Wishes on the Wind (47 page)

    But Terry's lighthearted attempt at reassurance had stirred concerns of another kind that had given her little rest in the hours since. The shame of Sean's behavior years of accepting all Sheila had to give without giving the girl his name. And the shame of her own behavior, in keeping silent and allowing him to continue.

    Realizing that there would be no better time to discuss the matter with Sean than while her feelings were pitched so high, Meg dried her arms on a nearby cloth and started back to the house.

    The buzz of low conversation in familiar tones caught her ear as she entered the empty kitchen. Heading straight for the sound, she walked across the hall toward the sitting room, only to stop abruptly just out of sight of the door as the whispered words became clear.

    "… tonight. The information was sent straight to Muff and it's all arranged, but we've to move fast. The bastard will be arrivin' on the evenin' train. We'll leave the fellow the
surprise s
he's deservin' and the men will support the strike again. They need this to realize…"

    Sean's voice drew to an abrupt halt as Terry loomed unexpectedly in the doorway in front of Meg. Terry's expression was threatening, almost unrecognizable in the moment before he exclaimed with a stiff laugh, "Aha, so 'tis only me wife with her ear to the wall." Reaching out, he wrapped his brawny arm around her and pulled her close to his side as he drew her into the room. "If ye had a need to hear our conversation, Meg, ye need not have listened in secret."

    Terry's eyes were warm and true. They lingered momentarily on her face before he surprised her with a kiss on her stiff lips, his voice deep with unexpected fervor. "Yer the love of me life, ye know that, don't ye, Meg? The best thing that ever happened to me, and if yer brother wasn't sittin' here right now, eyein' us both, I'd show you how well I mean what I say."

    But the underlying tension of the moment was not allayed by Terry's loving words. Meg remained stiff at his side, her gaze moving directly to her brother with her tight question.

    "What's going on here, Sean?"

    Terry's voice was low with reprove. "Should ye not have asked yer husband that question, Meg?"

    Unwilling to allow Terry to intrude into the truth of the moment, Meg responded quietly. "I asked the question of my brother, and it's from him that I'd like a response."

    Sean was suddenly on his feet, his eyes flashing with anger. "Do you really expect an answer about somethin' that's none of your concern? And I tell you now, it'll do you no good to spy. You're of my blood, but that don't give you the right to live my life for me. Back off, Meg! My life's my own, as well as my thoughts, and I'll explain neither of them to you unless I so choose."

    Turning abruptly, Sean left the room. The slamming of the front door echoed in the silence as Meg looked up at Terry. Her stomach tightened at his obvious resentment when he spoke.

    "So yer forced to turn to me for an answer." Terry's brow furrowed. "It seems this little scene is a bit more tellin' than it appears at first, when a man's wife looks to someone else before him."

    "Sean's my brother. He won't lie to me."

    "And so yer sayin' I will."

    Terry assumed an injured expression, and Meg was suddenly     stunned by the implications of her own statement. What
had
she meant? What had she seen in Terry's eyes in that brief moment in the doorway to make her doubt him?

    "Ah, Meg…" Unexpectedly reaching out to encompass her in his overwhelming embrace, Terry clutched her close. The familiar heat of him left her strangely cold as he held her in silence for a few long moments.

    Abruptly separating himself from her, his brown eyes limpid, he whispered softly, "And the irony of it all is that ye've made a mountain out of a molehill. Sean has his back up because some fellas in the patch have been tryin' to get the men to return to work. He's plannin' to take it out on them one way or another. I've spent half the day tryin' to talk some sense into him, but he's not heard a word I said."

    Meg did not respond to his explanation, and Terry shook his head, his expression sad. "Don't burn me with them clear eyes of yours, Meg. If ye choose to disbelieve me, I can do no more for ye."

    Meg stared at Terry. Something crumbled painfully inside her and hardly aware of the words she spoke, she whispered, "Why are you lying to me, Terry?"

    Color flooded Terry's blunt features as he pulled his muscled bulk to full height. "Believe what ye must then, for I've no more to say."

    Turning abruptly, Terry strode from the room, leaving Meg standing in silence as the door slammed emphatically behind him.

    The train shuddered along the tracks as David sat slouched in his seat. His jacket and hat flung across the carrier overhead, David tugged absentmindedly at his cravat. Loosening it another notch, he glanced at the man who slept a few seats away, his only fellow passenger, before turning back to the passing landscape.

    Strangely, he had forgotten the tortured quality of the terrain through which he traveled, the ugly piles of debris brought from underground, the dead lakes of effluent pumped from below, the fine layer of black dust that dulled the natural color of the seasons. There was little to dispel the aura of wretched misery that clung to the clusters of patch houses he viewed as the train crawled from one stop to the next, but he had not been away long enough to forget the ignorance of the miners, their arrogance, and the stupidity of their unrealistic demands that kept them living under those conditions.

    
Strike. The damned fools! Don't they see they have no chance for victory?

    David paused to consider that thought. No, he supposed they didn't, as short-sighted, stubborn, and proud as they were. He remembered that pride. He had known it firsthand. He had seen it close up, reflected in glorious blue eyes that affected him even now in memory. And he remembered that particular pride had proved stronger than love, and that all he had once had to give had not been enough to overcome it.

    Despising his own weak lapse into the torments of the past, David turned back to contemplate the landscape. Daylight was beginning to wane. His heartbeat quickened despite himself, as the terrain became more familiar and his destination neared.

    Reaching into his vest, David retrieved his pocket watch and flicked open the cap. He would arrive in Shenandoah shortly. Firmly curbing the unexplained anticipation building inside him, he confirmed in his mind that he had not come back to relive the past, but to face it. Then his unfinished business the anger, prejudice, resentment, and love stored up inside him would be truly settled at last.

    The sun was sinking toward its nightly rest behind the mountains as Meghan ran along a familiar dirt road and up the hill above the railroad yards, compelled by an inexplicable sense of urgency. The urgency had grown stronger with each moment that had passed after Terry and Sean left the house after supper without a word.

    Her mind steeped in the past, Meg remembered a dark night long ago when Sean awakened her from her sleep to drag her up this same hill. She remembered the excitement in his eyes when they crouched in a place of concealment and waited. She remembered the elation on his young face when a departing train below them was blown from the tracks. The sound of groaning metal was still clear in her ears, the bitter taste of fear still fresh in her mouth, as she relieved the horror of the moment that was etched forever into her memory.

    A short prayer escaping her lips, Meg climbed faster. She did not want to believe that Sean and Terry were no better than those men who had stumbled upon Sean and her as they made their escape from the scene of their heinous crime. She did not want to believe Sean and Terry could have the same coldness of death in their gaze that she had viewed in the eyes of those other men.

    Meg reached the crest of the hill and looked down on the tracks below. The words she had overheard Sean whisper a few hours earlier resounded in her mind as the train rounded the curve and came into sight.

    
He'll be arrivin' on the evenin' train. We'll leave him the
surprise
he's deservin'
…

    Her mind argued that she was wrong, that the man Sean referred to was not someone who had been declared an enemy, that she would not see her brother and her husband this afternoon become heinous criminals who

    A sudden explosion rocked the air, stealing Meg's breath as the tracks below burst with flame, hurtling the racing locomotive from the tracks! As if in slow motion, Meg watched the train tumble, dragging the cars behind it like a giant wounded snake as it fell with a groan of tearing steel into the embankment below.

    Clouds of billowing dust momentarily obscured her vision, but instinct compelled Meg forward the instant she saw motionless bodies lying on the ground where they had been thrown free of the train. Meg was suddenly running full speed toward the wreck. Slipping and sliding on the downward slant of the grassy terrain, she was breathless, crying, struggling to hold herself upright when she was suddenly swept from her feet by a strong arm. Gasping as a wide palm clamped across her mouth stifling her frightened scream, she struggled furiously as she was dragged behind an outcropping rock.

    Managing to turn around, Meg met familiar brown eyes filled with unfamiliar fury, and she went suddenly still. She saw a second man crouched beside them the moment before his accusing blue eyes met hers.

    ''You couldn't stay out of it, could you, Meg? Well, now you know what Terry and I were plannin'! And if there's any luck in it, one of them fellas over there, bleedin' his life's blood into the ground, is the new mine superintendent!"

    Terry's hand fell away from her mouth, but Meg emitted no sound. Aghast, she looked at him briefly before turning back to her brother.

    "Don't you realize what you've done? You can't really believe you have the right to take a person's life just because he's a company man! Sean, think! If you don't care for the lives of others, then think of your own soul!"

    "This is war, woman!" His face a bitter mask, Sean continued hotly. "I'll hear no more talk of my soul, and if you know what's    good for you, you'll keep out of this and stay home where you belong!"

    Her eyes transfixed on her brother's face, Meg saw his intense gaze shift to Terry. A look passed between them, and an inexplicable tremor shook her as Sean then drew himself to his feet, surveyed the area, and gave the signal to move on.

    Silent through the whole exchange, Terry lifted Meg to her feet. Unable to do anything else as her husband gripped her hand firmly, Meg stumbled behind them as they made their escape.

    Consciousness faded, then returned again, renewing the stabbing pain in David's head that dimmed his sight. He remembered a flash of light that was simultaneous with an ear-ringing blast, the sound of metal wheels abrading the track, and the groan of tearing steel as the world began tumbling around him. He remembered the pain as he hit the ground with a bone-shattering crack.

    And he remembered seeing her.

    The slender woman he had seen high on the hill when he first opened his eyes remained stationary at first. Then she burst into movement, stumbling down the mountainside toward him with headlong haste. She stopped as abruptly as she had started, and in that split second, with vision blurred by pain and settling dust, he had seen a mane of curling black hair and great silver-blue eyes staring directly at him.

    Meg.

    But she was gone again, and he could hear only the ring of male voices nearby and the crunch of footsteps moving cautiously through the grainy mist. He cried out, but there was no sound. With a supreme effort, he raised a hand to his pounding head. His fingers came away sticky with blood, and he groaned against his helplessness. Sound and light again began drifting away, and through the unreality, he was certain of only one thing.

    He had seen her.

    Taking care not to look directly at Meg, Terry gripped her hand more firmly as they approached the back door of the house. Maintaining his silence, he waited as Sean slipped cautiously into the kitchen, then reappeared to motion them inside.

    He walked past Aunt Fiona where she stood in the corner of the room and followed Sean upstairs, pulling Meg behind as her step lagged. The door of the bedroom closed behind them at last, and Sean turned to Meg with obvious anger.

    "I've no time to waste on words, except to say you've compromised Terry and me this afternoon with your interference. A job that was clean and free of complications can now rebound on us and on all the men waitin' at Muff Lawler's to give us an alibi."

    When Meg averted her gaze, Sean commanded harshly, "Look at me, Meg! Do I have your word that you'll stay here in this room until you've gained enough control of your senses not to give us away?" At Meg's silence, he demanded, "Answer me!"

    Terry's heart sank at the pain of Meg's response. "You have my word."

    Urging him to follow, Sean turned to the door. Looking directly at Meg for the first time, Terry felt the full weight of her tormented gaze as she whispered, "How could you let him do this, Terry? You were supposed to watch over him for me. I trusted you."