Countess of Scandal

by Laurel McKee

  As he finally left the house, Eliza leaned back heavily on the statue. Only when she heard his horse gallop away down the drive did she breathe again. She rushed to the door, slamming it shut

  "Eliza!" she heard someone cry. She glanced up to see Caroline leaning over the balustrade from the landing above, waving wildly. Her spectacles were pushed atop her head, her brown hair gathered in a hasty braid that snaked over her shoulder and down the bodice of her simple white muslin dress.

  The sight of her sister's face was like a balm to her injured spirits. This was her home, and she was back at last

  "Eliza, you're here," Caroline said, running down the stairs two at a time to throw herself into Eliza's arms. "I've missed you so much!"

  Eliza held her close, breathing in her fresh scent of soap and ink, the sweetness of her blotting out the smoke and the coppery blood.

  "I've missed you, too, Caro. But I'm sure you've been working too hard to even notice my absence."

  "I have been working. I'm devising a history of ancient Ireland, which requires a great deal of time and research." Caroline drew back, carefully studying Eliza's face. Eliza tried to smile. "But that never means I don't miss you. Are you sure you're well? You look pale."

  "I am tired. It was a long journey. And I just encountered George."

  Caroline wrinkled her nose. "Oh, George. What a menace he is."

  "What was he doing here?"

  "Came to frighten Mama, of course. He told her they just cleared out a rebel village and that some of her own tenants were planning to burn Killinan as they did More-ton Manor."

  "Moreton was burned?" Eliza cried. Will's home, destroyed?

  "No, but they tried. And Lady Moreton went scurrying off back to England. Just like a Tory, Mama said."

  "Has anyone tried such a thing here?" Eliza asked, still shaking with shock.

  Caroline shook her head. "It's been quiet here. Too quiet It leaves Mama too much time to fuss at me."

  "Weil, now she can fuss at me instead," Eliza said lightly, but her heart was heavy with worry about Will and his home.

  Eliza took her sister's arm as they hurried back up the stairs. Caroline pushed open the door, tugging Eliza into the drawing room with her. Despite the warm, sunny day outside, the heavy satin draperies were mostly drawn, candles lit against the shadows. There was no fire in the large black marble grate, but the room was still stuffy and stale, smelling of candle smoke and the dying flowers in the Chinese vases.

  Katherine Blacknall lay on a settee by the fireplace, staring at the portrait hanging there of Eliza's late father with his beloved hunting dogs, Killinan Castle in the background. She did not appear to really see it but merely lay there motionless, the folds of her blue and yellow striped dress spread around her like a cheerful reminder of another time.

  Anna sat on a chair beside her, her golden head bent over a piece of embroidery. She tossed it aside when she saw Eliza, leaping up to run over and hug her.

  "Oh, Eliza! You're safe; you're here," Anna cried, gathering Caroline into their embrace, too. Eliza held them both close, her precious sisters, laughing with them as they all spoke at once.

  Their mother slowly stirred, sitting up to blink at them in the gloom. A whisper of a smile crept over her face, which was pale without her usual powder and rouge, but younger and more vulnerable. "Oh, Eliza dear. Why did you not write us you were coming home?"

  "There was not much time, though I did send a note ahead." Eliza hurried over to sit beside her mother on the edge of the settee, kissing her cheek. She smelted of white lilies, of course, as she always did. It made Eliza feel suddenly absurdly young, and she longed to bury her face in her mother's skirts, as she did as a child, to take refuge in Catherine's calm assurance.

  But she was not a child now, and she had to take care of them. She clasped her mother's hands, studying her closely. Katherine was as beautiful as ever, she had always looked as if she was another sister, not their mother. Her fair skin was unlined, her features fine and delicate, her golden hair scarcely threaded with silver. But she looked tired.

  "Did my note not arrive?" Eliza asked.

  Katherine shook her head. "The post has been terribly unreliable of late. And my cousin has just told us some of the mail coaches were stopped and burned and an officer who was a passenger killed."

  The interruption of the mail coaches—the signal for the rising to start Eliza's hands tightened on her mother's.

  "I would place no credence in anything George says," Anna said contemptuously.

  "He surely knows more than we do, isolated here as we are," Katherine said. "How are things in Dublin, Eliza?"

  "Quiet enough," Eliza said, not mentioning the constant firing of the guns and the troops in the streets. "Crowded. Everyone floods into the city, looking for passage to England."

  "England." Katherine sighed. "Everyone leaves. Lady Moreton was one of the first to go."

  "Caro tells me there was trouble at Moreton Manor," Eliza said.

  "Oh yes. But we have had no such incidents here. We've been left in peace."

  "They haven't sent troops to quarter here at Killinan?"

  "They wouldn't dare."

  "Lady Moreton's son was here as well, but he left to rejoin his regiment," Anna offered.

  Eliza glanced at her, startled.

  "But we have heard nothing else." A small frown drifted over Katherine's face. "Were you not friends with him once, Eliza?"

  "Yes, I was. But you did not like that, Mama," Eliza said wryly.

  "I only wanted what was best for everyone." Katherine suddenly dropped Eliza's hands, turning to Anna. "Girls, your sister looks tired. Could you go and ask Cook to send up some food and tea? And have the maids air out her chamber."

  Eliza wondered why she did not ring the bell for such tasks. As Anna and Caroline hurried from the room, she watched her mother rise and go to the fireplace. Katherine fiddled with the china ornaments arrayed there on the mantel, moving one, then another, only to replace them again.

  "How are things here really, Mama?" Eliza asked.

  Katherine took a deep breath, the silk rippling across her delicate shoulders. "I told you, my dear. It is quiet enough. Some trees have been cut in the night, some provisions stolen from the smokehouse, but I have not seen the culprits."

  "Yet someone tried to burn Moreton. That is so near."

  'That is different, I'm sure. Lord and Lady Moreton never cared for their people as I have. They squeeze what they can from their land and send the proceeds off to London."

  Katherine turned back to Eliza, and she saw the bright sheen of unshed tears in her mother's blue eyes. It was the only crack in her dignity. "I have always taken care of our people, have I not, Eliza? I have always made sure that they are comfortable and well rewarded for their work. I have never been severe toward them. I have never let my comforts take away from their prosperity. I have nursed them, helped them whenever I can. I have lived my life among them!" Her voice broke, and she spun away again.

  Shocked, Eliza could only nod. "Yes, Mama, you have. Of course." And it was true. Katherine Blacknall had always been a fair and caring landlady, the Angel of Kildare.

  'Then how can they think I am their enemy?" Katherine said. "How can they think I would deceive them? I have begged them to confide in me, to turn in their arms and maintain the peace. And yet they turn from me. You turn from me."

  "I, Mama? No, never! I am here, am I not? I traveled as fast as I could because you said you needed me."

  "Yet you always had such strange notions, Eliza, things I could not understand. Such thoughts about the social order, about Irishness, Lady Louisa Conolly says you are friends with her nephew, Edward Fitzgerald, and that odd French wife of his."

  "I have not seen them in months," Eliza said truthfully. Not since that night she went to the ceilidh with Will and he sang "Cliffs of Doneen." That felt a thousand years ago. "I will help you, Mama, if you will let me."

  Katherine wiped at
her eyes. "Will you go with me to visit our tenants one more time? They always did like you so much. You were always running off to talk to them when you were a girl."

  "Yes, of course."

  "I know that you and I have sometimes been at odds, Eliza," Katherine said. She sat back down on the settee, taking Eliza's hand again. "Perhaps we have seen things differently in the past Perhaps I was wrong to encourage the match with Mount Clare."

  Eliza shook her head. "It was a long time ago, Mama. You wanted what you thought was best for me."

  "Yes. I always want what is best for everyone I care about But sometimes I fear I don't know what that is. I feel I know nothing at all anymore."

  Eliza feared she knew nothing, either. She leaned her head on her mother's shoulder, letting out a shuddering sigh as Katherine drew her close. She no longer understood anything at all.

  Chapter 19

  Eliza closed her eyes very tightly, forcing her hands to unclench and smooth over the sheet, making her tense shoulders relax back onto the feather mattress. It did not work—she still could not fall asleep, despite her tiredness. Despite the late hour, deep into the darkest part of the night

  The house was too quiet Every squeak of the floors, every click of the shutters in the wind, echoed too loudly. They sounded too much like running footsteps, frantic moans.

  She rolled onto her side, opening her eyes to stare out over her girlhood chamber. Her windows looked onto the back gardens, those manicured expanses of terraces and flower beds that were her mother's pride. Bathed in the summer moonlight, they looked so peaceful, so wondrously ethereal. But the gardens, the house, and all who lived in its walls were so very vulnerable.

  Eliza sighed. Worry was surely her lot now, and as Anna said, the waiting was terrible, especially after she was accustomed to action in her work in Dublin. At least her own worry did not include a baby, like poor Annie, who still waited for word of her Davey. Eliza's courses had been regular since Will left.

  But there was also a tiny, foolish part of her who wanted Will's baby....

  Impatiently, she kicked back the bedclothes, getting out of bed. She could not lie there another moment, thinking of war and of babies who would never be. It did no good. She should look in on her mother.

  As she reached for her dressing gown, a sound even worse than the silence tore through the house. A pounding at the front door, like the one at her house in Dublin when the soldiers came. Loud enough to be a battering ram.

  Eliza's stomach lurched, and she pressed her hand hard.against it. Was it rebels or troops? Either way, it was trouble. Killinan could be burned, her mother and sisters killed...

  "Oh, get ahold of yourself!" she said sternly. Panicking would help nothing.

  She tied the sash of her gown, hurrying out onto the landing. Anna and Caroline were already there, their arms tight around each other. Caro buried her face in Anna's shoulder.

  "I forgot my spectacles!" she whispered. "I can't see what's happening."

  "That's probably all for the best, Caro," Anna said, smoothing her hand over Caroline's rumpled hair. The hammering at the door went on, and Eliza peered over the balustrade to see the wood panels shudder. Those new locks her mother had installed would not long hold.

  Her mother's chamber door opened, and Katherine emerged still dressed in her gray silk dinner gown. A shawl was tossed over her shoulders, and she held a pistol in both hands.

  "Mama!" Eliza cried. "Do you even know how to fire that?"

  Catherine glanced down at the weapon, an old dueling pistol that had probably belonged to Eliza's rakish grandfather. "Not really," she said, shockingly calm. "But how difficult could it be?"

  "Very," Eliza said. She slid the gun from her mother's hand. "I will see what is happening. You stay here with the girls, Mama, and if necessary, you must ran down the back stairs and escape through the garden."

  "No, Eliza!" Anna gasped. "You come with us now."

  Eliza kissed her sisters' cheeks quickly. "Do as I say for once."

  Katherine wrapped her arms around her daughters, hugging them protectively close. Eliza ran down the stairs, suddenly realizing she had no shoes. The tile was cool under her bare feet, but she hardly noticed.

  She dragged back the locks, opening the door. For an instant, she was blinded by the glare of a torch and could see only the silhouette of a tall figure against the night sky.

  "What is this?" she demanded, despite the fact that her throat was dry with fear. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the light, but she did not recognize the man who stood there. He seemed very large, broad-shouldered, a monster of the night, with long, wild black hair. His face was half obscured by a dark beard, but his eyes glittered as he watched her. He said nothing.

  Eliza drew in a deep breath. He was only one man; surely she could defend her house against one man!

  "We have no arms here but this old pistol in my hand," she said. Weren't arms what everyone was after these days? "You may have it, if you leave us in peace."

  A deep, agonized moan suddenly sounded at Eliza's feet, and she looked down in growing, icy horror.

  "Will!" she screamed, collapsing to her knees, the gun falling to the ground. With shaking hands, she smoothed the tangled, sweat-soaked blond hair back from his face and saw that it really was Will. Lying on her doorstep, half unconscious. His coat was gone, his white shirt dirty, the shoulder torn away to reveal a bloody bullet wound.

  She cradled his head on her lap, staring up aghast at the dark man before her. Distorted by the torchlight, he looked utterly terrifying.

  Will's breath was harsh, his skin hot under her touch. She had never been so scared.

  "What is the meaning of this?" she said hoarsely.

  'There was a patrol not far from here," the man said in a light Irish brogue. "They were dead when I found them, except for this one."

  Found them, or killed them himself? And why had they not killed Will, too? The Moretons were not much liked in the neighborhood.

  "Why did you bring him here?" she said, running her hand gently over Will's furrowed brow as he moaned.

  "He had this clutched in his hand." The Irishman held out a pearl-framed miniature. Its surface was cracked, but Eliza saw it was her own portrait, the one painted just before she married Mount Clare, the one she gave Will before they parted, hoping he would remember her. She snatched it away, holding it tightly until the pearls bit into her skin.

  The dark man frowned grimly. "You and your mother have a fine reputation in Kildare ," he said. "No one wants to hurt you, nor none of your friends. But Kildare is 'green' now. We won't stand for the likes of him, especially after what happened with Annie and the village. It would be best if he left."

  His stare was almost gentle, yet unyielding. How did he know of Annie and the soldiers? What did that have to do with Will? "Left?" Eliza cried in confusion. "He is half dead!"

  "The English are being driven out of these lands once and for all," he said. "I brought him here out of respect for your family. I can't say how others will feel. He should leave as quick as he's able." With that, he took his torch and melted away into the hot, dusty night

  Eliza was alone in the silence, except for Will's labored breath as he struggled to hold on to life.

  "Eliza," she heard her mother say behind her. "Have they gone?"

  "Yes, they've gone."

  "What did—oh!" Katherine, too, fell to her knees on the ground, staring down at Will, aghast "William Denton? What is this?"

  "He was caught in an ambush," Eliza said numbly, gently smoothing back his hair until he quieted in her arms. "His . .. rescuer found this on him, so he brought Will here instead of killing him." She handed her mother the cracked miniature.

  "Your portrait?"

  "They said they brought him here out of respect but that he should leave the county."

  "Well, obviously we cannot leave now, can we?"

  Katherine said, tucking the painting into her long sleeve. "And they certainly will have
killed him if we don't get him out of the night air."

  Eliza shook her head frantically. "I don't want to hurt him more by moving him!"

  "I know, my dear. But we can't stay here. He needs to be seen to, and who knows if the mob will change their minds and come back again," said Katherine, and in her voice, Eliza could hear the calm echo of the Angel of Kildare. The woman who helped sick tenants all over the county.

  "You take his feet, Eliza," she went on. "I will take his shoulders."

  Her efficiency and her measured tone shook Eliza out of her own numb shock. She handed Will's head into her mother's arms and went to grasp his booted feet They were covered with dust and dried blood, though the shoulder seemed his only wound.

  "On my count, then," Katherine said. "One... two... three."

  Even though Will was tall, with lean, hard muscles, they managed to lift him in their arms, carrying him into the foyer. They laid him on a backless chaise, set under the unblinking stare of a marble Artemis.

  She leaned over Will, examining his ashen face and his pale lips. He was quiet now, but his brow was creased, his jaw clenched as if in fierce, feverish nightmares.

  Eliza quickly tore away the blood-matted shirt from the wound. She had helped a few Irish fugitives in her cellar who had wounds, but none this bad. And none of them had been Will Still, she could tell from gently probing that the bullet was still there under the skin. It would have to come out, or it would fester and he would die.

  "The doctor is gone from the village," Katherine said. "The Army conscripted him last week to help with their own wounded."

  "There would be no time for him to get here anyway," Eliza said. "I can do it"

  "Yes. I will help you."

  Eliza looked up into her mother's eyes to see that Katherine Blacknall was back. Whatever torpor she had suffered under the last few weeks was shaken away, and in her blue eyes there was only clear determination.

  "I have done my share of nursing in my life " Katherine said. "We can save him, my dear. I'm sure of it."

  "So it was Will," Anna suddenly said. "I was afraid..."

  Eliza turned to see her sisters on the lowest step of the staircase, their hands clutched together as they stared at the bloody scene suddenly invading their peaceful home.