She must be patient. She must remember how hurt he was. It was easy for her. No one had broken her dreams about her people, the ones she most admired and cared for, the people who defined who she was and what she had given her time and care to.
She took a deep breath.
“Course,” she agreed. “I spoke ’asty if I said diff’rent.”
He relaxed a trifle.
She must be careful she did not give so much away he thought she was weak, or disloyal to her own. He would not admire that, and she would not do it anyway. It was very painful to care so much about someone who was on the other side of such a division of beliefs, of honor, of loyalties which could not now be changed. There were too many debts, too many shared experiences, losses to be comforted and borne together, wept over. How were Mr. Moynihan and Mrs. McGinley ever going to manage?
“You don’t understand at all,” he said thoughtfully. “You can’t, and that isn’t your fault. You’d have to be Irish to have seen it, the suffering and the injustice.”
“Everybody suffers, one way or another,” she said reasonably. “It in’t just the Irish wot gets cold and ’ungry, or scared, or lonely, or wot gets put out on the street, or locked in gaol for summink they din’t do, or couldn’t ’elp doin’. It ’appens to all sorts. Sometimes even English gents gets ’ung for summink wot they din’t do.”
He regarded her with open disbelief.
“Course they do!” she said urgently. “I work for a policeman. I know fings wot you don’t. You in’t got the Ole world’s lot o’ sufferin’ all to yerself, yer know.”
His face darkened.
“Not that yer in’t right ter fight for fings better!” she went on quickly. “Or that it in’t important that Ireland be free ter look arter itself any way it wants. But wot about folk like Mr. O’Day and Mr. Moynihan? They got ter be done fair ter as well. Yer wouldn’t want it unfair, would yer?”
“Irish freedom is not unfair,” he said with an effort to control the anger in his voice. “Gracie, listen to me!” He sat down on the edge of the bed and pointed to the chair for her to sit, which she did. “You can’t understand in a week, or in a year, all the stealing of land, the killing of people that has gone on in Ireland over the centuries, or why the hatred runs so deep.” He shook his head, his face pinched and tense. “I can’t tell it to you. You would need to see it to believe people could treat other living, breathing beings that way, people who are their own kind, who hunger and shiver like they do, who work and sleep and love their children the same, who have the same dreams and fears for the future. It’s inhuman but it happened for hundreds of years, and it’s still happening.” He leaned further forward, his eyes brilliant, his voice urgent and angry. “We’ve got to put a stop to it, for all time, whatever it costs. All the past cries out to us not just to think of ourselves, but to think of those who are children now, or who are to be our children in the future.”
She said nothing, staring at him.
“Listen, Gracie!” His hand trembled with emotion. “Nothing precious is bought without a price. If we care enough, we must be prepared to pay!”
“O’ course,” she said quietly. But his words troubled her the instant after she had agreed with them.
He was going on, not seeing the hesitation in her face.
“History can be cruel, Gracie.” He was smiling at her now, some of the shadows gone from his eyes. “We have to have the courage of our beliefs, and sometimes that can be very difficult, but great changes are not made by cowards.”
Privately she thought that sometimes they were made by men without consciences, but she did not say so.
“Thank you for coming,” he said warmly. “I didn’t like quarreling with you.” He held out his hand.
She put hers out and his fingers closed over it, strong and gentle. He pulled her towards him and she yielded willingly. Very softly he kissed her lips, then let her go. She sat back feeling a peace and happiness settle inside her. The argument was not over. She still thought he was wrong in some of his ideas, but the feeling was right, and other things would be dealt with later. Caring was what mattered. She smiled back at him, letting her fingers slip from his and sitting back on her chair. She put her hand on the table to steady herself and glanced sideways as she accidentally moved the blue paper and the candles.
“Don’t touch that!” Finn started forward, his face tight and hard, his body stiff.
She froze, staring at him. She had never seen him like this before, such anger in him, and something else, uglier and more alien. She had touched two of the candles. They had felt different from each other. One was waxy, like any candle she was used to. The other was vaguely sticky, not the same.
“Leave it alone,” he said between his teeth.
“Sorry,” she said shakily. “I didn’t mean no ’arm.”
“No … no, of course not.” He seemed to be struggling for words, driven by a consurning emotion that he fought against—and lost. “It … you just … you shouldn’t …”
A prickle of horror ran through her. Maybe it was not a candle, as she had assumed. She had seen no wick in it. Could that be what dynamite was like?
She looked at his face and knew with a sick misery that she was right. Were it just a candle, her seeing it, touching it, would never have made them suddenly strangers.
She folded her arms, unconsciously hiding her hands and the fact that she was trembling.
He was still watching her. He must have seen the change in her face. Did he guess the fearful thought that beat in her mind?
“Gracie?”
“Yes!” She had answered too quickly, she knew it the moment the word was out of her mouth. She saw it in his eyes. Finn had had the materials for the bomb which had exploded in the study and killed Lorcan McGinley, his own
