Whiskey Island (45 page)

“Blessed Mother, Lena. What happened? Tell me.” He held her face to the light and saw marks on her cheeks as well.

She released a shuddering sigh. “A man stopped me, Terence. Looking for money. When he saw I had none, he tried to choke the life out of me.”

“My darling.” He pulled her against him with his good arm. The fact that he could not stroke her hair with his other was a torment. “Are you all right now?”

“Yes…He heard someone coming and ran away before…before he could do more harm.”

“Are you certain? You’re not hiding the worst from me?”

“No. No. It’s just as I’ve said.”

“Do you know who it was? Was it someone we know?”

“It was no one I’ve seen before.” Her breath caught, and she sagged against him.

It was all he could do to remain upright. He patted her back. “Did you tell anyone? Did you see the police?”

“No. There was no one to tell. I…I only wanted to come home. That’s all. What could I say except that he was a strong man who wanted my money and smelled of whiskey? Whiskey Island has a thousand strong men who drink too much.”

“We’ll tell Rowan. He’ll want you to report it. But you can’t come home after dark again. You must come home before the stars come out.”

“I don’t have that choice.”

“Then I must come and fetch you.”

“No!” She pulled away. “You can’t. It’s too far, too hard. And we can’t afford the carfare. I’ll stay on well-traveled streets. I was tired, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention. I’ll never be so careless again.”

He was sure she believed it unlikely he could frighten an attacker, even if he did escort her. He had yet to graduate to a cane, and his arm hung limply at his side. In any fight, he would quickly lose.

“You need a real husband,” he said bitterly. “You need a man who can support you and protect you. Not a travesty like me. I can’t take care of you. I can’t keep you safe. I can’t even give you a child. What good am I to you, Lena?”

“You are the reason I live,” she said, cupping his face in her hands. “The reason I do everything that I do.”

“I can’t even take you to bed.”

Her eyes widened. “Can’t or won’t, Terry? Has the doctor told you
that
part of you will never work again?”

He stared at her, but no words formed on his tongue.

“Or is this more of your self-pity? I thought we were done with that. Yet you still refuse to touch me. And I need you to.” Her voice rose. “I need you.”

“I’m afraid.” He nearly choked on the words.

“That we share. I’m afraid, too.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m afraid of more things than you’ll ever know.”

“Lena…” He tried to hold her, but he lost his balance. She supported him as he struggled to regain it. Her arms crept around him and settled at his back. Before he knew what to make of this outburst, she kissed him.

He was lost immediately. Any thought he’d had of resisting his own impulses was gone. She wanted him, and he wanted her. What did it matter if things didn’t go well? If he tried and failed? There would be other nights, a lifetime of them. And there had to be a place and a time to begin. They had to piece together what was left of their marriage or both be damned.

She was trembling against him, and he tried to hold her closer. Someone had hurt her and had hoped to hurt her more. What if she had been raped by the man who had choked her? What if someone hadn’t scared him away?

“Lena…” Terence kissed her cheek, her chin, the tears streaming down her face. “God forgive me. I’ve been so selfish.”

“No. It doesn’t matter. Just take me to bed, Terry. Make this better.”

He couldn’t be sure who helped the other into their bedroom, who removed clothes, who spread back the covers. He was awkward and frightened, but his thoughts were with her. He gazed at her naked body and knew that things would be right between them now. She helped him over her, helped him balance on his one strong arm, helped him place his crooked leg against hers.

They had often kissed and touched for long minutes before this act, but tonight there was little of either. He wanted to devour her, and she wrapped her legs around him as if that was her fondest wish.

He came quickly, with a shuddering, rasping sigh that was like a death rattle in his lungs. He collapsed against her, reborn.

“Oh, Terry.” She was sobbing against his shoulder.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, no!” She sobbed on.

He rolled away from her, then struggled to find a way to take her in his arms. She snuggled against him and continued to cry.

“There, my sweet love.” He stroked her hair with his good hand and kissed her forehead. “Oh, Lena, I know how hard it’s been. I would do anything to make these last months disappear.”

“You don’t know. You don’t….”

“I do.” He kissed her again.

She sobbed until all her tears were spent. He stroked her hair until, drowsy with satisfaction, he fell asleep with her against him.

She could not stay in their bed, her husband replete in her arms. Pictures of James Simeon filled her head, and as she never had before, she wanted to kill him. If a way had presented itself, she would have done it then. Gone to the Simeon mansion, accosted him in his bed and murdered him in cold blood.

The things he had done to her! The things she had allowed! The lies she’d been forced to tell tonight.

Her tears were not spent. They slid down her cheeks as Terence slept, his seed seeping from her body. His seed, Simeon’s seed. Simeon’s like burning acid against her tender thighs.

She had let Terence have his way tonight while her womb was still filled with Simeon’s poison. She had been powerless to stop Terence, because she had needed his comfort and love. But what sort of woman leaves one man and goes to another? What sort counts stars when a blackguard like Simeon forces his way into her body? What sort of woman lies to the man she loves?

Why hadn’t she simply killed Simeon before any of this began? Taken a kitchen knife and plunged it into his heart that first terrible night? Who would have believed she had murdered him? The house had been empty of servants. She was clever. She could have covered her tracks, lied to the police as sweetly as a mother crooning to her newborn babe. She could have been rid of Simeon forever, and would the sin have been greater than the sins she had committed since?

With Simeon gone, she could have found another position in another home. She could have persuaded Julia Simeon to continue Terence’s education.

She knew she was thinking like a madwoman, yet the pleasure, the power, of killing Simeon dried her tears. And then the enormity of what she was considering cut through the fog of rage.

“Mother of God.” She squeezed her eyelids closed. Terence slept on, as he hadn’t slept in months.

She sat up, terrified at where her thoughts had led her. Her soul was already lost, yet this was different. She’d had little choice but to let Simeon have his way with her. But murder was her own choice, and a terrible one. What kind of woman contemplated such a thing?

She had been to confession since Simeon had forced himself on her, but that particular sin had not been confessed. Silently she had asked God’s forgiveness, even though she had known there was no chance of it.

Now she knew what she had to do. She had to go to Father McSweeney tonight. She had to find him and make him listen to her. She had to tell him what she had done and, worse, what she wanted to do. If she didn’t confess this, if she didn’t unburden herself tonight, she didn’t know what might happen to her.

Or to Simeon.

It was still early enough. She and Terence hadn’t even had their supper. She could find the priest and confess, even if she had to go to the rectory. She got up and dressed quickly; then she made her way outside as Terence slept on.

The walk was long, the night air cool against her heated skin. She avoided the saloons and the darkest streets, climbing up the hill to the church as silently as she could. Once there, she stepped inside the nave and waited for her eyes to adjust to the candlelight.

There was no one else in the church, no one kneeling at a pew or standing at the altar. She was as alone here as she was during the moments when she waited for Simeon to empty himself inside her. God was absent then, and he seemed absent here. If she had ever felt his presence, she couldn’t feel it now.

She dipped her fingers in holy water and made the sign of the cross, although she felt she had muddied the water. She genuflected quickly, then scurried inside a pew halfway up the aisle, kneeling and bowing her head so that she would not have to view the images of Christ on the cross or the statue of the Virgin. She was not worthy to view them, or even to be here, yet where else could she go with her terrible secret?

She didn’t know how long she’d knelt there, her head hanging low, her heart thudding dully in her chest, when she heard footsteps. She looked up and found Father McSweeney staring down at her.

“Lena?”

If there was an appropriate response, it eluded her.

“Lena, are you ill?”

“At heart, Father.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “Have you come to speak to our Lord or to me?”

“Our Lord will not hear me, Father.”

“He will always hear you.”

The golden glow of candlelight seemed to pool around his head, and for a moment the man’s sheer beauty frightened her. He was an avenging angel and she the worst sort of sinner.

“He will
always
hear you,” Father McSweeney repeated. “You must not doubt it.”

“The Lord does not hear unrepentant sinners.”

“And are you unrepentant?”

“I wanted nothing to do with this sin, yet it was foisted on me.”

His expression changed from serene to concerned. “Do you want to confess it?”

She considered. That was why she had come, after all; yet now, confronted with the reality, she wasn’t sure what to do. If she confessed, then continued to work for Simeon and consort with him, would not her sin be greater? And how could she do otherwise?

“The confessional is the place for whatever is troubling you.” Father McSweeney moved into the pew and sat beside her.

“I can’t go there.”

“And why not?”

“Because even though I know I’m sinning, I’ll sin again.”

“That’s a troubling thought. You know you sin, yet you intend to continue?”

She only realized how tall he was when she found herself standing near him. Now, as he sat behind her, she felt diminished, by both his size and spirit.

“Tell me, Father, is it a greater sin to commit an act you know to be wrong in order to protect those you love, or to let them perish because you are afraid for your own immortal soul?”

“You’re speaking in riddles.”

“I’m speaking of my life!”

“Suppose you tell me what sin you’ve committed and why? That seems the place to start.”

She was surprised he was allowing this here, that he did not insist she follow him into the confessional. She was grateful, even touched, that he seemed to be trying to do what was best for her.

In the end, though, she couldn’t tell him. Not even side by side in the soft candlelight.

“Then I must guess,” Father McSweeney said. “And my guesses will be worse, I’m sure.”

“Nothing could be worse, Father.”

He looked grim. “Have you given up on your husband, Lena, and found a man you like better? Are you going to forsake your marriage vows?”

“No! I love Terry. I would never leave him. Everything I do, I do for him!”

“And what is it you do? What terrible thing is it you do? Steal for him? Lie for him?”

“Commit adultery for him, Father.”

He fell silent, but she saw his fists clench.

It was that human response, the show of emotion from a man who had eschewed it, that freed her tongue. She told him then, in a hopeless monotone, what Simeon had done to her and why she had allowed it.

“Had I not let him have his way,” she finished, “I would never have found another position. He told me so. Terry would lose his chance at an education. Our parents would have no chance to leave Ireland, or even to survive….”

“Lena…” He shook his head.

“I did nothing to encourage him, Father. You must believe me. I tried to stay out of his sight. I tried always to be with others when he was home. I dressed modestly. I—”

“Enough.”

She fell silent.

“And this is why Simeon listened to me when I told him about Terence,” Father McSweeney said at last. “I had hoped he merely wanted a chance to exercise his better nature. But the devil wears many disguises.”

She had expected anger, at the least a blistering lecture about what she had done and what kind of woman it made her. She had not expected him to take on any portion of her guilt.

“You didn’t know,” she said. “You couldn’t have known. You weren’t there to see the way he looked at me, right from the beginning.”

“You poor child.”

She had believed her tears were cried out. She was surprised to find they were not. The kindness in his tone, even the priestly anger, touched her heart in a way nothing else could have.

“You must not go back to work,” he said when her sobbing slowed. “You must confess this tonight and do penance. You must never go back.”

“And what of Terry? What of our families? With the weather warm, I can carry dinner to the docks again, Father, but that doesn’t pay our debts. Terry’s education has to continue. He’s learning so quickly. Soon he’ll be able to find a different sort of job. But not yet. He still has things to learn. And our families will suffer terrible hardship.”

“I will talk to Simeon myself.”

“And he will tell you I’m lying, then he will dismiss me and tell his side of the story to anyone who’ll listen. Both of our names, yours and mine, will be blackened.”

“What care I what’s said of me by Simeon and his kind?”

“Nothing good will come of it!”

“Surely you don’t intend to go back, to continue working there? The man’s wife is leaving the country. Now he’ll have every opportunity to be alone with you.”

“Tonight I thought of killing him. Not while…not while we were together, but later, when I was at home with Terry. I thought how good it would feel, even how I might do it. I was determined.”