Читать книгу Courting the Corporal - Heather McCorkle - Страница 10

Chapter 2

The setting sun cast a lovely orange glow on the open marketplace by the time Catriona finished explaining. Open mouthed and silent, both Sadie and Deirdre stared at her. The silence from her friends stretched her nerves until they were taught as a fiddle’s strings. No disappointment or suspicion played upon their faces, only shock. She had told them every word and every nuance of character that had come to pass in her parlor, leaving no question as to her sister-in-law’s intentions.

Orange light—and something else, was it excitement?—began to fill Deirdre’s dark blue eyes as she leaned forward. “What an adventure! Are you going to do it?” she asked.

Joy at the very idea brought a smile to her face at the same time anxiety flipped her stomach upside down. “I couldn’t possibly,” she murmured.

While her eyes were cast out over the fruit stands and merchant carts, she saw neither the people who walked the cobbled city center, nor the wares they searched for. Instead, she saw rolling fields of green bathed in brilliant sunlight.

“But you have always wanted to work with the land! Can you imagine it, the land of sunshine, the Wild West!” Deirdre exclaimed, her hands moving with each word as if they spoke for her as much as her voice did.

She turned a circle, twirling her burgundy skirt out, pausing halfway around to fetch an orange off a merchant stand. Eyebrows rising, she held the fruit beneath Catriona’s nose. “A place where things like this grow wild, they say!”

Though she shared her friend’s enthusiasm, fear held her back from expressing it. Plaintive calls for her to handle the expensive fruit carefully came from the vendor behind her, but Deirdre seemed not to hear.

Sadie nodded. “You do have a knack for growing things.”

The vendor behind them began to beseech their better nature. His desperate pleas finally made Catriona dig a few coins from her purse and press them into his hand as they walked by.

“You want to; I can see it in your eyes. Why stay here where the hens of high society sneer down their noses at you?” Deirdre asked.

Her gaze moved from Deirdre’s flushed face to Sadie’s guarded one. “I couldn’t leave you two. Sadie here would be out of a job, and who knows what trouble you would get up to with me gone,” she said, one eye narrowing at Deirdre as her gaze returned to her.

Laughing, Deirdre threw an arm around her as they walked. “That is certainly true, on both counts. But what if we both went with you?” Not so much as an ounce of tease peppered her tone. Excitement, yes, but not teasing.

“You’re serious?” Catriona asked.

She watched as Sadie’s brows rose, her head tilted, and a smile started to lift the corners of her lips. Deirdre draped her other arm around Sadie and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

“Sunshine, beaches, a warm ocean, all within a few days’ travel,” she tempted her.

The smile playing at Sadie’s full lips spread. The joy on her face stripped away the aging her husband’s death had wrought upon her, making her look her true twenty-five years once again. “It would be an adventure, would it not?” she asked.

Deirdre nodded. “The grandest adventure, indeed! Far away from the cackling hens of New York high society, in a place virtually untouched. Imagine it, the three of us forging a new path.” Her arm tightened around Catriona. “Three plots, one for each of us. That means it is meant to be. I would be happy to pay the fees on one of the plots and build a home on it. Together, we can fund the building of Sadie’s home.” She held up a hand just as Sadie’s mouth opened. “I know what you are going to say, it would not be charity. If you insist, you could work off the cost of the home by working at whatever endeavor we undertake with the land, but the home would be yours, yours!”

The passion in her friend’s voice moved Catriona, stirring an excitement in her that she hadn’t realized had been sleeping there.

“But what venture would we undertake?” Sadie asked.

Her thoughts went to her garden, the only part of that house that felt like hers. The idea sprung immediately into Catriona’s mind, as if it had merely been waiting for the right prompting. “A winery.”

Springing up, Deirdre skipped ahead of them, spun around to face them, and clapped her hands together. The woman’s girlish enthusiasm melted away the last of Catriona’s resistance. “That would be perfect! With our connections here in New York, we could even sell to buyers here!”

Eyes alight, Sadie laid grabbed one of Catriona’s hands. “Your mother’s grapes! You can take the vines. That is perfect,” she said.

Those vines were the one possession that her mum had brought all the way from Ireland, nursing them in American soil before Catriona had even been born. When she left home to marry Michael, her mum had given her a cutting off the vine as a wedding gift.

Shaking her head, Catriona stopped on the sidewalk before one of her favorite stores. Bailey’s Spirits. The mercantile sign hanging over the solid oak door announced that they sold wine, tobacco, and spirits. That they had ended up before this very shop struck a chord deep within her. But then, she had a feeling Deirdre’s tugging and prompting had a bit to do with that.

“Could we really do it? Should we really do it?” she whispered.

“Yes!” Deirdre and Sadie said in unison.

The bubbling excitement building within her threatened to boil away her reservations. Her friends’ eager faces fed the latter rather than the prior. Chin tucked, Deirdre peered at her from beneath her dark eyebrows.

“We try it, if it doesn’t work out, we come back. You said yourself that Ashlinn is leaving you the house here in New York, along with Michael’s inheritance. You have nothing to lose save for the experience of a lifetime,” she said.

Letting out a long breath that eased the pressure from her corset, she nodded. “All right. We’ll try it.”

Squeals of delight pierced her ears as her friends hopped about like young lasses and took turns embracing her.

“We must celebrate!” Deirdre said.

“Yes, we must!” Sadie agreed.

Eyes going to the shop door to their left, Catriona smiled. “I’ll buy the wine. ’Tis only appropriate that we do so with a special bottle.”

Sadie looped an arm through Deirdre’s. “We’ll pick up the cheese. There’s a shop just down the block that has the finest in all of New York,” Sadie said.

Deirdre nodded to her. “Excellent plan. We’ll meet you back here in a few moments,” she told Catriona.

With a nod and a wave, Catriona began to ascend the stairs to the shop. Deirdre’s voice rang out, making her turn her head back in their direction. “Red or white?”

“Red,” she called back as she kept climbing.

Foot halfway up the next step, she turned her head back around, and smacked into an unyielding body. The momentum of the person descending the stairs redirected her own, and she began to topple backward. A pair of striking green eyes widened within a face boasting fine cheekbones and a strong jaw that hadn’t seen a razor in at least a week. She had just enough time to fret over a handsome man—rugged though he was—seeing her tumbled to her arse, before his hand dashed out and grabbed hers. One moment she was falling, the next she spun around and landed in strong arms.

Pressed up against a firm chest as she was, she could scarcely draw enough breath to cry out. Arms that bulged with muscles barely contained within a simple cotton shirt engulfed her. The scents of lavender soap mingled pleasantly with the subtle musk of man.

“Easy there, ma’am. The path ahead is more important than the one behind,” a deep voice thick with a brogue that didn’t quite seem all Irish resonated from the chest against hers.

Finding her balance, she pushed away from the hard planes of muscle, freeing herself from arms that tugged with a slight reluctance to release her. She had to crane her neck back to take in all of the man who towered over her, and not because he was a few steps up from her like she had thought. He stood on the same step she did, he was just that tall. Cotton breeches filled out quite nicely—she hated to admit—went along with the simple shirt and an ankle-length leather duster. The outfit created the picture of a rugged man who looked like he belonged out West rather than in downtown New York.

Her cheeks heated as she realized he had said something, and she couldn’t recall for the life of her what it had been.

One of his brows rose into dark brown hair that hadn’t seen a barber’s scissors for at least a year, maybe longer. The motion made his green eyes all the more alluring, as if it increased their magnetism.

“Cat got your tongue?” he asked.

He didn’t even attempt to hide his brogue. Either he wasn’t from New York, or he had not undergone years of lessons to strip the Irish from his voice. Either way, his lack of concern over the matter both incensed and intrigued her—though she would never admit the latter to anyone save herself. And to speak to her with such familiarity, well it simply wasn’t done. Nor did it help that he used her old nickname. Hearing it reminded her of all the things she no longer was. And those reminders hurt.

Deep laughter rumbled from him when she didn’t answer. Straightening her shawl, she took a step back from him, skirt swishing against the steps as she did so. The material caught beneath her heel and she began to slip. His hand shot out and gripped her elbow, steadying her. The warmth of his hand on her arm felt wonderful. Sensations she hadn’t felt in years began to stir deep in her bosom. They were things she hadn’t ever wanted to feel again. Her judgment of men’s character, her attraction to them, couldn’t be trusted. Eyes narrowing, she tugged free of him.

“That is twice you have put your hands on me, sir. Such a thing is quite improper and I will thank you not to do it again,” she huffed.

A corner of his mouth lifted into a crooked grin that caused things low in her body to betray her and tighten. “But if I have to do it again to save you from falling, again, your thanks will then be for naught,” he teased.

Her brow furrowed so deeply she could see the carefully shaped hairs of it. Such a look would cause wrinkles, her mum would say, yet at the moment she didn’t care. “I shall forgive you since you are not from around here, and clearly do not know the rules of proper society.”

The man tucked the package he was carrying under his arm and fixed her with an amused look. “You should instead thank me for not letting you fall on your arse, twice.”

Mouth dropping open, she could only watch mutely as he gave her an exaggerated bow, turned, and strode down the steps. Her gaze remained riveted upon him. The leather duster billowed out around him, sending his leather and soap scent to her on the breeze. An arse of a man simply should not smell so good or have the ability to make such a simple outfit look so appealing. Shaking off such thoughts, she lifted her head and strode up the stairs, determined not to allow the frustrating encounter to ruin her good mood. She had a bottle of wine to buy and a change of destiny to celebrate.