, the Connors. Poor tenants to a poorer landlord, so conditions were awful. My grandmother died when Mam was fourteen—malnutrition—and my grandfather went with the typhus six months later, so ’twas up to her eldest sister to run the household.
But sure, times were bad, and two years later, when they couldn’t make rent, the sisters went their separate ways.
Mam was glad to get away and rarely spoke of her people.
But we were happy enough, and sure, having a small family and a generous landlord meant I never went without much.
” He paused again and ran a hand over his face.
“Thing is, word came when I was very young that Mam’s sister, Cate, had wed. But not just anyone.”
“Lord Browne,” I surmised. Cormac nodded.
“Aye. Her offer to me wasn’t the first of its kind.
Back then, she’d offered Mam and Dad a grand house fit for a land agent.
All she wanted was company, ye see, for the high society she wed into wanted nothing to do with her, or his lordship, as a result of their union.
I didn’t know the details when I was young, but Mam told me a bit when the offer came, once again, from Lady Catherine.
That letter arrived a week before ye did.
Lady Catherine wrote that she was in need of someone to see to her affairs—buying, selling, gardening, the accounting books.
All the things I was able to do. I knew Mam had cut her off years before, so when I told them I’d take the post if she agreed to a salary, to save them from taking ship, Mam’s heart broke. ”
I took a sip from the cup, watching as his face fell.