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He walked away from the pub sober, and wasn’t that a new experience? He’d fought the urge to drink, and he’d won. Cal wasn’t fool enough to think he wouldn’t have to fight the same battle tomorrow and the day after, but it heartened him that he could fight it.
He’d started drinking when his mother had died. At first, he’d wanted to be like the men he knew, and then he came back to the drink because it gave him the numbness he needed to get through the lonely days and nights. He was a good thief and a good gambler, but that wasn’t the life his mother had wanted for him. He told himself thieving and gambling was temporary, but as the years wore on, he knew he was lying.
He drank more. He gambled more. He lost more. He stole more. And he drank even more. Cal had welcomed the oblivion that came with a night of drinking.
Cal started back toward what he supposed was home for now. He didn’t think he’d be able to find his way back to the room he and Bridget shared, but the sense of direction that had saved him too many times to count in London seemed alive and well in Dublin. He passed the same beggars and barrow boys on the way back. They looked as bleak as they had this morning, and Cal wondered if the sun ever shown in this place.
He stepped over a few men sleeping on the street and wished he had a coin or two to toss them. It had been a man like them that had scared him enough to stop drinking—the first time. He’d been stumbling through one of the rookeries in London, so drunk his insides were pickled, and he’d tripped over something in the street. When he’d risen to his knees and looked back at what he’d tripped over, he’d seen the man. Cal had slurred an apology and received no response. When he’d shaken the man, a gin bottle had clinked on the pavement and the man’s unseeing eyes had merely stared up blankly.
For a moment Cal had seen himself and his own future. He’d vowed to stop drinking and gambling and get out of London. It had taken him eighteen months, but here he was.
He stopped now and stared at the front window of the room he shared with Bridget. The yellow glow from the lamplight warmed him. He’d left the key with Bridget, and when he knocked, she opened the door and stood looking at him.
“I’m happy to see you too, Mrs. Kelly,” he said to fill the silence. She moved back then, wary, and he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Something was different. He could feel that right away. He looked about, uncertain what it might be.
“Where have you been?” she asked. He turned to look at her and saw her hands fisted on her hips. She still wore the pretty yellow dress, but her hair was in a simple twist at the back now, no longer gliding down her back. This wasn’t exactly the welcome he’d been imagining.
“I’ve been with Donnelly at the pub.”
“I can smell that. Did you drink the beer or bathe in it?”
“Neither,” he said, surveying the room again. “You bought a tablecloth.” He’d finally picked out what was different. That wasn’t all, though. A vase fashioned from an old apothecary bottle sat on the table with weeds poking out of it. He looked closer and supposed they were flowery weeds, though it was still too cold for anything but this wilting, brown version. He glanced about the room and saw a few items on the larder shelf.
“I bought food, but I didn’t know when or if you’d be home. Now I think it might have been better if you’d stayed away.”
He rounded on her. “What bee has lodged in your bonnet?”
“Don’t pretend not to know.”
Cal squinted at her. This was the sort of infuriating thing women said that no man could make heads or tails of and yet if he professed ignorance, he’d be raked over the coals. He sighed and pulled his hat off. “I’m not pretending, lass, so you’d best enlighten me.”
She glared at him, and he thought she might resort to another of the infuriating things women often said—if you don’t know, I’m not telling you. But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “I don’t like being lied to.”
Cal was removing his coat and paused. “And what is it I’m to have lied to you about?” Very slowly he removed his coat and hung it on a peg beside his hat. He tugged at his neckcloth, loosening that.
“You said you don’t drink.”
“I don’t. I smell of it because that’s the position Donnelly gave me. I’m part owner of a pub called The Selkie.”
“A pub? But I thought when he said the pub, he meant...” She shook her head. “Why a pub?”
“Because that’s the pub the members of Innishfree like to frequent.”
“So you spoke to them?”
He gave her an incredulous look and sat at the table with its new tablecloth to remove his boots. “Not yet. Rule number two—”
“I don’t want your rules. You mean to tell me you spent all day in a pub and didn’t have a single drink?”
“That’s what I said.” He was hungry and tired and in no mood for an inquisition.
“Not one. Even though you said...I mean with your weakness for—”
Cal rose. “Sure and do you want me to prove it to you?”
“How can you do that?”
Oh, he’d show her. He was angry enough to make his point quite clear. He took two steps, grasped her by the upper arms, and hauled her against him. She had just enough time to gape at him before his mouth came down hard on hers.
