27
“You’ll do something about that little hoor, Mike Donovan, or I’ll scratch her eyes out and feed ‘em to the hogs!”
“I’ll handle it, Anna.”
“I’ll not be eased by smarm, mind! Do something or I will! My Davie can’t seem to stay away from that sleeveen and I’ve a mind to throw in a pair of bollocks to sweeten the deal with yon pigs!”
God’s teeth, I’ll kill that fecking Caitlin!
“She’ll not be bothering your Davie any more, Anna. I promise you. What you do with your husband’s bollocks is entirely up to you.”
“Are ya being funny, Mike? Only maybe you’ve developed a sense of humor on your travels that don’t translate here.” Anna stood with her hands on her hips, the very picture of the irate wife.
“Not at all, Anna,” he said soothingly. “I’ll take care of it, you can be sure.”
The woman snorted and stomped out of the cottage he used as an office. Fiona sat in a corner of the room, her feet up on a chair. She shook her head at him.
“Don’t you have work to do?” he asked, irritated. “Is this what went on while I was gone? A bunch of layabouts and no work?”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go there, brother dear,” Fiona said, getting slowly to her feet. “I told you Caitlin was becoming a handful.”
“Screwing the other women’s husbands in camp?” He shook his head in bafflement. “Is she just bored or barking? Or both?”
“I don’t know, but it was well beyond Gavin’s ability to handle, that’s for sure.”
“Fine, Fi. I get it. I’m back now. I’ll handle it.”
“How? Are you going to put stocks in the center of camp? I hear that worked well in America in the seventeen hundreds. Oh, wait, no it didn’t. How about stripping her and shaving her head? Although I have to say, our Caitlin is just perverse enough to enjoy the attention.”
“Good God, was she always like this?”
“You mean when Ellen was alive?” Fiona softened her tone when she mentioned the name of Mike’s dead wife. “I don’t know. Might be we just didn’t see it then.”
“Well, whatever, can you send her in to me? Do you know where she is?” Mike ran a frustrated hand through his hair and pushed aside the stack of maps on his desk. He had been trying to sort out where the existing pits and snares were located around the perimeter of camp to decide if more needed to be dug.
Gavin had earlier helpfully pointed out that there weren’t enough men in the camp to man the ones they already had.
“And John, too? If you should happen to see him.”
Fiona stopped as she was moving toward the door. “I’ll try.”
Mike glanced up in time to catch the sympathetic look she gave him. His homecoming had been everything he had expected it would be.
It hadn’t been pretty.
John was one of the very first people to watch him ride into camp, and the look on his face when he saw Mike was one that Mike would take with him to his grave. If he’d had it all to do over again, he would’ve told Aideen sorry-for-your-troubles and gone on to Wales without a second thought. Although Mike knew he couldn’t have.
But to see the look of stark betrayal on John’s face was as damaging a wound as if John had accused him of killing his father.
While he shared much of his adventures that first night and what news he had with the camp, John continued to avoid him. Whatever had existed between them before—as friends or even avuncular camaraderie—was gone, likely forever.
Mike would always be, in John’s eyes, the grownup he’d had to depend on because he was too young to go after and rescue his mother himself.
And Mike had failed. Failed him. Failed his mother.
And the killer of it was that John needed him. He needed a father and he needed everything that Mike wanted very much to give him.
But he’d have none of it.
“Right,” he said as Fiona turned away. “Just Caitlin, then.”
Sarah waited for two days. Two days of ferries arriving and leaving again. Two days of people coming from and going to Wales.
And no sign of Papin.
Sarah sat hunched on the perimeter of the pasture looking down at the harbor as she had done for two full days.
Why didn’t Papin come? All the answers to that question were immediate and unwelcome. She had been prevented. She was dead.
Sarah couldn’t stay much longer. There was no more dangerous spot for her than at this ferry crossing. But she couldn’t leave either. She stood now and turned away from the harbor and looked across the pasture westward. Fewer than fifty miles in that direction—two days of walking if she hurried—was Donovan’s Lot, and John. If Papin had come when they had planned, Sarah would be home by now. Her stomach lurched in frustration.
As the light receded from the sky, marking another day wasted, Sarah found she could wait no longer. Papin wasn’t coming, for whatever reason. It was time for Sarah to move ahead.
As soon as it was morning, she would return to town and do whatever she had to do to get back across that fucking channel.