I lay in bed recalling each word he’d said and how he had looked at me. At first, I’d been giddy that he’d finally noticed me and had taken me into his confidence. But then a small voice inside my head told me the encounter meant nothing at all. All he’d done was recite the bare outlines of his past. He might as well have been talking to a stranger on a train. The closest he came to betraying emotion was when he mentioned Mary.

“Don’t ever let yourself fall in love, Miss Sweeney,” he’d said.

I realized then that we were alike. I was afraid to fall in love as well. I still believed no man would ever have me. Ma had told me that often enough, drilled it in until I believed it. Whatever feelings I had for Aidan O’Hanlon were schoolgirl fantasies, and I needed to put them out of my head.

* * *

By the next day he had returned to the aloof and slightly distracted man I had come to expect. He nodded at me in the hallway, as if the evening before had never happened. I wondered if he even recalled it.

“So how was your evening with himself?” Kathleen’s question sounded more like an accusation. “The two of yez looked very cozy, sitting talking as if ye’d known each other for years.” She turned to Mrs. Donahue. “You should have seen them,” she said. “If I didn’t know better—”

“That’s enough, Kathleen,” said Mrs. Donahue. “We’ll have no such gossip in this house.” She turned to me. “Sit down, Nora, love. Have your breakfast and don’t listen to this one.”

Kathleen shrugged and laughed as she turned away toward the sink. “I wonder what Dom would think if he found out you were making eyes at the master of the house?”

“I want to hear no more about it.” Mrs. Donahue’s voice was sharp. “We’re having society to dinner tomorrow night and we have to be getting on with it. Take off your apron now, miss, and go and buy everything I have on this shopping list.”

Kathleen pulled a face and snatched the list from Mrs. Donahue. I stood up and excused myself, leaving my boiled egg and toast only half-eaten. Kathleen’s attitude was beginning to wear me down. She seemed to take every opportunity to pass remarks on my behavior. I suppose I should have complained that, as Mrs. Donahue often said, she didn’t know her rightful place. But who was I to complain—after all, this was not my rightful place either—I was still as much of an imposter as I’d been in Donegal.

After that night, Kathleen’s attitude toward me seemed to shift. She was polite enough while Mrs. Donahue was present, but when we were alone, she snapped at me over the smallest things and ignored me when I asked her for something. I grew more and more frustrated.

“What’s got into you, Kathleen?” I said.