Tide and Tempest (Edge of Freedom Book #3) (24 page)

The man drew back his foot. Morgan tensed, prepared himself for the next blow.

“Name’s Hennessy. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Conversation swirled around her. Tillie did her best to remain hidden in the room’s murky corner. Feeling curious eyes upon her, she lifted her head and found a youngish lass, probably around Meg’s age, peering at her.

But despite Tillie’s attempts to remain unobserved, the girl sidled closer.

“My name’s Mary McCloud.”

“Tillie,” she said, then realized that everyone in the room knew who she was. “Matilda,” she corrected hoarsely. “McGrath.”

The girl gave a shy bob of her head and motioned toward the crate. Tillie slid over, though in reality she questioned whether it would hold them both.

“I knew Braedon,” Mary said.

Shocked, Tillie stared at her, eyes rounded. “You did?”

“I met him back in Ireland; we grew up in the same village. My da used to buy wood from his family. He always seemed like a kind lad. I liked him.”

“Aye, that he was.”

Mary shifted on the crate to face her. “Do ya mind if I ask how the two of you met?”

Indecision tore at Tillie. She’d come intending to ask questions. She hadn’t figured on having to answer any. “He . . .”

She hesitated and looked to Jacob for help, but another argument had broken out between him and Seamus. Neither man even spared a glance in her direction.

She breathed deep. “He was at the market selling wood with his family, and I was there selling eggs. I got knocked down by a stray dog. Braedon saw and came over to help.”

She quieted as the memory washed back over her: Braedon’s tender chuckle drowning out the mocking laughter of the other village boys; his strong hands gently lifting her and wiping the embarrassed tears from her cheeks.

“I’m dreadful sorry you lost ’im.”

Startled to find that Mary still watched her, Tillie clasped her hands and shrugged. “It wasn’t long and we were together. Braedon loved me enough for a lifetime.”

Warmth flooded her heart as, perhaps for the first time, she realized how deeply she meant the words. Always before, when she agonized over losing Braedon, she’d felt anger toward God for taking him so young. Tonight, she felt only gratitude for having loved him at all.

She smiled at Mary. “Thank you for telling me that you knew Braedon. Glad I am to know he hasn’t been forgotten.”

Mary returned her smile. “He would be proud of you, I think, for continuing the fight for Irish independence. If I can help, you need only ask.”

Discomfited by the turn in the conversation, Tillie managed a self-conscious nod of agreement.

Across the way, the opening of the door let in a draft that set the room’s candles to flickering. Tillie intended only a glance, for others had come and gone in the hour or so since she and Jacob had arrived. This time, though, she stared transfixed as a man wearing a gray flatcap wound his way
through the throng of people gathered there until he reached a spot near the front.

“Tillie?” Mary leaned over to touch her forearm. “What is it?”

“I . . .” Tillie licked her lips and slid cautiously to her feet. “I need to get a little closer. Will you come with me?”

A bit of the puzzlement cleared from Mary’s face. “Of course.” She held out her hand. “Come. I’ll get you round the other side quick enough. We can see better there. Not as many people standing.”

Tillie accepted Mary’s hand, and together they inched through the raucous group until they reached the other side. Indeed, she had a better vantage of not only Jacob but of the latecomer staring so earnestly into his face.

He was a broad-set man with a barrel for a chest. Of his face she could see but a little, hidden as it was by the cap, but even that bit set her heart to racing.

The rider who’d attacked them and nearly killed Cass, the same man whose devilish intent had been burned into her memory, now sat just feet away.

“Say, you feeling all right?” Mary prompted. “You’ve gone all white.”

Feigning illness would be no difficult task considering the butterflies in her stomach and the trembling of her limbs. Tillie hunched her shoulders and slunk as far back into the shadows as the walls would allow.

“I . . . I am finding the room a bit stifling. Perhaps if we got some air?” she whispered.

Mary nodded. “Aye, then. C’mon.”

Tillie kept her eyes focused in the direction of the latecomer as they eased through the crowded room. For seconds at a time he’d be blocked from view by someone’s head or another’s shoulders, but then he’d reappear, his profile as forbidding
and stoic as ever. Each time she breathed a sigh of relief as she moved one step farther away.

And then a portly Irishman with graying muttonchops lumbered to his feet, drawing them to a halt and blocking Tillie’s view while he shouted a call to action, followed by several blustering attempts to incite those around him to even greater ire.

“Are we going to sit by forever while the English ignore our right to be free?” he began, his face reddening. “Or are we going to do something? No more sitting on our haunches waiting for the right moment. Now is the time to strike! Not a year from now, not even a month—”

“Ach, be quiet!” another man yelled. “Sit down and hear what the lad has to say before you go spilling your blarney all over it.”

Waving his hand in disgust, the portly man shoved out of the way, his muttering drowned out by the blistering glare that struck Tillie head-on in his wake. She froze, pinned for one horrifying moment by a pair of black eyes.

Like a nightmare unfolding, the latecomer left his chair and raised his hand, his arm hanging in the air like some evil portent as he gestured at her. “Let’s go, Mary.”

Tugging on her hand, Tillie urged Mary around a table toward the door, but what had seemed easy before was now a path fraught with obstacles. Men, lurching in front and around them, slowed their every step. Chairs, crates, and booted feet formed hurdles for them to cross.

Tillie risked a peek over her shoulder and gasped. How quickly the man in the cap had cut the distance between them! There was no doubting his intention now. He walked pitched forward at the waist, arms flailing and shoulders lowered as he shoved people out of his way.

“This way.” Spying a crack in the tightly knit mob, Tillie
hurried toward it, then looked back, confused, when Mary resisted the pull upon her hand.

“What’s your rush?” she asked.

Gone was the pleasant smile. Instead, Mary stared up at her from between narrowed eyelids.

Shocked, Tillie dropped her hand. “You . . . ?”

She cast a quick glance around the room. Indeed, the course on which Mary had set them had not been by chance. Neither had it been Tillie’s imagination and fear that made it seem as though the route out of the room were much more difficult.

Her gaze fell to Mary, who stood with her hand extended, a grin on her elfish face.

“The ring, Tillie. That’s all we want. Give it to me.”

“What?”

The man was close enough now for Tillie to sense his menacing scowl.

“I know you have it. Braedon gave it to you, ain’t so?” Mary persisted.

Tillie backed away slowly. “I dinna—”

“Give it to me!”

She shook her head. Even if she’d brought the ring, she would not see it placed in this woman’s greedy palm. “No.”

A growl ripped from Mary’s throat. She jerked her head toward the man in the cap and motioned for him.

Tillie spun, pushing through the crowd, away from the door and toward Jacob. If she could just reach him, if she could call out and somehow be heard above all the angry voices . . .

“Jacob! Jacob!”

It was no use. Even to her own ears, her shouting was lost to the masculine voices clamoring for attention. Someone grasped her elbow and she wrenched herself away without looking. If they caught her now, no one would even notice.
She strained against the sea of bodies, begging for passage and receiving only solid backs.

Most of the men had risen to their feet now. She could no longer see around their broad shoulders or raised fists.

Heat fanned her cheeks. Her breath came in rapid, shallow gasps. Inside her chest, her heart pumped a terrified rhythm. She twisted to her left, then her right. Behind her, beside her, more bodies pressing in—men clothed in gray coats buttoned down their chests. White shirts. Brown coats. And somewhere the man in the gray cap. All swirled in a crush that robbed her of air.

“God, please . . .”

Tears blurred the human mass. Then, just as quickly, a path opened.

The door!

Somehow she’d gotten turned around. Lost. She stretched out her hand, reaching for the door, but it swung open before she could get there. Recoiling, she clutched her fingers to her throat and watched, horrified, as two men dragged a third into the room and dropped him with a sickening thud to the floor.

Time ceased. No sound. No raised fists. No press of the crowd. Nothing but the sight in front of her.

The man on the floor was Morgan.

“Quiet!” Jacob’s roar echoed through the cramped room. From his place high on a table, he craned his neck to see. “Matilda?”

Tillie tore her gaze from Morgan long enough to shoot her hand into the air. “I’m here, Jacob.”

He nodded at her, lifted two fingers, and motioned his men in her direction. Almost immediately she was flanked on either side by two dour-faced men, who helped to alleviate the terror she felt.

There was no sign of Mary or the man in the gray cap.

Tillie glanced at Morgan and then back at Jacob. She longed to rush to his side, but having overstepped her bounds once before, she wasn’t eager to do it again.

“What in blazes is going on back there?” Jacob demanded, both fists propped on his hips.

He hopped down from the table. The crowd parted, creating a path for him straight to Morgan. He made no sign, no glance or slightest flicker to show that he recognized him. Instead he looked to the two who’d brought him in and frowned. “Where’d you find him?”

“The alley,” the larger of the two men replied. “He’s been trailing ya since the pub.”

Jacob turned to Tillie and looked her squarely in the eyes. “Do you know him, lass?”

“I . . .” she began, her stomach plummeting, her knees turning to water. She read urgency in the lines of strain on Jacob’s face. All eyes focused on her, as if she alone had become the object of interest in the room. Despair washed over her. “Jacob, I dinna—”

A groan rose up from the floor. Blood oozed from a gash on the side of Morgan’s head and stained the floorboards. Ripping her shawl from her shoulders, Tillie dropped to her knees and pressed it to the wound.

Glancing up at the faces circled around, she said firmly, “He needs a doctor.”

Still, no one moved.

Tillie raised her chin, staring at Jacob now. “I know him,” she admitted, her voice clear and steady.

For just an instant it seemed relief and an inkling of approval shone from Jacob’s eyes. He waved to the same two who’d carried Morgan in. “Get ’im up.” To a third man, he said, “Fetch a carriage. Take them anywhere she tells you.”

His eyes locked with hers for a brief moment, and then he spun around and returned to the front. Just like that, the shouting, the commotion, everything resumed as it had been before.

Everything, except that Morgan still lay unconscious and bleeding.

A new sort of panic set into Tillie’s chest, the likes of which she’d never experienced—not when Cass had been shot, not even when she’d lost Braedon. She grabbed his hand and held on tight while they carried him outside. At the carriage, she scrambled onto the seat and instructed the men to lay Morgan’s head in her lap.

“Gently,” she cautioned. The moment he was inside, she again pressed the shawl to his head to stanch the flow of blood.

“Ashberry Street,” she shouted to the carriage driver. “As quickly as you can.”

One of Jacob’s men poked his head into the carriage. Holding out the edge of his coat, he revealed the butt of a pistol emerging from the waistband of his trousers. “Just in case there’s any trouble,” he said. He then climbed aboard and slammed the carriage door shut.

Tillie gripped Morgan’s shoulders as the carriage pitched to accommodate the man’s weight. He was a large fellow, not the sort she’d normally feel comfortable having accompany her, but at the moment she couldn’t have been gladder for another’s presence.

The driver gave a whistle, and the carriage jolted into motion. Within minutes they were rumbling at a good clip down the street. The pace was fast enough to leave the fear and danger Tillie had felt at the meeting of the Fenians behind, yet not nearly fast enough to outrun the pain and dread that clogged her chest at the amount of red that stained her shawl.

They passed under a streetlamp. For a precious few seconds, yellow light bathed the inside of the carriage. Just as quickly it faded, and shadows returned once more. Over and over, the scene was repeated. Each time, Tillie used the glow to search Morgan’s face, to look for signs of his waking. And each time she was more taken aback as she found evidence of another bruise, another wound she’d not noticed before.

“Oh, Morgan, what were you doing, following us like you did?”

Hot tears burned her eyes, made her throat raw, but at his groan she quickly scrubbed them away.

“Morgan?”

She blew a sigh of relief when his eyes fluttered open, focused a moment, and then snapped to hers.

“Tillie . . .”

He struggled to sit. Still pressing the cloth to his head with one hand, she smoothed his rough cheek with the other.

“Aye, it is me, Tillie. Dinna move—we’ll be at the boardinghouse soon.”

Confusion and pain clouded his steel-blue eyes. “What happened?”

“You’re hurt. What on earth were ya doing, Morgan?”

He grimaced and reached for his head. “Trying to find you.”

She gently smacked his fingers away. “Why?”

The carriage bumped and jostled over a rut in the road. Gripping him tightly to her, Tillie waited until the ride smoothed again before peering into his face. “Well?”

Her breath caught as something sweet and glorious flickered in his eyes. Her heart lurched at the sight.

“Your safety is my responsibility. Regardless of what Rourke thinks, or what Kilarny says, I . . . I kinna let you put your life in danger.”

His low growl smothered any hope she might have harbored upon seeing the emotion she’d
thought
she read in his countenance. She glanced at the other passenger of the carriage, yet his thoughts were hidden behind an inscrutable mask.

This time when Morgan struggled to sit up, she let him go, then berated herself at the emptiness of her arms without him.

Grimacing, Morgan pulled his hand away from the cut on his head and stared at the stickiness coating his fingers. “What’d he hit me with, a club?”

The man riding with them flexed beefy fingers. “You could say that.”

Tillie crossed her arms and said nothing, for she was more
than a little tempted to hit him herself, even if he was still bleeding.

She handed him the ruined shawl. “It could have been worse. You were lucky . . .” She broke off as the vision of the man in the gray cap returned full force.

The shawl held to his head wound, Morgan leaned toward her. “Tillie?”

“I was pretty lucky myself. Your elaborate entrance may have saved my life.”

He did not appear amused. “What are you talking about?”

Tillie turned her attention to the other man, her mouth set in a stubborn line. Reading her meaning, he sighed and pounded on the roof of the carriage with his fist. It slowed and then came to a halt.

The man climbed out, turned and faced Tillie. “I suppose you’re all right now?”

“Fine,” Tillie assured him.

Giving a sharp command to the driver, he stepped back while the carriage resumed its pace.

“Well?” Morgan said once they were moving again. He tried to lower the cloth, but she guided his hand back to the wound. She then told him everything that had happened at the meeting, including her conversation with Mary.

Morgan let out an angry grunt. “I knew it wasn’t safe for you there. I never should have agreed to your going.”

The carriage swayed, gently tossing Tillie closer to Morgan. “But don’t you see? Now we know that the man trying to track me down is tied to the Fenians.”

“We thought that before.”

“But now we’re certain, and we can tell Jacob. The next time I’m at the meeting—”

“There will be no next time, Tillie,” Morgan barked, lowering the cloth from his head.

“Morgan—”

“I mean it. It be far too risky and I . . .” He fell silent, his face hard as he stared at her.

“You what?” She held her breath, waiting.

The noise of the wheels over the cobbled street lessened as the carriage slowed. They were approaching Ashberry Street. Soon Meg, Amelia, and the others would be gathered around, and she and Morgan would no longer be alone.

Which was only proper.

Tillie shook her head at her own foolishness for what she’d hoped to hear. Hadn’t Morgan proven time and again that his only concern was for her safety, and that out of a sense of obligation?

She eased forward on the seat, ready to disembark the moment the carriage rolled to a stop.

An ache settled in her chest as she lowered her face from view and reached for the door. ’Twas no romantic notion that had sent Morgan out into the street after her tonight, and no amount of wishing on her part would ever make it so.

Though she couldn’t admit it to him, the truth was she
did
wish that something deeper had driven him out searching for her, and not anything as trivial as a romantic notion.

She wanted Morgan’s love. Nothing less would ever do.