The channel crossing had been rough. Elizabeth had not minded. In fact, having to fight down nausea had distracted her somewhat from memories of the recent past, especially the memory of Donald's white, set face when she and Patrick had turned away from the altar in the crowded village church. Donald had joined the line of those congratulating the newly married pair as they stood at the church door. But apparently he had been unable to bring himself to attend the reception at the Hedges afterward.
That ghastly reception. Mrs. Montlow had moved among her guests with her head held high, trying to look as if her daughter's choice of a husband was a fulfillment of her own most cherished dreams. The guests themselves, lifelong friends and neighbors, gathered in subdued little groups, exchanging the conventional pleasantries, but with faces that reflected their puzzled wonder. They all knew that Christopher Montlow had fled within minutes after his acquittal, and that it must have been because he feared the tall Irishman who now moved about this room, looking coolly self-assured in his wedding finery of bottle-green velvet. How could it be that Elizabeth Montlow had jilted Donald Weymouth, a man they all loved and honored, in order to marry a man the Montlows had every reason to fear and dislike?
Much as it pained her to leave the home that had been hers all her life, Elizabeth was actually glad when it was time to go upstairs, and with Hawkins' help, change from her white satin wedding gown to a traveling costume of brown rep.
The road turned inland, past fields where men and women and even small children weeded on hands and knees between rows of blossoming potatoes. Stone walls marked the divisions between the fields. Sometimes, Elizabeth noted, the widths of the fields were scarcely a hundred yards. A few of the people working between the potato rows looked up with sullen faces as the coach passed. A man of about thirty, leading a scrawny cow along the road, looked equally sullen as he drew the animal aside to make way for the coach. So did a woman, hanging out clothes in the grassless yard of a tumbledown thatched cottage.
For the first time in perhaps half an hour, Elizabeth spoke. "These people look so thin."
"A not unnatural consequence," Patrick said, "of not having enough to eat."
She threw him a startled look. She had expected that he, a landowner, would react defensively to her remark. Was he so hardened to the wretched state of the Irish peasantry that he felt no need of a defense? She asked, "Are these your lands?"
"No, not yet."
The fields gave way to uncultivated land. Perhaps the numerous gray boulders thrusting up through the long wild grass explained why the earth had not been plowed. Soon after they had passed a lake—small and intensely blue, with a wooded islet in its center—clouds blotted out the sun, and gentle rain pattered on the coach roof. The shower was brief. When it had passed, Elizabeth saw the jaggedly broken towers of a ruined castle on a hilltop. Above it in the now clear sky hung an iridescent fragment of a rainbow.
Patrick said, his gaze following hers, "The Normans built that castle. Essex occupied it when Queen Elizabeth sent him over here to subdue Ireland. It fell into ruins after that, but Cromwell used it as an arsenal when he was here." He spoke as if Ireland's invaders, most of them centuries dead, were men he had known. Were many of his countrymen like that, so steeped in Irish history that this island's long and bloody past seemed like something that had happened yesterday?
The carriage rolled on past another lake, with floating white swans mirrored in its surface, past a small stone church with the cross of Rome atop its steeple, and daisies starring the unclipped grass of its churchyard. For a while they moved through a narrow glen, filled with the chatter of a noisy little stream. Leaning out of the carriage to look up through the fern-smelling dimness, Elizabeth saw a ruined watchtower, built by some ancient Irish king or some invader, rising from the steep hillside.
Despite the sullen poverty of those tenant farmers, and despite her anxiety as to what sort of life awaited her in Patrick Stanford's house, Elizabeth felt a stir of response to this land, with its wild loveliness so different from that of the tidy English countryside.
They left the glen and traveled along a level stretch toward a line of distant blue hills, shadowed by clouds, that held promise of another shower. Here the stone walls dividing fields of potatoes and grain were much farther apart The cottages they passed seem in better repair, and the cows grazing in occasional stretches of meadowland well-fed. To Elizabeth's relief, the few people she saw seemed less hostile. A man guiding a hand plow between rows of potato plants raised a battered black hat from his head and waved it. Three towheaded, laughing little boys slid down from a stone wall and ran alongside the carriage for a few yards, shouting something up at Michael in a language she knew must be Gaelic.
She asked, "Whose lands are these?"
"Mine."
"The fields are larger here."
"That is because I have not as yet been in need of obtaining more rents."
As yet. Perhaps her twenty thousand, Elizabeth reflected somewhat wryly, would make it possible for his tenants to work decent-sized holdings for some time to come.
They had reached another stretch of meadowland, dotted with grazing cattle. Up ahead and to the left, a magnificent black horse, with a woman perched on the saddle, soared over a stone fence and cantered toward them. Unbidden, Michael halted the carriage. With admiration Elizabeth looked at the rider, noting how easily she sat in the sidesaddle, one knee beneath her long dark blue velvet skirt hooked over the horn, her back very straight, her head with its matching velvet hat held high.
When she was a few yards away, she checked her mount and slid gracefully to the ground. Leading the horse, she approached the carriage window. Elizabeth saw that she was beautiful indeed, a tall brunette with classic features and wide-set eyes of a deep indigo blue. An ivory-colored plume swept around the brim of her hat, to touch a smooth cheek of almost the same shade.
She said, "Welcome home, Patrick." Her gaze went quickly from his face to Elizabeth's and then back again. Despite the proud carriage of the woman's head and her bright smile, Elizabeth caught an impression of anger and hurt, even pain.
Patrick said, "Thank you, Moira. May I present my wife? Elizabeth, this is our neighbor, Lady Moira Ashley."
"Welcome to Ireland, Lady Stanford. Everyone in the neighborhood is waiting eagerly to meet you."
"Thank you, Lady Moira."
"Do you ride?"
"Whenever I have the opportunity."
Moira laughed. "You will have no lack of opportunity here. Perhaps someday you and I can ride together. And you must allow me very soon to give a party for you and your husband."
"That would be very kind of you."
Lady Moira said, starting to turn away, "I must not keep you. I am sure that after your long journey..."
"Permit me." Patrick opened the carriage door and stepped to the ground. Long hands almost spanning her waist, he lifted Lady Moira into the saddle. For a moment she looked down at him, smiling slightly, but with anger and pain plain in her eyes now. Although Elizabeth could not see Patrick's face, she observed tension in his shoulders and the back of his neck as he looked up at the woman.
Moira's hand tightened around the handle of her riding crop. For a startled moment Elizabeth thought that the woman was going to lash Patrick's face. Instead she raised the crop in a farewell gesture, wheeled her mount, and sent him cantering back across the meadow.
Moments later, as the carriage moved down the road, Elizabeth asked, "Is Lady Moira your mistress?"
She felt rather than saw the startled look he threw her. "That is a very forthright question, madam."
"I see no reason why you and I should not be forthright about such matters."
"Ah, yes. What was that phrase in your letter? Something about making no objection to any other relationship I might choose to enjoy?"
Elizabeth made no reply. He said, "Perhaps I should take this opportunity to make it clear that I do not accord the same privilege to you. No matter what
our marital relations, or lack of them, I have no intention of sporting horns before my neighbors."
Elizabeth said in a dry voice, "Surely you can have no immediate anxieties on that score. For some time to come, I shall be too taken up with other matters to start thinking of a lover."
"I merely wanted there to be no misunderstanding about that point." After a moment he added, "No, Moira Ashley is not my mistress, nor has she been."
Perhaps that was true, Elizabeth reflected. Nevertheless, they were anything but indifferent to each other. "Does she know about the child or... the other circumstances of our marriage?"
He said shortly, "Of course not." Then he added, "Only Colin knows that."
"Colin?"
"My brother. You will meet him soon."
A few minutes later the carriage left the main road for a narrower one that led through a stand of oaks and alders Sunlight, now tinged with late-afternoon bronze, slanted through breeze-stirred leaves, to cast moving splotches of light on the road, the carriage, and the sleek hides of the matched grays. When they emerged from the woods, Patrick said, "There is Stanford Hall."
CHAPTER 17
Leaning a little way out of the carriage, she looked across a wide sweep of meadow grass at the house where she would bear her child and, perhaps, live out her life. Of reddish stone, it rose three stories behind its wall of similar stone. Dozens of mullioned windows blazed with sunset light. Round towers set at the north and south ends of the broad facade gave it a fortresslike aspect.
"It is an imposing house," Elizabeth said. She did not add that she much preferred the modest beauty of that house fifteen miles north of London.
"My great-grandfather built it after he received his grant of Irish land from Charles II. Except for the round towers, it is a duplicate of the house the Stanfords had built in England."
The carriage moved through open wrought-iron gates into the courtyard. Leaping down from the box, Michael opened the carriage door. As she and Patrick mounted stone steps, the massive oak doors of the house also swept open.
She found herself in a vast hall filled with reddish sunset light. From the shadowy reaches above hung a huge and perhaps almost priceless crystal chandelier. To judge by the dullness with which it reflected that reddish light, it long since should have been taken down and washed. Ahead of her, in the space between the twin staircases, stood the servants in two ranks, the women on the right, the men on the left. Appalled, she realized that there must be about twenty of them.
A plump gray-haired woman in a black dress and white linen mobcap stepped forward. Patrick said, "This is Mrs. Corcoran, our housekeeper."
The little woman curtsied. "Welcome, milady. And may you and Sir Patrick find every happiness." The beaming smile on her rosy, blue-eyed face made it clear that she meant it.
Patrick conducted Elizabeth down the double line of servants. Gertrude, the cook, a red-haired woman almost as tall as Patrick. Another Gertrude, one of two scullery maids. Matthew, chief footman. After that, as she smiled at housemaids and pot boys and kennelmen, Elizabeth stopped trying to remember their names. In time she would sort them out. She noticed a housemaid's torn cap, and badly tarnished buttons on the men's liveries. But if their buttons lacked luster, their smiles, touched with that faint ribaldry that always greets a newly married pair, were bright enough.
"And these are Padric and young Joseph, stableboys." He need not have named their occupation. A faint aroma, mingling with that of the lye soap with which they had scrubbed themselves, had already told her.
"Padric and young Joseph are the sons of Joseph, our head stableman. You will meet him later. Now he is seeing to the carriage horses."
Was that why Stanford Hall, until now a bachelor establishment, had so large a staff? Were servants' offspring automatically given employment here?
A man was moving toward them from the shadows beyond the left-hand staircase, a tall, dark-haired man who walked with a limp. Patrick said, "So there you are!" Then: "Elizabeth, this is my brother, Colin Stanford. Colin, this is my wife."
She looked up into a face that resembled Patrick's but was softer-looking, with the planes of cheekbone and jaw less well-defined. For a moment she saw a startled look in his dark eyes. Then he bent above the hand she offered and kissed it. "Welcome, Lady Stanford."
"Thank you."
"I shall see you at supper. But if you will excuse me now, I have some work I must finish. Besides, I know you must be wanting to rest." He turned and limped away down the hall.
Menservants were carrying trunks and portmanteaus up the stairs now, with Mrs. Corcoran toiling behind them. As Elizabeth and Patrick turned to follow, she asked, "How much younger is your brother?"
"He is three years older."
"Older! Then how is it that you, rather than he, are the fourth baronet?"
"You might as well know now. Colin is a half-brother, and illegitimate. After two years of marriage to my mother, my father began to fear he would have no legitimate children, and so he brought Colin here. The next year, I was born."
"I see. Who was Colin's mother?"
"A former governess, employed by Dublin friends of the Stanfords."
"She did not come here with her son, I suppose."
"Of course not. She stayed on in lodgings my father had provided for her in Dublin."
What had Colin's mother felt, deprived of her two-year-old son? And what had the last Lady Stanford felt, finding her husband's byblow added to her household? Probably no one except the two women involved had thought the questions important enough for consideration.
They had reached the balcony now, which, with its oaken balustrade, ran around three sides of the big entrance hall. As they moved past dim old portraits hung on the paneled wall, Patrick frowned down at the dark red carpet. It was almost threadbare in spots, and here was an actual hole. He had never noticed it before. How long had it been there?
Where the balcony turned, an open doorway afforded a glimpse of a flight of stairs. They must lead down, Elizabeth realized, to the kitchen and the servants' quarters. As they moved past the doorway, Patrick said, "If you want to have any of the household's furnishings repaired or replaced, please do so. In fact, I think you should."
She inclined her head in acknowledgment. So that was to be the destiny of part of those twenty thousand pounds.
The menservants had disappeared by then, but Mrs. Corcoran waited, smiling, beside an open door up ahead. When Patrick and Elizabeth had moved through the doorway, he turned back to the housekeeper. "Would you mind leaving us alone for a moment, Mrs. Corcoran?"
Her smile broadened. "Of course not, sir." Her brogue made the final word sound like "sor." She backed into the hall and closed the door.
Standing beside the trunk the menservants had left, Elizabeth asked, "Is this my room?"
"Yes. Do you find it satisfactory?"
Elizabeth looked around her. A worn but still beautiful Aubusson carpet. Massive oaken chests and bureaus of Tudor design. A small Queen Anne desk of rosewood. A wide four-poster bed, with an unusual and beautiful headboard. Its six slender columns, carved in a grape-leaf design, echoed the four much larger corner posts. The bed hangings, like those at the mullioned windows open to the sunset light, were of green and gold brocade. And everywhere—on the bureaus and chests, and beside the five-branched candelabrum on the bedside table—stood vases of apple blossoms.
But the brass candelabrum was tarnished, the hem of a window drapery sagged from its broken threads, and across the room, beneath a chest of drawers, Elizabeth could see a roll of furry gray dust at least six inches long. "It is a very handsome room."
"It was my mother's. After she fell ill, she occupied it until her death, about fifteen years ago."
"I see." She hesitated. "And your room?"
"Beyond that door." As her gaze flew to it, he added, "No, there is no lock. But that does not signify. If I chose to come in, no lock would keep me out."
Elizabeth's only answe
r was cool silence.
"About your wardrobe," he went on. "You have worn the same traveling costume throughout the journey from England."
She thought of the journey, a wretched one redeemed only by the fact that there had been no question of her sharing sleeping quarters with her husband. In Bristol, their embarkation point, there had been no accommodations for her except in a room already occupied by a woman and her almost grown daughter, and none for him except a room shared with three other male travelers. On the small ship in which they had made the rough channel crossing, there had been one large cabin for the men passengers, and another for the women.
"Naturally I did not change my traveling costume, since it is the only one I have," she said coldly. "I hope you will not find my wardrobe too deficient. Circumstances scarcely gave me time to assemble a larger one."
His tone was equally cold. "That can be remedied. We can have gowns made for you in Dublin."
"Dublin!"
He flushed. "Yes, milady, Dublin. Many of you English are woefully ignorant about that city. Some Dublin neighborhoods are as fine as any in London. And there is a dressmaker there, a Frenchwoman, who is as skilled as any in Paris. Moira Ashley's gowns are made by Madame Leclerc."
So that was it. He had felt this afternoon that she cut a poor figure beside the resplendent Lady Moira. His pride would not allow that, and so—also out of that twenty thousand pounds, no doubt—she would be clothed in velvets and brocades and Brussels lace. Well, at least some of her money was to be spent upon her own person. Many a wife, she knew, had stood helplessly by while her husband threw away her fortune at the gaming tables.
She said, "Just as you wish."
"I am going to Dublin within a few days. I will call on Madame Leclerc and make sure that she has an ample supply of materials." He added, "Supper is at eight. I will send Mrs. Corcoran in now."
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