Born in Shame (26 page)

“All right, I won't. And I have been honest, right from the start.”

“No more to me than to yourself,” he shot back. He was bleeding from a hundred wounds and could do nothing to stop it.

“I have.” She could only meet temper with temper, and hurt with hurt. “I told you all along there was no courtship, no future, and never pretended otherwise. I slept with you,” she said, her voice rising in panic, “because I wanted you, but that doesn't mean I'll change everything for you.”

“You said you loved me.”

“I do love you.” She said it in fury. “I've never loved anyone the way I love you. But it isn't enough.”

“For me it's more than enough.”

“Well, not for me. I'm not you, Murphy. I'm not Brianna, I'm not Maggie.” She whirled away, fighting the urge to pound her fists on the stones until they bled. “Whatever was taken away from me when my mother told me just who I am, I'm getting it back. I'm taking it back. I have a life.”

Eyes dark and churning, she spun back to him. “Do you think I don't know what you want? I saw your face when you walked in this morning and I was cooking breakfast. That's what you want, Murphy, a woman
who'll tend your house, welcome you in bed, have your children, and be content year after year with gardens and a view of the valley and turf fires.”

She cut to the core of what he was. “And such things are beneath the likes of you.”

“They're not for me,” she countered, refusing to let the bitter words hurt her. “I have a career I've put on hold long enough. I have a country, a city, a home to get back to.”

“You have a home here.”

“I have a family here,” she said carefully. “I have people who mean a great deal to me here. But that doesn't make it home.”

“What stops it?” he demanded. “What stops you? You think I want you so you can cook my meals and wash my dirty shirts? I've been doing that fine on my own for years, and can do it still. I don't give a damn if you never lift a hand. I can hire help if it comes to that. I'm not a poor man. You have a career—who's asking you not to? You could paint from dawn till dusk and I'd only be proud of you.”

“You're not understanding me.”

“No, I'm not. I'm not understanding how you can love me, and I you, and still you'd walk away from it, and from me. What compromises do you need? You've only to ask.”

“What compromise?” she shouted, because the strength of his need was squeezing her heart. “There's no compromise here, Murphy. We're not talking about making adjustments. It's not a matter of moving to a new house, or relocating in a different city. We're talking continents here, worlds. And the span between yours and mine. This isn't shuffling around schedules to share chores. It's giving up one way for something entirely
different. Nothing changes for you, and everything changes for me. It's too much to ask.”

“It's meant. You're blinding yourself to that.”

“I don't give a damn about dreams and ghosts and restless spirits. This is me, flesh and blood,” she said, desperate to convince both of them. “This is here and now. I'll give you everything I can, and I don't want to hurt you. But when you ask for more, it's the only choice I have.”

“The only choice you'll see.” He drew back. His eyes were cool now, with turmoil only a hint behind the icy blue. “You're telling me you'll go, knowing what we've found together, knowing what you feel for me, you'll go to New York and live happily without it.”

“I'll live as I have to live, as I know how to live.”

“You're holding your heart back from me, and it's cruel of you.”

“I'm cruel? You think you're not hurting me by standing here and demanding I choose between my right hand and my left?” Abruptly chilled, to the bone, she wrapped her arms around herself. “Oh, it's so easy for you, damn you, Murphy. You have nothing to risk, and nothing to lose. Damn you,” she said again, and her eyes were bright and bitter and seemed not quite her own. “You won't find peace any more than I will.”

With the words searing on her tongue, she whirled and ran. The buzzing in her ears was temper, she was sure of it. The dizziness outraged emotions, and the pain in her heart a violent combination of both.

But she felt as though someone were running with her, inside her, as desperately unhappy as she, as bitterly hopeless.

She fled across the fields, not stopping when she reached Brianna's garden and the dozing dog leaped up
to greet her. Running still when she stumbled into the kitchen and a startled Brianna called her name.

Running until she was closed in her room alone, and there was nowhere left to run.

 

Brianna waited an hour before she knocked softly on the door. She expected to find Shannon weeping, or sleeping off the tears. The single glimpse Brianna had had of her face as she'd streaked in and out of the kitchen spoke of misery and temper.

But when she opened the door, she didn't find Shannon weeping. She found her painting.

“The light's going.” Shannon didn't bother to look up. The sweep of her brush was passionate, frenetic. “I'll need some lamps. I've got to have light.”

“Of course. I'll bring you some.” She stepped forward. It wasn't the face of grief she saw, but the face of someone half wild. “Shannon—”

“I can't talk now. I have to do this, I have to get it out of my system once and for all. I have to have more light, Brie.”

“All right. I'll see to it.” Quietly she closed the door behind her.

 

She painted all night. She'd never done that before. Never needed to or cared enough. But she'd needed this. It was full morning when she stopped, her hands cramped, her eyes burning, her mind dead. She hadn't touched the tray Brianna had brought up sometime during the night, nor was she interested in food now.

Without looking at the finished canvas, she dropped her brushes in a jar of turpentine, then turned and tumbled fully dressed into bed.

It was nearly evening again before she woke, stiff, groggy. There'd been no dreams this time, or none she
remembered, only the deep, exhausted sleep that left her feeling hulled out and light-headed.

Mechanically she stripped off her clothes, showered, dressed again, never once looking at the painting she'd been driven to start and finish within one desperate night. Instead, she picked up the untouched tray and carried it downstairs.

She saw Brianna in the hall, bidding goodbye to guests. Shannon passed without speaking, going into the kitchen to set aside the tray and pour the coffee that had been made for her hours before.

“I'll make fresh,” Brianna offered the moment she came in.

“No, this is fine.” With something close to a smile, Shannon lifted the cup. “Really. I'm sorry, I wasted the food.”

“Doesn't matter. Let me fix you something, Shannon. You haven't eaten since yesterday, and you look pale.”

“I guess I could use something.” Because she couldn't find the energy to do anything else, she went to the table and sat.

“Did you have a fight with Murphy?”

“Yes and no. I don't want to talk about that right now.”

Brianna turned the heat on under her stew before going to the refrigerator. “I won't press you then. Did you finish your painting?”

“Yes.” Shannon closed her eyes. But there was more to finish. “Brie, I'd like to see the letters now. I need to see them.”

“After you've eaten,” Brianna said, slicing bread for a sandwich. “I'll call Maggie, if you don't mind. We should do this together.”

“Yes.” Shannon pushed her cup aside. “We should do this together.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

It was a difficult thing to look at the three slim letters, bound together by a faded red ribbon. And it was a sentimental man, Shannon mused, who tied a woman's letters, so few letters, in a ribbon that time would leach of color.

She didn't ask for the brandy, but was grateful when Brianna set a snifter by her elbow. They'd gone into the family parlor, the three of them, and Gray had taken the baby down to Maggie's.

So it was quiet.

In the lamplight, for the sun was setting toward dusk,
Shannon gathered her courage and opened the first envelope.

Her mother's handwriting hadn't changed. She could see that right away. It had always been neat, feminine, and somehow economical.

My dearest Tommy.

Tommy, Shannon thought, staring at the single line. She'd called him Tommy when she'd written to him. And Tommy when she'd spoken of him to her daughter for the first, and the last time.

But Shannon thought of him as Tom. Tom Concannon, who'd passed to her green eyes and chestnut hair. Tom Concannon, who hadn't been a good farmer, but a good father. A man who had turned from his vows and his wife to love another woman—and had let her go. Who had wanted to be a poet, and to make his fortune, but had died doing neither.

She read on, and had no choice but to hear her mother's voice, and the love and kindness in it. No regrets. Shannon could find no regrets in the words that spoke of love and duty and the complexity of choices. Longing, yes, and memories, but without apology.

Always
she'd ended it.
Always, Amanda.

With great care, Shannon refolded the first letter. “She told me he'd written back to her. I never found any letters with her things.”

“She'd not have kept them,” Brianna murmured. “In respect for her husband. Her loyalty and her love were with him.”

“Yes.” Shannon wanted to believe that. When a man had given all of himself for more than twenty-five years, he deserved nothing less.

She opened the second letter. It began in the same way, ended in the same way as the first. But between
there were hints of something more than memories of a brief and forbidden love.

“She knew she was pregnant,” Shannon managed. “When she wrote this, she knew. She'd have been frightened, even desperate. She'd had to be. But she writes so calmly, not letting him know, or even guess.”

Maggie took the letter from her when she'd folded it again. “She might have needed time to think about what she would do, what she could do. Her family—from what Rogan's man found—they wouldn't have stood with her.”

“No. When she told them, they insisted that she go away, then give me up and avoid the scandal. She wouldn't.”

“She wanted you,” Brianna said.

“Yes, she wanted me.” Shannon opened the last letter. It broke her heart to read this. How could there have been joy? she wondered. No matter how much fear and anxiety she might read between the lines, there was unmistakable joy in them. More, there was a rejection of shame—of what was expected for an unwed woman pregnant with a married man's child.

It was obvious she'd made her choice when she'd written the letter. Her family had threatened her with disinheritance, but it hadn't mattered. She'd risked that, and everything she'd known, for a chance, and the child she carried.

“She told him she wasn't alone.” Shannon's voice trembled. “She lied to him. She was alone. She'd had to go north and find work because her family had cut her off from themselves and from her own money. She had nothing.”

“She had you,” Brianna corrected. “That's what she wanted. That's what she chose.”

“But she never asked him to come to her, or to let her
come back to him. She never gave him a chance, just told him that she was pregnant and that she loved him and was going away.”

“She did give him a chance.” Maggie laid a hand on Shannon's shoulder. “A chance to be a father to the children he already had, and to know he would have another who'd be well loved and cared for. Perhaps she took the decision out of his hands, one that would have split him in two either way he turned. I think she did it for him, and for you, and maybe even for herself.”

“She never stopped loving him.” Again she folded the letter. “Even loving my father as much as she did, she never stopped. He was on her mind when she died, just as she was in his. They both lost what some people never find.”

“We can't say what might have been.” Tenderly Brianna tied the ribbon around the letters again. “Or change what was lost or was found. But don't you think, Shannon, we've done our best for them? Being here. Making a family out of their families. Sisters out of their daughters.”

“I'd like to think that she knows I'm not angry. And that I'm coming to understand.” There was peace in that, Shannon realized. In understanding. “If he'd been alive when I came here, I would have tried to care for him.”

“Be sure of it.” Maggie gave her shoulder a squeeze.

“I am,” Shannon realized. “Right now it's about the only thing I'm sure of.”

Fresh weariness dragged at her when she stood. Brianna stood with her and held out the letters. “These are yours. She'd want you to have them.”

“Thank you.” The paper felt so thin against her hand, so fragile. And so precious. “I'll keep them, but they're ours. I need to think.”

“Take your brandy.” Brianna picked up the glass and held it out. “And a hot bath. They'll ease mind, body, and spirit.”

It was good advice, and she intended to take it. But when she walked into her room, Shannon set the snifter aside. The painting drew her now, so she turned on the lamps before crossing to it.

She studied the man on the white horse, the woman. The glint of copper and a sword. There was the swirl of a cape, the sweep of chestnut hair lifted by the wind.

But there was more, much more. Enough to have her sit carefully on the edge of the bed while her gaze stayed riveted on the canvas. She knew it had come out of her, every brushstroke. Yet it seemed impossible that she could have done such work.

She'd made a vision reality. She'd been meant to do so all along.

On a shuddering breath, she closed her eyes and waited until she was sure, until she could see inside herself as clearly as she had seen the people she'd brought to life with paint and brush.

It was all so easy, she realized. Not complicated at all. It was logic that had complicated it. Now, even with logic, it was simple.

She had calls to make, she thought, then picked up the phone to finish what she'd started when she'd first stepped onto Ireland.

 

She waited until morning to go to Murphy. The warrior had left the wise woman in the morning, so it was right the circle close at the same time of day.

It never crossed her mind that he wouldn't be where she looked for him. And he was standing in the stone circle, the broach in his hand and the mist shimmering like the breath of ghosts above the grass.

His head came up when he heard her. She saw the surprise, the longing, before he pulled the shutter down—a talent she hadn't known he possessed.

“I thought you might come here.” His voice wasn't cool; that he couldn't manage. “I was going to leave this for you. But since you're here now, I'll give it to you, then ask if you'll listen to what I have to say.”

She took the broach, was no longer stunned or anxious when it seemed to vibrate in her palm. “I brought you something.” She held out the canvas, wrapped in heavy paper, but he made no move to take it. “You asked if I'd paint something for you. Something that reminded me of you, and I have.”

“As a going-away gift?” He took the canvas, but strode two paces away to tilt it, unopened, against a stone. “It won't do, Shannon.”

“You might look at it.”

“They'll be time for that when I've said what's on my mind.”

“You're angry, Murphy. I'd like to—”

“Damn right I'm angry. At both of us. Bloody fools. Just be quiet,” he ordered, “and let me say this in my own way. You were right about some things, and I was wrong about some. But I wasn't wrong that we love each other, and are meant. I've thought on it most of the past two nights, and I see I've asked you for more than I've a right to. There's another way that I didn't consider, that I turned a blind eye to because it was easier than looking straight at it.”

“I'm been thinking, too.” She reached out, but he stepped back sharply.

“Will you wait a damn minute and let me finish? I'm going with you.”

“What?”

“I'm going with you to New York. If you need more
time for courting—or whatever the bloody hell you chose to call it, I'll give it. But you'll marry me in the end, and make no mistake. I won't compromise that.”

“Compromise?” Staggered, she dragged a hand through her hair. “This is a compromise?”

“You can't stay, so I'll go.”

“But the farm—”

“The devil take the fucking farm. Do you think it means more to me than you? I'm good with my hands. I can get work wherever.”

“It's not a matter of a job.”

“It's important to me that I not live off my wife.” He shot the words at her, daring her to argue. “You can call me sexist and a fool or whatever you choose, but it doesn't change the matter. I don't care whether you've a mountain of money or none at all, or if you choose to spend it on a big house or fancy cars, miser it away or toss it off on one roll of dice. What's an issue to me is not that I support you, but that I support myself.”

She closed her mouth for a minute and tried to calm. “I can hardly call you a fool for making a perfectly sane statement, but I can call you one for even thinking about giving up the farm.”

“Selling it. I'm not an idiot. None of my family are interested in farming, so I'll speak with Mr. McNee, and Feeney and some of the others. It's good land.” His gaze swept past her and for a moment held pain as it traveled over the hills. “It's good land,” he repeated. “And they'd value it.”

“Oh, that's fine.” Her voice rose on fresh passion. “Toss away your heritage, your home. Why don't you offer to cut out your heart while you're at it?”

“I can't live without you,” he said simply. “And I won't. It's dirt and stone.”

“Don't ever let me hear you say that.” She fired up,
flashed over. “It's everything to you. Oh, you know how to make me feel small and selfish. I won't have it.” She turned, fisting her hands as she strode from stone to stone. Then she leaned heavily against one as it struck, and struck hard that this was it. From the beginning it had been spiraling toward this.

She steadied herself and turned back so that she could see his face. Odd, she thought, that she was suddenly so calm, so sure.

“You'd give it up for me, the thing that makes you what you are.” She shook her head before he could answer. “This is funny, really funny. I searched my soul last night, and the night before. Part of it I ripped out to do that painting. And when I finally took a good long look, I knew I wasn't going anywhere.”

She saw the light come into his eyes before he carefully controlled it again. “You're saying you'd stay, do without what you want. Is that supposed to comfort me, knowing you're here but unhappy?”

“I'm giving up a lot. Really making a sacrifice.” With a half laugh she combed her fingers through her hair. “I finally figured that out, too. I'm leaving New York. You can't smell the grass there, or see horses grazing. You can't watch the light strike over the fields in a way that makes your throat hurt. I'm trading the sound of traffic for the sound of mockingbirds and larks. It's going to be real tough to live with that.”

She stuffed her hands in her pockets and began to pace in a way that warned him not to touch her. “My friends—acquaintances mostly, will think of me with amusement now and again and shake their heads. Perhaps some of them will come to visit and see just what I've given up the fast lane for. I'm trading that for family, for people I've felt closer to than almost anyone I've known. That's a bad deal all right.”

She stopped, looking out between the stones as the warming sun burned off the mist. “Then there's my career, that all-important ladder to climb. Five years more, and I guarantee I would have had that metaphorical key to the executive washroom. No question, Shannon Bodine's got the drive, she's got the talent, she's got the ambition, and she doesn't blink at sixty-hour weeks. I've put in plenty of those weeks, Murphy, and it occurs to me that not one of them ever gave me the joy or the simple satisfaction I've felt since the first time I picked up a paintbrush here in Ireland. So I guess it's going to be real tough for me to turn in my Armani jacket for a smock.”