Born In Ice (29 page)

"That's how it should be."

"For her, perhaps." He didn't say what was obvious to both of them. Neither he nor Maggie required any of the monetary compensation that might result from a suit. "I have to admit, Brianna, it doesn't sit well with me. The principle of it."

"I can understand that, you being a businessman yourself." She smiled a little. "You never met Mr. Carstairs. It's difficult to hold a grudge once you have."

"Let's separate emotion from legalities for a moment."

Her smile widened. She imagined he used just that brisk tone with any inefficient underling. "All right, Rogan."

"Carstairs committed a crime. And while you might be reluctant to see him imprisioned, it's only logical to expect a penalty. Now I'm given to understand that he's become successful in the last few years. I took it on myself to make a few discreet inquiries, and it appears that his current businesses are aboveboard as well as lucrative. He's in the position to compensate you for the dishonesty in his dealings with your father. It would be a simple matter for me to go to London personally and settle it."

"That's kind of you." Brianna folded her hands, drew a deep breath. "I'm going to disappoint you, Rogan, and I'm sorry for it. I can see your ethics have been insulted by this, and you want only to see justice served."

"I do, yes." Baffled, he shook his head. "Brie, I can understand Maggie's attitude. She's focused on the baby and her work and has always been one to brush aside anything that interfered with her concentration. But you're a practical woman."

"I am," she agreed. "I am, yes. But I'm afraid I have a bit of my father in me as well." Reaching out, she laid a hand over Rogan's. "You know, some people, for whatever reason, start out on unsteady ground. The choices they make aren't always admirable. A portion of them stay there because it's easier, or what they're used to, or even what they prefer. Another portion slide onto a stable footing, without much effort. A bit of luck, of timing. And another, a small, special portion," she said, thinking of Gray, "fight their way onto the solid. And they make something admirable of themselves."

She fell into silence, staring out over the hills. Wishing. "I've lost you, Brie."

"Oh." She waved a hand and brought herself back. "What I mean to say is I don't know the circumstances that led Mr. Carstairs from one kind of life to another. But he's hurting no one now. Maggie has what she wants, and I what contents me. So why trouble ourselves?"

"That's what she told me you'd say." He lifted his hands in defeat. "I had to try."

"Rogan." Maggie called from the kitchen doorway, the baby bouncing against her shoulder. "The phone. It's Dublin for you."

"She won't answer the damn thing in our own house, but she answers it here."

"I've threatened not to bake for her if she doesn't." "None of my threats work." He rose. "I've been expecting a call, so I gave the office your number if we didn't answer at home."

"That's no problem. Take all the time you need." She smiled as Maggie headed out with the baby. "Well, Margaret Mary, are you going to share him now or keep him all to yourself?"

"He was just asking for you, Auntie Brie." With a chuckle, Maggie passed Liam to her sister and settled in the chair Rogan had vacated. "Oh, it's good to sit. Liam was fussy last night. I'd swear between us Rogan and I walked all the way to Galway and back."

"Do you suppose he's teething already?" Cooing, Brianna rubbed a knuckle over Liam's gums, looking for swelling.

"It may be. He drools like a puppy." She closed her eyes, let her body sag. "Oh, Brie, who would have thought you could love so much? I spent most of my life not knowing Rogan Sweeney existed, and now I couldn't live without him."

She opened one eye to be certain Rogan was still in the house and couldn't hear her wax so sentimental. "And the baby, it's an enormous thing this grip on the heart. I thought when I was carrying him I understood what it was to love him. But holding him, from the very first time I held him, it was so much more."

She shook herself, gave a shaky laugh. "Oh, it's those hormones again. They're turning me to mush."

" 'Tisn't the hormones, Maggie." Brianna rubbed her cheek over Liam's head, caught the marvelous scent of him. "It's being happy."

"I want you to be happy, Brie. I can see you're not."

"That isn't true. Of course I'm happy."

"You're already seeing him walk away. And you're making yourself accept it before it even happens."

"If he chooses to walk away, I can't stop him. I've known that all along."

"Why can't you?" Maggie shot back. "Why? Don't you love him enough to fight for him?"

"I love him too much to fight for him. And maybe I lack the courage. I'm not as brave as you, Maggie."

"That's just an excuse. Too brave is what you've always been, Saint Brianna."

"And if it is an excuse, it's mine." She spoke mildly. She would not, she promised herself, be drawn into an argument. "He has reasons why he'll go. I may not agree with them, but I understand them. Don't slap at me, Maggie," she said quietly and averted the next explosion. "Because it does hurt. And I could see this morning when he left the house that he was already walking away."

"Then make him stop. He loves you, Brie. You can see it every time he looks at you."

"I think he does." And that only increased the pain. "That's why he's in a hurry all at once to move on. And he's afraid, too. Afraid he'll come back."

"Is that what you're counting on?"

"No." But she wanted to count on it. She wanted that very much. "Love isn't always enough, Maggie. We can see that from what happened with Da."

"That was different."

"It's all different. But he lived without his Amanda, and he made his life as best he could. I'm enough his daughter to do the same. Don't worry over me," she murmured, stroking the baby. "I know what Amanda was feeling when she wrote she was grateful for the time they had together. I wouldn't trade these past months for the world and more."

She glanced over, then fell silent, studying the set look on Rogan's face as he came across the lawn.

"We may have found something," he said, "on Amanda Dougherty."

Gray didn't come home for tea, and Brianna wondered but didn't worry as she saw that her guests had their fill of finger sandwiches and Dundee cake. Rogan's report on Amanda Dougherty was always at the back of her mind as she moved through the rest of her day.

The detective had found nothing in his initial check of the towns and villages in the Catskills. It was, to Brianna's i thinking, hardly a surprise that no one remembered a pregnant Irishwoman from more than a quarter of a century in the past. But Rogan, being a thorough man, hired thorough people. Routinely, the detective made checks on vital statistics, reading through birth and death and marriage certificates for a five-year period following the date of Amanda's final letter to Tom Concannon.

And it was in a small village, deep in the mountains, where he had found her.

Amanda Dougherty, age thirty-two, had been married by a justice of the peace, to a thirty-eight-year-old man named Colin Bodine. An address was given simply as Rochester, New York. The detective was already on his way there to continue the search for Amanda Dougherty Bodine.

The date of the marriage had been five months after the final letter to her father, Brianna mused. Amanda would have been close to term, so it was most likely the man she had married had known she'd been pregnant by another.

Had he loved her? Brianna wondered. She hoped so. It seemed to her it took a strong, kind-hearted man to give another man's child his name.

She caught herself glancing at the clock again, wondering where Gray had gone off to. Annoyed with herself, she biked down to Murphy's to fill him in on the progress of the greenhouse construction.

It was time to finish dinner preparations when she returned. Murphy had promised to come by and check over the foundation himself the following day. But Brianna's underlying purpose, the hope that Gray had been visiting her neighbor as he often did, had been dashed.

And now, with more than twelve hours passed since he'd left that morning, she moved from wonder to worry.

She fretted, eating nothing herself as her guests feasted on mackerel with gooseberry sauce. She played her role as hostess, seeing there was brandy where brandy was wanted, an extra serving of steamed lemon pudding for the child who eyed it so hopefully.

She saw that the whiskey decanter in each guest room was filled, and towels were fresh for evening baths. She made parlor conversation with her guests, offered board games to the children.

By ten, when the light was gone and the house quiet, she'd moved beyond worry to resignation. He would come back when he would come, she thought, and settled down in her room, her knitting in her lap and her dog at her feet.

A full day of driving and walking and studying the countryside hadn't done a great deal to improve Gray's mood. He was irritated with himself, irritated by the fact that a light had been left burning for him in the window.

He switched it off the moment he came inside, as if to prove to himself he didn't need or want the homey signal. He started to go upstairs, a deliberate move, he knew, to prove he was his own man.

Con's soft woof stopped him. Turning on the stairs, Gray scowled at the dog. "What do you want?"

Con merely sat, thumped his tail.

"I don't have a curfew, and I don't need a stupid dog waiting up for me."

Con merely watched him, then lifted a paw as if anticipating Gray's usual greeting.

"Shit." Gray went back down the stairs, took the paw to shake, and gave the dog's head a good scratch. "There. Better now?"

Con rose and padded toward the kitchen. He stopped, looked back, then sat again, obviously waiting.

"I'm going to bed," Gray told him.

As if in agreement, Con rose again as if waiting to lead the way to his mistress.

"Fine. We'll do it your way." Gray stuffed his hands in his pockets and followed the dog down the hall, into the kitchen, and through to Brianna's room.

He knew his mood was foul, and couldn't seem to alter it. It was the book, of course, but there was more. He could admit, at least to himself, that he'd been restless since Liam's christening.

There'd been something about it, the ritual itself, that ancient, pompous, and oddly soothing rite full of words and color and movement. The costumes, the music, the lighting had all melded together, or so it had seemed to him, to tilt time.

But it had been the community of it, the belonging he'd sensed from every neighbor and friend who'd come to witness the child's baptism, that had struck him most deeply.

It had touched him, beyond the curiosity of it, the writer's interest in scene and event. It had moved him, the flow of words, the unshakable faith, and the river of continuity that ran from generation to generation in the small village church, accented by a baby's indignant wail, fractured light through stained glass, wood worn smooth by generations of bended knees.

It was family as much as shared belief, and community as much as dogma.

And his sudden, staggering wish to belong had left him restless and angry.

Irritated with himself, and her, he stopped in the doorway of Brianna's sitting room, watching her with her knitting needles clicking rhythmically. The dark green wool spilled over the lap of her white nightgown. The light beside her slanted down so that she could check her work, but she never looked at her own hands.

Across the room, the television murmured through an old black-and-white movie. Gary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in sleek evening dress embraced in a wine cellar. Notorious, Gray thought. A tale of love, mistrust, and redemption.

For reasons he didn't choose to grasp, her choice of entertainment annoyed him all the more.

"You shouldn't have waited up."

She glanced over at him, her needles never faltering. "I didn't." He looked tired, she thought, and moody. Whatever he'd searched for in his long day alone, he didn't appear to have found it. "Have you eaten?"

"Some pub grub this afternoon."

"You'll be hungry, then." She started to set her knitting aside in its basket. "I'll fix you a plate."

"I can fix my own if I want one," he snapped. "I don't need you to mother me."

Her body stiffened, but she only sat again and picked up her wool. "As you please."

He stepped into the room, challenging. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Where's the interrogation? Aren't you going to ask me where I was, what I was doing? Why I didn't call?"

"As you've just pointed out, I'm not your mother. Your business is your own."

For a moment there was only the sound of her needles and the distressed commercial voice of a woman on television who'd discovered chip fat on her new blouse.

"Oh, you're a cool one," Gray muttered and strode to the set to slam the picture off.

"Are you trying to be rude?" Brianna asked him. "Or can't you help yourself?"

"I'm trying to get your attention."

"Well, you have it."

"Do you have to do that when I'm talking to you?"

Since there seemed no way to avoid the confrontation he so obviously wanted, Brianna let her knitting rest in her lap. "Is that better?"

"I needed to be alone. I don't like being crowded."

"I haven't asked for an explanation, Grayson."

"Yes, you have. Just not out loud."

Impatience began to simmer. "So, now you're reading my mind, are you?"

"It's not that difficult. We're sleeping together, essentially living together, and you feel I'm obliged to let you know what I'm doing."

"Is that what I feel?"

He began to pace. No, she thought, it was more of a prowl-as a big cat might prowl behind cage bars.

"Are you going to sit there and try to tell me you're not mad?"

"It hardly matters what I tell you when you read my unspoken thoughts." She linked her hands together, rested them on the wool. She would not fight with him, she told herself. If their time together was nearing an end, she wouldn't let the last memories of it be of arguments and bad feelings. "Grayson, I might point out to you that I have a life of my own. A business to run, personal enjoyments. I filled my day well enough."

"So you don't give a damn whether I'm here or not?" It was his out, wasn't it? Why did the idea infuriate him?

She only sighed. "You know it pleases me to have you here. What do you want me to say? That I worried? Perhaps I did, for a time, but you're a man grown and able to take care of yourself. Did I think it was unkind of you not to let me know you'd be gone so long when it's your habit to be here most evenings? You know it was, so it's hardly worth me pointing it out to you. Now, if that satisfies you, I'm going to bed. You're welcome to join me or go upstairs and sulk."

Before she could rise, he slapped both hands on either arm of her chair, caging her in. Her eyes widened, but stayed level on his.

"Why don't you shout at me?" he demanded. "Throw something? Boot me out on my ass?"

"Those things might make you feel better," she said evenly. "But it isn't my job to make you feel better."

"So that's it? Just shrug the whole thing off and come to bed? For all you know I could have been with another woman."

For one trembling moment the heat flashed into her eyes, matching the fury in his. Then she composed herself, taking the knitting from her lap and setting it in the basket. "Are you trying to make me angry?"

"Yes. Damn it, yes." He jerked back from her, spun away. "At least it would be a fair fight then. There's no way to beat that iced serenity of yours."

"Then I'd be foolish to set aside such a formidable weapon, wouldn't I?" She rose. "Grayson, I'm in love with you, and when you think I'd use that love to trap you, to change you, then you insult me. It's for that you should apologize."

Despising the creeping flow of guilt, he looked back at her. Never in the whole of his life had another woman made him feel guilt. He wondered if there was another person in existence who could, with such calm reason, cause him to feel so much the fool.

"I figured you'd find a way to get an I'm sorry out of me before it was over."

She stared at him a moment, then saying nothing, turned and walked into the adjoining bedroom.

"Christ." Gray scrubbed his hands over his face, pressed his fingers against his closed eyes, then dropped his hands. You could only wallow in your own idiocy so long, he decided. "I'm crazy," he said, stepping into the bedroom.

She said nothing, only adjusted one of her windows to let in more of the cool, fragrant night air.

"I am sorry, Brie, for all of it. I was in a pisser of a mood this morning, and just wanted to be alone."

She gave him no answer, no encouragement, only turned down the bedspread.

"Don't freeze me out. That's the worst." He stepped behind her, laid a tentative hand on her hair. "I'm having trouble with the book. It was lousy of me to take it out on you."

"I don't expect you to adjust your moods to suit me."

"You just don't expect," he murmured. "It's not good for you."

"I know what's good for me." She started to move away, but he turned her around. Ignoring the rigid way she held herself, he wrapped his arms around her.

"You should have booted me out," he murmured.

"You're paid up through the month."

He pressed his face into her hair, chuckled. "Now you're being mean."

How was a woman supposed to keep up with his moods? When she tried to push away, he only cuddled her closer.

"I had to get away from you," he told her, and his hand roamed up and down her back, urging her spine to relax. "I had to prove I could get away from you."

"Don't you think I know that?" Drawing back as far as he would permit, she framed his face in her hands. "Gray-son, I know you'll be leaving soon, and I won't pretend that doesn't leave a crack in my heart. But it'll hurt so much more, for both of us, if we spend these last days fighting over it. Or around it."

"I figured it would be easier if you were mad. If you tossed me out of your life."

"Easier for whom?"

"For me." He rested his brow on hers and said what he'd avoided saying for the last few days. "I'll be leaving at the end of the month."

She said nothing, found she could say nothing over the sudden ache in her chest.

"I want to take some time before the tour starts."

She waited, but he didn’t ask, as he once had, for her to come with him to some tropical beach. She nodded. ”Then let's enjoy the time we have before you go " She turned her face so that her mouth met his Gray laid her slowly onto the bed. And when he loved her, loved her tenderly.

Chapter Twenty-one

For the first time since Brianna had opened her home to guests, she wished them all to the devil. She resented the intrusion on her privacy with Gray. Though it shamed her, she resented the time he spent closed in his room finishing the book that had brought him to her.

She fought the emotions, did everything she could to keep them from showing. As the days passed, she assured herself that the sense of panic and unhappiness would fade. Her life was so very nearly what she wanted it to be. So very nearly.

She might not have the husband and children she'd always longed for, but there was so much else to fullfill her. It helped, at least a little, to count those blessings as she went about her daily routine.

She carried linens, fresh off the line, up the stairs. Since

Gray's door was open, she went inside. Here, she set the linens aside. It was hardly necessary to change his sheets since he hadn't slept in any bed but hers for days. But the room needed a good dusting, she decided, since he was out of it. His desk was an appalling mess, to be sure.

She started there, emptying his overflowing ashtray, tidying books and papers. Hoping, she knew, to find some little snatch of the story he was writing. What she found were torn envelopes, unanswered correspondence, and some scribbled notes on Irish superstitions. Amused, she read:

Beware of speaking ill of fairies on Friday, because they are present and will work some evil if offended.

For a magpie to come to the door and look at you is a sure death sign, and nothing can avert it.

A person who passes under a hempen rope will die a violent death.

"Well, you surprise me, Brianna. Snooping."

Blushing red, she dropped the notepad, stuck her hands behind her back. Oh, wasn't it just like Grayson Thane, she thought, to come creeping up on a person.

"I was not snooping. I was dusting."

He sipped idly at the coffee he'd gone to the kitchen to brew. To his thinking, he'd never seen her quite so flummoxed. "You don't have a dust rag," he pointed out.

Feeling naked, Brianna wrapped dignity around her. "I was about to get one. Your desk is a pitiful mess, and I was just straightening up."

"You were reading my notes."

"I was putting the notebook aside. Perhaps I glanced at the writing on it. Superstitions is all it is, of evil and death."

"Evil and death's my living." Grinning, he crossed to her, picked up the pad. "I like this one. On Hallowtide-that's November first."

"I'm aware of when Hallowtide falls."

"Sure you are. Anyway, on Hallowtide, the air being filled with the presence of the dead, everything is a symbol of fate. If on that date, you call the name of a person from the outside, and repeat it three times, the result is fatal." He grinned to himself. "Wonder what the garda could charge you with."

"It's nonsense." And gave her the chills. "It's great nonsense. I used that one." He set the notebook down, studied her. Her high color hadn't quite faded. "You know the trouble with technology?" He lifted one of his computer disks, tapping it on his palm as he studied her with laughing eyes. "No balled up papers, discarded by the frustrated writer that the curious can smooth out and read."

"As if I'd do such a thing." She flounced away to pick up her linens. "I've beds to make." . "Want to read some of it?"

She paused halfway to the door, looking back over her shoulder suspiciously. "Of your book?"

"No, of the local weather report. Of course of my book. Actually, there's a section I could use a local's spin on. To see if I got the rhythm of the dialogue down, the atmosphere, interactions."

"Oh, well, if I could help you, I'd be glad." "Brie, you've been dying to get a look at the manuscript. You could have asked."

"I know better than that, living with Maggie." She set the linens down again. "It's worth your life to go in her shop to see a piece she's working on."

"I'm a more even-tempered sort." With a few deft moves he booted his computer, slipped in the appropriate disk. "It's a pub scene. Local color and some character intros. It's the first time McGee meets Tullia." "Tullia. It's Gaelic."

"Right. Means peaceful. Let's see if I can find it." He began flipping screens. "You don't speak Gaelic, do you?"

"I do, yes. Both Maggie and I learned from our Gran."

He looked up, stared at her. "Son of a bitch. It never even occured to me. Do you know how much time I've spent looking up words? I just wanted a few tossed in, here and there."

"You'd only to have asked."

He grunted. "Too late now. Yeah, here it is. McGee's a burned-out cop, with Irish roots. He's come to Ireland to look into some old family history, maybe find his balance, and some answers about himself. Mostly, he just wants to be left alone to regroup. He was involved in a bust that went bad and holds himself responsible for the bystander death of a six-year-old kid."

"How sad for him."

"Yeah, he's got his problems. Tullia has plenty of her own. She's a widow, lost her husband and child in an accident that only she survived. She's getting through it, but carrying around a lot of baggage. Her husband wasn't any prize, and there were times she wished him dead."

"So she's guilty that he is, and scarred because her child was taken from her, like a punishment for her thoughts."

"More or less. Anyway, this scene's in the local pub. Only runs a few pages. Sit down. Now pay attention." He leaned over her shoulder, took her hand. "See these two buttons?"

"Yes."

"This one will page up, this one will page down. When you finished what's on the screen and want to move on, push this one. If you want to go back and look at something again, push that one. And Brianna?"