The Eden Tree (14 page)

McCarthy finished bandaging Con’s leg, patting the last length of tape into place. “I hate to admit the truth, but despite your best efforts to cripple yourself this looks like it’s healing fine. You should be back up to snuff in no time.” He replaced his things in his bag and glanced around at Linn. “Might you have a cup of tea for me, Miss Pierce?”

“Linn. Certainly. It may be a little strong but I’ll add some hot water to it.”

“Leave it be. I like it strong enough to walk on with lots of sugar.” He turned back to Con. “I’ll help you to the loo, son; you’d best get dressed.”

Con’s eyes flashed between Linn and the doctor as if he suspected some incipient conspiracy, but he went meekly enough when McCarthy offered his arm. The doctor returned for a chair and left it in the bathroom.

“He’s sitting down to shave,” McCarthy informed Linn as he emerged to join her, taking his cup of tea and dropping onto a sofa with it. Linn was nursing another cup of coffee. They sipped in companionable silence for a while before the doctor broke it to say, “So don’t you think it’s time you told me what’s going on here?”

Linn shut her eyes briefly. Were all these people as nosy as Bridie and this man or had she been cursed with unfortunate luck? She felt as if she and Con were performing on a stage, with McCarthy and the housekeeper and half of Ballykinnon as a rapt audience.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said evasively.

“I think you do,” he replied. “There’s so much tension in this room I feel as if I’m sitting in the middle of an electrical storm.”

“Well, we did have a bit of an argument earlier.” God, she was even starting to talk like them. Pretty soon she’d be nattering about hooligans and donnybrooks too. The vernacular was seductive.

“That’s not the only kind of tension I feel,” the doctor responded archly, eyeing her over the rim of his cup.

Linn would have to be a dunce to mistake what he was implying and he knew she was no dunce. “I didn’t realize that it was so obvious,” she replied.

The doctor choked on his tea. “Obvious! It’s as plain as the whitewash on Paddy’s pig. It may interest you to know that after your grand appearance in the pub with young Conchubor, some of the lads started taking odds. You’re up against Kate as works in the Kinnon Arms. Word has it you’re winning, hands down.”

Linn stared at him, horrified, speechless with shock.

“Aye,” McCarthy went on, entranced with his own narrative, “since you appeared on the place Con hasn’t been seen about the town with Kate. Or any of the other hopefuls, I might add. You’re the frontrunner, to be sure.”

Linn slammed her cup down on the bar. “I’m very glad to hear it! It’s comforting to know that everybody in town thinks I’m yards ahead of the local barmaid in capturing that exalted prize, that man among men, the incomparable Connor Clay!” Furious, she grabbed up her purse and sweater and then whirled to confront the astonished doctor.

“If and when he comes out of the inner sanctum, you can tell him that I’m through playing nursemaid. If he gets stabbed or shot, clubbed or beaten or falls down a well, tell him to call Kate Costello. I’m sure she’d appreciate the chance to improve her standing from number two.” Linn stalked out of the cottage and shut the door behind her so hard that it rattled on its hinges.

Linn charged back toward the house at a breakneck pace, burning with humiliation. So she’d been providing free entertainment for the townspeople with her fascination for Bally’s most interesting resident. Newly arrived from America, a pretty young woman sharing the estate with the virile local celebrity was sure to arouse comment. And she had given them plenty to talk about, Linn reflected miserably. She wasn’t good at hiding her feelings; her behavior with Con during their visit to the pub had been enough to establish her as a contestant for Kate’s erstwhile boyfriend. What a fool she’d been making of herself. She felt ill when she considered what everyone must think of her.

The phone was ringing when Linn opened the front door of the main house. She considered ignoring it but she had never been able to dismiss the summons of that insistent bell, no matter how much she wished to be left alone. Ned curled about her legs in greeting as she picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” she said resignedly.

“It’s Bridie, dear. How are you?”

Linn responded to this question by bursting into tears.

Bridie’s heartfelt sigh came over the wire. “I thought as much. When I didn’t hear from you this morning early I knew you two would be mixing it up. Is Con all right?”

“Yes.” Linn sniffed.

“Then what ails you?”

Linn picked Ned up from the floor and buried her face in his fur. He purred, making a sound like a miniature outboard motor. “Everything,” she responded dramatically.

“Ah, well, in that case you’d best come and have dinner with us this day,” Bridie stated, her kindly voice tinged with amusement. “We’ll have a chat and you can tell me all about it.”

Linn hesitated. “I don’t know...”

“Yes, you do,” Bridie replied firmly. “I won’t be back until Monday morning, and by that time you’ll be floating away on a river of tears. It’s no good feeling sorry for yourself, I say. Now get yourself ready and my Terence will be by with his cycle to pick you up. I’m sending him off right now.”

The suggested method of transportation sounded vaguely suspect but Con and his car were out of the question, for different reasons.

“All right,” Linn said.

“Good girl. And don’t forget to feed that cat, now; he’ll be terrorizing the birds.” The line went dead.

Linn went to the kitchen. She opened two cans of cat food and placed the contents of both tins into a bowl. She refreshed the water in Ned’s other dish and watched as the prospective diner marched up to the food, sniffed it disdainfully and stalked off with his tail in the air. Linn shrugged. He would get hungry later.

Bridie’s Terence turned out to be a handsome, silent teenager who roared up the drive on a motorbike and waited with the patient detachment of a royal servant while Linn clambered up behind him. She put her arms tentatively around his middle, and then clung tighter when he surged forward suddenly. They flew down the path, spraying gravel, and traversed the four miles to downtown Bally with Linn hanging onto Bridie’s offspring for dear life, absorbed in mental prayer. Trees and buildings passed in a blur; Linn finally closed her eyes and abandoned herself to fate.

The bike lurched to a stop and Linn opened one eye cautiously. They had halted in front of a row of attached stone residences fronting Bally’s main street. Though all of the houses were actually one long, low building, the individual apartments had been painted different pastel colors to separate them into distinctive little homes. Terence locked his bike to a rack outside a flat that was painted daffodil yellow and shoved open the front door.

“Ma,” he bawled, so loudly that Linn jumped. It was the first word she’d heard out of him.

No answer from inside.

Terence put his hands on his hips and tried again. “Ma,” he yelled, “your lady’s here.”

Bridie appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. “That’ll do, Terry; you needn’t wake the dead.” She smiled at Linn. “Come in, lass. We’ll have a cup of tea.”

Terence, who apparently felt himself dismissed, flashed Linn a grin of dazzling beauty and loped off down the street.

“Be back for tea at half three,” his mother called after him. “Miss the time and you’ll starve. I’m not scouring the countryside for the likes of you.”

Terence continued on his way, undaunted.

“That one,” Bridie said in disgust, leading Linn inside. “He likes to pretend he’s deaf.” She pronounced it “deef,” as Linn’s father had.

“He’s an attractive boy,” Linn commented.

“And well he knows it,” Bridie answered with asperity. “He thinks he’s the catch of the town.”

“He must be doing some damage to the female population under twenty.” Linn chuckled.

“That he is,” Bridie answered, not without a note of pride. “But he’ll get his comeuppance one day, as we all do.”

“I think I’ve gotten mine,” Linn said, following Bridie down a narrow central hall that ended at the back of the house in a large kitchen. All the rooms opened off the middle passage; Linn had walked past a parlor and a dining room, as well as two tiny bedrooms.

“Sit yourself down and tell me what happened,” Bridie ordered, removing the cozy from the teapot, which sat in the center of the deal table.

Linn recounted her night taking care of Con and her conversation with Dr. McCarthy that morning. Bridie’s face filled with compassion at Linn’s obvious embarrassment concerning McCarthy’s comments.

“Neil McCarthy is a gossip; he was a gossip in the sixth form. He should be wearing a flower print dress and a veiled hat like my great aunt Caitlin, God rest her soul.”

Linn grinned at the mental image of Dr. McCarthy so attired.

“Pay him no mind,” Bridie advised, pouring Linn a cup of tea. “He finds his life in our hamlet here a wee bit dull so he likes to liven it up by getting mixed up in Con’s adventures.”

“It sounded to me as if he were scolding Con to keep out of them.”

“Hah. Don’t you believe it. If he wasn’t patching Con up for one thing and another and lecturing him, Neil would have little to do.”

Linn ran her finger around the rim of her cup, which she’d noticed was Belleek china and probably Bridie’s best. “But do you think what he was saying about the town is true? Do you think everybody’s watching me and Con to see what will happen?”

Bridie delayed answering by taking a large swallow of her tea.

“Bridie,” Linn prompted. “Tell me.”

“Well, I won’t say there hasn’t been talk. That’s to be expected.”

“I knew it,” Linn said unhappily. “Oh, this is awful. I’m going to stay away from him from now on, you can bet on it.”

Bridie nodded sagely. “And how do you propose to do that, with you half mad in love with him the way you are?”

Linn was past the point where she was going to deny the obvious to Bridie. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m going to do it. I have to. I’ve behaved so badly already that it has to stop.”

“Oh, what do you care what a bunch of old sob sisters are saying?” Bridie demanded. “You want him, go after him.”

“I would if I were sure he wanted me.”

Bridie rolled her eyes. “He wants you. Take my word for it.”

Linn shook her head. “You don’t understand. It’s more complicated than that. He harbors a grudge against me because of my father, and he can’t quite forget that or the difference in our backgrounds.”

“What about your father?” Bridie asked quietly.

“He was once in love with Con’s mother and left her to go to America. Did you know that?”

Bridie looked down at the table. “I had an idea.”

“Con’s very bitter about that. He says it ruined his mother’s life and his father’s too, because he couldn’t compete with a memory. Do you believe that?”

Bridie thought a moment before answering. “I don’t know as to the exact reason, but something shadowed Mary Clay’s face with grief all her life. That was not a happy woman.”

“Then I guess Con is right,” Linn replied softly.

“But what does that matter now?” Bridie demanded. “You’re not to blame for your father’s actions or for what happened in the past.”

“Tell that to Con,” Linn said sadly. “Sometimes he does put it out of his mind, but then I see it come back to haunt him. I can’t fight that. He has to accept me, everything about me.”

“But if he doesn’t what will you do?”

“Stay away from him, as I said.”

Bridie sighed. “Easier said than done.”

Linn swirled the floating tea leaves in her cup. “If only he weren’t so…difficult.”

“Difficult?”

“Stubborn, opinionated, suspicious, wild . . .” she recited.

“Tender, sexy, witty, kind?” Bridie suggested.

Linn folded her arms on the table and bent her head. “Those too,” she whispered. “Those too.”

Bridie drained her cup. “So as I see it, you’ve convinced yourself there are two reasons to avoid Con: one, the town is talking; and two, he’s resentful toward you because of your da. As to the first, the hell with it. As to the second, if he loves you he’ll get over it. Con is opinionated to be sure, but he’s far from stupid. He does hang on to a notion but when he finally sees that it’s wrong, he lets it go. Give him time.”

Linn looked up. “I don’t know if I can, Bridie. His distrust is breaking my heart.”

“Give him time,” Bridie repeated.

Linn examined the older woman. “Bridie, you know him.”

Bridie shrugged. “As much as anyone can get to know that lad. He always had a head full of ideas and a soul full of secrets.”

“But you’ve seen him grow up, observed him all his life. What chance do I have against a grudge he’s harbored since he was a child?”

“You’ve a powerful chance, my girl, if only you would realize the fact. That boy can’t take his eyes off you. The change is already working but you’ll halt the process if you give up too soon.” Bridie nodded her head to emphasize her point.