shadows did not seem to cling to her with their sadness as he offered her one lingering look, and reassurance washed over her. She could not explain why she felt safe in a way she never had before; nothing had changed. Not one thing. Da was still drinking in the kitchen, Ma was still worn and irritable with unhappiness and exhaustion as salt pork sizzled in a fry pan, and yet the lamplight seemed brighter as she followed it through the door and into the kitchen where more work awaited her.
He had not bargained on feeling sorry for the girl and bad for her plight. Ian took a drink of hot tea, uncomfortable with the tension surrounding him. Other than the clink of steel forks on the serviceable ironware plates, there was no other sound. Mrs. O’Rourke, a faded woman with sharp angles and a sallow face, kept her head down and shoveled up small bites of baked beans, fried potatoes and salt pork with uninterrupted regularity. Mr. O’Rourke was hardly different, his persistent frown deepening the angles of his sharp features.
These were not happy nor prosperous people. What had happened to the family over the years? What hardships? While it wasn’t his business, he was curious. This was not the wealthy family from his grandparents’ stories. Not sure what to say, he kept silent and broke apart a sourdough biscuit to butter it. Searing pain cut through his hand. He’d used a strip of cloth as a bandage, but judging by the looks of things the cut was still bleeding. He would worry about it later. His mind was burdened, and he had greater concerns.
A single light flickered in the nearby wall lamp, but it was not strong enough to reach beyond the circle of the small table. He’d caught a glimpse of the kitchen when he’d come in from the barn, but Mrs. O’Rourke had been in the process of carrying the food from the stove to the table in the corner of the spare, board-sided room. A ragged curtain hung over a small window, the ruffle sagging with neglect. The furniture was spare and decades old, battered and hardly more than serviceable. Judging by the outline of the shack he’d seen through the storm, the dwelling was in poor repair and housed three tiny rooms, maybe four.
Nana is never going to believe this, he thought as he set down his cup. What happened to the O’Rourke family’s wealth? Times looked as if they had always been hard here. His chest tightened. He had some sympathy for that. Recent hardships had broken his family. But he reckoned in the old days when they had all been sitting around the peat fire dreaming of the future, his grandparents could not have foreseen this. There was no fortune here to save the McPherson family reputation. His grandmother was going to be devastated.
“More beans?” O’Rourke grunted from the head of the table, holding the bowl that had barely one serving remaining.
Ian shook his head and took a bite of the biscuit, his troubles deepening. What of the marriage bargain made long ago, in happier times? How binding was it? It was clear the O’Rourkes wanted their daughter married. But what did Fiona want? Not marriage, by the way she was avoiding any evidence of his existence. She stared at her plate, picking at her food, looking as if in her mind she were a hundred miles away. Her features were stone, her personality veiled.
His fingers itched to sketch her. To capture the way the light tumbled across her, highlighting the dip and fall of her ebony locks and her delicate face. She could have been sculpted from ivory, her skin was so perfect. The set of her pure blue eyes and the slope of her nose and the cut of her chin were sheer beauty. There was something about her that would be harder to capture on the page, something of spirit and heart that was lovelier yet.
“I see you’ve taken a shine to the girl.” O’Rourke sounded smug as he slurped at his coffee, liberally laced with whiskey by the smell of it. “Maeve, fetch us some of that gingerbread you made special. Fiona, get off your backside and clear this table right now. Come with me, McPherson. Feel like a card game?”
“I don’t gamble.” He pushed away from the table, thankful the meal had finally ended. The floor looked unswept beneath his feet, the boards scarred and scraped.
“Didn’t figure you for the type, although that grandmother of yours was a high and mighty woman.” O’Rourke didn’t seem as if he realized he was being offensive as he unhooked the lamp from the wall sconce and pounded through the shadowed kitchen, carrying the light with him. “Your old man knew how to raise a ruckus. The times we had when we were young.”
O’Rourke fell to reminiscing and in the quiet, Ian hesitated at the doorway, glancing over his shoulder at the young woman bent to her task at the table. New light flared in the corner—the mother had lit another lamp—and in the brightness she was once again the lyrical beauty he had seen on the prairie trying to tame the giant horse. He realized there was something within Fiona O’Rourke that could not be beaten or broken. Something that made awareness tug within him, like recognizing like.
“McPherson, are you comin’?” The bite of impatience was hard to miss, echoing along the vacant board walls.
Ian tore his gaze away, trying hard not to notice the shabby sitting room. A stove had gone cold in the corner and the older man didn’t move to light a fire, probably to save the expense of coal. He set the lamp on a shelf, bringing things into better focus. Ian noted a pair of rocking chairs by the curtained window with two sewing baskets within reach on the floor. A braided gingham rug tried to add cheer to the dismal room, where two larger wooden chairs and a small, round end table were the only other furniture. He took the available chair, settling uncertainly on the cheerful gingham cushion.
“You’ve met Fiona, and you like what you see. Don’t try to tell me you don’t.” O’Rourke uncapped his whiskey bottle, his gaze penetrating and sly. “Do we have a deal?”
“A deal?” Hard to say which instinct shouted more loudly at him, the one urging him to run or the one wanting to save her. Unhappiness filled the house like the cold creeping in through the badly sealed board wall. He fidgeted, not sure what to do. His grandmother would want him to say yes, but he had only agreed to come. His interest, if any, was in the land and that was hard to see buried beneath deep snowdrifts. Still, he could imagine it. The rolling fields, green come May, dotted with the small band of brood mares he had managed to hold on to. “Shouldn’t we start negotiating before we agree to a deal?”
“No need.” A sly grin slunk across his face, layered in mean. “Your grandmother and me, we’ve already come to terms. Ain’t that why you’re here?”
Warning flashed through him. “You and my grandmother have been in contact?”
“Why else would you be here?”
Oh, Nana. Betrayal hit him like a mallet dead center in his chest. Had his grandmother gone behind his back? “What agreement did the two of you reach?”
“Six hundred dollars. My wife and I stay in our house for as long as we live. Now, I can see by the look on your face you think that’s a steep price. I won’t lie to ya. The girl is a burden, but like I said, she’s a hard worker. That’s worth something. Besides, I saw you looking her over. A man your age needs a wife. I ought to know. That’s why I settled down.”
Horror filled him; he couldn’t say what bothered him more. He launched out of his chair, no longer able to sit still. He thought of his frail grandmother, a woman who had lost everything she once loved. Her words warbled through his mind. It won’t hurt a thing for you to go take a look. The land might be just what we need—what you need—to start over and keep your grandfather’s legacy living on.
Legacy? That word stood out to him now. At the time, the plea on his grandmother’s button face had persuaded him to come, that and the doctor’s dim prognosis. Nana’s heart was failing. So, he’d reasoned, how could he disappoint her in this final request? Not the marriage agreement—he had been clear with her on
