Longing for Home (13 page)

“Has Joseph been a good employer?”

Katie nodded before taking the broom from its corner. She looked up from her work when the silence grew surprisingly long. Biddy’s usual smile had slipped noticeably. She watched Katie with a subtle expression of hurt on her face.

Katie paused in her sweeping. Biddy seemed to force a cheerfulness into her posture once more.

“I’m sorry for interrupting your work,” she said, her tone a little heavy. “I’ll not force you to talk with me when you’ve other things to be doing.” She stepped toward the swinging door leading to the dining room. “I’ll just go collect the girls, and we’ll be off.”

Katie realized with no small degree of surprise that she’d hurt Biddy’s feelings. How had she managed that? She’d answered Biddy’s questions, talked with her as she requested. In her inexperience, she must have done it wrong.

In the moment before Biddy slipped from the room, Katie called after her. “Wait, Biddy. Please.”

Again that forced smile appeared on Biddy’s face.

“I suspect I’ve offended you somehow. I can’t say quite what I’ve done, but I hadn’t intended to.”

Biddy quickly shook her head. “No. Not at all. I can see you’re not eager for company.” Something in her tone added a “my company” to her words. She turned once more to leave.

“I hadn’t meant to make you think I didn’t wish for your company,” Katie said. “I’ve no talent for making conversation is all. I have been a servant since I was eight years old. We were never permitted to chatter—’twas seen as a sign we weren’t working hard enough. I’ve not learned how to truly chat with anyone.”

“Did you really go into service at only eight?” It wasn’t pity Katie saw in Biddy’s eyes in that moment but something far closer to compassion.

“Aye.”

The topic didn’t end there. “How could your family bear to part with you so young?”

Katie might have been willing to confess to her lack of close companions, but she’d not admit her family had parted with her eagerly. “Circumstances required it, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. The humble in Ireland have known a great many hardships these past years.”

Katie nodded. Let Biddy think she’d been sent off strictly for reasons of poverty.

“I can’t say I have your ability for cleaning and organizing,” Biddy said. “The strides you’ve made in this room alone in only a few days are astounding. But I’m handy with a rag, and I’d greatly appreciate if you let me work alongside you in exchange for talking your ear off a bit.”

“I cannot promise to make good conversation,” Katie warned.

“Fair enough.” Biddy’s smile finally looked natural again. “And I’ll do my best to ask you things you can’t answer in only two or three words.”

“I believe that might help.”

“Five words that time.” Biddy nodded. “That is progress, I’d say. Perhaps by the time we finish the dining room, you’ll be up to six or seven.”

“Let’s not set our expectations too high.” Katie allowed a little smile. Conversation didn’t come easily, but she found herself almost enjoying it.

“I’ve a feeling, Katie Macauley, that you and I are going to become very good friends.”

Katie had never had a close friend. She’d never wanted one. The few times she’d allowed herself to grow close to anyone, she’d been pushed away or left behind. She’d decided long ago that she simply wasn’t the type to keep friends.

Biddy stayed for hours and hours. Katie fancied Biddy told her everything there was to know of her history, from the time her family left County Mayo during the last years of The Famine through her courtship with Ian while they both worked in a factory in New York. Katie also heard of their nearly ten years in Hope Springs. She listened with curiosity but stopped far short of sharing any of her own past.

Somewhere in the midst of her chatter, Biddy mentioned that the Irish families held a weekly céilí
,
a community party like those they’d known in their homeland. They played the music of Ireland and brought traditional dishes to share. Biddy said they even told stories, the blarney-filled tales that so captured a listener’s attention. Katie was most certainly invited, Biddy insisted. Further, she said, Mr. Archer likely expected her to attend.

Katie found herself wanting to go, but she’d need to ask for the evening off. Men, she’d learned while working in kitchens over the years, were most amiable after they were fed. She’d best wait until he’d eaten.

She heard the telltale sounds of chair legs scraping in the dining room later that evening. The family, it seemed, had finished their meal. She stepped into the room just as Mr. Archer rose from his seat. The girls were only just disappearing into the parlor.

“Might I have a word with you, Mr. Archer?”

“Is something the matter?” Why did he jump so quickly to that conclusion? She’d not created any disasters at his house since securing her position once more.

“I only wondered if I might request the evening off. Biddy O’Connor invited me to a céilí tonight.”

“I have no idea what that is.” He was not one for making a person feel at ease in conversation.

“A party, Mr. Archer. Céilí is the word used in the old country.”

He pushed his chair back up to the table, standing beside it with the air of one anxious to be moving along. “Ah, yes. The weekly Irish gathering.”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“I have,” he said. “I simply didn’t realize it had a special name.”

He didn’t seem immediately opposed to the idea. That was promising.

“I know I’m supposed to work here mornings and evenings, so asking an evening off only a few days into the job is rather a lot to ask.”

He raised a hand and cut her off. “You have already worked beyond the hours required of you. An evening off is not so presumptuous as you seem to think.”

His words surprised her. After several days of pointed reminders that she wasn’t being paid for her extra work, she’d have thought he wasn’t counting the longer hours in her favor. An odd man he was, to be sure.

“And,” he added, “I was more or less expecting you to attend. All the Irish in Hope Springs do.”

“Then you don’t mind if I go?” She wanted to be perfectly clear on that before hieing herself down the road. ’Twould be just her luck to return and find her things packed and waiting on the back porch, her job snatched away for a third time.

He shook his head and walked out of the room without further comment. ’Twas an easier thing than she’d expected.

Katie quickly saw to clearing the table, then slipped inside her room to tidy herself up. It would be a fine thing to hear the old tunes and stories.

She’d played a few of those songs on her fiddle for the Garrisons as they’d journeyed north from the train station but hardly ever in the months before that and not at all since arriving in Hope Springs. Her fiddle sat in a corner of her room, untouched. She hadn’t had time to pick it up.

She missed her father every time she slid the fiddle beneath her chin. She longed for the sound of his expert playing, missed the peace she’d once felt at hearing his music fill their tiny house. More than anything, she missed the way he’d once smiled at her as though he loved her more dearly than anything.

“Go on with you, now,” she whispered sternly to herself. “You’ve no right to miss what you don’t deserve to have in the first place.”

She wrapped her woolen shawl about her shoulders, closed the kitchen door behind her, and set off toward the bridge.

The sound of fiddles, tin whistles, flutes, and bodhráns led her to a tidy farmhouse several miles down the Irish side of the road from Mr. Archer’s house. The fifth house on the left, she realized, which meant it was the home of Tavish and Ian O’Connor’s parents. Katie smelled colcannon and bacon. The voices floating on the air rang deep with the tones of Ireland. She breathed it in, both soothed and upended. She longed for home, yet dreaded the memories connected to it.

Dozens upon dozens of people milled about. A group of musicians played together near the barn. Many of those gathered danced enthusiastically. A table sat spread with a great many dishes. Children eagerly stole sweet biscuits from the plates at the table’s end.

Katie clasped her hands and watched it all unfold. With so many in attendance, she’d go entirely unnoticed. That was her idea of a perfect evening. No one other than Biddy would be expecting her. The night would be quiet and peaceful.

She believed that right up until the moment Tavish O’Connor and his teasing smile appeared at her side.

Chapter Twelve

Tavish nearly laughed at the startled look of alarm on Katie Macauley’s face. He hadn’t the slightest worry she was actually frightened of him. He’d wager she simply didn’t know what to make of him. And, seeing as the feeling was entirely mutual, he found it endlessly amusing.

“Didn’t your mother teach you not to sneak up on a person?” She didn’t look over at him as she spoke. The stern set of her mouth didn’t fool him for a moment. Katie meant him to believe her angry, but he didn’t think she was as irritated with him as she worked to appear.

The woman could do with a fair bit of teasing, she could.

“You know, I don’t think my ma ever mentioned that.” He made a show of pondering the idea. “Perhaps we should go pull her aside and let her know you don’t think too highly of her abilities as a mother.”

For just a moment he saw panic flit across her face, quickly covered with an overdone look of scolding. “I knew you were trouble the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“Oh, come now.” He kept close to her side and smiled to himself when Katie inched further away. “Are you telling me when you first saw me sitting up in my brother’s wagon that your very first thought was, ‘That fine-looking Irishman over there is most definitely a rascal’?”

She kept her gaze on the crowd milling in front of her. Meant to not even look at him, did she? He would most certainly enjoy undertaking her introduction to the townspeople.

“So which of our fine Irishmen have you chanced to meet these past few days?” he asked.

Her chin rose more than a fraction. She’d certainly mastered the dismissively haughty look. “I’ve met hardly a soul, excepting you, and I can’t say you’d fit on a list of ‘fine Irishmen.’”

His chuckle at her well-turned response was joined by another amused rumble. He’d not realized until that moment that Seamus Kelly had happened past and overheard.

“I do believe you’ve been shown the door, Tavish,” Seamus said with a grin beneath his ginger whiskers. “Aye, and kicked right on through it as well.”

Tavish agreed with a nod. Katie had a way with set-downs. “This, Seamus, is Miss Katie Macauley, late of Mother Ireland. Though she’s not told me exactly where she hails from, I’d wager Ulster.”

“Ulster?” Seamus took off his green derby hat long enough to scratch at his head in an overly dramatic display of pondering. “It seems to me she has more than a touch of Dublin about her.”

Tavish knew he would say exactly that. “You think everyone’s a Dubliner. So which is it, Sweet Katie? Have I guessed right, or do the honors go to Seamus, here?”

Katie adopted a theatrically serious expression. She could tease and joke with Seamus but was all prickles with him? Tavish wasn’t certain what to make of that. “Though it pains me to admit you’re right about anything in this whole world, Tavish O’Connor—”

Seamus grinned at that. Tavish only just kept his own smile under the surface.

“—I was, in fact, born in County Donegal, directly in the heart of Ulster, and lived many years in Derry and Belfast.”

Tavish began an exaggerated bow in acknowledgment of his own correct guess, a guess, if he were being honest, that had been helped along by Biddy’s quick summary of her earlier conversation with their newest Irish neighbor.

Katie, however, raised a hand to stop him. “’Tis with deepest sympathy for your friend Seamus, him of the impressive hat—”

Seamus tipped the brim of that very hat.

“—that I confess I’ve never been to Dublin nor set eyes on the Liffey. I hope that’s something you can overlook and let me stay at this fine gathering.”

A friendly word from Miss Prickles? It seemed she saved her standoffishness and disapproval for him alone. He rather liked the idea of that particular challenge.

“You’ve gone and done it, you have,” Tavish said to her under his breath, leaning in closer so as to be heard. Katie pointedly regained the distance between them. “Seamus is a Dublin man, born and raised in the Liberties. He’ll likely claim you as kin, hearing you speak so highly of his town.”

Seamus turned in the direction of the crowd and in a deep and booming voice called out, “Attention, my good people.” He clapped, the sound echoing around them. The gathering grew still and listened. ’Twasn’t everywhere the town blacksmith was also the resident entertainer. “We have here a fine Ulster lass who is newly arrived among us.” He motioned back toward Katie.

Her eyes widened on the instant. Clearly she’d not expected to find herself the center of attention and didn’t at all enjoy the experience. Biddy had apparently left out that bit, then. New arrivals always received a very warm welcome.