Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3) Read online

  She took a deep breath and leaned back into the chair, letting the quiet of the house gather around her and take the worst of the day away. This house was a sanctuary in the truest sense of the word, a place of shelter, of refuge, but mostly of love. Suddenly she wanted Casey badly, wanted the strength of his arms around her and the comfort of his voice speaking any sort of words—the plain ones that told of his day, or the lovely, half-silly ones he spoke to the mound of her belly each night before bed. He had been late several nights this week, but he often stopped off for a quick pint with Owen before coming home. She thought the snug of Owen and Gert’s kitchen would be rather pleasant on this rainy evening, and maybe Gert would make her some of that spicy ginger tea that always settled her stomach nicely. She went upstairs and changed into more comfortable clothes, part of her eyeing the bed with a great longing to just get into it and have a long nap. But the need to see Casey took the upper hand over weariness so she dressed, brushed her hair out, applied a little lipstick and blush to revive her pale face, and went on her way to Owen and Gert’s.

  When she reached their stone house the lights in the front windows of the wee pub were out. She went around to the back, bent over in the wind and rain that had howled itself up into a real temper. The kitchen light was still glowing so she knew Gert was up. She rapped on the door, anticipating the warmth and the smell of bread dough that Gert always put up before retiring for the night.

  Owen answered the door, ushering her in out of the wet with his customary quiet hospitality. Over the last months, Gert and Owen had come to feel like family to her, and they were as excited about this new baby as she and Casey were. It gave her a feeling of warmth and stability to have Owen and Gert in their lives and she had come to depend on their friendship and open door. Childless themselves, Pamela knew they had come to view her as a surrogate daughter.

  The kitchen was warm and the remnants of dinner were on the table, the heady after-scents of Gert’s homemade German sausage still lingering on the air. Her stomach growled at the proximity of a decent meal, and Gert was already up fixing her a plate. She sat, though it was apparent Casey was not here. He had been here recently, though. His presence was as large and powerful as the man himself, and he left a certain energy behind in places where he spent any amount of time.

  She tucked in to the meal gratefully. Her appetite had only recently returned and she was famished much of the day. The sausages were perfectly spiced and accompanied by a generous portion of floury potatoes and gravy, and a side dish of dilled carrots. Gert did not believe in making talk when someone was eating. First, she always said, a full stomach, then time for talk. Pamela was happy to obey and made short work of the meal. Her entire body seemed to sigh in gratitude when she finished and leaned back in repletion, hoping she had the wherewithal to drive back home. At that point she took in the strange mood of her hosts. They were both looking at her as if she either had a terminal disease she wasn’t yet aware of, or there was horrendous news hovering and they couldn’t decide who had the grim duty of telling her.

  “I thought Casey might be here. He was, wasn’t he?” she asked, wishing they would just come out with whatever it was that so obviously had them tensed as a bow with a nocked arrow.

  Gert drew a hard breath through her nose and let fly. “He vas here, alright. With that hure, but I told him that he could go elsewhere. Imagine bringing that rothaarige hure into my home when he knows how much we care for you—I—”

  Owen sent a warning look in Gert’s direction and she snapped her lips shut, biting the sentence in half, but it was too late. Pamela’s recently eaten dinner turned over in her stomach. Her German was limited, but ‘redheaded whore’ was fairly straightforward. She had long feared that the pain and anger of her betrayal might cause him to do something rash, like rejoin his old compatriots in the IRA. But this… this was not something she had thought he would do. There was no doubting it though, for Gert’s face was drawn into a perfect portrait of Teutonic disapproval that spoke volumes.

  “What is it? What’s going on? ”

  Owen sighed, one hand ruffling the thin hair on his scalp. “He was in here earlier tonight then, but he’s moved along now.”

  “Moved along?” Pamela said, feeling like a stupid and increasingly nauseated parrot.

  Gert shook her head. “Owen, ve haf to tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” she looked directly at Owen, knowing panic was plain on her face and not caring in the slightest.

  “Gert asked him to leave if he was goin’ to be drinkin’ with that woman again.”

  “What woman,” she said slowly, “and what do you mean again?”

  “That woman with the red hair,” Gert said. “You go see for yourself. He is vis her now.”

  Pamela looked to Owen, hoping he could give her some innocent explanation for why her husband was seeing this redhead behind her back. Owen merely sighed, gave her a look of sympathy, and shook his head. “It’s true, Pamela, he’s been seen about with this woman a bit. She’s been down more than the once from Belfast. I think there’s nothin’ to it, but he did leave here with her tonight. I don’t know what the laddie was thinkin’ bringin’ her here, mind.”

  “Excuse me,” she said and ran for the bathroom, where she was violently sick. After, she took a moment to rinse her mouth and face, both numb and furious at the same time. How dare he? How could he? And then the inevitable answer. You know how, you know why, and you cannot blame him in the least.

  She took a deep breath and looked into the mirror. She was horribly pale and there were great dark circles under her eyes. She wanted to simply go home, get into bed, pull the quilts up over her head and bury herself in ignorance, but something stiffened her spine. The same thing that had allowed her to break the faith of her marriage bed in order to keep her husband whole was not going to allow her to take the path of least resistance now.

  She went back into the kitchen, the smell of sausage now curdling her stomach. She swallowed hard and waved away Gert’s attempts to pat her down with a wet cloth.

  “Thank you,” she said, “for telling me. I needed to know, and obviously Casey wants me to know if he brought her here.”

  “Pamela, sit down, would ye?” Owen said, his kindly face drawn with worry. “I’ll go fetch the lad an’ be certain I’ll not let him bring that woman with him. I’ll bring him here to you. You look dreadful ill, lass, I’ll not like the idea of sendin’ ye out in this weather with such news in yer mind.”

  “Thank you, Owen—I—” she took a deep breath, and bit down on a fresh wave of nausea. “I have to face him myself. I can’t explain, but this—please don’t let this make you think less of him. This is my fault.”

  She left then, blind and deaf to their protests and not feeling quite as culpable as her words had made out. She was hurt beyond anything she had ever known and very, very angry.

  Being that there were only three pubs to choose from in Coomnablath, it didn’t take long to find him. When he didn’t drink at Owen’s he’d been known to tip his elbow occasionally at The Emerald, a slightly more upscale establishment with seating for more than six at a go. However, had he wanted to be discreet, Casey hardly would have taken the woman anywhere in Coomnablath at all. To take her to Owen’s meant he wanted her to know, to rub her face in it.

  She saw the woman first, for she was in profile directly across from the door as Pamela stepped in. She was beautiful, even in the dim light of the pub, hair a deep, burnished red that glowed in the dim, like fire spread over dark water. Her eyes were a sparkling aquamarine, her skin fresh and dewy in the manner of true redheads.

  And then she looked at her husband, bold features in stark contrast to the redhead’s delicacy, his dark hair curling damply over his collar, the restless power of his body apparent even as he sat relaxed with a half-drunk pint of Guinness in one hand, his other hand gesturing broad
ly as he spoke.

  It would happen now and again, to be taken afresh by Casey’s physical presence, to remember the attraction he held was not solely for her, that other women had and did notice his particular charms and some even had the temerity to act upon it. He had never responded before, had always gently but firmly informed them that he was a married man and took his vows seriously. Except that right now he didn’t seem to be thinking about his marital state in the least.

  The redhead reached across and pushed an errant curl away from his eyelashes, a simple gesture that held a wealth of unspoken things, an act of intimacy that told Pamela the woman was very comfortable with Casey. So Gert was right. This woman had been around her husband on a regular basis while she sat at home like a fool waiting for him, blindly trusting that he would not take his revenge on her. Bile surged hotly at the back of her throat and she thought she might be sick right there.

  And then he looked directly at her, standing frozen in the doorway, hair in dripping rat tails, skin bled white with shock. She couldn’t breathe and understood suddenly that he had known she was there the entire time and thus the act had been one of deliberate cruelty. She didn’t feel her legs move, nor her feet walk across the floor, but suddenly she was there within a foot of them, but it was only Casey whose eyes she looked into.

  “You bastard,” she said and slapped him across the face. “If you’re having an affair, at least let me know ahead of time, so I don’t have to wait up any more.”

  Casey’s head rocked back slightly, a look of shock imprinted across his features along with the outline of her hand. His mouth opened but no words came forth, nor was she inclined to wait for him to make his excuses.

  She turned on her heel and strode out the door, banging it so hard that she could feel the jolt of the heavy oak in her very bones. Fury was filling her with a hot-white light, making her feel disconnected from the wet pavement beneath her feet.

  She heard his step behind her before she’d even crossed the narrow roadway, but was too angry to turn back.

  “Pamela, for Christ’s sake. Stop!”

  “Go to hell,” she said furiously.

  “I think I’m there already,” he said, and there wasn’t anger in the tone, only resignation. The words stopped her cold. She turned, a brick wall at her back, rain sluicing down pipes like a minor waterfall.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the rain already running in rivulets down his face, tracing the tight-held lines around his mouth.

  “For what, whoring around the village while I stay home?”

  “No—Jaysus, woman, I’m not havin’ an affair with anyone—particularly not with that one in there. I’m sorry for lettin’ her touch me like that.”

  “Are you?”

  “Ye want honesty then? No, at this present moment I am not particularly sorry, but I imagine I will be soon enough.”

  “Why are you seeing her then, if you’re not having an affair?”

  “She’s an old friend of Robin’s an’ she heard I was livin’ back here again, an’ so she looked me up. She has a wee girl who she says Robin is the father of an’ she’s been wantin’ to talk about him. I don’t know why she touched me like she did. It’s not been like that at all, woman.”

  She shook her head, knowing suddenly that it wasn’t about the woman sitting back there in the dim light of the pub but rather about the ghost whose taint spread between them like something dark and oily, clinging to their every interaction and all the unspoken words. The fury that warmed her went out like a light switched off, and she felt a great chill settle in its place.

  “Ye can trust me, woman. I’m a wee bit insulted that ye jump to conclusions so swiftly.”

  “But you can’t trust me anymore, can you?” she said so softly it could barely be heard above the pounding of the rain. She knew the words had reached his ears though, for he swallowed, his mouth twisting as if he would say the words she needed for comfort and yet could not bring himself to do so.

  He leaned forward as if to touch her, then merely put his forehead to the brick wall behind her shoulder. Against her, she could feel his warmth, in the chill of the night, yet there was no intimacy in the touch, just a pulsing of pain that divided them no matter how physically close they were. The baby was kicking and turning as if it sensed the cracks that were opening wide between its parents.

  “Did you want to hurt me?” she asked, words barely above a whisper over the pain in her throat. “Is that what this is all about—revenge? Well congratulations, you did it. I felt like someone had jabbed me in the windpipe, like I could hardly breathe when I saw her touch you.”

  “Hurts doesn’t it?” he said, the pain in his voice apparent even through the pounding of the rain against the pipes. “Imagine what it does to a man to know that another has touched his wife far more intimately than that, over an’ over again, an’ with her permission to do so.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t even want to think about it,” she said, feeling the terrible drop in her stomach that the mere mention of Love Hagerty still caused.

  “Well, I can’t stop thinkin’ about it,” he said, breath chill in her ear. Then he pushed away and walked off into the rain without so much as a backward glance, leaving her against the bricks alone.

  Later, she never could remember how she managed the drive home, though the torrential rain had forced her to go slowly, wiper blades whipping like fury. Her own rage was entirely doused by the guilt that dogged her every step since the first time she had considered betraying her husband in order to save his life.

  Inside the house, she went directly upstairs. She was wet and chilled to the bone so she stripped off in the bathroom, grabbing the white cotton nightgown that hung behind the door. She wrapped a towel around her hair and lit the bedroom fire, stacking pine in a neat tripod to give the fire the air it needed to burn hot. The baby was quiet now, a hard, solid weight firmly fixed within its watery world.

  She sat down in the chair beside the fire and waited for her husband, eyes fixed on the flames but every nerve trained for the sound of the door, and for the weight of Casey’s step over the threshold.

  It was another hour before it came and she had almost given up hope that he would come home that night. She could hear him banking the fire in the Aga and checking the downstairs as he did each night, making certain the doors and windows were secured against the night and the world beyond.

  He came up the stairs quickly, light step belying his emotional state. He hesitated at the bedroom door and she thought her heart might stop right then with the agony of not knowing exactly what had brought him home.

  Several very long moments passed before the door opened and he came into the room. She sat forward in the chair, clasping her cold hands tightly in her lap. He didn’t look at her right away for his face was hidden in the muffling folds of a towel. He was soaked to the skin.

  “Are you alright?” she asked. Casey’s head emerged from the towel, hair whorled in a clockwise spin of dark curls. He put the towel down and pushed the hair back from his face.

  “I feel a wee bit foolish, truth be told,” he said, and indeed he did look slightly shamefaced. “I don’t know what came over me in there. I just wanted for a minute that ye should feel the pain as I do.”

  She took a breath, but it wouldn’t force its way past the constriction in her chest. Casey wasn’t one to waste time on small talk nor to pretend that the scene outside the pub had not occurred.

  “We can’t go on this way, Casey,” she said softly.

  “Aye,” he swallowed, the line of his throat tight with emotion. “I don’t suppose we can.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, keeping a distance between them. She looked at him, noting the weariness in his face—as though he bore a terrible burden that he could not put down. And so if he could not, it was up to her to
take it from him, no matter the cost.

  A chunk of wood shifted in the fire, sending up a spray of sparks. The movement broke the tight silence that lay between them.

  “You once asked me to let you in—to give you all of myself or nothing. You said,” she fought for control of her voice, throat tight with longing and fear, “that half a loaf wasn’t enough to fill a man. And now I’m asking you the same thing, to let me in that I may go with you.”

  There was wary surprise on his face. “What?”

  “Casey, you’ve been holding back something every time we’ve made love since—since you found out about Love.”

  He took a deep, shaky breath and stood, crossing the room to where she sat, the fire’s heat penetrating through the thin weave of her nightgown. Moonlight lay in a broad strip across the floorboards, lighting the bones of his face in stark relief.

  He knelt on the floor and put his head in her lap so she could not see his face. His arms lay lightly along her thighs and she could feel how they trembled. His whiskers were like needles against the fine skin of her inner thigh but she wouldn’t have moved for the world right now. She didn’t even dare to speak, though she laid her hand gently on his head, feeling the soft springiness of his curls and the tension that lay along his skin.

  “I wish I knew how to reclaim ye,” he said quietly, though his tone was fierce. “I wish I knew how to wipe the vision in my mind of him takin’ ye, of him makin’ love to my wife. It makes me feel as though I’ve a rope chokin’ me round my neck every time I think of it. I wish I’d killed him with my own two hands an’ maybe that would have washed the poison out.” The hands in question were clenched into fists, bunched tight in the cloth of her nightgown.