Longing for Home (34 page)

“Good evening,” she said to Granny.

“Good evening kindly.”

Though Tavish vaguely remembered that old country way of returning a greeting, only his granny still used it.

He stood and helped her into the chair on Katie’s other side. Many of the chairs and benches gathered around the empty fire pit were filling. The storytelling would begin soon.

He lightly kissed his grandmother’s wrinkled cheek. “I missed visiting with you at the céilí last week.”

She patted his face the way one would a small child, something she’d done these many years. “A sweet half-truth, that. I’ll wager you weren’t pining for any female company but this sweet lass’s, here.” She nodded with her head in Katie’s direction.

“Ah, but when I didn’t come to the party, Katie came to see
me.
”

At Granny’s curious look, Katie rushed to clarify. “On accident.”

Tavish laughed heartily.
On accident.
What a delight she was when wary and stubborn.

“This one’ll keep you humble, Tavish, no mistakin’. A handsome man needs that in his life near about as much as anything else at all.” Granny emphasized the declaration with a firm nod. “So”—she lowered her voice to an overly loud whisper—“go sit next to her again, will you? Storytelling’s a good time for a little snuggling.”

“Is there anything you need, Granny, before I have me a ‘little snuggling’?”

Katie colored up adorably.

“Get on with you.” Granny laughed and shooed him away.

Tavish settled in once more. He grinned at Katie.

“Watch yourself,” she warned him.

Adorable, and no mistaking. Was it any wonder he’d missed her so much over the week since he’d seen her?

In the midst of the circled chairs and benches, Seamus stood and spoke in a roaring voice. “Now do you know what I’m going to tell you.” A typical beginning to a very tall tale.

The gathering hushed quickly, eager eyes turned in his direction.

“Not many years back, a lass and a lad were wearing out their soles walking up and down the roads of . . .” He offered the crowd an overdone look of contemplation. “Bless me if I can’t bring to memory just which county they were walking about in.”

Knowing their cue, the listeners immediately filled the air with suggestions, no doubt naming their own home counties.

Tavish cupped his hands around his mouth and made his own enthusiastic suggestion. “Antrim!” To Katie he said in a tone of utmost seriousness, “There’s no county can equal Antrim.”

Katie raised an eyebrow before calling out in her most carrying voice, “Donegal!”

She must have spoken at precisely the right moment. Seamus pointed in her direction. “It
was
County Donegal, now I set me mind to it. Over the craggy roads of Donegal this lad and lass were walking.”

He wove his tale in the traditional broad and expressive way.

Katie turned to Tavish. “There’s no county can equal Donegal.”

“Aye. Quite full of their own importance over there, they are.” He pulled his features into an overdone look of disapproval. “Nothing like the fine people of Antrim.”

She smiled just as he hoped she would. A teasing remark, a sincere compliment, and she colored up and smiled sweetly. Finding little ways to please her was becoming a favorite pastime of his.

He hoped Joseph Archer was wrong and that her baking would prove sufficient to support her. Otherwise, she’d likely leave. Life without Sweet Katie Macauley didn’t bear thinking about.

Chapter Thirty

Katie nearly doubled her bread orders over the next two weeks. She baked twice a week, alternately making her deliveries on foot or gratefully accepting Biddy’s offer to drive her about on those days when she was able.

She knew as long as she lived she’d not forget the look on Rose McCann’s face when she delivered an iced cake for her husband’s birthday. Her eyes grew wide. Absolute joy filled her smile. The McCann children looked as though they’d been granted full access to a candy shop. Katie couldn’t remember the last time she’d brought someone happiness so easily.

She’d also had an order for a berry tart and a loaf cake. Joseph had helped her determine the lowest price she could charge and still make a small profit. Katie struggled with charging her neighbors above her cost. She needed something to live on, but she wished she could simply give them the lower prices she paid at the mercantile. The Irish had been pushed and starved and driven from their homes enough times in the past without such cruelty following them there.

Katie came inside after gathering vegetables from the small family garden just behind the barn late one morning to find a folded bit of paper stuffed under the kitchen door. Someone had written a word across the front, though Katie couldn’t say what the word was. She flipped it around in her hand a few times, trying to decide what she ought to do with it.

Any note left for Joseph would have been brought to the front door. Even then, she couldn’t imagine anyone in Hope Springs communicating with
him
that way. They came to call when they had something to say.

The note, she felt more and more certain as the day went on, was meant for her. She even unfolded it, despite the pointlessness of that. It wasn’t a long note. But a few lines of words.

Who would leave a note for
me
?
She wondered that again and again. The Irish who knew her well were full aware she couldn’t read. Perhaps one of the other families?

But as she made her next round of deliveries, no one inquired after a note they’d left, no one seemed to be expecting anything from her. ’Twas then she began to worry a bit. If an Irishman hadn’t left the paper, then someone from the Red Road must have.

She kept the note in her apron pocket, wondering over it as the days continued to pass. If someone from the Red side of the argument had left her a note, ’twasn’t likely to be a friendly bit of conversation. Part of her wanted to know what it said. But another part of her dreaded the knowing.

Worse, yet, people had begun watching her. Not people she knew but strangers. Katie was acquainted with every Irish family in town. The people who’d taken to staring her down whenever she was out of doors were unfamiliar. She knew in her increasingly wary heart that these were Red Roaders keeping an eye on her and doing it in a way that left no room for doubt as to their ability to keep close track of all she did.

Katie didn’t like it one bit.

Tavish seldom came around to see her, almost never, in fact. She understood the absence; a farmer was quite busy during the growing and harvest months. She didn’t expect to see him, yet she found herself watching. He would read the note to her. She could have someone to talk to.

She stood in the lingering heat of late afternoon, pulling laundry off the line. If only the town would quit pitting themselves against each other. Even with those worries, she was happier in Hope Springs than she had been since leaving home. If not for the feud, she’d not hesitate to believe she could live contentedly there until returning to Ireland. And even if the returning took years longer than she’d originally planned, the thought of a delay didn’t panic her as it once had. She actually looked forward to the promise of time spent there. Without the fighting, Hope Springs would be almost perfect.

“I’ve heard a certain baker woman is in need of a few berries.”

She looked up from folding the girls’ bedding. “Berries, is it?” She dropped the precisely folded sheet into her laundry basket. “I’ve not seen you in nearly a week, and it’s berries that finally bring you round?”

Tavish set his bucket of berries down beside her basket, a look of amused surprise on his face. “I’m beginning to suspect, Sweet Katie, that you’re a touch put out with me.”

She was, a bit. She’d seen only the tiniest glimpses of him over the past fortnight. That he hadn’t even come to the céilí the last two weeks quieted any worries she’d had that he was avoiding her specifically. Still, she saw no reason to tell him as much. ’Twould do him good to work a bit at keeping her good opinion. She suspected he didn’t have to work hard at it where most people, most
women
especially, were concerned.

“I’ve not a had a moment to myself.” His tone was apologetic enough to speak of actual regret but not so thick with it to convince her he entirely believed her show of offense. He was teasing her as he always did.

Katie shrugged and turned back to the laundry, pulling one of Emma’s dresses from the line. “You might at least have stopped by after services yesterday and said a quick ‘Good day. Fine to see you. Must be off.’ Would it have killed you to do even that?”

She didn’t turn back but could hear he’d come closer. “I couldn’t do that,” he said. “See, you weren’t at church, and I don’t speak to heathens on the Sabbath.”

“That had best be a comment made in jest, Tavish O’Connor.” She sent him a look of warning over her shoulder.

Far from appearing penitent, Tavish’s lips turned up in a lazy smile. Her heart flipped about at the sight.

“Now why don’t you—” She stopped short, snapping her head in the direction of the not-too-distant road.

“Katie?” Tavish sounded understandably confused.

She motioned with her head toward the wagon slowly lumbering toward the Red side of town. The wagon’s occupants watched her as they passed.

“I swear I can feel them looking before they even come into view,” she said, something of a shudder sliding through her. “The Red Road’s taken to staring me down when I’m out of doors. They don’t say anything, don’t truly act threatening, they just . . . watch me.”

Tavish’s eyes were fixed on the wagon as it picked up speed just past the edge of the Archer farm. “How long have they been doing this?”

“The last week or so.” She didn’t like it but wasn’t entirely certain the Reds meant to be hostile. They might just as easily be checking to see if she yet worked for Joseph Archer, to see what she was doing and where. “It seems whenever I am outside—laundry, washing windows, any of those things—someone from the Red Road passes by, and they always slow down and watch me.”

The strangeness of such pointed scrutiny had quickly given way to discomfort. She didn’t like their staring at her, and she worried over their reasons.

“This only happens here?” Tavish asked.

Katie tried to busy herself with the laundry, but the disquiet in Tavish’s tone increased her own tension. “I am only ever here or down the Irish Road. I’ve never seen any Reds down there.”

His gaze returned to the now empty stretch of road visible from the side yard where the clothesline hung. Katie let her eyes follow his. There was something quite unnerving in knowing half the town kept such a close watch on her.

“And”—she pulled from her apron pocket the note she’d kept there—“a few days back, this was left at the kitchen door. I don’t know for certain it’s for me, but I suspect it is.”

Tavish took it from her and nodded immediately. “’Tis your name written on it.”

“Again, I’m only guessing, but I suspect it’s from the Red Road.”

His expression grew instantly tight. He unfolded the note and made quick work of reading it.

“Have you told Joseph about this?” Tavish asked, his words clipped.

“Not yet. I kept hoping they would stop or I would find out why they were staring at me.” She shook off the tension coiling inside.

“Where might we find Joseph about now, Katie?”

She set the last piece of laundry in the basket. “We don’t need to bother him with this immediately.”

“You blasted well should have bothered someone with this just as soon as it began.” He held out a hand to her. “Let’s go track him down.”

“He’s likely out in the fields,” she warned. ’Twould be a long walk and no guarantee they’d find him.

He took quick hold of her hand and tugged her in the direction of the waving grain out beyond the barn. He didn’t keep her hand in his, but he did walk close to her side. His company had generally been enjoyably friendly. But since the céilí two weeks earlier, when he’d sat at her side throughout the storytelling, giving her again and again a look she could only interpret as keen interest, Katie’d found herself a touch jittery around him. ’Twas as if her heart quite suddenly realized it was in danger.

She’d told Biddy some weeks past that her heart was being tugged by the two men in her life. But having Tavish flip it clear around with a mere glance was worrisome. She could not fall fully in love with a man whose home was here.

“Why did you not come tell me the Red Road’s been harassing you?” Tavish asked. “Or Biddy at least. She would’ve seen to it someone knew what was going on.”

“They haven’t truly been harassing, only keeping a close eye.” So Katie had been telling herself.

Tavish held up the note she’d given him. “’Tis more than that, Katie. ’Tis far more than that.”

She had no answer to such a declaration. The note, as she’d guessed on her own, was not one of friendliness. Tavish’s tense posture and tone made her wonder just how threatening the words were.

They made a slow walk along the side of the field, glancing down each row as they went.