The Shadows

by Chance, Megan

  And most importantly, he seemed a reasonable man.

  Tell me, Patrick thought impatiently. Send the message.

  He tapped his fingers against the glass. Impatience was his failing, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself. He could be patient with some things: with the business, with his mother, with Lucy, though she tried him often, as when she’d come begging him to hire some poor boy who needed a job—and who had thought Lucy capable of such finer feeling? It made Patrick wonder if perhaps he’d been wrong; perhaps his sister wasn’t as shallow as he’d thought. And despite the depression, the business was doing well—rich men knew how to stay rich, and they always needed tailoring and hats—so what was another stableboy if it made his sister happy?

  He turned from the display case, striding to the window, looking out on Madison Square, at promenaders and tinkling fountains, the smell of roses from his mother’s garden wafting through the open window. He thought of Grace in the reflected light of the garden: the softness of her mouth against his, the way she’d quoted “Dark Rosaleen” to him. He’d been struck then with the urge to tell her everything. Everything the Fenian Brotherhood had done, everything he wanted. The old magic and the failure of the Fianna to show and the calling of the Fomori. Daire Donn.

  But there again, he was too impatient. He would tell her eventually, because he knew she would share the passions of whomever she loved. It was that romance in her, her love for the Irish legends: the tale of Finn, who’d saved the life of High King Cormac of Ireland and was made the head of the king’s elite fighting force as a reward; the love story of Grace’s namesake, Grainne, and her Diarmid; and the tragedy of the fair-haired Etain’s love for Oscar. Grace understood his passion for their homeland.

  But he’d also seen her nervousness. He’d had to remind himself that she was still so young. Almost seventeen, but there was so much she didn’t know about the world, and at twenty-one, he’d seen so much more. He wanted to teach her. He wanted to see that fire in her eyes burn for him. But he had to go slow. Waiting was the key.

  He gripped the windowsill hard. He pressed his head against the glass.

  He hated waiting.

  When he heard the knock at the front door, he jumped. But then he realized that Daire Donn was unlikely to send a messenger to his house. No, the Fomori’s answer would come to the Brotherhood, where Rory Nolan was waiting.

  Patrick heard the opening of the front door, the maid’s voice. He heard her footsteps down the hall. When she knocked at his study, it was all he could do to school his face into a pleasant smile.

  “A note for you, sir,” she said, giving him what looked like a scroll tied with a ribbon before she left.

  It wasn’t paper, but parchment. Real parchment, made from scraped hides. Thick yet pliable.

  Patience, Patrick cautioned himself. It could be nothing, an invitation to a costume ball. A themed supper. Some foolish waste of time.

  But he knew it wasn’t. He felt the magic pulsing from it. He was amazed that the maid hadn’t seemed to feel it as well.

  He stripped the ribbon from the scroll and unrolled it, his fingers trembling.

  The note was written in Gaelic, in thick, flowing ink. He’d been reading Gaelic since he was ten, and this was no trouble.

  They had agreed. They were coming! The summer solstice—that was June twenty-first, only a few short weeks away. It had been so easy after all, just as Patrick had hoped. The Fomori were coming, and together they would save Ireland. And the answer had come to him. Daire Donn had chosen him.

  Patrick smiled.

  The scroll turned to dust in his hands and disappeared.

  TEN

  Grace

  My dreams that night were filled with death and destruction, screaming ravens and fire. Aidan shouting No, Grace! as purple lightning flashed. And then there was a river, and sunlight, and a blond young man standing on the bank beneath a tree laden with red berries. He turned—Patrick—his face lighting in that irresistible smile, and I ran toward him; but as I did, he changed. He wasn’t Patrick—but Derry, and I knew I looked into the face of my own destruction.

  I woke with my head pounding and the fury to forget him, and was relieved when I heard my grandmother call for me. When I stumbled to her room, she was twisted up in the bedcovers, her nightcap completely turned about so that the ribbons trailed into her face.

  “Grainne,” she croaked when she saw me, which was odd in itself, as she almost never called me by my given name.

  “Look at you,” I said, trying to smile, to ignore my headache. I leaned to straighten her cap.

  She grabbed my wrists so suddenly and tightly I cried out. “You must stop him,” she said. “It can only be you.”

  “Grandma, please—”

  “Is she all right?”

  It may have been the first time in weeks that I was truly glad to see my brother. He stood barefoot in the doorway rubbing his eyes, his clothes so wrinkled it was obvious he’d slept in them. I thought of my dream, his shouting.

  He said, “I heard her call out.”

  Grandma released me as suddenly as she’d grabbed me. She leaned back against the pillows with a groan. “That boy.”

  Aidan came into the room. “What boy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She’s been saying it for days. I think she means Patrick.”

  Aidan sat on the edge of the bed. I wanted to say something cutting, but he didn’t seem drunk for a change, and he gave me a sweet smile as he took Grandma’s hand, murmuring calming words. He was so good when he wanted to be.

  “There you are, my boy,” Grandma said, herself again.

  My boy. I wondered if I’d got it wrong. If that hadn’t been what she’d said before, instead of that boy. Perhaps it was my brother she’d meant and not Patrick. It made sense. Don’t trust him, she’d said, and He will keep you safe. Both things could be true when it came to Aidan. But to say that only I could stop him . . . I had no power over Aidan. I could not guilt him into seeing what he was doing to us, and my anger had no effect. His charm worked on me as well as anyone.

  Now I watched as his charm worked on Grandma too. She’d seemingly forgotten me. I hesitated, not trusting to leave her to him, but he said, “It’s all right, Gracie. I’ll stay for a bit. Go on and do whatever needs doing.”

  “The dishes, you mean?” I could not keep from being cutting after all. “As there’s no kitchen maid?”

  Aidan’s eyes darkened. “You’re learning a valuable skill. We could hire you out if need be.”

  I rolled my eyes and went back to my room to get dressed. My headache lingered, not strongly but there, the kind of thing you forgot until you turned your head just so or saw too bright a light. And that reminded me of Derry and that blinding glow, the stabbing pain. I still didn’t know what had caused it. But it seemed better to forget it.

  My mother had gone to give pianoforte lessons again, and I was in the kitchen, up to my elbows in greasy water, wearing my oldest dress, with my hair straggling into my face, when there was a knock on the back door. I meant to ignore it, but whoever it was kept pounding. Probably a peddler looking for the cook we didn’t have. I pulled my hands from the water, wiping them on the hem of the apron, and I yanked open the door.

  “You took your time.” Derry leaned against the wall near the door. Last night’s dream whirled back, as if his dark-blue gaze wasn’t enough to unsettle me on its own. “I see it wasn’t to fix yourself up.”

  My face flamed. I told myself I didn’t care. He was a stableboy. What did it matter if he saw me in my oldest dress, with my hair falling every which way? I raised my chin and met his gaze. “What do you want?”

  “You’re not going to invite me in for tea?”

  “I’m busy, as you must plainly see.”

  “Doing what?” He craned his neck to look past me.

  “Washing dishes.”

  He raised a dark brow, barely visible through that thick hair.

  “Do you
never comb your hair out of your face?”

  “I like it that way,” he said. “Most girls do too.”

  “Don’t you have something else you should be doing rather than bothering me—like mucking out stables or twisting Lucy about your finger?”

  “Twisting Lucy—is that what you think I’m doing?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

  “You’ve given me no reason to think otherwise.”

  “You’re very sure of your position for a lass who’s washing her own dishes.”

  I grabbed the edge of the door, meaning to close it on him.

  He stuck his foot in the gap and pushed the door open. He came into the kitchen, making me step back. “Don’t send me away so quickly. I’ve come to give you this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out something.

  “Patrick’s book!” I reached for it, and Derry pulled it away, just out of my reach. When I reached for it again, he put it behind his back.

  “What will you give me for it?” he asked with a too-sure smile that said he’d played this game many times.

  “I’m not Lucy,” I said. “And I don’t like being teased. If you think I’m going to give you a kiss for it, you’re sadly mistaken.”

  “A kiss? What makes you think I want one from you?”

  I tried to pretend my face wasn’t burning again and drew away. “Keep it then.”

  His smile softened—it was even more humiliating to see that he realized how much he’d embarrassed me.

  This time when he held out the book, I didn’t take it.

  “I’m sorry, lass. I shouldn’t have teased. You bring out the worst in me, I’m afraid. Go on, unless you want me to drop it on the floor.”

  Warily, I took it. I’d been worried over losing it, but it wasn’t until I had it in my hands that I realized just how worried. “Thank you. Where did you find it?”

  “On the walk.” He grinned. “Where you swooned.”

  “You did have it! You lied to me!”

  “I wanted to read it.”

  That surprised me. Both that he’d wanted to and that he could. “Oh. Did you?”

  “‘Alas, alas, and alas! For the once proud people of Banba!’”

  I clutched the book. “You did.”

  “You know what the poem’s about?” he asked.

  “Ireland’s oppression.”

  “You care about such things?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Safe here in your little house,” he said, gesturing. “Choosing pink dresses for a party. You’ll pardon me if I say it doesn’t seem that Ireland’s troubles trouble you.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” I said. “I care very much.”

  “Do you? For yourself? Or for Devlin?”

  My heart was pounding, though I didn’t know why. “It’s Patrick’s mission. And so it’s mine too.”

  “How involved are you, lass?”

  “Involved? Involved in what?”

  “The Fenian Brotherhood.”

  “Why, not at all. It’s a club for men. That’s why they call it the ‘Brotherhood.’”

  “What else do you know of it?”

  “If you have questions about the Fenians, you should ask Patrick. Though I don’t guess they’d have you as a member either, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “They only want rich men, is that it?”

  The way he was looking at me . . . I thought of yesterday, how I’d been pressed against him and then how he’d stared at me in my dream, and I wished he would leave. I said meanly, “They want heroes, not stableboys.”

  But he didn’t even react. He just kept looking at me as if he couldn’t look away. “What has Devlin told you, lass? What are their plans?”

  “Why would he share them with me?”

  “Because you’re to be his wife.”

  “That’s not . . . yes. Perhaps.” It flustered me that he’d said it. That he knew it. “It’s not settled yet.”

  “So still time to back out?”

  “Why would I want to back out?”

  “You’re young yet to bind yourself.”

  “I’ll be seventeen in twelve days. Which is not too young to be married, not that it’s any of your concern. And if I have to marry, then why not Patrick? He loves me. He knows me.”

  “You have to marry?”

  And I felt this urge to tell him all of it, as if he would understand, as if he always had. Always?

  “What makes you so sure he knows you?” he asked intently, stepping toward me.

  He was too close. He was solid and stunning and I wished he would touch me, and that thought shocked me so much I said forcefully, “Why are you asking me these things? My life has nothing to do with you.”

  He went still. I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “You know, you remind me of someone. Someone I lived near in . . . I guess ’twould be County Kildare now.”

  “My family is from Allen.”

  “Ah. Perhaps a relation then.”

  “Perhaps. My grandmother once said we were related to nearly everyone there.”

  I waited for him to say something else, but he only gave me a look that made me want to look away.

  “Thank you for returning the book,” I said carefully, stepping back. “Now I think you should leave. I’ve things to do, and I can’t believe the Devlins would appreciate you being here instead of in their stables.”

  He started. “Aye. I should go. Stables to muck, girls to twist about.”

  I couldn’t help smiling.

  “You should smile more often, you know.”

  Then he turned on his heel, and was gone.

  Dinner was intimate: Patrick and his family, me and mine. Mama had asked a neighbor to watch over Grandma, so she and Aidan were both here, and even the fact that Aidan reached far too often for the wine couldn’t mar my happiness.

  “Have you decided on the venue for Grace’s debut?” Mrs. Devlin asked my mother.

  Mama said, “Oh, I think someplace small.”

  “Small!”

  “Grace needn’t have a large one, Mama, if she’s already got a beau,” Lucy put in.

  Patrick smiled warmly at me. “I agree with Lucy. It should be small.”

  “In any case, I’d thought a violinist enough music,” Mama said.

  “There must be room for dancing,” Aidan said, taking another sip of his wine. “Or no one’ll come.”

  Mama said firmly, “Small is better.”

  I glared at my brother, who seemed oblivious to what my mother wasn’t saying—that small was all we could afford, even with Mrs. Needham’s kind support.

  Lucy said, “Half the boys we know are terrible dancers anyway. They’d ruin Grace’s toes before the night is out.”

  “My dear,” Mrs. Devlin murmured.

  “Well, it’s true. And I don’t know why a debut should matter so much. Wouldn’t we all be better off if we didn’t display ourselves like so much . . . horseflesh?”

  I stared at Lucy in amazement. She’d spent the years leading up to her debut going through every Godey’s Lady’s Book, debating the cut and color and embellishment of her gown, worrying over what flowers should decorate the tables and where the candles should be placed to show her blond hair to its best advantage. I had never known anyone who cared so much for debuts as Lucy Devlin.

  “It’s all so old-fashioned, don’t you think?” Lucy went on relentlessly. “We should be free to choose a husband from the whole world instead of those few who deign to answer an invitation.”

  Now I understood. It was about Derry, of course. I opened my mouth to make some comment about horseflesh and stableboys. Then I remembered how I’d felt standing so close to him in my kitchen, and I let the words die on my tongue. I hadn’t told her about his visit, and I didn’t intend to. She would think only the worst—of me, not of him.

  Patrick threw his napkin aside and rose. “Mama, Mrs. Knox, if you do
n’t mind, I thought I’d take the opportunity to show Grace the collection.” He looked at me. “That Celtic horse you mentioned.”

  I’d mentioned nothing of the kind, but gratefully I pushed aside my thoughts of Derry. “Oh yes. I’m eager to see it. Mama, do say yes.”

  “We’ll just be down the hall,” Patrick added.

  Mrs. Devlin said, “Patrick’s obsession—and his father’s. I vow those relics consumed Michael’s every waking moment. You must not encourage Patrick, Grace.”

  “I only want to show them to her,” Patrick said, laughing.

  Lucy said wryly, “Shall I chaperone?”

  I flashed her a glare, which she ignored, and then I looked pleadingly at my mother, who said, “No need, I think, if it’s just down the hall. I do hope I’m not making a mistake in trusting you, sir.”

  Patrick pressed his hand to his chest. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  He took my hand, tucking it into the crook of his arm as he led me out of the dining room.

  His warm breath tickled my ear as he whispered, “I thought we should never escape.”

  “You mean you haven’t a Celtic horse to show me?” I teased.

  “I’ve something better,” he said, taking me into the study. Once we were there, he started to close the door, and then he left it ajar. “Perhaps we shouldn’t give them reason to think poorly of us. Though if it were up to me, I’d lock it tight—Ah, what’s this? Don’t tell me I’ve made you blush.”

  There was no point in denying it.

  “Who knew that Grace Knox could go so pink?”

  “If you tell anyone, I’ll murder you in your bed.”

  “I wouldn’t dare. Especially because I can think of a few things I’d rather you do there.”

  I had walked right into it. Now my face felt on fire. I looked away, and then his fingers were at my jaw, forcing me to look at him, and his expression was so full of longing, the heat in my cheeks spread to the rest of me. He bent to kiss me, and again I shivered as his lips touched mine; again I wanted to pull him so close he couldn’t escape.

  His mouth moved to my jaw. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t tease. It’s only that I’d despaired you would ever think of me as anything more than a friend.”