The Irish Bride

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “Such scruples! One shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Look at Blanche. Gifts arriving day and night. She thanks the gentleman prettily and makes no commitment. It’s a good thing, too, else I’d be bankrupt from keeping her in flowers. You sit down and write the gentleman a nice little note of appreciation.”

  “I shall do so at once.”

  “That recalls it to my mind. Sir Nicholas is coming to dine with us this evening. You will naturally put off your other engagement.”

  “I cannot do that, Father.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I must go tonight. Mrs. Athy has asked her brother to come on purpose to meet me.”

  “Such persons can be easily put off in favor of so distinguished a gentleman.”

  “I’m afraid it is my only opportunity to speak to her brother. He’s away to America on the next ship.”

  “Then let him go.”

  “I’m certain Sir Nicholas will be able to dine with us all another night, Father. I will be going out this evening.”

  Mr. Ferris paced before the fireplace, flicking little fierce glances at her, his head sunk down between his shoulders like a vulture’s. “It’s my wish that you be here tonight.”

  “I hope always to be amenable to your wishes, Father, but I have a prior engagement. Sir Nicholas did not seem to mind when I told him I should be absent.”

  “You saw him today ... after I invited him?”

  “Yes,” she said, her fingers stroking the gilted edges of the book. “I met him at Clarendon’s.”

  “Alone?” The word should have sounded stern. For all his carelessness, Mr. Ferris had considerable regard for his daughters’ reputations. Yet his tone was indulgent.

  “We were alone only for a moment.” They’d only been interrupted by the cat, but Rietta kept that from her father. He was acting most strangely.

  “You must like him, daughter.”

  “Not very much.”

  “No, of course not. Well, we shall miss you at the table. Write that note. It will have to serve to satisfy Sir Nicholas, robbed of your presence.”

  “Goodness, Father It is not as though he were coming to see me, after all. Blanche will be company enough.”

  To her surprise, a smile showed her father’s inhumanly regular teeth. “Very well, my dear. Perhaps you know the best of it. Absence, eh? Absence.”

  Some time later, Rietta sat before her glass, brushing out her hair. She played in her mind a pleasant scene in which she informed her father and sister that she, long despaired of, was engaged to be married to Sir Nicholas. Would Blanche scream and drum her feet on the floor? They’d probably have to revive her with brandy. As for her father, he might even elevate her to the rank of favorite child.

  Rietta knew there would never be such a scene Sir Nicholas, in every physical respect her ideal, had much too masterful a disposition to ever make her a husband. Just from their brief acquaintance, she could tell that he would not care for a wife who had her own ideas and went her own way. A meek creature, who would make his will hers, would be more to his taste.

  “Which is in no way my description,” she told her reflection. “Pleasant to dream of, but there’s no more to it than that.”

  “Talking to yourself, Rietta? Better be careful. They say that’s how Mrs. Reedy began, and she wound up in the madhouse,” Blanche said as she entered the room.

  “Good evening, Blanche,” Rietta said, beginning to braid her hair. “You should dress for dinner.”

  “Oh, there’s more than enough time for that.” Her sister drifted aimlessly about the room, brushing her fingertips over the bed coverlet, dragging a tassel across her cheek, flipping through the pages of a book. Rietta was glad she’d tucked the note into her wardrobe. She tried not to make too much of the fact that she’d chosen the drawer that contained her undergarments, simply reflecting that there it was most likely to remain undetected.

  “I needn’t do more than change my gown,” Blanche said.

  “You haven’t heard, then?” Rietta said, pinning the braid up. “Father’s invited Sir Nicholas to dine here,”

  “Dine here? Tonight?” She stopped drifting and put her hands to her face as though trying to hold on to a whirling top. “You’re joking. He can’t possibly eat here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Aren’t we having mutton?”

  “Of course. Haricot mutton.”

  “You mean mutton stew? Oh, my God.”

  “Blanche, please don’t take the name of the Lord in vain.”

  “If the Lord were here, he’d be swearing Himself.”

  “Blanche!”

  “Oh, heavens! Why was I born into such a horrible, horrible family? Don’t you understand even the simplest facts of life? When a man like Sir Nicholas comes to dine with you, you don’t serve him whatever has been dredged up in the kitchen. You serve him the finest Galway has to offer.”

  “Oysters and Guinness?” She placed the last pin and gave her coiffure a pat. “It’s the wrong time of year.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Blanche, I’ve asked you not to swear.”

  “It’s too much. On top of everything else, it’s too much. At last there’s a man worthy to be my husband and you must serve him haricot mutton the first time he dines with us.”

  “If you want things done differently, you must do the household ordering,” Rietta said calmly, ignoring the sudden sense of depression that filled her upon hearing the words “my husband” in connection with Sir Nicholas and Blanche. “If not, you’ve no right to complain. Father likes haricot mutton.”

  “No right? No right? No right to see my future ruined through your stupidity?”

  “That’s enough,” Rietta said sharply. She grabbed at the end of her disappearing temper. “I will not be at home this evening, so you must be Father’s hostess. I’m sure you’ll make a splendid job of it. Father tells me that Mr. Mochrie and Mr. Joyce will also be at table. The numbers will be uneven, but I’m sure you won’t mind that.”

  “If you are suggesting that I like monopolizing men ...”

  “Monopolizing?” Rietta echoed. She’d been unaware that Blanche knew any words longer than three short syllables.

  Blanche sniffed. “Mr. Joyce was most unkind to me when he met me at the milliner’s. He accused me of flirtation. As if I would.”

  “You met Mr. Joyce at the milliner’s? I thought you said before that you had met Mr. Greeves there.”

  “I did,” Blanche said, preening herself in the mirror. “Only Mr. Mochrie didn’t come, but as you say, he’ll be at dinner.”

  “Blanche,” Rietta began, rising. “You didn’t let any of these men buy you anything?”

  “Of course not,” she said, shocked. She ruined the effect of her anger by giggling. “They offered, but I naturally refused.”

  “Thank mercy for that,” Rietta sighed.

  “Of course, someone did bring me a box of caramels that he bought especially for me, but there’s no harm in that, surely.”

  “Mr. Joyce, I wager.”

  Blanche only hummed a light air as she rocked back and forth on her heels. She looked angelic, except for the smirk that twisted her rosy lips. “You lose,” she said after a moment in which she plainly hoped Rietta was suffering tortures of unsatisfied curiosity.

  “I trust you didn’t eat them all before dinner.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t resist being just the tiniest bit greedy. They were so good and he seemed to expect that I should. He was a dreadfully long time in getting them, too, so I had to show how much I appreciated his effort.”

  “Too bad,” Rietta said, buttoning the grayish velvet pelisse that followed the lines of her dress. Though it was summer, the nights could still grow chilly after sundown.

  “Yes, I had to try on ever so many hats while I was waiting for him, even ones that made me look completely hideous. There was one green straw that turned me bilious. And the clock kept striking the quarter hours
till I was quite impatient. But Sir ... he came eventually.”

  Rietta’s fingers stilled on the last button. “So it was Sir Nicholas who brought you the caramels? Was he before or after the other two gentlemen?”

  “After,” Blanche said coyly. “It must have been a quarter to three before he came back with them. Even then, he had to rush away.”

  Rietta clearly recalled hearing the bell in St. Nicholas of Myra chiming three as she returned from walking down Quay Street to the bay. She had stood by the water for a little while until the unusual heat generated by her meeting with Sir Nicholas had faded. She had not wanted to meet Blanche while her cheeks were still flying storm signals and her hands still trembled with suppressed feeling. Yet even while she was attempting to cool down, he was fetching sweets for her sister.

  “Men are base,” she said coldly. “He was most likely rushing off to meet yet another woman—some other poor creature who has the misfortune to meet such a rake.”

  “Is Sir Nicholas a rake?” Blanche looked as though she entertained a daydream or two of her own. “It’s always been my ambition to reform a villainous brute. I wonder if Sir Nicholas drinks?”

  Rietta stared in wonder at her sister. “What have you been reading?”

  “Reading? Nothing at all. Ooh, I wonder if he grows violent when he drinks. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to bring a man like that to heel?”

  “Kindly don’t go through the world saying Sir Nicholas is a drunkard.”

  “But didn’t you say he was?”

  * * * *

  Nick hadn’t been in the house ten minutes before he realized how intently Blanche watched him. Mr. Joyce had flown to her like a metal filing seeking a magnet, leaving Nick to the overpowering entertainment of Mr. Ferris. Yet even while she spoke to Mr. Joyce, Nick was aware of her gaze on him. Her lovely blue eyes widened with alarm when he accepted a glass of wine from his host’s hand.

  Nick turned to Mr. Ferris. “I’d hoped that your older daughter might change her mind and be here this evening.”

  “Not Rietta. She doesn’t change her mind. Stubborn as flint.” He seemed to recall suddenly to whom he spoke. He ducked his head ingratiatingly. “I’ll not hide her faults from you. You won’t be able to say I misrepresented her.”

  “I had already realized that one.” Nick looked past his host, remembering her firm chin and steady eyes. “She told me she had a long-standing arrangement for Thursday nights. Where does she go?”

  “She takes a basket to an old pensioner of her mother’s. M’wife’s old maid. A Mrs. Athy.”

  Blanche overheard. “Are you talking of that old woman Rietta goes to? Dreadful creature. She’s as old as the hills.” She snickered. “Smokes a pipe, too, if you please.”

  “How very charitable of your sister.”

  Blanche seemed to catch something disparaging in his tone. “I prefer charities closer to home. There’s no need to walk outside the walls and into the Claddagh.”

  “She goes into the village by herself?”

  “Every week. I’ve only been once—that was enough for me. They spoke nothing but Irish the whole time. I couldn’t understand a word. And they expected me to eat herring!” She shivered throughout her frame in a wholly delightful way. Mr. Joyce’s eyes seemed fated to fall from his head.

  Mr. Joyce roused himself from contemplation of Blanche’s figure. “The villagers are openly hostile to strangers wandering there. Especially, if you’ll forgive my mentioning it, red-haired women.”

  “What’s wrong with red-haired women?” Nick asked, thinking there had to be a word more descriptive than “red” for that shifting mass of gold and copper.

  “The fishermen think red-haired women are bad luck. If they see one on their way in the morning, they turn around and go home. Or so they claim. It’s a barbarous place, the Claddagh.”

  “I can’t stop her,” Mr. Ferris said with a resigned shrug. “She sees it as her duty. Besides which, Mrs. Athy is very well respected among the fisher folk. She’ll see to it no harm comes to Rietta.”

  “Why, what harm could come to her, red-haired or not?” Nick asked. “I have been out of the country for some time, but it hardly seems possible that lawlessness should have taken such a grip.”

  “It’s just those people over there have their own laws, their own ways. They even claim to have their own king,” Mr. Ferris said with a chuckling contempt, adding, “It’s a wonder the government allows it in these unsettled times. Come now, Sir Nicholas, you must have heard that at least, born and bred in the West.”

  “Yes, I know of it. My father was of the opinion that they were the original founders of Galway and when our lot came in, they were pushed back.”

  “Your lot?” Blanche asked brightly.

  “The Kirwans are Norman,” Mr. Joyce answered. “So are my people. We came here in 1140.”

  It was obvious to Nick that Blanche had no interest in anything that had happened more than a day or two before, if so long as that. “I wonder where Mr. Mochrie has gotten to? You did invite him, Father?”

  “Yes, just as you asked.”

  Blanche pouted prettily when her father gave her game away. Mr. Joyce turned toward her with a half-wild expression. Nick had never seen the languid boy so active. She soon flattered him into a more compliant frame of mind that lasted even after David Mochrie arrived. Watching Blanche juggle her admirers was as good as a play. He declined to take a role himself, however, no matter how many encouraging glances he received.

  After dinner, Blanche excused herself. Shortly after she’d left the room, the pensive strains of a harp song wound its way through the candle smoke. David and Mr. Joyce, daring each other with their eyes over the brandy glasses, excused themselves as one man and nearly tangled arms and legs in the doorway.

  Mr. Ferris laughed low. “Like bees to a honey pot. It’s not her fortune that wins her so many admirers. Why, when she was but fourteen a poet attempted to run off with her. I never dared send her to school for fear she’d turn all the masters’ heads.”

  “I’m surprised you are willing she should be the wife of a squire. Such beauty deserves a title, at least.”

  Mr. Ferris winked at Nick. “You can’t have ‘em both, Sir Nicholas!” Perhaps Nick’s distaste showed, for the man poured more wine in his glass and sat back. “Oh, she’s had her opportunities to rise in the world,” he said matter-of-factly. “When she went south to her aunt, there were a few lordlings who wanted her. But not legitimate—I’m not rich enough for that! Besides, she don’t care to leave Galway and me.”

  Milton’s lines about whether ‘twas better to rule or to serve depending on where one was occurred to Nick. Better to be the prettiest girl in Galway than one of a hundred charming faces at a London assembly.

  “She’s a tender-hearted little thing. Wouldn’t give me pain for all the world. Still, time she was married.”

  “I’m surprised, sir, that you cling to the tradition of marrying eldest before youngest. Surely with so many suitors, Blanche might marry tomorrow if you so choose.”

  Mr. Ferris poured himself more wine. He wasn’t drunk, just loose enough to find confiding a pleasure and relief. “I’ll tell you ‘bout that. It’s all due to the curse.”

  “The curse?”

  “Right.” He drank, seeming to feel that he’d said enough.

  Nick hadn’t seen anyone put away so much liquor without showing the effects of it since Gunner Barnes had wagered he could drink four bottles of the powerful local anisette liqueur which, as it turned out, was considerably less alcoholic than the stuff Mrs. Barnes had been making for years.

  “What curse would that be, Mr. Ferris?” he asked, tipping the bottle over the older man’s glass.

  “I shouldn’t pay any attention to it, I know. But m’father believed it. Wouldn’t allow my sisters to marry out of order of their birth and neither shall I!”

  “So the curse is on your family.”

  Mr. Ferris nodded as though the hin
ge of his neck no longer held. “Something to do with a girl from the hills who thought my great-great-grandfather should have married her instead of her sister.

  “I don’t believe it,” Mr. Ferris added. “But I won’t go against it. If you marry my Rietta, you shall have a thousand pounds with her and, at my death, half my estates, providing I do not marry again.”

  “And if you do?”

  “If I do what?” His small, reddened eyes were blinking hard in order to focus.

  “If you marry again?”

  “Won’t. Not after my ... my Miranda. No one could ever take her place,” he said and sniffed. “She was a queen among women, fairest of all the roses. Sweet, modest, and tip over tail in love with me. Ah, m’darlin’, m’darlin’.”

  Nick recognized all the signs. He’d pulled the boots off more than one officer or cadet who’d underestimated his capacity for strong drink. Mr. Ferris had reached the maudlin stage, where it became necessary to mourn lost chances. He’d even known one subaltern to weep because he’d not yet met the love of his life and feared he never would. He’d been all of nineteen. Nick had dumped that one none too gently on his cot. The subaltern’s plight had seemed minor indeed, compared with himself at twenty-seven with half a dozen love affairs behind him and yet no love to keep.

  Nick stood up. “What time does Miss Ferris usually return from the Claddagh?”

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Ferris said, dabbing at his eyes with the edge of the tablecloth- “Ten, sometimes. She’s not often later than ten.”

  * * * *

  The stories and songs were over. The peat fire burned low in the earthen fireplace as Mrs. Athy saw out die last of her friends and neighbors. Rietta smiled at her hostess’s brother, his head fallen to his shoulder, his buzzing breaths faint. The whiskey had loosened his tongue and sent him eventually to sleep, as his sister had predicted.

  Mrs. Athy returned, picked up the kettle from the hearth, and gave it a questioning shake. A satisfactory slosh within rewarded her. “Another cup of tea, m’dearie?”

  “Not for me, Mrs. Athy, thank you. I shall gurgle fearfully as I walk home even if I don’t have another.”