Gingham Bride

“It’s not your place to ask questions, missy.” Da grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and shoved her. “It’s your place to do what yer told.”

Knocked off balance, Fiona shot her hands out, but she couldn’t see the wall. Her knuckles struck wood and she landed hard against the boards. She hardly felt the jolting pain, because it wasn’t going to be anything compared to what was coming.

“Let me tell you what, girl.” Da worked himself into a higher rage, smacking the strap against his gloved palm. “If McPherson changes his mind and won’t have you, you’ll be the one to pay. I’ll make this look like a Sunday picnic—”

She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, breathing slowly in and slowly out, ready for the bite of the strap. She heard the rustle of clothing, imagining her father was drawing his arm back for the first powerful blow. This won’t be so bad, she told herself, gathering what strength she had. She could endure this as she had many times before. She braced herself for the worst. It was best if she thought of being elsewhere, maybe astride Flannigan galloping toward the horizon. She imagined the strike of snow on her face and freedom filling her up. If only she could ignore the hissing strap as it flew downward toward her.

The lean-to door burst open with a thundering crack, and the strap never touched her back. Footsteps hammered on the board floor and Da cursed. Her eyes had adjusted enough to make out the shadowed line of two upraised arms, as if locked in battle. But the taller man, the stronger man, took the strap in hand and stepped away.

“It’s over, O’Rourke,” Ian McPherson’s baritone boomed like an avalanche. “You won’t beat this girl again. You hear me?”

“This is my house. You have no call giving me orders.”

“If you want me to consider marrying the girl, I do.” Warm steel, those words, and coldly spoken. He unwound the strap from where it had wrapped around his hand. Had he caught it in midstrike? Was he hurt?

It was hard to think past the relief rolling through her and harder to hear her thoughts over her father’s mumbled anger. He was saying something, words she couldn’t grasp, while Ian stood his ground, feet braced, stance unyielding. His words echoed in her hollow-feeling skull. If you want me to consider marrying the girl…

She squeezed her eyes shut. Marry. She wasn’t yet eighteen; her birthday was nearly five months away. The last thing she wished to do with her life was to trust a man with it.

“What is going on out here?” Ma’s sharp tone broke through whatever the men were discussing. Fiona opened her eyes, blinking against the stinging brightness as lamplight tumbled into the lean-to, glazing the man with blood staining his glove.

“Just setting a few things straight with the boy.” Da pounded past her. “Don’t stand there gawkin’, woman. Get me a drink.”

The door closed partway, letting in enough light to see the tension in his jaw. Ian McPherson hung the strap on the nail where it belonged, his shoulders rigid, his back taut. She inched toward the door, torn between being alone with an angry man and feeling responsible for his bleeding hand. He’d caught the strap, taking the blow meant for her.

Warmth crept around her heart, but it couldn’t be something like admiration. No, she would not allow any soft or tender feelings toward the man who wanted to bridle her in matrimony. She would be less free than she was now; this she knew from her mother’s life. Still, no one aside from Johnny had ever stood up for her. It wasn’t as if she could leave Ian McPherson bleeding alone in the dark.

“Is it deep?” She was moving toward him without a conscious decision to do so; she reached out to cradle his hand in her own. Blood seeped liberally from the deep gash in his leather glove. It had been a hard strike, then, if the strap had sliced through the material easily. She swallowed hard, hating to think that he was badly cut.

“I believe I shall live.” Although the tension remained in his jaw and tight in his powerful muscles, his voice was soft, almost smiling. “I’ve been hurt much worse than this.”

“If you have, then it wasn’t on my behalf.” She gingerly peeled off his glove, careful of the wound, which looked much worse once she could clearly see it. Her stomach winced in sympathy. She knew exactly how much that hurt. “Come into the kitchen so I can clean this properly.”

“I left the horses standing, and that’s not good for them in this cold.” He withdrew his hand from hers, although slowly and as if with regret. “I’ll bandage it myself when the horses are comfortable.”

“This should not wait.” Men. Even Johnny had been the same, oblivious to common sense when it came to cuts and illnesses. “You need stitches, and you cannot do that on your own.”

“I might surprise you. I have some skill with a needle.”

“Now you are teasing me.” She caught the upturned corners of his mouth. He wasn’t grinning, but the hint of it drew her and she smiled in spite of her objections to the man. “I’m not going to like you. I think it’s only fair that I give you honest warning.”

“I appreciate that.” He didn’t seem offended as he pulled away and punched through the door, holding it open to the pummeling snow. “It’s only fair to tell you that I don’t dislike you nearly as much as I expected to, Fiona O’Rourke. Now, stay in the house where it’s warm. I’ll be back soon enough and you can minister to my cut to your heart’s content.”

The 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 that—but in taking a look and in agreeing to meet the people once so important to their family.

Now, all he saw were broken dreams—his grandmother’s, his grandfather’s and his hopes to start again.

“What are you up to, young man?” O’Rourke slammed his bottle onto the unsteady table—not so hard as to spill the liquor—and bounded to his feet. “Your family agreed to this. The girl and six hundred dollars and not a penny less.”

“Six hundred for the girl?” Ian raked his good hand through his hair, struggling with what to say. The truth would probably make the man even more irate and if that happened, would he take it out on Fiona? He thought of his return ticket on tomorrow’s eastbound train and shivered. His palm burned with pain, a reminder of how hard O’Rourke had meant to thrash his daughter. His stomach soured.

“I feared this would happen. She’s no prize, I grant you that. I’m sorry you had to see how she can be. She could have lost that horse, and that ain’t the first time she’s done something like that. Trouble follows that girl, but she can be taught to pay better attention. I’ll see to it.”

He felt the back of his neck prickle. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed the shadow just inside the doorway to the kitchen. A glimpse of red gingham ruffle swirled out of view. She had come to listen in, had she? And what did she think of her father trying to sell her off like an unwanted horse?

“It costs to feed her and shelter her. Her ma and I are tired of the expense. Since we lost our Johnny, we don’t have anyone to work the fields in the summer or in town for wages in winter.”

And that’s what a child was to these people? A way to earn money without working for it? “I don’t have six hundred dollars, Mr. O’Rourke. My grandmother is ill and she isn’t aware of how precarious our finances are. My grandfather made some bad investments. We are nearly penniless as a result.”

“You have no money?” Fury rolled through the man, furrowing his leathery face and fisting his hands.

“Not a spare six hundred dollars. I didn’t come to renegotiate for the girl.” He had hoped he could bargain for the land with the little savings he had left. He had traveled here with a hope that O’Rourke would be willing to sell at a bargain to his friend’s son. That a wedding would not have to be part of the deal.

“If you don’t have the money, then this is a waste.” O’Rourke cackled, the fury draining, but the bitterness growing. “Tell your grandmother the arrangement is off.”

“That’s for the best.” Ian heard the smallest sigh of relief from behind the shadowed doorway. Again he caught sight of a flash of red gingham as she swirled away, perhaps returning to the kitchen work awaiting her. Disappointment settled deep within him. He told himself it was from losing out on land he had hoped to afford, but in truth, he could not be sure.

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