Jason, Veronica

by Never Call It Love

  And then, as she and Colin sat at supper one evening, they heard the thunderous striking of the door knocker, followed by Clarence's hurried footsteps along the hall. Patrick appeared in the dining-room archway. Elizabeth gasped. His face, bleak-eyed and with its dark skin grayed by pallor, was like that of a man who had just heard his death sentence.

  "Come into the library," he said hoarsely, "both of you."

  Beside Colin, Elizabeth hurried across the hall. Patrick was already crouched beside the strongbox. "Close the doors!"

  Colin obeyed. Elizabeth said, past the nameless fear crowding her throat, "What has happened?"

  With both hands Patrick drew papers from the strongbox. "I must get out of Ireland, right tonight."

  After a stunned moment she cried, "But why?"

  Not answering, he stood up. Colin asked quietly, "You have been betrayed?"

  "I have." He moved toward the fireplace. "I can only hope that not many others have been."

  It was Georges Fontaine who had given him the news, less than an hour ago, there in the upstairs room of the village public house. Someone had gotten word to London about the planned uprising. Agents of the king, armed with a warrant for Patrick's arrest, were already on their way across the channel. Unless he managed to escape, he would soon be in London. He thought of himself in the hands of his Majesty's interrogators, his will no longer in control of his painracked body, his tongue babbling out the locations of all those arms secretly assembled over the past years, and the names of brave men who would have led that uprising on Christmas Eve. And if he survived the torture, there would be the cart ride through the jeering crowd to a traitor's death on the gallows.

  Feeding papers into the flames, he said over his shoulder to his brother, "And don't remind me that all along you have warned that this might happen."

  Colin said, in that same quiet voice, "I did not intend to remind you."

  Terrified and bewildered, Elizabeth cried, "What are you talking about? What has happened?"

  Patrick turned to face her. "You'll find out when the English get here, and so I might as well tell you now." He did so in swift, curt sentences.

  Unable to take in the details, but now as aware as he that his remaining here would mean certain death, she fought for self-control. "But where are you going?"

  He studied her with narrowed eyes. During the past terrible hour it had crossed his mind that his own wife, hating him as she did, might have been his betrayer. He was sure that Colin had told her nothing. But perhaps, during his own many prolonged absences from the hall, she had gained an inkling of his activities. He had tried to be careful. Any incriminating papers not locked in his strongbox he always had consigned to the fire. But perhaps she had found some partially burned scrap...

  And certainly she had seen those cases of muskets in the cave near the village. According to Colin, she had assumed the cases contained tea or some other harmless sort of smuggled goods. Perhaps later, though, she'd had second thoughts...

  But no. Not even the greatest actress alive could counterfeit the bewildered fear he read in her white face and distended gray eyes. He said, "There is a French merchant ship anchored in a cove a few miles from here. A fishing boat from the village will take me to it. If it does not run into an English patrol, the ship should be well on its way to a French-held island in the West Indies after a few days' run. There is no need for you to know which island.

  "As for you yourself," he went on, "the English will arrest you when they get here, but I do not think they will hold you for long. True, I have used your money to buy arms, and they will soon find out that I have. But it was without your consent or even your knowledge. I think you will be allowed to rejoin your mother."

  Speechless, she stared at him. He had used her money to arm would-be rebels against her own country. Outrage surged through her, and then subsided.

  Strange that her anger should be so brief. And even stranger that it should be replaced by a thrill of admiration for this grim-faced man. Perhaps it was because she had seen with her own eyes the starving Irish scarecrows grubbing sullenly in their tiny fields. Perhaps it was because she was glad that, no matter what his treatment of her, the man whose name she bore had set himself apart from the idle, ruthlessly selfish Anglo-Irish of his class.

  He had brought more papers from the strongbox to toss into the flames. She said, "There is no guarantee, is there, that the English will treat me kindly?"

  He shot her a haggard look. "I am afraid not. If I had thought you would be in jeopardy... But I had no idea we would fail. We had planned so well, and worked for so long..."

  Unable to go on speaking, he fed the last of the papers onto the fire. Again he told himself bitterly that it must have been Henry Owen who had turned Judas. Probably he would never know for sure.

  Elizabeth thought of herself in an English prison, questioned hour after hour by determined men, and perhaps not knowing whether Patrick was free or under arrest, alive or dead. She said, almost before she knew she was going to, "Take me with you."

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. "To the West Indies?"

  "I would be better off than in an English prison." She added evenly, "Surely you owe me that much."

  Inwardly flinching at that last sentence, he forced his harassed mind to consider the idea. Certainly there was no guarantee that the English, unable to lay their hands on him, might not vent their frustration upon his wife. And the French merchant ship would have a good head start. With any luck...

  He said curtly, "Very well, if that is your desire." He turned to his brother. "You have had no part in all this, Colin. Perhaps you can make the English believe you did not even know about it. If so, you will be able to hold onto your own lands, even though mine, of course, will be confiscated."

  Colin said, in a stubbornly calm voice, "I am going with you."

  Patrick cried, "Good God, man! Why? Out of some kind of brotherly loyalty? If you come with me, it will be the same as confessing that you were part of the rebellion. If we are caught, Elizabeth won't hang, no matter what else they might do to her. She's a gentlewoman, and English. But you'll dangle from a gallows as surely as I will."

  "All this is true. But I would still rather take my chances aboard that ship. Besides, I know the West Indies. I might be of help to you down there in making a living."

  God knows he would need help, Patrick thought. The money he had here at the hall would not keep them for more than a few months. "Do as you like."

  Colin turned toward the door. "I had better write some letters for Clarence to deliver after we leave." He would write to Mr. Slattery, his overseer, and to his mother, and to Catherine Ryan, that calm-faced widow whose bed he might never share again.

  When the door had closed behind Colin, Patrick said to Elizabeth, "Can you be ready in an hour? None of us can take much baggage. The fishing boat is small."

  Despite her shock, her fear of what the next few hours might bring, let alone the coming days and weeks, Elizabeth forced her mind to practical matters. She would take one other woolen gown for the voyage, and fill the rest of a small hand trunk with lightweight clothing.

  "Yes, I will be ready."

  CHAPTER 27

  Afterward the events of that night were to Elizabeth an unreal blur. The hurried packing in her room. The leave-taking of the servants assembled in the downstairs hall, all of them with stunned faces, and Mrs. Corcoran and Rose actually in tears. They need not fear, Patrick told them, for either their lives or their freedom. Only fools—and certainly the English were not that—would believe that he had involved his household staff in his activities. "Whoever the English appoint to take charge here probably will continue to employ most of you. As for the rest, I have given Clarence a sum of money to tide you over until you find new places."

  After that, there had been the swift carriage ride through the moonless night to the village, where two silent men, only shapes of deeper dark in the darkness, handed them into a small, fishy-sm
elling boat. Patrick guided her to a place in the stern. She sat huddled deep in her cloak against the chill December night while the fishermen rowed the boat almost soundlessly down the inlet to the sea. Here a white mist hovered above the black water. She heard a subdued rattle as the two villagers hoisted sail. Slowly, with the fishermen taking to the oars whenever the faint breeze died, the boat moved through the thickening fog.

  Standing beside her, Patrick spoke only once. "I was to occupy the owner's cabin. Instead, you will have it. Colin and I will find some other place to bed down."

  Her voice was cool. "Thank you."

  The white smother had become so thick that she did not know they were near the French merchantman until one of the fishermen gave a cautious hail. Almost immediately it was answered from somewhere ahead in the fog. Gradually the ship took shape, a small three-master with a raised afterdeck. As nearly as she could tell, its sails were already set. But no lights were showing, not even the faint glow of a binnacle light.

  Patrick and Colin climbed to the deck. Then Elizabeth, aided by one of the fishermen, stepped from the swaying boat onto the rope ladder. Hampered by her skirts, catching her heel in the hem of her heavy cloak and then pulling it free, she managed to climb a few rungs. Hands reached down and drew her the rest of the way over the bulwark to the fog-wet deck.

  She found herself part of a cluster of dark figures. One of them was saying in heavily accented English, "... you would be alone."

  "I am sorry, Captain Marquette. My wife and brother chose not to risk arrest. If you have no objection, my wife will occupy the cabin you intended to assign to me."

  "Very well." The captain still sounded upset. Now she could distinguish his short, burly shape from that of the other men. "You, there," he said to one of the crewmen, "carry Lady Stanford's trunk. Lady Stanford, please come with me."

  She followed the two figures to the raised afterdeck. A door opened, letting a swath of yellow light into the fog. "Please go inside quickly, Lady Stanford."

  In the cabin the thin young sailor carrying her hand trunk placed it on the floor. Captain Marquette said, "Don't pull back the curtains at the portholes, Lady Stanford. Until we are clear of these waters, we must show as little light as possible."

  She could see his plump face now. It was not ill-natured, only worried. She could understand that. In English waters he had three fugitives from English justice, one of them a woman, aboard his probably unarmed merchant ship. "I will be careful."

  He bowed, and followed by the young sailor, left the cabin. She looked around her. Oil lamps hung in gimbals showed her the bunk bed, the washstand against the opposite bulkhead, the worn dark red carpet, and the heavy brown curtains drawn across the two portholes.

  Seated on the bed, she heard running footsteps along the deck, and the clanking of the anchor chain. Slowly at first, the ship began to move. She rose again, turned back the dark red counterpane and the blankets that covered the coarse but clean sheets, and undressed. In her night-shift, she extinguished the lamps and groped her way to the bed.

  Silence now except for the creak of ship's timbers and the faint seethe of water past the hull. She thought, feeling almost incredulous: Only a little more than a year ago I lived quietly in the English countryside, looking forward to my marriage to Donald and the children we would have. And now? Now I'm the penniless, childless, ignored wife of a man fleeing an English gallows. It's as if the unspeakable thing my brother did in that empty London house set a whirlwind in motion, one that soon caught me up. Now it has dropped me aboard this ship, plowing without lights through waters controlled by a country I no longer have a right to call my own.

  And yet, in spite of the sorrow for all she had lost, she had this strange sense of freedom, even exhilaration. It was almost good to be moving farther away from England and that bedroom Patrick Stanford had brutally invaded. And good to be moving farther away from Ireland, where she had lost the child conceived that terrible night. No matter how uncertain the future appeared, it at least held the promise of a new beginning.

  Exhausted, and lulled by the ship's gentle rolling, she fell asleep.

  She woke, to see dim light filtering through the porthole curtains. Quickly she crossed the cabin and thrust the curtains aside. No fog now, and no sight of land, at least not from the ship's starboard side. Just cloudless blue sky meeting a darker blue sea flecked with whitecaps. Moving to the washstand, she poured water from a pitcher into the heavy white basin.

  She had just finished washing and dressing when someone knocked. She said, past the quickened pulse in the hollow of her throat, "Come in."

  But it was only the young sailor of the night before, a breakfast tray in his hands. Smiling shyly, he placed the tray on a straight chair beside the bed, let down a folding table from one bulkhead, and transferred the tray to the table.

  Elizabeth asked, "Am I to take all my meals here?"

  "Pardon, madame?"

  Drawing upon those long-ago lessons from her father, she asked the question in halting French.

  For the time being, yes, he told her. They were still in English waters. Elizabeth nodded her understanding. As long as an English frigate might hurl a cannonball across the decks, it was preferable that she remain in the comparative safety of her cabin.

  She passed the morning inspecting the few garments she had brought with her. At the last moment she had remembered to thrust a sewing kit into the hand trunk. Now she used it to mend a torn lace cuff on a green summer gown, and to resew her cloak's hem where she had ripped it as she climbed the ship's ladder.

  The young sailor had just taken her luncheon tray away when again someone knocked. This time it was Patrick, carrying two books bound in dark brown leather. "Did you sleep well?" His voice was formally polite.

  She managed to match his tone. "Yes, thank you."

  He studied her. How calm she looked, and how lovely in the plain dark blue frock she had worn the night before, her gray eyes clear, her chestnut hair brushed to a sheen. Why in hell had she chosen to come with him? If she had stayed, she would have been in little danger of more than a brief imprisonment. By telling the English of his treatment of her, surely she could have convinced them that, far from wanting to help his cause, she had a fervent desire to see him hang.

  And why in hell had he allowed her to come with him? A fugitive with little money, he would have no easy time on the island of St.-Denis, even if he managed to get there. She would only add to his problems.

  Yet, she looked so desirable, and so brave. But then, she had always been brave. He thought of her trying to wrest the pistol from his hand in that lonely house north of London. He thought of her, body swollen with her unborn child, hurling her defiance at him in the library at Stanford Hall.

  He said, "Captain Marquette thought you might like some books. Do you read French?"

  She felt wry amusement. She had been his wife for almost a year, and yet he did not know whether or not she read French. "A little."

  "Then perhaps you will enjoy these." He placed the books on the chair, and with a courteous bow, left the cabin.

  For a moment she stared at the closed door. Behind the polite masks they often assumed, what did they feel for each other, she and this tall man whose name she bore? So far, the only naked, unmistakable emotions that had flared between them were hatred and rage and physical lust. And of late, apparently, he had ceased even to feel lust for her. Yet, she had chosen to flee Ireland with him, he had allowed her to do so.

  Could it be that in time...? No, better not to dwell on the possibility that someday theirs might become a real marriage, holding both physical satisfaction and mutual tenderness and respect. It would be enough if, on that island she had never seen, she could build a busy and reasonably peaceful life for herself.

  Determinedly she turned her attention to the books he had left. She found that they were the memoirs of Saint Simon. For the rest of the afternoon she read the vain and gossipy French duke's account of life at t
he court of Louis XIV. When the light began to fade, she looked out a porthole and saw that the day was no longer fair. The last rays of the sun, low on the horizon, struggled through fog. She drew the curtains, and taking the box of flints from its metal holder affixed to the bulkhead beside the door, lit the lamps.

  When the young sailor had taken her supper tray away, she turned back to her book. She was deep in the account of La Grande Mademoiselle's ludicrous pursuit of her unwilling young lieutenant when she became aware that something was happening on deck. She heard sharp, low-voiced commands, running footsteps, and the rattle of sail. Several moments later she became aware that the ship had lost most of its forward motion.

  Nerves tightening, she sat rigid. Why were they stopping? And why were there no sounds at all from the deck now, as if everyone aboard except herself had died? She knew there could be only one explanation. She pictured the little merchant ship, fog-enshrouded, rocking in the black sea, pictured the silent men on deck waiting to hear an English voice call across the water, "What ship?"

  Unable to remain alone any longer, she rose from her chair, extinguished the lamps, and stepped out on deck. No light anywhere, only a thick gray smother through which she could barely make out the dark figures in the mainmast rigging. Not speaking, and with only a subdued rattle of canvas now and then, they were still taking in sail.

  She looked to her left. More dark figures standing against the waist-high bulwark, one of them a head taller than any of the others. She moved across the fog-wet deck. "Patrick!" she whispered. "What is it?"

  She sensed rather than saw his startled frown. Arm around her waist, he drew her a few feet down the deck. "Ships," he said in a swift, low voice. "At least three of them, almost dead ahead. The lookout saw their mainmast lanterns through a rift in the fog."

  She asked tautly, "What sort of ships?"

  "Battle frigates, to judge by the height of their masts. If they stay on course, they should pass less than a hundred yards off our port."