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Her bedroom was the fourth door on the upper landing. The first door was the nursery, a tiny room set in the wall right at the top of the stairs. The second door, naturally, was Michael and Anne’s bedroom. The third belonged to Grace. Patrick’s bedroom was somewhere to the left of hers, down a short hall, which couldn’t be seen from the bottom floor.
The furniture in her room was sparse. Except for an enormous four poster bed, which she couldn’t imagine toting up those stairs, there was only an armchair to and a tiny round table set with an oil lamp.
She lit the lamp and seated herself in the chair. Foolish to ask Michael that question. What were you thinking, Amber Dawes? How divine he was. How being with him would solve everything. How it would never happen now.
She wasn’t thinking at all. She’d simply reacted. When would she learn?
A knock at the door broke into her thoughts, and she raised her gaze. Her gut sank at the sight of Anne in the doorway. He’s told her what I said, and now I’m out on my ear.
But Anne instead, moved over to the bed and laid out several dresses, draped over her arms. “I brought you some things,” she said. Beneath the dresses she also had underclothes and a nightdress.
Amber’s guilt increased. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Pish-posh. You can’t keep wearing that.” Anne nodded toward her current dress. “Besides, these don’t fit me.”
She lifted one, a pretty orange and brown plaid with a swooping neckline. “Stand up.”
Amber smiled tentatively, and Anne swathed her in the dress.
“See, it’s perfect,” Anne said. She laid that one down and lifted the next.
Amber caught her breath at sight of the silk gown. “I can’t take that from you.”
“Of course you can. With your hair and complexion, you’ll look perfect in it. I thought you could wear it Friday.”
The dress glimmered, its burgundy folds catching the light.
“I think though,” Anne continued. She held it up to Amber’s waist. “I think I’ll have to let it out a bit in the middle.” Her face didn’t flicker.
Amber held her breath. “Anne, I ...”
Anne laid the dress down. “How far along are you?”
Amber slumped. “Five months.”
“You carry it well. No one else has noticed. Tell me, is that why you ran?”
Amber turned around. She couldn’t look her in the eye. “Part of it.” The air grew tight, and her hands jittered. She folded them together.
“If I might give you a word of advice.”
Amber lifted her gaze. Advice? Stay away from my husband. That’s what was coming. Or, you’re not welcome here. We don’t want your kind.
“Of course,” she said softly. She braced herself.
Anne approached her, her arms crossed beneath her breasts. “No man will ever fill the emptiness you have inside. Michael O’Fallen is a wonderful husband, and I adore him. But he isn’t what keeps me happy. In fact, at times, he drives me mad. I don’t care if you’ve had one man or hundreds of men. Strength on the inside comes from only one place.”
“God. That’s what you’re going to say. Isn’t it?”
Anne seemed taken aback by her tone. She hadn’t meant it to sound harsh, yet how dare Anne push religion on her like that.
“I appreciate all you’ve done.” Amber moderated her words. “I appreciate the roof over my head and the food you’ve shared. And now the dresses. I’m in no place to turn away charity. But you’ve no idea what it’s been like being me. Having to lay flat for some fellow when you don’t know his name and he smells bad or he’s overweight, when that’s the last thing you want to do. So don’t tell me God was there and cared because He wasn’t, else I’d not be in this mess.”
She clamped her jaws shut. She’d said too much.
Anne left without speaking another word, and Amber moved the dresses from the bed, lying down with her palms curled over her belly.
God. Patrick said to look inward. Anne said God would fill her.
But they didn’t understand. All she’d ever heard of God was condemnation, old ladies with fancy carriages, and tight shoes who toted leather-bound Bibles, or street-corner preachers railing against Irish Catholics. Catholics against Protestants. Protestants against Catholics. She didn’t need either one. Both sides treated her exactly the same.
There was no place for God in the life of a whore. You lived for those brief minutes when you were actually alone, for a laugh or two with a girlfriend, who’d found herself in your same shoes. You lived for men like Michael, the rare ones that considered your feelings over their own.
Anne would never understand that. She didn’t know what it was like to be at the bottom, to lose it all. She had no idea what it felt like for a man you didn’t want to take what wasn’t his to have.
Amber reveled in her melancholy, her poor mood stretching out into the afternoon and evening. She picked at her supper, any appetite she usually had gone, and crawled into bed wishing for some semblance of relief. At least asleep her thoughts would cease, the constant torment over how low she was.
But instead, her head filled with images from the past. Groping hands. Sodden breath. And a gnawing emptiness inside that Michael was supposed to fill, only now wouldn’t.
She awoke drenched in sweat, her hair stuck to her face, and the borrowed nightdress encircling her armpits. Young Michael’s unhappy cry shot through the walls followed by the creak of a door, and muffled voices offering comfort.
Normal sounds that somehow made the emptiness broader. Her baby kicked, and she rested a hand on her belly. Even he was restless tonight.
She rose and wandered to the doorway, glancing left toward the nursery. Light glowing from the room enhanced the shadows moving back and forth with someone’s footsteps.
The baby let out another wail, and Michael and Anne’s bedroom door opened. She dashed back to her own, but peered out. Michael emerged, half-clothed, his shirt loosened, his bare chest exposed. Her insides coiled, and the hunger which consumed her rose again.
He entered the nursery, taking the baby from Anne and tucking him to his chest. “Go to bed, a chroí,” he said, his voice hazy with sleep. “I will handle it.” Anne, her hand over her mouth, scuffed her feet back to the bedroom.
Amber willed herself to remain in place after the door closed. She had no right to spy. It wasn’t her child or her business. Yet she edged ever nearer, his being there a magnet. She was within arm’s reach when his words came rippling out.
“Seoithín, seo hó, mo stór é, mo leanbh,
Mo sheoid gan cealg, mo chuid gan tsaoil mhór
Seothín seo ho, nach mór é an taitneamh
Mo stóirín na leaba, na chodladh gan brón.”
Hush-a-bye, baby, my darling, my child
My flawless jewel, my piece of the world
Hush-a-bye, baby, isn't it a great joy
My little one in bed without any sorrows.
The beautiful sound that emerged from Michael’s throat stunned her senses, spreading around her heart until a sob pushed at her throat. She swallowed it, intent on the euphony that saturated her mind, and pressed closer, the ridges and curves of the doorframe reforming her palm.
Michael reclined in a rocking chair, the baby sleeping on his shoulder. The tail of his shirt had caught between the spindles, revealing tanned skin and tantalizing trail of chest hair. Overcome, she gasped.
He turned his head, his face growing still and tiny lines creasing the corners of his eyes. “Amber?” he whispered.
Her sob returned, choking her. Sing to my child. Sing those words for me. But she had no right to ask that. No right to even think such. Spinning about, she dashed back toward her room. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t look him in the eye.
Yet her hand on the bedroom door, he called her name again, and she halted, her grip tightening on the knob.
He approached from behind, his breath blowing warm on her neck, and touched her shoulders, turning her about. The emerald gleam in his captivating eyes bore deep in her soul. “Amber, what’s wrong?” he asked.
She gaped at him, looming there so large and real, his fragrance lapping at her senses. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He grimaced. “I’m sorry about that. The baby ... I don’t know what was wrong with him tonight.”
She didn’t respond, her words thick on her tongue. “Michael, you and I ... We ...”
Longing swept over her heart. Longing to draw on his strength, to know what it was like to be his. She raised a hand to his jaw, trailing her fingers down the plane of his face and cupped his cheek. She pulled his mouth down to hers, seeking solace in the taste of him. Her body shivered at his unguarded response, and she drove in harder. Desperation clawed at her. A kiss was not enough. She would have more. She would give herself to him and capture his essence.
He gave a grunt and yanked away, wiping his lips. He stepped back on the landing. “No, Amber, this is wrong.”
But the feel of him, the smell of him, lingered. “Please,” she said. “Be with me.” With me. Love me.
He retreated further. “I’m married, Amber, and I love my wife. There is nothing between us. You know that.”
“But I need you. I came here for you,” she said.
“No, Amber, you didn’t.” His voice was quiet, docile.
Tears strung her lashes.
“You came for an image of me that doesn’t exist,” he said. “I’m not the young, scared boy you knew in New York. You wanted to know what happened to me, so I’ll tell you. I found myself always running and unable to stop. The further I ran, the further I still had to go, until eventually I found myself looking into the eyes of a girl I loved who didn’t know me.”
A girl I loved. Anne.
“Two people prayed for me,” he continued. “They told me about Christ, about walking by faith and trusting him as Mama did after Papa died, as she did raising me without money in her pockets or a steady job. They told me how Jesus would always be with me, guiding my footsteps. But most of all, they told me that all the love in the world combined can’t compare to the size of the love He has to give.”
She sank against the wall, her hands at her sides. “But Michael. I love you.”
He re-approached. Standing a hair’s breath away, he laid a hand on her cheek. “I owe you a lot, and I’ve never forgotten you. I always wondered what became of you, if you got out. But Amber, I love my wife, and what you feel for me isn’t what you think it is.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead, and she shut her eyes, tears sliding down her face. He rejected her. For his wife.
He stepped back and as he did, Anne appeared. She met Amber’s gaze.
“Come,” she said. “We need to talk.”
Amber’s cheeks flamed, and words failed on her tongue. Betrayal. She’d betrayed Michael and his wife with her behavior. She had no rights here, and now, they had no reason to let her stay.
“I’ll go,” she said. That’s what Anne had come to say anyhow, to ask her to leave. It was better if she offered first.
Anne flicked her hair over her shoulder. “You were right about Michael.”
Amber startled. Not what she expected her to say. “I ... I was?”
“You thought by coming here, he’d help you, and you were right. He’d never turn you away. He’s too kind for that. You won’t know this, but I rejected him. I had an accident and lost my memory. We were married at the time. But all I could remember of him were flashes, so I convinced myself he was evil.” She quirked a strained smile. “Imagine that. Michael O’Fallen, evil.”
Amber’s thoughts about Anne resurfaced. Maybe she was wrong. She wadded her nightdress in her fingers. “Is ... that why he sang to you?” She braved the question.
“Did Patrick tell you about that?”
Amber nodded.
“Yes, he sang to win my heart because he loved me.” Anne paused. “I, of all people, understand why you love him.”
Amber’s heart pushed into her throat, her doubts swirling around her. No one could know how she felt. No one who hadn’t lived there, been forced to do those things.
“I can’t imagine what your life was like, what you’ve had to endure,” Anne continued. “But we told the truth when we said you’re welcome here. God loves you, and He offers you healing and forgiveness.”
But that couldn’t be. God wouldn’t forgive her after what she’d done. There was no forgetting all those men who entered her door. How could He, or anyone else, forget that? Plus, now she’d kissed Michael, Anne’s husband. No wife would forgive for that.
Yet the question perched on her tongue, falling out. “Do you ... forgive me?” She jumped at her own voice. She should never have asked. Of course, she didn’t. Anne would throw her out now, and she’d end up back on the street.
The silence broadened in the room. “For kissing him?”
Amber’s cheeks heated.
“I forgive you,” she replied, her face blank. She reached for the knob, turning her back.
Amber called out to her. “Anne.”
Anne cast a look over her shoulder.
“I ... I’m sorry.”
With a nod, she left.
Amber stood there, her hand on the mound of her stomach. She was sorry, but just the same she’d never forget it. Never forget how it felt for just one moment to be solely his.
Michael looked up as Anne entered the bedroom. She swept around the bed and seated herself on her side of the mattress, but kept her back turned away from him. He waited. He had no room to speak and deserved whatever she threw at him.
The minutes stretched out, interminable.
“I’ve forgiven her,” she said at last.
Forgiveness. It was like her to do that. But it was also something he’d have to earn.
“Though I really wanted to toss her down the stairs,” she continued. She spun about.
He couldn’t read her face in the surrounding darkness.
“All the women who have followed you around, made eyes at you, begged for one moment of your time, all those who weep and cry when you sing or write you silly love letters, I’ve never been jealous of any of them.”
He cleared his throat. “Why not?”
A shaft of light caught her eyes. He clamped his jaws shut and stared into their blazing depths.
She rested her hands in her lap. “Because your heart is mine. You love me.” She glanced away. “Now ... now I am eaten up with it. Jealous of your past with her. Jealous of her infatuation with you. Jealous of her beauty. But ...” She twisted sideways. “But call it women’s intuition or God speaking to my heart, call it foolishness, if you will, I simply cannot throw her out.”
“Anne ...” He risked calling her name.
She didn’t acknowledge it, and a lump formed in his throat.
“I’m sorry. I was unprepared. I only thought ...” he continued.
She whirled on him. “You didn’t think because that is how you are. The great Michael O’Fallen. I’ve lived with other people’s image of you, their worship of your every footstep, and I have tolerated it. Celebrated it even at times. But I will not ... will not share your bed.”
Share your bed with Amber. The thought wedged itself between them.
She fastened her gaze on his face. “Make love to me.”
He swallowed hard. There was no affection in her words, only anger, and she was right to be angry.
“Make love to me. Prove you’re mine, then promise me you’ll never do that again.”
He reached for her and with one hand on her arm, pulled her against him. She lay there rigid, unflinching. There would be no romance this time, no poetry or sweet Gaelic phrases, nothing but the physical evidence he was married to her and she was married to him.
He draped himself over her, the muscles of his chest brushing the tip of her breasts, and as he did, met her gaze.
“Promise me,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Promise me, Michael.”
He ran a hand down her cheek, swiping a tear. “I promise.”