Irish Lady by Jeanette Baker

you’ll be about more than I will. Don’t bother about the food right away unless you’re hungry.” He looked pointedly at her slender figure. “It doesn’t look as if y’ bother with food much. You’re thinner than y’ were as a girl.”
    Meghann ignored his last comment. “Actually, I am hungry. I’ll make us some tea. If there’s soup and bread I’ll make that too. As soon as I find out where everything is I’ll call you, unless,” she tilted her head and looked at him speculatively, “you want to keep me company.”
    He shook his head and turned back to the window.
    Suddenly Meghann was stricken with doubt. What if he wouldn’t talk to her? She took a step forward and stopped. Michael had been through a tremendous ordeal, and it was far from over. Perhaps he needed time. Resolving to curb her impatience, Meghann picked up her suitcase and walked back down the stairs, leaving him alone.
    Tins of soup, fruit, vegetables, tea, oats, biscuits, and a basket of potatoes filled the cupboards. An inspection of the refrigerator revealed a half-dozen eggs, a pint of milk, a package of butter, two packages of cheese, and several pounds of beef, lamb, and a pork roast. They definitely wouldn’t starve.
    Meghann unpacked the groceries she had purchased and opened a tin of potato soup, added grated cheese, a tin of corn, and some salt. She ladled the soup into bowls, set out some sliced wheat bread and two glasses of Guinness, and called to Michael to come downstairs.
    Five full minutes passed before he arrived at the table. Meghann’s cheeks were pink with temper. Too bad for him if it wasn’t hot enough, she fumed silently. If he didn’t care enough to come when she called, he could just eat it cold.
    He ate sparingly, efficiently, making his way through the creamy soup and buttered bread with minimal motion. She noticed that he barely touched his ale.
    â€œYou’re not drinking your Guinness. Would you like some tea?”
    Michael looked up, startled, as if he’d forgotten that someone else was in the room. A minute went by, and the bewildered look on his face vanished. “Aye. I’ll take a cup of tea. I’m not much for Guinness, or spirits for that matter.”
    â€œWhat kind of Irishman are you,” she teased, busying herself with the tea, “to be refusing the drink?”
    â€œA practical one, I hope,” he retorted with a spark of the old fire. “God, Meggie, I would have thought you of all people would be encouraging temperance.”
    She set the teapot on the table along with two cups, spoons, and saucers. “I wasn’t serious, Michael. Can’t you laugh anymore?”
    â€œIn case y’ haven’t heard, there hasn’t been much t’ laugh about in my life lately.”
    She poured milk into each cup and then added the tea, in the orderly symbiosis she’d learned at her mother’s knee. Only her voice revealed her emotions. “I’m trying to help you,” she said quietly.
    â€œHow magnanimous of you. I must remember that.”
    Meghann sat down across from him and lifted her cup with icy hands. “You don’t like me much, do you?”
    A shock of black hair fell across Michael’s forehead. Impatiently, he tossed his head back and glared at her, naked anger in the storm-tossed turbulence of his eyes. “Should I? Y’ took your education and your talent and left us. That’s such a Protestant thing t’ do, Meggie. There isn’t one doctor or lawyer or teacher in the Shankill. They all left for better neighborhoods. That isn’t what we do. We help our own. Maybe there’s bad blood in you. Is that it, Meggie?” His cruel emphasis of her childhood name sickened her. “Maybe there’s always been some Prod in you, more, that is, than Lord Sutton’s endowed patrician di—”
    â€œThat’s enough! My