Some of the tension left Kellie’s shoulders. “Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here.”

  “Kate is from Dublin,” Tom offered. “She teaches at Heather’s school.”

  A slim blond with cool blue eyes spoke up. “I’m Maggie, Tom’s sister.”

  “Hello, Maggie,” Kellie said politely.

  “Tom has never brought home a woman before.”

  “He’s not bringing one home now, at least not in the context to which you’re referring,” she replied quickly.

  They stared at her in astonishment.

  She blushed at her rudeness, took a deep breath and resolved that nothing else tonight would rouse her temper.

  “What is it that you do, Kellie?” the lovely Kate asked.

  “I’m a teacher, on leave.”

  “What are you doing in Banburren?” It was Maggie again. “Were you sacked?”

  “For Christ sake, Maggie, give over.” Tom shook his head. “Where have your manners gone?”

  “No,” said Kellie. “I wasn’t sacked. My reasons for leaving were personal, but you can rest assured your children are safe with me. I didn’t molest anyone or anything like that. I intend to return to my position and will definitely be welcomed with open arms.” She wanted to strangle the woman. Instead she turned her back to her. “What level do you teach, Kate?”

  “Sixth,” replied Kate. “I love it. It’s what keeps me here in Banburren, that and the Whelans. They’re my family now. I’ve no one left in Dublin.”

  “It’s a lovely school. It must be wonderful to teach there.”

  “Yes.” Kate nodded. “We’ve no problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “You know. The Catholic-Protestant thing.”

  “I’m glad to hear it If only everyone could forget.”

  “We can all raise a glass to that sentiment,” said a sandy-haired man who stood beside Maggie. “We never got over James and Martin dying the way they did. It took the rebel spirit out of us. Now we’re staid old men and women.” He wrapped his arms around Maggie. “Aren’t we, love?”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Maggie. “I’ll not admit to being old.”

  He winked at Kellie. “Why, then, all that pulling at your eyes and patting the soft spot under your chin every morning?”

  “I do no such things, Danny Sheehan.” His wife slapped his arm playfully. “Shame on you for spying on me.”

  “Now, love, you wouldn’t be denying me a good laugh, would you?”

  “What will Kellie think of us, you with your mouth flapping and me vain as a queen.”

  “She’ll think we have a sense of humor.”

  Kellie laughed. She was beginning to relax. “I’ll check and see if Susan needs help in the kitchen.”

  Conscious of eyes watching her back, Kellie walked down the hallway and stood at the entrance to a well-lit kitchen. Susan stood at the sink, speaking to Heather. Kellie stepped back into the hallway before they could see her and breathed deeply. She placed both hands on the wall, bracing herself. She didn’t particularly want to isolate herself in the kitchen with Tom’s mother but the room filled with curious people was too much.

  It was Heather who saw her first. “Kellie, look at the cake Gran made. She said I can ice it as soon as it cools.”

  Kellie walked into the room, leaned over the cake and sniffed appreciatively. “It’s lovely and it will be even more lovely when it’s iced.” She touched the little girl’s bright hair.

  Heather skipped across the floor. She stopped at the door. “I’m going to play with Sam and Willie. Call me when the cake’s cool.”

  Susan wiped her hands on a towel. “I’ll call you the very minute it’s ready.” She smiled. “Did you need something, Kellie?”

  “I wondered if you could use some help. It’s a big crowd you’re feeding.”

  The woman’s eyes were bright and probing. “I’m accustomed to it but I imagine it’s hard on you to meet them like this, all at once.”

  “A bit.”

  Susan opened her mouth to speak, changed her mind and then changed it again. “I invited them all tonight because I wanted you to be done with it, to recognize everyone if you see them on the street. They’re naturally curious and protective of Tom. Tonight will be awkward for you but then it will be over. Do you understand what I’m saying, Kellie?”

  These people were impossible. She smiled politely. “Thank you for caring, but you’ve misunderstood. Tom and I are acquaintances,” she reminded the woman. “That’s all. There’s nothing more between us.”

  “Perhaps that’s all there is for you, but I can tell you he hasn’t asked me to cook a meal for a woman since he married Claire. What do you think that means?”

  Kellie felt as if her skin was peeled back and every nerve exposed. Be calm, she told herself. Honesty is always best. Be honest whenever you can. “I know that for some reason you think Tom needs a wife. Perhaps he does, but it won’t be me. I grew up in a community like Banburren and it simply isn’t going to happen. I can’t live here. I don’t belong. Do you see that?”

  Susan was silent for a long time. Finally she spoke. “You’re a far better woman than the one who left him seven years ago. I can see it and apparently Tom does as well, to his credit.” She smiled brilliantly. “Heather tells me you cook. How are you at peeling praties?”

  Dinner was surprisingly pleasant. Kellie was seated between Maggie, who’d obviously called a truce, and the warm and lovely Kate. Eileen, another sister completely caught up in her infant son, sat across the table beside her husband, a large man who had the thick hands of a farmer. Mary Catherine, the youngest of the Whelans and the first to graduate from university, kept the entire family entertained with tales of her new job as a chemist in nearby Ballybofey. Tom was at the other end of the table near his mother and the children. Somewhere between the soup and the lamb, Kellie began to enjoy herself. The conversation was lively and the people far more decent and warmhearted than she’d expected under the circumstances.

  “Tom tells us you’ve a degree in literature,” said Kate after the plates were cleared away and the two of them had moved back to the sitting room. “Perhaps, if you’ll be staying awhile, you’d be interested in helping out at the library while you’re here. The librarian is a friend of mine and I’ve heard they need someone. The position doesn’t pay well but it’s something.”

  Kellie looked across the table at Tom. He must have told them he was working her too hard. “It sounds lovely. Shall I call your friend?”

  “I’ll tell her I’ve spoken with you. That way she’ll expect you.”

  “Thank you, Kate.” Kellie was humbled and ashamed. She hadn’t expected such complete acceptance so soon. These people were lovely, too lovely to lie to.

  “You’re welcome. I remember what it felt like after I’d left Dublin. If it hadn’t been for Maggie and Eileen I don’t know how I would have managed. Banburren is a lovely place but it’s a small town. Even though I had James, there wasn’t a great deal to do until I took a job. Now, with James gone, I’m even more grateful.”

  “What made you stay on?”

  Kate tilted her head and the shining mass of black hair swung across her cheek. “I don’t know, really. I had to finish the term and then I was offered another contract and I took it. One year turned into the next and here I am.”

  “You’re very young and very attractive. No one like you stays in Banburren.”

  “You’re here.”

  “But I’ve no intention of staying.”

  Kate smiled. Her teeth were good, even and straight and very white. She was breathtaking. The question popped, unbidden, into Kellie’s mind. What would a woman like Kate, a woman who could have anyone, want with James Whelan, an IRA man from Banburren? She shook the thought away. There was no explaining love.

  It was the session that made the evening. They were a musical family. Maggie’s husband played the fiddle, Mary Catherine the whistle, and even Eileen was persuaded to hand her baby to her husband while she took up the bodhran. And of course there was Tom on the pipes. The music was sweet and slow and haunting, raucous and inspiring, soaring and swooning and rousing, breaking down inhibitions, lifting their spirits, drawing them together in a way that words could never do. When the last notes died away, Kellie was flushed and content and satisfied in a way she hadn’t been since she was a girl on her own at Queen’s.

  It was after eleven when the family, sated and filled with pudding and spirits, called an end to the evening. The Whelans, a small community in themselves, content in their togetherness and their culture, gathered their coats and their children, kissed each other goodbye and went their separate ways.

  Susan stood at the door, her trim figure framed in golden lamplight. “Goodbye,” she called out. “Hurry home or you’ll catch your death. It’s a cold one.”

  Kellie buried her nose in the fleece of her collar and stuffed her hands into her pockets. It was cold, a damp, bone-chilling cold that whistled in on the wind from countries far to the north. She’d forgotten that cold could be like this, a cold that froze lips and noses and caused the back of her teeth to ache. A hot bath would warm her, but in Ireland hot water was in short supply.

  Tom walked beside her with Heather in the middle. The two of them chatted back and forth with the ease of people comfortable with one another and the occasional silences that permeate a long acquaintance. Kellie recalled the feeling, wondered if she would ever know it again, shrugged off a twinge of self-pity and concentrated on ignoring the cold. She shivered. The streets of Banburren were empty at this time of night. It wasn’t so much an ominous feeling, more a lonely one as if the dark shops and quiet streets had been abandoned by their inhabitants.

  Tom had left the lamp on in the hallway and the small peat fire had taken the chill from the room. He kissed Heather good-night, reminded her to brush her teeth and watched her climb the stairs to her room.

  Kellie went immediately to the hearth, stripped off her gloves and held her hands over the flame. The shivering that had once been controllable and confined to her jaws and teeth spread throughout her body. The cold was painful.

  Tom came up behind her. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded and rubbed her arms.

  He took both of her hands in her own. “You’re freezing.”

  Again, she nodded.

  “Kellie, you’re ill,” he said gently. “Come with me. I’ll get you to bed immediately.”

  Unresisting, she allowed him to lead her into the bedroom where he removed her coat and shoes and tucked her snugly beneath the down comforter. Then he rummaged through her chest of drawers, pulling out and tossing aside articles of clothing until a small white pile had formed on the floor. Frowning, he sat back on his heels.

  “What’s the matter?” Her teeth chattered.

  “Where do you keep your pajamas?”

  “I don’t wear them.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m out of the habit. Usually the duvet is warm enough.”

  “Tonight, in your condition, it won’t be.”

  “I have flannels for exercising. They’re hanging in the closet.”

  She watched him push the hangers aside until he found a pair of gray leggings and a flannel shirt.

  “These will do,” he said, tossing them to her.

  Unwilling to lose an ounce of the warmth, she stared at them over the edge of the duvet.

  “Brace yourself,” he said. “It will only take a minute and you’ll be much warmer.”

  She nodded and reached for the clothes. Under cover of the heavy comforter, she removed her skirt and jumper, dropped them on the floor beside the bed and tugged on the leggings and shirt.

  Tom picked up the discarded clothes, hung them in the closet and walked toward the door. “I’ll fix you a hot drink and bring in an electric grate. If you’re ill it won’t help much but if it’s just the cold you’ll be fine in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  He was back with extra pillows and a cup filled with a fiery liquid that tasted of lemons, honey and alcohol. Kellie’s head swam and the burning sensation that seared its way past her lungs gave way to a delicious numbness. Cool pillows were slipped under her head and once again the duvet was tucked tightly around her shoulders. She was no longer cold, only tired, very tired, and only too grateful to allow Tom to minister to her needs.

  Her last thought was that the Whelans were lovely people, especially the warmhearted Kate. It would be too much to expect that she would find a friend in Banburren. Friendship, however, real friendship, required full disclosure and that wasn’t possible. She couldn’t confide in anyone. Still, someone to pass ideas with or to stop in occasionally and share a pot of tea with would be wonderful. Perhaps that, at least, could be achieved. “Your music is lovely, Tom,” she whispered before drifting off to sleep. “I liked it very much.”

  Seven

  She looked down the nearly empty street. He’d caught her alone, outside the bakery. It was early. She’d biked into town to pick up a loaf of fresh bread for breakfast, preferring the early hours when fewer people walked the streets.

  At first it seemed like nothing, the hand on her arm, a polite moving her out of the way. But when she turned to smile, her blood ran cold. He was a large man with a nose spread across his face, heavy-lidded dark eyes and a wary, closed look about him.

  “Hello, Kellie,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “Hello.” The word came out without air, her voice unrecognizable to her own ears.

  “Shall we walk a bit?”

  It wasn’t a question at all. She knew that, just as she knew who he was. Everyone who’d grown up in Andersonstown recognized the type—thick, beefy, tattooed men with cropped hair, thick necks, a single hoop earring piercing their left earlobes, black leather jackets and blue denims with a bulging pocket, men no one argued with or asked questions of.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She swallowed and nodded.

  “McGarrety’s gone to quite a bit of trouble to find you.”

  Dennis McGarrety, brigade leader of Belfast’s Irish Republican Army, an assassin. “Oh?” Instinct told her to say something.

  “He would like to ask you some questions.”

  She waited.

  Kellie opened her mouth to explain and then closed it again. Perhaps she should see McGarrety. She had questions of her own, but not here in the middle of Banburren. “Not now,” she said firmly.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow, at nine o’clock Mass.”

  “That’s a crowded one.”

  “Eight o’clock then.”

  He nodded and walked away.

  Tom sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. He looked up when she walked in. “Good morning. You’re out early. Are you feeling better?”

  “Much better.” She held up the bread. “It’s better when it’s just fresh.”

  “So it is.” He regarded her steadily.

  Uncomfortable, Kellie babbled about nothing. “I thought I’d work on the computer today if you’ll be out, and if you don’t mind,” she added. “Of course if you need it I can find something else to do. Perhaps they need help at the library today. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Whatever you like.” She sounded ridiculous.

  He continued to stare at her, saying nothing. Something close to amusement flickered in his eyes.

  Deliberately, Kellie closed her teeth around her tongue, setting the sharp edges around the most sensitive part. She would say nothing more until he spoke.

  Tom folded the paper, sugared his tea and drank half of it down. “You’re welcome to the computer. I’ve a pipe order to work on.”

  “Do you have many at one time?”

  “Usually no more than three. It isn’t fair to hold someone up if he’s interested in playing. It takes some time to get one out. Although—” He stopped.

  “What?”

  “I’ve accepted a deposit for an order, quite a large one, from a fellow in England, but I can’t reach the man. If he’s changed his mind, I should return the money.”

  “How can you return the money if you can’t reach him?”

  “Therein lies the problem.”

  “Is his name a common one?”

  “As a matter of fact it is. Austin, I believe he said. Austin Groves.”

  Kellie froze. Surely she couldn’t have heard correctly. Austin Groves was the name on one of Connor’s passports. Her mind wasn’t working. That was it. The encounter with McGarrety’s man had muddled her brain. She would wait for the drumming to stop and then she would ask again. It was impossible, an incredible coincidence. Austin Groves was an ordinary enough name. It couldn’t be Connor. He didn’t play the uillean pipes. He was fairly proficient on the oboe, but the pipes, no. And yet Connor had communicated with Tom Whelan.

  “I’ll wake Heather,” he said after a bit.

  “Wait.” She bit her lip. “I know—” She stopped. “I knew an Austin Groves, but he may not be the same one. What does he look like?”

  Tom shook his head. “I’ve never met him.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Somewhere in the south of England, I think, although he sounded Irish. Apparently his sister loves the pipes. They’re very close. He wanted to please her by taking them up. I take it he’s already a bit of a musician.”

  Kellie could no longer feel her fingers. “Are you saying that your only association with Austin Groves was to make him a set of pipes?” Her voice sounded high and shrill.

  Tom frowned. “Aye. What is this all about, Kellie? You’re white as bone.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” she whispered. “I have to think.”

  He sighed and stood. “You’ll let me know when you’ve sorted it out?”

  She nodded and automatically began pulling out the pans she needed for breakfast.

  The library was the loveliest building in Banburren. Wooden shelves, thick with books, were spaced far enough apart for two people to peruse opposite sides. A reading room with deep chairs, warm lighting and long windows faced the hills. A librarian sat behind a desk advertising both circulation and research, and smiled benevolently at visitors. Now she smiled at Kellie. “May I help you, love?”