“He… who?” Isaac asked, though there was only one man inside that made him uneasy.
“The stranger.”
“Did he say anything untoward?” He turned around then. “Did he do something he ought not have?”
She wiped another tear from her cheek. “He asked me to marry him.”
“He didwhat?”
“I was doing dishes, and he came up and said he needed a mother for his young’uns, then said I was pretty enough to look at. I tried to move away, but he had me cornered by the sink. And he touched me hair. And I just… couldn’t…” She shook her head and let the words fade.
There was no crime in talking to a woman, no crime in proposing to her either. O’Byrne oughtn’t have touched her hair without permission, but here Isaac was contemplating doing thesame thing. How could a man resist feeling one of those fiery tresses?
Yet Isaac found soothing words leaving his mouth anyway. “If you’re not interested in his suit, I’ll have a talk with him about leaving you alone. A man needs to listen when a woman tells him no.”
“Th-thank ye.” Her voice trembled, but she looked up at him without her gaze darting away. “I’m sorry to be such a mess tonight.”
He shook his head. “There’s nothing to apologize for.”
And there wasn’t. Not when he was a constant mess on the inside himself, even if it only showed on holidays or when his brother went on a shipwreck rescue.
“They d-deserve a better pa.”
Elijah glanced at his wife’s reflection in the small mirror above the dresser, where Victoria stood pulling pins out of her hair. The house had long since quieted, all of their family and friends gone home, while the O’Byrne children were tucked into bed in the loft.
“Don’t you agree?” Her eyes met his in the mirror, a sharp hazel despite the dim lantern light.
His mind flashed with images from dinner. O’Byrne’s raucous laugh, the dark manner in which he watched Aileen Brogan, the way he’d sent Alice to get help from Jack when she’d asked her pa for a second piece of pie. If O’Byrne couldn’t be bothered to get pie for one of his children now, would he bother to feed them when they were his responsibility alone?
But the worst part was the children’s silence. It was as though they became mute ragdolls in the presence of their father. Theonly time he remembered any of them talking to their pa was when Alice asked for pie. Jack had avoided him altogether, walking around with tight shoulders and a clenched jaw all night, while Alice and Toby had mainly hid, finding corners to play in and ways to get lost in the group of other children.
Elijah unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt before yanking it over his head. “I agree.”
“Do we have to give them back?” Victoria pulled another pin from her hair, releasing a wave of dark brown hair to hang by her ear.
“Not this second, no. O’Byrne has to find somewhere to stay first, and he also needs to find a job he can work in town.”
“He won’t try to take the children to the logging camp?” She released more hair from her pins, then met his gaze in the mirror.
“A logging camp is too dangerous for children.” He’d put his foot down on that one. No pa with a lick of sense would want his young’uns in a place where trees could fall on them.
Victoria looked away. “When the time comes, I just don’t know if I’ll be able to give them back.”
He could give a hundred responses to that.
I told you not to get too attached.
I warned you we’d only have them for a short time.
You knew I was looking for their father.
I wondered if this was a bad idea from the start.
Instead, he came up behind his wife and wrapped his arms around her. “I know, sweetling. I don’t know if I’ll be able to give them back either.”
She laid a hand on the union suit covering his forearm. “Did you hear what he said when Jack asked him if he’d heard about Jenny passing?”
“I wasn’t aware Jack talked to his father at all.”
