Chapter Thirty-Three

“Listen to me, lass. You have to stop this weeping. You do yourself no good.”

Nancy clung to Liam’s hands and continued to sob. He wondered wearily where she got all the tears. Exhaustion nibbled at him; he’d been up with her all the night, and she drained his emotions the way a horsefly might drink blood. Add to that the emptiness he felt from Clara’s absence—a debilitating loss—and he now struggled badly.

He knew Clara had acted out of mercy, but he began to wonder if it had been wise to take Nancy from the hospital. Sure and it was a terrible place where he wouldn’t leave a diseased dog, but maybe they could have found somewhere better, somewhere she could get the care she obviously needed. He, dealing with his own demons, felt singularly unable to provide the right support.

He’d tried several times to explain to Nancy that he remembered nothing of the past they shared. She either refused to listen or failed to understand. Caught in a nightmare she continued to relive, she insisted on believing he shared it with her.

“Dead, he is dead.” Her pretty eyes, awash with tears, reached for his. “I did love him, you know, so very much.”

“Sure, and you did. Faith, who would doubt it?” The “him” being her child. Their child. It still amazed Liam he could fail to remember his own son.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen. ’Twas an accident. You were there; you saw. You know!”

“I do, Nancy. Quiet yourself now, or you’ll become ill.”

He ached to ask her questions. She was the one person from whom he might conceivably get the answers he needed about his past, their marriage, where he’d come from, and who he truly was. But the poor, mad creature remained so fragile he dared broach none of that. Just the sight of him sent her into this state.

“Where were you?” she asked piteously now. “Where, when I was in that terrible place?”

Ah, and this made a slight departure from the constant lamenting.

He resisted the impulse to smooth her fair curls. A bonny thing she was, right enough. But the woman he’d have chosen for his wife?

His heart hurt anew for Clara, who was just downstairs and who centered his life.

“I had a mishap. Remember I told you that? It’s why I recall so little of what happened to us.” He added very gently, “We sailed from Ireland, right? And before that we were in Dublin, but we’re not from Dublin, correct?”

“We had Tommy with us then. So sore hurt! The fire! Oh, Tommy…”

The lamenting began again, a circle of the same sorrows Liam had heard all the night long. He sighed deeply and tried to ease his hands, into which Nancy’s fingers had dug. Of one thing he could be certain: he had traveled with her from Ireland and was a firm presence in this nightmare she inhabited.

His head dropped over their joined hands, and despair flooded his heart. He ached to remember, but would remembering do him any good?

A whisper of sound from behind told him the room door had opened. Nancy hated the light, so he kept the drapes drawn and the lamp low, but he knew without seeing her that Clara stood behind him.

“Liam, if I might steal you for a moment—”

He got to his feet and strove to free himself from Nancy’s grasp. She protested and began to weep harder.

“Just for a moment, Nancy, and I’ll be right outside. Only give me an instant, love, before I’m back.” He felt the impact of that word—love—go through the woman who stood behind him. Could Clara truly doubt his feelings for her?

Nancy wailed when he left her; Clara never looked at him as they stepped outside into the hallway.

He drew a breath. “Listen to me, Clara—that was an endearment, only.”

“I know.”

“The poor, pitiful thing—”

“You don’t need to explain.”

He lowered his voice and whispered fiercely, “She means nothing to me.”

Clara did look at him then, a measuring glance. He wondered what she saw. His weariness? His desperation? “She’s your wife. She should mean something.”

“She should, but she doesn’t. Christ, do you think I’m proud of that? I’m in there with her clinging to me as to a life raft, and all I can think of is you.”

Compassion flooded Clara’s eyes. Maybe that made one of the things he loved best about her—her ability to not only sympathize with others but to act upon it. But no, he adored everything about her, each hair, each fleck of green in those great, gray eyes.

“Do you think you can persuade her to settle?”

“Cursed if I know—she hasn’t yet. There’s a good reason she was in that place, vile as it was. She blames herself for whatever happened to the child, though clearly ’twas a terrible tragedy.” He remembered again the garish dream—Nancy coming out into the dark after him, arguing. Fire and screaming. “If only I could recall it. This wall in my mind is like a physical pain.”

“But”—Clara voiced the truth that lay between them—“she remembers you.”

“Yes.” He couldn’t deny it. “Have you something in your father’s surgery that might calm her for a spell, just so I might catch my breath?”

“I’ll look. But we can’t keep her sedated long. It’s what I came to tell you; I have news.”

Liam had hoped she’d come to hold him in her arms, or at least touch him, and help to save his sanity.

Woodenly, she went on, “Georgina will be going to live with Theodore, and taking those of the children as will be happiest with her, such as Jimmie and probably the rest of the littlest ones.”

“Eh? She’s agreed to live in sin with the man?”

“No, they’ll be married as soon as Theodore can wrangle a license. He’s gone to arrange that now.”

“Well, good for him. He’s a man to stand by his principles, that I will say. And lucky to win her.”

“She loves him, and he loves her. That’s what truly matters.” Disconcertingly, Clara’s eyes filled with tears. “It won’t be easy for them, but better, better than—”

“Than us? God, you’re right.”

Behind the closed door, Nancy called Liam’s name.

“Please,” he whispered at Clara, “please tell me we’ve some hope.”

She lifted her hands. “Right now, it’s hard to see any.”

“Tell me you’ll be with me tonight, so my heart may go on beating.”

She shook her head. “Not a good idea. I must go and see my grandfather tomorrow—ask him for mercy.” Her face twisted in repugnance. “I don’t expect any, so meanwhile we plan. It will help to split the household. Theodore may be able to find us lodgings. He thinks I should set you, Nancy, and some of the older children up somewhere safe. He also thinks I should reside with him and Georgina.”

“You won’t do that.” Wild denial arose in Liam’s chest. “You won’t leave me that way.”

“It may be best. And”—she gestured at the door—“it’s not as if you’ll be alone.”

“Ah, Clara!” He nearly fell to his knees. “You speak about responsibility—to the children, to her.” He jerked his head at the door. “But what of your responsibility to me?” That wasn’t fair, but he no longer cared. “You raised me from the dead; you can’t abandon me.”

“Do you think it’s what I want?” Pain flared in her voice. “Do you think my agony is less than your own?”

“I don’t know, is it?” He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting worse than he did. “Tell me, Clara, tell me.”

“I still love you.” She confessed it the way a woman would confess to murder. “God help me.”

He had to close his eyes for an instant; his relief felt so sharp it hurt. “Then there must be hope for us.” He argued against her silence, “Love can accomplish most anything.”

Clara nodded at the door behind him. “Have you remembered anything? I thought seeing her, being with her, might bring things back from behind that wall you say is in your mind.”

“Nothing yet. Her sorrow is like a third presence in the room with us. I can barely think for it.”

“Does she speak of your son?”

“Of little else.”

“Yet you still don’t remember him?”

“No, and how do you think that makes me feel? There was a fire—started by accident, so she says. The child must have been badly burned and died later, during our journey. She blames herself. She says we argued.”

“About what?”

He shrugged. “Me boozing.” He smiled bitterly. “You chose a real gem for your husband, didn’t you, Clara? A drunk, a criminal, and already married.”

Clara refused to rise to that bait. “You need to remember so we can get at the truth, all of it. Stay with her tonight.”

“No.”

“Lie with her, sleep with her, and perhaps then you’ll remember.”

“Clara, please.” He did reach out then, seized her hands. Slowly he sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to her hands, like a man at prayer. “Don’t turn from me.”

“I’m not. But your wife—your true wife—needs you now. And you need to find out who you are.”

“Clara, take pity on me.”

She bent to him then. He felt her lips on his hair, quick and fierce and, when he tipped his face up, on his brow, his cheek, his lips. Raw hunger ripped through him from her mouth to his, and the taste of her penetrated to his soul.

The fleeting taste. She drew him up by his hands onto his feet and backed away, pain, desire, and regret in her eyes.

“Find out what you can,” she bade. “Do that for me.”