The Firebird

by Susanna Kearsley

  And after that she’d fallen back to watching him, half-listening, more interested in the way that he and the vice admiral interacted. It was clear they had a history that had not been without conflict, though they seemed to view each other with respect.

  Moray smiled and said to Gordon, “Having buried me already once at sea yourself, you should not have been much surprised to see me resurrected.”

  “No, perhaps not. But I was surprised to think you might have had a child.” He took his cup of tea from Anna, thanking her. “The priests who were pursuing her did call her ‘Anna Moray,’ though she would not own the name. I did allow she might have been your brother William’s girl, or Robin’s, but I could think of no good reason why they’d send their daughters out of Scotland, when they were themselves both there still. And the more I knew her, I confess I could not think of her as anyone’s but yours. Not in her face alone,” he said, “but in her habits and her manner, and her speech.” He smiled. “She all but dared me, in Calais, to take her part.”

  Sophia said, “And I am glad you did.”

  There could be no mistaking, Anna thought, how Gordon’s features softened when he gazed upon her mother. “Would you like a different drink?” he asked her, with a hint of humor. “I recall the last time you drank tea with me it was not to your liking.”

  The small smile that she returned to him held memory, too. “No, thank you, Thomas. Tea is fine.” And at her prompting, he continued.

  “Well,” he said, and looked again at Moray, “if you were indeed her father, as I did suspect, then I could think of but one woman who would be her mother, for considering the girl’s age, I remembered you had eyes for but one woman at the time. And I knew where I’d last seen her. So I wrote to Slains,” he told them. “To the Earl of Erroll.”

  Anna, with her own tea in her hand, returned to sit beside her mother. “When was this?” she asked, because it was the first she’d ever heard of it.

  “At Candlemas, our first year here. But what I did not know was that the earl had died the autumn just before that.”

  Anna frowned. “But he was not an old man.”

  “No. No, it was indeed a tragedy. His letter was returned to me unopened by his sister, the new countess, who assumed it spoke of business for the king, which might be private. I assured her, in the letter I wrote back to her, my business was of quite a different nature.” Gordon drank his tea, the way he always drank it, without sugar to smooth any of its bitterness. “I asked the countess if Sophia Paterson, who once had lived at Slains, did live there still, and if she’d ever had a child. I got my answer the next spring. The countess, like her mother, is a woman of discretion. She said, no, Sophia was no longer there, and yes, there’d been a child, but all she was at liberty to tell me was the child had left that place with Colonel Patrick Graeme some few years before, and if I truly had a right to know her whereabouts, then I would also know the colonel well enough myself to ask him.” His eyes, in good humor, admired the countess’s cleverness, as he went on, “So I did. I learned where Colonel Graeme lived in Paris, and I wrote to him. And then had no reply until the letter you yourself did see me open,” he told Anna.

  She remembered.

  Moray levelly remarked, “My uncle died nearly five years ago.”

  “I know,” said Gordon soberly. “I’m sorry. News is slow to reach us sometimes in this place. It was his son, the Capuchin, who wrote to me November last, to say he had just then found time to sort his father’s things, and found my letter yet unopened, and had read it.”

  Anna pictured Father Graeme, with his father’s laughing eyes and bearded face, and asked, “And was he well?”

  “The monk? Aye,” Gordon answered, “he was well, but very curious as to why I would ask about Sophia’s child.” He settled back. “Till then I had been guarded also, with my information, for I would not for the world, my dear, have put you in harm’s way. But when I had this letter from the Capuchin, I knew from how he wrote that he did have an urgent interest in your welfare. So I answered him, and told him I believed that I did have you here, with me. I told the tale of how I’d found you at Calais, and then…”

  “And then my cousin, Father Graeme, wrote to me,” said Moray, neatly picking up the narrative.

  “To us,” Sophia said.

  He granted the correction, with a sideways glance toward his wife. “His letter reached us… when?”

  “The seventeenth of May,” she told him quietly. “At half-past three.”

  Her gaze had drifted downward and he reached across to where her hands were tightly twined upon her lap, and covered them with one of his. A little gesture that would have gone unremarked by most, but Anna saw the strong unspoken flow of comfort pass from Moray to her mother. Then he raised his eyes to Anna’s.

  “We’d come to think the worst. When ye were lost,” he started, and then stopped and had to start again, as though his voice had failed him. “When ye vanished from Calais, I was where word could not have reached me. It was not until the summer, when we’d seen the king moved safely into Italy, that I had leave to go, and I came north, to Ypres.”

  “To keep your promise.”

  “Aye. To fetch my wee brave lass, and bring ye home with me to Ireland, where your mother and your brothers were awaiting ye. Where ye belonged.”

  Her smile was sad. “Except I wasn’t there.”

  He shook his head. “And I learned why, and that ye’d gone with Patrick—Father Graeme—to Calais. So that’s where I went, too.” He looked then, at Vice Admiral Gordon. “Did ye ken Rebecca Ogilvie was also at Calais, then?”

  “Aye, I did. In fact, I had just crossed the Channel in her company,” said Gordon. “I confess I took no small delight in making it a most unpleasant voyage for her.” He was smiling at the memory.

  “Well, the Ogilvies and I have an acquaintance of long standing,” Moray said. “When I went across to Scotland twenty years ago with Simon Fraser, they were in the boat behind, and being captured when they landed, neither one did hesitate to string the noose around our necks to save their own. They’ve intrigued for the English ever since,” he said, “and when I heard that Patrick, all unknowing, had left Mrs. Ogilvie alone with Anna…”

  Whatever he’d thought when he’d heard that was destined, it seemed, to stay private, because he looked down and away from her then, and this time it was her mother’s hand that moved gently from underneath his to lie calmingly over the top of it, weaving her fingers through his as she clasped his large hand within both of hers, lending him strength.

  “We believed you’d been taken,” she told Anna softly. “Your father spent some months in Paris, and he and his cousin and your Uncle Maurice and good Colonel Graeme together did search for you, but there was nothing.” Her voice dropped in volume. “Just nothing.”

  Recovered now, Moray turned back to her. “Why did ye run from Calais?”

  Anna tried to explain, though the words sounded sorely inadequate now, the attempts of a small, lonely child to protect those she loved by surrendering all hope of happiness, as it had seemed to her then.

  When she’d finished, Sophia was once again holding a hand to her heart. “Oh, my dear. Oh, my love.”

  Moray did not say anything, but his eyes had the same reddened bright look they’d had long ago when she had kissed him good-bye at the convent. Abruptly, he pushed himself out of his chair and crossed over to one of the windows and stood looking out, with his back to her.

  Gordon, affected as well, drew a sharp breath and looked to the side, to a candlestick set on the bookshelf, as though it were suddenly wanting his keen observation.

  “But really, it all worked out well in the end,” Anna told them, attempting to fix what she’d broken. “I’ve had a good life. Not just here, but before this,” she said to Sophia, “at Slains, and at Ypres. I have had a good life.”

  Moray said, “Not the life ye were meant to have, Anna. The life that we wished for ye.”

  “
No, perhaps not, but…” She paused, and her forehead creased lightly with all of the effort of trying to say what she wanted to tell them, to lessen their pain. She said, “I should have been very sad, to have missed any part of it.”

  Vice Admiral Gordon sniffed loudly, and coughed, and said, “Well, then.”

  And all of them sat there in silence a moment.

  Sophia was first to speak. “Thomas, I cannot begin to—”

  “Then don’t.” In his charming smile, Anna could see how he might have appeared as a younger man. “There is no need. I owed you that much.”

  Moray told him, “I’m thinking ye’ve paid any debt to us over more times than ye needed to.”

  Gordon’s gaze traveled from Sophia’s face to her daughter’s, and looking at Anna he said to her father, “In this instance, Colonel, ’twas I who was paid.”

  “You’ve done well by her, Thomas,” Sophia said gently. “You’ve made her a lady.”

  That word struck a discordant note within Anna, and twisted her heart in a way she had almost forgotten, with all that had happened this evening. But now she looked sharply at Gordon.

  “Your letters.”

  “What letters would those be, my dear?”

  “I was told by the general that you and Sir Harry had both written letters of late, touching things of importance. If I’m to return into Ireland now with…” She broke off and glanced at Sophia, in case she assumed too much, but when she saw how her mother was watching her, looking so hopeful and happy, she said, “…with my parents, I pray you allow me to carry those letters, instead of the man you have asked.”

  Gordon lifted his eyebrows. “Why? What’s wrong with Mr. O’Connor?”

  She stopped up her ears to the voice of her heart. And she told him.

  Chapter 46

  It only took four days to get her passport, little time to see to everything that needed to be done; to say good-bye to all the people she’d grown up with and grown fond of, and would miss.

  The trunk she had brought to the Lacys’ had been packed again, only this time more full, with a pair of red shoes at the bottom that she’d been unable to part with, for reasons she did not examine.

  There’d been other gifts. The general had insisted that she take the chessboard with its pieces, “For it rarely has been used so much as when you have been here, and I do fear the chessmen will grow bored and idle after you have gone, so you had better take them with you. Every army,” he had told her, “needs its general.” Father Dominic had given her the grace of the Seraphic Blessing of St. Francis, placing his hands gently on her head while he had prayed, “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may He make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; may He lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.” And then he had told her, “Remember the faith you were raised in my child, and love not in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth; and whoever may come to you, either a friend or a foe, or a thief or a robber, receive them with kindness, for each man must walk on the path to which he has been called.”

  She’d promised to try, though she knew she had not the monk’s way of forgiveness.

  The children had made her a drawing in pencil, with all of them in it, and labeled in Michael’s fine hand.

  “This is you,” little Katie had said to her, “catching the bird. And that’s Ned.” She had pointed to one of the sketched figures, taller than the rest. “He’s gone away now.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  She had let Gordon tell the Lacys what she knew about their kinsman and his dealings with the English spy, for she’d not had the heart to do so. None of them had spoken of it to each other since.

  In time, thought Anna, she herself would cease to think about him, and she would no longer see his smile or hear his voice within her memory quite so often. He’d be relegated to that same dim place as Christiane, and she would count it well that she had never lost her heart to him. Or so she’d reassured herself, as she had packed her things away, but for some reason when she’d taken up the note and playing cards he’d sent her, and prepared to tear them through and so dispose of them, her fingers had been unable to do it, and instead they’d gripped the ace of hearts and smiling knave more tightly, and had wrapped his note around them and thrust all into her pocket.

  Mrs. Lacy knew, she thought, for in the older woman’s eyes as they were saying their farewells Anna had seen a light of sympathy. “Men and their secrets,” Mrs. Lacy had said, and she had shaken her head and given Anna one more kiss and had assured her she’d be perfectly all right with Mary Gordon coming now to keep her company until the baby’s birth.

  Mary herself, and Nan, had been harder farewells, and there’d been weeping all around, but Anna knew now, from her parents’ own example, that a parting did not always mean a permanent good-bye. She had remembrances from each of them—a pair of pearl earrings from Mary, and an amber brooch from Nan. And even Charles had paid a visit to Vice Admiral Gordon’s house, to sit for tea and talk and say his own good-bye.

  Gordon had remarked to him, “I hear you’re bound for Moscow soon, with General Bohn.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have done well, my lad. I’m proud of you, as would your father be.”

  Charles had returned the smile and said, “Your own pride, Uncle, is enough for me.” To Anna, he had added, “I expect you now to write to me, and tell me your adventures, cousin, for I trust you’ll not forget your family.”

  She had given him her promise.

  And in truth, she seemed to have more family round her now than she knew what to do with, for she’d scarcely moved these past few days without her father walking by her side, or else her mother sitting next to her, and all within their circle had by now been told the story of their coming, or at least the public version of it, for to everyone her father had been introduced as Captain Jamieson, who’d left his daughter in Vice Admiral Gordon’s care while he himself had been away and fighting for the French, and now had come to take her home again.

  Sir Harry was the only one among their friends who knew the perfect truth of it, because he knew her father’s family well and had been quick to recognize him when they’d first been introduced, although he’d held the secret close and played along in public with the common version of the tale.

  Sir Harry had himself arranged the sloop that was to carry them to Cronstadt, where they were to meet a larger ship to take them first to Amsterdam, and then from there to Ulster, where her parents had their home. And it was now Sir Harry who was personally seeing to the loading of their baggage on that sloop, while he and Moray stood together on the solid timber planks of the exchange, beneath a sky whose sun was hidden behind swiftly running clouds.

  “And how are both your sisters?” asked Sir Harry.

  “Very well, I hear.”

  “Amelia was always great fun. They did both marry Grahams, your sisters, did they not?”

  “Aye. Our family’s well bound to the Grahams.”

  “We’re all interwoven, I think,” said Sir Harry. And then, as though that had reminded him, “I was sorry to hear that my stepmother, your brother’s wife, had passed on. Has he married again?”

  Moray shook his head. “No, I’m told Robin manages well enough now, with the children grown older.”

  “It must be very difficult, to not have any contact with them. You were always close, as I recall.”

  “Aye.” Moray gave a nod so short that Anna knew by now, from watching him these past days, that it hid a deep emotion. “My youngest brother, Maurice, knows I live, for I did see him while he was at Paris, but I doubt he does remember that.”

  “I’d heard he was… not well,” Sir Harry said. “So he has not recovered?”

  Moray gave a shrug. “He is much improved, I’m told, from what he was. But he will never be again the man we knew.”

  Sir Harry gave a feeling sigh. “Aye, well, the world has turned us all, and which of us will ever be the man that we once were
?”

  Moray’s eyes grew slightly crinkled at their corners. “I do see the world has turned you into a philosopher.”

  “A merchant, if you please,” Sir Harry said, and smiled. “And with much business to attend to.” While they’d shaken hands the men had shared a brief embrace, like brothers. “A safe journey to you, John. ’Tis good to see you look so well. Come, Mr. Taylor,” called Sir Harry to his secretary, “it is time we were away.”

  As Mr. Taylor passed, he gave a final bow to Anna. “Godspeed, Mistress Jamieson.”

  “I thank you, Mr. Taylor.”

  They had spoken briefly earlier, and Anna had, with some remorse, said, “I am very sorry if I gave you cause to hope, sir, that—”

  He had not let her finish. “Any hopes,” he’d told her, “were my own. Your behavior, Mistress Jamieson, has always been most proper and most ladylike, and quite above reproach.”

  That had been earlier this morning. Now, he only wished her well and bowed and took his leave.

  As Anna watched him walk away down the exchange, her mother came to stand beside her. “He does seem a nice young man.”

  “He is,” said Anna. “He is very nice.”

  Her mother smiled, and straightening the seam at Anna’s shoulder said, “If I could give you one piece of advice, my dear, it would be that you should never give your hand to any man unless he also holds your heart.”

  What hope for her, then? Anna wondered, for her own heart was already held by one who had no right to it and who did not deserve it, but who would not let it go. “Then I suppose,” she said, in a small voice that did not fully seem to know that it was saying things aloud, “that I shall never give my hand.”

  Her mother did not make reply to that, but gave her arm a reassuring squeeze and turned away to say farewell to the vice admiral.