His smile widened and, in spite of her annoyance, Kate noticed how white and even his teeth were against the brown of his tanned cheeks.
‘Most girls would have taken an extremely dim view of pedalling to Ballyfeeny in search of a down pillow,’ he remarked, ‘but then you’re not like most girls, are you?’
He was taunting her, hoping for a reply that would place her in an awkward position, she realised, and she preserved a cold silence until the pumping operations were completed.
Then, conscious that his sardonic gaze was following her every movement, she wheeled the bicycle out of the yard. It was years since she had cycled, not in fact since she had been a child tearing around the small garden of her parents’ suburban home, and her heart thudded nervously as she wobbled down the short path that led to the road. How ignominious if she should fall in an untidy bundle amongst the mechanism, to be extricated by a grinning Owen, before she even reached the anonymity of the main road!
To her relief she managed to pedal out of his view without mishap and was soon bowling along the white limestone road feeling a rising sense of exhilaration as she realised she was in control of the ungainly monster. The tingling cool air from the distant Galy Mountains blew against her cheeks. Fields of dark rich earth and thick green pasture spread on the far side of hedges, white with a froth of hawthorn blossom that exuded a scent that was almost headily sweet. So delighted was she by her surroundings that it was some time before it dawned on her that she had been cycling along the road without once coming on a signpost and, except for a passing cart, had had no encounter with another human being. She would ask the very next person she happened to meet, she told herself a little anxiously. How dreadful if she should lose her way and the excursion end in a search for her! She could imagine Florrie’s tart remarks at being deprived of her pillow and Owen’s exasperation at what he would consider her addle-headedness.
She was relieved to see a float advance towards her pulled by a large shaggy horse and driven by a weatherbeaten gnome-like character in a shapeless felt hat, green with age. The small twinkling eyes of the gnome surveyed her with interest when at last they drew level. He drew up his horse which began to crop the thick grass growing by the roadside. ‘You’ll be the girl that’s come to stay at Laragh!’ he stated.
A little taken aback by his prescience, Kate didn’t reply.
‘I knew it as soon as I seen you,’ he remarked with satisfaction. ‘They was saying in the village that you were medium low-set and that your hair was a bit foxy.’
Cautiously Kate reviewed this statement; ‘medium low-set’ didn’t sound complimentary, she concluded; nor did the description of her hair. However, she had become accustomed to Irish exaggeration and made a mental note to discover later the exact nuances of this extraordinary statement. ‘I’m staying at Laragh,’ she agreed cautiously.
A knowing smile crossed the leathery face and Kate wondered just how much of her predicament was known in the countryside and what conclusions had been drawn from it.
‘I’m on my way to Ballyfeeny House,’ she said hastily, to forestall further personal remarks. ‘Could you tell me how far it is from here?’
He nodded wisely. ‘You’ve a fair share to go yet: about a mile to the crossroads; then you turn left until you come to the mills, then right again. You can’t miss the big house: there’s two lions or such-like animals on the pillars afore the gate lodge.’ He paused, eyeing her speculatively, and appeared to be on the point of questioning her further, but Kate hastily mounted her bicycle and with a word of thanks rode off.
She found that the gnome’s estimation of a mile was very different from her own, but at last she reached the lodge, nodded to a smiling woman who stood in a small overgrown garden with a child in her arms, and found herself pedalling wearily along the long avenue.
When eventually the house came into view she was startled by its size and magnificence. No wonder Doretta found it hard to believe that the Fitzpatricks were not wealthy while they lived in this enormous Georgian mansion set in rolling parkland dotted with ancient sycamores, oaks and chestnuts!
It was only as she drew nearer that she discerned the unmistakable shabbiness that marred the first opulent view. The pillars on either side of the narrow door were flaking with neglect and in the stained glass lunette that surmounted the doorway there were several pieces of missing glass. Weeds grew high where so obviously a velvet lawn should have extended to the riverside. She leaned her bicycle against an overgrown shrub feeling that her method of arrival had been rather incongruous. To arrive in style at such a house one should bowl up the avenue in a phaeton drawn by a perfectly matched pair of carriage horses with silver-mounted harness.
The windows stared blankly at her as she approached the door, and remembering Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s anything but friendly attitude towards her she began to regret falling in so readily with Florrie Lawlor’s wishes. What would be her reception by the haughty mistress of Ballyfeeny House? she wondered uneasily as she pulled the old-fashioned brass bell. The door was slightly open, she noticed, but considering the circumstances of her last meeting with Mrs. Fitzpatrick she felt that a formal approach would be expected.
However, as she waited, listening for the slow purposeful approach of a servant, the silence was broken by cries of anger and the unmistakable sound of splintering furniture and crashing china. Galvanised into action, Kate dashed into the hall and to her amazement found two small boys apparently locked in a death struggle, pummelling and pushing each other with alarming ferocity. As they rolled about the floor, they crashed into a fragile Sheraton table, dashing to the floor a blue and white Chinese vase. Already signs of their depredations were strewn about the hall and a crystal vase with its contents of red and white tulips lay in a soggy mess on the worn Axminster carpet. So violent were their movements that Kate was only vaguely aware that they were of the same size and that their faces were very white and their hair soot-black. These would be the twins, she concluded, as she leaped forward and, catching them by the back of their torn shorts, held them apart like a pair of snarling tiger kittens.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!’ she said angrily, as she surveyed the shattered remains of what had been obviously beautiful and valuable antiques. All diffidence had suddenly left her and she gave each warrior a thorough shaking before releasing them.
The unexpectedness of her arrival and her strong-arm way of dealing with them seemed to act on them like a deluge of icy water. Immediately their differences were forgotten in amazed contemplation of this strange little fury with the thick honey-coloured hair.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,’ Kate repeated furiously as she bent down and picked up the pieces of a cut glass goblet. From her experience at The Trinket Box, she knew that it was a piece of rare blue Waterford glass.
As the two children surveyed her in stunned silence Kate turned her attention to them, realising with a sense of shock that they were completely identical from the coal-black locks of hair that lay on their broad foreheads to the torn shirts and untied shoe-laces on their scuffed shoes. ‘You must be the twins! I’ve heard about you,’ she said significantly.
She noticed with misgivings the pleased expression that crept into their sloe-black eyes, and immediately regretted her words; evidently the twins relished their notorious reputation and were flattered by her immediate recognition.
‘We’re not quite identical, you know,’ one of them piped up defensively. ‘Sean has a freckle.’
Kate surveyed them closely: it was true, one of the little demons had a faint brown freckle on his left cheek.
‘I’m Eamonn,’ said the speaker, and favoured her with a wide grin, showing perfect white teeth and reminding her only too forcibly of his brother Nicky.
‘You must be Kate,’ Sean said with conviction. ‘And you must invite us to your wedding. Nicky has it all arranged, hasn’t he?’
Kate blinked at him in astonishment, her anger at their destructiv
eness forgotten at this extraordinary statement.
‘I love wedding cake,’ Sean continued happily. ‘When I get married I shan’t go away on a silly honeymoon; I’ll stay behind and eat up all the cake myself.’
‘Me too!’ Eamonn agreed fervently.
Evidently, in spite of the similarity of their appearance, it was Sean who was the moving spirit of the duo.
‘You can’t leave us out,’ Sean urged, ‘especially after all the trouble Nicky has taken to get Owen married off. You must send us one of those little cards with silver writing inviting Masters Eamonn and Sean Fitzpatrick and afterwards send on a piece of cake in a little box. You won’t forget, will you? Not that I intend to sleep with it under my pillow,’ he added contemptuously.
‘Oh no, we’re not going to sleep with it under our pillows,’ Eamonn echoed with a giggle. ‘Are we, Sean?’
Sean didn’t deign to answer. His coal-black eyes were surveying Kate curiously. ‘You’re not a bit like the sort of girl we expected, you know.’
‘No?’ Kate waited with interest for him to elaborate.
He shook his head, tossing the lock of hair on his forehead. ‘Oh no! Nicky said you’d probably turn out to be a cold fish of an English girl, but you’re not, you know,’ he added with satisfaction.
It was time, Kate decided, that she made her position perfectly plain. ‘I’m certainly not going to marry your cousin,’ she said severely, ‘I’m simply staying on at Laragh to help out until Mrs. Murphy is well again. I suppose you know she has broken her arm,’ she added a little acidly, for it was perfectly obvious that there was very little that happened in the surrounding countryside that the twins were not aware of.
‘Oh yes, we know,’ Sean said solemnly, ‘and it was a terrible pity, for she makes the most terrific upside-down rhubarb cake. Can you make upside-down rhubarb cake?’ he asked with interest.
‘No, I certainly can’t,’ Kate said firmly, ‘and now if you two have really made up your minds not to do any more damage, I’d like to fetch your Aunt Florrie’s down pillow. That’s what I came for in the first place. Do ask your mother if I may have it.’
To her exasperation this request sent the twins into convulsions of laughter.
‘Mother isn’t here: she has gone into Limerick,’ Sean said at last, ‘and Doretta’s in charge. Eamonn and I hate her. When Mother’s here she’s all smarmy and sweet, but when we’re here alone she’s always scolding us and saying rude things about us in Italian. She’s up in her room making a frock. I heard her tell Nicky she wouldn’t go out with him as she wants it finished before she goes to Blarney with Owen.’ A thought struck him. ‘I do hope Cousin Owen isn’t silly enough to marry her: then she’d be a sort of relation, wouldn’t she, and she’d never go back to Italy again! You must marry him right away, for I’d simply hate Doretta as a relation. Wouldn’t you, Eamonn?’
‘Me too!’ his brother answered solemnly.
They looked at each other with the large sloe-black eyes that were so like their brother Nicky’s: they were hard to resist and Kate wondered if they had inherited them from their father, the gay boyo, who had squandered the Fitzpatrick fortunes.
‘You must go to Blarney too,’ Sean announced determinedly, ‘otherwise she might propose to him.’
Kate smiled, ‘But I haven’t been invited.’
Sean looked impatient at what he obviously considered an irrelevancy. ‘If she goes to Blarney and kisses the stone, then she’ll have the gift of eloquence and will marry him for sure, but don’t worry, Eamonn and I will think of something. Won’t we, Eamonn?’
‘Oh yes, for sure! Perhaps we could put a spell on her or cut up her frock when she finishes it, or something,’ Eamonn said hopefully.
Kate, who had heard enough about the twins to have a healthy respect for their abilities, was on the point of protesting when there was the sound of a creaking step and Kate turned to find Doretta standing on the staircase watching them in silence. How long had she been there? Kate wondered, listening to the twins’ uncomplimentary remarks concerning her.
Her skin gleamed like shadowed porcelain and a frock of rose and vermilion printed voile outlined the curves of her rounded figure. The twins had relapsed into a sulky silence as though her very presence extinguished all their frivolity.
However, it was Kate on whom her attention was fixed. She looked faintly disapproving as she said with formal dignity, ‘I am surprised to see you at Ballyfeeny. Do you not know that Mrs. Fitzpatrick objects to your staying on at Laragh?’ She sounded coldly outraged—as though she were the mistress of the house ejecting an undesirable guest, Kate thought, and her initial feeling of embarrassment disappeared as she felt growing anger at Doretta’s assumption of authority.
‘I’m not staying long,’ she said stiffly, ‘I’ve simply come to fetch Mrs. Lawlor’s pillow: she left it behind last time she stayed here.’
‘She is a tiresome old creature and I hope it is a long time before she stays again at Ballyfeeny; she is for ever poking and prying and for ever asking questions that don’t concern her.’
Kate, however, had no intention of discussing Florrie’s vagaries with this girl who was showing her such undisguised animosity. ‘If you’ll fetch the pillow, I’ll go immediately,’ she stated.
Doretta arched her brows, as though offended by the demand. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea where it is, and even if I did know it is not included in my duties to go searching for pillows.’ She turned to the twins and her face darkened angrily as she surveyed their torn shirts and general air of dilapidation. ‘You have been fighting again; you are a pair of little savages. It is too bad that I should be expected to live under the same roof as two such guttersnipes! Go to your room and change your shirts immediately, and on the way back fetch the pillow.’
‘But you haven’t mended our other ones yet, Doretta,’ Eamonn pointed out with an air of reasonableness. ‘You’ve been hours sewing your new dress.’
Doretta’s voice rose angrily and colour touched the pallor of her cheeks. ‘Do not be insolent! It is not my business to be for ever sewing your tattered clothes: do you take me for a servant to attend on you hand and foot? Now off you go and do as I tell you or I shall box your ears.’
In spite of this threat the twins showed a marked reluctance to depart; they shuffled their feet and gazed at each other uncomfortably.
‘Go, go, go!’ Losing all pretence of patience, Doretta advanced on them threateningly and Sean said in a small voice, ‘I’m afraid we had a pillow fight last week—’
‘And the feathers were scattered to the four winds,’ Eamonn intoned. ‘And anyway,’ he added, as though recollecting a grievance, ‘you told Mother that you would get us tea, but you stayed up in your room sewing that silly old frock of yours. And it’s not as if Cousin Owen will notice what you wear. Sure he won’t, Sean?’
‘That’s right,’ Sean agreed. ‘Even if you wore nothing, he wouldn’t notice. Would he; Eamonn?’
‘Oh no, he’d never notice,’ Eamonn replied solemnly.
‘Fiends!’ Doretta screeched, advancing on them and dealing each of them a resounding blow. In a moment the hall was echoing to a spate of shrill Italian abuse with mingled howls of protest from the outraged twins.
When at last the boys had departed Doretta made an effort to control the anger that had contorted her face and banished all its classic beauty. She shrugged and pursed her mouth ruefully. ‘You see what a handful I have in those two demon children, yet their mother seems to think I should keep them as neat as what you call pins on paper. If I had known that there was no proper staff here I should not have come in the first place, but I was deceived. At home I am not expected to do any housework. We have many servants. However, I do not intend to stay here much longer: I shall make other plans,’ she added significantly.
No doubt her realisation that Nicky was, after all, not heir to Ballyfeeny had more than a little to do with Doretta’s intentions, Kate thought. She had not even hinted
at going back to Italy. Was Owen Lawlor perhaps involved in her plans?
An overwhelming curiosity to know made her ask tentatively, ‘You will be taking up another position, then?’
Doretta glanced at her with sudden awareness and a slow secretive smile touched her lips. ‘You are anxious to know, aren’t you, because you are in love with Owen Lawlor, but I shall not tell you. As the saying goes, all is fair in love and war.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
WITH a change of mood that Kate found bewildering, Doretta asked brightly, ‘And now would you like to come up to my room and see the dress I am making for the day I go to Blarney? It is a blue, the colour of the sea: it is a colour that becomes me very well.’
For the rest of Kate’s visit, Doretta chatted amicably, displaying her wardrobe and discussing her possessions. Was it simply her Latin blood that made Doretta so uninhibited, Kate wondered, or was it a subtle attempt to convince Kate how fruitless it would be to consider herself as a possible rival should she set her sights on Owen Lawlor?
When at last she departed, she found the twins waiting for her: they were sitting on the iron railings that bordered the avenue and hailed her appearance with enthusiasm. ‘We’ve just thought up the most terrific way for you to get even with Doretta.’
‘But I don’t want to get even with Doretta,’ She said firmly, as she prepared to mount her bicycle. ‘Why on earth should I?’
‘We mean about going to Blarney.’ Sean’s eyes snapped with excitement. It’s a shame you should be left behind,’ he added piously.
‘But someone must take care of things, and that’s my job, isn’t it?’
‘It’s supposed to be Doretta’s too, but we could starve to death for all she cares.’
‘The pair of you look remarkably healthy to me,’ Kate said, laughing, ‘and now, off you go. If I don’t leave now it will be dark before I get home.’
It was at this moment that her voice was drowned by the sound of Nicky’s car roaring up the avenue and drawing up with a shower of gravel. He was immediately hailed enthusiastically by his admiring brothers.
The Made Marriage Page 11