The Last Bride in Ballymuir Read Online Free Page B

I’d tell you not to ruin
the meal, but it’s far too late for that.” He leaned back in his
chair. “No more talk of money or the future, Vi. I’ve spent
fourteen years doing what others commanded. I’ve no idea what I
want to do for myself, and no idea what I can do. I need time. Time to think
about it, and time to just be. Can’t you understand?”
    She sighed. “I can, it’s just I can’t bear
not seeing progress made.”
    “ I’m out. That’s progress,
I’d say.”
    “ No, that’s justice. You
shouldn’t have been in there at all. You’re no terrorist and never
were.”
    “ Among my padmates,
paramilitary was the preferred term,” he dryly
corrected.
    “ Call them what you will,”
his sister said, unwilling to be swayed from her point. “Progress
is when you can pick up and move on.”
    No arguing that. The soup best left uneaten,
Michael grabbed some bread, then slid his chair back from the
table. “Have you anything to read?”
    Vi pointed to shelves built into the wall
next to the fireplace. “You’ll find Roddy Doyle and Joe O’Connor,
as well as some poetry and a few of the classics.”
    He nodded. Making his way to the bookshelf,
he said, “I’ll be seeing you in the morning, then.”
    “ Mass is at nine,” Vi said
in a tone that was more order than point of information. His
thoughts must have been clear on his face because she continued in
the same major-general tone. “It’s one morning a week I’m asking of
you. And I might point out that you stand a chance of gaining
something from your effort, too.”
    He raised one brow. “We still have politics
to argue over. Care to give it a go?”
    Vi sat back and smiled. “We haven’t changed
at all. I’m still trying to bully you and you’re still swatting me
down.”
    “ And you need it, sweet
Violet,” he said with a broad wink, then laughed at her answering
growl. No, some things hadn’t changed at all.
     
    By half past five the
following morning, Michael was willing to
concede that some less pleasant aspects of his life remained the
same, too. He’d not slept ‘til past three. And even Roddy Doyle’s
wit hadn’t been enough to keep his mind away from Kylie. To Kylie it went and to Kylie it
stayed.
    To have felt his mouth
against a woman’s for the first time in over a dozen years was
surely an event grand enough to rob him of sleep. It was more
than that, though. It was the rightness of
her taste, the soft ness of her lips. It was
the fleeting thoughts he’d had when their mouths met. Thoughts of
days to come.
    Michael gazed at himself in the tiny square
of mirror above the bathroom sink. While he shaved away a day’s
growth of blue-black beard, he pondered the fact that a man who
looked so—well, to be truthful—dangerous could be so damned
inexperienced. A fine irony there, and one he’d bought and paid for
with his own rash acts. Perhaps these feelings for Kylie O’Shea
could be reduced to just that— rash acts and inexperience.
    After sluicing off the last of the shaving
cream and toweling dry his face, Michael scowled at his reflection.
He summed up his life in two words: “Bloody fool.”
    Downstairs by six, he took
pleasure out of settling into Roger’s chair, then reading some
more. An hour or so later, Vi, eyes still
half-shut and red hair wild as any
Medusa’s, staggered from bedroom to kitchen.
    “ Kettle’s still warm,” he
told her and tried to look apologetic as she jumped nearly to the
low-beamed ceiling.
    Clutching closed a wild crimson silk robe
that made Michael wonder whether his sister had spent time in a
seraglio, Vi asked, “What are you doing up and about so early?”
    “ I’ve been trained better
than your dog. I expect it’ll take me some time to unlearn it
all.”
    Vi said nothing in return, not that much
could be said. She clattered about in the kitchen for a while, and
then settled at a small desk not far from where he sat. “I’m
phoning Mam—promised her I would. I need