J. Robb - Vengeance in Death

He had love in his heart, the hot-blooded love for a woman that could never have rooted if the ground had remained stony.

After all these years he discovered that coming back hadn't stirred the ghosts, but had put them to rest.

"Fuck you, bloody bastard," he murmured, but with outrageous relief. "You couldn't do me after all."

He turned away from what had been, set his direction on what was, and what would come. He walked, content now, through the rain that began to fall as soft as tears.

Eve had never been to a wake before, and it surprised her that, given Roarke's usual style of doing things, he'd chosen to hold it in the Penny Pig.

The pub was closed to outside traffic, but crowded just the same. It seemed Jennie had left behind a lot of friends, if no family.

An Irish wake, Eve was to discover, meant pretty much what an Irish pub meant. Music, conversation, and drinking great quantities of liquor and beer.

It made her think of a viewing she'd attended only the month before, one that had led to more death and violence. There the dead had been laid out in a clear side-viewing casket, and the room had been heavy with red draperies and flowers. The mood had been sorrow, the voices hushed.

Here, the dead were remembered in a different manner.

"A fine girl was Jennie." A man at the bar raised his glass, and his voice over the noise of the crowd. "Never watered the whiskey or stinted when pouring it. And her smile was as warm as what she served you."

"To Jennie then," it was agreed, and the toast was drunk.

Stories were told, often winding their way from some virtue of the dearly departed and into a joke on one of those present. Roarke was a favored target.

"There's a night I remember," Brian began, "years back it was, when our Jennie was just a lass – and a fine figure of one was she – that she was serving the beer and the porter. That was when Maloney owned the place – God rest his thieving soul – and I was tending bar for a pittance."

He paused, took a drink, then puffed into life one of the cigars Roarke had provided. "I had an eye for Jennie – and what right-minded young lad wouldn't – but she had none for me. 'Twas Roarke she was after. On that evening, we had a fair crowd in, and all the young bucks were hoping to get a wink from young Jennie. I gave her all me best love-starved looks."

He demonstrated with a hand over his heart and the heaviest of sighs so his audience hooted with laughter and cheered him on.

"But to me she paid no mind at all, for her attention was all for Roarke. And there himself sat, perhaps at the table where he's sitting where he is tonight. Though he wasn't dressed so fine as he is tonight, and I'd wager a punt to a penny that he didn't smell so fresh either. Though Jennie sashayed by him a dozen times or more, and leaned over, oh, leaned over close in a way that made my heart pound wishing I were exposed to such a fine and lovely view, and she would ask so sweetly could she fetch him another pint."

He sighed again, wet his throat, and went on with it. "But Roarke, he was blind to the signals she was sending, deaf to the invitation in that warm voice. There he sat with the girl of my dreams offering him glory, and he kept noting figures in a tattered little book, adding them up, calculating his profits. For a businessman he ever was. Then Jennie, for a determined girl was she when her mind was set, and it was set on Roarke, asked him please would he give her a hand for just a moment in the back room, for she couldn't reach what she needed on the high shelf. And him being so tall, and strong with it, could he fetch it down for her."

Brian rolled his eyes at that while one of the women leaned over the booth where Roarke sat with Eve and good-naturedly pinched his biceps. "Well, the boy wasn't a cad for all his wicked ways," Brian continued, "and he put his book away in his pocket and went off with her into the back. A frightful long time they were gone I'm after telling you, with my heart broken to bits behind Maloney's bar. When come out they did, with hair all mused and clothes askew, and a bright-eyed look about them, I knew Jenny was lost to me. For not a bloody thing did he carry back for her from the high shelf in the back room. All he did was sit again, give her a wicked, quick grin… and take out his book and count his profits.

"Sixteen years old we were, the three of us, and still dreaming about what our lives might be. Now Maloney's pub is mine, Roarke's profits too many to count, and Jennie, sweet Jennie, is with the angels."

There were a few tears at the end of it, and conversation began again in murmurs. Bringing his glass, Brian walked over, sat across from Roarke. "Do you remember that night?''

"I do. It's a good memory you brought back."

"Perhaps it was ill-mannered of me. I hope you didn't take offense to it, Eve."

"I'd need a heart of stone to do that." Maybe it was the air, or the music, or the voices, but they made her sentimental. "Did she know how you felt about her?"

"Then, no." Brian shook his head, and there was a warm gleam in his eye. "And later, we were too much friends for else. My heart always leaned toward her, but it was in a different way as time passed. It was the thought of her I loved."

He seemed to shake himself, then tapped a finger on Roarke's glass. "Well now, you're barely drinking. Have you lost your head for good Irish whiskey living among the Yanks?"

"My head was always better than yours, wherever I was living."

"You had a good one," Brian admitted. "But I remember a night. Oh, it was after you'd sold off a shipment of a fine French bordeaux you'd smuggled in from Calais – begging your pardon, Lieutenant darling. Are you remembering that, Roarke?"

Roarke's lips moved into a smirk, and his hand brushed its way down Eve's hair. "I smuggled more than one shipment of French wine in my career."

"Oh, no doubt, no doubt, but this night in particular, you kept a half dozen bottles out, and were in a light and sharing frame of mind. You pulled together a game – a friendly one for a change – and we sat and drank every drop. You and me and Jack Bodine and that bloody fool Mick Connelly who got himself killed in a knife fight in Liverpool a few years back. Let me tell you, Lieutenant darling, this man of yours got drunk as six sailors in port and still won all our money."

Roarke picked up his glass now and savored a sip. "I recall being a bit light in the pocket the next morning when I woke up."

"Well." Brian grinned hugely. "Get drunk with thieves and what does it get you? But it was good wine, Roarke. It was damn good wine. I'll have them play one of the old tunes. 'Black Velvet Band.' You'll sing?"

"No."

"Sing?" Eve sat up. "He sings?"

"No," Roarke said again, definitely, while Brian laughed.

"Prod him enough, and keep his glass full, and you'd get a tune out of him."

"He hardly even sings in the shower." She stared thoughtfully at Roarke. "You sing?"

Struggling between amusement and embarrassment, he shook his head and lifted his glass. "No," he said again. "And I don't plan to get drunk enough to prove myself a liar."

"Well, we'll work on that some." Brian winked and rose. "For now then I'm going to have them play a reel. Will you dance with me, Eve?"

"I might." She watched him walk off to liven up the music. "Getting drunk, singing in pubs, and tickling barmaids in the back room. Hmmm." She shot a long, speculative look at the man she married. "This is very interesting."

"You do the first, the others come easy."

"I might like to see you drunk." She put a hand on his cheek, glad to see the sadness had faded from his eyes. Wherever he had gone that afternoon was his secret, and she was satisfied that it had done him good.