Never Call It Love (28 page)

He
said, after a long moment, "Did you tell her that? Did you offer to buy
her husband from her? Yes, I can see that you did. Moira, you're an imbecile.
Do you think that a woman like Elizabeth would take money from...?"

He
broke off. For several moments she looked at him, her face turning white, her
eyes large now and very dark. "What were you going to say? From a wanton?
A slut?"

"Of
course not. I was going to say 'from my mistress.'"

"But
I'm not just that to you! Patrick, Patrick! We love each other."

He
said quietly, "Have I ever told you I loved you?"

She
stood motionless for a moment. Then her face twisted. "But you do love me,
you do!" Tears welled to her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. "It's
only because you're so stiff-necked that you won't... You've got to love me!
You're all I have in the whole—"

"Moira!
I had best leave now. We will discuss this when we are both calm." He
started to turn away.

"Oh,
no, we won't!" Sudden fury blazed in her tear-wet face. She sprang forward
and grasped his arm with both her hands. "We'll discuss it now! Are you in
love with that scrawny Englishwoman? Maybe you're hoping that someday you will
get everything you want in bed from her. In the meantime, I am... a convenience."

"Moira!
You know you've been more than that to me."

She
rushed on, unheeding. "But if you've been making a fool of me, you've been
making a fool of yourself, too. She'll never love you. She told me so. Her life
with you is miserable. She stays with you because she has no money, and because
she can never have the man she wants, that vicar of hers."

Anger
replaced the softening he had felt at sight of her tears. He pulled his arm
free of her grasp and turned toward the door.

"Patrick!
If you leave me now, don't ever come back!"

"Good
night, Moira." He opened the door.

Her
voice rose to a scream. "You're going to be sorry for tonight! You have no
idea how sorry!"

Her
last sentence came to him through the door's heavy panels. He descended the
broad staircase, walked past a footman, who stared discreedy straight ahead as
he held the front door open, and went out into the night.

During
the ride of a little more than half an hour to the hall, some of his anger
cooled. Would Moira have him
turned away at the door if he again went to
Wetherly? He doubted it. But beautiful and desirable as she was, he also rather
doubted that he would want to see her again. It was not just his distaste for
the thought of her following Elizabeth to Dublin and offering her a bribe.
Despite those tears that momentarily had touched him, there had been something
almost frightening about her tonight. Oh, their tempers had clashed a few times
in the past, but never before had he gained the impression of a woman... not
quite sane.

That
threat of hers as he went out the door crossed his mind. He shrugged it off. An
enraged woman would say anything. And what revenge could she take, aside from
excluding him from her bed and taking some other man into it?

A
sleepy-eyed Clarence opened the door to him. "Good evening, Sir Patrick.
Her ladyship has returned."

"She
is in her room?"

"Yes,
she retired more than an hour ago."

He
looked up at the shadowy gallery above the twin staircases, remembering Moira's
words. "She'll never love you. Her life with you is miserable." Had
Elizabeth really said that? Surely not, at least not in those words. She was
too reticent, too well-bred, to make such confidences, especially to her
husband's mistress. Nevertheless, those words probably described what she felt.

And
yet, there had been a period of several weeks when she had not seemed too
wretched, at least when she lay moaning with pleasure in his arms. But surely
the loss of the child had ended all that. Surely all he could expect now, if he
went to her bed, was cold acquiescence. And despite that violent episode in the
house north of London, he was not by nature a rapist. He could take little
pleasure in a woman who merely endured his possession of her body.

He
turned toward the library. Glancing to his right, he
saw a thread of
light shining beneath the door of Colin's office. He hesitated, and then
decided he wanted no company tonight.

In
the library he found only one of the oil sconce lamps lit, its feeble glow
mingling with that of the dying fire. He lit more lamps and added a log to the
embers. Women, he thought. What endless trouble they were. Surely the Almighty,
if there was one, could have chosen some more sensible way to perpetuate the
species than by creating two sexes.

Resolutely
he turned to the strongbox in one corner of the room, opened it, and took out a
duplicate of the list he had given to Georges Fontaine that night. He spread
the papers out on the heavy table and looked down at them. Only two more
shipments, one of cannon and one of muskets, were due to arrive. The cannon
would be hidden with others at Sligo Bay. As for the muskets, there was still
room in that cave near the fishing village.

And
a few weeks from now—on the day before Christmas, to be exact—designated
leaders all over this island would pass out arms to the men under their
command. English soldiers stationed in Ireland, already drunk on Christmas
grog, would respond slowly to simultaneous attacks on their garrisons. Across
the channel, England too would be caught up in the annual celebration, with
Parliament in recess and the king's ministers scattered to their country
houses. By the time the English realized that now theirs was a three-front war,
and sent what reinforcements they could muster across the channel, all Ireland
would be in Irish hands.

Soon
he was deep in thoughts that had nothing to do with the two women, either the
one at Wetherly, who walked the floors with angry tears streaming down her
face, or the one who, despite her lonely and hopeless thoughts, had finally managed
to fall asleep in her four-poster bed here in his own house.

Fall
slipped into winter, the mild winter of southern Ireland, with only occasional
light snow but many days of chill rain or of fog so thick that from her bedroom
window Elizabeth could not see the courtyard's wrought-iron gates. With no
desire to ride out along the muddy lanes, she passed many of the short
afternoons playing chess with Colin before the library fire.

Patrick
spent little time at home. Even when he was physically at the supper table,
Elizabeth felt he was not really there. Tense and silent, he seemed off in some
world of his own.

Early
in December Elizabeth had reason to believe that his other world no longer
included Moira Ashley. When Rose brought in the tea one morning, she fussed
elaborately over the tray she had placed across her mistress's lap, moving the
cup and saucer about, and lifting the teapot's lid to look inside. Finally
Elizabeth realized that these maneuvers were meant to draw attention to the
ring on the girl's right hand, a ring of some silvery-looking metal with a
red-glass setting.

"What
a pretty ring! Where did you get it?"

My
friend Molly, over to Wetherly, bought two of these from a peddler and gave me
one. The young gentleman who's there so often now asked Molly to tighten some
loose buttons on his coat, and she did it so nice he gave her three
shillings."

The
girl's face and voice were bland. Nevertheless, Elizabeth
realized that
Rose, the recipient of a gift, was in turn bestowing one. She wanted her
mistress to know that Lady Moira had taken a new lover. "What young
gentleman?"

"Michael
Halloran, Sir John Halloran's youngest son. Molly says he is there all the
time."

Elizabeth
was sure that in that case Patrick no longer visited Wetherly. He was scarcely
the sort to share a mistress with another man. She said, "It's a nice
ring, Rose. Will you please tell Mrs. Corcoran that I would like to see her
now?"

Annoyed
with herself for the leap of hope in her heart, she watched the girl leave the
room. What reason did she have to think that Patrick might turn to her now? If
anything, he had seemed more distant than ever these past few weeks. Again she
was touched by the half-frightened thought: if he was not with Moira, what was
he doing during his absences from Stanford Hall?

Over
the next few days she felt a heightening of that unease, as if some disaster
she could not name impended. At supper he would sit at the other end of the
long table, dark face unreadable, speaking scarcely a word to her or Colin.
Twice in the night she was awakened by the sound of him pacing up and down his
own bedroom.

And
then, as she and Colin sat at supper one evening, they heard the thunderous
striking of the door knocker, followed by Clarence's hurried footsteps along
the hall. Patrick appeared in the dining-room archway. Elizabeth gasped. His
face, bleak-eyed and with its dark skin grayed by pallor, was like that of a
man who had just heard his death sentence.

"Come
into the library," he said hoarsely, "both of you."

Beside
Colin, Elizabeth hurried across the hall. Patrick was already crouched beside
the strongbox. "Close the doors!"

Colin
obeyed. Elizabeth said, past the nameless fear crowding her throat, "What
has happened?"

With
both hands Patrick drew papers from the strongbox. "I must get out of
Ireland, right tonight."

After
a stunned moment she cried, "But why?"

Not
answering, he stood up. Colin asked quietly, "You have been
betrayed?"

"I
have." He moved toward the fireplace. "I can only hope that not many
others have been."

It
was Georges Fontaine who had given him the news, less than an hour ago, there
in the upstairs room of the village public house. Someone had gotten word to
London about the planned uprising. Agents of the king, armed with a warrant for
Patrick's arrest, were already on their way across the channel. Unless he
managed to escape, he would soon be in London. He thought of himself in the
hands of his Majesty's interrogators, his will no longer in control of his
painracked body, his tongue babbling out the locations of all those arms
secretly assembled over the past years, and the names of brave men who would
have led that uprising on Christmas Eve. And if he survived the torture, there
would be the cart ride through the jeering crowd to a traitor's death on the
gallows.

Feeding
papers into the flames, he said over his shoulder to his brother, "And
don't remind me that all along you have warned that this might happen."

Colin
said, in that same quiet voice, "I did not intend to remind you."

Terrified
and bewildered, Elizabeth cried, "What are you talking about? What has
happened?"

Patrick
turned to face her. "You'll find out when the English get here, and so I
might as well tell you now." He did so in swift, curt sentences.

Unable
to take in the details, but now as aware as he that his remaining here would
mean certain death, she fought for self-control. "But where are you
going?"

He
studied her with narrowed eyes. During the past terrible hour it had crossed
his mind that his own wife, hating him as she did, might have been his
betrayer. He was sure that Colin had told her nothing. But perhaps, during his
own many prolonged absences from the hall, she had gained an inkling of his
activities. He had tried to be careful. Any incriminating papers not locked in
his strongbox he always had consigned to the fire. But perhaps she had found
some partially burned scrap...

And
certainly she had seen those cases of muskets in the cave near the village.
According to Colin, she had assumed the cases contained tea or some other
harmless sort of smuggled goods. Perhaps later, though, she'd had second
thoughts...

But
no. Not even the greatest actress alive could counterfeit the bewildered fear
he read in her white face and distended gray eyes. He said, "There is a
French merchant ship anchored in a cove a few miles from here. A fishing boat
from the village will take me to it. If it does not run into an English patrol,
the ship should be well on its way to a French-held island in the West Indies
after a few days' run. There is no need for you to know which island.

"As
for you yourself," he went on, "the English will arrest you when they
get here, but I do not think they will hold you for long. True, I have used
your money to buy arms, and they will soon find out that I have. But it was
without your consent or even your knowledge. I think you will be allowed to
rejoin your mother."

Speechless,
she stared at him. He had used her money to arm would-be rebels against her own
country. Outrage surged through her, and then subsided.

Strange
that her anger should be so brief. And even stranger that it should be replaced
by a thrill of admiration for this grim-faced man. Perhaps it was because she
had seen with her own eyes the starving Irish scarecrows
grubbing
sullenly in their tiny fields. Perhaps it was because she was glad that, no
matter what his treatment of her, the man whose name she bore had set himself
apart from the idle, ruthlessly selfish Anglo-Irish of his class.