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The air in the room fell flat, as if her statement had sucked it all out.
“None?” Michael tucked his thumbs in his belt.
Amber bit her lip, nervousness building inside. “I’m afraid I left in a hurry,” she said. Her agitation spread to her hands where she played with her skirt, folding the plaid fabric into pleats.
“It’s a long trip,” he said.
A long trip. Well, he would know that, having traveled it himself, but she could see there was more to his statement than that. He wanted to know why she was here. She couldn’t tell him. Not yet.
She smiled. “Yes.”
His eyes captured her, a million questions spilling from their glorious depths, and she stood there in awe, unable to look away.
Patrick cleared his throat. “I’m sure we can find you anything you need. Are you hungry?”
Amber glanced at him, grateful he’d broken the spell Michael cast. “Yes. I’m afraid I haven’t had the coin to buy much food.”
Michael straightened and motioned through the door, his gaze still focused on her face. “We’ll start with food. The baby will take his time anyway. He gets that from her.”
He led her from the room down the short hall and into the kitchen, where he motioned to a table and four chairs.
“Take a seat,” he said.
She obeyed and traveled her gaze around the room. It was really quite a house. The foyer was large enough for several families, and the kitchen could feed the entire town.
A worn wooden counter ran lengthwise beneath a set of tall windows spanning the length of the room. In its center lay a sink and washboard, and at its end stood the icebox. She followed Michael’s movements as he stooped, searching inside.
Married. You, Amber Dawes, are a fool. And now a jealous fool. Jealous? Yes. Jealous of a girl she’d only just met. Perhaps the luckiest girl in the world. A girl with his green-eyed baby and obviously his heart as well. Had she really thought she could arrive on his doorstep and step into his life like old times?
She squeezed her hands together. That’s exactly what she’d thought. She even hoped he’d make the child his own.
She’d fantasized about him from the first moment he strolled into the bar, his pockets empty, hunger gnawing at his flesh. He’d asked her for a bite to eat, afterward resisting every attempt she made to cajole him into her bed.
Which made that a challenge. There wasn’t a man alive who didn’t want her, or so she’d thought, and worse yet, a man so pleasant to the eye. But over time, his kindness wriggled into her heart. He gave her value. He said she was worth something, a feeling distinctly unlike all the others.
He felt around in the icebox, and she traced the twist and turn of his trim waist, the lift of his muscled arms, desire spiraling in her gut. Age had improved him and that made seeing him much harder.
Patrick seated himself at her side. Conscious of his presence, she dragged her gaze away.
“Tell me,” he said. “How did you get here?”
It was a fair question, for the town was not close to any railroad and travel was difficult.
“I lucked out,” she said. “I found a family coming this way, and they took pity on me, being as I had no money to give them.”
This was partially true. Stepping off the ship at Jacksonville unescorted, it took only minutes before a male asked if she needed help, and she’d done what she did best. Flirted. Her lip in a pout, her lashes curled, she’d poured out the story she’d concocted in her head.
Of course, the man’s wife wasn’t too happy about it, and Amber didn’t blame her for that. As a peace offering, she’d kept herself removed a fair distance during the journey, approaching only long enough to ensure she’d get where she was going.
Michael set a plate before her, and her stomach growled. Sliced ham, fluffy biscuits with a spot of red jam, and slices of fresh cheese stared up at her from the plate.
“I would say that was more than luck,” Patrick said. “God obviously took care of you.”
She glanced at him. Not God. Years of experience. Years studying people’s behavior. God didn’t care about her. God wouldn’t leave a girl barely thirteen years old to a drunken father and the lust of a middle-aged man.
She took a bite of the biscuit, choking down her thoughts.
A thump from upstairs drew Michael’s attention. “I should check on Anne and the baby,” he said. “You won’t change your mind about church?”
She dusted crumbs from her gloved fingers. When had he become so religious? “No, I’m ... too tired.” The last thing she needed was people condemning her, people deciding how good or bad she was.
He stared at her for a moment. “Amber, there’s no one here judging you, not us, and least of all, not God.”
She attempted a smile. It was like him to say that. He’d never judged her. However, God was another matter for He knew what she was, and He knew why she was here.
“Since you’re tired,” Patrick said. “You can stay home with me.”
She swallowed a bite of ham and wiped her mouth. “You don’t go to church?” That seemed curious. After all, he’d mentioned God.
He shook his head. “Not today. I must stay with my niece. She’s ill and doesn’t like to be left alone.”
Michael’s footsteps left the room, and she resisted the urge to watch him go.
“Ill? Here in this house?” Silly of her to ask. What did she know of this place or his life?
He pointed toward the ceiling. “Upstairs, in her room.”
She studied his face. He had a kind face. “Well, if I’m staying, then that’s one person here. Isn’t it? Perhaps if I meet her, then you can go.” And I’ll have an excuse to avoid the whole thing.
He opened and closed his hand on the table, the movement drawing her attention.
Soft hands. So he wasn’t a laborer. But ... she transferred her gaze along his arm to square shoulders, a lean chest, and an attractive oval face. He wasn’t that bad looking. He had gentle eyes. Why did she always notice the eyes?
His expression wavered. He questioned her motive. That was only right.
“Look,” she said. “If she hates me, I’ll back off. I promise I won’t do anything you ask me not to. I am here, after all, strictly on your charity. I have no rights to your house, your food, or your generosity.”
“I offer that freely,” he said.
His words rang loudly in her soul. No one offered anything for free, least of all for girls like herself. There was always a price.
She resisted the urge to rub her fingers across her waist. “And I am grateful.”
He nodded and didn’t speak further, so she concentrated on her food, rising afterward to carry her plate to the washbasin. She turned back toward him to find he’d risen.
“If you like, I’ll take you up,” he said.
She followed him from the room back through the foyer to the stairs, then across the upper landing. Outside a bedroom door, they halted. “What’s wrong with her if I might ask?” She met Patrick’s gaze with what she trusted was humility. She didn’t mean to pry into his private life.
Pain reflected on his face. “Her mother died. Her mother, my sister.”
His sister who he’d apparently loved a lot. He wore his sadness on his sleeve.
“She watched her mother waste away to skin and bones and has never been the same since,” he explained. “Her father sent her to live with me after she collapsed. He hoped ...” He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I am better equipped to teach her what schooling she needs.”
But this wasn’t about schooling. Amber could see that clearly.
Patrick pushed the bedroom door open, and Amber gazed inside. It had decidedly girly décor—floral wallpaper, two large vases of flowers, and a lavender-shaded lace bed coverlet.
“Hello.” Amber made an effort to speak cheerfully.
The girl, a pretty young thing with sky blue eyes and a pale complexion, gazed back from a seat on the bed. She appeared to be about fifteen.
“May I sit?” Amber indicated the bedside chair.
The girl nodded, her fingers picking at the ribbon tied around the end of her long, honey-colored braids.
“My name is Amber. What’s yours?”
“Grace.”
“Grace is a lovely name.” Amber offered her a smile.
“Grace, sweetheart, Miss Amber is Mr. and Mrs. O’Fallen’s friend,” Patrick said from behind. “She’s offered to stay with you while I go to church.”
Grace looked past her at his face. “That will be fine, Uncle.”
“If you need me ...” he said to her.
Amber acknowledged his remark with a bob of her head and turned her gaze back to the girl. “Grace, what do you like to do in your spare time?”
What could a child do locked in her room all day? Fifteen was so young to be sealed off from the world. But then look at her own life. Though the circumstances were far different—by the girl’s age, she’d already seen so much filth and degradation—the result was the same. What she’d endured as a child had often made her want to crawl into a hole and disappear.
Grace smiled, a look which brightened her countenance, and wrinkled her nose, stretching a sprinkling of freckles crossing the bridge of it.
She was such a beautiful child.
“I read a lot,” Grace said. “Do you read?”
Amber didn’t reply right away. She hadn’t had time for reading growing up, or for any schooling, for that matter. Her father hadn’t cared if she learned, nor had the parade of men who entered and left her room. “I’m afraid my reading isn’t that good,” she replied.
“You want me to read to you then?” the girl asked.
Amber gave her an encouraging smile. “I’d love that. Why don’t you pick your favorite story?”
The slats of the pew bore down uncomfortably on Patrick’s back, yet the discomfort seemed minor against his turmoil within.
Grace had taken to Amber, which was good. But it was also unusual. She’d not made any attempt to ask about other children her age since coming to live here, nor had she spoken much about her father’s absence. She’d shown no particular interest in Anne, though she was enamored of the baby. Yet with one conversation, she’d already come further out of her shell than he’d seen.
Admit it. That’s not what’s agitating you.
No, it wasn’t. He rubbed his forehead with his thumb. It was his attraction to Amber.
She was uncommonly beautiful. Not that it was wrong for him to notice. No man in his right mind could ignore that. But she stirred him physically, and he was unprepared for that. She wore her beauty like a cloak, hiding behind her sexuality as a means to an end.
Given that, what had she come here expecting to find? Obviously not Michael being married. That hadn’t stopped her from practically falling at his feet. She was used to getting her way where men were concerned, and he feared she’d met a brick wall with Michael O’Fallen.
The pew creaked with Michael’s weight, and Patrick looked up from his reverie.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Michael said to Anne. His eyes danced, a sign he was up to something.
She offered him a faltering smile. “You haven’t enough pennies.”
This only made him tease her more. “Aye?”
“Aye.” She returned the word to him in a wobbly Irish burr.
“Well, for wan penny den.”
Patrick smiled. Michael’s Irish accent always broadened when he tried to make her laugh, but she held stalwart this time.
“One penny won’t get you much,” Anne replied.
Michael wrapped an arm about her, walking his fingers down her arm. She shrugged him off.
“I’m thinking you don’t know the effect you have on the female population.”
His mirth ceased. “Anne, I ...”
Patrick glanced away. He knew exactly what female she referred to, and given her present effect on himself, could only imagine her effect on Anne. It’s not every day another woman shows up looking for your husband.
“Mr. O’Fallen, if I might have a word with you?” A heavyset man wearing a too-tight cravat poised before them. A gold watch-chain extended over his rather round belly and into a pocket in his red brocade vest. He rubbed his midriff.
“Of course, Mr. Compton,” Michael replied. He rose from the pew with a halting glance at his wife, who stared back, her gaze distant.
“I can’t tell him that,” Anne mumbled several minutes later.
Patrick coughed gently into his hand. She clearly hadn’t meant him to overhear her. “Anne? Are you all right?”
She faced him. “You remember the story Michael told you about New York?”
This reference surprised him. They’d talked about Michael’s past ages ago when the pair of them had first come to live with him. Michael had killed someone there in defense of a girl. A weird twist came to his gut, and she confirmed it.
“The girl Michael fought for is Amber.”
“Oh.”
What else was there to say? It explained so much—why she’d come looking for Michael, why she knew the power of her femininity.
“That does make this difficult. Doesn’t it?” he replied.
Difficult for her. Difficult for Michael.
“She’s in love with him.” Her voice showed her pain. She was struggling, and Michael wasn’t making it any easier.
He’d learned a lot about Michael O’Fallen in their last year together. Things always took on one of two formats with him. They were either dire emergencies he had to overcome immediately, or a big joke. And he suspected this was the latter. At least, until a few moments ago.
“Look,” Anne said. “Amber didn’t know about me before she came here. Right? She was surprised to find he was married.”
He nodded.
“So what did she want from him?”
Good question. What did she want? Shelter and safety? Was that all this was? Amber’s words returned to his thinking. I used to practically beg him to—
His cheeks warmed. Oh, goodness gracious. She’d wanted ... wanted ...
He looked down at his lap to avoid Anne’s gaze. She had obviously figured this out on her own, but he wouldn’t be the one to confirm it. Nor would he allow her to see the image now flashing in his head.
How would he ever manage to concentrate on the service?
What was she not telling him? Michael steered Anne by the elbow into a nook in the vestibule of the church and leaned against the wall, his gaze focused on her face. “Anne.” Did she think he was blind? Amber upset her, and she had a right to be upset. But she didn’t know Amber like he did. That she’d come so far to find him didn’t seem odd at all.
“‘Anne,’ what?” she returned.
He released his hold on her arm. “What’s bothering you?”
She’d had some new revelation flash over her face before the service. He’d seen it in her eyes and wanted to ask. However, Mr. Compton’s conversation took until the start of the service, and he’d had no time.
“I thought you were okay with Amber being here.” Hadn’t they talked about this?
“I was. I am.” She corrected herself. “It’s not me. It’s Patrick.”
“Patrick?” Surprised, Michael shoved his hands in his pockets. What did Patrick have to do with Amber?
“He likes her.”
Patrick likes Amber? Patrick Finnegan, the most conservative, easy-going person he’d ever met?
“He only met her hours ago,” Michaels said. “How can you possibly know?”
She smiled at him, a mocking expression. “You dear, sweet, ignorant man. I am a woman. I know these things.”
Michael scratched his head. “Well, she is attractive.”
Her knuckles impacted his arm with a jolt, and he jumped.
“I mean from a single man’s point of view.” He dodged her second blow and laughed. “Stop hitting me.”
“This is serious, Michael. She was a ... you know, and he’s ...”
Good point. They were two opposite people.
“And what do we know about why she’s here?” Anne continued. “Have you asked yourself why she came?”
Why? Hadn’t she said why?
“She said she was in trouble and had nowhere to go,” he replied.
“Nowhere but one thousand miles south to you?”
Her mouth formed a pout, and his gut sank like a stone.
I’ll always love your husband, she’d said.
Was Amber in love with him? Yet he knew the answer. She was. “I didn’t think ... I’m sorry, Anne.” Sorry that his past once again had come between them. That wasn’t fair.
She stroked his cheek with the fingers of her right hand. “I’ve already said I don’t blame you. But you need to wake up and realize there’s more to her being here than we thought. No female, not even one who’s been through what she has, travels this far unescorted, much less, seeking a man she hasn’t seen in almost two years, unless ...”
He drank in her gaze. Unless what?
“Unless you and she ...”
His face blazed hot. “No. She and I never did. I can assure you of that.” Not that Amber hadn’t tried to lure him in. Not that he hadn’t been tempted to take her up on it. But his mama’s words had held him steady.
Michael cupped Anne’s chin in his hand. “Tá mo chroí istigh ionat.” My heart is inside you.
She smiled. “Just promise me, you’ll never do that for her.”
“Reverend?”
Patrick paused on the steps of the church, the afternoon sun hot on his head, and allowed a rather rotund woman to descend. The woman, a hanky stuffed into her curled palm, panted and wheezed on her way down the steps, her face turning red with the effort.
“Mrs. Compton,” he said with a practiced smile.
“Reverend, it is so good to see you today.” She wiped at her lip with the handkerchief. “And most fortunate that you came to the service. How is your poor, little niece?”
Patrick kept his face straight, despite the hated reference to his “poor, little niece.” He neither wanted pity for himself nor for her.
“She’s well,” he said.
Mrs. Compton dabbed the handkerchief across her damp brow. “So glad to hear it.”
I’ll bet. It wasn’t that he disliked Mrs. Compton, but he’d met woman of her ilk before. They said the right things to your face, but only to spin the wheels of gossip. His move here had caused enough of that. He’d heard the whispers.
That strange man in the big house ...
They say he keeps his niece locked up in her room.
I hear she has a nervous disposition.
He had no time or patience for such gossip.
Mrs. Compton grasped his arm in a vice grip, her pudgy fingers bleeding his skin white, and he gritted his teeth.
“I wanted to ask you about Friday.” Her voice was a coo, belying her grip on his arm.
He winced. “Friday?”
“Yes, Mr. Compton and I are having a dinner party to welcome our nephew to town for a visit. We see him so rarely. And I understand your poor, little niece keeps you tied at home, but I thought perhaps you and Mr. and Mrs. O’Fallen could spare me an evening? Hetta, our maid, is coming over to watch the baby, and I can ask her to check in on the girl.”
Check in on her and report back to you. He stared down at his arm, which had begun to throb.
“Now,” she continued. “I know it’s uncomfortable for you to be out alone, you being single and all, so why don’t you bring a date?”
A date. He stuffed down an urge to laugh. So that’s her game. As if being single was blight on all mankind.
“Mrs. Compton.” Michael spoke from behind, and she spun around, her eyes bright and glowing.
“Young man, you are coming Friday. Aren’t you? Did Mr. Compton speak to you?”
Michael inserted himself at her side, gently steering her down the steps. “Absolutely, he did, and we won’t miss it.”
“But do you think ... just maybe, you might sing a little something?”
Patrick couldn’t help the grin that rose on his face. Who was smoother? Michael? Or Mrs. Compton?
“Now, Mrs. Compton,” Michael replied. “You know I have to protect my throat. Too much singing harms the vocal cords.”
“Oh dear.” She fluttered her hanky before her face. “I suppose you’re right. Seven o’clock then?”
“Yes, seven is perfect.” He replied.
“We so look forward to seeing you.”
Her husband, a wide smile on his fleshy face, took her arm, and she cast a lingering gaze over her shoulder as he pulled her away.
Patrick stepped to Michael’s side. “Thank you for that.”
Michael laughed. “You looked like you needed saving.”
“I’m afraid I did. She was about to launch into her spiel about me being single. She even told me to bring a date.”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “That’s not such a bad idea.”
Patrick paused in his descent. Et tu, Brutus?
“Why don’t you bring Amber?”
Amber? No, that wouldn’t do. There were a million reasons why it wouldn’t. Foremost, she was a woman of some experience. But would God want him to judge her for that? Or did he really believe in forgiveness?
A gleam appeared in Michael’s eye.
I don’t like that look.
“Now, why not?” Michael asked.
A scuffle on the steps brought Anne into their conversation, the baby squirming in her arms. “Why not what?” she asked.
Michael took the baby from her, balancing him against his chest. “It seems Mrs. Compton wants Patrick to bring a date. I simply suggested he ask Amber.”
She was way too enthusiastic for Patrick’s taste.
“That’s a good idea,” she said. “You should have more fun, Pat.”
Patrick tugged at his collar, which suddenly pressed too tight. Fun for whom? Mrs. Compton? Or you and Michael?
“Come now,” Michael said. “It’s one evening. Amber, I’m sure, will be a perfect lady. We aren’t setting you up for life, you know.”
Patrick offered a weak smile. Somehow, it felt like it.