Chapter 12
Caity held her breath as Shane’s long legs covered the distance between them, but she didn’t budge. She stood there, hands on her hips, heart pounding, silently daring him to put her on that mule.
“Suit yourself, woman,” Shane said as he dropped to one knee and whipped out his scalping knife.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Her anger turned to shock as he slashed off the trailing train of her riding skirt.
“Stand still,” he ordered as he gathered a section of her habit in one hand. The razor-sharp blade parted the soft cloth and the petticoats beneath it. Stunned, she watched as Shane sliced the material from midthigh to the hem, both back and front.
“You . . . you pratie-digging blackard!” she cried. “You’ve ruined my mother’s riding habit.”
“I’ve ruined nothin’. I’ve made it useful.” He turned to Justice. “Saddle Ladybug for her.”
“You’ve destroyed my skirt. Do you even know the cost of such material?”
Shane shook his head. “Make up your mind. If you’re too high and mighty to ride Bessie, you can ride the bay mare. I’ll not have it said that I bully my wife.” He slid the knife back into its sheath. “And I’m not going to let you ride a spirited horse with your legs all tangled in twenty yards of skirt.”
“My legs are my affair,” she retorted.
“Some would say otherwise, darlin’, seein’ as how I am your lawful husband.”
“Are you? You seem to forget that more than I do,” she flung back at him. She was so mad that she wanted to punch him. She’d never been a violent person, but it was all she could do to pin her clenched hands at her sides.
“I never forget that, Caity,” he said. “Your safety is my concern, as your husband and as the ramrod of this spread.” He went to the mule and began to untie the cinch. “Ladybug’s got more fire than Bessie, so you’d best hold on tight if you don’t want to be tossed on your ass.”
Caitlin glared at him. She’d looked forward to this time alone with him. She’d wanted to try to mend the breach between them. Instead, they’d somehow vaulted into another full blown confrontation over a mule.
She forced herself to control her temper. “Shane McKenna, you would try the patience of Job.”
“Maybe so.”
He didn’t sound in the least repentant, even though he was at fault, not her. “If I’m going to be so much trouble, maybe I shouldn’t go at all.”
“You know what you need?” he asked as he whipped the saddle off Bessie and slung it over the hitching rail.
“What do I need?” If he laid one finger on her, their marriage was over, she vowed. Shane might look like his father, but the day he started acting like him, she would—
“This.” He slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close, then lowered his head and kissed her.
Caitlin’s first thought was to resist, but the warmth of his mouth on hers was delightfully intriguing. Her anger ebbed, and she found herself in a struggle with her own will.
She parted her lips to voice a half-hearted protest when the tip of Shane’s tongue darted to touch hers, sending shimmers of sweet sensations swirling through her body.
Somehow she found herself leaning against him, returning the kiss, fitting her mouth to his, and savoring the feel of his broad hand on her back, losing herself in the earthy scent of him.
And then, just when the kiss was deepening, he released her and stepped back, leaving her giddy and confused. Unsatisfied. “Shane . . . don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t kiss you?”
Shane’s husky brogue fed the weakness inside her. “Don’t stop,” she whispered.
“Ah, Caity mine.” He chuckled softly and brought his mouth down to sear hers.
The second kiss was even better than the first. Heat flowed from his lips to hers and swept over her until her last doubts were utterly lost.
Yes, she thought, yes. This is what I want . . . what I’ve always wanted.
Shane’s magical kiss went on and on until she was forced to wrap her arms around him to keep her feet on the ground. She might have lost her wits altogether if she hadn’t heard a boyish giggle behind her.
“Oh!” She gasped. “The children . . .” she stammered when she could speak again. Her lips tingled, and she could still feel the shape and texture of his mouth against hers. She could still taste him.
“You want me to put the mule’s saddle on Ladybug?” Justice asked in an innocent voice.
Shane was still looking at her, and the intensity of his stare made her stomach feel as though she’d swallowed a handful of butterflies. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time; she wanted all the world to vanish so they could go on kissing and touching, so that he could keep holding her so tightly that she could feel the beat of his heart.
Shane grinned, and for a moment Caitlin glimpsed the boy she’d once pledged her life to.
He lightly traced her bottom lip with a fingertip, and a wall of ice crumbled inside her.
“Seems to me,” Shane said, “that it’s better that Justice sees us kissin’ than fightin’.” The steady gaze from his silver-gray eyes caressed her.
Caitlin nodded and looked away, too full of emotion to answer. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and tried to ignore the throb of blood pulsing through her veins.
“Caity?”
“Yes,” she managed, finding her voice. “You’re right, husband.”
“McKenna?” Justice held tight to the mare’s halter as she tossed her head and whinnied frantically to her foal in the barn. “Do you want me—”
“No, thank you,” Caitlin said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to ride Bessie.”
“You’re certain?” Shane rubbed his fingers along the faint scar on his cheek.
Caitlin nodded. “You know your own animals best, and it was foolish of me to argue with you over so small a thing.”
“Do you want this horse or not?” Justice demanded of Shane. “If she’s not goin’ with you, I will.”
“You heard her, boy. Put the mare away. And you’re to stay here at the house and keep an eye on things.” Still looking pleased with himself, Shane began to resaddle the mule.
“Gabe don’t need my help,” Justice said. “I heard you tell him to stand guard. I want to come with you.”
“Not today.”
Justice kicked the dirt with the toe of his boot. “But I want—”
“Do as you’re told,” Shane ordered. “If you want to be treated like a man, then you’ll have to accept a man’s responsibilities.”
Sullen-faced, Justice led the mare away.
Caitlin watched Shane saddle the mule, then allowed him to help her mount. “I guess Bessie’s not the only mule-headed creature here,” she said. He adjusted first one side of the saddle and then the other, before tucking her feet solidly into the leather stirrups. “Justice seems disappointed. Maybe we should take him with us,” she ventured.
“Nope. I mean to have you all to myself.” He patted Bessie’s neck. “Keep her head up. Her gait’s not the smoothest, but Bessie won’t spook on you the first time a leaf blows across her path.”
“Neither will I.” Caitlin was glad that Shane wanted to be alone with her, and that Justice was staying behind. She just hoped she wouldn’t come home to find horse feed in her flour canister.
Shane swung up on his buckskin and looked at her questioningly. “Neither will you what?”
“Spook at the first sign of trouble,” she answered confidently. “I’m used to taking care of myself.”
“Me, too,” he said. “It seems the both of us will take some practice in this husband and wife stuff.”
“I suppose so,” she agreed. “There’s one thing in particular that I know I need instruction on.”
“And that is?”
“The kissing. It’s been so long since I’ve kissed a man, that I fear I’ve forgotten how.”
He smiled. “Aye, Caity. On that point we agree.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “What’s wrong with my kissing?”
“Nothing practice won’t cure, wife,” he teased. “And I’ll consider it my husbandly duty to teach you everything I know.”
“What do you think?” Shane lifted Caitlin from the saddle and set her feet lightly on the ground. “Is Kilronan the closest thing you’ve ever seen to paradise?”
She nodded and took a few tentative steps away from the mule. They’d been riding for more than an hour, and she’d seen old forests and sunny meadows that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Everywhere she looked the land was green and full of life. Deer moved among the big trees, geese and ducks flew overhead, and horses and cattle grazed in the open pastures.
“It’s so big,” she said.
He tied the mule’s reins to a sapling and came to stand beside her. Almost shyly, he took her hand in his. She liked the feeling.
“Do you think you could be happy here?”
She nodded. “I do, but . . .” She sighed and pulled away. She wondered if Shane intended to kiss her again and if she should let him. Sweet Lord. When Shane touched her, she couldn’t think straight.
It seemed strange to be wary of her own husband, especially since his kisses were so wonderful. But things were complicated enough between Shane and her without adding more to the stew. Suppose she let nature take its course? She and her husband would be bedded by nightfall. The thought was delicious and frightening.
“But?” Shane’s question broke into her reverie.
“I . . .”
“You miss the life you had before you came to America,” he supplied.
“Oh, that.” She swallowed, trying to ease the constriction in her throat. The life she had? Didn’t he realize what Ireland was like now? And how could she make him understand? “Not the way it’s been the last few years,” she hedged. “It’s nothing like you remember. But I do miss having women friends and church and parties. It can be lonely, your Missouri.”
How could she tell him that there was nothing left of County Clare to go back to? That everyone and everything that had been dear to her had been lost in the stench of rotting potatoes and pestilence?
“The potatoes rotted,” she said. “Like they did the year before you left home. But not just a few fields, all of them. One day County Clare was green as heaven, and the next blackened as the gates of hell.”
Bile rose in her throat as she remembered the smell, not just of putrid potatoes but of death.
“I didn’t know it was so bad,” Shane said.
“The blight spread,” she continued. “I don’t know where it started, but whole counties lost their crops. And for the working families, there was nothing to eat. Nothing.”
“We’ve heard rumors, but—” His voice rasped with emotion.
“The English don’t want the rest of the world to know the truth,” she said bitterly. “English lords still send boatloads of wheat and beef out of Ireland, but the poor people starve. Thousands wander the roads begging. Desperate men and women will do anything to feed their hungry children.”
Caitlin took a deep breath and looked out over the green hillside. Remembering the bad times ripped open the half-healed wounds inside her, but the telling had to be done.
If she bore witness to what she had seen, maybe the nightmares would stop haunting her. Maybe she’d stop waking in the night with the taste of disease in her mouth and the sound of wailing in her ears.
“Good Squire Lawton of Lawton Hill was murdered for his driving pony, Beauty. She was black, with a white mane and tail, and she carried her head high. Oh, Shane, she was the sweetest pony you’ve ever laid eyes on. But they butchered her and ate her half raw. They boiled her hide to make a soup and even smashed her bones to get at the marrow.”
Shane swore softly. He reached for her, but she shook her head. If she went into his arms, she would break down, and her tears would keep her from telling him what he had to hear.
“We tried to help. Lots of good people did. You can feed a dozen guests who show up uninvited for dinner. But what do you do when twenty come the next day, and thirty the day after that? My parents lost everything, Shane. What do you say to the hollow-eyed children who come too late for a crust of bread or a saucer of cabbage?”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
“You didn’t ask. And . . . and I didn’t think you’d believe me. Who would if they hadn’t seen it with their own eyes? My parents tried to help. They gave everything they had . . . even their lives, and it didn’t help. It didn’t matter at all.”
“Maybe it did,” he said. “Maybe some of those people survived because of their sacrifice.”
“Do you think so, Shane?”
He nodded. “A few, maybe dozens. It matters.”
“I’d like to think that.”
“That’s why you came to America, because you couldn’t stay in County Clare.”
“Yes. That’s why I came.” She looked into his eyes and saw the pain flickering there. “But I would have come before, if I’d gotten word from you. I never stopped watching for your letters . . . hoping.”
“I want to believe that, Caity. I swear I do, but it’s hard.”
“Marriage is supposed to be about trust,” she said.
“Aye, it is, but I’m a man with little to give.”
“Why, Shane? What made you change? You weren’t like this when I married you.”
“I was younger then. Softer maybe.”
“No,” she replied. “Sweet maybe, but never soft.”
He laughed wryly. “Sweet? Me? You’re the first to say it. When Da died, and my mother remarried five weeks after the funeral, it was me my mother packed off to the hiring fair. My brother Kevin was older, but she kept him with her. She said I was fierce with too much of my father’s temper to keep peace with her new husband.”
“I remember when you left. I cried. You were gone from the village for two years and three months.”
“My first master was Dan Duffy. He fed his pigs better than his hired hands. I served him for two years before being laid off and going to work for a dairy farmer nearly as harsh.”
“You never told me that.”
“There was no need, was there? I was sixteen by the time I returned, old enough to hold my own against a grown man. And wiser. Duffy was a bare-knuckle boxer. He knocked the hell out of me, but I learned a little of his craft.”
Caitlin sighed. “When your mother moved away with her family, I was afraid that I’d never see you again. I expected you to settle near your family.”
“You were my family, Caity. You were the only one I thought of. If my mother didn’t want me near her, why should I follow her to another county?”
“But your brothers and sisters . . . Surely, you—”
“I went to see them once. My sister Molly had married a sailor and moved to London. Kevin and I always rubbed each other the wrong way, and I was a stranger to the little ones. My mother made it plain that I was welcome for supper, but she had no room for me to stay the night.”
“You think she turned her back on you?”
“Aye.”
“First her, and then me.”
“Maybe.”
She went to him and touched his arm, feeling the heat of taut muscles beneath his skin. “Whether you believe it or not, Shane, I’ve always been honest with you.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Stubborn, he was stubborn. And no matter what he said, she knew he still didn’t believe her about his letters or about Derry.
She squeezed his arm. “Tell me about Cerise.”
“You don’t want me to talk about her.”
“I asked, didn’t I?”
He looked away toward a wooded hill. “She said she loved me, but when she quickened with my child, she wanted to get rid of it.”
A child! Caitlin hadn’t thought that he could say anything about Cerise that would hurt her more than she’d already been hurt, but knowing they’d conceived a child together did.
“I cannot imagine,” she said thickly. “I don’t understand a woman who wouldn’t want her own child.”
“We fought over the baby the night she died. More than just words, Caity.”
The tone of his voice sent a chill down her spine. She shuddered as a question rose in her mind, a question so terrible that the answer could destroy her future. She didn’t want to ask it, but she had to know. “Did you kill her? Did the thought of Cerise killing your babe make you do something to her?”
“I was drunk, Caity, but not that drunk. Somebody put a knife into her, but it wasn’t me.”
Relief made her knees weak. Her husband was mortal, with all the failings of flesh and blood, but he was no monster.
Caitlin tried to keep her voice steady as she asked, “Who did murder Cerise?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, nobody does. I saw the shadow of a man as he escaped out her bedroom window.”
“And you were blamed?”
“By some people. Earl Thompson for sure. Not by Fat Rose, and not by the law.”
“What about Justice?” she asked. “Does he have any idea what happened?”
“I don’t know. He was asleep in the attic. Cerise never liked him in her room. He doesn’t talk about the night his mother died. Not a word.”
“He worships you, Shane. He’d not do that if he thought you killed his mother.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Justice had a strange relationship with Cerise. They weren’t like any mother and son you’ve ever known. Maybe she wasn’t capable of being a good mother.”
“Well, he has a good father now,” Caitlin said.
“I try, Caity. Trouble is, I never had a decent one myself. It’s like the first time I got on an unbroken horse. Eventually I learned to ride him, but I took a lot of spills along the way.” Shane shuffled his boot heel along the ground, much as Caitlin had seen Justice do when the child was frustrated. “I want to do right by him. I promised his mother I would.”
Caitlin, moved by his concern for the boy, touched Shane’s arm lightly. “Maybe bringing me here was wrong for Justice. He hates me.”
“He’ll come around.”
“I’ve tried everything I can think of. What if he never accepts me? Can we be a family if he doesn’t? Or will there come a time when you start to resent me as much as he does?”
“He’s a good kid, Caity. But he’s got strange ways. I didn’t see much of him when his mother was alive. She sent him off to live with his Indian relatives a lot. After he came to Kilronan, he went nearly two months without speakin’ a word to me. Gabe he took to, right off. And when Mary came, the two of them were easy with each other. And then, inch by inch, like gentlin’ a wild colt, I got closer to him. Somebody treated him hard, and gettin’ past that takes a lot of patience.”
“But if he had an Indian family, why didn’t they take him?”
“Cerise wanted me to do it.”
“Have you talked to them? Let him visit—”
“I don’t want anything to do with them. Cerise had something against her kin. I don’t know them, and I don’t want to.”
“And?” She held his gaze without wavering. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“I want him to forget his mother. I want to forget her. Any relative of hers would just make it harder to do that.”
For a few minutes they stood there side by side, and then Shane motioned to the animals. “We’d best get back in the saddle, Caity. There’s more I want you to see.”
As they rode on, Caitlin tried not to dwell on what Shane had told her about Cerise and the child they had made together. That was in the past, and nothing could change what had happened. What mattered now, she told herself, was what she and Shane could build together.
Shane’s joy in his land was evident, and his enthusiasm was hard to resist. He seemed more open than he had been since she’d arrived, and they were able to share easy conversation about simple things that had happened in the past week.
“Derry wants a cat,” Caitlin said. “Did you know that? The captain of the riverboat had an orange calico, and Derry was fascinated by it. I thought I’d have to carry her off the boat in a trunk to keep her from stealing that cat.”
“A cat, is it?” Shane arched a dark brow and chuckled. “I mind the tomcat your father kept, the black one. It hissed at me whenever I came anywhere near it.”
“Noah? He wouldn’t hurt a flea. He was terrified of mice.” She smiled at Shane. “Derry’s got a name all picked out. She wants to call her cat McKenna.”
“That little colleen is one of a kind.”
“She calls you Papa; did you know that?”
“Does she?” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth as he reined his buckskin close to Caitlin’s mule. “I’d give her my name. You’ve only to say the word.”
Caitlin tried to ignore the tightness in her chest. “And if I did, Shane, would that mean I’m admitting she’s a child of my body? Must we fight this battle—”
“No. I could lie to you and tell you that I believe your damned story about Derry, but I won’t. My own mother lied to my father about Kevin their whole life.”
“Isn’t it possible that—”
“Show me a five-month’s babe born alive with hair and fingernails, and I’ll show you a piece of the true cross.”
“So I’m to be condemned for your mother’s folly?”
“Nope. I’ll not condemn you, Caity. I just won’t swallow what can’t go down.”
She blinked back fresh tears. “You make it difficult for me—”
“Watch Bessie’s head. Pull up on the reins,” Shane ordered. They were approaching a fast-running creek with a steep bank on the far side. “Pay attention, Caity. The creek is low. In a flood it can spill over these banks and take out hundred-year-old trees, but now it’s barely up to your mule’s knees.”
Caitlin gritted her teeth as he guided his horse into the water ahead of her. How could they ever settle their differences so long as Shane believed her a cheat and a liar? It was all useless. Shane was impossible.
He twisted in the saddle and shouted back. “Let Bessie pick her own way over the rocks. She’s surefooted.”
Caitlin held tight to the front of the saddle as the mule shifted her hip and slid into a hole in the creek bottom. Caitlin gasped as water splashed up over her boot tops and wet her skirt, but just when she thought Bessie’s legs would crumble under her, the animal struggled up into the shallows. Shane’s horse was already out of the stream and climbing the rocky incline on the far side.
Caitlin leaned forward on the mule’s withers as Bessie leaped forward and charged up the creek bank. A section of soil slid away under Bessie’s front feet, but the mule plunged ahead. They’d nearly caught up with Shane when Caitlin heard an odd noise.
The sound wasn’t loud, just a dull rattle that could have been loose seeds in a dried gourd. But in the split second before Bessie exploded under her, Caitlin’s mouth parched with fear. Shane’s horse reared up, and Caitlin’s scream was drowned in Bessie’s bray of fright.
The mule sprang straight in the air, ears laid back, head jerked up at an impossible angle. Her forelegs slammed into the earth, jarring Caitlin’s teeth and making her see stars.
Caitlin fell forward onto the mule’s withers and hung on as the animal jumped sideways, kicked again, and broke into a dead run.
Terrified, Caitlin clung to the reins and concentrated on keeping her seat. Rocks and trees sped by at an alarming rate. Bessie’s hooves threw up so much dust that Caitlin could barely keep her eyes open. At any second she expected to be thrown to the ground or smashed against a tree. One foot came out of the stirrup, but she locked her fingers into Bessie’s close-cropped mane and wouldn’t let go.
Gradually the mule’s breathing became labored, and she slowed her breakneck pace to a ragged gallop and finally a spine-crunching trot. When she tapered off into a walk, Caitlin got up the courage to pull on the only rein she had left.
Bessie plodded obediently in a circle.
“Whoa,” Caitlin pleaded. “Whoa, girl.”
The mule stopped short and hung her head.
Caitlin cautiously slid out of the saddle. Her boots touched the grass, but her legs refused to hold her. She kept sliding until she was sitting on the ground, nearly under the mule.
Bessie didn’t move. Her dark hide was soaked with sweat, and foam dribbled from her open mouth. Her white-rimmed eyes were bloodshot, and her long ears drooped forward limply.
“Poor old girl,” Caitlin murmured. Adrenaline still raced through her body. She knew she should be afraid, but she wasn’t—not for herself. All she could think of was Shane. Had he been thrown? Had the snake bitten him? It must have been a rattlesnake, she decided. What else could have panicked the animals so? What if the snake—
A horse’s high-pitched whinny caught her attention. “Shane!” she called. She scrambled up and looked around. Shane’s horse trotted toward her through a grove of trees, but the saddle was empty. “Shane?” His name came out in a croak.
Keeping one hand on Bessie’s reins, Caitlin reached out to catch Shane’s gelding. The horse didn’t seem to be hurt, other than a pair of skinned knees. His chest was wet and his eyes wild, but if the snake had bitten him, it didn’t show.
“Where’s Shane?” she demanded irrationally of the animal. If he was hurt or dead . . . An awful numbness spilled through her.
She had to find him, but she didn’t even know which way to go. Dragging both animals by the reins, she started back toward the trees where she’d first seen Shane’s buckskin.
She’d reached the stand of oaks when she heard him call her name. “Caity?”
Her fear turned to joy as she saw him. “Shane! Here! I’m here!” she shouted back. Tears blurred her eyes. Instinct demanded she run to him, but her knees were too weak to carry her.
“Caity! Are you all right?”
No man who could run like that was badly injured, she decided in the last seconds before he swept her off her feet.
“Caity.”
She wanted to tell him that she was fine. She wanted to ask him if he’d fallen off his horse. But suddenly all that mattered was that she was in his arms, and that he was kissing her as she’d never been kissed before.