Scarlett (103 page)

Two weeks later three wagons rolled heavily up the drive. The furniture for Mrs. Montague’s rooms had arrived. The lady followed in a smart carriage, along with her maid.

She directed the disposition of the furniture in a bedroom and sitting room near Scarlett’s, then left her maid to see to her unpacking. “Now we begin,” she said to Scarlett.

“I might just as well not be here at all,” Scarlett complained. “The only thing I’m allowed to do is sign bank drafts for scandalous amounts of money.” She was talking to Ocras, Cat’s tabby. The name meant “hungry” in Irish and had been given by the cook in an exasperated moment. Ocras ignored Scarlett, but she had no one else to talk to. Charlotte Montague and Mrs. Fitzpatrick seldom asked her opinion about anything. Both of them knew what a Big House should be, and she didn’t.

Nor was she very interested. For most of her life the house she lived in had simply been there, already as it was, and she’d never thought about it. Tara was Tara, Aunt Pittypat’s was Aunt Pitty’s, even though half of it belonged to her. Scarlett had involved herself only with the house Rhett built for her. She’d bought the newest and most expensive furnishings and decorations, and she’d been pleased with them because they proved how rich she was. The house itself never gave her pleasure; she hardly saw it. Just as she didn’t really see the Big House at Ballyhara. Eighteenth-century Palladian, Charlotte said, and what, pray tell, was so important about that? What mattered to Scarlett was the land, for its richness and its crops, and the town, for its rents and services and because no one, not even Rhett, owned his own town.

However, she understood perfectly well that accepting invitations placed an obligation on her to return them, and she couldn’t invite people to a place that had furniture in only two rooms. She was lucky, she supposed, that Charlotte Montague wanted to transform the Big House for her. She had more interesting things to do with her time.

Scarlett was firm about the points that mattered to her: Cat must have a room next to her own, not in some nursery wing with a nanny; and Scarlett would do her own accounts, not turn all her business over to a bailiff. Other than that, Charlotte and Mrs. Fitz could do whatever they liked. The costs made her wince, but she had agreed to give Charlotte a free hand and it was too late to back out once she’d shaken hands on it. Besides, money just didn’t matter to her now the way it used to.

So Scarlett took refuge in the Estate office and Cat made the kitchen her own while workmen did unknown, expensive, noisy, smelly things to her house for months on end. At least she had the farm to run, and her duties as The O’Hara. Also she was buying horses.

“I know little or nothing about horses,” said Charlotte Montague. It was a statement that made Scarlett’s eyebrows skid upwards. She’d come to believe that there was nothing on earth Charlotte didn’t claim to be an expert on. “You’ll need at least four saddle horses and six hunters, eight would be better, and you must ask Sir John Morland to assist you in selecting them.”

“Six hunters! God’s nightgown, Charlotte, you’re talking about more than five hundred pounds!” Scarlett shouted. “You’re crazy.” She brought her voice down to normal sound, she’d learned that shouting at Mrs. Montague was a waste of energy; nothing bothered the woman. “I’ll educate you a little about horses,” she said with venomous sweetness. “You can only ride one. Teams are for carriages and plows.”

She lost the argument. As usual. That was why she didn’t bother to argue about John Morland’s help, she told herself. But Scarlett knew that really she had been hoping to have a reason to see Bart. He might have some news of Rhett. She rode over to Dunsany the next day. Morland was delighted by her request. Of course he’d help her find the best hunters in all Ireland…

“Do you ever hear from your American friend, Bart?” She hoped the question sounded casual, she’d waited long enough to get it in. John Morland could talk about horses even longer than Pa and Beatrice Tarleton.

“Rhett, do you mean?” Scarlett’s heart turned over at the sound of his name. “Yes, he’s much more responsible about his correspondence than I am.” John gestured towards the untidy pile of letters and bills on his desk.

Would the man just get on with it? What about Rhett?

Bart shrugged, turned his back to the desk. “He’s determined to enter the filly he bought from me in the Charleston races. I told him she was bred for hurdles and not for the flat, but he’s sure her speed will compensate. I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed. In another three or four years, perhaps he might prove right, but when you remember that her dam was out of…”

Scarlett stopped listening. John Morland would talk bloodlines all the way back to the Flood! Why couldn’t he tell her what she wanted to know? Was Rhett happy? Had he mentioned her?

She looked at the young Baronet’s animated, intense face and forgave him. In his own eccentric way, he was one of the most charming men in the world.

John Morland’s life was built around horses. He was a conscientious landlord, interested in his estate and his tenants. But breeding and training race horses was his true passion, followed closely by fox hunting in the winter on the magnificent hunters he kept for himself.

Possibly they compensated for the romantic tragedy of Bart’s absolute devotion to the woman who had gained possession of his heart when they were both not much more than children. Her name was Grace Hastings. She’d been married to Julian Hastings for nearly twenty years. John Morland and Scarlett shared a bond of hopeless love.

Charlotte had told her what “everyone in Ireland” knew—John was relatively immune to husband-hunting women because he had little money. His title and his property were old—impressively old—but he had no income except his rents, and he spent almost every shilling of that on his horses. Even so, he was very handsome in an absentminded way, tall and fair with warm, interested gray eyes and a breathtakingly sweet smile that accurately reflected his goodhearted nature. He was strangely innocent for a man who had spent all of his forty-some years in the worldly circles of British society. Occasionally a woman with money of her own, like the Honourable Louisa, fell in love with him and made a determined pursuit that embarrassed Morland and amused everyone else. His eccentricities became more pronounced then; his absentmindedness bordered on vacancy, his waistcoats were often buttoned wrong, his contagious whooping laughter became sometimes inappropriate, and he rearranged his collection of paintings by George Stubbs so often that the walls of his house became peppered with holes.

A beautiful portrait of the famous horse Eclipse was balanced perilously on a stack of books, Scarlett noticed. It made no difference to her, she wanted to know about Rhett. I’ll go ahead and ask, she decided. Bart won’t remember anyhow. “Did Rhett say anything about me?”

Morland blinked, his mind on the filly’s forebears. Then her question registered. “Oh, yes, he asked me if you might possibly sell Half Moon. He’s thinking about starting up the Dunmore Hunt again. He wants me to keep my eye open for any more like Half Moon, too.”

“He’ll have to come back to buy them, I guess,” Scarlett said, praying for affirmation. Bart’s answer sunk her in despair.

“No, he’ll have to trust me. His wife’s expecting, you see, and he won’t leave her side. But now that I’ll be aiming you at the cream of the crop, I couldn’t help Rhett anyhow. I’ll write and tell him so as soon as I find the time.”

Scarlett was so preoccupied with Bart’s news that he had to shake her arm to get her attention. When did she want to start the search for her hunters, he asked.

Today, she answered.

Throughout the winter she went every Saturday with John Morland to one hunt or another in County Meath, trying out hunters that were for sale. It wasn’t easy to find mounts that suited her, for she demanded that the horse be as fearless as she was. She rode as if demons were chasing her, and the riding eventually made it possible for her to stop imagining Rhett as father to any child but Cat.

When she was home, she tried to give the little girl extra attention and affection. As usual, Cat scorned embraces. But she would listen to stories about the horses for as long as Scarlett would talk.

When February came, Scarlett turned the first sod with the same happy excitement as in earlier years. She had succeeded in relegating Rhett to the past and seldom thought of him at all.

It was a new year, full of good things to come. If Charlotte and Mrs. Fitz ever got finished with whatever they were doing to her house, she might even be able to give a party. She missed Kathleen, and the rest of the family. Pegeen made visits so uncomfortable that she almost never saw her cousins any more.

That could wait, it would have to. There was planting to be done.

In June Scarlett spent a long, exhausting day being measured by the dressmaker Charlotte Montague had brought over from Dublin. Mrs. Sims was merciless. Scarlett had to hold her arms up, out, in front, at her sides, one up one down, one forward one back, in every imaginable position and some she would never have imagined. For what seemed like hours. Then the same thing sitting. Then in every position of the quadrille, the waltz, the cotillion. “The only thing she didn’t measure me for was my shroud,” Scarlett groaned.

Charlotte Montague gave one of her infrequent smiles. “She probably did, without your knowing it. Daisy Sims is very thorough.”

“I refuse to believe that terrifying woman’s name is Daisy,” Scarlett said.

“Don’t you ever call her that, unless she invites you to. No one below the rank of Duchess is ever allowed to be familiar with Daisy. She’s the best at her trade; they wouldn’t dare risk offending her.”

“You called her Daisy.”

“I’m the best at my trade, too.”

Scarlett laughed. She liked Charlotte Montague, and respected her as well. Though she wouldn’t call her exactly cozy to have for a friend.

She put on her peasant clothes then and had supper—Charlotte reminded her it was dinner—before she went out to the hill near Knightsbrook River for the lighting of the Midsummer Night bonfire. When she was dancing to the familiar music of the fiddles and pipes and Colum’s
bodhran
, she thought how lucky she was. If what Charlotte had promised was true, she was going to have both worlds, Irish and Anglo. Poor Bart, she remembered, wasn’t welcome at his own estate’s bonfire.

Scarlett thought of her good fortune again, when she presided at the Harvest Home banquet. Ballyhara had another good crop, not as good as the two previous years, but still enough to make every man’s pocket jingle. Everyone in Ballyhara celebrated their good fortune. Everyone except Colum, Scarlett noticed. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. She wished she could ask him what was wrong, but he’d been cross as a bear with her for weeks. And he never seemed to go to the bar any more, according to Mrs. Fitz.

Well, she wasn’t going to let his gloom ruin her good mood. Harvest Home was a party.

Also, the hunting season would be starting any day now, and her new riding habit was the most enchanting design Scarlett had ever seen. Mrs. Sims was everything Charlotte had said she was.

*   *   *

“If you’re ready we will take a tour,” said Charlotte Montague. Scarlett put down her teacup. She was more eager than she wanted to admit.

“Mighty kind of you, Charlotte, seeing as how every door except my rooms has been locked for practically a year.” She sounded as cranky as she could, but she suspected that Charlotte was too smart to be fooled. “I’ll just find Cat to go with us.”

“If you like, Scarlett, but she saw everything as it was done. She’s a remarkable child, just appears when a door or window is left open. It made some of the painters quite nervous when they found her on top of their scaffolding.”

“Don’t tell me things like that, I’ll have a seizure. Little monkey, she climbs everything.” Scarlett called for Cat and looked for Cat to no avail. Sometimes the little girl’s independence annoyed her, like now. Usually she was proud. “I guess she’ll catch up with us if she’s interested,” she said at last. “Let’s go, I’m dying to see.” Might as well admit it. She wasn’t fooling anybody.

Charlotte led the way upstairs first to long corridors lined with bedrooms for guests, then back down again to what Scarlett still had trouble calling the first floor instead of, in American usage, the second. Charlotte took her to the end of the house away from the rooms she’d been using. “Your bedroom, your bath, your boudoir, your dressing room, Cat’s playroom, bedroom, nursery.” The doors flew open as Charlotte unveiled her labors. Scarlett was enchanted with the feminine pale-green-and-gilt furniture in her rooms and the frieze of alphabet animal paintings in Cat’s playroom. The child-size chairs and tables made her clap her hands. Why hadn’t she thought of it? There was even a child-size tea set on Cat’s table and a child-size chair by the hearth.

“Your private rooms are French,” said Charlotte, “Louis Sixteenth, if you care. They represent your Robillard self. Your O’Hara self dominates the reception rooms on the ground floor.”

The only ground floor room that Scarlett knew was the marble-floored hall. She used its door to the drive and the broad stone staircase to the upper floors. Charlotte Montague led her quickly through it. She opened tall double doors on one side of it and ushered Scarlett into the dining room. “My stars,” Scarlett exclaimed, “I don’t know enough people to fill up all those chairs.”

“You will,” said Charlotte. She led Scarlett through the long room to another tall door. “Now this is your breakfast room and morning room. You may want to have dinner in here as well when you are a small number.” She walked across the room to more doors. “The great salon and ballroom,” she announced. “I admit to being very pleased with this.”