Whiskey Island (59 page)

Terence tired quickly, but the climb wasn’t as hard as he’d feared. The wind picked up and tried to tug him off balance, but he learned to lean into it and adjust his posture. He had gone nearly a third of the way before he stopped to rest. He had hoped by now to see Lena at the top, but no one was in sight.

Worry nagged at him, although he wasn’t certain why. Father McSweeney wouldn’t have let her set off on her own. At worst she had been delayed and they would meet nearer to St. Brigid’s. But even that sensible assessment didn’t ease his mind. He knew his wife, and he knew how concerned she would be. Nothing would stop her from starting home once she realized a storm was brewing.

He started up again, panting from the exertion and stumbling once when the wind changed direction. He covered the next third of the hill without seeing anyone. The sky steadily darkened, until it seemed night had fallen. Lightning over the lake was the best source of light, and he used it to help steer a straight course on the road. He stumbled once more and nearly went down. He rested a moment, wiping his sweaty palm on his trousers before he gripped the cane and set off again.

He was nearly to the top, heart pounding but exultant, when a man appeared on the road just before the crest of the hill. He stood in the middle, looking down at Terence. His arms were folded and his feet spread wide. Terence didn’t recognize him, but the man seemed to know who he was.

“Terence Tierney?”

Terence stopped, balancing himself on both crutch and cane. “Who wants to know?”

“Never mind that. Go home now. Your wife’s been detained.”

“Detained?”

“That’s right. She’ll be coming along later.”

As he examined the man, Terence could feel anger rising inside him. The man was young and built as solidly as a bull, with wide shoulders and chest, and a thick neck that was only just long enough to support his head. Judging from the sideways slant of his nose, he’d seen more fights than John L. Sullivan.

“I don’t think I’ll be going home,” Terence said. “If she’s been detained, I’ll wait at the rectory for her.” He started toward the man, who didn’t abandon his position.

“I’m not asking you, Paddy. Your little biddy’s got better things to do than hobble home with you. Get along with you now. When Mr. Simeon’s done with her, he’ll send her on.”

Terence stopped, stunned. “Simeon?”

“That’s right. They’re having a chat about why she left her employment so suddenly. He’s not a man who likes his good works thrown back in his face.”

Terence knew only what Lena had told him about Simeon, that he had been unkind to her, berating her in front of the other servants and threatening almost daily to dismiss her. She’d reported that when Father McSweeney had heard what was happening, he offered to make her his housekeeper and take over Terence’s education himself. Terence had been so grateful to be out from under the despised Simeon’s shadow that he hadn’t investigated further.

Now he wondered what Lena
hadn’t
told him. Why would a man as powerful as Simeon care if a servant left, when there were a hundred more waiting at his front gate to take her place?

But questions could wait. The fear that had been growing with each painful step up the hill now blossomed wildly. He pictured Lena alone with James Simeon, a man she had described, perhaps charitably, as unkind.

He sensed that Simeon’s watchdog was a man who fed on fear. He was careful not to show any feeling but disdain. “My wife won’t be chatting with the likes of Simeon. You can’t be stopping me.”

“But she
is
‘chatting’ with him.”

“Then I’ll be looking into this myself. Just get out of my way.” Terence swung himself toward the man, who still refused to move.

“Don’t make me kick you like a stray cat, Paddy. Go on home.”

“My wife wants nothing to do with your Mr. Simeon.”

The young man laughed. “You don’t think so? My guess is she wanted a lot to do with him, at least for a while. And from the look of you, I guess I can understand it.”

Terence was close enough now to see the pockmarks scattered on the man’s cheeks, but his words were far uglier. “My wife’s a decent woman,” he retorted.

The man mimicked his brogue. “A ‘day-cent’ woman who spread her legs for money, my friend. Over and over again, I imagine. And from what I can tell, Mr. Simeon developed a taste for her.”

Terence swung his cane so fast and hard that it caught the young man off balance. Rage clouded his vision as the man crumpled backward to the ground. Terence didn’t give him the opportunity to rise. He swung again, cracking the tip of the cane against the side of his skull.

Had he struck with more force, the man would have been knocked unconscious. As it was, Terence stumbled forward as he swung, and the blow bounced off at an angle. Howling in pain, the young man grabbed the cane and jerked hard, and Terence sprawled on top of him.

He had one good arm and a fierce desire to avenge his wife’s name. But neither was a match for the strong young man beneath him.

Lena was no sooner out of the carriage and hurrying toward the road to Whiskey Island than the heavens opened and rain began to pour. She pulled her shawl over her head and kept her eyes focused on the ground as she began to pick her way down the hill.

“Best hurry,” a man’s voice called.

Startled, she glanced up and, through sheets of rain, saw a man, cap pulled low over his face, limping past her. Although she could hardly see, she wondered if this was Simeon’s groom, a young man disliked by the entire household staff because of his rough manners. If so, he had abandoned his post.

She huddled into the shawl and picked up her pace. Already water was sluicing down the unpaved road, and the clay soil was growing slick as it sucked at her shoes.

She prayed Terence had gone home, that when she didn’t show up at their meeting place, he had assumed she was waiting out the storm at St. Brigid’s. She prayed that the groom had not confronted him and that she might have time before Simeon did, time to tell him everything.

She should have known that Simeon would find a way to retaliate, and she should have anticipated what it would be. Both she and Father McSweeney had underestimated the millionaire’s need for revenge. They had been fools to believe that Terence could be kept in the dark.

She only prayed that Terence truly did love her enough to understand and perhaps even someday forgive her.

Her focus was so narrow that she nearly missed the man lying in the road to her left. She might not have noticed at all if his body hadn’t channeled the rain to the middle of the road, to run like a creek over her feet. With a cry she stopped and stared, then splashed her way toward the prone figure.

“Terence!” She knelt in the mud and touched his face. He was lying on his side, crumpled like a dirty cleaning rag. Frantically she pushed back his hair and saw a wide trail of blood spurting from a wound at the side of his head.

“Mother of God!” She doubled her shawl and pressed it against the wound, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding. “Terence! Terence!”

For a moment she thought he was dead. But his head turned slightly and his eyes opened, his long lashes fluttering like moths against pale cheeks before his eyes fixed on her.

“Terence. Hold on. I have to go for help!”

“Simeon…”

She knew then who had done this. Not Simeon, who wouldn’t dirty his own hands, but the groom who’d been watching for Terence while Simeon threatened her.

He licked his lips. His words were fainter. “Did he…hurt you?”

“No. No! He’s a terrible man, but he didn’t. He can’t hurt me anymore.”

“But he…did.”

She began to weep. “Not now, Terence. We’ll talk later. I have to get help.”

“I’m so…sorry. I would…kill him, if I…could. For you.”

She knew then that he understood what had happened, and that he loved her still. Somehow he understood everything, and he had forgiven her. “Oh, I know. I know you would, dearest. And nothing else matters now except getting help. Please, don’t die. Hold on. I’ll be back. There are houses just up at the top—”

“The baby. Take care of my…baby.”

“I will. I will. But you’ll be here to help me. We’ll take care of our baby together. You only have to let me—”

“Let Rowan…help.” His eyes didn’t close, but he ceased to see her. His lips went slack, and his head rolled back, to its original position.

“Terence!” She shook his shoulder, then pounded on it. “Terence, don’t leave me!”

She was still shaking him when the rain slackened and someone from a house at the top of the hill came to see why a woman was screaming on the road down to Whiskey Island.

38

S
he would have sold the house on Tyler Street, had there been anyone to sell it to. But men with money in their pockets wanted houses farther up the hill. The Irish were spreading west, into tidier neighborhoods away from the river. Rowan offered to buy the house, but she refused to let him. He had stayed this long on Whiskey Island just to add his wages to theirs, and she couldn’t let him continue sacrificing his happiness for her.

Father McSweeney insisted she stay in the housekeeper’s quarters at the rectory, but had she, room and board would have been deducted from her wages. The good Father had no choice in this matter, and the church leadership was unwilling to make an exception. Since she paid nothing for the house she had shared with Terence, she stayed on there instead. Rowan stayed on, too, despite the raised eyebrows of neighborhood gossips.

“And just what is it you think they’ll be doing?” Katie Sullivan demanded of the biggest busybody when the rumors reached her. “Her bursting with child and mourning her husband, and him keeping the peace night and day? When a house is on fire, go home and look at your own chimney, woman!”

Lena mourned Terence’s death with an intensity that frightened Katie, who told her so. Katie insisted Lena’s grief would harm the child inside her. Lena ate and slept little. She cleaned the rectory and prepared Father McSweeney’s meals. But all joy had gone from her life. At night she lay in the bed she had shared with Terence and sobbed until she fell asleep.

Terence’s wake and funeral had been solemnly grand, with more in attendance than anyone had expected. He had been well liked and, at the end, admired for fighting back and attempting, against the odds, to make something of himself.

His death had frightened the Whiskey Island residents. From the moment the Irish had built their tar paper shanties and the saloons had set up business, Whiskey Island had been a brawling, lawless place, with “paddy” wagons in attendance every night and journalists moralizing on its degradations.

But murder was not common. Now someone had murdered Terence Tierney, bashed a crippled man in the head with a rock and left him to bleed to death in a violent thunderstorm. And what had his death accomplished? Terence was not a man of means. He’d been carrying no money or valuables. He had stolen no man’s job or wife, kicked no man’s dog or child.

His own wife was
with
child.

While local citizens organized bands of men to patrol Whiskey Island each night, Rowan pursued his own inquiries. He listened to Lena’s account of that evening. She told him that James Simeon had demanded she speak with him, and that his groom was posted on the hillside to watch out for Terence, in case he tried to climb the road to find her.

She told Rowan that as she’d descended the hill in the storm, a man had passed. He’d greeted her, and she’d noticed he was limping. But she couldn’t tell Rowan anything more. His cap had hidden his face; her shawl had blocked her view. And although she knew the groom from her days as Simeon’s cook, she could not, with any certainty, say that the man she’d seen in the rain that night was he.

Rowan had gone to question the groom, but the young man’s father, Simeon’s gardener, swore that his son had arrived home after a drive with Simeon as dry as if there had never been a storm. They had outrun it, he insisted, and the storm didn’t break over Euclid Avenue until minutes after they returned. The cocky young man himself came to greet Rowan, sauntering across the stables with an unimpeded gait.

Lena wanted to blame Terence’s death on Simeon, but why would he kill a man he planned to torment with his wife’s infidelity? Surely Terence’s death was worse than Simeon’s revelations would have been, but like a cat who plays with its prey before killing it, Simeon would most have enjoyed torturing Terence before having him murdered.

At first she waited for Simeon to waylay her again, to repeat his offer of a job and remind her that she was a widow now who would soon have a child to support. But as one month passed, then two and three, she began to believe he had given up. She was growing larger and more cumbersome every day, and a world of beautiful women was open to Simeon. With Terence’s death, the last laugh was his, and he could forget her.

Rowan brought news that strengthened what, to that point, had been only a shaky theory. He returned from work one night to find her sitting in the Boston rocker that Terence had given her on their wedding night. She was staring at a cold hearth, even though Rowan had laid out kindling and logs in the fireplace that morning.

“Lena? You should be in bed.”

She looked up and gave a wan smile. “I never dream of Terence. That’s odd, don’t you think?”

“It’s too soon. You will, when a dream won’t bring you such grief.”

“We sat like this so often. Me in this chair, him in that.” She gestured to a straight-backed chair in the corner. “He would read to me. I can almost hear his voice.”

“We’ll find the man who killed him, Lena.”

“Men look for revenge. Women look back.”

Rowan lowered himself to a bench beside the fireplace. “I’ve news that might interest you.”

She wasn’t interested, but Rowan was dear to her, and she wouldn’t hurt him for anything. “And what would that be?”

“It’s about Simeon.”

She wondered exactly how much Rowan suspected. She hadn’t told him the substance of her last conversation with Simeon, but he knew that she’d been forced to endure it against her will. Did he know what else she’d been forced to endure?