When he had disentangled himself from their boisterous greetings he walked towards Kate, his dark eyes dancing with the mischievous gleam that always made her uneasy.
‘And what is the virtuous Kate doing on villainous Fitzpatrick territory?’ he asked mockingly. ‘Or is it that the Fitzpatricks no longer seem so outrageous in comparison to the goings-on at Laragh?’
‘There are no goings-on at Laragh,’ she said coldly.
‘No? You surprise me. I’m sure you’d be shocked to hear all the nasty things that are being said locally about the set-up—or have you considered that aspect of the matter?’
‘I’m not interested in what people say,’ she protested, but the colour that flooded her cheeks belied her words. She could, only too clearly, imagine the ribald laughter in the local pubs as the farmers and labourers drank their beloved Guinness and discussed in detail the scandalous tit-bits that gave colour and interest to the monotonous life of the small villages.
‘Ah-ha, so you do care! Well, in that case, why don’t you let Owen make an honest woman of you? After all, a lonely bachelor like Owen should be a walkover!’
He was in one of his wicked taunting moods, she realised, and she was determined not to give him the satisfaction of knowing how keenly his words had struck home. ‘I should imagine that if Owen intends to marry anyone it will be Doretta.’
It was an attempt at defence and she saw his smile stiffen.
‘Yes, our Latin beauty is knocking around with him, I hear. And to think that until fairly recently I was her white-headed boy! There’s a fickle female for you!’ He spoke lightly, but Kate got the impression that Doretta’s change of allegiance had pricked his vanity badly.
The twins, who had been listening avidly, now pulled excitedly at their brother’s arm. ‘That’s just what we were talking about before you came,’ Sean told him. ‘Eamonn and I thought up the most terrific plan for getting even with Doretta and putting a spoke in her wheel.’
Nicky did not answer immediately. Taking the bicycle from Kate, he leaned it against the fence, then linking her arm he led her around the side of the house, followed closely by the twins. ‘We shall discuss this wonderful scheme while strolling in the lime walk,’ he declared. ‘It was planted in the good old days when people had plenty of leisure for perambulating between the trees and breathing in the fragrance of the blossoms. A perfect place for lovers, don’t you think? Why can’t you and I be friends, Kate? If Doretta is really out for Owen’s scalp, she’ll very probably get him, for I know enough about her to know she’s a very determined girl when she’s pursuing her quarry. That will leave you and me at loose ends, won’t it? Now is there any reason on earth why we shouldn’t enjoy ourselves in our own way?’
‘You mean in your own way, don’t you?’ Kate said dryly, and tried to pull her arm from his possessive clutch. But he merely tightened his grip.
‘Dear me, how you’ve changed since you used to pen those enchanting letters of yours! I remember one in particular: it struck me at the time as being quite poetic; let’s see, how did it go?’ He wrinkled his brow in a pretence of searching his memory, then intoned, ‘I imagine your little cottage with golden-tinted thatch, set in green meadows and purple ploughed fields.’
Kate’s eyes smarted with tears of mortification. What had possessed her to write such self-revealing words to a perfect stranger?
The twins, who were now dancing alongside, gave loud whoops of merriment. ‘Did you really write that, Kate?’ Sean gurgled.
‘You two clear off.’ Nicky made threatening motions with his fist. ‘You’re not wanted.’
‘But we haven’t told you our plan about Doretta,’ they chorused indignantly.
Kate, however, was no longer listening. Ahead lay two parallel lines of lime trees, starred with blossom, their delicious scent borne towards her with every eddy of the warm air. The broad walk of brilliant green turf was strewn with fallen petals. How wonderful to wander here with the one you loved, she thought, then immediately reminded herself sternly that it was just such romantic day-dreams that had landed her in the pickle she was in.
In spite of her reluctance to accompany Nicky, he determinedly marched her towards the towering trees and commanded the twins to reveal their plan. ‘Though, if it’s anything like your usual brainwaves, it will be utterly ridiculous!’
‘It’s not,’ Sean said indignantly. ‘It’s quite simple really. We just thought Owen and Doretta would be frightfully annoyed, if you and Kate should happen to reach Blarney before them. It would rather spoil things for them if you were walking close behind them, like the oyster.’
Nicky paused and regarded his brothers with an abstracted air. ‘Do you know, for the first time in your short careers, you’ve come up with something really practical, and its beauty lies in its complete simplicity.’
The twins gazed at each other in triumph. To gain their adored elder brother’s approval was evidently their main ambition in life.
‘And now, you two, clear off,’ commanded Nicky.
They hesitated for a moment or two longer, then, recognising the command in their brother’s tone, scuttled away.
‘And after all,’ Nicky continued musingly when they had disappeared from view, ‘why should we not go to Blarney if we want to? It’s not the exclusive preserve of Mr. Owen Lawlor, is it?’ His eyes were bright with mischief. ‘I can just see us, quite wrapped up in our own business, but somehow always in their vicinity. And if they stop for a meal, just happening to decide on the same hotel—with a table within hearing distance. Yes, it’s distinctly the sort of outing that would appeal to me.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ Kate said coldly, ‘however, it doesn’t particularly appeal to me, so you can count me out.’
‘But why? Don’t you want to kiss the Blarney stone?’
‘Yes, I do,’ She admitted.
‘Then why hesitate? You’ve as much right to go as Doretta.’
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Think what a fool you’ll feel when you go back to England and have to confess that you didn’t kiss the Blarney stone when you had the opportunity!’
In spite of herself, Kate smiled. Nicky could be extremely persuasive when he wanted to. Besides, honesty forced her to admit that she rather longed to show Owen Lawlor that she was quite capable of making her own arrangements. Not that she would neglect her duties, she told herself virtuously. Aunt Florrie would, she felt sure, take over the running of Laragh for the day.
‘So you’ve decided to come,’ said Nicky, who had been watching her closely. ‘You and I will have a marvellous time. In a way we’re both in the same position: Doretta has given me the push and you’re the unwanted onlooker.’
His words stung her. But was it not true? Owen had never made a secret of the fact that he considered her presence an embarrassment. Her lips tightened stubbornly. Well, for once, Mr. Owen Lawlor wouldn’t have things all his own way. If he found her presence and that of Nicky embarrassing it was no more than he deserved!
The afternoon was well advanced before she left Ballyfeeny and as she pedalled down the country roads on her return journey she noticed how deserted and silent the country was. The sun was setting behind the barren mountains silhouetted darkly against the sky. A little cold breeze had sprung up and Kate shivered as she got off the old bicycle and pushed it up a steep incline, regretting that she hadn’t accepted Nicky’s offer to drive her home. Ahead the road stretched between fields and patches of bog land that were dotted with dark deep holes that from the distance appeared to be filled with black ink.
As she glanced about at the wild landscape Kate felt a growing sense of unreality. Was it really she, Kate Norbert, who was pushing this bone-shaking old bicycle belonging to an eccentric elderly lady whom she had met only that very day? She found herself looking back on her sheltered existence at The Trinket Box with a kind of wonder: how quiet and even had been the tenor of their lives in the little market town where t
ime had flowed past without much interest or excitement! But did she really regret those days? she wondered. When Margot married, her own last link with England would be broken. Perhaps when Mrs. Murphy returned, she might get another job in the neighbourhood. After all, she was beginning to become familiar with the countryside and had struck up an acquaintance with some of the villagers. Better to stay adjacent to Laragh than to go farther afield, she told herself. But once again her native honesty made her admit to herself that it was the fact that in remaining near Laragh she would also be near Owen that prompted the decision.
Somehow the knowledge gave her a feeling of unbearable melancholy: she was no longer free, she realised: her feelings for Owen had become a bondage and one without hope of release for Owen, apart from considering her an embarrassment, had only too obviously no interest in her whatsoever.
Wrapped up in her thoughts, it was only when she had remounted and was bowling down the incline that she realised with a stab of alarm that the road that appeared to be leading her farther and farther into the mountainous part of the country was completely unfamiliar and that she must have lost her way. It was at this point that she heard a loud report as the front tyre punctured on the flinty road.
She dismounted, only then feeling how her muscles ached from the unaccustomed exercise. The handlebars slipped from her fingers and the bicycle fell on to the side of the road with a loud crash as she sank wearily on to a large boulder.
The deserted countryside seemed sinister and inimical, and her heart beat fast as she remembered the stories Joe had told her when he had eased into the kitchen at odd minutes of the day for what he called ‘a sly cup of tea’; stories of the wail of the banshee proclaiming an imminent death in certain families; stories of the sheegwee and the evil leprechauns who haunt the mountains. Her thin cotton frock did little to keep out the chill air. Apart from that, she was beginning to feel hungry, for she had not eaten anything since morning: the idea of offering her refreshment had evidently not occurred to Doretta.
Another aspect of her predicament occurred to her; Florrie Lawlor, she felt sure, would make a great fuss as darkness closed in and she had not yet made an appearance. When they phoned Ballyfeeny and discovered that she had set off on her return journey they would probably search for her. But the prospect of being rescued by Owen did nothing to raise her spirits. He would consider she was making a nuisance of herself and show her scant sympathy, she felt sure.
When at last, after what seemed aeons of time, she heard the sound of an approaching car, her forebodings proved to be only too correct.
The big expensive-looking car drew up, Owen leaned out of the window, and said curtly, ‘And just what are you doing siting there like patience on a monument? Do you realise that Florrie has worked herself into a fine state imagining you at the bottom of a bog hole?’
Miserable as she was, Kate didn’t miss the fact that he was making it clear that he himself had felt no anxiety concerning her whereabouts. She got stiffly to her feet. ‘I lost my way. I must have passed the signpost without noticing it.’
‘Indeed you must,’ he said sardonically as she climbed into the seat beside him.
Impossible to tell him that it was due to the fact that her mind had been fully occupied by thoughts of himself that she had missed the signpost.
‘Just exactly where did you think you were going by following that road?’ he asked in exasperation.
‘Oh, I thought I’d come to a village sooner or later,’ she said vaguely.
‘Well, you wouldn’t have come to anything except the Galty Mountains and then we should probably have had a bit of a job locating you.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Lawlor’s bicycle!’ Kate exclaimed, attempting to climb out again. ‘I nearly forgot it.’
But he leaned over and slammed the door shut. ‘Don’t mind it! It will be perfectly safe here and I’ll send someone to fetch it in the morning. It was Florrie’s blasted bicycle that led to the trouble in the first place.’
Kate refrained from telling him that he had made no attempt to dissuade her from starting out on the journey.
‘Anyway, I should have thought you’d have had enough of it to do you for years to come,’ he said grimly.
‘Well yes, I am a bit stiff,’ Kate confessed.
He glanced at her keenly. ‘And cold too, I see!’ he added, as she gave an involuntary little shiver. ‘The air up here can be icy even on the warmest day.’ Then, before she could protest, he pulled off his jacket and tucked it about her shoulders. ‘And what’s more,’ he informed her, ‘you look frightened. I expect you’ve been listening to stories of banshees and so on?’
Kate nodded shamefacedly. ‘Joe can make them sound convincing—and anyway, it’s easy to believe in all sorts of supernatural goings-on in this part of the country.’
‘Then you should show more sense,’ he said abruptly. ‘The story of the banshee originated from the cry of the curlew—and as for the sheegwee and the leprechauns, you can discount them. And now, suppose we start back before Florrie calls out the Guards and makes a laughing-stock of the Lawlors?’
Kate nodded and settled back into the unaccustomed luxury of the car seat.
‘Do you know, Kate, you seem to have a talent for getting both yourself and me into awkward corners? Do you realise I had to go to a neighbour and borrow his car?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely. ‘I know how you’d hate to ask for it.’
He glanced at her swiftly before backing the car. ‘Do you indeed? I shouldn’t have thought you to be so perspicacious, Kate.’
‘No, you think I’m a fool for falling so easily for Nicky’s advertisement, don’t you?’
‘Not altogether! Just too romantic perhaps for your own good.’
As he turned the car and headed back along the road she was feeling flattened and dispirited. ‘No, I expect to someone like you I must appear very immature and imprudent,’ she said at last in a small voice.
‘Someone like me! And just what exactly do you mean by that ambiguous remark?’
‘Oh, someone with your arrogant attitude to life!’
‘So I’m arrogant, am I? Surely you don’t expect me to take that as a particularly complimentary remark, do you?’
‘But I didn’t intend to be complimentary,’ Kate replied with candour. ‘I was only answering your question.’
For the first time since her arrival she heard him laugh with genuine amusement. ‘Are you always so devastatingly frank?’
‘Oh dear, I’ve put my foot in it again!’ she exclaimed in dismay. ‘Margot was always telling me that I should think before I spoke and that I’m much too forthright.’
‘But perhaps I prefer you that way.’
She glanced at him covertly, but his profile revealed nothing.
‘You see, Kate, I’ve never liked plamas.’
‘Plamas?’
‘That’s the Irish word for a particular form of what you’d call soft soap.’
And no doubt Owen, as an eligible young man, had been subject to plenty of soft soap from the local girls, she thought. And it was even more subtly applied by Doretta, with her smooth Latin sophistication. But then, if he was in love with her, Owen would hardly be aware of the process, she realised. She smiled wryly. ‘At any rate you could never be mistaken for a plamaser!’
‘Perhaps not! Neither am I completely devoid of the softer sentiments!’ He paused, then said a little grimly, ‘I expect you’ve already heard from Florrie that my parents’ was a made match. Well, when I marry mine certainly won’t be an arranged thing. Though, by all accounts, my father and mother had a happy life together, they died when I was a boy, so I’ve only a pretty dim memory of them.’
‘But how exactly is a made match—arranged?’ she asked hesitantly, then regretted her temerity when he didn’t answer immediately.
‘How is it arranged?’ he repeated abstractedly, as he swung the car into the road leading to Laragh. ‘Well, usually the boy and girl have m
et at a dance or a ceili. Perhaps they’ve spoken only a few words together, but if the boy has a suitable farm and the girl an appropriate dowry the match-maker can get to work. Sometimes he’s a close relation of the prospective groom, but professional matchmakers do exist. Anyway it’s the match-maker who conducts all the financial arrangements: he approaches the girl’s father and suggests the suitability of the marriage and if the father agrees the next stage is the “walking of the land”, which really means that the girl’s father surveys the prospective groom’s property and judges if the house is suitable and the amount of acreage extensive enough. Neither the bride nor the groom enter into things at this stage, of course, but later on, when all the final arrangements have been made, the boy and girl walk out together several times before the marriage.’
Kate wrinkled her brows. ‘It sounds a bit cold-blooded, doesn’t it?’
‘Perhaps! But you’d be amazed how many happy marriages result from it. You see, they don’t expect ecstatic happiness. They look on it more as a partnership, the husband taking care of the stock and the land and the wife ruling the kitchen and farmyard and, later on, the children: generally they get on very well together.’
‘But it sounds so—so unromantic!’ Kate protested.
‘And who are you to talk?’ he demanded quizzically. ‘When you answered Nicky’s advertisement did you not intend to embark on a friendship that could easily have resulted in what you consider a sordid marriage arrangement?’
‘Oh no, that was completely different,’ Kate protested, outraged at the suggestion. ‘I just wanted someone to write to—and perhaps to visit.’
‘So if the letters had been genuine on Nicky’s part you didn’t intend to marry him even after coming all this way?’
Kate hesitated, cautiously reviewing his question. He was mocking her, she knew, subtly placing her in the position of a husband-hunting female, who would not be too particular who she married as long as she was in a position to wear a gold band on the third finger of her left hand!
The Made Marriage Page 12