An Embarrassment of Riches (27 page)

His hand tightened beneath her arm. ‘Allow me to introduce my bride, gentlemen.'

There was an instant hush. Alexander savoured the moment. He thought of Genevre. He thought of her leaving America believing him to have been unfaithful to her. He thought of her dying in that belief.

‘My bride,' he said with relish. ‘Miss Maura Sullivan of Killaree, County Wexford.'

‘Sullivan?' half a dozen journalists asked simultaneously, their faces blank. ‘Sullivan?'

No-one had heard of a Duke of Sullivan or an Earl of Sullivan. One bright spark, remembering that among the British aristocracy a family name and a title were often two different things, shouted out: ‘Is Sullivan the family name of the Duke of Powerscourt?'

Alexander smiled genially. ‘My new bride has no family connection with the Duke of Powerscourt.'

Beyond the crush of journalists he could see a carriage waiting, emblazoned with the coat of arms that his father affected. Captain Neills's messengers had been highly efficient.

‘In fact my wife has no family connections at all,' he said, still smiling as he forced the journalists to make way for himself and Maura.

As he reached the carriage he gave Maura a hand into it and then turned to the still besieging Press, delivering his
coup de grâce.
‘My wife is Irish, a Roman Catholic and illegitimate. Good-day, gentlemen.'

If he had said that his wife was a two-headed leprechaun his statement couldn't have met with more disbelief. Hard on the heels of the initial reaction of stunned incredulity came anger. Every single journalist was convinced that Alexander was trying to make a fool of them. His bride's name wasn't Sullivan. Sullivan was a name from the Irish bogs.

‘Your sense of humour isn't appreciated, Mr Karolyis!'
one of them shouted out as the coachman flicked the reins and the carriage began to move away.

Alexander merely grinned. In another few moments they would be interviewing Captain Neills. Then they would have to believe him.

Maura was staring at him in shattered horror.

‘Why … why did you say those things?' Her face was ashen, her eyes enormous, her voice cracked and unsteady.

He was still grinning. ‘Why not? They're the truth, aren't they?'

A slight touch of colour had begun to return to her cheeks. Sick disbelief was turning into bewildered anger. ‘Yes, but it's not for the world to know! You are the first person I have ever told …'

‘So no-one else ever knew?' As the carriage rolled away from the docks and towards the city he looked across at her with genuine interest.

‘People in Killaree knew. And Lord Clanmar and Isabel and Kieron.'

He was about to ask who Isabel and Kieron were but she gave him no opportunity.

‘And who were all those people? Why did they want to know about our marriage? Why should they think I was one of Lord Powerscourt's daughters?'

‘They were journalists,' he said dismissively, noting how her hair shone in its restraining silken net.

‘But why … ?'

‘Look over there. That's where Charlie Schermerhorn's grandmother lives.'

Exercising almost super-human self-control she looked in the direction he was indicating. Curiosity overcame her hurt indignation. ‘Who is Charlie?'

‘Charlie is my second cousin. Over there is the restaurant where we celebrated his nineteenth birthday.'

He was like a child at Christmas and his pleasure was infectious. ‘And there is the theatre where Adeline Patti sang when she first came to the city, and there is Perry's, where the best canvas-back in all the world is served!'

Only when they turned into Fifth Avenue and he said they were nearly home, did she first begin to suspect what awaited her.

On either side of avenue were mansions, great ornate edifices with no unifying architectural feature but that of over-decoration and lushness. Some were built of marble and were reminiscent of Italian
palazzi
, others were turreted and pinnacled in the fashion of French châteaux. Domes and minarets, Tuscan arches and Gothic spires proliferated. Behind giant cast-iron gates could be glimpsed courtyards and fountains and Palladian doorways supported by fluted columns. To Maura, accustomed to the clean classic lines of Ballacharmish, everything seemed ridiculously excessive and out of proportion.

At her side, Alexander was clenching and unclenching his hands in a fever of impatience. He was nearly home. His father had obviously been appraised of his arrival, In another few moments they would be face to face. He wondered if his father already knew of Genevre's death. He wondered if his father would try and justify the terrible lies he had told. He wondered if he would be sorry.

He squeezed his short-cut nails into his palms. His father had never been sorry for anything in his life and it wasn't likely that he would begin to be now, which was why he was going to
make
him sorry.

He looked across at Maura and with a wave of irritation wished that she looked less presentable. Where on earth had her silk-net snood come from? And how had she come to possess a dress that fitted her as if it had been made to measure by a skilled couturier? He wondered if he should warn her of what was about to take place and decided against it. If he did, she might bolt and he didn't want anything going wrong now. Not when the moment of his revenge was so near at hand.

‘We're here.'

Maura had been looking in fascination at the stream of elegant equipages traversing the far side of the avenue. Now she turned her head and her lips parted in silent stupefaction. Before her were gigantic gates encrusted in gold-leaf. The carriage paused, waiting for entry, and two small black boys in blue-and-grey livery opened them. Beyond was a courtyard that would have done justice to a Medici.

‘You didn't tell me …' she said, looking up at what appeared to be a white Renaissance palace, the lower walls half-drowned in crimson La Belle Marsellaise roses. ‘I had no idea …'

‘It didn't matter.' His voice was terse, brusque with nervous anticipation. Would word have already reached his father about Maura? Would he be assuming, as the journalists had assumed, that she was one of Lord Powerscourt's daughters? Another thought seized hold of him and he gasped out loud. If his father did not know of Genevre's death, might he not think that the girl he had returned with
was
Genevre?

‘Are you all right?' Maura was looking at him in concern. In the bright New York heat her dark blackberry-blue dress looked unexpectedly sophisticated, the colour intensifying the blue of her eyes.

‘Yes.' He didn't put a hand out to help her from the carriage. He didn't want to touch her. She should have been Genevre. He wanted her to be Genevre so much that he didn't know how he could possibly contain his longing. It seemed impossible to him that he could hurt so much and still be alive.

Maura was aware that he was undergoing some great emotional upheaval and she made no comment on his discourtesy as she stepped down from the carriage and stood at his side.

The giant doors facing them had opened and a butler had emerged and was walking swiftly down a flight of stone lion-flanked steps towards them.

‘Welcome home, Mr Alexander. Welcome home!' he said effusively.

Alexander had no intention of wasting time on exchanging pleasantries with the staff. ‘Is my father in?' he asked abruptly, beginning to take the steps two at a time.

‘Yes, sir.' At the tone of Alexander's voice Haines's effusiveness circumspectly vanished. ‘He was informed a half-hour ago of your arrival on board the
Scotia.
He is in the Chinese drawing-room …'

Maura was making her own way up the steps in Alexander's wake. Haines endeavoured to escort both of them simultaneously, hurrying down a few steps from Alexander's side to Maura's, and then running up the steps again to be alongside Alexander.

Alexander was uncaring of his plight. At the top of the steps he turned, waiting impatiently for her. Beyond him, stretching away from the open doorway and into the vast entrance hall beyond, available members of the Karolyis staff had hastily assembled themselves into two goggling lines of greeting.

It was an opportunity Alexander had no intention of missing. As Maura bemusedly joined him he gave a beaming smile to the maids and footmen. ‘Allow me to introduce my wife,' he announced expansively, ‘Mrs Alexander Karolyis.'

Thirty pairs of eyes nearly popped from thirty heads. Maura, remembering Ballacharmish, felt a surge of laughter bubbling up in her throat. Well might they stare. So would Mrs Connor and Ellen and Kitty have stared if Lord Clanmar's son had arrived home and introduced a bride dressed in a plain cotton dress and without a single piece of adorning jewellery.

As bobs and bows were made Alexander led the way towards the Chinese drawing-room and his waiting father. Maura's rising nervousness at meeting the father-in-law she had been told nothing whatsoever about was offset by incredulity at the almost unbelievable ostentation. The vast, dome-like entrance-hall was of yellow marble and was crowned with serried ranks of chandeliers, each boasting at least a thousand pendants of cut glass. A huge stained-glass window depicted the kings of England and France on the Field of the Cloth of Gold and would have done justice to a cathedral.

Beyond the entrance hall pale mahogany-panelled drawing-rooms stretched in vistas on either side, crowded with tapestries and statuary and what appeared to be genuine Renaissance mantelpieces. She glimpsed a cavernous dining-room of red marble complete with musicians' gallery and a library whose walls and ceilings were drowning beneath frescoes of nymphs and gambolling satyrs.

At the thought of living among such excessive ornateness her amusement verged on near hysteria. In every palatial room baroque, rococo and Gothic vied for supremacy. Everything was gilded, decorated, ornamented.

Double door after double door was opened for them by footmen. Maura caught sight of a painting she was sure was Venetian and another that looked as if it had been pillaged from the Sistine chapel. As they approached yet another set of double doors Alexander raised his hand to the waiting footmen restrainingly. He wanted the doors to be flung open only when they were on the threshold. He wanted to be there without any warning, like the Demon King in a children's play.

As they paused before doors carved with rampant Chinese lions and fire-breathing dragons, Alexander took hold of Maura's hand. This was it. This was the moment that would put an end to all his father's dreams and aspirations. No aristocratic blood would now enter the Karolyis family, submerging for ever the memory of the peasant blood from which they had sprung. His father had lied and deceived in order that his daughter-in-law be superior in family to Genevre. And now he was going to introduce him to the daughter-in-law those lies and deceit had obtained for him.

He squeezed Maura's hand tight. ‘Ready?' he asked her, brushing a tumbled lock of hair away from his brow with his free hand.

She nodded, wondering why he was so excessively nervous. His father had wanted him to return to America a married man, and he had done so. Surely he could be expecting nothing else but approbation?

Alexander gave a slight nod in the direction of the footmen. The doors were flung open.

Walking forward, her hand still clasped in Alexander's, Maura's first impression was of a sea of blue-and-white porcelain and of a Chinese carpet so exquisite and delicate in colour and design that it redeemed all the previous garish monstrosities at a stroke. Her second impression was that her father-in-law was not remotely the man she had expected him to be.

She had assumed him to be aged and frail, a man anxious to see his son married before death cheated him of the pleasure. He was not remotely frail and he looked to be no older than forty-five or fifty.

Alexander walked a few feet into the room with her and then halted. His father rose from the ebony-framed chair in which he had been sitting and remained standing, making no move towards him. With a sudden rush of disquiet Maura was reminded of a confrontation she had once witnessed in Killaree's bohereen between Ned Murphy and Mr Fitzgerald.

Ever since Alexander had first spoken to her, Maura had never known what to expect next. She did not know what to expect now. She imagined that Alexander would introduce her as his wife. Instead, he said baldly in a voice she barely recognized: ‘She's dead. Genevre is dead.'

Victor Karolyis held his son's eyes unflinchingly. He hadn't known and his first reaction was annoyance that his information service had failed him.

Alexander knew that if he moved one step further towards his father all control would desert him. All he wanted was to put his hands around his father's neck and to throttle him. Shaking with suppressed emotion, his nostrils pinched and white, his voice raw with hatred and with pain, he said: ‘You saw to it that none of my letters reached her, didn't you? That none of her letters reached me. And then you told her I was engaged to one of Powerscourt's daughters. You told the whole
city
that I was engaged to one of Powerscourt's daughters!'

No expression whatsoever crossed Victor's face. He had expected this scene for a long time and he was prepared for it.

‘It was for your own good,' he said imperturbably. ‘It would have been a deplorable marriage.'

Alexander could contain himself no longer. With a primitive howl he leapt towards his father. As he hurled himself on him Victor staggered backwards beneath his weight. A table went flying, Ming vases crashing to the ground.

‘
You murdered her!
' Alexander sobbed, his hands around his father's throat. ‘
You murdered her, God damn you!'

As Victor kicked out, trying to free himself, both of them fell, rolling and flailing over the shattered pieces of china.

Maura gathered her stunned senses together and flew to the door, wrenching it open, shouting at the stupefied footmen for help. They stared past her at the kicking, struggling, rolling figures and not knowing whether their employer was the victim or the aggressor, and whether they would be thanked or dismissed for intervening, they turned on their heels and ran to inform someone more senior of the fracas.