The Bride He Let Go

Chapter 1

The rolling mists of the early morning drifted to and fro across the vibrant green hillsides of Ireland.

The grass, lush and thick as a blanket, was dotted with wooly white sheep, gamboling through the shafts of sunlight that shone here and there through the clouds.

The rolling hills rose gently from the nearby seashore, lapped by the incoming tide; a small fishing boat was moored not far offshore, bobbing in the gentle southern surf.

In the distance, the little town that had seen every important event in her ancestors’ lives was waiting for her—a cluster of thatched-roof houses with whitewashed walls, humble abodes circled around the village’s crown jewel: the little church, built of the local tawny stone, with its single bell tower jutting above the fog.

The sun rose higher, and the bell began to peal the nine o’clock hour, drawing worshipers to gather together beneath its welcoming beams…

“Bridie! Can’t you hear that kettle? Goodness, girl, it’s whistlin’ away two inches in front of your nose, so it is!”

Bridie Hamilton snapped out of her reverie so quickly that her chin slipped off the hand she’d rested it on; she would have gone headfirst into the window if she hadn’t caught herself at once. Eyes wide, a blush creeping onto her cheeks, she turned to her mother with an apology at the ready.

“I’m awful sorry, Ma—I was just…”

“Just daydreamin’, as usual,” her mother said, but her scolding was half in jest, and a note of fondness was audible beneath her exasperation.

She lifted the kettle from the hob and poured it neatly into the waiting teapot, then glanced into the steaming depths and gave a wordless exclamation.

“Well, Bridie, and this is what you call making the tea? Letting the kettle steam and whistle away while the leaves aren’t even in the pot? ”

Bridie put a hand to her forehead, caught between chagrin and laughter.

“I’m sorry, Ma,” she said again. “You’re right.

I was daydreaming.” She sighed and fetched the canister of good, dark tea from the shelf.

It was the only kind her mother ever drank—strong enough to stand a spoon upright in it, and purchased specially from a shop down the street, run by a fellow Irishman.

Bridie’s father, John Hamilton, liked it strong and dark, too, but he was more likely to add a dash of whiskey to the brew when he could afford it.

And when Marianne Hamilton wasn’t looking—she didn’t approve of drinking, though in Bridie’s limited experience it was as much use to ask an Irishman to stop imbibing as it was to ask birds to quit flying.

“And what was it you were dreamin’ of, Bridget Hamilton, when you ought to have been tending to your chores?”

“Kinsale, of course.” Bridie shrugged, smiling wistfully. “I know, I know—do I ever dream of anything else?”

“Ahh,” said her mother softly, then turned to fetch down a few cups from the cupboard.

Bridie had a feeling she knew what her mother wasn’t saying.

It wasn’t the first time that she’d confessed to dwelling on the town they had left behind fifteen years earlier—not by a long shot.

When they had first come here to America, settling in Boston in a primarily Irish neighborhood, John Hamilton had sternly instructed his three children that they were never to forget where they came from—they were Americans now, yes, but their Irish heritage was carried with them, and they ought never to forget that their ancestors were buried in the little churchyard in Kinsale, County Cork.

Bridie was the oldest of the three, and her memories were the strongest; as her father would later often remark, he needn’t have bothered with admonishing her to keep Ireland in her heart, for it was never far from her thoughts.

In more recent years, he had taken to admonishing her with just the opposite, in fact. “Now don’t you forget, Bridie Hamilton—you’re an American girl now!”

But in truth, Bridie was certain that her own fond memories of Ireland and her longing to be back where she had been born were equally shared by both of her parents—and if her younger siblings had been a bit older when they’d left Ireland, they would have felt just the same.

Ella had been two years old, James only six months—and the twins, of course, had not even been born yet.

They were American girls, through and through, born right here in Boston, though their thoroughly Irish parents had done their best to raise them with a sense of their heritage.

“Ma,” she said now, tentatively, smiling her thanks as Marianne handed her a steaming mug, “you do think we’ll be able to go back someday, don’t you?

I know Pa said he can’t imagine that we’ll ever be able to afford it, but—well, I can’t imagine we won’t.

Not ever. Lucy and Molly ought to see the town where their parents were born and where their grandparents and great-grandparents are buried—don’t you think? ”

There was more than a hint of sadness in her mother’s smile now.

“Of course they ought,” she said. “But as for whether they will—why, my girl, that’s for the good Lord to arrange. You know, times have been difficult these past few years.”

Bridie scoffed a little.

“I don’t ever remember a time when they weren’t,” she said frankly.

She turned her gaze once more to the window, imagining the scene before her was a green, rolling vista—instead of the brick wall of the building directly across the alley, edged in grime and fogged by smog.

“They say America is a land of opportunity—well, where was our opportunity when they were handing them out?”

Marianne sighed, shaking her head.

“You’re too young to remember how difficult it was back in Kinsale,” she said.

“Too young to realize that what your father did was necessary to save and protect us all. Our life there was good, Bridget—but our life here is better in many ways.” She reached out and squeezed Bridie’s arm, comfortingly.

“It may take you some time to see it, but your father made the decision because he believed it would be best for you and your siblings.”

“I know,” Bridie said softly, unwilling to argue the point.

After all, her parents loved all of their children dearly; she was one of the fortunate ones, she knew, who had been raised with the knowledge that she was precious to her family, even as her father strove to put bread on the table and her mother worked her fingers to the bone mending holes in their clothing.

A family of five children was far from unusual; Bridie couldn’t help but wonder, though, why it was so common in times as challenging as these.

Not that she would ever have wished any of her four younger siblings away; she loved them as dearly as her parents did.

But winter wasn’t that far off—and the Hamiltons were already in debt as it was. If John’s employment as a carpenter went dormant this year, as it had the last year, how could they hope to carry on?

She ought to go out and look for more mending work, she thought, sipping her tea, eyes still fixed on the window.

She had taken over the work from her mother after James fell ill a few years earlier; Marianne’s hands were full enough as it was with the housework and the twins, still quite young, and with James hardly able to walk—the doctor had said he could never fully recover, not even after the operation.

His employment at the docks was little more than a memory now.

But even a dozen new customers would not be enough to pay off their debt.

If only she were able to find work in a factory, like some of the other girls she’d gone to school with!

Though she had tried, no one had wanted to hire her.

Was it her much-mended clothing or her lilting accent, trapped halfway between Irish and American?

She might never be certain of the reason, but the effect was undeniable—no matter how many places she went or how many interviews she begged for, she wasn’t able to find employment.

Ella did her best to help, too, of course, but like Bridie, she came up against many of the same issues.

And as sweet, kind, and unassuming as Ella was, she lacked Bridie’s resilience—or her stubbornness.

It was almost infuriating for Bridie to know that she was the strongest of her parents’ children, and yet she was of so little use to the family!

Well, she would find something, she promised herself. She would find a way to help through the winter ahead—some way of working and putting aside money. Her family would be better off, and whenever she got the chance, she would save up money to go back to Ireland, too.

Even if her parents decided to stay here in Boston—because it was the land of opportunity.

It was later that evening, after her father returned home from work, that she received the news.

John Hamilton bided his time. He waited until supper was over and the twins were sent to bed; they were only seven, after all, and the family generally waited until they were tucked away in their cot in the second bedroom before important discussions began.

He waited through that, too—it was after James drifted to sleep in front of the kitchen fire and August left for his shift at the docks that he gestured for Bridie to meet him in what passed for a sitting room.

There was scarcely enough room for one person to sit in that room—in truth, Bridie suspected that it was more of a closet than anything, but the family had turned its use into something more appropriate to their needs.

After all, none of them had much in the way of clothing.

The sitting room was the only place in the little flat full of people where private conversation could take place.

John Hamilton sat down and put his elbows on his knees, heaving a sigh as he rubbed his face with both hands.

Bridie sank down onto the floor beside him, reaching out to pull one of his hands down and hold it in her own.

She looked up into her father’s face, noting with a cold shock that he looked—well, rather old, these days.

He couldn’t have been much more than forty-five, but in the last few years his hair had turned nearly white, and his face had grown rather worn.

Yet his eyes were as bright as ever beneath the bushy brows and the shaggy, rather unruly hair; tonight, though, she suspected that their brightness came from a mix of drink and emotion.

“Pa, you were late for supper. Don’t tell me it’s because you stopped at the bar before you came home!”

He waved a hand at her.

“Well, and if I did, are you only wanting to know so’s you can tell your mother? I needed a dram, that’s all; a spot of liquid courage.”

“Courage for what, Pa? You didn’t lose your job!”

“No, no, Bridie, I didn’t lose my job.” He sighed. “But you know as well as I do, and as well as your mother does, that we’re in a bind these days. It’s rough enough to get by when you don’t have debt at hand as well—and the doctors, well, they earn their pay, don’t they?”

There was bitterness in his tone; try though they might, pay though John Hamilton might, the doctors had not been able to restore James’s ability to walk. The operation had cost at least six months’ wages; it might as well have cost the earth, as far as Bridie was concerned.

“What is it, Pa?” she asked, more gently this time.

She wrapped her fingers around his and held on tight.

He met her gaze—blue eyes to blue, the color of the sea in a storm.

His hair, before it turned white, had been the same color as hers, too, a coppery russet.

She took after her father more than her mother—a dreamer, yes, but a fighter, too.

John Hamilton took a long, deep breath.

“I’ve made an arrangement,” he said. “Your ma thought I ought to have spoken to you about it first. But I knew you would understand, and the agency was very particular about timing. You know the matrimonial agency down on the corner of Fourth and Gregson, near the shop?”

She nodded, her brow furrowed.

“Well, they call themselves the largest such agency in Boston—pride themselves on supplying bachelors all over America with only the finest brides. But they’ve outdone themselves a bit, and they’ve more bachelors waitin’ than they have brides.

Sam Thompson sent his girl Vera to speak with ‘em, and they matched her with a fellow then and there.”

Bridie was dimly conscious of the fact that her stomach was beginning to sink toward her boots.

“Pa…”

“There’s a fee, Bridie,” her father said, eyes fixed on his hands.

“A good fee—it’ll see us through the next winter if we’re careful.

The agency assured me that the match they made for you is a good man.

If you arrive there and find anything different, why—why, you can just come back to us, that’s all.

And it isn’t so very far away, after all, Texas. ”

“Texas,” she repeated numbly; her voice sounded very small and far away.

Her father took her hand, warm in his, and met her gaze once more.

“He’s a good man, and a wealthy one,” he said.

“A name I know, too—from years ago. It would be of so much help to me and to your mother to know that you were well cared for—better cared for than we can. Besides.” He managed a smile.

“You’ve always said that you wanted to travel, ever since you were a little girl. ”

Bridie’s mind was racing, a dozen different objections rising to her lips.

Travel, yes, that had been a long-held dream—but back to Ireland, not to Texas!

And she’d had no real intention of marrying, at least not anytime soon.

And if she wasn’t here to keep an eye on her siblings, there was no telling what sort of mischief the twins would get into…

But the way her father’s gaze pleaded with her sent all those objections out the window—at least, they would have done, had there been a window in the tiny sitting room.

She had only just this afternoon been wishing there was something she could do to be of more help to her family.

Her father, unknowingly, had handed her precisely that.

And if the man she was going to marry was wealthy—then he might well be the key to returning to Ireland after all.

At last, she bit her lip and nodded. She couldn’t speak the words of agreement, but her father understood. With a long, heartfelt sigh, he drew her into his arms and held her close, smelling of woodsmoke and whiskey. Bridie held onto him, fighting back tears.

She would soon leave home, heading toward an uncertain future, armed with nothing but her hopes—and it wouldn’t be the first time.