Conor's Way (26 page)

"Spies are everywhere," Gallagher went on,
"and many of them come dressed in petticoats." He reached into the
pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out a revolver. He held it so
that all the men in the room got a good look, then he cocked the
gun. "Informers will pay with their lives," he said, as his arm
made a slow sweep around the circle of faces, "and the hearthstone
of hell will be their bed rest forever."

The gun paused at Conor's chair, and the eyes
of the two men met over the barrel. All the other men in the room
ducked instinctively as Gallagher pulled the trigger. All but
one.

Conor didn't flinch, and the hammer fell with
a harmless click.

Gallagher laughed low in his throat. "He's a
cool one, is our Conor," he said, and set the gun on the table.

Conor knew that he'd just passed the test and
decided it was time to get to the point. He straightened in his
chair and asked the vital question. "What do you want us to
do?"

Gallagher's lips moved in a
twisted imitation of a smile. "I've got one thousand rifles sitting
in a New York City warehouse, courtesy of our American cousins
in
Clan na Gael
and I want you to help me smuggle them into Ulster starting
three months from now."

Conor decided Gallagher deserved his
reputation as a full-blown revolutionary genius.

Olivia was bone weary. She slumped in the
wagon seat and pulled her hat low against the pouring rain,
exhaustion settling over her. Oren sat beside her in the wagon, and
neither of them spoke as he drove the wagon down the muddy lane
toward Peachtree. Olivia was too tired to talk, and though Oren was
now a father for the sixth time, he was still a man of few
words.

She thought of Kate's tired
but exultant face as she'd held her newborn son, and Oren, looking
so proud he could bust, giving his wife a smacking kiss right in
front of her. It warmed the heart, it truly did, to see them so
happy like that after sixteen years of marriage.
It must be lovely to be
married
, she thought, and drifted off to
sleep.

The jerking stop of the wagon woke her.
Olivia grabbed her basket and jumped down without waiting for Oren
to help her. "You make sure Doc Morrison has a look at Kate and the
baby as soon as he gets back."

"I will," he answered. "Thank you, Olivia,
for everything."

He climbed back into the wagon seat and
snapped the reins. The wagon rolled out of the drive as Olivia ran
for the shelter of the veranda. She pulled off her muddy boots,
then entered the house.

The house was quiet, but
dim light spilled into the foyer from the library.
Conor must still be awake
, she thought as she set down her basket and her
mud-encrusted boots. He had waited up for her. A warm glow began
inside her at the thought and made her smile.

After removing her rain-soaked hat and
duster, she crossed the foyer to the library and smiled at the
sight that met her eyes. Conor was sitting on the sofa, wide awake,
with the girls piled around him and over him like a pack of wolf
cubs in a den, all three of them cozy, comfortable, and asleep.
Chester, also sound asleep, lay across Conor's feet.

Conor glanced at her over Miranda's head.
"Don't you dare laugh," he muttered and turned his face away,
looking almost embarrassed.

Olivia covered her mouth and shook her head.
"I wouldn't dream of it. Are you comfortable? You look...rather
smothered."

He glanced down at the children around him.
"I do seem to be trapped at the moment."

Still smiling, she studied him. "You make a
nice pillow."

He lifted his head and looked at her, his
eyes silver- gray in the lamplight. The momentary embarrassment was
gone, replaced by something else, something almost predatory. His
lashes lowered as his gaze ran down the length of her in a slow,
speculative perusal, from her wet hair to her sodden hem and
stocking feet. "You think so, love?"

Olivia couldn't help but envision it, an
inviting picture of tousled bedclothes and him. She froze with
sudden awareness and an acute, overwhelming shyness. She wished
she could say something clever in return, something flirtatious,
but she felt hopelessly inadequate to the task. She'd never been
any good at flirtation.

The sound of their voices woke Carrie. She
lifted her head to find Olivia standing there. "Mama?" she mumbled
sleepily. "We waited up for you."

"I see that," Olivia answered, relieved by
the distraction. "But it's way past your bedtime." Walking over to
the sofa beside Becky, she laid a hand on the girl's shoulder and
shook her gently. "Becky, wake up."

Becky opened her eyes and lifted her head
from Conor's shoulder. "Mama, you're home," she said with a yawn.
"Did Mrs. Johnson have her baby?"

"Yes, she did. A boy, and they're doing just
fine." Olivia turned to Conor, who rose and handed Miranda over to
her. "Thank you," she murmured, taking the child in her arms. "I
hope they weren't any trouble."

"How much trouble could they be? They all
fell asleep, and right in the middle of one of my best
stories."

Picturing it, she wished she'd been here. It
would have been wonderful to see him telling stories to the girls
just the way any father might do. But Conor wasn't their father.
Not even close.

"Well, good night." She looked away. "Sleep
well."

"I'll try," he answered, a hint of irony in
his voice she didn't understand.

The girls bid Conor a sleepy good-night, and
Olivia led them out of the library. She stopped in the foyer to
light a lamp, then took the girls upstairs. "Go to bed," she
whispered to Becky and Carrie as she paused in the hallway outside
their rooms. "I'll tuck you in after I put Miranda in bed."

"I'm too old to be tucked in, Mama," Becky
whispered back.

Olivia smiled. "Well, I can still come in and
say good-night, can't I?"

"I suppose," Becky admitted, and went down
the hall to her own room.

Olivia turned to Carrie. "You, too, miss. In
bed you go."

For once, Carrie did not try to come up with
any excuses. She went into her room without a single protest.
Nonetheless, Olivia waited until she saw Carrie crawl into bed
before she went into Miranda's room. She pulled back the sheet and
gently laid the child in bed, trying not to wake her, but she woke
up the moment Olivia let her go.

"It's still raining, isn't it, Mama?" she
mumbled, opening her eyes.

Olivia sat down on the edge of the bed,
thinking that Miranda must still be afraid. "Yes, but the thunder's
stopped now, honey."

"I was scared," the child admitted. "But Mr.
Conor says the thunder's just shouting at everybody, and next time
the thunder comes and shouts, I should shout right back. That's
what he does when he has bad dreams."

"He told you that?" Olivia was astonished
that Conor would admit such a thing, especially to the girls. "I
think it's a good idea. How about we do that next time?"

"Okay." Miranda snuggled down into the
mattress. "He told us a story. It was real good, Mama." She gave a
huge yawn. "I wish Mr. Conor could tell us stories every night."
Her eyes slowly closed.

Olivia leaned down and kissed her daughter's
cheek. "So do I, sweetie," she said softly. "So do I."

***

Olivia was exhausted, but sleep eluded her.
She kept changing her position, punching her pillow, and
rearranging her bedcovers, but she simply could not sleep.

Finally, she decided that a cup of tea would
do her a world of good and got out of bed. She pulled on her wrap
and left her room. But as she started down the back stairs, she
noticed light spilling through the doorway of the kitchen
below.

Conor was still awake? Olivia hesitated on
the landing, wondering if perhaps she should forget the tea and go
back up, but in the end, she didn't. She continued on down the
stairs to the kitchen and found him hunched over the table, writing
on the slate. He looked up as she entered the room.

"I couldn't sleep," she explained. "Couldn't
you sleep either?"

"No."

"I thought I'd make myself a cup of tea.
Would you like one?"

He didn't answer, and she walked over to the
stove. She stirred the banked coals to life, added kindling, and
put on the kettle to boil.

Neither of them spoke, but she watched him
out of the corner of her eye as she made a pot of tea—hunched over
the slate, forming letters with care.

"Practicing your penmanship, I see," she
said, as she brought two cups of tea to the table.

He took the cup she offered him and sat back
in his chair. "Yes, though I don't know what good it will do me,
being a prizefighter."

"Prizefighting," Olivia murmured
thoughtfully. She rested her elbows on the table, her fingers
curled around the cup in her hands, studying him over the rim. "Why
do you do it?"

He shrugged. "It's a way to make a
living."

"There are plenty of other ways to do
that."

"Indeed," he said lightly. "But most of them
involve work."

Olivia wasn't fooled by that glib comment.
She'd seen him work, and she knew laziness wasn't the reason.
"Haven't you ever thought about taking up another profession?
Something less ...violent."

"Like what?" He looked across the table at
her, and a shadow crossed his face. "A man doesn't need to know how
to read to know the signs in the windows all say, 'No Irish need
apply.'"

"Don't you ever feel like settling down in
one place, having a stake in something more permanent than
tomorrow's fight?"

He met her eyes. "I told you, I like to roam.
I'm not the settling-down kind, Olivia. I like my freedom."

She'd known that the first moment she'd
looked at him. "You could have a farm of your own. There's plenty
of land out West to homestead. Free for the taking, so they
say."

He shook his head. "I'm no farmer."

"What's wrong with being a farmer?"

He didn't answer for a long
moment. "My father was a farmer," he finally said, "and his father,
before him. We grew potatoes like everyone else. You see, there was
so little land available to us—most of it being held by British
landlords and put into grain that got shipped to England. Potatoes
were the only crop we could grow that could feed our people on what
little land we had. The potatoes fed our families; they fed our
animals; they paid our land rents. They were everything to us. We
couldn't survive without them. Then the
ocrás
came. The hunger."

His unwavering gaze was
focused on her, but she knew he didn't see her. In his mind, he saw
his homeland. "One mornin' when I was eleven years old," he said
slowly, "I woke up to the sound of my mother screaming. I ran
outside to see what it was all about, and I saw her standing with
my da and my brother, pointing to the
clochan
where we stored our crops.
She was sobbing and saying something about the potatoes. I ran to
the
clochan
just
as my da opened the door. The smell hit us...Mother of God," he
whispered, "it was like nothing of this earth, that
smell."

He paused, but Olivia said nothing. She
simply waited, afraid that if she spoke he would retreat behind
that wall of his again—afraid he would make some glib comment to
change the subject, and never tell her the rest.

"My da and Michael went
into the
clochan
," Conor went on. "They told me to wait outside, but I
didn't. I followed them. I saw them leaning over the bin where we'd
put the healthy new potatoes from the fields just the day before.
My da looked at me as I came in, and for the first time in my life,
I saw fear in his face. I knew something horrible had
happened."

He frowned, looking suddenly bewildered, like
a child who didn't quite understand that a cruel joke had just been
played on him. "I peered over the top of the bin, and I couldn't
see any potatoes. The bin was full of this slimy mush that smelled
like sulfur and looked like porridge. Black porridge. Sure, I
thought I was looking into the bowels of hell."

His description was so vivid, Olivia could
see that bin, smell that smell, as if she were there with him.

"We took a bit of the stuff and fed it to one
of the pigs," he went on. "The pig died, and we knew it was the
blight. We went out and tried to dig the potatoes that were still
in the ground, but it was too late. Overnight, all the plants had
withered and the potatoes had turned black right in the ground.
Everywhere, it was the same, and that putrid sulfur smell hovered
over the land like a thick fog. To this day, I can smell it."