Nobody's Saint (31 page)

In the distance she could see two men swinging scythes in a field of rye, the many bundles behind them testifying to their efficiency. It was hard to tell from so far away, but she rather imagined that Conor was out there, working so hard. She didn’t know who was with him.

Séamus lifted her down from the wagon, his hands not touching her a second longer than was proper. Once, she would have had to slap his hands away—after she had let them wander just a bit. Strange as it seemed, it felt awkward to have him behave himself.

“Thank you, Séamus,” she said, turning away.

“I’ll take your things inside,” he said and once again lifted a heavy trunk onto his back.

He still had fine, broad shoulders, she thought, but she had since learned that she liked her men lean and lanky.

He led the way and pounded on the door with the toe of his boot, and Mary Kate waited outside the door of her own house. It didn’t feel right to barge in unexpected.

The door opened, and Bridget stared at her a moment before she screamed and cried, “Mary Kate, by the saints it
is
you!”

They still looked a great deal alike, with their dark hair and blue eyes, but there was something about Bridget now that glowed. The two women embraced, and Mary Kate breathed in the woodsy scent of forget-me-nots that Bridget favored over Mary Kate’s rosewater. She hadn’t grown any, still three inches shorter than Mary Kate. The embrace felt almost perfect.

Almost.

They pulled apart, and Mary Kate’s gaze fell to Bridget’s stomach. Bridget laughed and clasped her hands over the small swell. “Four more months to go. Oh, I’m so glad he or she will get to meet you.

“Do you mind, ladies?” Séamus complained. “I’ve a good-sized load here.”

“Come in, come in!” Bridget said, pulling Mary Kate inside the house and then off to the side so that Séamus could pass.

The house was as neat as a pin, and the savory smell of mutton stew hung in the air.

“That’s a smell I’ve missed, I’ll tell you,” Mary Kate said.

Bridget beamed. “Da says mine’s nearly as good as yours. Oh! Speaking of Da, did he see you when you came in?”

“Where is he?”

“Out in the field with Conor. Oh!” Bridget giggled again. “I’m married, you know, to Conor Fitzpatrick, and a full two months before this, in case you’re wondering.” She clasped her stomach again.

Séamus set his burden down inside and tramped back out for the other trunk.

“I heard. Jack Roche told me the second I stepped out of the carriage.”

“What about you? Sir Calder said he’d found you a husband. He said he was sending you to the New World. We thought we’d never see you again! Sir Calder told Da the name of your betrothed, and I sent a letter. I can’t imagine where it will end up.”

“If John Hartford gets it, he’ll likely burn it just because it bears my name.”

Bridget laughed merrily. “Couldn’t send you back fast enough, could he? But you must tell me everything!”

The second trunk arrived on Conor Fitzpatrick’s broad shoulders. “Mary Mother of God, it is you,” he said, setting the trunk down near the door.

“Mary Katherine!” She recognized her father’s voice and spun to greet him. He folded his arms around her, and she noticed he was heavier than he had been when she’d left. Not fat, just not rail thin. She inhaled again, longing for familiar smells where touch had let her down. He didn’t smell right. Something was wrong.

She pulled away and looked deeply into his eyes, clear and blue as her own. Bright and full of life, they were.

“Mother of God, you’re stone-cold sober, aren’t you?”

He grinned. Lord, had he always been so handsome? “As a judge.”

“Mother of God,” she whispered again. Why? Why did it feel like such a betrayal? She should be so happy, but all she wanted to do was bring him a bottle of whiskey and get her old life back.

She stepped back and her eyes traveled back and forth across the trio, and then those eyes began to burn, and her mouth started to quiver, and her throat started to close.

“Mary Kate, are you going to cry?” Bridget asked, wonder in her voice.

“Of course not. I’m just so happy to be home—to see you all.” Oh God, she was going to cry.

“We’re glad to have you back, too, lass,” her father said, reaching for her.

She jerked backward, terrified that if he touched her again, everything inside her would come spilling out. Not just the tears, but the curses and rage that threatened to explode.

Damn them! Damn them! Damn them all for getting on just fine without her! Damn them for luring her away from the man she had given herself to, for making her leave a part of herself behind, when she’d never had to leave at all!

She turned on her heel and fled up the stone stairs to the room she and her sister had shared, then stopped short when she got there. There were strange things in here, men’s things. A shirt tossed over the bed, like it belonged there, a man’s jacket hanging on the peg by the door, a brush she had never seen before, a pair of men’s shoes at the foot of the bed.

And next to the dressing table was the cradle that had held her and Bridget as babes.

She walked over and sank down next to it, fighting to hold back the tears until she couldn’t breathe.

“I know it seems silly,” came Bridget’s soft voice behind her. Bridget’s
soft
voice? “We won’t need the cradle for so long, and Conor says ‘tis inviting bad luck, but I just wanted something to make it feel real.”

“Everything’s changed,” Mary Kate said.

“For the better. You’ll see. There’s a bed in the spare room now. ‘Tis yours, if you’ll have it.”

“So I’m gone, and everything’s better. I never knew I was holding everyone back.”

“What are you talking about? What are you saying?”

Mary Kate hated the sound of bitterness she couldn’t keep from her voice. “Apparently I was the one who drove Da to drink and who could never keep the yard neat nor the crops all harvested.”

“So you know, Mary Kate,” Bridget said, “Da near drank himself to death when he sent you away. And then, when he heard that you’d been sent to Jamaica, he…well, I’ll let him tell it to you. But it was about that time that I married Conor. He’s a pigheaded man that one. Oh, he don’t yell and throw a fit like we do, but he don’t back down either. He poured all Da’s whiskey down the privy. Stank to high heaven, and not the usual smell, I’ll tell you.”

“You learned to cook!” It was an accusation, not praise.

“After you left. What choice did I have? If it seems like things are running better without you, ‘tis only because there’s more of us sharing the load. You always had to bear it alone, Mary Kate. That was the lion’s share of your pride.”

Mary Kate’s tone softened. “I thought I had done it all so well.”

“You did.” Bridget sat on the floor next to her. “You did. Too well. D’you know how lost I was at first? Da and I nearly killed each other at least once a week. I needed you to follow, to tell me how to deal with him. I couldn’t cook, and I burned everything. I never cared for numbers, so Da, blind drunk, tried to keep the accounts. When the collectors started showing up, I had to learn fast. D’you know how many times I cursed your name for leaving me?”

Mary Kate smiled. “How many?”

“Mary Kate!”

She put her hand in her sister’s. “I didn’t want to leave.”

“I thought you didn’t fight hard enough.” Bridget squeezed that hand.

“I only went because Sir Calder said that he’d throw us out if I didn’t.”

“He would have, too. But I was fifteen and selfish. You were supposed to take care of me.”

Mary Kate sniffed and dashed away the drop that spilled over her eye before it could find its way to her cheek. “I’m sorry I couldn’t.”

“It was for the best, though. It made me grow up. D’you think a little hoyden like I was could have caught the eye of a man like Conor Fitzpatrick? He said I was a brat before, but I have spirit now.”

Mary Kate swallowed past the lump in her throat and lied through her teeth. “I’m glad you’re happy. I’m glad you had a chance to grow up.”

“What of you? You’ve been through so much. How have you grown, Mary Kate?”

I’ve grown so I don’t fit in here anymore
, she thought.
I’ve seen things, been places. I’ve learned I love the open sea and crowds of people in every color speaking every language. I’ve learned about honor and true sacrifice, rather than merely manipulating people so I get what I want.

“A lot.” She laid her hand on the cradle and set it to rocking. “I want to marry a fisherman or a sea captain and live by the water all my life, I know that much.”

“A fisherman? Now I’d never have thought of that.”

“Bridget?”

“Aye?”

“I need you.” The tears were coming too fast to stop.

“I always hoped that someday you might.” Bridget gathered Mary Kate into her arms and let her sister sob.

Mary Kate and Father Brendan sat in a pew in the otherwise empty chapel. The tiny sanctuary of stone with its lovely Celtic carvings couldn’t compare to the cathedral in Cartagena, there was no altar of gold or pulpit of marble, but it was intimate and familiar.

“You must try harder to repent, Mary Kate.” Father Brendan was young, perhaps a few years shy of his forties, and Mary Kate had always felt that she could be entirely frank with him.

“I can’t! I’ve tried and I can’t. I’d do every bit of it again if I had a chance. Oh, Father, if I hadn’t been so pig-headed, I’d do it all but be married next time.”

“That would be a start. You can at least agree that you repent what you did without the sanctity of marriage.”

“Well, I suppose I could regret that, aye.”

“Sooner or later you must learn to bend my girl, or you will surely break.”

Mary Kate put her elbows on the pew in front of her and dropped her head into her hands. “I can’t help it.”

“What will you be doing now?”

“With Diego safely out of the way, ‘tis an easy thing to promise to sin no more.”

“I’m not talking about that. What will you be doing with your life?”

She sighed. These days it seemed like she was always on the brink of tears. “I’m helping out at home. As Bridget gets further along, it will be better if she doesn’t have to do so much. Da and Conor do just fine on their own, but they don’t mind help in the fields, and I can visit the tenants so the men have more time for our crops.”

“But you’re not happy.”

“Was I ever? I don’t remember. I thought I was.”

“You’ve always been a different sort of girl.”

She ignored the little twinge of pain that caused and rolled her eyes. “Thank you.”

“Don’t give me that look. You went out of your way to be different, even difficult at times. The Mary Katherine I remembered was often angry, but it was like you were always at your best when you were in a rage.”

“I know what to do with anger, Father. I just take it out on the next handy person and feel better in no time.”

“Well, there’s plenty of help at home, and less responsibility. On the whole, I’d think there’s far less to pique your temper.”

“You’ve the right of it there, Father. ‘Tis sad I am, and I don’t know what to do with that. I can’t take any of it back. I’ve no money to go to Havana, and even if I did, he’s at sea so much. It might be months before he showed himself there. What would I do to earn my keep while I waited? I speak so little of the language.”

“Then set your sights here. Take your time. You’re young yet.”

“I suppose.”

“Trust me.”

She sighed. “Thank you, Father.”

“Give yourself time, Mary Kate.”

She nodded and left, but she hadn’t found any comfort. It had been five months since she had left Jamaica, and the pain hadn’t dulled. All the time in the world would never ease the sure and certain knowledge that she had made a mistake. It wasn’t just Diego, although it was losing him that kept her up at night and weighed her heart down all day. She missed the sea so badly it ached inside her, and some nights she would rock back and forth in her bed. She missed the Caribbean, and every time clouds filled the Irish sky, as they so often did, she pined for warm sunshine.

She didn’t go far, just to the graveyard behind the chapel. Her mother’s grave was there, under a tall oak and marked by a small headstone, with space for her father next to it. She sat down next to the moss-covered dip in the dark, cool earth.

“I wish you were here. I wish you’d been here all along.” Then she looked up at the sky through the leaves of the ancient oak. “Magdalena,” she whispered, “help me.”

*

Diego sat down at his desk in his new office. It wasn’t a terribly large room, no sense wasting rent on a space he would use so seldom, but its furnishings glowed and the floor was made of the highest quality tile. It was an office that spoke of success.

He opened a ledger book filled with entries, accounts of several years’ worth of lucrative voyages. The largest plantations figured prominently. Everyone knew Diego Montoya was a man who could be trusted, relied upon.

His clothes were of the finest cloth and the latest style, and in his purse he had more than enough money for a sumptuous dinner. But he wasn’t hungry, and there was no one he cared to have admire the cut of his coat. The office was impressive, but it was empty.

The door opened, and a woman entered. She was a stranger, and she wore strange clothes. Her hair was straight and of the darkest brown, as were her slightly exotic eyes, and she had a lovely olive complexion. She wore an odd shirt with sleeves that cut straight from her wrist to her waist. What appeared at first to be a skirt, was actually a floor-length pair of wide breeches. She smiled at him, and although he was certain he had never seen her before, he felt he knew her.

“You have a fine office, Diego.”

“Forgive me, madam, do I know you?”

“Certainly you do. Come now, Diego, you know exactly who I am.”

“Magdalena?”

“I have missed you.”