“I don’t know,” she whispered, her defenses crumbling. All her loneliness and longing tumbled in upon her. Her hands came up to cover her face, and the tears dripped between her fingers.
In two quick strides he was there, gathering her into his arms, holding her close against his chest, pressing kisses against her hair.
“Oh, Kathleen,” she heard him murmur over and over. “Kathleen, I do love you. I really do. Help me to show you. Please, Kathleen.”
She cried against him until she had no more tears. He brushed them away with his fingers and wiped them on his shirt sleeve. When she was finally able to look up at him, she noticed tearstains on his cheeks as well.
“We’ll make it,” he whispered. “We’ll make it—but I want us to be happy. Both of us.”
He pulled her even closer and kissed her again.
“So what do we do?” asked Kathleen with a trembling voice as soon as she was able to speak.
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “I don’t have the answers—but I think we need to talk.”
Talk. Oh, how Kathleen longed to talk. To really talk. Not just to say, “Good morning. Did you sleep well? Please pass the biscuits.” No, really talk.
She nodded and wiped her nose on a handkerchief from her apron pocket.
“Where do we start?” she managed.
“I don’t know.” Slowly he released her. “There is so much that we still haven’t said. So much we haven’t shared.” Then he dared to go on. “I have longed to talk, but I thought you—you weren’t ready to share your past—your heart. I was waiting—”
“And I wanted to talk,” Kathleen laughed shakily, “but Madam always said a man didn’t want a—a chatterer.”
“Chatterer? That was one reason I sent for a wife—so I wouldn’t have to talk to Black.”
Kathleen laughed again. So he talked to the animals, too. It seemed funny. Ironical.
He sat down on a kitchen chair and pulled her onto his knees. “Let’s talk,” he said with a grin. “Let’s talk all night if we want to. Let the dishes wait. I want to know all about you. I want you to know all about me.”
Kathleen put her arms around his neck and drew his head against her. It was almost surprising for her to discover that she didn’t hate him after all. She had never felt such deep, fervent love.
Chapter Fifteen
Erma
Once the door had been opened to real communication, Kathleen felt that she could not get enough. At times she wondered if she really was becoming a chattering woman, but Donnigan seemed to enjoy it. He nodded and smiled and made comments of his own, and night after night, before they knew it, the evening was gone and it was time to retire again.
“How much more quickly time goes when you have someone to talk to,” Kathleen mused.
“Is Black missing your conversations?” she teased Donnigan one evening as they sat by the fire, she with a sock to darn and he with one of his old newspapers.
He grinned. “I talk to him now and then just so he won’t feel left out,” he teased back.
Kathleen chuckled. “And I still talk to Polly when I milk her,” she admitted.
Kathleen had insisted that she be the one to milk the cow morning and night. It was good to get out of the kitchen and breathe a breath of fresh air. And Polly was milked in the barn, so it was never too cold.
They were silent while Kathleen threaded her needle. But the silence was no longer cold and threatening. They both knew they could break it if they had an idea they wished to discuss, a thought to share, or just an event of the day to tell about.
Donnigan’s eyes went back to his paper.
“What are you?” Kathleen asked suddenly, causing Donnigan’s head to lift.
“What am I?” He hesitated. “A man—I hope.”
Kathleen chuckled. “I mean—what nationality? What were your kin?”
Donnigan shrugged carelessly. “I dunno.”
“Donnigan sounds Irish,” Kathleen commented.
“You know an Irishman named Donnigan?”
Kathleen made another stitch. “No,” she admitted. “But when I first saw your name on that piece of paper, I thought maybe it was Irish.”
“Well, I’ve never met another man—or boy—in my whole life who answered to the name,” said Donnigan, his tone ironic.
“I wonder what nationality it is. Where it came from,” Kathleen said as she placed another stitch.
Donnigan shrugged again.
“Don’t you care?” asked Kathleen. “I mean, I’m an O’Malley. I’ve been told that all my life. My father made me feel proud to be Irish. And you don’t even know what you are. Doesn’t it matter at all to you?”
“Guess not. I’ve never given it much thought. What difference does it make? Men are—men. People are people. No difference.”
Kathleen glanced up at him, surprised by his attitude.
“But wouldn’t you like to know if you are French or German or British—or Irish?” she asked in mock exasperation.
“Don’t think I’m Irish,” Donnigan returned.
“Sure now, and you definitely are not,” said Kathleen pertly, her accent strengthening for the first time in a long while. “An Irishman knows what he is, and that’s the pure truth of it.”
Donnigan smiled.
“Sure now,” he tried to mimic her.
Kathleen threw the newly darned sock at him and he rose quickly from his chair, chasing her around the kitchen and stuffing the mended sock down the front of her gown.
“You can never be serious,” she accused him, though she knew it wasn’t true.
“I’m serious,” he answered, but his voice still held teasing.
“Then tell me where you ever got a name like Donnigan.”
He still held her around the waist. “I don’t know,” he replied. “My mother named me, I was told. Where she got it—or why she liked it—I’ll never know.”
“Don’t you like it?”
He released her then. “If you had any idea how many fights I had as a youngster over this name of mine—”
“But why?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s just—just different.”
“Then why haven’t you changed it? You could go by Don or—or—”
“Guess that’s the reason I fought. Fellas were always trying to call me something else. Pin a nickname on me. And I kept insisting that my name was Donnigan—and that they call me that.”
In their short time together Kathleen had heard Donnigan correct a storekeeper who didn’t call him by his full name. He had not been rude. Just simply stated, “The name is Donnigan.” At the time she had been surprised that he would make an issue of it. She was especially surprised now when he confessed he didn’t even like the name.
But Donnigan had become serious. “I lost my mother when I was very young,” he said with deep feeling. “My name is the one thing I have from her. Guess that seemed reason enough to fight for it.”
Seeing the pain in his eyes, Kathleen wished she hadn’t asked.
A rider pounded into the farmyard, a young boy from town. Kathleen and Donnigan were both surprised. Rarely did they have company and never anyone who came so obviously on a mission. Donnigan met him at the door.
“Is Mrs. Harrison in?” he asked, sounding out of breath.
Kathleen moved to the door, her eyes wide with concern. The young lad reached up to remove his cap.
“I’ve a note for you, ma’am—from Mr. Stein,” the boy said, and handed Kathleen an envelope.
Kathleen’s hand began to tremble. Whatever would Lucas have to say to her that would require courier service—and at such speed, she wondered.
By the time she had crossed to a kitchen chair and torn open the envelope, Donnigan was shutting the door. The boy was gone.