Chapter 27
“Miss Calverso
n.” Someone was talking to her. “I am sorry. The bastard locked the door.”
The voice was Irish. Mick?
Oh, no, God no. It was that ghastly McNally. But at least Taylor was off of her. A blanket covered her now. Her shoulder throbbed with sharp pain, her ankle hurt, her mouth felt dry as desert sand, and her heart ached. Hell’s bells, but she was sick of being abducted.
“No more,” she said groggy, but furious. “Enough is enough. Let me go. I want to go, I want to go . . .” She was going to say home, but who knew what that was. Timona had briefly had a home, but she vaguely recalled he had left her.
She began to cry in bottomless anguish. Hard sobs shook her until she couldn’t breath.
Araminta helped her in a sitting position and stroked her back. “She never cries. Never. I fear she must be suffering from a serious injury. At the very least we will need a doctor for her shoulder.” Araminta spoke in an alarmed tone, not angry as Timona would expect.
“Oh Araminta, I am so sorry they have bothered you. Ouch. My arm pulled from the socket, I believe. Mick would have known what to do,” Timona managed between sobs.
“Ah, now that’s the plan,” said McNally.
Timona still crying, opened her eyes. “P-pardon?”
McNally said, “You mean McCann, don’t ye? He should be along eventually. And now I recollect that little boy of his said he was good at healing injuries.”
She sniffled, hiccupped, and gaped at him. He pushed back his greasy dark hair and gave her a hideously ugly smile.
“I thought you heard me explain, miss, but you must be groggy still. I’m not McNally. My name is Frank Travis. Now you’re wide awake I can explain. Miss Araminta knows all about it.
“A few days back the
boc mór
, er, Mr. Blenheim, asked around the diggers for McNally and McCann said that I should go in his stead. McNally thought perhaps they were going to fire him because he’s on the lam, so he was more than willing to let me be him.”
“But I don’t understand, why you?”
“I’m formerly of the police. Nothing like New York City, you understand. I was a constable covering a few villages in County Kerry. But McCann thought I’d be better at keeping you safe should the Calverson boys have something in mind for you. I’m a fair size bigger than McNally, you see.
“And I’d be an experienced witness no matter what nonsense they were working on. I was holding off until the judge or whoever they bribed to do the ceremony showed up, ye understand. Wanted to gather in the whole nasty bunch of them at once.
“Your friend Miss Araminta said you wouldn’t mind waiting that long. ’Tis very sorry m that I didn’t do so good a job at keeping you safe, Miss.”
She beamed at him through eyes swollen with crying and the blow from Taylor. “You are an angel, Mr. Travis. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.”
“He is certainly strong,” Araminta said gloatingly. “He put Taylor down and out fast enough. And Blenheim, that fearful coward, did not even put up a fight.”
“Ah. I think the door might have smashed Taylor, not me.”
Araminta gave Timona a handkerchief. With her good hand Timona rubbed at her face and blew her nose.
“And here is some brandy for you, my dear,” said Araminta. Timona was about to say that one wasn’t supposed to drink after receiving a blow to the head. But the bash wasn’t so terrible. And she really needed something for the pain in her shoulder. She reached for the brandy and gulped it down.
She dozed and woke to the sound of a door slamming. A familiar voice spoke in English and another shouted angrily in Gaelic.
“Mick,” she croaked.
He kissed her gently, next to the bruise on her cheek and then on her mouth.
Considering how rough Mick had to be to reset her shoulder, she more than deserved such tenderness. He’d directed McNally—no, Travis—to pull on her arm until there was a grinding click. He had held her tight in his arms as McNally pulled the shoulder into the right spot.
Then Araminta had handed over the strips of cloth she’d made and Mick bound her shoulder and arm firmly. In less than an hour the earthshaking, nauseatingly sharp pain had lessened to a horrible ache.
“That’ll do for now. We must get a real doctor to look at you, though,” he said.
Her ankle was sprained, but not badly, Mick told her.
He kissed her again, then turned to the others. “Araminta, love, please give me ten minutes with her. Could you make some of your ambrosial coffee perhaps? Get Mr. Travis here to help you with the stove. Tis the least he can do. Maybe the men out on the porch can help.”
“Men?” asked Timona. “Oh, did I hear Solly’s voice outside?”
“Aye, you did. Your blasted Tothman has come. He insisted on trailing after us. I asked a couple of the diggers along in case I needed help, but then had ’em all stay put on the porch so’s they don’t go messing about with what’s known as the crime scene. Mostly it was to keep that damn Solly from coming in and pestering you, Timmy.”
Mick stood up and pulled a random handful of bills out of his pocket and handed them to Frank Travis. He gave Timona a quick crooked grin. “Blenheim gave me all this cash, sure I am that he’d be overjoyed to know I’ll use it so well.”
He turned his attention back to Travis. “Would you thank the men most kindly and send them on home? This’ll be for their troubles. I wish you could shuck us of Tothman so easily, but we’ll have to deal with him later, I imagine.”
Timona smiled, recalling how Mick ordered the Tuckers about on the morning of the fire. He did inspire confidence and action.
When they were alone, he cradled her close. “Timona, I am so sorry.”
“Why? Do you mean you were the ringleader of the gang? You want me to marry one of those men? I won’t, you know. Not even for you. Not even McNally. Or raed, but no Frank.”
He refused to return her smile. “I thought Travis would be enough to protect you. Ah Timmy, my lovely girl, I wish none of it happened to you.”
“Mick, the only time I truly felt despondent was when I thought you were gone from my life. They—they read me a letter they said was from your mother. But then I remembered you told me she couldn’t write.”
She studied him. He looked down at his hands and his face seemed pink.
“Mick?”
“They are great ones for waving papers about in a person’s face for proof, aren’t they? I should say ‘weren’t they,’ for they are finished with their plots and stratagems, thank goodness.”
“Mick, why are you blushing?”
“Ah, aye. Um, the letter. ’Twas from me mother. I saw it was missing and knew Blenheim must have lifted it from me pack. My sister Nora wrote it for my mam.”
Timona pushed herself away from his chest. “Then who is Theresa?”
Mick grinned. “Mam’s friend’s daughter. My mother long ago decided we should wed. ’Tis a big joke with me and Theresa but the mothers refuse to believe we don’t suit.
“Blenheim didn’t read you the whole letter. There’s a bit from Nora herself and she writes that Theresa’s going to Dublin in the fall. My sister ends her part of the letter by saying she will join her unless I and my sinning woman send for her instead.”
“Oh. Shall we take Nora?”
“Timmy, we don’t have to decide any such nonsense now.”
“How on earth did your mother know about me?”
“Nora wrote that a fancy English businessman tracked down the family and informed them I was living in sin.”
“A Calverson employee,” Timona said glumly.
“Aye. He wanted to bring Mam over here to deliver the message herself. But she’ll never step foot farther than the edge of the village.”
With her uninjured hand, Timona stroked his shoulder. “Oh Mick, I wish they had left you and your family alone. I am sorry it has been so difficult to be with me.”
“You won’t hear me complaining. Hell, I’m not the one with injuries, my poor dearie.”
“But they have been so dreadful to you.”
“Not so bad. And entertaining. Hear this for sheer lunacy: Taylor paid a considerable sum of Calverson money to buy me a job. Remember the one I didn’t take in New York? If I’d taken it, turns out they would have fired me and had me thrown in jail for corruption. And you remember the article they showed us?”
“
Cac capaill
,” she said with a damp smile.
“That’s the one. Written by Taylor. He forgot to make all the right changes about me being busted for corruption when I didn’t take the bait.”
“But I don’t understand. When I saw Griffin in New York, he . . .”
“Go on,” Mick said.
“He mentioned that in New York police and others almost always pay Tammany for their advancement.”
“Yah, but there’s so much grand talk of late about cleaning up the system. And they were setting up the whole job to make an example of me. They planned to nab me for bribing my way into advancement. A shrewd plan—it would have gotten rid of me and had the Calverson company sitting pretty with e Tammany bunch, supplying them with a good scapegoat to make the press happy.”
“How did you figure all that out?”
“Oh, I figured out none of it. I long ago had Griffin marked as the man who got me the job, as a sort of a favor to his sister’s . . . Ah. Well. But I must say Blenheim is a blunderer. He mentioned me grand new job at lunch our first day here. When he said he did not know your brother well, I believed him and I thought it about time to ask your Griffin for help. He very obligingly did a bit of snooping.
“Oh, and when I wrote to Griffin I used the telegraph as if it were merely a letter. I’m catching on to the ways of the rich, you see.”
Mick brushed back a few strands of her hair from her face and kissed her again.
“Is that really all they have done to you?” she asked.
“Yes, that’s all. Nothing to what they’ve done to you, love.”
“Oh, Mick. When did you learn all of this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out before answering. “Timmy. I didn’t want to bring you into it. I wasn’t sure if it was my dreadful prejudice against Blenheim and his rich university-boy kind. I had to know they wished us harm. ’Twould be carrying tales to you if I told mere suspicions. A dolt I was to stay mum, I know. I am sorry.”
She smiled. “Mick. If I so much as brought home a guest for dinner I would tell you. Much less if I was setting up some kind of elaborate plan for your protection or detecting a plot to kidnap you.”
He kissed her jaw and gently skimmed the bruise on her cheek with his forefinger. “I promise. Next time I ferret out a plot to kidnap you, I’ll tell you. I did plan to say something once I knew for certain. But you’d been snatched away by then. If only I’d been there to follow or stop the buggers! Oh, I am sorry, love. I know I should have told you. I didn’t want you to think I was as bad as Blenheim. A reverse snob, I think you’ve called me.”
With her good arm, she pulled him down. They both forgot their injured mouths for a long kiss.
She snuggled close to him. Everything would be all right now. No. Not quite everything.
She looked up into his face, her brow furrowed. “Good Lord. I have just thought of Griffin. Does he know about this nonsense yet?”
Mick shook his head. “Not yet, but he will, and too soon. I sent a telegram for him yesterday since I knew he’d want to, ah, straighten things out and I wanted to see him in person first. I worry about your brother for your sake, ye ken. He is not likely to sit back when it is his own company’s men that did this to you.”
She rubbed her face on his shirt.
“Mick. He might do something horrible and—”
“Listen, my darling. This will be hard, and perhaps long, but I think we can get through this. I have a fine list of witnesses from here to New York. McFee, Colsun, Padraig, and other good people heard the threats and nonsense in New York if we need to make a case there—that day I wrote all the names in my memo book. While we were at Colsun’s with ’em, I palmed a middle page of that rubbishy article they wrote. So if Taylor penned the dirt himself, the way I think he did, there’s some handwriting to compare. Better even than countering with your own pet reporter’s story, aye?”
“You’re jealous because you want your own pet reporter.”
Mick chuckled and smoothed back a fewstrands of her hair from her face. “Here we have the diggers, not to mention Travis and Araminta and even your blasted Solly. But just to be sure, well, I’m thinking your camera will help provide evidence. I have your equipment out in the cart. I believe I remembered the right plates to use. And I have the stuff that flashes light. But you must tell me what to do.”
She leaned back against him. And he told her the details of his plan.