Twenty

While Kate was occupied with estate business that afternoon, Evan—and the sliced-off cinch from Con’s saddle—prepared to pay a call of his own.

He rode this time. Since Lady Alix was likely to be footsore from the long journey across Ireland, he took a smart chestnut with a white snip on his nose that made the gelding look as if he’d been nosing about in cream. Their destination: a cottage on the edge of the village.

Evan looped around Thurles, not expecting or particularly wishing to see anyone—but as he guided the sure-footed chestnut across a field, he overtook a small, wizened figure he soon recognized as the old apothecary, Petty.

“Good afternoon to you, Mr. Rhys.” Petty squinted at Evan, his face a wreath of kindly wrinkles. “Out for a constitutional, I am. And yourself?”

“Paying a call,” Evan said. To someone who might be more forthcoming than the magistrate. Driscoll had much to protect, including the safety of the town and his own reputation.

Since Petty had come his way, Evan paused to question the old man as well. With him, Evan took a different tack. Relaxing his hold on the reins so the gelding could lower his head to crop grass, Evan said, “I did think I’d explore some of the sights while I’m here. I missed the old places, you know. Nothing gets in your heart like Ireland.”

“Sure and certain,” agreed Petty. “Where would you be wanting to look? There’s the chase course, before the crowds start their flocking in another week.”

“Always a fine sight.” Evan clucked at the gelding, halting the horse before it took too many steps away from Petty. “I’ve an interest in antiquities too, as you know. I thought of learning more about Irish history.”

“I knew you were after being a smart man. And how would you like to learn? Thurles hasn’t much of an archive, though Whelan House might—”

“Oh, I’m no scholar,” Evan interrupted cheerfully. “I’d rather get my hands dirty in a field than my nose dusty in a book. Which is the nearest castle I might explore?”

The old man pushed back his hat, scratching at his head. “Killahara, I expect. But I don’t know if you could look around there. It’s Trant land, and the baron keeps his tenants in the castle.”

“No, that wouldn’t do. An inhabited castle will have people making modern changes. I want to see history as it was.” He snapped his fingers in feigned realization—causing the chestnut to lift his head and eye Evan with doubt. “Loughmoe Castle is also near, isn’t it?”

“It is, it is. If you’re on the back of a horse,” the apothecary agreed. “But I don’t know what sort of condition it might be in.” He slapped his thighs. “Old legs couldn’t make that distance in a constitutional.”

“Do people commonly visit there?”

Again, Petty scratched his head. “Can’t say, really. The crops haven’t been good since the terrible cold year. People of Thurles, we keep busy enough getting by.”

Ah, 1816—it had been a difficult year all over, for many reasons besides Con’s death. During a bad harvest, an apothecary might be shielded from immediate want, but if hungry tenant farmers hadn’t the money to buy his goods, he’d be feeling the pinch in his purse too.

“Does anyone live in Loughmoe?” Evan asked. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Not for years and years.” Petty spat on the ground. “Family were wild geese.”

Evan racked his brain for an explanation. “I do apologize, but you’ll have to help me. I’m sure the castle was not owned by waterfowl.”

“Not that sort of geese, no. The wild geese were Jacobites, those who fled.”

“Ah.” This, Evan understood. Jacobites were those who disputed the line of succession to the English throne—broken during the Stuart years, when it seemed the world would be torn and made bloody between Catholic and Protestant. “So they were Catholic.”

And when their safety was endangered, they picked up their wealth and fled—leaving behind the tenants who had been their foot soldiers, plus a castle to fall into ruin.

For the first time, Petty looked wary. “And which church do you be going to, Mr. Rhys?”

“One in Wales, and that not for years,” Evan said. “I’ve no goose in this fight.”

But he wondered. Loughmoe would bear further examination after he paid his call.

“I’ll let you get on with your walk,” he told the older man. “Not that you need it, Mr. Petty. You’re looking fit as a fiddle.”

“More of your blarney.” The old apothecary looked pleased. “Off with you now. Off with you.”

And with a tip of the hat on both sides, they parted ways. Evan clicked to the chestnut, nudging the horse back into stride, and continued his journey.

He came to his destination from the west, where Thurles trailed out to farmland, and before the manicured racecourse grounds began. Here was a single cottage that backed onto the drifting River Suir. The building was small, a plain rectangle of whitewashed coarse stone. A stout chimney poked from each end, and a roof of thatch overlaid it like combed hair.

All around the cottage, in a riot of warm autumn color, were woody shrubs and flowering plants. It took a skillful hand to coax so many varieties to life, to keep them looking wild but neatly in their places.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary.” Evan dismounted the gelding, tying him to a post beside the cottage door. “How does your garden grow?”

Before he could lift his hand to knock, the door opened. “You were speaking that old rhyme again,” said a pleasant lilting voice. “I saw you through the window.”

“I can’t help it. Your garden always brings it to mind.” When his hostess stepped back, allowing him over her threshold, he swept off his hat and made a bow of greeting. “How do you go on, Mary?”

Mary O’Dowd was a woman of about thirty years, with hair of vibrant red and a pale face as mottled as the moon. She hadn’t always looked thus. When Evan, little more than a youth, first met her—then a kitchen maid at Whelan House—she’d been as smooth-skinned as a peach. Con couldn’t resist her, and he made her his mistress.

That was before Con met Kate. But it was also after. The smallpox had almost taken Mary’s life three years before, and…well, there was something about almost losing a person who had been very dear. The threat of loss had made Con discard the had been and remember the very dear, and he nursed Mary back to health in this quiet cottage. Evan had never seen his friend display such tenderness.

In a strange sort of way, it was almost honorable.

“I’m all right,” said Mary. “Had a tough while going on these past years, since…”

Since. There was only, ever, one since. “I know. You’ve made a fine home for yourself and the child.” A boy or a girl? He didn’t know. Mary’s baby hadn’t yet been born when he left Ireland—intending to stay away for good.

“I’ve a fine son,” said Mary, “and he deserves no less than a home that suits him.”

A boy. Con had another son.

Evan was glad to see that Mary was getting on comfortably. The interior of the cottage was similar to the outside: whitewashed and crisp, chilly but cheerful. The rectangular space was divided into two rooms, one much larger that encompassed a cooking area, a small table, and a few chairs. The smaller space must be the bedchamber. Bright curtains trimmed the windows, and on the mantel above the cooking fire, a few precious ornaments had been arranged.

A little black-haired boy ran from behind the single door. “Da? Da come?”

He wobbled, the uncertain run of a chubby young child moving with more speed than steadiness.

Mary darted to scoop him up, giving the boy a smacking kiss on one cheek. “He didn’t, love. Da can’t come. You know that. But this is one of Da’s friends, Mr. Rhys.”

“Mitter Ree,” said the boy, and then buried his face in the curve of his mother’s shoulder.

“Hello, lad,” said Evan. There was no mistaking his parentage, with the jet hair and the wicked dark eyes. “This one will be a handful for you, Mary.”

“His name is Conall.” Mary looked at Evan over the shoulder of the boy. “Do you—I thought the earl might have liked it.”

“It’s a fine name,” Evan replied. “Yes, I think the earl would have liked that.”

As far as Evan knew, this was true. Con wanted what he wanted, and he never shied from notice. When Con wed Kate, he had paid Mary off with a stipend. Well-intentioned, doubtless, but good intentions didn’t last long. Evan knew his friend to be guilty of infidelity, the casual, emotionless sort. Con tumbled a pretty maid or visiting widow with as little care and as much delight as one would crack the crust of a fancy-topped crème brulée.

Evan had never liked crème brulée, and he didn’t like the elasticity with which Con regarded his marriage vows. Somehow Con had never got a bastard on any of his paramours—until Mary.

He’d been proud, excited. For Evan, that had been the beginning of the end, watching Con squander money, knowing he had not one family to take care of, but two.

I’ll make sure Mary’s child is cared for, he’d insisted. Laughing.

A bastard? What kind of life can a bastard hope to have?

My child—Con refused to use the word bastard—will have a good one. I’ll see to it.

See to it, then, said Evan. But I won’t watch it happen. I can’t watch what you’re doing to your family.

You can watch Kate well enough, retorted Con—and Evan knew then, he knew, that Con had long understood Evan’s hopeless love for Kate. Maybe he thought Evan would love her enough for them both, while Con ran around with other women.

Or maybe he didn’t care—not for his wife’s heart, and not for his friend’s.

Everything Evan held dear, Con valued little. And so Evan left, swearing never to return. Remaining would be like watching someone shoot horse after healthy horse. It would be like a museum director watching every precious item in his holdings burned and crushed.

But he had returned after all. And here was Mary, delivered of a healthy son, whom Con had not been able to care for.

The cut-off cinch was heavy in Evan’s pocket. Driscoll’s odd, clumsy dodge about Con and false antiquities lay heavily on his mind.

And he noticed something he hadn’t before.

“Mary,” he said. “Where did you get that statue on your mantel?”

Mary jogged the little boy on her hip. “The dolphin, you mean? Con gave that to me. He said it was a Roman one.”

“So it seems.” Evan crossed the room to look at it more closely. The stone sculpture was the size of the O his fingers could make curving together, the dolphin’s nose almost touching its tail.

“Is it worth something?”

Evan picked up the statue, hefted it—too light for solid stone—and squinted at it. Somewhere, if it were of the type he’d seen so often, there would be a join. Aha. With a wring of the dolphin’s neck and a squeak of tight-fitting stone, Evan yanked the sculpture apart. It was hollow within, and empty—like the false antiquities Evan had lectured on. And it had come to Mary from Con.

What did this mean? That Con was connected to the forged antiquities somehow? As Driscoll had carefully not suggested?

Evan looked into the little space, feeling just as hollow. “No,” he said. “It’s not worth any money. But if it’s worth something to you, you should keep it.” He pressed the pieces back together, unable to help admiring the skill of their join.

“It is,” Mary said from behind him. “Besides my boy, it’s all I have of Con.”

“You went to his funeral, didn’t you?”

“I did, and I go to his grave all the time. Sometimes we see the countess.”

“The countess?” Evan set the dolphin back on the mantel with unsteady fingers, then turned. “The—the young countess?”

“The young one, Con’s wife,” Mary agreed. “She’s a real lady.”

With a gentle hand, she covered her son’s ear. “She didn’t deserve to be run around on, but—Con was going to run around anyway, see? And I wanted it to be with me. I couldn’t be quit of him.” Her mouth trembled. “I took a few weeds from the churchyard wall. We’ll bring them back, and Conall can lay them for his da.”

“Fowers,” said young Conall.

“That’s right,” Mary said. “Flowers for your da. I want you to know him as much as you can.”

What do you want your boy to know? Evan almost asked. Con was my closest friend for years. I don’t think anyone knew him better.

Even so, there was much about him I never guessed.

From the mantel, the dolphin seemed to smile.

So Evan asked a different question instead, hand in his coat pocket to brush the sliced-off cinch. “Mary, did you know a groom named Adam Jones? He worked at Whelan House around the time Con died.”

Mary tickled her son’s side, her brow creased with the effort of recollection. “The Welsh fellow, you mean?”

“He was Welsh?”

“Sure he was. Welsh as you and Miss Ahearn.”

“Miss Ahearn is Welsh?” Evan realized he was repeating himself. “That cannot be. She’s from Thurles.”

“She sounds like she’s been in Ireland awhile, but that’s no County Tipperary accent. If you could hear speech with Irish ears, you’d know her voice for a Welsh one, like yours.”

This was both interesting and odd, but not precisely to the point. “Was Mr. Jones angry with Con? Maybe an issue of pay, or… What do grooms get angry about? A wager gone wrong?” Who would know, at this point in time? It had been two years. Evan could almost feel straws slipping from his grasp.

Mary opened her mouth—then closed it, shaking her head. She set her child down with an instruction to play with his blocks in the bedchamber. When Conall had scooted off, Mary spoke—quietly, so quietly Evan had to draw near. “I’m a good Catholic, though I’ve done my share of sinning. And there’s something wrong in this town.”

This, Evan had not expected. “With whom? Where?”

Mary jerked her head toward the back of the house. “It goes down the river. Ever so many boxes, but of what?”

“Boxes?” Evan struggled to follow.

“Wooden ones, great big ones floating by at night. I asked Mr. Driscoll about all the boxes once, and he said he had the matter in hand. Gave me a shilling for my trouble, treating me like a housemaid peeking on naughty guests.”

“And these boxes come from upriver?” Evan asked. When Mary nodded, he said, “Then I need to search upriver.”

Loughmoe Castle was upriver on the Suir, wasn’t it? Loughmoe, and its wild geese so long flown.

“Don’t search alone,” Mary said. “The young countess would go with you, I’d wager. She’s a crack shot.”

“Thank you, Mary,” Evan said. “I don’t think I’ll go to the castle yet. By the by, how are you getting along? Have you means enough?”

Mary winked, the sauciness that must have drawn Con’s eye so many years ago. “I get a shilling for my trouble every time a box goes by, so I do all right.”

With that, Evan took his leave from Mary. Instead of returning to Whelan House or cutting north to Loughmoe, he rode further west. He crossed the Suir on a stone bridge, the chestnut’s hooves making a pleasant ringing clop.

West they rode, past fields, until farmland became manicured and rough stone walls became tidy white-painted posts.

Here they were at the racecourse, a gravesite of its own. An uneven oval, smooth green turf chopped by hedges, outlined by white fences, split by a ditch. It was the tidy version of life. Problems for those who never otherwise encountered them.

This wasn’t fair, Evan knew. Anyone who owned or could borrow a horse could ride the course. For many, the race was a wind-whipped escape from the grind of everyday life. When soaring through the air on the back of a horse, unwashed nappies and burned meals and that sprained finger one had got at work didn’t matter so much.

He urged the chestnut onto the silent course. The gelding’s ears were pricked, and he tugged at the bit. He recognized the track and was ready to set off at a gallop. “No races today, boy,” Evan soothed. “I just want to have a look.”

He rode the chestnut to the first jump, then swung down. Holding the reins, he walked around it, hedge and fence, and then examined it from either side.

The chestnut snorted, shaking his fine head.

“You’re right,” Evan said. “I don’t know what I thought I’d find.” After two years, it wasn’t as though a letter of explanation would be tucked into the neatly trimmed jump.

Here on this site, the fifth Earl of Whelan fell. It was due to tack that someone had damaged. Someone Welsh, who fled.

Someone named Jones.

Jones, like Sir William’s old friend. The criminal mastermind, Anne Jones.

Who was Welsh, and who had fled from the baronet, taking the secret of a lost daughter with her.

Like the horse, Evan shook his head. Coincidence—all of it. He was weaving connections that weren’t there. Nothing was here now but a fence and a hedge, both of the sort Con had jumped hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

“Why did you do it, Con?” Evan murmured. “Why did you take the leap?”

The answer came easily. He’d done it because he loved it, and because he never expected any harm to come to him. This was why he’d raced, too, and why he had betrayed Kate. Why he’d asked Evan to keep his secrets.

And didn’t Evan understand? Those were the same reasons Evan had visited Whelan House so often over the years: because he loved being there. It was like his home. He never expected Con to return with a bride who took Evan’s heart, unknowing, and never gave it back again.

Even so, he had assumed his friend would always be there. That the cinch would hold. That Con would bounce up from every fall. And that the one who possessed Kate, the greatest treasure imaginable, would value her as she deserved and give her what she wanted. Show her she was enough, just as she was.

But Con had gone silent, and Evan had too. So many years wasted. So many years apart. So much he could have said, should have said—and so much he dared not, lest he frighten Kate from his side. Lest he break his own heart beyond repair.

Anguish ripped through him, a keen of such rage and sorrow that he dropped the chestnut’s reins and sank to his knees on the turf. Right after the maiden jump, at which Con had fallen and met the end of his life. Evan crumbled for all the words unspoken to his friend, the letters unwritten to Kate, and all he still could not say to her.