Fourteen

For the following days in the carriage, Kate was not sure whether, dropped onto a globe without orientation, she would know her surroundings from the land of England or Wales.

Neither country so recently visited had felt like home. Would she know a home when she reached it? After the past few weeks in Evan’s company, she was scrambled, disoriented, tipped askew.

Her hair, however, had been combed well, and lay in marvelous neat curls.

When the carriage reached the heart of Ireland, the air seemed to settle about her. Gone were the bracing breeze and drumming of raindrops from the eastern coast. Here the air was milder with frost in the dawn that vanished in sunlight. Every other day or so, a scatter of rain fell, as if the sky were full of mischief that must spill out.

By the time the travelers reached Thurles, this familiar sort of light rain was falling, tapping the carriage windows in greeting as they trundled along the main street. Thurles was a small market town east of a hunt racecourse abutting the Suir River, with all the usual shops.

A medieval tower house, Bridge Castle, crouched on one bank of the river. No longer used to defend the waterway from foes, its crumbling top was peacefully fringed with green, and moss speckled the solid stone walls. At every season, even in drizzle and damp, anglers could be spotted at the river’s edge, though whether they’d a hope of catching trout or whether they only enjoyed the chance to jaw with friends, Kate didn’t know.

She realized, as the carriage rolled on and the neat storefronts fell behind, that there wasn’t a single friend on whom she needed to call now that she’d returned. She’d become so wrapped up in her obligations, especially since Con died. Why, even her closest friend—she shot a glance at Evan, who was looking out the opposite window—was an inheritance from her late husband. Who were her people? Who would ever choose to be with her for her own sake?

The questions shifted her into action. Almost without thinking, she knocked at the carriage roof. The driver halted, and Kate opened the door and hopped down. She tipped her face up, collecting chilly raindrops on her eyelids and cheeks, then looked around for someone to greet.

The rain had cleared the street, but—ah! She was right by the apothecary’s shop, where the mail was delivered and posted. That was reason enough to enter.

She passed through the door with its jingling bell overhead. The shop was small and close, with myriad shelves behind the counter and a sharp smell of liniment and wintergreen. “Mr. Petty?” she called.

As the door jingled again, the elderly shopkeeper popped out from the back of the shop. A wizened bald man with large ears, Petty’s homely face beamed as soon as he saw Evan. “Why, Mr. Rhys! We haven’t seen you in such a time, but I would know you in an instant. And how is it you’ve been, sir?”

Sure enough, Evan—and Susan too—had entered the shop behind Kate.

“Quite well, Mr. Petty. And yourself?” When the apothecary made his own polite answer, Evan added, “Lady Whelan and I met by chance while traveling, and I realized it had been far too long since I visited this fair town.”

“Lady Whelan! Sure enough, there you are. Didn’t expect we’d be seeing you until the autumn was all done.” The apothecary seemed equally delighted to see Kate, though somehow he had overlooked her presence before his counter until that moment. “It’s right good to see you, my lady. Out and about in your state.”

“Ah—what state is that?”

“Why, your widowhood.” He blinked saucer-round eyes. “Got some letters for you, I have, that come earlier today, if you’d like them? Or someone’ll come from the house tomorrow.”

“I’ll take them. Thank you.”

“If you’re sure? Don’t want to trouble you in your time of grief.”

Kate looked at him oddly. “It’s perfectly fine. I am not in mourning anymore, Mr. Petty, and even if I were, I would be willing to accept mail.”

Petty returned her odd gaze. “Not in mourning anymore, my lady?”

“It’s been two years since the late earl passed.” She tried on a smile. “The time has, perhaps, passed quickly for a busy man such as yourself. And Thurles is thick with dowager countesses.” Good Old Gwyn would never let anyone forget the crushing burden of her loss; Kate wanted only to set it aside.

When Petty relinquished the mail to Kate, Evan gave Petty a letter of his own to be posted.

The smaller man regarded it with sharp blue eyes. “Writing to England, eh? And you just come from there?”

Petty did not number among his faults a lack of curiosity. His question awoke Kate’s own, and she craned her neck to see the direction on the folded paper. What she saw made her head snap back with surprise. “You’re writing to my father?”

“I should have written to him from the road,” Evan said. “Your father wants to find himself an Anne Jones, and my parents might know the right one.”

Ah. That made sense. “I wouldn’t venture to promise that for all the tea in China or all the Anne Joneses in Wales,” she replied lightly. “But why does—”

Her question was cut off by another jingle of the bell. “Ah, it’s a good afternoon for business despite the rain!” Petty hurried around the counter on bandy legs.

This time it was Janet Ahearn, a middle-aged spinster of pinched features and heavy lilting accent. “Mr. Petty, the last packet of pastilles you made for me fell into powder within a day. I must have more!”

“Of course, of course. And what size of a packet will you be needing, then?”

“A large one, I think,” she sniffed. “Larger than the last. Say—make it six, I think. I shall distribute them to the ill as needed. And I’ll need the same in a week’s time.”

“Week’s…time…” repeated Petty, scribbling notes on a slip of paper with a stub of pencil. “Very good, very good.”

When he finished writing, he stuffed the paper and pencil into his waistcoat pocket. “Look who we’ve here, Miss Ahearn.”

“Oh, heavens! Mr. Rhys.” The spinster’s sour, narrow features relaxed. “Why, isn’t that a fair sight! And how are you, sir?”

“I might as well start opening the mail,” Kate murmured to Susan. “It’ll give me something to do while Mr. Rhys finishes making his greetings.”

And, in fact, she did so—or at least flipped through the bundle of letters. Estate business. Estate business. Estate business. A bill. Another bill. All while Petty’s errand boy ran into the street and shouted for all and sundry to come greet Mr. Rhys.

Honestly. It was as though they thought Evan were back from the dead.

A prickle of guilt darted through her. Surely their delight could be understood. He was Con’s friend, and everyone had loved Con. Seeing Evan again—half of the pair of handsome rogues—was like getting Con back as well.

Or so they must be thinking. Kate had never found the two to be much alike, and with the distance of years in which she and Evan had grown past Con, she could not equate the longtime friends. It did a service to neither to compare them, and Evan deserved every cheerful greeting on his own merits.

Kate held up her post before her face, pretending to study the directions while she instead listened.

“If your pastilles fall to powder again,” Evan told Miss Ahearn confidentially, “you could mix the powder with mulled wine.”

That lady’s brows and voice lowered, interested. “Will that increase the medicinal effect?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Evan, “but then you’ll have a glass of mulled wine.”

Sour Miss Ahearn actually chuckled at this. “Such warmth is a comfort on a rainy autumn day.”

“Dr. Rhys’s prescription, then.” Evan laughed. When the errand boy returned, Evan gave him a few pennies to buy sweet rolls for himself and his young friends at the baker’s.

At Ardent House, Kate had worked so hard to get Evan to laugh. Now the laughter came easily, bubbling out as though Thurles had tapped into a spring of delight.

She had never experienced such a feeling. As Lady Whelan, she was near but not of the town, which was full of Irish. Catholics. People who had known each other for generations. People who worked for a living and played with equal fervor. They took pride in their racecourse, in the rich history of the chase. Evan shared their easeful fondness, and Con had too.

Kate had supported her husband by caring for the children and minding the estate—but in so doing, she realized, she’d not made a place of her own in the town. Instead she perceived a tautness between herself and the people of her late husband’s estate. She might be Lady Whelan, but she was also English-born. Her name betrayed her. Her accent betrayed her. She was a foreigner in Ireland, bound here by the children she had created.

As word circulated about the return of the travelers—no doubt sped along by the sight of an unknown carriage before Petty’s store—the small shop began to crowd. The people of Thurles greeted Kate with deference and condolence—a condolence that unsettled her with its scrupulous politeness.

The people of Thurles were accustomed still to treating Kate as though she were glass-fragile. Their voices dropped, their eyes went somber, and their mouths solemn.

The widowed countess. Widow widow widow.

Once a man died, all his flaws were forgotten. Poor Lady Whelan. How could she ever recover?

It had been two years. She was recovered, if only she could bring the town to see it. She was Kate, not merely Con’s widow.

She made polite chat, but it was Evan whom the villagers wanted to see. Words spilled forth, as if people had been holding questions from him at the tips of their tongues. Mr. Rhys! My man found the quaintest little old statue while digging in the garden. Can you give it a look?

Mr. Rhys, are you to ride in the chase?

Mr. Rhys, we did see a handbill for your lecture. Is it true there’s smuggling hereabouts?

This last question drew a protest from Miss Ahearn. “This far up the river from the sea? Nonsense. Smugglers wouldn’t bother. Besides, Thurles is a proper sort of town.”

“I’m here to find that out,” Evan replied. “Not that I doubt Thurles is proper. Or I didn’t until I returned to it.”

Petty gave a scratchy chuckle. “Mr. Rhys, you’ve a tongue made for blarney. Sure you’re not Irish?”

Evan laughed. “Only in my dreams. Lady Whelan! Come out from behind those letters, won’t you? Poor Lady Whelan, she has been suffering from my glib tongue since Newmarket.”

Kate recognized this as an invitation to enter the conversation. “Only since Newmarket?” She handed off her letters to Susan, feigning surprise. “Why, I should have said since Cambridge. You’ve been entertaining me with your saucy tongue since your even saucier lecture.”

“You heard him lecture, Lady Whelan?” This was asked by a serving girl from the Prancing Pony, a pretty village woman of no more than twenty. “What was it like?”

“I’m right here,” Evan said, “so mind you say nice things.”

“What other sort of thing could there be to say?” Kate waved a careless hand. “Mr. Rhys’s lecture was so fascinating that my brother vowed he would begin collecting flint.”

“He did?” This from the wide-eyed serving girl.

“No, he didn’t.” Evan frowned. “He said he had to see a man about a horse.”

Kate felt like teasing him. “True, but as you know, in Newmarket cant, ‘man’ means ‘excavation site’ and ‘horse’ means ‘flint.’ Well, ‘any sort of ancient artifact,’ but Jonah meant flint in particular.”

Evan arched a brow at her. “Did he, now?”

“Oh, yes.” Kate tapped her temple. “We have the twin connection.”

“You have a twin?” breathed the serving girl. Somehow every question involved her pressing against Evan, surely more than the movement of the people in the shop required.

Kate could hardly fault the young woman, for Evan was a treat to look at—thick dark unruly hair, and the careless, useful cut of his clothing. Stubble that had grown out during the day’s travel, splashes of mud on his boots from the road. And those hands…

Those hands, those hands. He had touched her and tickled her on every bit of her body. For that time, she felt beautiful.

Now she felt lumpy again.

Enough of that. She must try harder, that was all. The next person who entered, Kate would speak to without the smallest hesitation.

She soon regretted this vow, for the next person to enter was Finnian Driscoll. Resident magistrate and holder of the bulk of Con’s debts, he was a well-fed, well-pleased man of late middle age. His great belly, biscuit-colored coat, and red waistcoat made him look, from the side, as though he were carrying a drum before him.

He had served as resident magistrate since the role was established four years before. As a native of Ireland who had served as an officer in the British Army, he’d done well reconciling the English rulers with the Irish villagers. Privately, Kate thought it was because he went to every church service—making himself both Catholic and Church of Ireland, yet neither. All he needed now to establish himself at the pinnacle of Thurles society was land.

Whelan land. And without a miracle, he would get it at year’s end.

“How do you do, Mr. Driscoll?” There was hardly room for the magistrate and his capacious belly to slide up to the apothecary’s counter.

“Why, Lady Whelan! What a treat.” Driscoll made his bow, curtailed by the close quarters. “We didn’t expect you back so soon, with the second week of races in Newmarket only just complete.” He looked over her shoulder. “And I heard Mr. Rhys, didn’t I? There’s a treat too. Didn’t expect him to be traveling with you.”

“I am full of surprises,” Kate said. “A woman of various and startling gifts.”

Driscoll ignored this reply, holding out hands against the press of the crowd. “Now, now, everyone, don’t be bothering the countess. Leave her be. She must be tired after all her travel.”

“Mr. Rhys traveled as long as I did,” she pointed out.

He lifted graying brows. “But you’re fragile.”

“I most certainly am not.”

“Ah, you’re that brave to say so.” He shook his head. “If you’re not careful, you’ll wear yourself to a sliver.”

“I could not become a sliver if I tried my damnedest,” she muttered, but Driscoll was already turning to greet Evan.

Thus it always went. Had gone, ever since Con’s death. For her own good, Driscoll looked out for her. Ignored her protests. He talked of her as though she were enfeebled—and who might hear and believe him?

Was this why the townspeople treated her as a widow of glass?

She wasn’t in the mood for conversation after all.

“I need some air,” she said to Susan. “Come or stay as you wish. I’m neither fragile nor a sliver, and I’m all right on my own.”

It was not difficult to slip between jostling townsfolk. They took little notice of a small, roundish woman as they gloried in cheerful conversation. The bell at the shop door jingled to free Kate, and she stepped out into the drizzle to take great gulps of fresh, damp air.

Returning to Thurles was not the homecoming she’d expected. She was back to being a countess, her idyll in England over.

Yet had it been an idyll? How could it have been, when she had never understood whom to be?

Except for one night, came the treacherous memory.

Not that it mattered now. Evan had so many friends here he didn’t need another. A petulant thought, and one she tried at once to quash. She returned to the carriage, settling into the enclosed space that now seemed less small than the spaces around it.

When Evan and Susan joined her, beaming at having encountered so many familiar faces, Kate knocked at the roof for the driver to take them to their destination.

“Amazing, Mr. Rhys, the number of people who remember you after two years,” burbled the maid.

“It goes to show,” Evan said, “that I should not have stayed away so long.”

“If you had not,” Kate replied, “everything would have been different.” She did not know whether this would have been good or bad.

West of the town center lay the looping racecourse. “You have utterly confounded that poor serving girl,” said Evan to Kate. “She’s now convinced that I led the race meetings at Newmarket, which were in truth coordinated excavations of ancient dwellings.”

“Yet you didn’t stay for the second week of races? For shame, Mr. Rhys,” said Kate. “How will they get along without you?”

“You would be amazed,” he said drily, “how well people get along without me.”

He was looking out the window when he said this. By now, she recalled his mannerisms well enough to suspect he was hiding some starkness on his mobile features.

“Just because they can,” she answered, “doesn’t mean it’s what they prefer.”

* * *

Anne Jones—or Janet Ahearn, as they knew her here—saw the letter directed to Sir William Chandler. Petty had laid it on the counter, a careful carelessness of the sort they had worked out years before.

Sir William Chandler. The name was a threat and a promise, a memory and a hope. What had Rhys learned, and what would Rhys tell him? Not who Janet Ahearn truly was, she was sure. After years of slipping beneath notice, she could tell when someone’s view of her had changed.

Once she had been a soldier’s wife, and then, after being widowed in Spain, a courtesan. Sir William had known her as such thirteen years before. He had not known, until a few months ago, that she had borne his child.

He had left Spain in 1805 as little more than a corpse, stricken by a virulent palsy that stripped the strength from his hale limbs. She understood, then, that he would have concern for no other body but his own.

Once in England again, with all his wealth at his disposal, he recovered. He did not regain the use of his legs, but his health and vigor—by all accounts—were restored.

Anne remained behind in Spain, impoverished and forgotten. Anne did not have the luxury of caring only for herself, as Sir William’s babe grew within her. That was when she decided she would do anything, be anything, never to be left powerless again.

Her time in Thurles had a double advantage. It was near Sir William’s legitimate daughter. And it was near Loughmoe Castle, from where the wild geese had flown. The geese—rich Catholics who fled Ireland when the Jacobite movement failed—were hated by all those who remained. Their riches were stripped, even the stones of their castles unseated.

It had been Anne’s idea to turn those stones to advantage. Anne’s, to set the Whelan tenants to carving instead of farming. Smuggling was steadier income than tending the land. With her network of willing recipients on the shores of Wales and France, she saw to that. Thurles was far enough inland to evade notice, but it had a fine river that trailed to the sea, and a watchtower from which she could post notice at all times. Why, she had even pulled the apothecary into the matter. Packets of pastilles were nothing of the sort. That old fool Petty enjoyed the adventure of it.

For years she had traveled Great Britain, taking frequent absences from Thurles under the guise of visiting family. She had watched and waited. She’d had her failures—Rosalind Agate had slipped from her power and wed Sir William’s younger son—but no matter. Sir William’s heart had many ties. None were to Anne.

One was to this eldest daughter of his, this Kate. Already she had become a widow, but there was so much more she could lose.