Wishes on the Wind (46 page)

    David could not suppress a smile at his cousin's unembarrassed candor. "Grace, you'll never change."

    Seated across from Grace in her tastefully-furnished sitting room a few hours later, David realized he was wrong. An extremely indulgent Freddie Haas III had put in an appearance and left again for an appointment. Grace's healthy two-year-old son had been introduced, cuddled, and then removed by his nanny for a nap. Alone, their conversation had slipped into reminiscence that had somehow stirred the same nagging discomfort with which he had awakened, and Grace's scrutiny had deepened.

    "I thought of you often while you were gone, David. Far more   often than you thought of me, no doubt, but it was always that way. I did worship you so. In a way, I suppose I still do. And you haven't disappointed me, for you've become a handsome man.''

    "And you're a beautiful woman, Grace." David smiled. "I suppose we should be grateful for our heredity."

    Grace nodded. "Yes, that's true, but even as a child I knew you were something special. I started to think of you as my own personal possession, because I knew I had a special place in your heart that was surpassed by no one else. The day I realized that was no longer true was one of the most difficult days in my life. I'm afraid I handled it very poorly and I regret the discomfort my behavior caused you."

    Sensing the direction in which his cousin was heading, David shrugged. "That's all in the past, Grace."

    Not to be deterred, Grace pinned him with her surprisingly intuitive gaze. "You said Mr. Gowen offered you an opportunity to run Papa's mine and you're hesitant to accept. Will you be honest with me about the reason, David?"

    "I'm not sure I know the reason, Grace." His discomfort increasing, David attempted to avoid Grace's scrutiny. "I don't trust Gowen. I never did."

    "But you said you're concerned with the way things have been handled in the coal fields. That would indicate your interest hasn't lagged."

    David shrugged. "No, it hasn't, to my surprise. I didn't think I'd ever want anything to do with coal mines again."

    Grace hesitated, then offered softly, "Your aversion to the industry wouldn't have anything to do with your personal experience, would it, David? With some unfinished business you might have back in Shenandoah?"

    David stiffened, a slow heat climbing into his face as a short, surprised laugh escaped him. "You
have
grown up, Grace, and you've become a romantic. I hate to disillusion you, but I have no unfinished business in Shenandoah."

    "I'm sorry." Grace gave a delicate shrug. "I was such an obnoxious child at times, so selfish and self-centered. I've changed, of course, and you have, too, in some ways. I just want you to be as happy as I am."

    "I'm not unhappy, Grace only unsettled."

    "I'm glad, David." Leaning forward, Grace kissed his cheek and changed the subject.

    Hours later, as he walked back down Walnut Street, David felt    a familiar irritation. Grace had not changed as much as he thought. As fond of her as he was, she still managed to annoy him.

    David suddenly realized he wasn't being entirely honest. He couldn't blame Grace for her unexpected insight, only her unexpected candor.

    With a caustic laugh, David admitted to the truth at last. He simply had not realized that old wounds could still bleed.

Chapter 19

    Terry hunched his broad shoulders over the bar, his brow drawn into an uncharacteristic frown. "Fill me glass again, sport. I've a heavy thirst tonight."

    "Aye, fill mine as well."

    Muff Lawler made another pass with the bottle as Sean pushed his glass forward and watched as the amber liquid splashed expertly to the brim without a drop of spillage.

    Terry and he had arrived at their favorite
 
she been
almost an hour earlier. They had wandered around the room, mixing with friends and exchanging conversation, conscious of the prevailing aura of doom that shrouded the room and those in it.

    Turning at a snort beside him, Sean met Jim McKenna's almost boyish countenance as the undauntable Irishman retorted, "You're both a step behind me tonight, boyos, and I think you've to do some fancy drinkin' if you expect to catch up."

    "I'm not that much a fool, Jim!" Terry's short laugh lifted his heavy features into a smile for the first time that evening, turning heads toward him with curiosity. "Yer a single man. Ye've not a young bride at home waitin' to greet ye with a mean look in her eye if ye come back two sheets to the wind."

    "Are you tellin' all these good men here that my sister's a shrew, Terry Donovan?" Sean's question was delivered with a touch of levity that elicited a surprisingly sober response from his brother-in-law.

    "Nay, never that. She's a rare one, is me Meg, and I count meself a lucky man to have her. And the truth is that I'll not risk me place in her heart for a bit of whiskey at this bar or any other."

    Pausing only a moment at Terry's unexpected earnestness, Sean then lifted his glass to the smaller man beside him. "Then I suppose it's up to us single men to take up the slack, Jim." Sean raised his voice. "So let's hoist our glasses, boyos, and drink to  victory over them that would cheat the Irish in these fields from their due."

    A round of approval resounded throughout the room as drinks were raised and tossed back with the first enthusiastic response of the night.

    "Come on, give us a jig, Jim."

    Similar prompting echoed along the bar.

    "Aye, you're the only fella from the old sod that's light enough on his feet to bring us a taste of home."

    "We're in need of a light touch tonight."

    Protesting, Jim McKenna finally succumbed to the chorus of urgings as the fiddle in the corner struck up a jig. Sean was watching his friend's nimble feet with amusement when Terry leaned toward him with a casual smile.

    "I'll be driftin' out now, Sean." Pulling his oversized frame to his feet, he tossed down the last of his drink and touched his pinkie finger to his cap. "Tell the fellas that there'll be snow in Tipperary before long, and it'll be a foot if it's an inch."

    His expression stiffening, Sean mimicked his gesture with a brief reply. "And the rains'll not wash it away."

    Watching as Terry ambled through the crowded room toward the door, Sean moved a few steps down the bar.

    The night had deepened and the kitchen candles were snuffed. Coals glowed in the kitchen stove, the only light in the darkened house except for the kerosene lamp that flickered shadows across the parlor where Aunt Fiona sat opposite Meghan in her favorite rocker. The occasional hours of solitude they shared at night while everyone else in the house entertained themselves otherwise had become a ritual between Aunt Fiona and herself. Meghan had not sacrificed it since she married, realizing it allowed Terry time with his friends. In the two years since Terry had come to Shenandoah, she had rested more easily with the knowledge that Sean was included in that group, and that Terry was a steadying influence on her brother.

    Meg amended that thought. It was not as if Sean's anger had mellowed. To the contrary, the pressure of the strike had intensified his feelings of bitterness and betrayal. She knew Terry's easy disposition did not lean toward retribution, and she often worried that Terry's friendship for Sean would draw him into trouble along with him. But in the back of her mind the knowledge remained that Terry was levelheaded, not given to acting on impulse and  rage like Sean, and she depended upon him to balance her brother's more impetuous ways.

    "Yer man will be returnin' soon, won't he, Meg?"

    Meg glanced at the clock on the wall and frowned, realizing he was late. "Aye, he should be home soon."

    It was later than usual, but the dire circumstances of the strike brought men together nightly in the drinking establishments around town. It would not surprise her if the talk was hot and heavy, for despite the victory at Foxworth's in Ashland the previous week, things were not going well. More men had quietly returned to work at Lang's the following Monday, their empty stomachs defeating them, and Sean had been livid.

    Aunt Fiona's weary eyes were intent on her face, and Meg attempted to erase all sign of concern. But it was apparently to no avail.

    "Are ye thinkin' somethin' might have happened, then? Would ye like me to walk with ye to see if there's any commotion about town?"

    "No, Aunt. Terry will be home soon."

    With a reassuring smile, Meg turned back to her mending. Terry would return soon, because he was a man who enjoyed coming home to her. He was dependable, loving, with not a vengeful bone in his body. It had been those facets of Terry's character that had turned her to him when she began to believe that her single status was one of the major impediments in the way of Sean's marriage to her dear friend, Sheila McCrea.

    With a small smile, Meg recalled Terry's surprised expression the night she told him she would marry him, and she knew that although their marriage had not inspired Sean to take a similar step, she did not regret it. Terry loved her, and if her love was based less on passionate emotion than was his, if the many nights spent in Terry's arms had not erased the memory of a leafy bower and the blissful loving of another man, her love was nonetheless sincere.

    For the past was past, and Terry was the present. And he was a good man, one of their own.

    The room was silent, the sociability of the saloon below significantly absent as Sean studied the faces of the men who had soundlessly filtered into Muff Lawler's sitting room at careful intervals. In the five years since he had first entered this room, Sean had come to know these men very well, and their keen anticipation at being summoned to this unexpected meeting of the brotherhood was clearly visible to him. Ed Ferguson, Pete Monaghan, Tom Hurley, Frank McAndrew, Jim McKenna and others stood lining the walls. They were his brothers, born to their kinship with an oath sworn to protect each other as well as the honor of all Irishmen, and baptized in a stream of violence against their oppressors that had sealed their power in blood.

    Standing within the informal circle, Sean saw Muff mentally count the dozen or so men present before turning with a nod to the man standing in the shadows just outside the perimeter of the circle. That man was their new body master, fresh from Ireland a few years earlier with credentials so powerful that he had almost immediately been thrust into his present position. Fiercely dedicated to the cause, he had not let his brothers down, and Sean knew the men gathered here would follow him into Hell itself if the fellow so directed.

    Acknowledging his feelings to be the same, Sean watched as the big man stepped out of the shadows and strode into the circle of waiting men. His immense size all the more imposing for the air of threat with which he walked, his craggy face appearing to be cut from stone as his brown eyes burned with zeal, Terry Donovan started to speak.

    David moved quickly toward the morning train. It occurred to him that he had spent the greater portion of the last week on the train between New York and Philadelphia, only to find himself boarding the train again. But this time he was headed in another direction.

    So much had happened during the past week. Gowen's offer of employment and his visit to Grace had freed memories he had thought long ago set to rest. He had left Philadelphia shortly thereafter, and spent the next few days reveling in the splendor of Elizabeth Marklin's many charms. The sheer inventiveness of the woman during the long nights they spent together amazed him still.

    For that reason, he had been startled to realize after a few days of Elizabeth's entertaining that he could no longer avoid the reality that his dear, naive, unworldly cousin Grace had been right. He had unfinished business in Shenandoah.

    He had returned immediately to Philadelphia. Assured by Gowen that he was free to supervise Lang Colliery at his own discretion, he had then accepted the fellow's offer. Two days later,   he was rushing for the train that would deliver him to Shenandoah.

    The conductor's call interrupted David's thoughts, alerting him as his train jerked into motion, and David broke into a run. Leaping onto the car, he paused to catch his breath before putting his suitcase down and turning back to view the station as it slipped into the distance. His sense of relief startling, it was suddenly clear to David for the first time that it was this unfinished business in Shenandoah that had brought him home.

    The afternoon sun was warm on her head as Meg labored over the washtub behind her aunt's house. Raising a soapy hand, she brushed back a nagging wisp of hair, her bright O'Connor eyes straying to the scarred back door as a worried frown creased her brow. Her work at McCall's had been cut to three days weekly, and she feared it would be cut further if the strike was not settled soon, but that was not the cause for her present uneasiness. Sean and Terry had been home most of the day and had been surprisingly absorbed in a private conversation. Her questions had accomplished no more than to elicit a strong hug and a smile from her husband, along with a response tinged with humor.

    "Come now, darlin'. Sean's fair to wear poor Sheila out with the spare time he's had on his hands of late. I'm just makin' an attempt to distract him for a few hours to allow the poor girl some rest."