1863 Saratoga Summer Page 29

  “Robbie, come away,” Sinead shouted, her voice breathy, her eyes broad with terror. “He’ll bite you if you get too close.”

  Connor whirled around and took hold of her arms to settle her. “Where did you get such foolish ideas, Sinead?”

  He stood there, looking down at her and wanting to take her in his arms and kiss away all her fears. His thoughts were written on his face.

  Robbie stretched over the door from his waist on and grabbed for air with one hand. He scrunched up a bit closer on his perch, tipped over and nearly fell inside the stall, his feet kicking in the air and his hands pushing against the wooden half-door. At the same time, the horse moved closer as if to see what object was offering some amusement from the boredom of captivity.

  Sinead screamed. Her hands flew to her mouth. She gasped in fear. “Oh my God, he is going to get eaten. If he falls, he’ll get trampled.”

  She turned. “Connor, please, please, take him away from there.” She was gagging. Sobs emanated from her mouth in great gusts then she wailed, “He’s going to get killed. I know it.”

  Robbie froze on the top edge of the door. He turned around to look at her, his eyes blinking in the dim light. “Mama, don’t cry. Don’t be scared. This horse is my friend. He won’t hurt me.”

  Connor shook her. “Sinead, stop it! The boy’s not in any danger. Even if he were to fall in, the horse would draw back from him.” Connor glared at her, his annoyance growing into anger. “Good God, woman, you act as if ghosts sewed rocks into your dainty undergarments.”

  He dropped his hands from her arms, picked Robbie up from the door and held him in a tight grip. “It’s really alright, son. It seems your mama is more afraid of horses than they are of her.” He whispered in Robbie’s ear. “Let’s just give her a minute to compose herself.”

  “That’s what Grandda Bowes says about her. He says she’s got an af…fix…iton…or something like it. He told me she’ll need to get over it if she’s going to live here with all of us.”

  With her breath barely there and a slight hint of madness in her tone, she shouted at the two of them. “We’re not going to stay here. Robbie, you and I—“

  “Rob, Mama, Rob…”

  “Are going back to New York City as soon as we can—as soon as I can drag your grandda away from here. Or we’ll take a train,” she said all in one breath. “That would be fun, wouldn’t it, Rob?” Tears streamed down her face, pushing down bad memories.

  She wheeled around, away from them. “My heart’s been in my mouth most of the time I’ve been here. I’m leaving. I feel I can’t breathe in this place. I can’t keep track of my son, I’m afraid of the horses and I want to go home.” she clutched the wall in her distress.

  Connor growled at the back of his throat. He fixed her with a cold eye. “This is your home, lass. It’s what your da bought so you could be safe from those others you were so against.”

  She feverishly shook her head, back and forth. “Nae.”

  Her unbound locks could capture a man’s desire, he noted with annoyance. This marriage was made for fools. She would never crave the simple life he did.

  “I don’t care about all that,” she countered. “He never asked me what I wanted. I want to go back to the city.”

  “What are you going to do when you go back to Ireland with me?” Hope dawned in his expression.

  She ignored his fleeting smile. “I’m not going to Ireland with you or anyone else,” she mumbled quietly. A murmur of uneasiness slid throughout her body. A frown marred her brow. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Well, I guess you’ve made up your mind to it, but I can’t stay here in this country forever. I have responsibilities over there that must be taken care of.” He gave her another wry half-smile, one that failed to reach his eyes.

  “You’ve got a father and brothers to do for you. This lad has only me.”

  “It’s the way you’ve done it,” he snapped, knowing there was no escape for their quandary. “You haven’t allowed anyone to penetrate your tight little circle.”

  Her gasp filled the barn. “I’m not going to stand here and argue with you. The stench is making me ill. So are you.”

  “Then flee to the safety of the house. Live your bare existence, if it suits you but don’t force the child.” He resisted making a comparison between his own life, filled with family and friends, and this youngster’s lonely life. “The lad and I are going to examine the rest of the property and greet some of these horses. Rob likes horses. He doesn’t need to be kept away, just taught how to handle them as my da taught me.”

  “You’re not taking him anywhere. He’s going back to the house with me.”

  Robbie was watching the two of them argue. He grasped Connor’s face in his hands and turned it as a mirror to his own. “Don’t holler at my mama. Don’t make her cry.” He pointed a finger at Connor’s nose. “That’s not nice.”

  Heartbreak echoed in his words. Connor set him on the ground and hunkered down to his level. “Listen, laddie, I wasn’t hollering at your mama because I don’t like her. I do. She’s a wonderful lady, but I don’t have to agree with her all the time, do I now?”

  “You’re not going to spank her are you?”

  “Nae, but it’s a nice idea…” Connor straightened and looked at Sinead. Their battle was brief, brutal, but over. He preferred to bargain with her, plead, or perhaps, placate her but chose to tease instead. “Should I spank you for scaring this child far more than horses could ever do?”

  Still fuming, Sinead refused to acknowledge her husband. She held out her hand to Robbie. “Come, son. We’ll go up to the house and play in the sand.”

  “I want to see the other horses. Talk with them. I want to stay with my da and be teached about horses.” Robbie put his hands on his hips, looked up at his mother and glared at her.

  Sinead’s shoulders sagged with disappointment. She wheeled around, her hands clenched into the folds of her skirt. “See what you’ve done. You’ve made him misbehave to his mama.”

  “Nae, ‘tis his mama who has misbehaved. Now you can either continue on this little tour Rob and I are taking or go up to the house and sulk behind closed doors.”

  His curiosity of the word apparent, Robbie asked, “What’s sulk mean?”

  Sinead raised her finger and pointed it at Connor. “If anything happens to this child you’ll be held responsible. It’ll be on your head.”

  “I think I can handle it. Go sulk, lady. A good sulk might do you some good. Soften your belligerence,” Connor groused.

  Robbie yanked on Connor’s pant leg. “Da, what’s ‘sulk’?”

  The frown between Connor’s brows disappeared. “Come laddie. I’ll tell you all about it as we walk and talk. It’s something ladies do quite well.” He grinned at Sinead, a big, broad grin.

  “So do men,” she commented then fired a glance of loathing at both of them and stormed from the barn in a mood. Charging across the sandy entrance, the ground shifted beneath her feet but didn’t slow her progress to the stairs. Halfway up the steps to the house, she turned and glared down at the barn.

  She would like to put her hands around Connor’s neck, she would. But in what fashion?

  Chapter Nineteen

  A week went by. By the thirtieth of July, two days short of three weeks since her husband’s arrival in America, Sinead’s life was changed, with incredible dramatic intensity. Each time she looked out the window, a myriad of tents, placed everywhere on the one hundred and six acre property, greeted her eyes. The city of tents obstructed her vision of the barns and paddocks.

  Bowes and Connor granted workmen, with or without families, the right to pitch tents on the grounds, until after the races in August. People were tucked into every available space on the farm, some living close to the woods but near the Kayaderossera Creek, others staying closer to the main house. The surrounding area, which could easily be seen from the house, resembled a carnival grounds or a gypsy encampment.


  Two barns and two paddocks, built out of the very best lumber, stood like fortressed gates. Horses occupied both pastures but were put in the barns during the heat of the day and let out at night to enjoy time on grass.

  Twice daily, morning and night, Bowes’ two grays pulled a trailer over the lower road to cart valuable racehorses from the farm to the training area. He drove with considerable care, forcing the grays to a walk when the horses in the trailer fidgeted. “Easy, lads. Let’s not rile up the boyos in the back.”

  The former sulky track on Union Avenue was now Horse Haven, reconstructed by Jack Morrissey, the famed fighter and gambler. It stood ready and waiting for the first day of its legal four-day program, starting August third. Morrissey considered it just another profitable amusement for the free-spending summer guests.

  ~*~

  “My God, ‘tis getting crowded in here, what with all the workmen piling in to have their say,” Bowes commented early one morning. Connor and he stayed in the largest tent, near the barns and paddocks, maintaining a constant vigil over the stock until after the racing days.

  “Everyone wants to talk about the horses scheduled to run on the new track,” Connor supplied, “and to voice their opinions, I guess.”

  “And the care of those we have here. And the building or rebuilding of anything and everything,” Bowes added with a snort of laughter.

  Occasionally, one or the other would go up to the house for a spot of food, but they talked about little else but horses and racing stables while they were there. Their time at the house was further shortened by shouts from harried workers.

  Harry, growing very fond of Sinead, stopped in for brief visits, as did young Jonah. Each day, the local postman delivered what was turning out to be larger quantities of mail for those living on the premises. Nevertheless, most of Sinead and Robbie’s days were spent alone, something to which they were not accustomed.

  This noontime, the postman came to the house and knocked on the front door, instead of leaving the mail in a small, enclosed hut at the bottom of the road, as usual.

  Pleased with the interruption of her otherwise boring day, Sinead greeted him kindly. “Och, Mister Sanders, have you come for a call?”

  “No, missus,” the thin, dower-looking man replied. “I’ve come to bring you a personal letter. Here,” he said, shoving the letter at her, “it’s addressed to you, under your father’s name.”

  He frowned at her as if such a designation bothered him. “I figured it might be an important missive.”

  “Well, I thank you for bringing it to my door.” She smiled at the discomfited man. “Would you be caring for a spot of cool lemonade on this hot day?”

  “Why, I thank you, missus, but I think I’d better be bringing this package down to your husband. Is he in the fields?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Mr. Sanders. He’ll shortly be up for a spot of food, and, if not, I’ll take the package down to him. It’s a small one and looks easy to carry.”

  Sinead took the package and other letters from him and placed them on top of a table by the door, except for the letter to her, which she put into her apron pocket. She watched the postman move off the front porch. She heard his “Hi there, young fella’” and saw him ruffle Robbie’s hair.

  She pulled her letter out of the apron pocket and glanced at the return address, one of the hotels in the village. The familiar handwriting set her heart to pounding, with its tight, precise, recognizable lettering.

  The post was from Adelaide Dewitt. Nothing pleasant ever came from Adelaide. Sinead knew it was bound to be bad news. A picture of Connor flashed into her mind. She couldn’t bear to be alone while reading probable disastrous news.

  She felt everything she gained in life was slipping through her fingers. No matter how fearful she was of the horses, she needed to go down to the barns, to Connor.

  She yanked off her apron and flew out the front door, where Robbie was playing in the sand. Unable to leave him to his own devices, she grabbed his pail and a shovel and half dragged him with her down the steps Connor built to the first barn. At the bottom, she let go of Robbie’s hand, admonishing him. “You play right here in the sand where mama can watch you.”

  She stood on the bottom step, cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted like a fishwife, hawking her wares. “Connor. I’m needing to speak to you.”

  “He’ll be with ye in a minute, lassie.” Her da answered, unseen, from somewhere inside the barn. His position away from her, in a barn, and the sound of his voice calling out sunk deep within her memory. Although unable to focus on her own thoughts, the pulse in her neck beat like a runaway train.

  Connor poked his head out of the barn and shouted, “I’m in the middle of something. What is it you’re needing, Sinead?”

  The deep timbre of his voice jogged her memory even further and caused her to shudder. She shook her head to dispel whatever it was crawling around inside her brain. She grunted, chiding herself for her foolishness then quickly laughed. “And you might be in the middle of more, if you don’t step lively. I need the two of you up at the house. For only a moment. Something’s come up and I’m thinking I’ll be needing advice.”

  She saw her da, who came to the barn door, look at Connor and heard him bellow with glee. “Did ye hear what the lass said, Connor? She might be needing our advice. Did ye ever think such a thing would occur in your lifetime, now, did ye laddie?” Bowes doubled over, laughing.

  Annoyed at her father’s bantering and using her as the butt of a joke, Sinead turned on her heels in a bit of anger. “Go to hell the both of you. Men!” she exclaimed. She grabbed Robbie’s hand and marched him back up toward the house, grumbling the entire way.

  “Mama, my pail,” Robbie wailed.

  “I’ll get it later.”

  “But I was building a barn for the pony da is going to get me,” he whined.

  “And what pony are you talking about? You’ll not be getting any pony in this house, for sure, young man.”

  Robbie sputtered, “But, he said…”

  “Well, he’s wrong. You’ll not be getting any pony.” Sinead looked down at him. His face was tracked with a fine line of tears, rolling from his eyes to his chin. Kneeling and gathering him in her arms, she whispered, “Och, my darling, I meant, you’ll not be getting a pony until you’re a bit bigger and older.”

  Belligerence dripping from the words, Robbie whispered back, “That’s not what my da said.”

  “Well, he and I will discuss it, later on. Though probably not until the races are over, and he gets his mind onto other things than the horses he’s caring for.” The mere thought of those other things made her grin.

  “You look silly, mama,” Robbie said in a loud, petulant voice.

  She gasped. “Now, is that a nice thing to be saying to your mama?”

  Connor, looking solemn, came up the stairs two at a time and stood two steps below them. Sinead needed only to lift her eyes to stare into his face.

  “Tell me, lassie, what could be so all-fired important for you to be calling me from the training of a young horse to the bit?”

  When he took another step, he swung Robbie up on one hip and put his arm around her. Sinead felt a warm tremor start in her feet, and she moved up the steps at a quicker pace.

  “Come into the house. I’ve something to show you.”

  Connor raised and lowered his eyebrows. “I hope it’s something so interesting I won’t mind leaving the horses for a spell.”

  Her gaze swept over him, and a warm flush crept up her neck, her face and her ears. She was flustered, at a loss for a retort, so she mumbled, “Nae. This is serious. I have a letter from Adelaide Dewitt”

  Robbie pulled Connor’s face around to look at him. “That’s my grandmother you know, but she doesn’t want me to call her Grandmother. I have to call her Missus Adelaide, ma’am.” Robbie giggled. “Isn’t it funny?”

  “Aye, laddie. Sure is funny.” They reached the porch. Connor set Ro
bbie down. “Why don’t you play out here for a spell? I’ll have Mama call you in when she’s fixed us both some lunch.”

  “All right. I’m building a fort, under the steps, you know.” Robbie pointed to a mass of sand sitting by the porch step.

  “And, ‘tis a fancy one, for sure.”

  Connor followed Sinead into the coolness of the house and closed the door. He halted directly behind her. Without letting her get far ahead of him, he swung her around, against his chest. “Where are you going, lass? ‘Tis not often we have a moment to ourselves.”

  “Not with you staying down in a tent with my father, we don’t,” she grumbled.

  Connor kissed her forehead and twirled a strand of her hair around his thumb. “And here, I thought you like it better.” Brushing her hair back from her temple, he kissed the bottom of her ear and brought her closer to him.

  “Connor, please. Robbie may come into the house at any moment.”

  “And what would be wrong if he saw his da kissing his mama?” Connor grinned down at her. “I thought you might be wanting another lesson, maybe even needing one.”

  Sinead couldn’t resist the lure of the bantering form of intimacy or the deep, soft tones near her ear. Affected against her will by his closeness, she raised one hand to his face. She allowed two of her fingers to trace the sharp ridges of his bones, wondering what submitting to his touch and possession might mean in her life. She stopped. It would make him far too important. Her other hand closed in a tight knot, along one side of her skirt. She’d touched hot coals before and wanted to draw away from the hot coal in front of her.

  Connor stared down at her. A merry grin turned up one part of his lip. Unable to bear his searching gaze, her hand moved over his eyelids and closed them. Reaching up on the tips of her toes, she administered a quick, unsettling kiss to his mouth. He sucked in his breath and his eyes snapped open.

  She skittered away toward the kitchen. One long arm reached out and caught her elbow, his body following like a snake. “Don’t go, lass…”

  Sinead battled with a depth of wanting. It spilled out of her and caused her to move back into his embrace. His breath was shorter now. She wanted to say something but her tongue felt thick.