17

“Ana, please. You must come down. It’s been two days.”

Ana burrowed deeper into the bed covers. Tillie’s pleas early that morning had gone unanswered; she had no intention of heeding Amelia’s now.

“Won’t you at least tell me what’s wrong? How will I ever be able to help you if—”

“You can’t help,” Ana interrupted, poking her head out from under the covers. Her beloved watch was gone, and with it her last link to her family. “No one can.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe if you would talk to me, tell me what happened.” More knocking. “Ana?”

Sighing, Ana slid from under the covers and padded to the door and drew back the lock. She didn’t wait for it to open, however. She trudged back to the bed and climbed up in. Behind her, the door creaked long and low.

“There you are. I’ve been so worried.”

Guilt compounded the weight burdening Ana’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, Amelia. I never meant to cause you or anyone else here any worry.”

“It’s not just us here at the boardinghouse, dear,” Amelia said. Her feet swished softly across the rug until she reached the corner of Ana’s bed. “That poor young man from the church has been simply beside himself.”

At first, Ana thought she meant Father Ed, but quickly righted her thinking. “Derry has been here?”

“Oh yes. Twice, in fact. And when we told him that you refused to come downstairs . . .” A frown marred her pretty brow as she sat. “Oh, Ana, won’t you tell me what happened?”

Tears sprang to her eyes at the concern in Amelia’s voice—and just when she thought she’d exhausted them all. At her sniff, Amelia pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it into her hand.

“Thank you,” Ana said, unable to look at Amelia for fear that she’d erupt in an onslaught of fresh weeping.

The bed dipped and rocked as Amelia rose. A moment later, water wrung from a towel into the washbasin, dribbled and splashed. Amelia returned and dabbed the cloth to Ana’s forehead and eyes.

“There now. You’re bound to feel better after you’ve washed your face.”

If only her cares could be vanquished with the swipe of a cloth. Still, she mumbled her thanks and then waited while Amelia fetched a ribbon for her hair. Surprisingly she did feel better with her tangled locks drawn back from her cheeks. Enough so that she could meet Amelia’s gaze without fear of breaking.

Amelia smiled and gave her knee a satisfied pat. “There. Told you so.” She lifted a slender brow. “Well? Can you talk?”

She pushed up in the bed. She owed it to Amelia to tell her a part of what had happened. Beginning with the day Ellen had been burned by the cauldron, she proceeded to fill her in on her conversations with Eoghan, up to and including his relationship to Cara, but leaving out the part about the intruder. That was still too raw. Too personal.

When she finished, Amelia shook her head. “But I don’t understand, dear. Why did his trying to help you find your uncle upset you so?”

She clenched her jaw. “My uncle hated my family, Amelia. He and Ma had some terrible rows after Da died. I remember them arguing once, and him threatening to kick us all off the farm.”

Her eyes widened. “Could he do that?”

Ana shook her head. “I have no idea. I only know that I dreaded seeing him come around after that. I was always afraid he’d come to take our home.”

“And now Derry’s actions . . . I mean, Eoghan,” she corrected, “his actions have nigh posted a sign above your head telling your uncle how to find you.” Her hand fluttered to her throat. “No wonder he was beside himself.”

Compassion soaked her eyes when she again looked at Ana. “I can’t blame you for being so angry, dear, but have you stopped to consider his side?”

“His side!”

She quickly reached out to cover Ana’s fisted hands. “You said he wrestled with the decision for several days. It must have cost him a great deal to make such a concession, especially since, in his mind, Cara betrayed him.”

“So you’re saying what he did was a good thing?” Ana asked.

Her lips twisted in a wry smile. “I’m saying, dear girl, that you must mean an awful lot to that young man for him to heed your advice—or did you not tell him he should seek to reconcile with his sister?”

Wary of the gleam in Amelia’s eyes, Ana drew back her hand. “Aye, that was my intent. But it’s different with my uncle and me. He is a harsh, angry man. Cara is nothing like that, and she loves her brother, if he would just give her a chance to prove it.”

“Give her a chance, hmm?” Her gaze lowered. “Ana, could it be that the same might be said for your uncle?”

A shiver traveled Ana’s spine. “I was terrified of my uncle.”

“You were a child,” she replied gently. “Perhaps you had reason to be afraid, but perhaps”—she leaned close and lowered her voice to a whisper—“your fear was composed mostly of fantasies created in a little girl’s mind.”

Ana turned her face away. The memories, the nightmares—she refused to believe they were a figment of her imagination.

“Regardless, dear,” Amelia continued, her warm hand covering Ana’s knee, “don’t you think you at least owe it to your uncle to see if he’s changed? After all, what harm could he do?”

What harm could he do?

Though she repeated the words inwardly, they brought no calm or sense of assurance. Instead, a chill crept over Ana.

Eoghan paced the floor in front of the fireplace in the boardinghouse’s parlor. Waiting had never been his strongest virtue. Waiting patiently was absent altogether. Every creak of the door had him turning expectantly, every footfall, craning until he thought his head would snap off.

“Ain’t no good to go on pacing like that, ya know,” Laverne said, her plump fingers working a needle through the sock she was darning. “Amelia said she would talk to her and let you know.”

Framed in the light streaming from the window, she might have made a pleasing enough picture were she not the object of Eoghan’s current frustration.

“Perhaps if you had just let me speak to Ana myself, none of this pacing would have been necessary.”

“What, give you leave to burst into a lady’s bedchamber, unannounced and unwelcome?” Her lips puckered in a frown. “I think not. Besides, whatever ya done to make Miss Ana so cross with ya, well, I’m thinking trespassing where ya wasn’t wanted may not have been the best way to go about fixing the situation.”

Another argumentative female. Seemed everywhere he turned of late, he encountered another one. Eoghan threw his hands into the air and resumed pacing, but not for long. A light step sounded on the stair and then Amelia entered, followed by a somewhat pale Ana.

Eoghan’s heart lurched in his chest.

“There, ya see?” Laverne left her seat by the window and crossed to wrap a plump arm around Ana’s slender shoulders. “I knew Amelia would be able to sort things out.”

“Laverne, would you be so kind as to fetch these two some tea? They have a few things that still need to be worked out.”

“Just the two, ma’am?”

Amelia nodded. “I’ll take mine in the library.”

She ducked her head and then scurried out to do Amelia’s bidding, her brows drawn in a puzzled frown.

“Now,” Amelia said, fixing them both with a stern look, “you two have a lot to discuss. I’ll leave you to it, though I trust”—here she doubled the intensity of her glower—“that you’ll each share openly with the other.”

At their mumbled agreement, she smiled, gave Eoghan’s arm a pat and Ana’s cheek a kiss, and then slipped out the doors.

Not only was Ana pale, she had dark smudges beneath her eyes. And she looked thin. Though she met his gaze, she moved no farther into the room. It took a moment for him to realize it was the fire and not his presence that kept her rooted to her spot near the door.

“Ana, I’m sorry—”

He broke off as Laverne’s heavy tread thumped down the hall. Laden with a tray bearing a flowered teapot and two cups, she swung into the parlor, deposited the tray onto the table in front of the settee, then peered back and forth at them both.

“There now, that should do it. If there’s anything else you need—”

“We’ll let you know,” Ana said.

Still, Laverne hesitated. Finally, she gave a stiff nod that nearly dislodged the mobcap on her head and backed out of the room. “All right then. I’ll leave you two to your business. Holler if you need anything.”

The doors slid closed with a snap, leaving Eoghan alone with Ana for the first time in days.

It was not an entirely comfortable feeling.

He moved to the fireplace, scooted one of the chairs away from its fiery warmth, and placed it so that it sat catty-corner to the one Laverne had occupied at the window. Motioning toward it, he invited Ana to join him.

Once she was seated, he claimed the other chair, neither one breaking the silence that stretched between them. Finally, he cleared his throat and finished the apology Laverne had interrupted with her entrance.

“Ana, you have every right to be angry. I should never have gone meddling in your business. Maybe if I’d left things alone, you wouldn’t have been attacked. I’m sorry.”

His heart lurched at the sudden tears that sprang to her already reddened eyes. She reached out her hand and laid it lightly over his arm. “I don’t think so, Eoghan. The intruder in my room—I think he was after something specific.”

“What do you mean?”

Her jaw worked and she ground out, “My father’s pocket watch. It’s missing. I didn’t notice until after you left.”

His mind whirled. Could the intruder simply have been a thief? “The watch . . . was it valuable?”

“Only to me.”

His stomach sank. So, Ana was the target. A part of him had hoped the entire incident an unhappy coincidence.

“You mustn’t blame yourself, Eoghan. Were it not for you, that night could have resulted in far worse—” She broke off and, after a moment, opened her hand. In her palm lay a green feather.

He quirked an eyebrow. “What’s that?”

“I snatched it from the intruder’s cap when we fought. I thought it might help you find him.”

He nodded and slid the feather into a pocket of his coat. “Still doesn’t excuse the other thing,” he mumbled, reluctant to even voice it.

“You were only trying to help.”

He’d pondered for the last two days what he would say once he saw Ana again, and determined to speak the words, he gave a stubborn shake of his head. “Aye, and quite a mess I made of that, now, didn’t I?”

Instead of agreeing with him, she smiled, robbing the next words right off his tongue. He covered her small, delicate hand, still lying so gently on his arm, and gave it a squeeze. He had to know . . .

“What happened, Ana? To your ma and Brigid . . . the fire . . . There’s more you haven’t told anyone. Isn’t that so?”

A shadow fell over her, followed by swift, fleeting sorrow.

She bowed her head, her long hair tumbling forward over her shoulder. “It was so long ago.”

“But it haunts you still?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted.

Though he longed to brush the tendrils from her forehead, he resisted. She’d tell him if she could, and if not, he’d not repeat the mistake of pressing too hard, too soon.

“My uncle was my father’s half brother. Unmarried. No children.”

He watched, still and silent, as she was drawn into the memories. Her face, normally so expressive, went blank, and pain filled her soft brown eyes.

“We never saw much of him when Da was alive. Only after he was killed did he dare come around. I think it was because he was always a little intimidated by my da.”

“How did your daed die?” Eoghan asked gently.

“A farming accident. That’s all Ma would ever say, though I remember some men carrying him in, and one of them going out to put down one of the horses after.” A shudder shook her. “My uncle started showing up a lot after that, always carrying on about the farm being too big for Ma to run by herself, and how women shouldn’t be allowed to own land. She never budged, but he kept coming by. Eventually I think Ma got to where she was afraid of him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling I had, maybe? I couldn’t put my finger on it then and certainly wouldn’t try now, so many years later. It’s just . . .” Her pretty features twisted. “I wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust him.”

Eoghan leaned forward in the chair. “What do you mean?”

She stared at him, her eyes deep wells, beckoning to him. “I managed to get out of the house the night of the fire, but Ma and Brigid . . .” Her eyes fluttered shut. “I don’t even remember going to the church on the outskirts of our village. I was burned, and in shock, yet something drew me. The priest there found me, tended to my wounds, and when I was well enough to travel . . .”

She fell silent, and he sensed she was reliving those childhood moments. Helpless, he waited, afraid to speak for fear of startling her.

“Father Joseph changed my name and bought me passage on a ship bound to America.”

He drew a sharp breath. “Changed your name? Why?”

“At the time, he said it was to keep me safe. I didn’t understand then, but now I think it was because he didn’t trust my uncle.”

“So he sent you to America? A child, alone, in a foreign country?”

“Not alone,” Ana said. “He contacted a friend, some man I had never met. He traveled with me to an orphanage run by another Irish priest here in New York.”

“Who was this man? Do you remember?”

She gave a slow nod. “But Father Joseph, he bade me never to tell who it was that helped me. To this day, I’ve never breathed his name to another living soul.”

Frustrated, Eoghan dragged his fingers through his hair. “Your uncle, then. You remember his name?”

The muscles along her jaw bunched. This time, her nod was stiffer. “Aye. I remember him.”

“Well?” he prompted, though his chest tightened even before she opened her mouth to speak.

“McCleod. My uncle’s name is Brion McCleod.”

Eoghan’s stomach sank. The Fenians had paid to have a man by that name delivered from the barge office. He’d seen the note. Worse, he had personally delivered the message.

And that meant that he, and he alone, had set loose upon the city—and the woman he’d grown to love—the one man who still haunted her dreams.