The Irishman's Daughter Page 22

  * * *

  The landlord’s guests had drifted downstairs, toasted the occasion with wine from reserved bottles, and scooped up plates of food. The musicians, sporting black jackets with satin lapels, played Mozart string quartets while the ladies and gentlemen dined. After dinner the quartet broke into music more suited for dancing.

  Everything had been going well until Sir Thomas had drawn her aside. And he had done it in full view of everyone, including her father and Lucinda, a clever trick, she supposed, to allay suspicion from his true intention. But even after their conversation, Briana was uncertain what his motive was. Perhaps she had misunderstood his meaning.

  A few minutes after she left the landowner, Lucinda pounced on her in the great room like a Fury. “What a disgusting display!” Her sister’s face seethed as she spat out the words. If they had been darts, Briana would have been mortally wounded.

  Taken aback by Lucinda’s hostility, Briana ushered her down the hall into the kitchen. She closed the door and prepared herself for a fight. “I did not initiate the conversation with Sir Thomas, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “What did he say to you?” Lucinda asked in an accusatory tone as she stood with fists clenched by her sides. The green god of jealousy had consumed her.

  “It’s really none of your business, but since you’ve asked”—Briana leaned against the kitchen door to block anyone from entering—“I’m not sure what he wanted.”

  “Really.” Lucinda huffed. “Don’t lie to me. I know—”

  “Know what?” A hot anger flushed her face. “You weren’t eavesdropping, were you?”

  Her sister’s head drooped, and Briana knew she had heard their short exchange. Beneath her indignation she pitied Lucinda’s obsession over a conversation. However, her sympathy, at the moment, did not extend to forgiveness. She felt like opening the door, leaving Lucinda alone with the lingering odor of cooked fish and the dirty pots and pans.

  “I was standing by the window,” her sister said in a calmer tone. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Because . . .” Her sister broke into sobs and walked in anguished circles around the spot where the table usually sat. “He looks through me,” she said, pain filling her voice. “I try and try and try and he never gives me the time of day. I work for his friends, I school their children, I make myself presentable from morning ’til night . . . and nothing I do will turn his head.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “Of course it’s what I want!” Lucinda shook her fists. “He is everything I’ve ever dreamed of!” She leaned against the oak cupboard as if she was too frail to continue, muttering words Briana couldn’t hear. Her misery showed in the tight creases that lined her face.

  Briana took a few tentative steps toward her sister. “Maybe he’s not the right man for you. Maybe you’ve read too many books, set your sights too high.”

  “You’ve already made your bed,” Lucinda said bitterly. “You’ve made your choice. I want more out of life than living in a cabin, but Thomas can’t see my affection for him. He said that you look beautiful, that you are the most ravishing sight in Carrowteige.”

  “A compliment. Nothing more. I don’t need flattery.”

  “He told you that life was easier in Manchester. He hinted that you would be happy there under a life of privilege. Did he invite your husband as well?”

  Briana shook her head. “No, and you know that I would never leave him. That’s when I ended the conversation. Privilege can be held over one’s head until it becomes oppression. I wanted no more talk.”

  Lucinda covered her face with her hands in exasperation.

  Briana touched her sister’s shoulder. “I can understand your need—”

  Glass shattered at the front of the house.

  That sound was followed by the somewhat muted percussion of exploding gunpowder. Women screamed as shouts and curses echoed from those gathered in the great room. Briana ran to the kitchen door, threw it open, and raced down the hall. Lucinda followed with equal speed.

  The sight before her was chaotic. Sir Thomas lay sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from a shoulder wound, soaking his white shirt and waistcoat. Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Rogers, both stuffy and plump, cowered in the corner nearest the door clutching their sachets and fans. Mrs. Ward, however, used to the bloody adventures of three boys, bent over the owner, using her handkerchief to cover the wound while her husband cradled the owner’s head in his hands. The other two husbands crouched nearby while Brian hurried for a glass of brandy. Briana rushed to the wounded man. Lucinda landed beside her, hands aflutter, horrified by the sight of her employer gasping on the floor.

  “A glancing blow,” her father said after he returned with the brandy. “A hand’s width lower and the bullet would have pierced his heart.” He pointed to the shattered looking glass at the back of the room, where the ball had lodged in the wall.

  “I’m fine,” Sir Thomas said, and tried to rise up, but fell back, wincing in pain. He clutched at his shoulder and shouted, “Someone get the devil who did this.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” Brian said. “It’s dark out. We’d be easy targets.”

  “Well, by damn, I’ll go,” Sir Thomas said. “I’m not dead.” He attempted to get up again, but Mr. Ward restrained him with a firm grip on his host’s arms.

  “Get away from the window,” Mrs. Ward yelled at her three sons as they crept toward it, attempting to look over the casement. “Sit on the floor and be quiet.”

  The boys frowned, showing disappointment at their thwarted curiosity, but complied with their mother’s wishes.

  “I’ll get Rory,” Briana said. “He can help staunch the wound.”

  “It’s not safe,” her father objected while positioning the brandy glass on the owner’s lips.

  “Would you rather he bled to death?” Briana asked.

  “Get your husband,” Sir Thomas ordered.

  “I’ll go out through the kitchen,” Briana said. A horrifying thought chilled her as she watched the landlord writhe on the floor. Rory’s pistol. What if he had shot Sir Thomas? No, he would never have had a hand in such madness despite his hatred of the Englishman.

  She felt as if stones had weighed her down as she pushed herself up and headed for the hall.

  Rory burst in the front door and, seeing her, captured her in his arms.

  “Sir Thomas has been shot.” Briana pointed to the great room and then whispered, “Where have you been?”

  “Talking a walk. I heard the shot from the beach.”

  Briana looked down at his feet, which were coated with sand. Relief flooded her. How could she have thought that Rory would shoot Sir Thomas? And what of the others at the ball—three boys, the guests, and the musicians. What insane person would take the chance of killing a child?

  “Hurry!” She led Rory into the room.

  Sir Thomas was sitting up now, and though he seemed relieved to see a man who could help him, his eyes couldn’t hide the flicker of suspicion that streaked across them.

  “Are there clean bandages?” Rory asked Brian.

  “A few in the cottage,” her father replied.

  Rory shook his head. “I don’t want anyone else to get shot.” He looked to Briana. “Get me clean cloths from the kitchen.”

  Briana complied with his order and disappeared down the hall. She rummaged through a drawer where dish things were kept and returned with several.

  Rory and Brian stripped the waistcoat from Sir Thomas and ripped his bloody shirt apart at the shoulder. “Give me the brandy,” Rory said to his father-in-law. Brian handed the glass over with some dismay because he had guessed its use.

  Rory took the cloths from Briana and then doused them with liquor. “This is going to sting,” Rory said. He pressed a cloth over the gash that ran across the landlord’s left shoulder and held it there.

  “Damn!” Sir Thomas’s face contorted i
n pain, and he howled at the ceiling, causing Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Rogers to wince as well. His outburst was short, however, and soon he was sitting with his left hand planted firmly on the floor while tending to the wound with his right. “That, ladies and gentlemen, was the signal for the evening to end,” Sir Thomas said.

  The musicians disbanded and the guests retreated to their rooms after saying a hurried good night. Briana was left in the room with Sir Thomas and her family.

  Rory and Brian cautiously pulled the curtains across the shattered window and lifted the landlord to a chair. Sweat broke out on Sir Thomas’s forehead.

  Lucinda swabbed a handkerchief across his face. “Do you feel sick?” Her attention never wavered from her employer as he sagged in the chair.

  “Sick?” he said contemptuously. “I’ve been shot. It burns like hellfire.”

  Lucinda backed away, rebuked by his gruff response.

  “I’ll wrap bandages on you before I take you upstairs,” Rory said.

  “Thank you,” the owner replied, “but Mr. Walsh will give me a hand.”

  Brian lowered his head in a deferential nod.

  “My concern now,” Sir Thomas continued, “is in finding the bastard who shot me. I’m sure he wanted me dead, but he missed the mark.” He stared at Rory. “Would you have any idea who did this?”

  Briana again thought of the pistol.

  Shaking his head, Rory said, “I was walking on the beach when I heard the shot, I ran from the bay to the house, but I saw nothing.”

  “Are there any witnesses to your actions?” Sir Thomas asked as Lucinda again wiped his face. He waved her away.

  “I beg your pardon, sir. You’ll have to take my word for it.” He pointed to the sand on his feet.

  As Briana was about to jump in to defend her husband, Sir Thomas lowered his head. “Brian, help me up the stairs—I feel a little faint.”

  The owner’s face sagged under the pain. His black muttonchops glistened with perspiration, and his hair fell in damp curls across his forehead. Her father eased the Englishman out of his chair and placed his shoulder underneath the owner’s right arm. The owner hobbled out of the room using her father as a crutch, but he turned at the stairs.

  “I have one final thing to say . . . as we end the evening.” His barely contained smirk irritated Briana. “At the end of the month, Lear House will be closed.”

  The announcement had been made—and they had known it was coming. Still, the news was shocking enough to take their breath away. Lear House would be shuttered and locked, and every tenant upon its lands would be subject to eviction.

  Sir Thomas and her father climbed the stairs, never looking back, as she grappled with the calamity she had feared for months.

  * * *

  They said little as they stored the excess food, cleared the table, and cleaned the blood from the great room floor. The musicians, stunned as they were by the night’s events, offered to move the furniture and kitchen table back to their original positions. Lucinda sobbed quietly as she worked next to them, and once their work was through she declined an escort back to the cottage. Briana had never seen her sister so despondent and feared for her safety despite her wish to be left alone. Her father had left Lear House for a few minutes and then returned with bandages and strips of cloth. Rory instructed him on the best way to treat the wound.

  She and Rory closed up the kitchen and walked back to the cabin. Rory’s step quickened as they neared their door. Inside, he lit the candle, placed the flame on the small table, and went immediately to the bag that held the pistol.

  “It’s here,” he said with relief. He took the weapon out, held it in his hand, and then muttered, “By all the Saints.”

  “What’s wrong?” Briana asked.

  “It’s been fired. Smell it.”

  She took the pistol and smelled the sulphuric odor of burned gunpowder. She handed it back to him and sat on the bed feeling heavy and tired, her mind filled with questions.

  Rory had pronounced his dislike for the Englishman many times. How many other tenants, villagers, or Mollies had heard as well? Certainly he wouldn’t lie to her, but would she be caught in a lie as well to cover his hostility toward the owner? Someone had taken the pistol and shot Sir Thomas—that was the only explanation. But who?

  The shooting was bad enough, but closing Lear House crushed any vestige of hope she had been able to muster the past months.

  She, her family, and the tenants were about to lose everything they had known—their history, their homes, and possibly their lives.

  PART TWO

  AMERICA AND BEYOND

  CHAPTER 13

  Late July 1846

  Briana and Lucinda stood at the end of the lane leading to Lear House. Rain pelted Lucinda’s umbrella, sheltering them both from the rivulets of water that poured down its curved top. Briana could hardly look at the manor, which would soon be a shell of its former self, the doors bolted and locked, the windows closed and shuttered.

  Lucinda, more stoic, took in the events with the analytic mind of a governess. Briana wondered what her sister was thinking under her thick veneer of inscrutability.

  The manor would be surrendered to the insects and rats that, as of late, had made it a nesting ground in their search for food. Briana remembered the once grand splendor of Lear House, now perched on the hill like a gray tomb. Even the few clear, beautiful days could not dispel the gloom that had drenched the house in a summer filled with rain.

  Sir Thomas had made good on his threat to close the manor by the end of June, but the process took longer than expected because the books had to be audited, a census taken, and certain valuables secured for shipment to Manchester. The owner’s wound, though superficial, had suppressed his enthusiasm for Lear House and Ireland. Although he told Briana and her father that he wanted to be back on English soil as soon as he could book passage, he was often hampered by fits of depression, which slowed his work. Briana noted he would take to his bed and remain sequestered until the evening meal was called. She supposed these bouts were related to his injury and the loss of Lear House, but she wondered whether other mental forces were at play.

  As they stood, sister to sister, Briana imagined what was going on in Lear House with her father, Rory, and Sir Thomas enclosed inside. Rory was probably stone faced, seething, as he muttered about the worsening disaster of the famine. He could do nothing to fight Sir Thomas’s orders, or the weather, or the political forces that had conspired against them. He was also holding a secret that she shared—the almost overwhelming proof that Rory’s pistol had wounded the landowner. In much the same manner as her husband, Brian would cast a melancholy gaze as he went over the books, seeing his life’s work and the fortunes of his tenants wiped out on the page.

  Lucinda gripped Briana’s fingers. The rare displays of warmth between them had become more frequent as Sir Thomas’s behavior had turned reclusive. Her sister needed someone to lean on now that the heated fantasy of a romance with the landlord had cooled.

  Briana dodged the pelting rain from a sudden gust of wind. “We should probably see what we can prepare for dinner.” Food consumption had slowed after the shooting because the invited guests had vacated Lear House; still, supplies were nearly gone. Only a half bag of oats and one bag of meal remained—fish were hard to come by because of the continuing torrents, wild winds, and perilous currents. The pig was, of course, gone and no other meat had graced their table since the day of the ball. Daniel Quinn, who had subsisted on table scraps, had disappeared without a good-bye a few days after the guests.

  “I hardly care to go inside anymore,” Lucinda said. They paused before the door, and Briana studied the gray eyes and pale skin of her sister’s face. Sir Thomas rarely spoke to either of them now, preferring to deal with others. Lucinda had taken the landlord’s remote attitude especially hard; Briana learned from her father that her sister strayed from her room only when required and often cried herself to sleep.

  �
�You understand that he isn’t in love with me—if anything, I’m a conquest,” Briana said, hoping to assure her sister. She had never expressed this feeling so strongly before, but her sister’s melancholia forced her to speak. “And I’m not in love with him. There’s nothing he could say or do to sway me in my love for Rory.”

  Lucinda gripped the umbrella handle, her knuckles turning white. “Yes. I don’t think he’s in love with anyone but himself.” The dark door of Lear House stared back at them.

  “Have you given up on him?” Briana asked.

  Lucinda pointed the umbrella at Sir Thomas’s bedroom. “At one time, I would have done anything he asked, but when I found out the night of the ball that he cared nothing for me, and that he only desired my services as a governess to keep his friends happy, my feelings changed. The shot intended for him hit my heart instead.”

  Briana put her arm around her sister’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you were hurt, but I’m glad you can finally see through him. I’m sure it’s been painful.”

  Her sister drew in a deep breath. “More painful than anything I’ve ever experienced—a hundred times more painful than leaving Father and you to teach in England.” She shook her head. “Yet I truly wonder if I’m over him. Being around him, seeing him, still hurts.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Briana whispered, upon hearing footsteps. Her attention was drawn to the man in a great coat and hunting cap who opened the manor door. His left arm was drawn up in a white cloth sling that kept it crossed over his chest. Lucinda drew closer to her sister as they backed up on the wet terrace.

  He stopped in front of them and tipped his cap. The rain wicked down the brim onto the slate. “I’ve informed your father that I’ll be leaving on the morrow. The things I’ve selected will be picked up and transported to Belmullet for the trip to England. The house will be locked, and no one will be permitted to enter. The heavier objects—the furniture—and some of my clothes will remain here, in case . . .”