Blurb:
Bare knuckles brawler
Ronan O’Neill makes a living with his fists as he wanders through the American
frontier. But he dreams of a home, a place to call his own. A fight in a tiny
Ozarks settlement brings more than he expected and he meets a widow, Jane, who
offers to tend his hurts. Without Jane, he’ll never survive but she draws upon
all her skills as a healer and fey ways to keep him alive. As he burns with
fever and dreams of survival, he’s struck by one thought above all others –
he’s come to love this woman. As he heals, he realizes he might – after so long
– find his way home if they can overcome a few obstacles along the way.
Author:
Growing up in historic
St. Joseph, Missouri, Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy scribbled her stories from an
early age. Her first publication – a
poem on the children’s page of the local newspaper – seems to have set her
fate. As a full time author, she has
more than twenty full length novels published along with assorted novellas and
short fiction. A contributor to more
than two dozen anthologies, her credits include Chicken Soup For The Soul among
many collections of short fiction. She
is a member of Romance Writers of America, Missouri Writers Guild, and the
Ozark Writers League. Lee Ann earned a
Bachelor of Arts degree from Missouri Southern State University as well as an
Associate Degree from Crowder College.
She has worked in broadcasting, retail, and other fields including
education. She is currently a substitute
school teacher. As a wife and mother of
three, she spends her days penning stories, cooking, reading, and other daily
duties. She currently makes her home in
the Missouri Ozarks, living in what passes for suburbs in a small town.
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Excerpt:
Chapter One
With his feet planted
on the thick green grass heavy with clover, Ronan O’Neill balled his hands into
tight fists and prepared to take on his opponent. Murmurs from the gathered
crowd echoed in his ears, but beyond the noise he heard birds singing in the
trees at the edge of the grounds. Overhead the noon sun shone down over the
gathering. Somewhere Ronan caught the sweet scent of honeysuckle still in
blossom in early September, stronger than his own rank stench of sweat and
anxiety. No matter how many times he fought or how well he put up a mask of
bravado, Ronan always tasted fear until the first punch. Then blood lust,
battle instinct, rose up, and he thought about nothing else.
Just as the first
contender stepped forward, Ronan saw the woman. She stood apart from the others
with a worn shawl across her shoulders and her feet bare. He noticed her dark
hair was tamed into a heavy braid descending past her knees. When her dark eyes
met his, he noted her pretty face. Few women graced the throng with their
presence, and those who did stuck close to their men. But this one stood alone.
And unlike the others, she didn’t wear a sunbonnet or hat of any kind. He
thought she smiled at him, a sweet, brief expression, and he inclined his head
in a brief nod to acknowledge it.
Ronan turned his
attention toward the man across from him. He stood more than six feet tall,
several inches taller than Ronan, and his broad shoulders made him wider too.
Ronan sized up his challenger and, despite the man’s size, detected softness
around the man’s middle and what he thought might be weakness in his face. He
could take him, he decided with confidence, but it might be difficult.
The master of
ceremonies – an older gentleman, someone of importance, if his waistcoat was
any indication – stood beside the two men. “Are you goin’ for blood or being
knocked out cold?” he asked in an effort to determine in advance what
constituted a win.
“Well, Amos, I say I’m
for putting this other fella down and out,” Ronan’s opponent said.
Amos turned his gaze
to Ronan, who nodded. “Aye, fair enough,” he said, aware how musical and
foreign his brogue must sound to the people here. Their countrified accents
were strange to his ears. Although Ronan spoke English well enough, Gaelic
remained his first tongue, the one his mother whispered to soothe him as a wee
wane. His father had realized English, even though it was the tongue of the
British oppressors, would be a vital tool for his son’s generation.
“All right then,” Amos
said. “You’ll go at it till one of you goes down and out.”
Without any further
discussion, Ronan raised his fists and ducked the first attempted blow. He
hammered the other man hard with a series of quick punches to the face, and as
blood streamed from his rival’s nose, Ronan punched the man’s wide belly. When
his challenger moaned and bent double, Ronan knew he would win this match and
the prize, a five dollar gold piece. As they sparred, the crowd called out
encouragement to his adversary.
“Go get him, George!
Take the Irishman!”
Smirking like a fool,
another shouted, “Knock him out, George!”
George rallied to
their calls and battered Ronan’s face in a fierce attack. In retaliation, Ronan
jabbed a finger into the soft spot at the base of George’s throat, and the man
choked. Ronan thumped him hard and pummeled his head with a series of blows
hard enough his hands hurt with the force of delivery. Their fight continued as
they wrestled and did their best to damage each other. Ronan found his feet,
and so did George. But, the larger man wavered back and forth. Ronan took him
down with a series of well-aimed blows to the head and a final punch to the
gut. George toppled like a felled tree and didn’t move.
Ronan, blood streaming
from a dozen cuts and aching from too many blows, stood, and after a moment’s
hesitation Amos declared the Irishman the winner. He handed over the five
dollar gold piece, and the crowd, stirred up with the fight, quieted. Their cheers
throughout the battle in George’s favor stopped when he hit the ground, and
their mutterings sounded hostile to Ronan. Several men knelt down beside
George, declared he was breathing, and carried him away toward town. As the
crowd began to disperse, one man rushed forward with a harsh cry and a knife in
his outstretched hand.
“I’ll get you for
this, you sorry Irish dog!” the man shouted. “George is my kin.”
He slashed at Ronan
with the blade, aiming for the chest or gut. Swift-footed, however, Ronan
sidestepped the attack, so the knife sliced his outer right arm. Sharp pain
burned, but Ronan did nothing. A powerful aroma of homemade corn whiskey
rippled outward from George’s relative, and Ronan figured the man far too drunk
to spar with. Several onlookers came out of the crowd and maneuvered the
attacker away. Blood gushed from the wound. Despite the pain, Ronan did nothing
but dig into his pocket for a handkerchief. He dabbed at the flow, but the rag
did nothing to stem the tide.
After putting the gold
piece into his inner pocket, Ronan assessed his injuries. His head pounded,
standard enough after a hard fight, and his stomach muscles ached where he’d
been struck. He didn’t doubt his shins would be bruised, and his left knee
throbbed from a well-aimed kick. His right eye would blacken, and it swelled
already, sore. Ronan’s worst wound, the knife cut, still bled, and he struggled
to stop the bleeding before it made him feel faint. Alone, without any friends
or kin to call his own, he couldn’t afford to be ill, and the possibility
stirred his normally tranquil soul with growing anxiety. He concentrated on the
task and didn’t pay any attention to his surroundings until a quiet voice said,
“You’re hurt.”
Ronan lifted his head
to find the woman he noticed before the fight standing at his side. At close
range, he found her beautiful. Her delicate features could have been those of
an expensive china doll. He could get lost in her dark eyes, so deep and filled
with mystery. Her full pink lips begged to be kissed. With interest, despite
his hurts, he smiled at her and said, “Aye, well, it’s never so bad. I’ll fare
well enough if I stop the blood.”
“I reckon I can tend
to your wounds,” she said. “I don’t have anything here, though. You’d have to
come home with me.”
Not one to trust much
of anyone unless they earned it, Ronan trusted her. He didn’t understand why.
But his instincts did and so did Ronan. Her willingness to bring him home
surprised him, though, because most women wouldn’t risk their reputation,
especially not with a stranger such as him. “Aye, I will, then,” he said. “I
hope home’s not far?”
“It’s a little ways,”
she said. “But it’s not so far we cain’t walk it.”
Fatigue and weakness
threatened, but Ronan drew on his physical strength and his stamina and
determined he could make it. “Let’s go then, woman,” he said. “Before I fall
down in a faint. If I’m going home with ye, I should make your acquaintance. My
name’s Ronan O’Neill.”
“Pleased to meet you,”
she said. “I’m Jane Allen.”
Jane took the blood
soaked handkerchief from his hands and peered at the cut. From her apron pocket
she took out a fresh rag and applied it. Her light touch on his arm soothed
some of his uneasiness, and he didn’t protest. Nor did he object when she tied
the cloth around his arm or linked her arm through his uninjured one to provide
support.
“Do you live in town
then, Jane?” Ronan asked. In his wanderings, he came across the small settlement,
and when he heard about the chance to fight, he stayed a few days. Most of
Neosho centered on the courthouse square and trailed up the hills just above
town. It seemed as likely a place as any to make a little money fighting before
moving on to another.
“No,” she said. “I
live off yonder. It’s not far to town, and I like it fine off away from the
rest. Can you make it? I sure cain’t carry you.”
“I’ll do,” Ronan said,
although weakness dogged his steps.
“You’re looking
peaked,” Jane commented. “Hold on, Mister O’Neill. We’re nearly there.”
If not, he’d fall on
his face. Still, he somehow summoned up enough spirit to say, “’Tis Ronan,
woman. There’s no Mister O’Neill here.”
“Ronan,” she said,
with a hint of amusement in her voice. “Come sit a spell then, and I’ll tend to
your hurts.”
Jane pushed open the
cabin door and brought him inside. Her capable hands guided him to a crude
bench, and he sank down onto it, grateful. Ronan swayed, and she scooted him
until his back rested against the table. She removed a kettle from the hearth
and poured hot water into a tin cup. He watched as she rifled through some
baskets to the left of the fireplace and put something dry into the hot water.
As it steeped, Jane produced some dried herbs and some cloth.
“I’ve got some willow
bark steeping for tea,” she told him. “It’ll help what pains you. Let me undo
this around the wound.”
Her hands were gentle
as she removed the cloth tied over his cut. Although the movement sent daggers
of pain through his head, Ronan twisted his head to look. It looked worse than
he thought, a deep, wide slice into his flesh, but the bleeding had slacked
off. Using water from the kettle, Jane washed the wound out and removed the
drying blood. It hurt, but he didn’t mind. After she cleaned it, she reached
into a covered bowl on the mantle and took out some short sweetening. Jane
added it to the willow bark tea.
He sipped the pungent
brew, glad of the sugar to temper the otherwise bitter taste. It would help, he
knew from experience, but without the sweetening it would have gagged him.
As Jane washed his
face, Ronan squinted out of his good eye, the left being too swollen to allow
much vision at his surroundings.
While the warm willow
bark tea seeped into his body, his headache diminished to a tolerable level.
Jane reached for an opaque glass jar with a tight lid. Ronan watched as she
brought it to the table and fished out some leeches. She handled them with care
as she applied them to his black eye. So, she’s a bit of a healer, then, he
thought as the cool bloodsuckers clung to his skin. The sensation made him
uneasy, but he didn’t fuss knowing they could relieve the swelling.
“What else pains you?”
Jane asked. “You seemed to favor your knee a bit. Is it hurt?”
“Aye,” Ronan said.
“The amadon kicked me hard there.”
“Let me see it,” she
said. He bent, head whirling, to roll up his pants leg. Jane made a little
cooing sound of sympathy when his puffy knee emerged, and she touched it with
light fingers. “Oh, it must hurt terrible bad.”
“It does,” he said, wincing.
“It’s a wonder you
could walk at all,” she told him. “I’ll use leeches on it too, but first, I
have some witch hazel extract.”
The faint smell of the
tincture reminded him of other fights, previous injuries, but as Jane bathed
first his knee then some of his other bruises, Ronan grew aware of her touch.
When she ran her hands along his sides, checking for sore spots, he stiffened
but not with pain. Her touch evoked feelings he’d all but forgotten, and he
wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. When Jane touched the worst spots, however,
he winced, and she unbuttoned his shirt without a by-your-leave.
“You’re going to
bruise something awful,” she commented as she touched the worst places with her
fingers. “I’ll put some witch hazel on these, too.”
She applied it with a soothing touch and one
also somehow disturbing. With her body in such close proximity to his, Ronan
wanted to hold her. He ached to kiss her, and his loins stirred to life,
reviving passions he thought dormant or dead. Although he liked what she did
very much, he wondered what kind of woman would bring a stranger home and tend
him like family. And he was curious why she did.
After bathing all his
bruises with witch hazel and applying leeches to his sore knee, Jane smoothed
his hair away from his face. “Now,” she said. “Do you want more tea, or are you
hungry?”
