With the tip of a quill pen, Patrick was pointing to some of the score of inked X marks on the map. "Near Londonderry we now have almost a hundred muskets hidden in the vaults of a ruined abbey. Here in an inlet of Sligo Bay, in a cave, are fifteen cannon your people shipped to us a year ago. Near Castlebar... But perhaps you would rather read the information. On those sheets of paper are the lists of arms and gunpowder stored at each of the locations marked on the map."
Georges Fontaine nodded and then pulled the map and sheets of paper close to him. He was that rarity, a taciturn Frenchman. Over the years he and Patrick, without becoming friends, had developed respect for each other. It was not a respect that extended to the separate causes for which they worked. To Patrick, France was a country sadly misruled by fat, stupid King Louis and vain and extravagant Marie Antoinette. To Georges, the Irish were a people so feckless, so divided among themselves, that the rebellion Patrick strove for probably would not succeed, any more than had the Irish rebellions of the past.
But they had a common enemy, England. And each man was fully aware of the courage and determination of the other.
Patrick got up, walked over to the fireplace, and stood, as he often did, palms propped against the edge of the mantlepiece, gaze directed at the blazing logs. Then, unable to stand quietly, he began to pace the room. Within a few months, all he had worked for these past ten years would bring the beginning of a glorious triumph, or a bloody shambles of defeat, just one more of the defeats that island had suffered in its six-hundred-year struggle against the English invader.
In one respect he had been reckless. Unlike previous landowners who had led rebellions, he had not counted upon using mercenaries—usually Scots—to do the fighting. Instead, he planned to do something that no rebel leader—whether Irish or Anglo-Irish, Catholic or Protestant—had yet dared to do. He would distribute to desperately poor tenant farmers the arms, smuggled in from France, that he had been stockpiling over these past years.
But if he had been daring in one respect, he had been cautious in others. Always he had maintained the facade of the self-indulgent Anglo-Irish landlord, breeding fine hunters, maintaining a pack of foxhounds, and going to London each winter to attend balls and royal levees and to throw away money at the gaming tables. With a very few exceptions, not even the men who would take leading roles in the uprising knew the identity of its chief planner. During his recent tour of Ireland he had inspected firearms sufficient to supply seventeen thousand men, but he had met face to face with only six. Among them was a young baronet with an estate near Limerick, one of the few men of property willing to risk their lands in an attempt to shake off the English yoke. The other five were all either tenant farmers or owners of only a few acres.
As for the great mass of men who for years had drilled by night in isolated fields, and who would use those hidden arms when the time came, they knew only their local leaders. Most of them, far from knowing that Patrick Stanford was the chief architect of the coming rebellion, had never even heard of him.
Georges Fontaine, studying the map and the handwritten sheets of paper, began to drum his fingernails against the table. The sound reminded Patrick not only of the Frenchman's presence, but of Henry Owen, the man who had sat with him and Fontaine at a taproom table in that Dublin inn the previous summer.
At one time Owen had been a tenant of Patrick's. Through his own efforts, plus a small loan from Patrick, he had managed to buy a few acres near Waterford. Patrick had felt that if he could trust anyone, he could trust Henry Owen. The man was intelligent and hardworking. He had risen too recently from the tenant class to be callous to their sufferings. Until that meeting in Dublin last June, Patrick had confided in him almost as completely as he had in the French agent, Fontaine.
But in that Dublin taproom Patrick had received an impression of something false and overhearty in Owen's manner. That impression had been reinforced when, only a few days ago, Patrick had visited Owen at his small farm. The next day in Waterford he had seen Owen's wife coming out of a shop, clad in a brown velvet gown and an ostrich-plumed hat. At sight of her, a coachman had scrambled down from the box of a smart new carriage and opened its door for her.
How could a farmer make enough from a few acres of potatoes and wheat to buy velvet and ostrich plumes, and a carriage and pair? Well, perhaps Owen had not. Once he had mentioned to Patrick that his wife's uncle, a Belfast merchant, had "done very well in the tobacco trade." Perhaps Mrs. Owen had inherited money.
Nevertheless, Patrick was glad that he had never turned over to Owen a master list giving the size and location of arms caches all over the island. Always he had told Owen that he would be supplied with such a list "later."
Behind him the Frenchman said, "I see from this list that our recent shipment of eighty muskets reached you."
Patrick turned. "Yes, four days ago. I was waiting in Waterford when they arrived." Transferred by night from a French merchant ship to an Irish fishing boat, the arms had been concealed not only by false deck but by a day's catch of herring.
Fontaine asked, "May I keep this list and the map?"
"Yes. I have duplicates in my strongbox at the hall."
Rising, Fontaine stuffed the papers inside his greatcoat. "I had best leave. Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment with a wine merchant in Cork." It was in the innocent guise of an agent for a French wine-exporting firm that Fontaine traveled all over Ireland. "I want to ride part of the way yet tonight."
Patrick waited a few minutes after the Frenchman had gone. Then he too left the public house, rode through the sleeping village and up the steep path to the moon-flooded headland and the rolling, uncultivated land beyond it. There he turned, not toward Stanford Hall, but Wetherly.
Nevertheless, he found himself wondering if Elizabeth had returned from Dublin. As always when he thought of her—and he avoided doing so as much as possible—he felt a mixture of anger and guilt. Perhaps that morning last September he should have realized that a quarrel might endanger the unborn child. Perhaps he should have turned there on that hillside and ridden away, and never even let her know he had seen her in Weymouth's arms. But he was not capable of such restraint.
And later on, certainly, he had tried to be gentle with her. Despite the fact that the uprising for which he had risked his property and even his neck all these years was now imminent, he had been willing to go with her on a frivolous errand to Dublin, just as soon as he had the opportunity. But that had not been enough for her. While he waited in Waterford for that arms shipment, she had gone off, not even leaving him a message. He'd had to question the servants to learn the whereabouts of his own wife.
With an effort he turned his thoughts from Elizabeth to the woman he would see in a few minutes. Early that morning a Wetherly servant had brought him a note from Moira, demanding that he come to her as soon as possible. He hoped that she did not plan to bring up again that preposterous idea that he petition for divorce on some trumped-up grounds.
He hoped also that she had gone no further with her plan to invest heavily in that South American diamond company. The little fool! She had no need to gamble recklessly. She was sufficiently rich. But where money was concerned, she was insatiable, just as that ivory-skinned body of hers was insatiable for lovemaking.
That particular thought brought him a pleasant glow. Busy with other matters, he had not been to bed with her for more than a week. He urged his mount to a brisker trot.
When he entered the long-familiar room with its thick Aubusson carpet, its blazing candelabrum on a dressing table covered with scent bottles and little silver pots of rouge, he knew at once that she had not given up hope of seeing him that night. Her hair, falling around shoulders left bare by a diaphanous green nightshift, had been brushed to blue-black luster. Her full mouth was rouged. Smiling, she came into his arms. He kissed her, one hand between her shoulderblades and the other on her hips, pressing the whole length of her full-breasted body against him.
She lo
oked into his dark face, its eyes half-lidded with desire. Should she talk to him about it now, or later? Now, she decided, while his hunger for her would lend force to her arguments.
"I've been to Dublin since I last saw you."
He said, not sounding very interested, "You have?" With one hand he drew the bodice of her nightshift lower and kissed one ivory breast.
She stepped back from him. "I stayed at the same inn as your wife. We had tea together." She saw his face grow rigid, but nevertheless rushed on. "Oh, Patrick! I don't think she will oppose a divorce, not if you tell her you want it."
He said slowly, "Let me understand this. You took it upon yourself to go to Dublin and talk to my wife about—"
"I had to, for both your sake and mine! Otherwise we would have gone on like this year after year, just because you're too softhearted to—"
"Softheartedness has nothing to do with it." His voice was ice-cold now. "I have told you several times that I will never try to divorce my wife. A marriage is a bargain. And an honorable man keeps his bargains."
She smiled at him. "But, my darling, it was such a foolish bargain! I'll never understand why you thought you had to marry her, just because she was weak and silly enough to let you get her with child. In fact, I'll never understand why she let you, a cold-as-a-fish woman like her..."
"Moira! I've told you before that I will not discuss that"
She said hurriedly, still with that coaxing smile, "But think how happy we could be, Patrick. It's not just that we love each other. I'm rich, and I'm going to be even richer, and you need money. We could give her money, too, enough that she could live comfortably back in England."
He said, after a long moment, "Did you tell her that? Did you offer to buy her husband from her? Yes, I can see that you did. Moira, you're an imbecile. Do you think that a woman like Elizabeth would take money from...?"
He broke off. For several moments she looked at him, her face turning white, her eyes large now and very dark. "What were you going to say? From a wanton? A slut?"
"Of course not. I was going to say 'from my mistress.'"
"But I'm not just that to you! Patrick, Patrick! We love each other."
He said quietly, "Have I ever told you I loved you?"
She stood motionless for a moment. Then her face twisted. "But you do love me, you do!" Tears welled to her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. "It's only because you're so stiff-necked that you won't... You've got to love me! You're all I have in the whole—"
"Moira! I had best leave now. We will discuss this when we are both calm." He started to turn away.
"Oh, no, we won't!" Sudden fury blazed in her tear-wet face. She sprang forward and grasped his arm with both her hands. "We'll discuss it now! Are you in love with that scrawny Englishwoman? Maybe you're hoping that someday you will get everything you want in bed from her. In the meantime, I am... a convenience."
"Moira! You know you've been more than that to me."
She rushed on, unheeding. "But if you've been making a fool of me, you've been making a fool of yourself, too. She'll never love you. She told me so. Her life with you is miserable. She stays with you because she has no money, and because she can never have the man she wants, that vicar of hers."
Anger replaced the softening he had felt at sight of her tears. He pulled his arm free of her grasp and turned toward the door.
"Patrick! If you leave me now, don't ever come back!"
"Good night, Moira." He opened the door.
Her voice rose to a scream. "You're going to be sorry for tonight! You have no idea how sorry!"
Her last sentence came to him through the door's heavy panels. He descended the broad staircase, walked past a footman, who stared discreedy straight ahead as he held the front door open, and went out into the night.
During the ride of a little more than half an hour to the hall, some of his anger cooled. Would Moira have him turned away at the door if he again went to Wetherly? He doubted it. But beautiful and desirable as she was, he also rather doubted that he would want to see her again. It was not just his distaste for the thought of her following Elizabeth to Dublin and offering her a bribe. Despite those tears that momentarily had touched him, there had been something almost frightening about her tonight. Oh, their tempers had clashed a few times in the past, but never before had he gained the impression of a woman... not quite sane.
That threat of hers as he went out the door crossed his mind. He shrugged it off. An enraged woman would say anything. And what revenge could she take, aside from excluding him from her bed and taking some other man into it?
A sleepy-eyed Clarence opened the door to him. "Good evening, Sir Patrick. Her ladyship has returned."
"She is in her room?"
"Yes, she retired more than an hour ago."
He looked up at the shadowy gallery above the twin staircases, remembering Moira's words. "She'll never love you. Her life with you is miserable." Had Elizabeth really said that? Surely not, at least not in those words. She was too reticent, too well-bred, to make such confidences, especially to her husband's mistress. Nevertheless, those words probably described what she felt.
And yet, there had been a period of several weeks when she had not seemed too wretched, at least when she lay moaning with pleasure in his arms. But surely the loss of the child had ended all that. Surely all he could expect now, if he went to her bed, was cold acquiescence. And despite that violent episode in the house north of London, he was not by nature a rapist. He could take little pleasure in a woman who merely endured his possession of her body.
He turned toward the library. Glancing to his right, he saw a thread of light shining beneath the door of Colin's office. He hesitated, and then decided he wanted no company tonight.
In the library he found only one of the oil sconce lamps lit, its feeble glow mingling with that of the dying fire. He lit more lamps and added a log to the embers. Women, he thought. What endless trouble they were. Surely the Almighty, if there was one, could have chosen some more sensible way to perpetuate the species than by creating two sexes.
Resolutely he turned to the strongbox in one corner of the room, opened it, and took out a duplicate of the list he had given to Georges Fontaine that night. He spread the papers out on the heavy table and looked down at them. Only two more shipments, one of cannon and one of muskets, were due to arrive. The cannon would be hidden with others at Sligo Bay. As for the muskets, there was still room in that cave near the fishing village.
And a few weeks from now—on the day before Christmas, to be exact—designated leaders all over this island would pass out arms to the men under their command. English soldiers stationed in Ireland, already drunk on Christmas grog, would respond slowly to simultaneous attacks on their garrisons. Across the channel, England too would be caught up in the annual celebration, with Parliament in recess and the king's ministers scattered to their country houses. By the time the English realized that now theirs was a three-front war, and sent what reinforcements they could muster across the channel, all Ireland would be in Irish hands.
Soon he was deep in thoughts that had nothing to do with the two women, either the one at Wetherly, who walked the floors with angry tears streaming down her face, or the one who, despite her lonely and hopeless thoughts, had finally managed to fall asleep in her four-poster bed here in his own house.
CHAPTER 26
Fall slipped into winter, the mild winter of southern Ireland, with only occasional light snow but many days of chill rain or of fog so thick that from her bedroom window Elizabeth could not see the courtyard's wrought-iron gates. With no desire to ride out along the muddy lanes, she passed many of the short afternoons playing chess with Colin before the library fire.
Patrick spent little time at home. Even when he was physically at the supper table, Elizabeth felt he was not really there. Tense and silent, he seemed off in some world of his own.
Early in December Elizabeth had reason to believe that his other world n
o longer included Moira Ashley. When Rose brought in the tea one morning, she fussed elaborately over the tray she had placed across her mistress's lap, moving the cup and saucer about, and lifting the teapot's lid to look inside. Finally Elizabeth realized that these maneuvers were meant to draw attention to the ring on the girl's right hand, a ring of some silvery-looking metal with a red-glass setting.
"What a pretty ring! Where did you get it?"
My friend Molly, over to Wetherly, bought two of these from a peddler and gave me one. The young gentleman who's there so often now asked Molly to tighten some loose buttons on his coat, and she did it so nice he gave her three shillings."
The girl's face and voice were bland. Nevertheless, Elizabeth realized that Rose, the recipient of a gift, was in turn bestowing one. She wanted her mistress to know that Lady Moira had taken a new lover. "What young gentleman?"
"Michael Halloran, Sir John Halloran's youngest son. Molly says he is there all the time."
Elizabeth was sure that in that case Patrick no longer visited Wetherly. He was scarcely the sort to share a mistress with another man. She said, "It's a nice ring, Rose. Will you please tell Mrs. Corcoran that I would like to see her now?"
Annoyed with herself for the leap of hope in her heart, she watched the girl leave the room. What reason did she have to think that Patrick might turn to her now? If anything, he had seemed more distant than ever these past few weeks. Again she was touched by the half-frightened thought: if he was not with Moira, what was he doing during his absences from Stanford Hall?
Over the next few days she felt a heightening of that unease, as if some disaster she could not name impended. At supper he would sit at the other end of the long table, dark face unreadable, speaking scarcely a word to her or Colin. Twice in the night she was awakened by the sound of him pacing up and down his own bedroom.
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