In Dublin's Fair City Read Online Free PDF

back home again because of what you had done. I thought there was a price on your head.”
    “I’m willing to risk it,” I said.
    “Molly, this is absurd. How many risks do you think you can take in your life before the odds are against you?” He was yelling now.
    “There's really not much of a risk, Daniel, so calm down.” I had found a glass jar on the scullery shelf and now filled it with water, my back to him. “It turns out things weren’t as bad as I had feared; and besides, I’ll be going nowhere near my home, and how many people are called Molly Murphy, for heaven's sake? It must be one of the most common names in Ireland. You really don’t have to worry about me.”
    This speech was braver than I was actually feeling, but I wasn’t having Daniel forbidding me to go to Ireland now.
    “What is this Mr. Burke wanting you to do in Ireland, I’d like to know?” he went on.
    “I told you I can’t discuss a client's business. Let's just say it's a family matter.”
    Daniel scowled. “I smell a rat here. A rich impresario can cable Ireland and hire someone on the spot to do the investigating. He doesn’t need to send an unproven girl from New York.”
    “In the first case, he wants a complete stranger to do the poking around; and in the second, I’m no longer a girl but a woman.”
    “So you are,” he said, looking at me frankly. “So you are.”
    There was a long pause and then he said, “How long will you be gone?”
    “I couldn’t say. Until I’ve finished the job.”
    “So you won’t be here for my trial?” He tried to sound disinterested, but his face gave him away. He looked like a lost schoolboy. I weakened. “Daniel, I have to take the job. The fee is good and I need the money. It's a wonderful chance for me. If I do well, Mr. Burke is a powerful man. He may well refer me to his friends. Besides,” I added, noting his desolate face, “There's not going to be a trial. Now your fellow officers know who was really to blame, they’ll be speaking up for you. They’ll want you reinstated, won’t they? The commissioner will have to let you go free.”
    “I wish I could believe that,” Daniel said. “That certainly wasn’t the impression I got when I spoke with him yesterday.”
    “All he can actually pin on you is the prize fight,” I said. “And that would merit a slap on the wrist and a fine, nothing more.”
    “I admire your optimism,” Daniel said. “I have none myself. Those weeks in jail have crushed my fighting spirit, Molly.”
    “Not enough to stop you trying to lay down the law with me,” I said, and couldn’t resist a smile. He looked at me and smiled back. Those alarming blue eyes flashed for the first time since I’d seen him in that jail cell. He reached out his hands and took mine. “Don’t go, Molly. I need you here.”
    I could feel myself about to weaken. It was a fault I had when I was around Daniel Sullivan. That electricity sparking between us whenever he touched me hadn’t dimmed with time. “I have to go, Daniel,” I said, trying to pull away from him. “But I shouldn’t be away for long. And you have others you can turn to now. It's time you told your family the truth. They’d want to know, I’m sure. Don’t they have powerful friends and connections who’d put in a good word for you? I seem to rememberthat they were pals with the governor. Have him step in on your behalf.”
    “You know my reason for not contacting my family is that I’m concerned for my father's health problems,” he said. “I’d still rather he wasn’t involved in this.”
    “Then your other alternative is to stall,” I said. “Find excuses to have the trial delayed until the end of the year. Then we’ll have a new police commissioner and ten to one he’ll be a friend of Tammany Hall.”
    He squeezed my hands tightly. “I’m sure everything you say makes sense,” he said, “but this has all been like a nightmare to me. I never believed I could be arrested