Twenty-one

That night, Kate braced herself for another visit from Good Old Gwyn. But as they waited for the customary quaver at the drawing room door, Evan opened the glass-fronted curio cabinet in the corner and shuffled through items within.

Mysterious of him, yes. But why should he not? He seemed to fit here; he always had. He had been a part of Whelan House before Kate herself.

“How long,” he asked, “have you had this bust?” He emerged from the depths of the cabinet with an odd carved statue in his hands.

From her perch on the long sofa, Kate looked at it blankly. “Is that mine?”

“Surely it is. I found it in the cabinet.”

“It must have been in there since some time before Con died. He was always switching those items when he ordered new draperies and things like that. I stopped looking at what was in there a long time ago.” Kate rose, crossing the room to join Evan and get a better look at the item.

“It’s definitely not an ancient bust,” Evan said. “For one thing, it’s extremely small. I can hold it in my hands. And for another…”

Kate, peering over Evan’s shoulder, laughed. “It looks like Lord Liverpool.” Indeed, the bust bore a startling likeness to the prime minister of England—but in classical garb, and with a laurel crown. “That’s awful. I wish I’d spotted this long ago. I could have used the laugh.”

“I think it must have been made as a joke,” Evan agreed. “Especially because—wait a moment.” With a wrench at the head, it squeaked and turned on the neck—then popped free.

“Good Lord,” said Kate. “You’ve beheaded the prime minister.”

“We’re in Ireland, so it’s permitted. Different country. Hardly even a crime.” Evan tipped the little stone head. “Fine joinery, fitting those pieces together so neatly. You see the hollow inside?”

“That’s not usual for statuary, is it?”

“For cast bronze, but not for stone.”

He handed Kate the head, and she studied the hollow within. It looked chiseled out, the marks rough. “What could it be for?” Her brief spurt of humor had faded, and now she could not think of a question to which she wanted the answer.

Evan’s mouth had pressed into a grim line. “I suspect that these statues are used in smuggling.”

“Because they appear to be statues,” Kate realized, “and nothing more.” She didn’t want to hold the funny little head anymore, and she handed it back to Evan as though it were a scalding potato.

“Customs agents won’t care about statuary. Not falsified pots, either. They’re looking for obvious riches, like silks and coins.”

“What does it mean that Con had one?”

Evan looked troubled. “It might mean nothing at all. He might have seen it in a shop, thought it funny, and bought it. It’s not a forgery, because it’s not meant to pass as anything old.”

She swallowed. “What else could it mean?”

Carefully, Evan fitted the head and neck together. They seemed not to want to join, and he had to shove with gritted teeth to squeak the pieces into place. “It could mean that Con was involved in smuggling.”

“But why?”

Another question to which she did not want the answer—yet this one came to mind easily.

Because they had always worried about money—always. Or to be more accurate, Kate had worried about money. Don’t buy that, please. We can’t afford that. The rents aren’t enough.

Don’t, can’t, aren’t. Hers had become the voice of absence. A challenge. Con always responded with a don’t, can’t, aren’t of his own. I don’t need to worry. You can’t curtail my pleasures. Things aren’t as dire as you say.

Con wouldn’t have minded the adventure of smuggling—and he wouldn’t have minded the extra money gained for looking the other way. Money for carriages and curtains and carpets, for gifts far more lavish than a bolt of cloth and a few toy soldiers.

Evan’s thoughts seemed to have followed the same line. “With Con, the why is not difficult to imagine.”

So easy, in fact, that she assumed at once it was true. “I wonder what his pleasure was. Stolen gems?”

“A fine guess. I knew you had the criminal instinct.”

“It’s the company I keep,” Kate said lightly. “I used to be a perfect lady.”

“And now you’re a just-right lady, is that it?” Evan tossed the tiny prime minister from one hand to the other. “What shall we do with this fellow?”

“Pitch it into the fire.”

“Nonsense. It’s stone. It won’t burn.”

“Put it back into the curio cabinet, then,” Kate decided. “But I won’t keep it.” Never before had she felt a possession as a burden, but now she wanted to smash it. A great sweep, a clearing out that would make Whelan House into the home of her shaping. “I haven’t changed anything since he died. At first I didn’t want to, and then there was no money. But now…”

Evan tossed the bust into the cabinet with more force than care. “What’s this? Are you talking of change? So much excitement for one evening! You’re going to make me swoon.”

“This is only good sense. These old walls are so thick. What do you think would bring more light into the space?”

“A great hole in the roof,” he said promptly.

“Take that back at once. A sound roof, I am relieved to say, is one thing this house does possess.”

But even as she joked, she wondered. Who had her husband been?

* * *

The following morning, Kate entered the study. As usual. And regarded the pile of work on the desk. As usual.

Ledgers, letters, questions, demands. Blotting paper, ink bottle, quill, sand. All in a pile for the earl, but one earl was gone, and the other was only nine years old. There was no one to sort through the papers but the countess.

She was more than a countess, though. Yesterday her hair had been tumbled, her skin warmed by passion. The awareness was unexpected—unfamiliar. Not unwelcome.

For a countess was also a wife, wasn’t she? Or in Kate’s case, a widow. And a mother who had been wed, and a lover who had been a friend. A lady who could seethe with anger, a friend who could be aflame with lust.

There were so many ways to be imperfect, but that did not mean they were not right.

“Time enough for these papers later,” she decided. There was a walk she needed to take. She collected a fistful of blooms from the hothouse, then set off.

A brief burst of a sun shower had wet the grass, leaving the strands sparkling with drops. Kate had worn her great gray cloak again, and its hem became damp and heavy almost at once.

When she crossed onto the Church of Ireland lands, the new vicar—clipping the hedges before the little church—turned to greet her. A medium-sized, medium-looking man in every way, Reverend Jerrold nonetheless had a manner of great warmth. “Lady Whelan, what a pleasure. It’s not often I see you here.”

She waved her handful of flowers at him. “I’m on my way to the churchyard.”

“Ah.” He bowed. “I think it’s empty at present. Take all the time you wish.”

Kate turned the corner of the church, a wee stone building of great anciency. The churchyard at its side was neatly tended and just as old, with some markers worn illegible by time and rain.

One was new, comparatively, its trimmed edges still sharp. The name and dates were writ large, but Kate would know them by heart if the stone were blank.

Conall Ritchie Durham, Fifth Earl of Whelan. The courtesy titles, the dates. Beloved son, father, husband. A life in a few short lines, ending at the age of thirty-two years.

Good Old Gwyn had wanted a large marker. Something to collapse before and sob over, Kate had thought uncharitably. It was a flat tall slab, curved at the top. Simple, yet grand and looming.

In the darkest pit of shock after Con’s sudden death, Kate had stayed away from the churchyard. She felt too conspicuous, her every feeling scrutinized. Was she grieving enough? Was she mourning properly?

But on this fine autumn day, it was pleasant to be there. The churchyard was green space in which, overhead, sounded the fluty call of a thrush. To birds, the trees in a churchyard were like any others: good for perching, for making homes, for finding seeds.

She set down her flowers, then gathered her long skirts to one side and sat beside the tall grave marker. “Conall Ritchie Durham. Here you are. It seems strange that you should be still when there’s a chase coming up. You always did like the chase.”

Every kind of chase. How well she remembered their first meeting.

“What is your Christian name, Miss Chandler?” he had asked.

Young and sheltered as she was, Abigail Chandler recognized the glow in his eyes as admiration, and she could not bear to see it snuffed. Which it surely would be if she told him her name, wouldn’t it? Abigail. Abigail was provincial. Abigail was agog and easily impressed. Abigail was a nickname for a maid. Abigail would make do.

Abigail was not who she wanted to be for this young man of fashion. Instead, she told him her second name. “I am called Catherine.” A queen’s name.

“Are you?” He winked. “May I call you Kitty?” His voice was a purr that seemed to make this name, too, into a small one.

She drew herself up. “I prefer Kate.” A name of decision. Quick on the lips, quick with a quip.

Thus she was ever after. But after they were married, she found that even Kates had to make do. Even as Kate, she had to make the best of something that had once seemed lovely and full of promise, but became quite the opposite.

“I loved you once, you know.” She pressed her hand against the cold stone, stroking the smooth line of it. “You did know, didn’t you? You used that to your advantage.” Talking her into a quick, passionate interlude in the stillroom, surrounded by spices and dried herbs. Persuading her not to wait up for him, when he went God only knew where. Coaxing her for a ride in another new carriage…and another.

Con had been like a wood fire, bright and warm and snapping. Kate was the low flicker of peat. They had complemented each other, sometimes. Sometimes they had not understood each other at all. But they had done well, as well as they could. And once upon a time, he had loved her too.

A creak at the gate made Kate look up. There stood a woman outside the churchyard, with the simple clothing of a servant. Beneath her cap, she was veiled, her arms full of wriggling child.

She seemed not to want company, for as soon as she saw Kate sitting in the churchyard, she stepped back. After plucking a few weeds from the top of the low wall, she passed on down the road.

Kate watched them walk away. The little boy, barely out of leading strings, was a solid bundle who resisted his mother’s embrace. Likely he wanted to get down and walk at the creeping pace of a toddler. Nora and Declan had been the same once. Every rock in the path had been fascinating, every crackling leaf on the ground a wonder to touch and—if Mama wasn’t watching—to taste.

The memory made her smile. “Our children are beautiful, Con,” she said. “I think they’ll be good people. Evan…” Her voice broke, and she lifted her hand from the polished marble. “Evan knows how to make them happy, even better than I.”

Her throat closed on the remaining words, and she patted the marble. “I wonder who we’d have become if you had lived, Con. Would we have been happy again?”

If…would…maybe…

She felt too shy to speak of Evan anymore. Taking a lover was too new, and the friendship between the two men was too old.

Not that she thought Con could hear her. She was talking to herself as much as to him. But there was a comfort in saying the words; speaking them gave them the weight they needed to become truth.

“This is a beautiful place to lie,” she said. “I know you’d rather be striding around, and part of me will always have difficulty imagining you otherwise. But the turn of the seasons is gentle here, and something is always green. There’s no snow, no hail, rarely even a storm.” This was not Newmarket, not Holyhead. There was no mistaking Thurles for anything but itself.

The sun was steady now, and she let her bonnet fall back. Gathering up the flowers, she arranged them before the headstone. They were showy, as Con would have liked. Roses of dark crimson, tender cyclamen of white-tipped pink, and pink carnations. The smell was heavy, making her stomach roll with queasiness, but they looked lovely together.

Flowers had meaning, and she had chosen these carefully. Mourning, they stood for. Good-bye. I will remember you always.

“Thank you for bringing me to this beautiful place, Con,” she murmured. “I think…it finally feels like my home.”

And then she leaned against the marble monument to Conall Ritchie Durham, the fifth Earl of Whelan, and let the sunshine warm her all over.