by Dorothy Eden
Cathleen stood with her head high, holding her temper. “I had this letter today.” She hadn’t intended to show it to him, but now the anger he made her feel resulted in her thrusting the folded paper at him. “Read it. You’ll see that whether I want to or not, I’m being dragged into your affairs.”
He was frowning again, his head bent as he studied the scrawled message.
“What would you do about such a thing?” Cathleen asked impatiently. “Decide it wasn’t your business? Ignore it? Let a helpless child be in danger? Or go to the police?”
“Good heavens, no police! This will be settled inside the family. It’s a family matter.”
How would it be settled, if no one knew what it was?
Cathleen shook her head slowly, but all she could say, in baffled anger, was, “For goodness sake, call me Cathleen. Liam does.”
He stood up. He was really quite a lot taller than Liam. Her head would come—she took a step backwards, aware that she had flushed and that he was looking at her curiously.
“But I’m not Liam. Am I?”
“You’re not Liam, in the least.”
“Good. It’s as well to have that point established. Thank you for thinking it your duty to tell me about my mother. I assume you’ve told Liam, too.”
“Peggy said it was always you who went up to see her.”
She tried not to waver beneath his intent regard.
“Can I ask you what you intend to do about that letter?”
“No. You cannot. And I ask you to let it alone. You and my bird-brained sister—what might have been kept inside the family is now all over Loughneath.”
So he knew about that, too.
“But we only went and made appointments with the hairdresser. Surely that was innocent enough.”
“Kitty has never had her hair done in the village. Everyone knows that.”
“Well, I warned you!” Cathleen said heatedly. “I couldn’t let a thing like a child in trouble—”
He interrupted in a quiet voice of weary boredom, “Mrs. Lamb—Cathleen—mavourneen, if you like it in Irish—could you possibly use up those admirable maternal qualities on something else? Aunt Tilly’s orphans, if you like. But just something else.”
She stood staring at him, making no move to go, thinking desperately that she must know the truth about him.
“I’m not going to apologize for interfering,” she said stubbornly. “Nor for using time belonging to your aunt this afternoon. After all, I worked late last night. I spread things on the floor in the library and sat behind the desk. No one knew I was there.”
His black eyes didn’t flicker
“I was the last person to go upstairs to bed.”
She couldn’t tell him more plainly that she had overheard him, and that today Kitty was shadowing her. But all he did was put his hands on her shoulders and say gently,
“If you insist on being involved in our melodramas, you mustn’t be so sensitive. Stop inventing scarecrows. Now go to bed.”
It was only later that she remembered she had left the letter with him. So he could destroy it and pretend it had never existed. And everyone, listening to his beguiling voice, would believe everything he said. Even she, herself…
She dreamed she heard the baby crying again that night. But when she woke up she was crying herself.
And it was dawn, and the crows, gathered on the crooked tree, were beginning to croak and squabble. There they sat in the unreal early dawn, threatening with their weight to break off that grotesque branch.
The tree was a scarecrow like herself, inhabited only with the black birds of sorrow…
CHAPTER NINE
CATHLEEN OPENED HER EYES and saw the face floating above her.
“Liam! Oh! It’s you!”
Blue sky and green fields swung dizzily as she struggled up. The face above her swam in a mist, too. Then it came clear, and she heard Rory saying, “I’m not Liam. Sorry. What happened?”
“Macushla bolted. I couldn’t hold her. Let me get up. Where’s Macushla now?”
“She’s all right. She’s made for the stables. What does Liam think he’s doing, letting you ride a half-broken filly?”
“But she’s so gentle. Something must have frightened her.”
She had been riding down the slope of the field beyond the shrubbery and the lawns, when all at once Macushla had turned to a wild thing, swerving sharply to the right, and then, freed of her rider, galloping away. In the suddenness of her fall Cathleen couldn’t be sure whether she had seen a flicker of white among the rhododendron bushes or not.
Rory, she noticed, wore a white shirt.
But there was Liam galloping up and leaning out of the saddle to ask what had happened.
“I had a fall,” said Cathleen. “Macushla bolted.”
“What made Macushla bolt?” Liam looked at Rory. “Did you see?”
“Only the filly coming home with an empty saddle. Why the devil do you let a woman ride her before she’s properly broken?”
“She is properly broken,” Liam retorted. “She must have had a fright.”
“A filly that age jumps sideways at her own shadow.” The two men’s gazes were locked. It was the first time Cathleen had realized the enmity between them. Rory moved first, putting his arm across Cathleen’s shoulders. “Let’s get back to the house. Cathleen needs some brandy, by the look of her.”
Cathleen put her hand to her hair. It was tumbling out of its pins on to her shoulders. She was shaken, but quite able to stand alone. The temptation to lean on Rory was pure weakness.
“I’m perfectly all right, only a bit bruised, I expect. You’d better go and see what’s happened to Macushla, Liam.”
Liam had slid out of the saddle.
“Jimmy will take care of her. Are you sure you’re all right?”
Now both pairs of eyes, the black and the blue, were looking at her. And in the shrubbery, had that white thing moved away?
“Of course I am,” she said impatiently. “It’s not the first toss I’ve ever taken.”
“How did you happen to be there?” Liam asked Rory.
“A mere coincidence,” said Rory levelly.
Was it coincidence, too, that Mary Kate was grumbling about the early morning visit of one of those good for nothing tinkers, wanting to sell her pots and pans before breakfast, and him with his foot in the doorway, as cheeky as the devil.
“Where is he now?” Cathleen asked sharply.
“Miss O’Riordan sent him on his way with a flea in his ear. Me with my good copper pans, and him wanting to sell me his rubbishing stuff. The nerve of him!”
Miss O’Riordan, animated from her encounter with the tinker, came briskly into breakfast with a white duster tied round her head, as if she had been at her housework for some time. And Kitty’s pale blue linen dress had seen so many tubbings that now it was almost white.
The movement that had startled Macushla could have been the flash of the tinker’s bright tin wares as he slipped away through the back garden.
It could have been a branch whipped with a gust of wind, or a pigeon flying out of the undergrowth.
The disarray of Cathleen’s hair was noticed, and the reason had to be given. It was no use to say feebly that her typing fingers were intact. Miss O’Riordan was angry, and said bluntly that Cathleen was paid to work as her secretary, not to be entertained as if she were a guest at a country house, with morning rides and dinner-parties.
An argument began to fly about Cathleen’s still dizzy head.
“Hang it, Aunt Tilly, she can’t do more than an eight-hour day. She must have recreations.”
“She’s welcome to read any of the books in the library, and walk about the gardens.”
“You can’t make her a prisoner.”
“Prisoner, is it! And her twice in the town, already. And finding her way all over the castle. Talking to this one and that one. Oh, a great talker she is. And now, at dinner tonight, she’ll be treated as a guest
. I’ve put her next to Colonel Green because of his British sympathies, the poor misguided fellow.”
Here Cathleen roused herself.
“I’m afraid, Miss O’Riordan, after that bump, my head—”
“Whatever’s happened to your head is your own fault entirely. You’ll come to dinner, because otherwise the numbers will be wrong. I refuse to sit down thirteen at a table. You have my permission to excuse yourself immediately afterwards. But accidents on horses aren’t something I bargained for when I engaged you. I can’t be put to the expense and trouble of finding another young woman with your qualifications. So I merely ask you to stop training for the Dublin Horse Show, or whatever it is, and stick to your job.”
“A dictatorship, you see,” said Rory, and Cathleen realized that he was speaking directly to her. “Or perhaps matriarchy would be a better word.”
“And what nonsense would that be you’re talking?” Aunt Tilly said icily. “I’m not your mother. I merely struggle to run this impossible household while she’s incapacitated. Where, I’d be having you tell me, would you all be without me?”
Liam got up and walked round the table to give the old lady’s shoulder a squeeze.
“We all know what you’ve done for us, Aunt Tilly.”
A flicker crossed her long face. That was the only sign she gave that Liam’s gesture had pleased her. She said in her rasping voice,
“Kitty, don’t take all day over your breakfast. The silver must be cleaned, and Mary Kate won’t have time to help. I want Patsy for polishing furniture. It needn’t be said all over County Galway that Loughneath Castle has gone to rack and ruin. We’ll have candles on the dinner-table. Their light is flattering for more than one kind of ruin.” Her eyes snapped round the table, looking for appreciation of her wit. “Kitty, did you hear what I said?”
Kitty’s hands went involuntarily to her cheeks. Had she thought this was another small verbal cruelty of her aunt’s? She didn’t raise her eyes.
“I’ll do the silver, Aunt Tilly.”
“Good. And don’t forget to pay some attention to your own appearance. I admit none of the guests are very young, but there’s no point in not making the best of yourself. Colonel Green still has an eye for a woman, even if he’s rather more than a day over sixty. Mrs. Lamb, if you’re going to faint, don’t do it here.”
Cathleen opened her eyes wide. She felt far from faint at that moment. Healthy indignation was surging through her. She knew that in this household she was never going to be able to let well alone. Kitty must have an ally.
“I’m not going to faint, Miss O’Riordan.”
“Then if you need an aspirin, go and take one. I expect you to be in the library working by nine-thirty.”
“Welcome to ould Ireland,” said Rory. He suddenly put back his head and shouted with laughter.
Miss O’Riordan was right about the candlelight. It made the room look shadowy and magnificent. The dark secret eyes of the gypsy in the painting looked down at the polished table with its crested Georgian silver and Waterford glass, at the guests in evening dress and jewels.
Contrary to Miss O’Riordan’s warning, Cathleen found her neighbour, the elderly Colonel Green, a courtly and entertaining person with more than a touch of the blarney. Opposite her, Liam looked very handsome indeed. He kept giving her intimate glances which she refused to acknowledge, but which undeniably made her heart beat faster. Kitty, apart from her unfortunate red dress which completely extinguished the little colour she had, was doing her best, talking to a middle-aged couple who apparently lived for hunting. The enigmatic Magdalene, though her shining red hair swatched round her head was beautiful, was not otherwise as striking as Cathleen had expected. She sat next to Rory at the head of the table. Rory, in spite of his conventional attire, still had a touch of wildness about him. It was in his eyes, Cathleen realized. They were too bold and bright ever to be subdued to the convention of a dull dinner-party.
But the evening was Miss O’Riordan’s.
“She ages wonderfully,” Colonel Green said in an undertone to Cathleen. “She’s a much finer-looking woman now than she was as a girl. Then—well, what with her plain face and her temper, the young men kept well out of harm’s way. Though I must admit there were scandals. Oh, yes, indeed.”
“Scandals seem to be a prerogative of this family,” Cathleen murmured.
“Always have been. Always will be. Ah yes, Miss Matilda was quite a girl.”
The candlelight shone on the long eccentric face, the piled white hair, the scrawny neck, the expensive black gown. It shone, too, on the brooch pinned at the centre of her flat bosom, and this held Cathleen’s eyes irresistibly. Who, least of all Colonel Green, would have believed the scene that had taken place not an hour before.
“Mrs. Lamb, I want you to go to Dublin tomorrow. You’ll have to spend the night, and return the following day.”
“Certainly, Miss O’Riordan.”
“I want you to take this brooch to a jeweller. I’ve telephoned him. He knows the piece very well. He will give you five hundred pounds for it.”
“Five hundred!”
Aunt Tilly’s eyes raked her with magnificence and contempt.
“My dear girl, it’s a Fabergé piece. It was my grandmother’s. It should of course, be an heirloom, but that’s less important now than the necessity for money.”
“But what a pity—”
“I didn’t ask you to express an opinion, Mrs. Lamb. Worse things happened in the potato famine.”
So Cathleen could say no more. She couldn’t even ask if Rory knew of this sacrifice of one of the family heirlooms which, in its way, was as significant as the land he refused to sell. She could certainly never ask why Miss O’Riordan had such an urgent need for five hundred pounds.
The gypsy in the painting wouldn’t have minded losing the brooch. She would probably have preferred her multicoloured flamboyant glass beads to diamonds and sapphires.
Colonel Green followed Cathleen’s glance to the picture and whispered, “One of Sean O’Riordan’s whores. That was in the day when all the landed gentry had their whores painted.”
“Wasn’t she really a gypsy?”
“Heaven knows. Could have been, at that. Wouldn’t trust an O’Riordan.”
Talk of the gypsy had made Cathleen think of something else.
“Do you have tinkers calling at your house?”
“Not that I know of. My housekeeper would give them short shrift. They might poach on my property, thieves and rascals that they are.”
“Are they still illiterate?”
“I should think so. The lazy devils wouldn’t waste time going to school.”
So if all tinkers were illiterate it couldn’t have been the tinker who had written that note. Unless he had persuaded someone to write it for him, and then had journeyed thirty miles to Galway to post it.
But who?
Or was the persistent tinker not a genuine member of that star-light and sun-up profession?
When the ladies left the table, Cathleen contrived to walk beside Magdalene Driscoll.
“Would you like to come up to my room to powder your nose?” she asked.
She hoped Miss O’Riordan hadn’t noticed. If she didn’t talk to Magdalene now the girl would be monopolized by other people, and then would be gone.
On close inspection, Magdalene was more attractive than Cathleen had at first thought. She had a sharp nose, but delicate features and an exquisite skin, also an air of great pride. She looked at Cathleen curiously.
“You’re the new secretary, aren’t you? Is Miss O’Riordan really writing a book? I should think she’s asking for libel suits.”
“It’s fascinating material.”
Cathleen watched Magdalene as she sat in front of the mirror. She saw the disillusioned eyes looking back at her from the glass.
“Fascinating is right. Up to the present day.”
“I expect you’ve heard the rumour, too. About the baby.”
“I gather that most people have. Someone has made it his business, or her business, to see that it spreads. At that, rumours spread of their own accord in this country.” She shrugged. “It won’t be the first illegitimate child in this family, I should think.”
“Illegitimate?”
“How else?” Magdalene had turned to face Cathleen. Her eyes had no hint of mockery. “Shamus wasn’t married, you know. Nor did he have a child.”
“But—”
“Oh, yes, you’ve heard all the stuff, about the marriage register, and so on. Couldn’t there be another Shamus O’Riordan? It’s not an absolutely unheard-of name. All I know is, it wasn’t my Shamus. He didn’t lie. Oh, I know what you think. That Irishmen don’t lie, but speak cleverly and amusingly round the truth. Shamus didn’t even do that, He was honest.”
“But the baby—”
“God knows! Ask Rory. Ask Liam. That’s if it even exists.
“I had an anonymous letter. I lost my own baby not very long ago. I suppose this person knows and is thinking I’ll be sympathetic or gullible or something, and start making things awkward for the family.”
“Hell!” said Magdalene sympathetically. “That makes two of us bereaved. I am sorry.”
“But who would write the letter to me?”
“The baby’s mother, perhaps. If there is a baby. I suppose she fondly imagines she’s the wronged one. But if she were honest she would come into the open, wouldn’t she? There’d be no need for this back-door approach.”
“You mean that red-headed girl who came—”
“That will-o’-the-wisp, that bog fairy!” Magdalene suddenly put her face in her hands. “I don’t know. All I know is that I loved Shamus and he loved me. And now he’s gone. Don’t get mixed up with this family. I’m warning you. You’ll only get hurt.”
“Scorched,” Cathleen murmured. “That’s what Rory said.”
“Rory’s like Shamus.”
“Honest?”
“I wouldn’t know about that. One honest O’Riordan in a generation would be riches. No, he’s only like him in looks. I have to keep away from him. I might be tempted to do this transference of feelings thing, and find I’d an impostor on my hands, Or in my breast.” She began patting powder on her nose. “Do you think we’re all crazy?”