Never Call It Love (17 page)

The
carriage and its driver, Michael, a stocky, cheerful man of forty-odd, had been
waiting when the ship docked at Waterford. He had said, "Welcome to
Ireland, Lady Stanford, and may you find every happiness." Then, to
Elizabeth's astonishment, he had added with a wink, "And congratulations
to you, Sir Patrick," and clapped his employer on the shoulder.

The
channel crossing had been rough. Elizabeth had not minded. In fact, having to
fight down nausea had distracted her somewhat from memories of the recent past,
especially the memory of Donald's white, set face when she and Patrick had
turned away from the altar in the crowded village church. Donald had joined the
line of those congratulating the newly married pair as they stood at the church
door. But apparently he had been unable to bring himself to attend the
reception at the Hedges afterward.

That
ghastly reception. Mrs. Montlow had moved among her guests with her head held
high, trying to look
as if her daughter's choice of a husband was a fulfillment of her own most
cherished dreams. The guests themselves, lifelong friends and neighbors,
gathered in subdued little groups, exchanging the conventional pleasantries,
but with faces that reflected their puzzled wonder. They all knew that
Christopher Montlow had fled within minutes after his acquittal, and that it
must have been because he feared the tall Irishman who now moved about this
room, looking coolly self-assured in his wedding finery of bottle-green velvet.
How could it be that Elizabeth Montlow had jilted Donald Weymouth, a man they
all loved and honored, in order to marry a man the Montlows had every reason to
fear and dislike?

Much
as it pained her to leave the home that had been hers all her life, Elizabeth
was actually glad when it was time to go upstairs, and with Hawkins' help,
change from her white satin wedding gown to a traveling costume of brown rep.

The
road turned inland, past fields where men and women and even small children
weeded on hands and knees between rows of blossoming potatoes. Stone walls
marked the divisions between the fields. Sometimes, Elizabeth noted, the widths
of the fields were scarcely a hundred yards. A few of the people working
between the potato rows looked up with sullen faces as the coach passed. A man
of about thirty, leading a scrawny cow along the road, looked equally sullen as
he drew the animal aside to make way for the coach. So did a woman, hanging out
clothes in the grassless yard of a tumbledown thatched cottage.

For
the first time in perhaps half an hour, Elizabeth spoke. "These people
look so thin."

"A
not unnatural consequence," Patrick said, "of not having enough to
eat."

She
threw him a startled look. She had expected that he, a landowner, would react
defensively to her remark. Was
he so hardened to the wretched state of the Irish
peasantry that he felt no need of a defense? She asked, "Are these your
lands?"

"No,
not yet."

The
fields gave way to uncultivated land. Perhaps the numerous gray boulders
thrusting up through the long wild grass explained why the earth had not been
plowed. Soon after they had passed a lake—small and intensely blue, with a
wooded islet in its center—clouds blotted out the sun, and gentle rain pattered
on the coach roof. The shower was brief. When it had passed, Elizabeth saw the
jaggedly broken towers of a ruined castle on a hilltop. Above it in the now
clear sky hung an iridescent fragment of a rainbow.

Patrick
said, his gaze following hers, "The Normans built that castle. Essex
occupied it when Queen Elizabeth sent him over here to subdue Ireland. It fell
into ruins after that, but Cromwell used it as an arsenal when he was
here." He spoke as if Ireland's invaders, most of them centuries dead,
were men he had known. Were many of his countrymen like that, so steeped in
Irish history that this island's long and bloody past seemed like something
that had happened yesterday?

The
carriage rolled on past another lake, with floating white swans mirrored in its
surface, past a small stone church with the cross of Rome atop its steeple, and
daisies starring the unclipped grass of its churchyard. For a while they moved
through a narrow glen, filled with the chatter of a noisy little stream.
Leaning out of the carriage to look up through the fern-smelling dimness,
Elizabeth saw a ruined watchtower, built by some ancient Irish king or some
invader, rising from the steep hillside.

Despite
the sullen poverty of those tenant farmers, and despite her anxiety as to what
sort of life awaited her in Patrick Stanford's house, Elizabeth felt a stir of
response
to this land, with its wild loveliness so different from that of the tidy
English countryside.

They
left the glen and traveled along a level stretch toward a line of distant blue
hills, shadowed by clouds, that held promise of another shower. Here the stone
walls dividing fields of potatoes and grain were much farther apart The
cottages they passed seem in better repair, and the cows grazing in occasional
stretches of meadowland well-fed. To Elizabeth's relief, the few people she saw
seemed less hostile. A man guiding a hand plow between rows of potato plants
raised a battered black hat from his head and waved it. Three towheaded,
laughing little boys slid down from a stone wall and ran alongside the carriage
for a few yards, shouting something up at Michael in a language she knew must
be Gaelic.

She
asked, "Whose lands are these?"

"Mine."

"The
fields are larger here."

"That
is because I have not as yet been in need of obtaining more rents."

As
yet. Perhaps her twenty thousand, Elizabeth reflected somewhat wryly, would
make it possible for his tenants to work decent-sized holdings for some time to
come.

They
had reached another stretch of meadowland, dotted with grazing cattle. Up ahead
and to the left, a magnificent black horse, with a woman perched on the saddle,
soared over a stone fence and cantered toward them. Unbidden, Michael halted
the carriage. With admiration Elizabeth looked at the rider, noting how easily
she sat in the sidesaddle, one knee beneath her long dark blue velvet skirt
hooked over the horn, her back very straight, her head with its matching velvet
hat held high.

When
she was a few yards away, she checked her mount and slid gracefully to the
ground. Leading the horse, she approached the carriage window. Elizabeth saw
that she was beautiful indeed, a tall brunette with classic
features and
wide-set eyes of a deep indigo blue. An ivory-colored plume swept around the
brim of her hat, to touch a smooth cheek of almost the same shade.

She
said, "Welcome home, Patrick." Her gaze went quickly from his face to
Elizabeth's and then back again. Despite the proud carriage of the woman's head
and her bright smile, Elizabeth caught an impression of anger and hurt, even
pain.

Patrick
said, "Thank you, Moira. May I present my wife? Elizabeth, this is our
neighbor, Lady Moira Ashley."

"Welcome
to Ireland, Lady Stanford. Everyone in the neighborhood is waiting eagerly to
meet you."

"Thank
you, Lady Moira."

"Do
you ride?"

"Whenever
I have the opportunity."

Moira
laughed. "You will have no lack of opportunity here. Perhaps someday you
and I can ride together. And you must allow me very soon to give a party for
you and your husband."

"That
would be very kind of you."

Lady
Moira said, starting to turn away, "I must not keep you. I am sure that
after your long journey..."

"Permit
me." Patrick opened the carriage door and stepped to the ground. Long
hands almost spanning her waist, he lifted Lady Moira into the saddle. For a
moment she looked down at him, smiling slightly, but with anger and pain plain
in her eyes now. Although Elizabeth could not see Patrick's face, she observed
tension in his shoulders and the back of his neck as he looked up at the woman.

Moira's
hand tightened around the handle of her riding crop. For a startled moment
Elizabeth thought that the woman was going to lash Patrick's face. Instead she
raised the crop in a farewell gesture, wheeled her mount, and sent him
cantering back across the meadow.

Moments
later, as the carriage moved down the road, Elizabeth asked, "Is Lady
Moira your mistress?"

She
felt rather than saw the startled look he threw her. "That is a very
forthright question, madam."

"I
see no reason why you and I should not be forthright about such matters."

"Ah,
yes. What was that phrase in your letter? Something about making no objection
to any other relationship I might choose to enjoy?"

Elizabeth
made no reply. He said, "Perhaps I should take this opportunity to make it
clear that I do not accord the same privilege to you. No matter what our
marital relations, or lack of them, I have no intention of sporting horns
before my neighbors."

Elizabeth
said in a dry voice, "Surely you can have no immediate anxieties on that
score. For some time to come, I shall be too taken up with other matters to
start thinking of a lover."

"I
merely wanted there to be no misunderstanding about that point." After a
moment he added, "No, Moira Ashley is not my mistress, nor has she
been."

Perhaps
that was true, Elizabeth reflected. Nevertheless, they were anything but
indifferent to each other. "Does she know about the child or... the other
circumstances of our marriage?"

He
said shortly, "Of course not." Then he added, "Only Colin knows
that."

"Colin?"

"My
brother. You will meet him soon."

A
few minutes later the carriage left the main road for a narrower one that led
through a stand of oaks and alders Sunlight, now tinged with late-afternoon
bronze, slanted through breeze-stirred leaves, to cast moving splotches of
light on the road, the carriage, and the sleek hides of the matched grays. When
they emerged from the woods, Patrick said, "There is Stanford Hall."

Leaning
a little way out of the carriage, she looked across a wide sweep of meadow
grass at the house where she would bear her child and, perhaps, live out her
life. Of reddish stone, it rose three stories behind its wall of similar stone.
Dozens of mullioned windows blazed with sunset light. Round towers set at the
north and south ends of the broad facade gave it a fortresslike aspect.

"It
is an imposing house," Elizabeth said. She did not add that she much
preferred the modest beauty of that house fifteen miles north of London.

"My
great-grandfather built it after he received his grant of Irish land from
Charles II. Except for the round towers, it is a duplicate of the house the
Stanfords had built in England."

The
carriage moved through open wrought-iron gates into the courtyard. Leaping down
from the box, Michael opened the carriage door. As she and Patrick mounted
stone steps, the massive oak doors of the house also swept open.

She
found herself in a vast hall filled with reddish sunset light. From the shadowy
reaches above hung a huge and perhaps almost priceless crystal chandelier. To
judge by the dullness with which it reflected that reddish light, it long since
should have been taken down and washed. Ahead of her, in the space between the
twin staircases, stood the servants in two ranks, the women on the right,
the men on the
left. Appalled, she realized that there must be about twenty of them.

A
plump gray-haired woman in a black dress and white linen mobcap stepped
forward. Patrick said, "This is Mrs. Corcoran, our housekeeper."

The
little woman curtsied. "Welcome, milady. And may you and Sir Patrick find
every happiness." The beaming smile on her rosy, blue-eyed face made it
clear that she meant it.

Patrick
conducted Elizabeth down the double line of servants. Gertrude, the cook, a
red-haired woman almost as tall as Patrick. Another Gertrude, one of two
scullery maids. Matthew, chief footman. After that, as she smiled at housemaids
and pot boys and kennelmen, Elizabeth stopped trying to remember their names.
In time she would sort them out. She noticed a housemaid's torn cap, and badly
tarnished buttons on the men's liveries. But if their buttons lacked luster,
their smiles, touched with that faint ribaldry that always greets a newly
married pair, were bright enough.

"And
these are Padric and young Joseph, stableboys." He need not have named
their occupation. A faint aroma, mingling with that of the lye soap with which
they had scrubbed themselves, had already told her.

"Padric
and young Joseph are the sons of Joseph, our head stableman. You will meet him
later. Now he is seeing to the carriage horses."

Was
that why Stanford Hall, until now a bachelor establishment, had so large a
staff? Were servants' offspring automatically given employment here?

A
man was moving toward them from the shadows beyond the left-hand staircase, a
tall, dark-haired man who walked with a limp. Patrick said, "So there you
are!" Then: "Elizabeth, this is my brother, Colin Stanford. Colin,
this is my wife."