A Worthy Heart Read online

  Rylan looked ready to explode, whereas Adam’s expression proved unreadable.

  Colleen moved to her husband’s side and gently touched his arm. “Perhaps this is not the time to make hasty decisions. When Gabe gets back, we’ll fill him in on what’s occurred, and together we’ll decide what’s best.”

  A measure of relief trickled through Maggie’s system. Colleen would temper her husband’s reaction. She’d make Rylan see reason.

  He gave his wife a thin smile. “Aye, that sounds like the sensible thing to do.”

  Adam uncrossed his arms. “I’d best clean up and be on my way. If you need me at any time, call John McNabb at the church. He’ll get word to me.”

  Rylan stepped toward Adam. “I fear I owe you an apology. At the orphanage, I’m bound by regulations, but in my own home I should have been more welcoming. We’re family, after all.” He held out his hand. “I hope you can forgive me.”

  Adam didn’t hesitate to accept his hand. “No apology needed.”

  Maggie’s heart swelled with pride at Adam’s honorable attitude. He would be well within his rights to harbor a grudge against Rylan, yet he bore her brother no ill will. Perhaps now her brothers would see Adam’s true nature.

  Adam pointed at Chester, still sitting by the chair Maggie had vacated. “It seems this fellow has taken a shine to Maggie. It might be timely to keep him as a guard dog. I can build a shelter for him outside, if you’d like.”

  Rylan nodded. “That sounds like a fine idea.”

  16

  MISS HASTINGS, may I speak with you, please?”

  Aurora looked up from the book she’d been reading aloud, surprised to see Dr. Reardon in the doorway to the children’s ward. Her heart gave an unwelcome lurch at the sight of his frowning countenance. Had she done something to displease him?

  She handed the book to one of the older children. “Constance, will you continue the story? I’ll be back in a minute.”

  With a quick nod to the floor nurse in charge of the youngsters, Aurora followed Dr. Reardon out of the room and closed the door behind her. “Yes, Doctor? Is there a problem?”

  “I’ve just had a call from Mrs. Montgomery at St. Rita’s. It seems several of the children have contracted a fever.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “They want me to come over and examine them. Would you be able to accompany me?”

  She frowned. “Are you sure you don’t want a trained nurse to go with you?”

  A flush rose up his neck. “Not until I assess the situation. If it’s more serious than I anticipate, I can always bring someone else in.” He gave a rueful smile. “The children respond far better to you than to me and are more likely to be cooperative if you’re there to calm them.”

  There was a grain of truth in what he said. Some of the children were fearful of the doctor, especially since he usually administered shots or ill-tasting medicine. And they did seem to enjoy Aurora’s presence. “Very well. I’d be happy to come with you.”

  “Good. We’ll leave right away. I only pray we can keep the illness from spreading to all the children.”

  Adam trudged up to the front door at Irish Meadows, praying for courage to confront his mother in a calm and fair manner.

  After finishing his day’s work at the orphanage, Adam had found himself dwelling once again on his parentage and realized he had to take action or go mad from all his speculation. And so he had taken the train to Long Island. The fact that it was his father’s evening at the men’s club made it a perfect time to catch his mother alone.

  He entered the foyer of his childhood home, and seconds later, Mrs. Johnston appeared.

  “Master Adam. This is a surprise. Is your family expecting you?”

  Adam almost smiled at the housekeeper’s attempt at subtlety. “No, this is a spur-of-the-moment visit. Is my mother in?” It suddenly occurred to him that Mama may have gone out herself.

  “She’s in the parlor. One moment and I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  Adam wanted to protest that he had no need to be announced, but the reality remained that this was no longer his home.

  Footsteps sounded seconds later. “Adam, what a wonderful surprise.” A slight wariness accompanied his mother’s welcoming smile. “What brings you here?”

  He bent to kiss her cheek, the familiar scent of her lavender perfume bringing him back to his childhood. “I needed to talk to you about an important matter.”

  “Of course. Come in. Alice, please bring us coffee and some biscuits.”

  “Right away, ma’am.”

  Adam followed his mother into the parlor. The smoky odor from the fireplace blended with the smell of lemon furniture polish, unleashing a flood of memories of the times spent in this room with his siblings.

  He swallowed hard and focused on the purpose of his visit. Once Mama had settled in her chair, he seated himself on the sofa near her.

  “So what is this important matter you wish to discuss?” Mama picked up her needlework and rested it in her lap.

  “I’m afraid it’s a somewhat unpleasant topic, Mama, but one that needs to be addressed—once and for all.”

  “Well, that sounds ominous.” Mama’s nervous laugh echoed in the room.

  Adam looked down at his clasped hands and prayed for the right words. He let out a slow breath. “First, I want to apologize for the disappointment I’ve caused you over the years. I know my relationship with Father has been a source of strife in your marriage.” He held up a hand to halt her protest. “Don’t deny it, Mama. It pained you that we never got along. That I never measured up to his expectations.” He paused to regain his focus. “Over the past years, I’ve done a lot of thinking about why my father preferred Gil, another man’s son, over his own flesh and blood.”

  “Oh, Adam. That’s not true.” Sympathy glistened in his mother’s eyes.

  He shook his head. “You know it is, Mama. And the only conclusion I could come to is that I’m not James O’Leary’s flesh and blood.” He softened his voice and looked her in the eye. “Am I, Mama?”

  A startled noise, half gasp, half moan, escaped her lips before she covered her face with her hands. Quiet sobs wracked her body, causing pangs of guilt to shoot through Adam’s chest. This was exactly why he’d never broached the subject before. The idea that he could cause his mother even more grief tore at his soul.

  “Here, here. What have you done?” Mrs. Johnston practically dropped her laden tray on a side table, and with a disgusted glare at Adam, rushed to her mistress’s side.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “You never do, yet destruction lies in your wake wherever you go.” She laid a hand on Mama’s shaking shoulder in a protective gesture. “You’d best leave before your father gets back. He’ll not take kindly to you upsetting your mother this way.”

  Adam rose, gripped by the strong desire to flee this house and never return. Yet the need to know the answer to his question held him frozen in place. Mama’s reaction told him he had hit on the truth, but he had to hear it from her lips.

  He handed his mother a handkerchief. “I’m not leaving until I get the answers I came for.”

  Mama dabbed the cloth to her face, seeming to compose herself. “It’s all right, Alice. Please leave us.”

  “But Mrs. O’Leary—”

  “Now.” The authority in Mama’s voice made the older woman snap to attention.

  “Very well. You’ve only to ring if you need me.” Her stiff words spoke of the hurt his mother had inflicted.

  Adam shoved his hands in his pockets, fingering the coins there while waiting for his mother to speak.

  She gestured to the sofa. “Sit down, son, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Stiffly he lowered himself to the edge of the settee, wishing he could do something to ease the pain on his mother’s face.

  “You’re right,” she said at last, her gaze fixed on the carpet. “James is not your
natural father. I . . . I was expecting you when we married.”

  A horde of emotions surged through him. Relief, anger, disappointment, and regret all balled into one huge lump in his throat. He tore the top button of his shirt open, clawing to bring more air into his lungs. “How . . . ? Who?” He didn’t know what to ask first.

  Mama let out a long-suffering breath. “His name was George Drake. I was betrothed to him before I met your father.” She paused as she reined in her emotions.

  Adam stared across the room as he tried to process the news. “Did you love him?” he asked quietly.

  She must have loved him, to do what she’d done. But how could she have switched her affections to James so quickly?

  “I loathed him.” Her nostrils flared, and tight lines pinched the corners of her mouth.

  “I don’t understand. Then how could you . . .” He clamped his mouth shut, unable to ask such a personal question of his mother.

  She lifted her chin, which quivered. “When George learned of my affection for James and my intention to cancel our betrothal, he . . . forced himself on me.”

  Adam lurched to his feet, shock reverberating up his spine. His mother had been violated?

  “George thought by being . . . intimate with me . . . that James would no longer want me, and being a ruined woman, I’d be forced to marry him.”

  Adam paced the carpet in front of the fireplace, trying to absorb the horrific revelation. “Did you have him arrested?”

  She lowered her gaze and shook her head. “I was too ashamed to tell anyone at first.”

  “But you did tell James . . . and he married you anyway?” Disbelief stabbed at Adam. Even knowing how much James loved his mother, he couldn’t imagine him simply accepting the situation.

  “I didn’t tell him right away,” she said quietly. “I knew James would kill George.”

  Adam understood that feeling. If anyone ever violated Maggie, it would take an army to stop him from destroying the man.

  “So you married him and then told him you were with child?”

  His mother leveled him with a steely glare. “Do you really believe me capable of such a deception?”

  Adam spun around, anger ripe in his chest. “I find it a distinct possibility since you’ve lied to me my entire life.”

  He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth—the moment his mother’s features crumpled with grief.

  The parlor door crashed open. James charged into the room, stopping inches from Adam’s face, nostrils flared. “You will apologize to your mother at once, or so help me, I will throw your sorry hide out of this house for good.”

  The anger left Adam in one great whoosh, like air deflating from a balloon. He dropped to one knee before her and took her hand in his. “Forgive me, Mama. I had no right to speak to you that way.”

  She lifted sorrowful eyes to his and placed a tender hand on his cheek. “I never wanted you to know,” she whispered. “Never wanted you to feel shame over your conception. That’s why I hid the truth.”

  The sickening reality seeped through Adam like a toxin. He squeezed his eyes shut, the soothing contact of her palm unable to ease the pain radiating from his soul.

  “When I found out I was expecting, I had no choice but to tell James. He loved me enough to marry me anyway and accept you as his own.”

  Adam rose stiffly then and faced James. “Except you never did accept me. No wonder I could never do anything right in your eyes.”

  A muscle twitched in James’s jaw. “Lord knows I tried. But the older you got, the more you resembled him.”

  No surprise there. All his life people had remarked on the lack of similarity between James and his oldest son. Mama had always laughed it off, insisting Adam took after her side of the family. “What happened to George? Did you confront him?”

  Blue fire blazed in James’s eyes. “I made sure he would never bother Kathleen again.”

  It didn’t take much to imagine the type of punishment he’d inflicted. Adam frowned. “Why didn’t he have you arrested for assault?”

  “He didn’t dare. I told him Kathleen would go to the authorities and make him pay for his crime.”

  Adam walked to the fireplace and peered into the ashes, as cold and gray as his tortured soul. He raised his head and looked around the room with changed eyes. The very walls seemed to mock him with fragmented memories of his childhood. “Did Drake . . . did he know about me?” He couldn’t say why it should matter, but he had to know.

  “No. He ran afoul of the law again and was thrown in jail.” James’s terse words left no doubt what he was thinking. Like father, like son. “He died in prison a few months before you were born.”

  Adam shook his head, his thoughts chasing around his mind like a cyclone. He was the son of a criminal who had died in jail—his existence the result of a brutal act. Although relieved to finally know the truth, the searing pain remained—a festering wound that might never heal, knowing he’d been a source of grief for his mother since the moment of his conception.

  Silent tears marred the complexion of his mother’s pale cheeks. James stood behind her, one hand draped protectively over her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, Adam,” she whispered.

  Adam straightened, pulling the last shred of pride around him like a suit of armor. “It’s not your fault, Mama. You were the victim in all this.”

  “You were a victim, too. I should have tried harder—”

  “Stop, please.” He raised a hand and let it fall. “You did the best you could under the circumstances.” Adam couldn’t bear to look at James. Couldn’t stand to see the contempt—or worse yet, the pity—that might shine there.

  Fresh tears washed his mother’s face. “I’ve always loved you, Adam. Please don’t ever doubt that.”

  Threads of sorrow wound their way through Adam’s chest, tightening to the point of pain. He couldn’t stay in that room a moment longer or he’d suffocate. “I know, Mama. I love you, too,” he said in a strangled voice.

  Then, with her anguished features etched into his brain, Adam whirled around and strode out of the parlor, not stopping until Irish Meadows was nothing but a speck behind him.

  17

  THE STILLNESS OF THE HOUSE was Maggie’s first indication that something was amiss. No sound of baby Ivy fussing for her morning bottle, no constant chatter from Delia as she prepared for school, no humming from Colleen as she cooked the family’s breakfast.

  Instead, the kitchen lay in cold, gray silence. A sense of foreboding sent shivers chasing up her spine.

  After lighting the stove, Maggie moved to the parlor to start a fire there, in case Rylan hadn’t yet done so. Disappointment weighted her steps. She’d hoped to speak with Rylan and Gabe this morning before they started their chores. It had been a few days since the incident with Neill at the orphanage, and Maggie wanted to find out what her brothers had decided. She hoped that Colleen had had a chance to make them listen to reason and decide that rushing to buy an early passage home would not be in anyone’s best interest.

  Not that it mattered what they decided, because Maggie was not going home. They’d have to hogtie her and haul her bodily onto the ship before she’d leave.

  The faint glow from the parlor fireplace broke the darkness of the room. Maggie squinted in the dim light, vaguely making out a figure seated in the corner.

  “Colleen? Is everything all right?”

  Colleen shifted the baby from her shoulder, seeming to come out of a daze. “Oh, Maggie. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

  “Where is everyone?”

  With the stiffness of a much older woman, Colleen rose from her seat and placed Ivy in the basket at her feet. She brushed her hand over her wrinkled dress, which looked as though she’d slept in it. “Rylan’s at the orphanage with Dr. Reardon and Aurora. There’s a possibility that some of the children have contracted typhoid fever.”

  “Typhoid? That’s terrible.” Maggie had seen such an outbre
ak once before near their village. “Which children are sick?”

  “Greta, Johnnie, and Felicia. Possibly a few others.”

  “What about Delia?”

  “Not so far, thank the Lord. But I’m keeping her home for now. She’s still sleeping. Unlike Ivy, who’s had me up most of the night.” Colleen added a log to the fire and stirred the embers with a poker.

  Maggie attempted to pull her thoughts together. “Don’t worry about breakfast. I’ll take care of it. You should catch some sleep while Ivy naps.”

  Colleen smiled. “Thank you. I think I will.”

  Maggie returned to the kitchen, took out the large frying pan, and set the tea kettle on to boil. She would keep it simple with bacon and toast, not sure when anyone would be ready to eat.

  The bacon was almost ready when Gabe entered the kitchen. He came up behind her and kissed her cheek. “Good morning, love. Where is everyone?”

  Maggie handed Gabe a mug of tea and quickly filled her brother in on the grim news.

  A concerned frown marred his forehead. “When will they know if it’s typhoid?”

  She scooped out some bacon and biscuits and set them on the table for Gabe. “I’m not sure. Dr. Reardon and Aurora have been there all night.”

  Gabe’s eyebrows shot up. “Aurora’s there?”

  “Yes. She’s assisting the doctor.”

  Gabe set down his mug with a thump. “I’m going over to see what’s happening.”

  Maggie frowned. “I don’t think that’s wise. Not until they’re certain what they’re facing.”

  Gabe plucked his cap off the hook on the wall. “I’ve likely been exposed anyway since I’ve been over there almost every day. Besides, I reckon Rylan could use my support.”

  Before she could protest again, Gabe strode out of the room, his breakfast untouched on the table.

  Maggie wasn’t sure what worried her more—the potential typhoid epidemic or Gabe’s extreme reaction to Aurora’s possible peril.

  Aurora wiped the brow of five-year-old Greta and set the wet cloth in a bowl on the bedside stand. The girl’s cheeks, red from fever, stood out like bright flags against the stark whiteness of the rest of her face. Her frame barely created a ripple under the quilt. Four other children slept in the spare room on the third floor, cramped quarters to be sure, but it was the only space they had available to care for the sick children away from the still-healthy ones.