Chapter Fifteen
The flight back to Dublin was torturous, or at least it would have been if she were awake for it. As soon as she was on the plane, Natalie felt extraordinarily tired. She wanted more than anything than to snuggle up to Patrick, but that was clearly not going to happen. Instead, she nodded off in the seat across from him as he worked, having terse conversations with a number of different people.
It seemed he had canceled a number of engagements to return to Dublin at this point, and some people were not pleased.
When she mentioned it, Patrick shrugged.
"They can be pleased or not pleased, it has ceased to matter to me at all. Right now, there is only one important thing for me to think about."
He leveled a cold look at her, and Natalie felt a spark of temper run through her.
"You can't treat me like a criminal," she said. "All I did was take a pregnancy test and take a walk."
"No, that's not all of what you did," he bit out. "You neglected to say that you took off with your head in the clouds as you are so prone to do, and while you were newly pregnant, before even speaking to a doctor, you decided to wander around a desolate portion of a city that you knew not at all. The police officer on the phone told me they found you in an area that had two muggings in the last year, Natalie!"
"I didn't know that," she contested hotly, but he made a cutting motion with his hand.
"There is nothing you can say that is going to make this sound better, Natalie," he said bitterly. "I knew when I met you that you were wild. I thought perhaps that Scotland might have tamed you a bit, made us suit a little better, but I can see now that that was purely wrong."
"Tamed me?" cried Natalie. "Like some kind of wild bird or dog?"
"I would expect a dog to come to heel better," he retorted. "But quiet now, I have a call to make."
It was on her mind to simply shout and ruin the call, but that was likely just pure spite talking. Her fatigue was catching up with her again, and before the phone call ended, she was asleep again.
She woke up with a blanket tucked around herself, but when she glanced at Patrick to thank him, she saw him pacing the cabin behind her, a dire look on his face.
***
In Ireland, they returned to the townhouse, and this time she was given her own room instead of staying in her nook in the library. The room was fine, luxurious even, but the only thing it seemed to do for her was to emphasize that there were more walls between her and Patrick than there had been otherwise.
"You are to stay put," he said the first night back. He had all but shaken his finger at her, and she bared her teeth in frustration. "If you think I found you fast in New York, where I know next to no one, you should see how well I know the Dublin police force."
She narrowed her eyes.
"Can't keep a woman?" she said, her voice dark and taunting. "Do you have to threaten to lock me up?"
"A woman with a grain of common sense would not have to be locked up," he retorted, and then he was gone.
***
Two days later, Patrick sat her down with his offer, if one could call it that. In his study, he passed her a slip of paper with a number so large on it that she blinked.
"That is how much you will get for your time," he said remotely. "For bearing the child and spending the first year nursing it, boy or girl. During the time you are pregnant and nursing, you will receive a small stipend of the money, say, five thousand a month, and at the end you will receive the balance."
"Are you going to tell me what this is all about?" she asked angrily, and he glared at her.
"You are wild," he said. "There's something in you that cannot be tamed, and it is a fine thing in a lover, but it is...” he struggled with the words, “...deeply unsettling in a mother. That money pays you for your work, and then you will leave the baby with me, where he or she can be raised safely and without fear."
"Without fear!" she spat, but he slammed his hand down on the desk hard enough to make her jump.
"Yes! Without fear that their mother might be kidnapped by criminals, or fall out of a window or go walking in a dangerous park at night! Without fear that their mother might leave everything behind to wander the world for years before returning!"
"I wouldn't," she said weakly, but there was something all too true about it.
"Take the deal," he advised her. "It is the best you'll get, and it will save us all from pain. All three of us."
***
For one day, she put up with it. Natalie wept in her room for a few hours, and then she laid on the bed, coming to terms with it. Perhaps he was right, and she was a dangerous influence. Perhaps he was right, and she would bring pain to any child she bore.
Then Natalie's native stubbornness buoyed her up, she grabbed a piece of paper and started writing.
Better a wild mother than a father who sees everything in shades of gray. Better a nomadic life than one spent in one place, doing the same thing and never thinking of anything beyond it.
She paused, biting her lip, but then she shrugged.
I love you, and I won't give our child a life like that.
Then she was gone.
***
At the airport, Natalie carried only the clothes she had first come to the country with, her phone and her passport. She had a ticket back to the United States, where she would be able to raise her child in peace, and yes, she would try to curb her wilder impulses to keep her child safe. She did not think of Patrick, not of his arms around her or the way her heart was screaming at her not to leave Ireland.
She was working so hard on not thinking of him that she barely heard him shouting her name. Natalie saw the crowd move first, and then she turned just as he ran straight for her, gathering her into his arms. To her shock, his body was shuddering as if he had run a long distance.
"Patrick?"
"Don't you dare," he growled, his voice broken. "Don't you dare leave me, not after you said you love me and that you are having my baby. I love you. I love you so much, you wild woman, and I am sorry."
She could feel the tears prickling her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She knew that she should let him go, talk rationally, but she could not.
"You called me terrible things," she whispered, and he only held her harder.
"Because I was a fool," he growled. "I was crazed with fear, and blinded by my own stupidity. Then you were gone, I read your note, and I realized... Natalie, you were right. About everything. I'm not fit to be a father on my own, I would need you. And then I realized that I need you for all of it. Morning and night, Dublin and New York and Beijing and all the places in between. Stay with me. Stay with me and I swear, I will make you the happiest I can."
She hugged him hard, feeling as if her heart would swell with joy. Something in her told her that it would all be all right, it would all be wonderful, but still.
"No," she said, and she felt him shudder as if a bullet had gone through him.
"No?"
"No. I love you. I want you, and I want to be married to you and have you father our children to come, but I won't stay. Come with me, instead. Come on. Right now. I will give you my heart, but my soul, I think that you have to chase."
Patrick's face changed from one of confusion and heartbreak to understanding. He glanced up at the gate's designation as if seeing it for the first time, and he laughed.
"All right then, pet," he said, love in every word. "San Diego it is. I've never been, so this ought to be interesting."
"I've never been either, but I'm sure it will be wonderful," she said, and she knew she was not talking about the city.