Chapter 7
On the night before their wedding, Jed came to Bridie as the twilight was settling over the gently rolling acreage of his land.
His hands were in his pockets, his shoulders a little hunched, and the smile on his face was tentative and unsure—as though he didn’t know what to expect.
It broke her heart a little to realize how she had left this kind, generous man so unsure of himself—and yet the very breaking of her heart made her frustration rise. She hadn’t asked for this, had she? She had only gone along with what others wanted!
This wasn’t her fault!
And neither was it his…
“Walk with me, Bridie?” he said quietly.
She took a deep breath and let her gaze settle on his for a moment.
Over the past few days, she’d found herself avoiding him as much as she could—allowing time for him to get to know Ella, if he wished.
And yet, each time, her jealousy drove her back towards him.
She was torn between wanting the best for him—which surely must be Ella, for it couldn’t be Bridie herself!
—and wanting to make everything very, very simple: nothing more, nothing less than Jed McHale and Bridget Hamilton, standing hand in hand before the preacher, saying their vows for the world to hear.
And then she would belong to him…
And then, inevitably, she would betray him.
Perhaps it was just as well that her secondary plan didn’t seem to be working.
He hadn’t called off their engagement in favor of a new love with Ella.
Ella herself seemed to love Jed’s horses more than she cared for Jed himself.
It was just another foolish idea from the mind of Bridie Hamilton. She ought to have known better.
And still, as his eyes hovered on hers, with that familiar intensity, she felt a calmness sweeping over her tumultuous heart.
She took a deep breath.
“All right,” she said.
He took her cloak from the hook and wrapped it around her, tucking the ends in to make sure she was warm enough. With November halfway over, the air outside was frigid, but she rather relished it, finding that its cold fingers on her hot cheeks helped her regain her composure. At least, some of it…
Her composure rocked again when Jed took her hand and slid it through his arm.
They walked together in silence for a time, their breaths rising and falling in tandem.
She took a moment to look around herself at the land that Jed owned—the land she had grown very fond of, though it was so very different from her ideal of Ireland.
The last of the green had faded with the colder weather, and the leaves had turned golden and scarlet and begun to fall.
Winter would be on them soon—and with that thought, she felt a surge of anxiety and frustration begin to build in her chest, fighting against the calming influence of the beauty of her surroundings and Jed’s presence at her side.
If she didn’t follow through on her plans now, she wouldn’t be able to—the winter weather would make train travel to the east coast difficult, and the tossing, stormy seas would be impossible to traverse.
She had ascertained the time and cost of the journey to Ireland; though it had been a trip of a month or more fifteen years before, it was little more than two weeks now with the new shipping routes.
And yet, they were rapidly approaching the time of year when no ships dared ply the waters between America and Ireland, no matter how stalwart and intrepid their captains.
Too many were sunk in the attempt. She longed for Ireland—but she wasn’t quite willing to risk her life to get there. Not yet.
At the same time, she knew that if she didn’t go now, she would never go at all. To allow herself to become Jed’s bride, to stay with him through the winter and experience life as his wife—she was terribly afraid the dream would fade and she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to leave.
Now or never…
The words had never meant so much to her before.
As her mind roiled and spun, Jed seemed completely unaffected by anything other than the peaceful serenity of his home.
He glanced at her with a smile, taking her distracted frown for cold, and removed his jacket, draping it over her shoulders and wrapping it close.
With his arms around her, he bent down to brush a fond kiss to her temple—and the resulting surge of yearning for his touch pushed her frustration over the edge.
She stepped back away from him.
“Why on earth do you want to marry someone that you had to pay for?”
The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.
The two of them froze, staring at each other; her mind raced, searching for a way to take them back, yet her innate honesty would not let her.
She had spoken the truth about her feelings.
Even now, with her growing understanding of her father’s motivations and the way that Jed had explained his own, she still couldn’t quite bring herself to give him credit for seeing her as anything more than a bargaining chip.
Bought and paid for.
Why shouldn’t I be paid, then? Why should I feel so guilty? Don’t I deserve to get anything out of this transaction?
In the midst of her turmoil, it was a surprise to hear Jed respond, his tone measured and even.
“I’ve forgotten about it,” he said.
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“About what I gave to your father,” he explained. He shoved his hands in his pockets, shoulder shrugging under his flannel shirt. Without the coat, she knew he must be freezing, but he made no move to take it back, or to direct them back towards the house. “The money.”
“I know it didn’t mean much to you,” she said. “Money is the easy part, for a man as wealthy as Jed McHale.”
This made him flinch—and she flinched herself, a dart of guilt lodging in her heart. He had been nothing but kind to her—he didn’t deserve to hear her speak this way to him. Why couldn’t she stop?
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If it cost everything I had, or nothing at all—either way, I’d still want you, Bridie.
I can’t explain it.” His shoulders lifted in another shrug.
“Sometimes I imagine what it would have been like if I had just been a simple apprentice in Boston, as I pretended to be when I was there. I would have met your father just the same—and perhaps I would have met you, too, and stayed there. Perhaps we would have gotten to know each other in a truer fashion, without any of the artifice, the pretending—the bargaining…” He trailed off for a moment.
She waited. “Either way, I can’t wish that things were different than they are.
I love you, Bridie, no matter how the two of us came together.
Your father may have been the one who wrote to me to begin with, but I believe it was the good Lord who brought you to me.
If I’ve ever done anything good with my life, this is how I am repaid—with far more than I could ever deserve. ”
She blinked back the tears that stung at her eyes. His tone made it clear—he meant every word.
And just as he did not deserve the way she treated him, she knew that she, too, could never hope to deserve a man as good as Jed McHale.
“I can’t marry you,” she choked out. He drew a sharp breath, and she hurried on, afraid that her courage would fail her just when she needed it the most. “I can’t marry you, Jed—and you shouldn’t want to marry me.
I only agreed to it in the end because I felt guilty over the thought of ruining my father’s plan.
I wanted to do what I could for my family—and this was the way it was presented to me.
So I agreed, but even then, at the beginning, I never intended to be your true wife.
I only wanted to marry you so I could use your money to buy myself a ticket to Ireland.
I’ve never wanted anything more than that—to return to the land I was born in.
Oh, I know you’ll think it’s foolish and stupid!
But that’s the truth! And I won’t pretend that I had any noble ambitions—I would have left you as soon as I could.
I even thought perhaps it might be easier if you married Ella instead—I tried to arrange it, but it didn’t work.
My plans never work—and this one won’t either, for if you’ve any sense at all, you’ll have to see that it would be the worst thing you ever did, to marry a girl who tells you outright that she doesn’t love you.
That she only wants your money.” She squeezed her eyes shut to blot out the pain on his handsome face.
“That she doesn’t, that she can’t…love you for who you are. ”
There was a long, breathless pause. She almost wondered whether he had turned away from her while she had her eyes closed, whether he had left her behind.
Abandoned her in the field, abandoned her to the gathering dusk.
She wouldn’t have blamed him. There was no reason for him to stay now.
No reason for him to take her arm and walk her back to the house, toward the faint light in the distance…
“Ireland,” he said quietly. She gasped in a breath, but didn’t open her eyes. He was still there, just as close as he had been a moment before. “Tell me about Ireland, Bridie. Tell me what you love.”
Through the pain and tumult of her emotions, she grasped for the vision that had always come to her so readily.
For the first time, it was difficult to find—everywhere she turned, she could see nothing but the pain in Jed’s warm brown eyes.
At last, she spotted the glint of emerald green, the hint of sunlight sparkling on the waves, and forced the memory to surface.
“I was just a girl,” she said, eyes still shut tight.
“But I remember it all. The green of the hills—like nothing you’ve ever seen, especially not here in Texas.
It was as though the earth itself were shouting with joy, the grass growing before your very eyes.
The sound of the waves crashing on the shingle—you could hear it in your sleep, and it made everything feel safe and familiar.
The sunlight has a glow to it, there, shafting through the clouds.
There’s a little church with a steeple, surrounded by the rolling hills—you can see it for a mile or two, and hear the bells for far longer.
The little house where we lived, Ma and Pa and Ella and James and me, was scarcely big enough for two people, let alone five, but it was always full of warmth and laughter.
When James was born, the entire village crowded around to welcome him.
Someone—an old woman—took him in her arms and said that he would be the happiest baby ever born in County Cork.
I knew then that anything was possible. Pa had tears in his eyes. Ma was laughing…”
She felt his touch, tentative and unsure, pressing lightly on her hand as she clutched his jacket around her. She opened her eyes and realized then that the tears had escaped her strong will to stream down her face.
“I know you must think it’s foolish…” she began.
But he shook his head.
“To want to return home?” he said. “To want to go back to where you felt the world was new? How could I think that foolish, Bridie? I did the same thing myself when I came back to Galveston, didn’t I?
” He bit his lip. Were those tears in his eyes, too?
She couldn’t be sure. “If it’s Ireland you want, Bridie Hamilton, then it’s Ireland you’ll get.
And you needn’t vow to marry me for it, either. ”
Her eyes flew wide; she couldn’t look away from him.
“Jed… I can’t…you shouldn’t…”
“You can, and I will,” he said softly, then let go of her hand.
“I’ve said it all along, Bridie. All I want is for you to be happy.
Ireland will do that—marrying me won’t.” He gave her a pained smile.
The sun was going down, unheeded. “So I know what to give you as a wedding present, after all. Even if we never marry.”