The Last Bride in Ballymuir Read online

“Wait until we’re through this. Then decide.”

  Her answering look held mild reproach, as if he should know better than to doubt her.

  “By the time I was fifteen, my parents had found a way to be rid of me when school wasn’t in session, too. A second cousin of my mam had a farm outside of Dundalk, and it was arranged that I’d work for him over the summers.” Michael tipped back his head and gazed blankly at the ceiling. He could still see the old bastard in perfect detail, and smell the stench of his rotting teeth.

  “You couldn’t tell me from a slave, those days. I hardly left the farm all summer long, and had no mates to come visit.” In retrospect, it had been fine practice for his years in prison.

  “And you didn’t get word to your parents about this?” Kylie sounded so incredulous that Michael knew for all her father’s faults, at least he’d paid attention to her.

  Michael shrugged. “I didn’t see the point. They’d stopped listening to me long before. And at least it made the prospect of classes each fall one hell of a lot more tolerable. And then, my last year in school, I met someone. Her name was Dervla McLohne and she was several years older than I.”

  Not that Dervla had had any idea that first night she’d come up to him in the pub. With his size, he’d easily passed for a man in his mid-twenties, a fact he’d used to his favor in more than one late-night excursion off school grounds. It was only when he’d turned into a red-faced stammering fool over one of her more explicit comments that she’d asked his age. He’d been too distracted by his pounding erection to even think to lie.

  “So she wasn’t a student?” Kylie asked with a guilelessness that Dervla couldn’t have matched even when still in nappies.

  “No, she was a clerk at a store in town. The set she ran with was intense, wild. Brawls over political matters I’d never spent a second thinking about. Affairs... break-ups...” He trailed off, then bitterly finished with, “I was so damn thrilled to be a part of all this adult life.”

  She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “It seems to me that you’d have been thrilled to be a part of anything.”

  “I suppose,” he replied, knowing that no matter how lonely, Kylie would never have permitted herself to be drawn in the way he was. She possessed too much integrity.

  “Dervla and I became more, ah, involved. And it just so happened that my father, in the only stroke of generosity I’ve ever witnessed from him, got me a car as an early graduation gift. That made it all the easier to slip away and spend time with her.

  “One weekend, I met a man she said was her brother Brian, down from Derry. He was the first of the group who made me genuinely uncomfortable. He teased Dervla about being with me, but he didn’t really seem to be joking. There was too much malice to it.” He paused, shifted his weight on the threadbare sofa. “After that, when Brian came visiting, she didn’t invite me over. Two or three times that spring, though, she did ask me for a ride north. Since I was in my last year at school, there weren’t any particular restrictions on where I went. On Fridays, I’d pack into Dervla’s flat with everyone else staying there, then early in the morning we’d cross the border and visit her friends in Belfast or wherever. I didn’t much like her friends.”

  Kylie’s head tipped to a quizzical angle. “Then why did you agree to go with her?”

  “I was eighteen, thought I was in love, and knew I wanted her. I’d have agreed to do about anything she asked.”

  Kylie’s cheeks grew bright crimson. She stared down at her hands, primly folded in her lap. “I see.”

  Judging by her color, Michael figured she did. “On the last weekend before I was to take my Leaving Certificate and be done with school, Dervla asked me to drive her north to see her brother. I agreed, of course. The trip was nothing out of the ordinary.”

  Without even closing his eyes he could see the two of them in the front seat of that car, Dervla distracting him from the road, and from thinking at all, with her hand moving upward to toy with the button on his jeans. We’ve been waiting so long, Mickey, and Brian’s promised me you and I will have a room of our own.

  “We got to her brother’s house. It was in the thick of the projects, and I was sure my car would be stripped and put to use for local political causes by morning. That night, there was a party. I still don’t know if I just drank too much or if something had been slipped into my drink. All I know is I woke when the front door was kicked in and a group of men stormed into the room.”

  He didn’t tell Kylie about watching Dervla and Brian being dragged naked from the bedroom. Her brother who was no brother at all.

  He didn’t tell her how at the cost of a broken nose and jaw, he’d fought the officers who’d tried to grab him. Not because he feared whatever was to happen next, but because he’d wanted to kill. Kill Brian. Kill Dervla.

  Not that he’d had the chance.

  He didn’t tell Kylie of the gunfire from the kitchen, of Dervla with the top of her head gone and a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer drowning in his own blood. He carried the brutal scene with him every step of every day, but that wasn’t why he was certain he deserved death himself.

  Michael fixed his gaze on an idyllic print above the fireplace. Ireland through the eyes of a tourist, he decided. And while he told the rest of his story, he kept his eyes pinned to that idyllic green and placid place.

  “I was arrested with the others in the house. When I was interrogated, I asked them to contact my family. The message came back that I now had none. No money, no family, no hope of any help. I kept thinking that the authorities would come to see I was telling the truth, that I was a bystander to whatever Dervla and her friends were doing.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “No. It seems I’d been helping Dervla smuggle materials used to make bombs. Brian was more than happy to implicate me. They impounded my car. Taped inside the boot was enough Semtex to put a huge, fucking crater into the earth. The authorities were amazed that we hadn’t managed to blow ourselves up well before that. I spent the next fourteen years wishing I had.”

  “And were you guilty?”

  “I was responsible. And because I had no one left, I admitted association with Dervla’s group. You see, in the Maze—where they were going to put me—you were either on one side or the other if you wanted to survive. I picked the poison I knew. Family,” he said, practically choking on the word. “I was jailed with my new family.”

  And the rest, he should have practiced saying. Words came to him in jagged chunks that ripped at his soul as he tried to force them out. “When they were questioning me, I learned that a family living above a Belfast pub had died in a bombing attack... a little boy and girl. They’d connected the explosion back to the group Dervla and Brian belonged to. It happened a week after we’d paid a visit there. Two children died,” he repeated, then mentally finished the thought that hadn’t left him since that night: They died because I was a fool who couldn’t tell love from deception.

  Steeling himself for the contempt he knew he’d see on Kylie’s face, he looked at her. And what he found was even more shattering. He saw her tears, and it nearly killed him. Michael was out the door and down a dark road before his own tears came. Fourteen years, and finally they came.

  Chapter Ten

  God between us and all harm.

  —Irish Blessing

  If the man had to bolt out of the place, at least he could have had the common sense to take his car, Kylie thought. But no, Michael Kilbride had gone on foot, and left his jacket hanging beside the door, too. Three cold hours he’d been gone. And here she stood peering out into dark swallowed by more dark.

  “Come back,” she whispered. She ached for him, for what he’d been through, for the burdens he carried. He’d been a fool, people had suffered ... and died.

  Kylie pushed aside the image and sorted through what she knew of the man. He felt remorse, this much was true. Beneath the impassive, damned-if-I-care mask he wore, it weighed into his every word, his
every action. He needed to heal. If forgiveness were hers to give, she could forgive him his youth and stupidity. She wondered, though, whether he would ever forgive himself.

  “Home, Michael,” she urged.

  She knew he couldn’t hear her, of course, wherever he was, tangled in his knot of guilt, grief, and self-hatred. As much as she wanted to search for him, there was no point in having two fools wandering in the dark. Eventually, Kylie changed into her nightgown, combed her hair, brushed her teeth, then curled up on the couch to wait. And later—much later—she fell asleep.

  A beacon in the darkness, Michael wearily thought as he closed in on the soft, glowing light at the top of the hill. Numb from the cold and wrenching night, he willed himself forward. Just a few more steps and he would retrieve his jacket and car keys, then never see Kylie again.

  Never again.

  The confines of his old cell were more welcoming than the sentence he’d just given himself. He could have done his full bird of twenty-five years standing on his head before he could do this.

  Feet making crunching sounds on the hard dirt path, he walked to the front window and peered in the smudged pane. The light next to the couch still shone, but everything else seemed still. He went up on the balls of his feet, trying to see over the back of the couch to the fireplace. If the peat was no longer smoking, he’d know she was asleep. But even at his height, he couldn’t see clear of the couch.

  Figuring that trying his luck at a quick escape was better than freezing to death, he edged toward the door and lifted the latch. Like everything else in Kylie O’Shea’s house, it worked only halfway. Jiggling it a few times, he finally got it to open. One hand feeling the wall just inside the door, and the rest of him shivering outside, he finally touched the worn canvas of his jacket. Lifting it slowly from the hook, he froze when a soft hand settled on top of his.

  “Are you going somewhere?”

  He leaned his forehead against the hard, stuccoed side of the house, feeling it press sharply into his skin. He closed his eyes. There was no denying it; God had it out for him. Showing him the way to Kylie, then taking her away, but only after one last, tantalizing touch.

  “I’m going home.”

  The hand pulled at him. “Then come inside.”

  It was the cold—it had slowed his brain until even the simplest words were too much for him to understand.

  A second hand reached out and grabbed at the neck of his sweater. “I asked you to come inside, and do it before the last bit of heat escapes, if you please.”

  One hard tug had him stumbling over the stoop. The door closed behind him before he even knew what happened. Michael steadied himself, then looked down at her. He’d never thought of flannel as a sensuous material, but he’d never thought of it caressing Kylie O’Shea, either.

  “I knew never to wager against you in a fight,” he said.

  “Leverage, nothing more. You’ve had me worried.” She gestured at the couch. “Sit down.”

  He didn’t consider disobeying. In a matter of minutes, she had stoked the fire, ordered him out of his shoes, buried him in a blanket, and tucked a mug of tea into his hands.

  “You thought to just leave, didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t see much in the way of a choice,” he said before taking a scalding sip of the tea. Gasping, invoking a few of the saints, he set the mug down on the lamp table.

  “Too hot?” At the concern in her eyes, he eliminated torture as a possible reason for being brought back inside.

  “It’ll cool,” he managed to get over his burnt tongue.

  She sat next to him on the couch, slipping her slender bare feet under one corner of his blanket. “While it does, let’s get to my part in that little talk we were having.”

  He supposed it was better to be done now, while he was still numb and wrung empty from the grief he’d finally set free.

  Kylie wasted no time in getting in her first blow. “You didn’t have much sense back in those days. But then again, most young people don’t.”

  “Most aren’t lethally stupid, either,” he pointed out.

  She raised one hand in an abrupt arc. “You’ve had your say. It’s my turn now. The choices you made, I’m not saying they were right, or even wholly understandable to me. But I don’t think you made them meaning to hurt others, did you?”

  Lord, he was bone-weary. He’d asked himself these questions countless times. And the answers never changed. “They were hurt just the same. Children no different than the ones you see in your classroom every day—”

  Her eyes closed as if she tried to force back tears. He wondered if she was putting a face to the children, giving them identities. God knew he had, down to the minutiae of their budding lives. Long before he’d seen their photos at the trial, he’d known them. And tonight he’d finally mourned them. And himself.

  “But did you know you were smuggling—” She trailed off with a wince. He could almost see her mentally picking up then dropping ugly, truth-laden words like “explosives” and “bombs” before she finally settled on,”—the things that you were?”

  “No, I had no idea I was carrying anything at all. But—”

  “A no will do,” she directed, sounding very much like a prosecutor he’d had the bleak fortune to meet. Kylie leaned forward to tug a bit more of the blanket off him and over her legs. “You were led, Michael, and far too easily. But you’re no youngster anymore, and you’ve paid a heavy price for your poor choices. Don’t you think it’s time you let it go?”

  This was not the kind of thing one could get free of. He could never grant himself absolution for his acts. Lives had ended, and his had changed irrevocably. But tonight, in the midst of the ache and chaos, he had felt something shift deep inside. A door rustier and more ill-sprung than even Kylie’s had begun to open. He saw now that he could learn to move on. However horrible his mistakes, he had a life to pick up. One on the fringes, but a life nonetheless.

  “Even if I do let it go, others won’t.”

  “You can only take care of yourself.” He wondered if she recognized the irony of those words coming from a woman who did nothing but care for others. “As for the rest of the world, they’ll come around in time.”

  She spoke with such sincerity, such utter trust in a universal good he simply didn’t believe in. There was nothing he could say in return without hurting her.

  Color rose in her cheeks. Tugging the blanket the rest of the way off him, she cocooned herself in it. “You left it to me, whether I want to see you again. Nothing tonight has changed my answer. I-I want to be with you.” She let out her breath in a relieved sigh. “There now, I’ve said it.”

  A profound relief rolled through him. He hadn’t lost her yet. “I want to be with you, too,” he said, then shook his head over the embarrassing inadequacy of his words. “I’ll treasure you, Kylie, I swear I will. I’ll see you don’t come to harm.”

  She reached out and traced the line of his jaw. He fought not to show how much her simple touch affected him. Showing too much, caring too much, meant one day hurting too much.

  “I’m safe with you. I’ve always known that,” she said softly.

  He didn’t mean to pull her to him, any more than he meant to close his mouth over hers. Or to demand that she give her all. He didn’t mean to, but even while knowing he couldn’t give the same in return, he did.

  At the first taste of her, the first touch of tongue to tongue, he was lost to his need. The feel of Kylie’s lithe body in his arms only fed the hunger, as did the low moan of pleasure that drifted from her throat. Her throat... vulnerable, white as a virgin’s thighs, and tasting sweet, so sweet.

  It was physical, this wanting, slamming through him and leaving him breathless. But it was more. So much more that he couldn’t understand it. Pushing aside the blanket, he cupped her breast in his hand, and took her surprised gasp into his mouth. Her fingers clenched tighter into his back, then relaxed. He didn’t move, just felt her heartbeat— a flight o
f startled birds—beneath the thin fabric of her gown.

  He fought the need, relentless though it was. He would not frighten her.

  “My treasure, ma stor,” he whispered, trailing kisses down to the tender curve where her neck met the sweep of her shoulder. At her sigh, he shifted their position just enough that he could turn his attention to the soldier row of tiny buttons marching down the upper part of her nightgown. Their eyes met, hers wide, smoky blue, and trusting, so trusting. His fingers fumbled and shook, but finally he slipped his hand against her skin.

  “Like silk,” he murmured.

  Her eyes drifted closed. He caressed the valley between her breasts, then gradually feathered outward. Kylie’s breath came fast and shallow, and she said something in Irish he couldn’t understand. He stroked her, dusted the night with kisses and nonsense words. He honored her.

  Soon it wasn’t enough, this touching without seeing. The last few buttons gave way with ease. He pushed the fabric aside. Transfixed, he gazed at her lush beauty. After a moment, she made an embarrassed sound and tried to cover her breasts.

  “No, you don’t,” Michael said, taking her hands and spreading her arms wide. “It would be a sacrilege. And a near impossibility,” he added with a quick smile. He dropped a kiss on the pulse still fluttering madly at her throat. “You’re beautiful, you know.”

  “I’m just...me.” Her voice was thready with self-consciousness.

  “Beautiful,” he reaffirmed, then brought his mouth to one peak.

  Kylie jumped as if kissed by fire. He touched her as no man ever had.

  No man. Rough, terrifying images wavered in the shadows, then gathered substance. For a moment they succeeded in becoming her reality even though she knew they were ghosts.

  Hurtful, evil ghosts. She was stronger than this, and smarter, too. Kylie lifted her hands to run her fingers through Michael’s thick hair. She held him to her, focusing on the feel of his wet mouth against her hot skin, on the drawing pressure that brought an answering tug deep and low inside her.