Conor's Way (18 page)

"And this is?" He made a sweeping gesture
with his arm, his own anger rising at the dung heaps, urine, and
raw sewage of the Belfast slums surrounding them, Catholic and
Protestant ghettos that were the bastard children of Britain's
industrial revolution.

Mary refused to look at the squalor. "The
Church will excommunicate you," she whispered. "You'll be barred
from Neamh."

Conor looked into her
lovely face. Sweet Mary, who worried more about the destination of
his soul than he ever would. "Mary," he murmured, curling the
tendril of hair at her cheek around his finger, its beauty a sharp,
sweet contrast to the bruises on his hand. It was the hair of an
angel, a gloriously rich mixture of red and gold that when loose
could cover him like sunlight. He pulled her closer. "Mary," he
said against her lips, "
Neamh
is not where I'll be going when I die. You're the
closest thing to heaven I'll ever see."

She gave a tiny sob against his mouth and
pulled back. "It doesn't have to be that way."

"What would you have me do? Put the British
yoke on my shoulders and work their stolen land like some dumb,
mindless animal? Or toil in the factories they've built, live in
the wretched slums they've made, and pretend that I'm very happy
to be a subject of the Crown?"

"I'd have you give up hating and make a life
for yourself, man. A hearth, a home, a family. I'd have you leave
the past behind and think of the future."

To Conor, it was the same thing. "I can't
forget. I won't forgive."

"I know," she said on a soft sigh of
resignation and pain. She turned and sagged back against the wall.
"But you can't win this fight, Conor. They'll break you." She
paused, then added softly, "I can't bear to watch it happen. Not
to you."

From the pub, the drunken laughter faded
away, and a song began.

I wish I had you in
Carrickfergus, if only for nights in Ballygrand
...

Angus had obviously recovered enough from his
defeat to raise the lads in song.

I would swim over the
deepest ocean, the deepest ocean, to be by your
side
.

"Colm asked me to marry him."

Six words, and the world opened beneath his
feet.

He felt himself falling into a dark abyss.
"What did you say?"

Straightening away from the wall, she faced
him. "Do you intend to stay in the Brotherhood?"

He looked into her face, and he knew what she
was thinking. "Mary, don't. For God's sake, don't make me
choose."

"I have to, Conor!" she cried. "I can't live
with the uncertainty. I can't spend my nights pacing the floor,
wondering if you're going to come home, knowing that one night, you
won't." She paused and took a deep breath. "If you stay in the
Brotherhood, I'm going to marry Colm. It's that simple."

He felt all his joy slipping away, leaving
him more empty than he'd ever thought he could be. He should have
known this would happen; he should have seen it coming. He'd
thought he could have both, but he could not. Even O'Bourne, who
had recruited him into the Brotherhood two years before, had warned
him that women and causes did not mix. He hadn't believed him then.
He looked at Mary, pale and resolute, and he believed him now.

He had to say something. "Colm's a fine
man."

"You're not even going to try to stop me, are
you?" she asked. There was no surprise in her voice, but there was
pain. He heard it, he felt it, but he could not ease it.

Colm was a good man. He wasn't. Colm could
offer Mary something. He couldn't. Colm owned a pub, the only
business in a Belfast slum that ever prospered. He had enough money
to support her, to give her the hearth, home, and children she
wanted. She would always know that at dawn Colm would be lying
beside her, not dead in some alley or ditch with a bullet in him.
Life was hard enough, and she deserved at least that much. Conor
knew he could never give it to her. He couldn't give it to any
woman. He'd been a fool to ever dream otherwise.

His lips tightened and he shook his head, a
movement that tore his heart in half. "No," he answered. "I can't
give up what I believe in, Mary. Not even for you."

"I love you, Conor." She reached up and
touched his cheek. "Good-bye," she murmured, and stood on tiptoes
to kiss him quickly, then she turned away. "God bless."

He watched Mary as she walked down the alley,
picking her way carefully on the cobblestones that were slick from
years of accumulated filth. Mary, who was a slender and graceful
flower that had somehow grown out of the Belfast dung heaps. Mary,
who was the only truly good and beautiful thing in an evil and ugly
world. She paused at the corner, and he thought for a moment she
would turn and look at him one last time. But she went on,
disappearing from his view, and he had the sick feeling he had just
thrown away his only chance at heaven.

During the next few days, Olivia said nothing
more about her offer of a job or Conor's refusal. She continued
teaching him to read, and he made rapid progress. He also grew
stronger with each passing day. He began taking walks every
morning, each one longer than the last. The girls sometimes
accompanied him, but often he went alone.

The girls' worship of Conor did not lessen as
the days passed, but only seemed to strengthen with time, forging a
bond that worried Olivia. She knew the closer they got to him, the
harder it was going to be when he left. Yet, without a father, the
girls had missed so much, and when she watched them together, she
just couldn't bring herself to put a stop to the friendship.

She was fiercely protective of her girls, but
she knew she couldn't always protect them from heartaches. They
would be disappointed when he left, but they would get over it. And
she'd find someone else to help her, someone steady and stable,
someone God-fearing and hard-working who didn't swear, didn't
drink, and didn't have smoky blue eyes that made her weak in the
knees.

Olivia lifted the ax in her hands and brought
it down toward the log on the stump in a clumsy swing. The blade
sank into the wood far enough to get stuck, but not far enough to
split the log. It didn't matter that she chopped wood nearly every
day, she never got any better at it.

Asking him to stay was a stupid idea anyway,
she thought as she began working the blade free. It was for the
best that he was leaving soon. She and the girls didn't need his
help. They were managing just fine. Olivia reached for the wedge,
jammed it into the crack she'd made in the log, then straightened
and glanced up at the sky overhead. "Just fine," she repeated
aloud. "We don't need him."

She pushed back her broad-brimmed hat and
glanced around, her gaze lingering on the dilapidated barn, the
crooked fences, and weathered outbuildings. Even in the soft light
of dawn, they looked old and tired.

Her shoulders slumped. Suddenly, she felt as
worn and weary as her surroundings. It didn't make any difference
what she wanted. Conor was leaving. That choice was not hers to
make.

She had made her choice a long time ago. She
looked at the garden surrounding her, seeing the overgrown rose
arbors, misshapen boxwood hedges, and battered gazebo for what they
were: the pathetic vestiges of what had once been a beautiful and
gracious plantation.

She could remember her mother giving
cotillions in this garden—a graceful figure moving amid the crowd
in a cloud of apricot silk. Olivia looked down at the dull gray
skirt and the heavy leather work gloves she wore, and she sighed.
What would her mother say if she could see Olivia now?

She'd be scandalized to see her daughter
wearing a man's gloves and chopping wood, when she had been born
and bred to play the piano and host garden parties. But after her
mother's death, there had been no music, there had been no parties
in this garden.

She could remember when all the slaves had
departed in '63. Only Nate had stayed on—dear, dependable Nate.
She'd given him twenty acres of prime land for his own farm, but
she knew he hadn't stayed because of that. Twenty-one then, she had
watched the other slaves go, and she had realized the truth she'd
been shielded from all her life—that slaves weren't happy being
slaves, that up-country white folks didn't care what happened to
the plantations, and that the beauty and grace of her childhood had
been a false and fragile existence all along.

She could remember the anguish that had
etched deeper into her father's face with each passing year—a man
lost without his wife, bereft without his sons, bewildered without
his way of life, trying to drown the pain in Kentucky bourbon, and
later, cheap moonshine.

Olivia could picture him on the day they'd
heard Lee had surrendered at Appomattox—high on a ladder only a few
feet from where she was now, waving a bottle and singing "Look
Away, Dixieland," at the top of his lungs, before he came crashing
down amid the camellias, his back as broken as his spirits.

She and Nate had tended him for those six
agonizing weeks, watching his life ebb slowly, relentlessly away as
he refused to eat, refused to bathe or shave himself, wanting only
to die, and hating her and Nate for keeping him alive. They had
buried him in the family plot

beside her mother, beside the wooden markers
Nate had made for her brothers' graves.

She had wandered through her empty house and
her empty days, aimless and lost, clinging to the remnants of her
faith and trying to find a purpose to her life. Her family was
gone, and she had no one. Nate was a staunch and loyal friend, but
he could not replace the family she had lost. Then, that summer,
the girls had come to live with her, and she had found the purpose
she'd been seeking. Now, she had a new life, made from the ashes of
the old.

Conor's words came back to
her like an echo.
I like my
freedom
.

Well, soon he would have all the freedom he
wanted, and she would go on as she always had. If she didn't find
anyone to help her, she'd carry on without help.

Peachtree might not be a gracious plantation
anymore, but it was hers. She was going to hang on to it, even
though that meant she'd have to fix her own roof and pick her own
peaches. When the time came, she prayed she'd find the courage to
do both. Olivia lifted the ax and went back to work.

***

There were a few things Conor just couldn't
tolerate, and watching a task being done wrong was one of them.

He stared out the kitchen window that looked
out on the side of the house, watching Olivia's pathetic attempts
at log-splitting, and he felt that irritating and inconvenient
prick of conscience. He knew how hard she worked; he knew how
difficult things were for her. He couldn't stay, but hell, he was
healthy enough now to split a few logs. It was the least he could
do.

He went outside and rounded the corner of the
house to the woodpile.

Olivia looked up as he approached. "Mornin".
You're up early."

He studied her as she clumsily swung the ax
again, missing the log altogether, and he shook his head. It was a
wonder, indeed, that she didn't chop her foot off. He walked to her
side.

"What are you doing?" she asked as he took
the ax from her hand.

"I can't stand it." He gently pushed her a
safe distance away. "I just can't stand it. The way you chop wood
is a disgrace, it is, indeed."

"What are you talking about?" Olivia asked,
watching as he walked back over to the stump.

He looked over his shoulder at her and
smiled, an instant of dark blue eyes and wicked humor, then turned
and swung the ax, hitting the log dead center. Two more quick blows
of the ax, and the log split, falling away from the stump as two
pieces of firewood. He looked over at her again, his features as
seriously innocent as a schoolboy's.

"Show-off," she accused, but she smiled as
she pulled several pieces of wood and kindling from the small stack
she'd already chopped, and walked away.

The girls weren't up yet, and the house was
quiet, except for the steady, measured sound of the ax. Olivia
pulled off her gloves and started a fire in the stove with the wood
she'd brought in, but as she made breakfast, she couldn't help
watching him through the open window.

His profile to her, he worked at a steady
pace, without wasted effort. She thought of her own clumsy
attempts, of how long it took her every morning to do what he did
so effortlessly.

He paused and set down the ax. Unbuttoning
his shirt, he pulled it off then tossed it aside. He wiped the
sweat from his brow with one forearm, balanced another log on the
stump, and resumed his task. Olivia noticed the flex and play of
his muscles as he worked, fascinated by the chiseled contours of
his broad back and shoulders, and the strength in his arms as he
swung the ax. He moved with a masculine grace and strength that
were fascinating to watch. That warm aching feeling returned, and
she leaned against the counter, breakfast forgotten.