A Passion Most Pure (54 page)

Mitch blinked, then rubbed his eyes and yawned. "No, I wouldn't sleep." He put his hand on Faith's head and stroked her hair while Marcy watched. "Faith," he whis pered, "we fell asleep on the couch. I think you better get up.-

Faith stirred, her eyes lidded with confusion. "What?" she asked, then bolted upright when she saw Marcy.

Marcy smiled. "It's all right, Faith; I understand how you could have fallen asleep. I'm just worried the sleep you did manage to get wasn't as restful as it might have been. Do you need to go up and get into bed?"

Faith shook her head and groped at her hair to pull it away from her face. "No ... no, I'll be fine. I can always sleep in tomorrow. We've got too much to do."

Marcy patted her cheek. "You'll feel better when you freshen up," she said, heading for the kitchen, "and get a good hot cup of coffee inside of you." She disappeared through the door.

Faith hesitated before turning to Mitch. "Good morning," she whispered, rubbing her arms to hide her awkwardness. "Goodness, I guess we've spent our first night together. I hope I didn't drool on you."

"No," he said quietly.

She squinted a bit. "Are you all right?" Her hand reached to touch his cheek. "You look.. . drained. But then I guess you would. I hogged the couch, didn't I?"

"Completely," he said with a faint smile.

She laughed. "I'll do better, I promise." His smile faded enough to catch her eye. "What?" she persisted, her brows crinkled in concern.

He stared with sober eyes, and his voice held no mirth. "Are we doing the right thing?"

She felt her face go pale. "What?" she asked again.

He stood and stretched, his eyes brooding. "Getting married. Is it what you want?" He watched her carefully, as if measuring her response-the way she looked at him, the color in her face, her tone.

She suddenly felt chilled and buffed her arms with her palms. "Of course it is, Mitch. Why would you ask that? As a matter of fact, I just dreamed of our wedding last night."

"I figured you were dreaming of a wedding," he said. "You said 'I do.'"

"Well, then, look at that. I can't even be without you in my dreams. What more proof do you need than that?" she asked with a laugh.

"More, I'm afraid."

Her heart stopped. "What are you talking about?"

He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "It's not my name you said, Faith."

The oxygen swirled still in her lungs. "What?"

His eyes snapped open, and his pupils dilated in anger. "It wasn't our wedding."

"That's not true! You were there. We were married!"

"All I heard was his name. You said, 'I love you, Collin, I do.'"

She recoiled as if he slapped her. "No! That didn't happen." Closing her eyes, she put her hand to her head and tried to think, to remember. She thought of Collin, of how she felt when he held her, kissed her, and a sick feeling buzzed inside. Her eyes flew open. "I love you!" she cried. She reached for him, but he stepped back.

"Do you love him too?"

Her heart thudded, and her gaze dropped to the floor. "I don't know," she whispered.

He grabbed her then, his fingers gouging her shoulders. "You do know-you're lying to me! Tell me the truth. Do you still love him?"

She jerked away, wet fury stinging her eyes. "Yes!" she screamed, and his face calcified to stone. He spun around. She clutched his arm. "Mitch, don't do this. I want to marry you!"

He turned, his blue eyes glazed with ice. "Perhaps we better sleep on it."

Her temper flashed. "I just did, and I want to marry you. I won't lie to you, Mitch, ever again when it comes to Collin. No, I'm not over him yet-I realized that fully last night. But the fact of the matter is he's leaving, and in a very short time I am too. There's nothing more for me here. I want to go home-home to Ireland and to you."

"And if he marries Charity? How am I supposed to cope with that? Knowing he's part of our lives forever, part of you forever ..."

She put a hand to her throat, the taste of fear weighting her tongue. "Collin wouldn't want to live in Ireland, I'm sure, if he even marries Charity. We still don't know that for sure."

A spasm jerked in his jaw. "No," he whispered, "all we do know for sure is that you love him ... and that he loves you."

She gasped at the sound of his words and dropped to the sofa, her hand shielding her eyes. "He doesn't love me..."

"The devil he doesn't! Do you think I'm blind? The way he looks at you makes me sick. But even that didn't matter until I saw how you looked at him. It tears my heart out, Faith, and I'm not sure I can handle it."

She started to cry. "So, what do we do?"

"I don't know. Maybe we need to give it a rest for a while. God knows we could use some time apart to pray about it."

She nodded and wiped the tears from her eyes, then stood to face him. "I love you, Mitch," she whispered.

His mouth tightened in a hard line. "I know. As much as you can with another man in your heart. But I won't share you, Faith, not with any man."

She nodded again and took a deep breath. She pried the ring from her finger and held it out with a quivering hand. "Keep it for me, will you?" He stared at it for a moment, then took it and dropped it in his pocket.

She pushed the hair from her eyes and tried to smile. "Goodness, no wonder you want to postpone the engagement," she said, attempting to be light, "I must look frightful! I better go freshen up." Without a backward glance, she fled the room, fighting a fresh blur of tears as she ascended the stairs.

The morning was strained, but then Marcy wasn't surprised. Why should any of them be happy, she thought. They were all being torn-she from the life she'd known, Mitch from the woman he loved, and Faith from everything she held dear. It was not a day to remember; it was a day to forget, and for Marcy, the memory of it could not pass soon enough.

She fixed them breakfast, although none of them really ate; each picked at their plate as if their thoughts and appetites were somewhere else. Marcy sensed tension between Faith and Mitch but attributed it to sheer anxiety at their pending separation. They would be together again soon enough, she mused, and the thought warmed her. Unlike she and Patrick, she suddenly remembered, and the warmth was pushed aside, as always, by the cold grip of reality.

The plan for the day was simple enough. Mitch and she would assist Faith in packing up as much of the house as they could. They would leave only a few things for Faith until the house could be sold and their lives in Boston put to rest. Faith might even move in with Mrs. Gerson for a while, Marcy thought, although she suspected her daughter would stay until the bitter end. Her daughter's heart was tenacious in its clinging to the things and people she loved, and Marcy knew she loved this house, or at least the life it once held for her.

"Why don't you two start here and pack up as much as you can? I'll head upstairs and finish the bedrooms," Marcy said.

"We'll make short work of it, Mrs. O'Connor," Mitch assured her, and Marcy gave him a tired smile before leaving the kitchen.

Mitch rose to his feet with a sour feeling in his stomach.

Faith looked up. "Is that all right with you?"

"I'm not fragile, Faith," he said with a hard stare. "I won't break if we're alone in the same room together."

She bit her lip. "I know. I just meant-"

"I know what you meant," he said curtly. He moved to the counter to commence packing.

They worked quietly side by side, wrapping dishes in newspaper before packing them away into boxes and crates throughout the room. There was a mundane ease to the task, which helped for the moment to quell the uneasiness he felt. Eventually, they began to talk about things that didn't hurt as much-her job at the Herald, Mrs. Gerson, Maisie and some person named Danny whom Maisie was seeing.

It didn't take long for the laughter to surface, and Mitch sensed his anger fading, a development that only caused him alarm. He needed the anger to stay strong. If he lost it, there was no telling what he would do. And he couldn't afford to relent, not on this. When the sound of her laughter would soften his heart, he would remember Collin. Then the edge would return, keeping his feelings safely pinned beneath the heat of his anger. He could do this, he thought. He would get through this day and on that ship with his anger intact, where he could put a little distance between them-distance to think, distance to pray, and distance to get on with his life if he had to.

Marcy silently made her way from bedroom to bedroom, packing away the few things still left after days of dismantling each of her family's rooms. She moved slowly, her face void of any expression as she methodically went about the business of storing their lives into crate after crate. All of the rooms were mostly barren by now, except for Sean and Steven's, where Mitch had stayed, and her own, of course, where she and Faith had slept, when sleep came. More often than not, it evaded them altogether.

Marcy stood in the hall and stared at the only room left to pack. For a moment, she couldn't move, or wouldn't, so unwilling was she to face her final moments in the room she had shared with Patrick. The door was closed, and a part of her wanted it to remain that way. Opening it would only subject her to further pain, and yet, she knew that this would be her moment of closure, her final good-bye to the man whose love was still more real than his death.

Straightening her shoulders, she walked to the door and pushed it open. She caught her breath, totally unprepared for the grief that gripped her heart. She stood there, hand propped against the side of the door as her legs weakened and tears sprang to her eyes. The sunlight filled the room with its glorious light-the same light where she had awakened for over twenty-one years next to the man who had been the light of her life. The room had been stripped except for the bed and a few items on the bureau, but Marcy looked at the bare walls and stark furnishings and saw only the years of joy she had known.

She moved to the bureau and raised her hand to trace the outline of the pitcher and glass sitting next to her perfume and toiletries. Her thoughts wandered to the night Patrick had come home from Brannigan's, liquor on his breath and perfume on his clothes. She smiled, recalling how he'd tiptoed into the room and gargled with her perfumed water before sneaking into bed. She had been so wounded, and he had been so tender ...

Her eyes squeezed shut, sending hot tears streaming down her face. No, she thought to herself, I won't think about that now. She turned to strip the bed and stopped, taking his pillow in hand as she stood transfixed. Slowly, painfully, she wrapped her arms around it and closed her eyes, breathing in the scent of him with his musk soap and hint of pipe tobacco, and her heart ached for his touch. She looked at the bed where he had held her and loved her and given her his children. She collapsed on it, and a choked cry escaped her lips. Clutching his pillow in her arms, she rolled into a fetal position and wept, her anguish rebounding once again.

"Oh, God," she cried through broken sobs, "I can't live without him! Everywhere I go, I see his face and hear his voice. Why did you allow this? Why? Why did you take him?"

"Marcy ..." She heard the voice of God more clearly and audibly than she had ever heard it before. She listened intently, a strange warmth flooding her soul.

"Marcy," it said again, and her heart froze. "He kept me alive for this moment."

The room grew hazy white around the edges as she looked up. She screamed, and her eyes blurred with wetness as she stared. Frantically, she blinked the tears away, and when she looked again, he was still there, standing in the doorway. She screamed again and he laughed. Then she did, and within two great strides, her husband was holding her in his arms, hoisting her from the bed.

"Oh, Patrick!" She wept as she seized him, unwilling to let go, even to look into his face. She could feel his lips in her hair, on her neck, and she cried harder until he picked her up and placed her back on the bed. He crawled in beside her and clutched her tightly.

"How?" she cried, her fingers digging into his back. She felt the movement of his laughter against her cheek as she pressed hard against his chest. "They said you were dead!"

He pulled back to take her face in his hands.

"Not dead," he said with a faint smile. "Wounded. Enough to be unconscious awhile."

"A coma?" she asked, her hand tenderly exploring his face.

Patrick nodded and rubbed the back of his head. "A piece of shrapnel put a pretty good dent in my skull, but I made it."

"But they said you were buried in France-with military honors. How could they make such a mistake?"

His smile faded. "They buried my friend, Thomas LaRue. They thought it was me."

"Was he the friend you tried to save, or did he save you?"

"How did you know that?"

Marcy gently touched the back of his head and shivered. She stroked his cheek again to make sure he was real. "The soldiers who notified us ... they said you died trying to save a friend. They said you were a hero."

Patrick's eyes were somber. "Some hero. I got myself wounded and LaRue killed trying to get him back to the barracks. He was sick, and I was afraid he would die."

Marcy reached to brush her lips against his, and he kissed her back, jerking her to him with a force that sent a wave of heat pulsing through her.

She pulled away, breathless. "But, Patrick, how could they make such an awful mistake?"

"LaRue said he was dying, but I refused to believe it. He wanted me to make sure his wife got the cross he wore, but it was tangled with his dog tags. I argued with him, but he insisted. To appease him, I put it around my neck, fully intending to return it once I got him to the billet. But we never made it. I felt something hit my head, and I could tell I was blanking out. I grabbed his chain from my neck and put it on his arm before passing out. Only, it wasn't his chain; it was mine. LaRue died, and they thought it was me."

Marcy stared, her eyes and mouth gaping as tears puddled her cheek. She put her hand to her lips. "Oh, Patrick, I wanted to die, I missed you so much."