Perfect Timing (10 page)

“Do ye mean I’m free to go?” Ceara asked as she wobbled to her feet.

The fleshy woman, dressed in a light blue léine and darker trews, opened the cell door and tossed a shiny red sack into Ceara’s arms. “Free as a bird. Get dressed. Leave your scrubs on the cot. I’ll wait for you at the end of the corridor.”

Ceara didn’t need to be told twice. She put the bag on her bed and struggled to loosen the drawstring. In all her days, she’d never seen such a sack. It shimmered like polished satin, but to the touch, it felt insubstantial, slick, and a bit stretchy. It made a faint crackling sound as she pulled it open. Inside were her things—the green gown, her ankle-length léine, her underclothes, and her prized velvet slippers. She hurried to clothe herself, ignoring the curious stares of the other women in nearby cells.

“So, you’re getting out in record time,” Paula, the woman next door, noted. “What did I tell you, sweetie? We’re like cattle in a chute, in for a bit and then booted out.”

Ceara had no idea how this turn of events had come to pass, but she thanked God that it had.
Freedom
. She had fully expected to be imprisoned for the remainder of her life. She quickly donned her léine, lacing it tight to her waist, and then tugged on her dress.

“Sweet Christ, you wear enough layers,” the older woman said. “Does that really work for you out on the streets? Maybe I need to get me an outfit like that.”

Ceara didn’t know what Paula was talking about, and she had no desire to tarry for an explanation. “’Twas lovely making yer acquaintance,” she said breathlessly as she tested her bodice laces. ’Tis my hope that ye shall be set free soon. ’Tis no place fer a gentlewoman.”

“Now, that’s a new one,” the woman said with a husky laugh. “A gentlewoman, am I? I like the sound of that.”

Hopping to get her slippers on, Ceara exited the cell. “Farewell, me friend. May ye be in heaven a full hour before the devil knows ye’re dead. ’Twill be me prayer that ye become rich and make the journey to New Zealand well before that becomes a worry.”

The woman laughed again. “If I had a beer, I’d toast to that, and same back at you. Maybe you’ll return to Ireland soon.”

As Ceara raced along the corridor, praying the guard hadn’t left her behind, she wanted to shout over her shoulder that she would never again see the Ireland of her birth. But ’twas a wee bit of information best kept to herself.

Once out of the cell block, Ceara was led into a small room appointed with only a chest-high bench. Behind it, a balding man in a uniform stamped forms and made her sign papers, one stating that all her personal belongings had been returned to her. “’Tis not so,” she protested. “Sir Quincy Harrigan kept me hat and me satchel, which contains all me belongings except for the clothing on me back.”

The man shrugged. “Take it up with Mr. Harrigan. We are responsible only for what was in your possession when we booked you.”

Ceara reluctantly signed the paper with a strange writing implement she wanted to take apart and examine. ’Twas not a quill. There was no need to dip it in an inkwell. How did it work? As she signed her name several times, she kept expecting it to run dry, but it didn’t.

The man took the documents and slipped them into a folder. “You’re free to go, ma’am. Just don’t leave town until your court hearing. Since you have no address here, notification of date and time will be sent to you general delivery. Be sure to stop by the main post office every couple of days to see if it has arrived.”

Post office? She would have to find out what that meant, but two words she understood clearly. Her heart squeezed. “Court hearing? So I’m still in trouble?”

“Breaking and entering is a serious offense. Getting out on bail doesn’t negate the fact that you’ve been accused of a crime.” He jabbed a thumb at some double swinging doors to her left. “Go out that way, and best of luck to you.”

Ceara turned to stare at the exit, and suddenly she felt like a lost child. Where would she find shelter? What would she have to eat? Though it was mid-March, the weather was still bitterly cold here, even more so than at home. Recalling the yellow-haired woman’s words about soon being back on the streets, Ceara almost wished she were in the cell again, where she had at least been warm and would have been fed regular meals, even if only bread and gruel.

Trembling with trepidation, she pushed out through the doors and found herself in a large, well-lighted room lined with wooden benches. Quincy Harrigan stood just inside the glass entrance, which led outside. The breadth of his chest and shoulders was enhanced by a bulky blue inar of sorts, one of the oddest garments she’d ever seen. Instead of flowing loosely over his torso and legs, it hugged his upper body and reached only to his waist. Nevertheless he was breathtakingly handsome, everything about him emanating strength. His hat, broad of brim, sat at a forward tilt on his head, revealing the pitch-black hue of his hair at the sides. She fleetingly wondered if he was a descendant of the Black Irish, for his skin was the color of dried chicory root and his eyes were so dark a brown they reminded her of coal polished to a high sheen.

He didn’t immediately speak, and Ceara couldn’t think what to say. Had Sir Quincy—what was the term?—posted her bail?

“Well,” he finally said, “you look none the worse for wear.” With the flat of his hand, he pushed open one of the doors. “After you.”

Ceara hurried across the gleaming floor and exited in front of him onto a walkway of inlaid stone. At the end, it spilled into an intersecting path that was gray and made of long, rectangular slabs that felt as hard as rock beneath her slippers. She stopped to gape.

“What is this?” she asked. “Not stone, surely, unless ye’ve learned how to melt and pour it like iron from a forge.”

He paused beside her, his expression wary and yet perplexed. “It’s cement.” When she still looked at him questioningly, he added, “Concrete.”

“Ah.” Lifting her skirt, Ceara tapped the surface with her toe. “’Tis strange to me.”

A sudden gust of chill wind set her off balance. With a shiver, she accepted that she was still weak from the journey and wondered how long it would be before she regained her strength.

Quincy shrugged out of his inar and draped it over her shoulders. “Use my jacket. It’ll keep the cold at bay.”

Jacket
. She committed the word to memory as the heat of his body radiated from the lining to surround her with warmth. “’Tis soft with cáera skin,” she said appreciatively as she fingered the wool. “’Tis good to recognize something. So farmers still raise cáera for meat and wool?”

“We call them sheep.” The moment he offered that bit of information, he frowned and muttered something she didn’t catch. Grasping her elbow, he led her to the rear of the police station, where countless carriages were parked. In her mum’s crystal ball, Ceara had seen Sir Quincy’s equipage, a gemstone green monstrosity with an enclosed passenger area at the front and a wagon attached to the back. As they approached the vehicle, Ceara was amazed by its actual size. It sat so high off the ground on big, fat wheels that she almost could have bent at the waist and walked underneath it.

“My truck,” he said, thumping the right front door. “Sorry about the dirt. I use it at the ranch. It’s not fancy, but it gets me around.”

As he opened the door, Ceara stopped and tipped her head back to search his expression. This man planned to take her somewhere, and if she left with him, she would be at his mercy. “I am thinking that ye negotiated me release, sir. Is that correct?”

“Against my better judgment, but yes, guilty as charged.”

“’Twas generous of ye.” She drew his jacket close. “But where, may I ask, are ye taking me?”

“Back to my place.”

“To yer manor, ye mean?”

A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth but never reached his lips. “It’s just a house, not a manor.”

A terrible possibility occurred to her. “Are ye taking me there to punish me for me crimes against ye?”

The smile finally won out and slowly tipped his mouth into a disarming grin. Eyes twinkling, he said, “That would be taking the law into my own hands.” When Ceara held his gaze, he added, “I have no intention of punishing you. You’ll be as safe as a babe in its mother’s arms.”

Quincy Harrigan stirred several emotions within her, but feeling safe wasn’t one of them. She glanced over her shoulder, taking in the world around her. Nothing she saw looked remotely like home. As reluctant as she was to go with him, she couldn’t see that she had any choice. With no coin, she couldn’t hope to procure shelter or food, and even in her beloved Ireland, ’twas not safe for a lady to wander about a village without a male escort to protect her. Besides, where were all her grand intentions to be brave and self-sacrificing to save the lives of others? All the Harrigan first wives were still fated to die, and despite the hostile reception, Ceara had come here for them.

She gave a startled bleep when Quincy’s big, hard hands encircled her waist. With an ease that unnerved her even more, he swung her up onto the seat of his truck. “Buckle up,” he said as he closed the thick portal.

Though Ceara’s first language was Irish, she prided herself on being fluent in English as well. But what did
buckle up
mean? She perched rigidly on the cushion, which appeared to be dyed leather but was butter soft. Hands folded and clenched on her knees, she watched as he circled the truck and climbed in on the opposite side to sit behind a large thing that looked like a wagon wheel. She jumped when he inserted a key into a slot at the wheel’s base and made the truck roar to life.

“God’s teeth!”

He glanced over at her. “What?”

“That noise, sir! What is it?”

“Drop the ‘sir,’ and in answer to your question, it’s the engine. Diesels are loud.” He leaned across her, groped near the door, and then drew a strap across her chest. The tips of her breasts tingled when the inside of his forearm grazed them. “I thought I said to buckle up.”

He jabbed the shiny metal tongue at the end of the strap into a square thing near her hip. Then he straightened and repeated the process with the strap on his side. Ceara deeply disliked feeling trapped. Briefly she wondered whether this was some sort of ritual restraint; then she realized it couldn’t be, since he’d imprisoned himself in the same way.

“Whatever shall we do if the carriage topples and we must jump clear to save ourselves?” she asked.

He sent her a sharp, burning look. “Can we dispense with the act for a while? It’s a truck, not a carriage, and I think you damned well know it.”

He backed up the
truck
, then jerked on a stick poking out from the wheel column to make the equipage go forward.

“Ye’ll not go fast, I pray.” She glanced over at him. “’Tis dangerous, surely, at such speeds.”

“Don’t worry. I never exceed the limit by over five miles an hour.” A muscle ticked in his lean cheek. “And I repeat, let’s drop the act. As entertaining as it is—and as good as you are at it—my patience with this charade is starting to wear thin.”

* * *

Quincy tried his best to ignore his passenger as he drove toward home, but he wasn’t successful, even by half. When he pulled out onto Main, she squeaked when she saw traffic coming at them in both lanes, grabbed the dash with white-knuckled fingers, and haltingly spurted out a Hail Mary.

Gotcha
, Quincy thought, barely managing to squelch a smirk. “That’s amazing! People said the Hail Mary way back in the fifteen hundreds?”

She crossed herself. When she looked over at him, Quincy saw that her face had gone as pale as milk. “’Twas mostly taken from the Gospel of Luke, and later on words were added. Have ye not heard of the Council of Trent, where the prayer was sanctified?”

The Council of Trent?
Quincy had heard of it, but he couldn’t for the life of him recall when it had taken place. In the fifteen hundreds sometime?

When he braked suddenly behind a blue Toyota, she released her hold on the dash long enough to cross herself again. “’Tis a fair new prayer at home, but a lovely one, asking fer the intercession of our Holy Mother.”

She resumed her death hold on the dash. Quincy wondered how she managed to make all the color drain from her face. Now,
that
was some fine acting. The lady had missed her calling to Hollywood. “So when are you planning to come clean?” he asked. “You broke into my arena for a reason, and I don’t for a second buy that you did it merely to play games with me and my family.”

Two bright spots of color flagged her cheeks to chase away her pallor. She spat out some words that he didn’t recognize, but it wasn’t necessary to understand to know he was being insulted. She was putting on quite a show—he had to give her that—and despite his worry over Loni, a grin tugged at his mouth. That seemed to make her even madder. Then, with an obvious attempt to collect herself, she said in English, “I told ye me reason fer coming. Believe it or not, ’struth!”

Quincy sighed. “
’Struth?
What the hell does that mean?”

“God’s truth. ’Tis a common word at home.”

Quincy took the highway on-ramp and tromped the fuel pedal as he merged with traffic. He smiled to himself when she loosened one hand from the dash to brace her shoulder against the passenger door. He didn’t for a moment believe that she was truly frightened—unless, of course, she was actually crazy and completely delusional.

“’Tis icy!” Ahead on the asphalt there was a long stretch of packed snow. She gaped at it with eyes that had gone as round as nickels. “God have mercy! Are ye out of yer mind? ’Tis slick. We shall surely—” She broke off, gulped, and closed her eyes. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord—”

“I’m studded up,” Quincy said, cutting her prayer short.

She cracked open one eye to peer at him. In all his days, he’d never seen a prettier blue. “Ye’re what?”

He felt silly explaining what was patently obvious, but the gentleman in him felt compelled to offer her some reassurance, just in case she really was afraid. Maybe she was so mired in insanity that she actually believed she was nearly five hundred years old. “My tires are studded. Studs, you know?” Keeping his attention on the road, he spared her a brief glance to see if any comprehension showed on her face.
None
. “Studs,” he repeated. “They’re little nails that poke out from the tires to grab on the ice.”