A Love by Any Measure (7 page)

“O’Toole’s,” August proclaimed. “I want it.”

At Her Hearth

T
he fever chased away restful sleep. Through the night, visions plagued him. He dreamed of a bride, fresh and fragrant and fine, and of her smile. He dreamed of standing before the congregation in the sight of the Heavenly Father as she took his name. He dreamed of pulling back her veil, and of the horror that followed as the crimson-lipped beauty mocked him.

“Oh, August, do you believe this will make you happy? Do you believe this is right? How utterly foolish.”

The scene dissolved. He saw himself looking in the window of the cottage, a hearth alight with gentle flame. Maeve’s form flickered, with a broad-shouldered man at her back, his arms wrapped tightly around her. As the figure pressed kisses down her neck, August pounded the glass, trying to get her attention. She seemed unable to hear, but the blond-haired Irishman saw August through the panes. Saw him, and laughed as he indulged in Maeve.

In the morning, August placed a lantern in the window the very moment he could escape attention, and waited.

He found himself pacing up and down the length of his bed chamber, staring at a clock with a steady tick, but whose hands seemed fixed. How could time pass so slowly? He wanted her here, wanted her now. He needed to reclaim his property, to reaffirm the contract. She was his, not Owen’s, for as long as she stayed on his land. For as long as he could keep her on his land.

No, he needed her to leave.

He wanted her to stay.

His foolishness taunted him. What was he expecting this to become? Maeve was both Irish and poor. She could never be more than a plaything. As children, it hadn’t mattered that they came from different societies. Ignorance had been bliss. But now he knew the ways of the world. Besides, what he may have once lackadaisically fantasized was impossible, and even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be fair to try to make Maeve legitimate in the eyes of English society. His father had tried and failed, and his dear mother’s heart had never mended.

August affirmed his intentions. He would make her detest him so much that her hatred would poison him, too, and then all these inklings of … something … would sink back beneath the surface. She would marry her blacksmith and be happy.

Though by her own admission, she did not love Murphy. Perhaps her heart was set on another?

Twenty minutes later, August found himself staring at the modest, white-washed cottage’s fire-lit window across the meadow. He couldn’t remember making the decision, or readying the mare. This was lunacy. Surely Rory would be at home, and how would he explain himself then? It was nearly nightfall; if he waited another hour, Maeve would make her way to him.

An hour, however, was simply too long.

He dismounted and approached the door, steeling himself for what he was contemplating. Would she see through this farce? Would she see that he found himself so desperate for her that after days without, he could not wait until evening to take her into his arms again?

Not based upon her crude glare which competed with the fire burning on the hearth as she opened the door.

“And here I thought Saint Patrick had driven all the snakes from Ireland,” she muttered. August gave her a wry smile but said nothing. “What do you want?”

He looked down and saw the book Maeve was holding: the Bible, had turned, it seemed, based on the small sliver of the text visible, to the Song of Solomon.

She saw his gaze tracking to the tome and quickly tossed it aside.

“As owner of this land, it is my right to inspect the property for upkeep. Is your father in?” He was careful to keep any indication of hope for a negative response out of his tone. Nevertheless, his eyes set past her, trying to search the interior. His dream had left him half-expecting to see that cursed Murphy.

“In town. At the pub, I’d reckon.”

August concealed a devious smile as best he could, drew in a deep breath, and continued. “Pity, I would have liked to have seen him. Well, you’ll do, I suppose. I wish to take a survey of your cottage.”

“Oh really?” Maeve spat, popping her hip and wrenching her fist into her waist. “At this time of day, no less?”

“Miss O’Connor, if I wished to inspect the property at midnight on Christmas Day, I have that privilege. Now, step aside and let me in.”

Gnashing her teeth didn’t make it any less true, so reluctantly Maeve deferred. August pulled off his riding gloves and set them and the crop next to the discarded book. The cottage was tiny, seeming far smaller than it had been to his adolescent eyes a decade ago. Besides the main room, there was only one other chamber, and a ladder leaning against one wall, leading up to what he remembered as Maeve’s sleeping loft. He climbed up and found a spread of blankets pushed under the eaves of the low roof. Maeve must hardly have been able to sit up in so little a space, let alone find comfort, he thought.

“It’s not quite as opulent as Shepherd’s Bluff,” she hissed from below, “but it does fine for us.”

“Yes, everything seems in good condition,” August agreed, coming back down the ladder and finding her red-faced and glassy-eyed, tracking his movements.

Her breath sped as he paced to within mere inches of her. She was obviously surprised, and she turned away to focus across the room but made no attempt to back away.

“You saw the lantern?”

“Yes.”

“You had planned to come?”

“As agreed.”

He grinned. “But, here I am.” He raised his hand to her cheek, but did not yet touch, waiting for her permission. “If your father is out, I can spare another eighty seconds of time, I suppose.”

Her brow furrowed in contemplation and with every moment, her breathing grew more unsteady.

“I suppose it would be better; smells like rain. How do we keep time? Our little mantle clock doesn’t tick so loudly as that French contraption of yours.”

“I will use your pounding heart as my pendulum, then,” August assured her as his hand sought out the soft curvature of her cheek. She shuddered under his touch like a leaf in the wind, her eyes drawing closed and her body leaning into his. August pressed his lips fully on hers and sucked her bottom lip.

Mine.

He moved next to the softness of her neck just below her chin and gave it a bite.

Also mine.

He moved his lips around to her right ear and sucked the lobe into his mouth, dancing over it with the tip of his tongue.

You’re all mine.

Maeve pulled her body closer as August embraced her and whispered softly into her ear.

“I saw you in town.”

She gasped, trying to pull away, but he held her firm.

“I saw you with him, and I know what you asked him.”

August gently pushed his tongue into her ear, causing her to quiver, her grip on his arms to tighten.

“I wonder if he’ll ever kiss you this way?” he mused as he pulled himself back to her mouth and pushed his tongue past her lips. She yielded all too willingly.

“Will he be able to make your heart race this way?”

His hand drifted back around her front and cupped her right breast through the cotton folds of her blue dress. Her nipple perked instantly as he pinched the virgin flesh, making her moan.

“I doubt he’ll ever do to you what I can, Maeve.” August let his hand fall downward to the edge of her skirt, tracking lightly, reaching the apex of her femininity and trailing his hand over. He could feel her heated wetness even through the layers of material, and he had to use all his will power to deny himself the opportunity to explore flesh to flesh.

“He’ll never make you respond like I do. Just remember that when you think about … making other arrangements.”

With that, he backed away, hiding his own arousal from her as best he could. Gasping, Maeve was clearly on the edge of throwing herself back in to his arms — if August had wanted, he probably could have pushed her further. Had all of eighty seconds passed, after all? Unlikely. But this occasion wasn’t about the time. Maeve needed to understand that August took business seriously, and he never had a partner in his transactions. He was a sole proprietor.

“‘Til next time,” he said as he replaced his gloves and took up the cherry riding crop. “Nearly three minutes. Won’t that be … long. Just a petticoat, if you can find a way. My respects to your father.”

Maeve nodded, her face flushed and her chest heaving.

August closed the door and threw himself onto his horse, galloping away as quickly as possible before he could change his mind and throw time frames out the window. He chided himself in reminder that Maeve wasn’t the goal, the cottage was. Besides, knowing Maeve’s prejudices, he suspected she would find a way to imbue herself again with the disgust she obviously held when her body wasn’t manipulated into overlooking it. Just because he was tricking it into deceiving her opinions of him with sensations never felt before, didn’t mean he was a changed man in her eyes. He would never take residence in her heart.

Nor should he, he reminded himself. He would return to England eventually, and no matter how August tried to dismiss the reasons why, his chest seized with self-contempt when he imagined once again winning Maeve’s friendship, only to abandon her the way he had before.

He could not break her twice. He could not hurt her that way again.

He could not hurt that way again.

Scoring Time

Like a true apostate, Maeve threw her Bible in the corner with as much might as she could muster, and felt right silly soon after. It was no fault of the Good Book that she had been staring at the same page for fifteen minutes, reading and rereading, taking nary a word from it. It was not the book’s fault that she could not soothe the burning sensation boiling on her body in all the places he had touched the previous night.

“Oh! Bring yourself to your senses, Maeve!” she yelled out to the empty cottage, realizing her hand was tracing delicate lines over her cheek bones, trying to replicate the titillation Grayson had caused.

She needed a distraction and a swift kick in the shins to drag her back to her senses. She would not let Grayson’s touch be construed as something other than what it was. And what was it really, but his self-satisfying manipulation of her for his pleasure?

His pleasure.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’ve got to stop thinking about him, silly girl! Think about Owen instead!”

Though he had rejected her plea to move in with him, looking back she realized it had been a silly idea. Engaged or no, a firm date wasn’t even fixed. What sort of scandal would ensue if she had pressed the issue? Owen had seen it for what it was. He cared enough to tell her no, to protect the good name she seemed so determined lately to sully.

That’s what a real man did: protected his woman. Grayson was a little boy, playing a game with a borrowed toy.

But Maeve wasn’t exactly opposed to being played with a wee bit. Guilt was too often brushed aside as something undesirable, as something to be rid of at the first opportunity. Maeve knew better than that. Guilt was an opportunity for the improvement of the soul, and she needed a good dose of it. What better a place to find it than exposing herself to the only one who seemed to know of the arrangement?

The note she left for her da said she’d be at the O’Keefes. Maeve grimaced as she left, catching sight of the lantern burning in the window at Shepherd’s Bluff.

She knocked three times on Patty and Patrick’s door and heard a scattering of foot steps behind. Patty opened it after a few moments, bobbing up and down with baby Mary on her shoulder.

“Maeve?” she asked, a little taken aback. “Good heavens, you look all flustered. Is something wrong?”

Aye, something’s rightly wrong. “May I talk to you?”

Patty smiled sweetly, but her eyes belied the otherwise warm welcome as they scanned Maeve from tip to toe, almost as if she could see the blight upon her through her dress.

“Of course,” she sighed, opening the door further and allowing Maeve to step in from the cold drizzle coming down outside.

The middleman’s cabin was hardly bigger than the O’Connor cottage, but it did have the luxury of two fireplaces and two bed chambers. Being an only child, Maeve had never minded that her bed lay in a cramped sleeping loft, but she could imagine in a house full of children, the additional space would be most welcomed. Patty had claimed from the age of fourteen that she would have ten young before she turned thirty. She had married Patrick right after her eighteenth birthday, and Mary was born a year later. As her gently-rounded belly evidenced, she was on schedule to fulfill her wish.

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

Maeve nodded wordlessly and sat at the table. Patty handed little Mary Bernice off to her guest as she poured the hot water from the kettle and into the pot, adding a spoonful of leaves. Mary reached to pull down Maeve’s curls, her chubby little cherub hands surprisingly strong despite a mere six months of life. Maeve kissed each of her angelic knuckles, dreaming of having her own leanbh not so far off in the future, a little girl perhaps with dark hair and bright green eyes.

Green eyes? She admonished the thought.

“She likes you,” Patty concluded as she set a mug of tea down on the table and took a seat. “And that is no small thing. She shrieks to high heaven whenever Grayson tries to hold her, though she snuggles right to her da like a sweet babe.”

“Grayson?” Maeve asked, taken aback. “He comes to see her?”

“Well, not her specifically.” Patty smiled, pulling a sip from her mug and licking her lips after. “He comes to see Patrick, needing something or other. And Patrick, of course, passes along news he picks up as he’s about. Gets an ear full every round he makes, he does, especially the days he passes the Sharons. Aye, those days it wouldn’t matter how many ears Patrick had, Brocc would fill them all.”

Maeve nodded her understanding. Mrs. Sharon was well known as the prominent gossip of Middle Lake, but her daughter, Brocc, was an artesian of the craft, having had quite a history of not only spreading scandalous truths with great enthusiasm, but also of inventing to supplement where truth proved bland.

“I can imagine,” Maeve whispered, carefully taking a draft off her mug while bracing Mary in her lap with her other arm.

Then the thought occurred to her: what if the dispelling of gossip was not one way? What if Patrick gave as well as received? Was he spreading word about what he suspected? But then Patrick had never said exactly what he had suspected, only that he knew something was going on. Perhaps that made it worse. Perhaps he had supposed Maeve was engaged in some lurid love affair with the lord of the manor. Was that so far from what it was, truth be told?

No, not at all. The motivations might be different, but the results were the same. With every moment she spent in his arms, the closer she came to losing her innocence. Their next encounter would span three traitorous minutes. Three minutes! Her mind couldn’t even comprehend what a man could do to a woman with so much time at his disposal. Maeve was hardly well versed in the physical aspects of a relationship to have a clue.

But Patty was, and if asked, would she tell?

“Patty,” she began hesitantly, “I know we haven’t talked like old times for a while. I’m not complaining to make you feel bad, but as you are the closest friend I have, can I ask you about something?”

She rolled her eyes and smiled expectantly. “I was wondering if that’s why you came! Aye, we don’t get to visit much these days, but you can talk to me, sure as rain. After all, with your wedding coming up, you’ll want to be sure to be ready, won’t you?”

“My wedding?” Maeve suddenly understood with a lurch of her stomach. But that also meant Patrick likely hadn’t said anything about her and Grayson. “Of course, my wedding. Yes, normally a girl learns these things from her ma, but in my case … ”

Patty grabbed her hand up and patted it lovingly. “We all miss your ma. Sine was a good woman. So how much do you know? Maybe that’s a good place to start.”

“Well, I know the basics, I suppose,” Maeve shyly admitted, a blush overcoming her face. “After all, you don’t live around sheep for so many years and not catch a glance of them in spring. But I imagine it’s a little different for people.”

“Ain’t that the Lord’s truth!” Patty laughed heartily and little Mary giggled in response. “Have you kissed him yet?”

Maeve blushed even further, answering her question as forthrightly as any words could.

“You will, and often. And then you’ll find your hands want to touch him just about everywhere.”

That Maeve knew, remembering when her hands seemed to have a mind of their own, reaching out to grab August any place they could find harbor.

“But then you begin to feel … almost animal like, if you’re doing things right. Owen will know what to do. You’ll feel like you’re catching fire, and your whole body will be driving you to get as close to him as possible. I don’t know how to explain anymore to you than that. It’s not as though there’s a set order to it. But when you lay in the arms of the man you love and you give your whole body to him, it’s divinity. You’ll never feel anything in the whole world that rivals that moment. Oh dear, look at the angel! She fell asleep right in your arms.”

Mary was indeed asleep, her little chubby cheeks vibrating softly as she breathed in and out. Children are such funny creatures, bouncing like frogs one moment and dead asleep the next, Maeve thought. Patty stood up to take her and set her down in a blanket-filled basket on the floor across the room, not far from the gently crackling fire. Maeve sat back in her chair, nursing the mug in the divine tranquility that looking at a sleeping babe gives.

“Oh, and you shouldn’t let the pain of the first time upset you,” Patty added matter-of-factly.

Maeve’s head bolted upright. “Pain? What pain?”

“You’ve always been so easily shook. Don’t worry. It lasts a few moments, and only the first time. And then, well, then things after are really, really pleasant.”

Maeve tried to wet her tongue, but found her mouth had gone oddly dry. She swigged the tea instead, so that she could talk in more than a croak. “And how long does it all … take?”

Patty took this question quite seriously. Her brow furrowed and she mouthed numbers as she counted out silently on her fingers.

“I guess it can take a good while, or be very quick. Depends.”

Maeve felt as though she should have been shocked by her candor, but then again, Patty O’Keefe was never one to shy on anything. It was one of the things Maeve loved most about her, even if at the moment it was making her a wee bit skittish.

“Right after we were married, it was quick — a few minutes, maybe? — but we’d do it three or four times a day,” Patty continued. “Over time and since Mary it’s been less, but it lasts longer. Of course Patrick and I are so much more occupied and weary than we used to be. Saints preserve us, look at the way you’re fretting. You’re getting yourself so anxious, and the wedding isn’t anytime soon. The way you’re sweating you would think that you’re going to be lying in his bed tonight!”

An irrepressible, nervous giggle leapt forth before Maeve could contain it. She bit her bottom lip in order to stifle the outburst.

They rambled on for some time as Patty asked about Owen, having never met him but in passing, though Patrick apparently had. Maeve told her all she knew about him — he was the eldest of three children, but his brother had left for America three years prior; his mother and father still lived in Cork with his sister; he was an apprentice to the master furrier of Killarney; and he rented a small flat near the cemetery on the edge of the city. They had met at the market early the previous spring, and he had asked to walk with her that very afternoon. They had strolled together nearly each Saturday afternoon since, talking about nothing in particular, and Maeve not having any idea of his motivations. In late August, he had come out to Middle Lake and stated quite frankly that he would like to meet Rory and ask his permission to wed as soon as his circumstances allowed. Rory was only too happy to grant his blessing.

“Do you love him?” Patty asked pointedly. The display of shock in Maeve’s eyes must have provided her an answer. “All right, then. Do you think you could love him?”

“Owen is a good man, and I would be a fool not to love him someday.”

Though Patrick and Patty had fallen head over heels with each other as soon as they started courting, love before marriage was a luxury few could afford.

Maeve looked out the window and noticed darkness had fallen. Then she turned to the mantle, noting the hour. Her heart leapt.

“Oh! I have to go! I’ll be in for a tongue-lashing if I tarry any longer! Thanks for tea. My greetings to Patrick.”

Maeve rushed. As she turned around to close the door, however, a certain sadness in Patty’s expression caught her by surprise. Maeve hesitated, a hand lingering on the knob, and waited.

“Patty, where’s Patrick this late?”

It was just a guess, but proved a good one. Patty gave a little jerk of her head.

“Out,” she stated simply and with a finality that told Maeve not to inquire any further.

“Everything will be fine. I don’t think Patrick would do anything … wrong.”

With an air of disbelief, she sighed. “I hope you’re right. Soon you’ll be in love too, and you’ll know the torture of having a husband who loves you too much. But he thinks he’s doing rightly by us, so I hold my tongue.”

A sense of foreboding overcame her and she shuddered, though if from the discomfort of the words unspoken between them or from the chill of the night air, Maeve knew not.

“Well, good night.”

The middleman’s cottage was only a brief walk from the main house, but Maeve ran the distance as though there were wolves at her back. She stole into Grayson’s room just a few minutes later, breathless and beet red. He sat in his chair reading once again, this time wrapped in a wool blanket. Glancing momentarily at Maeve over the top of his book, he returned his attention to it without pause.

“Do you believe entombing yourself in a winter cloak meets my request for ‘simpler,’ Miss O’Connor?”

Her chest heaved as she sat and she saw Grayson trying to focus his gaze without appearing to be looking at the movement. He was failing. Finally, he gave up his pursuit of the written word and closed the book, leaving it on the seat of the chair as he rose. From a cabinet, he withdrew a glass and tumbler filled with something red. Having dispensed some of the drink, he presented it to Maeve with a half-smile. She took the offering and sniffed; it was sweet, pungent, and bitter all at once. But it was wet and her mouth was dry, so she tipped back the whole of it in one gulp.

“I considered a petticoat,” she finally gasped out as the wash in her throat simultaneously burned and soothed, “but I don’t own one worthy of your eyes trained on London finery. Besides, I’ve come up straight from Patty’s, and I didn’t think showing up to your middleman’s cabin in my undergarments would be wise.”

He chuckled slightly. “I’m not certain Patrick would have been totally disapproving, if you had blushed over the way you are now. And I haven’t even laid a hand on you yet.”

She handed the glass back to him with a snide glare. “You think your touch does anything to me?”

It was a stupid, rhetorical question with a self-evident answer. Patty was right. When he touched her, something else took over. He knew it too, and just to prove his point, he approached and lowered his hand toward her cheek. Maeve’s reaction betrayed her words as her breath hitched, her eyes fluttered shut, and her face leaned forward, trying to reach.