Gifts of Love Read online

  “Don’t forget Hale,” Laura called after him, and laughed.

  In the days that followed Laura was unable to let go of the feeling that she was in a delightful dream that would end with cruel suddenness. Each morning she awakened with a sense of worry that dissolved only when she saw Jason’s smile. It was miraculous to her that the husband she had come to dread was now the person she wanted to be with every minute.

  Now that she was no longer afraid of his biting sarcasm being turned on her, she talked freely with him. He was an entertaining companion, sometimes thoughtful and quiet, sometimes roughly playful. He was a considerate lover, always sensitive to her pleasure, but with an earthiness that she found exciting.

  To Laura’s surprise, Jason seemed to relish the discovery that she was not the delicate, reserved creature he had thought her. One morning he swept her away from the others and took her on a ramble through the woods, teasing and flirting as if she were a maiden he was bent on seducing. Saucily she ducked away when he would have kissed her.

  “No,” she said, picking up her skirts and making her way to a fallen tree trunk. “I know what you intend, and I will not be taken advantage of in the snow.”

  He followed readily. “I could make you forget the cold.”

  “I don’t think so.” Primly she stepped over the tree trunk, and gave a little shriek as he made a grab for her.

  “I never back down from a challenge,” he said.

  Swiftly she picked up a long birch stick and turned to face him, touching it to his chest as if it were a sword. “So this is the reason you brought me out here,” she accused, “for an unseemly frolic in the middle of the woods.”

  “Exactly.” With deliberate slowness he took the stick and broke it in half, tossing it aside. “And I’m going to have my way with you.”

  Backing up step by step, Laura considered the possibility of compromise. “One kiss,” she offered.

  He continued to stalk her. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Her eyes sparkled with laughter, and she held out her arms to keep him at bay. “I will not bargain with you, Jason.”

  They eyed each other assessingly, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Suddenly Laura darted to the side, and found herself snatched up in a pair of strong arms. She laughed exuberantly while he lifted her by the waist as if she weighed nothing at all. Slowly he let her slide down until their faces were even, her feet still dangling above the ground. Without thinking, she twined her arms around his neck and fastened her mouth to his in a kiss so direct and natural that Jason staggered slightly, his senses electrified. He had to put her down before he sent them both tumbling in a heap. Spellbound, he stared at the woman in his arms and thought of what an arrogant fool he’d been. He’d assumed he knew her so well when he didn’t know her at all.

  “Jason,” she asked wistfully, “do we really have to go back home tomorrow?”

  “We can’t stay here forever.”

  She sighed and nodded, wondering how long the truce between them would last once they were back in all-too-familiar territory.

  It was with reluctance that they finally left the Marshes’ Brookline home the next day and returned to their own Beacon Street address. Sophia had been able to guess at Laura’s remaining worries and gave Laura an uncharacteristically long hug good-bye. “Everything will be all right,” Sophia whispered, patting her on the back. “After seeing Jason with you the past few days, I’ve come to realize that there is no difficulty of yours that time will not solve.”

  Laura smiled and nodded, but she knew that in this matter Sophia wasn’t right. Time meant very little. Two whole months of marriage had not accomplished for her and Jason what the past four days had. And there were problems that still faced them, problems that could not be resolved no matter how much time went by. She had to find some way of prying past Jason’s deepest reserve, the barrier that kept them from reaching an intimacy beyond the physical pleasure they shared.

  As he had promised, Jason took her to the site of his most recent building. It was the first time she had actually seen one of his projects under construction. Before now she been wary of showing too much interest in his business concerns. Now she inundated him with questions.

  “What sort of people will be renting the apartments?” she asked. “Small families? Young men?”

  “And young women, on a cooperative basis.”

  “Young women without chaperones?”

  He laughed at her faintly censorious tone. “Yes, self-reliant women with their own careers, sharing an apartment together. Is that too radical a proposition for a Prescott to approve of?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I suppose the Prescotts cannot hold back progress.”

  He grinned and drew her arm tighter through his. “We’ll make a liberal of you yet.”

  As Jason walked her around the property, Laura was impressed, even a little awed, by the size of the undertaking. The air was thick with the noise of the steam shovel, the crew of men spreading gravel and swearing, the dust everywhere. Part of the property included a former rubbish dump, which was being covered with clean gravel.

  The slight train of Laura’s skirt dragged through the patches of muddy ground, and she paused every now and then to tug at it impatiently. She was outfitted in the most practical garments she owned, a wool and grosgrain walking dress of a deep plum color, a matching cape, and sealskin boots with double soles. The heavy draperies and tightly molded skirt prevented her from moving with Jason’s ease, and he was forced to cut his strides to match hers.

  Jason slowed their pace even more as they were approached by a thin, ragged figure from the street. Laura’s eyes darkened with pity as she looked at the elderly man, who wore tattered clothes that were hardly adequate protection against the cold. His gray beard was thin and yellowed, his skin veined, and he reeked of gin. He spoke in a heavy Irish brogue that Laura could barely decipher.

  “Here now, sir, d’ye have a coin t’ spare for an ould man? The wind is sthrong an’ could today.”

  Laura looked up at Jason, whose expression was unreadable. “Indeed it is,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some coins, placing them in the outstretched hand.

  The old man peered at him with watery eyes that suddenly brightened with interest. “Sure now, yer frae the ould sod.”

  Jason’s slight accent became more pronounced than usual. “My grandfather left County Wexford during the first potato rot.”

  “Aye, ye have th’ look o’ Wexford, eyes an’ hair black as coal. Meself, I come frae Cork.” The man nodded in thanks, gesturing with the coins clutched tight in his bony fist. “God bless ye, sir, an’ yer bonny wife.”

  Laura glanced back at him as they moved on; he was scurrying furtively across the street, hands tucked underneath his arms. “Poor man,” she said. “I hope he buys something to eat.”

  “He’ll spend it on drink,” Jason said flatly.

  “How can you be certain?”

  For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to reply. “He can get whiskey cheaper than bread,” he finally said.

  “Then why did you give the money to him if you knew…” Laura frowned and stared at the ground, feeling the tension in his arm, knowing that something had struck a raw nerve.

  Jason felt a powerful urge to tell her what he was thinking, but his habit of privacy concerning his past warned him against saying anything. He opened and closed his mouth several times, feeling heat creep up from his collar as he fought an inner battle. There was no reason to confess anything to her, no need for her to know. And if Laura understood what his childhood had really been like, she would feel contempt for him. She would feel the same disgust that he felt whenever he remembered it. God knew why now of all times he felt driven to tell her what he had once vowed never to speak of.

  Jason stopped walking and turned his gaze to the steam shovel as it bit into the hard ground.

  “What is it?” she asked gently. “What
did he remind you of?”

  He spoke as if the words were being dragged out of him. “I knew men like that when I was young. Men driven from their home by poverty and disease, and most of all hunger. They didn’t care where they went, so long as they escaped from Ireland. Often they landed in Boston with no money, no work, no relatives. They…” He stopped and took a short breath before continuing. “They used to beg for a warm place in my family’s room at night, when the winter was bitter.”

  “Your family’s room? Don’t you mean your house?”

  He didn’t look at her. “We lived in one room of a basement. No plumbing or windows. No light except when the door to the sidewalk above was opened. Filth kept draining in from the street. It was little more than a gutter.”

  Laura was silent with amazement. That could not be true, she thought. He could not have come from that kind of poverty. She had known the Morans had not been a family of great means, but Jason was talking as if they had been slum-dwellers!

  “But your father was a grocer, wasn’t he?” she asked awkwardly. “He had enough money to send you to school.”

  “That was later, when his business began to succeed. Even then he had to trade his soul for the money. He managed to convince some local merchants and politicians that I would be a worthwhile investment.” Jason’s mouth twisted. “For the first several years my father ran his grocery in our cellar room. Until I was nine or ten, I remember eating nothing but scraps and foodstuffs gone bad, the worst of whatever he couldn’t sell.”

  “But your education…How…?”

  “My father was one of the few who allowed—no, pushed—his sons into the free public schools. He couldn’t read. He wanted at least one of us to be able to.”

  “Did you want to?”

  “At first I didn’t care. I was an uneducated brute who wanted nothing except food and what little comfort I could find. And there is an attitude in the North End, that a man isn’t meant to rise above the life he’s born to. The Irish are fatalistic about such things. I thought the only way to get something I wanted was to steal it.” Jason smiled grimly. “When I couldn’t find coal or wood to scavenge, the family had to stay in bed all day to keep warm. God knows I saw no use in learning to read.”

  “What made you decide to try?”

  He answered distantly, as if he were only half-aware of her presence. The memories were never far from his mind—they were what drove him—but until now he had never allowed himself to speak of them. “I saw men laboring on the wharves until their backs were ruined. And the hostlers and stablers living in worse conditions than the horses they cared for. All the Irish laborers and domestics who will work for any wage—they call them ‘green hands.’ There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to escape it.” Jason looked at her then, his black eyes unnervingly intense. “I worked all the time. On the docks, in saloons, anywhere there was a coin to be made. In school I studied hard, made the highest marks. I never lost at anything—baseball, footraces, public debates. Every man of means I crossed paths with became a mentor. But the admission into the Boston Latin School was nothing short of a miracle. I’ll owe favors for that from now until kingdom come. That was when everything changed, when I finally knew what it was I really wanted.”

  Laura did not ask what that was, for she was afraid of the answer. She suspected that what Jason really wanted was what he could never have, to assume a place in the most powerful circles of Boston society that would never be allowed to an Irishman. Such positions had been decided generations ago, and no intruders were admitted into the sacred circles. No matter how much money or power Jason acquired, he would always be considered an outsider.

  “And then Boston Latin led to college,” she prompted quietly.

  “When it came time for that, some Irish businessmen helped to foot the bill. I eventually repaid their investments many times over.”

  “Your family must be very proud of you,” she said, and was puzzled when he didn’t answer.

  While she was still trying to absorb all of what he had told her, Jason took her by the shoulders, his gaze hunting for pity or revulsion. She felt neither, only a desire to comfort him. She thought of what he must have been like as a boy, hungry and too poor to hope or even to dream.

  “Oh, Jason,” she said softly. “I didn’t suspect you had such desperate odds against you. You should have told me before.”

  She saw that whatever he had been expecting from her, it had not been that. His face was utterly still. She touched his lean cheek with her gloved hand.

  “You should be repelled, knowing where I came from,” he muttered.

  Laura shook her head. “I admire you for it. I admire you for what you’ve made of yourself.”

  He gave no reply, staring at her in an almost calculating way, as if he wanted to believe her but could not. Her hand fell to her side, and she gave him an uncertain smile.

  They were interrupted by the approach of the construction foreman, who had seen them from a distance. Eagerly he greeted them and conferred with Jason on some details of the project. Laura watched them, struck by how quickly the bitterness and memories on Jason’s face had vanished, replaced by his usual calm authority. It dismayed her to see how easily he hid his feelings. She was afraid she would never fully understand him.

  After bidding the foreman good-bye, they walked to the double barouche and Jason muttered to the driver that they were going home. Laura clambered into the velvet-lined carriage, arranging the mass of her bustle, petticoats, and heavily draped skirts in order to sit comfortably. Jason sat beside her, closed the door, and pulled the morocco blinds at the window shut. Obligingly he leaned over to help tug a fold of her skirt out from beneath her. The carriage started with a small jolt.

  “Jason,” she said in a low voice.

  “Yes?”

  “I hope you don’t regret telling me about your past.” Hesitantly she reached out to stroke his chest. “I know there is much more you’ve left unsaid. Someday I hope you will trust me enough to tell me the rest.”

  His hand closed in a fist over hers. Surprised, she darted a look at him, wondering if she had somehow made him angry. There was a dark blaze in his eyes—but it was not anger. He wrapped his other hand around the back of her neck. His thick black lashes lowered, and he looked at her with a narrowed gaze.

  “Laura, why did you marry me?” he asked roughly.

  She was startled, and turned a shade or two paler. Clumsily she tried to dodge the question by making light of it. “I believe this is called fishing for a compliment, Mr. Moran.” She smiled, but he did not respond. His silence forced her to continue. “Why did I want to marry you…well, there were many reasons, I suppose. I…I knew you would be a good provider, and you were Hale’s friend, and during those four years you spent Christmas with us, I became acquainted with you, and…” Her gaze dropped away. She tried to pry herself free, but she was held fast against one hundred and eighty pounds of obstinate male, and they both knew she would not be freed until she gave him what he wanted.

  “The truth,” he muttered.

  “I can’t tell you something I don’t know.”

  “Try.”

  Helplessly she tugged at her trapped hand. “Why is it necessary?”

  “Because I thought I’d forced you into marrying me. A few days ago you told me that you married me of your own free will. I have to know why.”

  “I don’t know why.” Laura gasped as he twisted and dragged her across his lap. She was bound in a cocoon of skirts and stays, her head forced up by the pressure of his arm. “Jason, please, I don’t know what you want—”

  “The hell you don’t.”

  “Let me go, you bully!”

  He ignored her demand. “Then we’ll take another tack. If you had a choice, then tell me why you didn’t marry someone from your own social rank. There were young men with good names and adequate means—you could have had any of them.”

  “Oh, a prime selection,” she agreed, glaring at
him. “Hordes of blue-blooded snobs reared to do nothing except preserve the money their grandfathers made. I could have married some dignified Brahmin who would insist on eating oatmeal every morning of his life, and tucking an umbrella under his arm even when it wasn’t raining, and complaining until he was an old man about not being accepted into the Porcellian club at Harvard!”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Jason, stop this!” She writhed until her strength was exhausted.

  “You told me you wanted to marry me since you were fifteen,” he said ruthlessly. “Why?”

  She trembled with distress, her eyes glittering with sudden tears.

  “No, don’t cry,” he said, his voice gentling. “Laura, I’ve told you things I’ve never confessed to anyone. It can’t be any more difficult for you than it was for me.”

  His handsome face was so close to hers, and there was something pagan in the blackness of his eyes. Laura drew the tip of her tongue over her dry lips and swallowed. Her blood was rushing so fast it made her light-headed. “The first time I met you,” she managed to say, “Hale had brought you home for the Christmas holidays. You kept watching me during that awful dinner…remember?”

  He nodded slightly.

  “You looked like a wolf in a cage,” she said. “The room seemed too small for you. You didn’t belong there, but I could see how badly you wanted to, how determined you were. And I knew I could help you.”

  “Dammit, you didn’t marry me to be helpful!”

  Futilely she tried to free her arms. “We’ll be arriving home soon—”

  “I won’t let you go until I have the answer. Was it that you liked the idea of marrying a social inferior? So you could always have the whip hand?”

  “No,” she gasped.

  “The money? You wanted to be the wife of a rich man, no matter how vulgar his bloodlines.”

  “Jason, you…you louse!” She struggled furiously. Had she been able to slap his face, she would have.

  “Why did you marry me?”