Page 29 of A New World for the Irish Daughter

“No… no thank you, Da.” She glanced at Danny, who was loitering in the doorway, dressed in the three-piece suit he’d bought back in Chicago. “You’re looking well, Danny,” she remarked.

He glanced down at his suit with obvious pride. “It’s smart, isn’t it?”

“Danny and I have been doing a little business as of late,” their father explained as he took a nip from his flask before pocketing it. “We’ve become enterprising gentlemen, don’t you know!”

“Oh?” Maggie tried to suppress the frisson of alarm such news instinctively caused her. She prayed whatever they were doing, it was aboveboard. “What kind of business?”

“Oh, just a little buying and selling down by the waterfront,” Danny told her breezily. “You don’t need to frown like that, Mags—I know what you’re thinking! It’s all perfectly safe and legal, I swear.”

“I wasn’t frowning,” Maggie protested with a laugh, even though she knew she had been. “I’m glad to hear it, at any rate.” Hopefully her brother was telling the truth.

“You don’t need to worry about us,” their father assured her comfortably. “We’re doing all right.”

“And Brendan?” Maggie asked after a moment, glancing around as if he might suddenly appear. “How is he?”

“Oh, same as ever, I suppose,” their da replied. “Keepin’ busy here, doing all sorts of errands for Miss Jessie. I think she’s fond of him, you know.Right fond.” He winked knowingly, and Maggie had to work to school her expression into something resembling nothing more than polite interest.

“Oh?” she asked, and she knew she sounded brittle. She felt a hot flare of jealousy she knew she had no right to feel.

“You ain’tjealous, are you?” Danny asked, a surprising note of sympathy in his voice as he leaned forward to clap her on the shoulder. She would have expected her brother to tease her about any feelings she might have for Brendan, but the fact that he wasn’t alarmed her all the further. Brendan and Miss Jessiemustbe serious, then. “Not after all this time?” he continued, frowning. “Brendan said the two of you were just friends.”

“We’ve only ever been just friends,” Maggie replied quickly. “Of course I’m notjealous.” She saw her father and brother exchange glances, and she knew she hadn’t fooled them—and not herself, either. “He and Miss Jessie…?” she forced herself to ask, unable to finish the question.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” their father said hastily. “As to anyactualgoings-on. But she likes him well enough,that’sfor certain.”

“Well, he’s a likeable fellow,” Maggie replied lightly.

She could imagine what a breath of fresh air a man like Brendan, so friendly and kind, honest and goodhearted, was to the understandably jaded Miss Jessie. He was so different from the rough sailors or oily businessmen whom she was forced to welcome to her parlor house. It didn’t hurt that Brendan was a handsome man, either, with his light brown hair brushed back from his forehead, his hazel eyes that glinted so often with good humor.

“But we want to hear aboutyou,” Maggie’s father insisted jovially. “Tell us all about your nursing!”

“Do you get do anything grisly?” Danny asked with interest. “Cut off a leg or some such?”

Maggie laughed. “I havehelda leg that’s being amputated,” she told him, and laughed again as his eyes rounded. “And once it had been cut, I had to put it in the waste bucket.” She winced to remember the awfulthunkit had made.

“I always thought doctors were no more than butchers,” their father said with a shudder.

“I assure you, these doctors are not butchers,” Maggie replied, smiling. “The leg had gangrene and had to be removed.”

“I don’t know about all this talk of legs and such,” Mrs. Adams remarked as she came to the table with the promisedtea, as well as a plate of hot buttered scones. “It doesn’t seem ladylike, somehow, doin’ that sort of thing.”

Maggie suppressed the urge to point out the obvious—that what the women did at Miss Jessie’s was hardly ladylike, either.

“Thank you, Mrs. Adams,” she said instead, and took a scone. “These look delicious.”

“Have you heard about our Jenny?” Mrs. Adams asked as she joined them at the table, and Maggie tensed. She’d meant to inquire about Jenny earlier but had forgotten in the midst of their conversation.

“She’s all right, I hope?” she asked, a tremor to her voice.

“All right?” Mrs. Adams snorted. “Just gone and got herselfaffianced, I should say, to her lumber man, Mr. Grayson. He always called on her particular and now he wants to marry her and take her up north. What do you have to say about that?”

“Oh. I…” Maggie stared at the cook in complete surprise. It was just as Miss Jessie had said, and the girls hoped, that a customer might take a serious and even matrimonial interest. “That’swonderful!”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Maggie turned at the sound of that familiar deep voice, with only a hint of Irish brogue left. “Brendan…” she murmured as she took in the sight of him standing in the kitchen doorway. He looked exactly the same, dressed in his usual suit of brown wool, his jacket shed and his sleeves rolled up. His hair was a little mussed, like he’d been outside and the wind had blown it, a bit of color in his cheeks.

Maggie stared at him for another beat, a sense of longing welling up inside her, before she forced herself to tear her gaze away and take a sip of her tea.