Betraying Season (17 page)

The remainder of their walk to the Carrighars’ was silent. At the door, he bowed and declined her polite invitation to come in; from the relief on her face, he guessed she needed some quiet time alone to think as much as he did. He left her with a quick squeeze of her fingers, and she blushed again but did not look displeased.

On his brisk walk home, Niall smiled and nodded to all passersby. The handsome houses lining the South Mall had never looked so elegant, and even the thickening clouds threatening rain by dusk looked beautiful. He’d done the right thing, the proper thing, and Mother would just have to accept it eventually. In the meanwhile, he would court Pen honestly, as she deserved.

On Wednesday night, Pen attended the concert, a small wind ensemble playing at a private home, with the Keatings. Two days later, Lady Keating took Pen with her to call on friends, and the day after that to go shopping. By the day of the shopping expedition, Pen didn’t even ask Ally’s permission. Her conscience troubled her at first but soon lapsed into silence. Why bother Ally when she would never miss her? Lady Keating’s elixir continued to keep her comfortable, for which they were all grateful. It also kept her unconscious nearly all day. Still, she had finally begun to gain weight, much to Cook’s and Norah’s approval—though Pen couldn’t help wondering how two childless women had come to regard themselves as experts on the subject of pregnancy.

But their wise noddings and oracular declarations gave Pen the excuse to spend as much time as she liked with the Keatings. It was like having two homes.

She’d even left her embroidery bag at their house rather than carry it back and forth, and Lady Keating had presented her with a pair of velvet house-slippers with her initials on them that fit her perfectly. The small blue upholstered armchair by the window in the
library had become “hers,” and either Doireann or Niall was usually in its mate next to her.

Since that walk home the other day, Niall had been . . . well, she wasn’t sure. At least his conversation never again took on that suggestive, flirtatious tone it had the night of the dinner party, for which she was grateful. Was his declaration that he would not trifle with her feelings part of why she had come to feel so at home here?

Now Niall talked to her about his reading and correspondence with some of the people he’d met on his European tour—intelligent, serious discussion about the politics and economies of the many little German principalities. She could see how deep his knowledge and understanding of the area were compared to the young men whom she’d met last year during her season.

“You should go to London and work for the foreign ministry,” she said to him the following week as they sat in the library one rainy afternoon. “I’m sure they’d snap you up in an instant.”

“With Lord Palmerston as foreign minister, being chewed up and spat out would be the more likely outcome.” Niall smiled up at her from where he knelt at her feet, holding a map of the tiny kingdom of Hanover, which he’d been describing to her.

The Duke of Cumberland had inherited the throne of Hanover when his elder brother William, king of both England and Hanover, died, because Queen Victoria’s sex barred her from inheriting the crown. Pen looked down at Niall’s gold hair, shining even in the dull gray light from the window, and restrained the urge to run her fingers through it. Did he know that his probable father was now Hanover’s king? Was that why he had spent nearly a year there?

On the sofa near the fireplace, Lady Keating laughed her silvery
laugh. “Goodness, I should hope not. Perhaps you will see Niall in London someday, my dear. But for now I am glad that he’s here.”

“I’m glad I’m here, too.” Niall surreptitiously rubbed the toe of one of her slippers where it peeped out from the hem of her dress.

Pen smiled and shook her head at him for taking liberties. It was odd how he never did that sort of thing when they were alone, but only when they were with Doireann or Lady Keating. It had been her experience that young men usually waited until their mothers and sisters were elsewhere to indulge in such demonstrations—the little squeezes of hands, the fleeting touches—but Niall seemed to run contrary to this rule.

Not that Lady Keating ever seemed to notice, apart from the occasional indulgent smile. Pen could only assume she approved of Niall’s attentions to her. And she was glad to not have to fend off too-amorous gestures on the few occasions when they were alone. That would have been worse than the verbal flirting. Though more and more she’d wondered what she would do if he tried to kiss her. Would she mind?

Probably not. At least, not if the dream she’d had about him last night was any indication.

She squirmed slightly, hoping he wouldn’t notice the warmth she could feel in her cheeks. Mary Margaret’s earthy description of Beltane rites must have been stuck in her mind when she went to sleep last night. Maybe that would account for it. What was happening to her? A few days ago, she’d objected to his flirting with her, and now she was thinking about how his lips would feel on hers. . . . She shifted again in her chair.

Niall glanced up at her. “May I get you anything?”

“N-no. I was just thinking that I ought to go back to the Carrighars’ and do some reading,” she improvised.

“Do you have to?” He slid a finger under her skirt and tapped her toe again.

“Beastly boy,” she murmured to him.

“Tell me to stop and I will,” he whispered back.

“Double beast.”

Unfortunately it was true; she really ought to go back and study. There were several chapters that she hadn’t got to yet, and class was tomorrow. But it was so much more pleasant here, with Niall being quietly outrageous and Lady Keating so welcoming—

There was a knock on the door, and one of the maids entered the room, bearing a large tray. “Cook’s baked some tarts, mum,” she announced, setting the tray on the table and leaving.

“You must stay and have tea before you go, Pen dear. I won’t let you walk home in this rain, and it will take Padraic some time to get the carriage ready.” Lady Keating leaned over the tray. “Mmm, are those lemon curd tarts?”

Pen stayed.

“The poor thing’s only eighteen. Must she marry now? She’s barely had a chance to breathe, let alone enjoy herself for five minutes. Why can’t she have another year or two to herself?” Pen asked, as she and Niall strolled down St. Patrick Street a few days later.

A dense fog had drifted in from the harbor, and the atmosphere was heavy with moisture. Pen tried to ignore the tendrils of hair at her forehead that were curling riotously in the damp air. It was fun to go walking in the fog like this because it was different from a London fog—clean and sea-tinged, not yellow and choking. The
passersby were fewer than usual, and the fog muffled the sounds of the city around them. It was as if they were in their own little world.

“Because she’s the queen, not a flighty debutante.” Niall frowned down at her, then laughed. “Unlike some people I know.”

“Flighty? Ha! I’d like to show you flighty.” She could, too. Perhaps a quick trip to hang by his coattails from the spire of St. Anne’s. Honestly!

But to debate like this with Niall, what with his knowledge of the political situation and her knowledge of the queen, was most stimulating. “All I’m saying,” she continued, “is that perhaps she should be allowed another year or two to learn her own mind, so that she chooses the right man to marry. Don’t you think it of great import to the nation that she marry the right man?”

“Oh, that’s easy. It will be either Albert of Coburg or a prince of Orange, though I’ve heard she didn’t like them when they met. Of course, there’s Grand Duke Alexander of Russia, but I somehow don’t see the queen marrying a Russian. My money’s on Albert. It’s what everyone’s expecting in Germany.”

Niall would know, after all the time he’d spent abroad. But still. “Well, I don’t know why she couldn’t marry an Englishman, if she so desired. Must she take a husband from a different country?”

He shook his head. “If she marries in England, it’ll have to be to one of her Cambridge cousins, and I don’t think Parliament or her mother favor the match. And anyway, what’s wrong with marrying a man from a different land? Are you saying it’s necessarily a bad thing? Would you refuse on principle to marry a man from, oh, say, Germany?”

“As my German is not as good as it should be, our courtship might be problematical.”

“Well, if not a totally foreign land, then what about a slightly foreign one? Would you, say, consider marrying an Irishman?”

That was somewhat surprising; Niall usually saved remarks like that for when they weren’t alone. But by now she was better able to respond to them. “Good heavens!” she cried, as if in shock. “Why, I’ve never even considered such a thing! Marry an Irishman?” She peeked up at him from the edge of her bonnet.

He grinned back at her. “Not even considered it? Not in your wildest, most horripilatious fancies?”

“Well. . . .” She pretended to consider the question. “I don’t know. It’s rather a far-fetched notion. Are there any Irishmen you think might be suitable for me to—”

A sharp, shrill sound made her break off midsentence. It rose and fell, and then seemed to split in two.

“Did you hear that?” She pushed her bonnet back and turned her head a bit. “It sounded like a constable’s whistle. Or was it the fog playing tricks?”

“No, you’re right,” Niall replied, pausing. “Sounds like several constables’ whistles. Oh lord, not again.” He sounded disgusted.

“What? What is it?”

“Some anti-Union agitators kicking up their heels, I’ll wager. Hotheaded idiots. They’d get a lot more accomplished going to school and becoming politicians, not fighting them.”

“What are they doing?”

“Who knows? It might have been a public speech that got a little too inflammatory. It’s happened before. Some young lad gets carried away by the rhetoric he hears and starts a bit of trouble with a constable. I don’t know why they can’t do their speechifying in their clubs, rather than in public. At least innocent bystanders can’t get
hurt that way.” His voice grew grim. “Padraic’s youngest daughter was blinded in one eye by a rock about ten years ago when she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that was a quiet year for the agitators.”

Pen stared into the mist, their flirtatious conversation nearly forgotten. Now shouts could be heard from somewhere ahead of them, but the fog made it difficult to see where they came from. It was eerie, knowing that somewhere nearby there might be fighting and mayhem. “The clubs, you said? As in the reading club that we passed once?” Like the one they’d seen Eamon Doherty enter?

“Yes, that’s—” Niall broke off at the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. He pulled Pen back against the wall of a building just as a pair of young men came flying out of the mist, closely pursued by a police constable waving his stick. He blew his whistle, but the pair ahead of him never slowed.

“Good heavens!” she breathed as they passed, close enough to touch, and disappeared up the street.

“I think we should go back to the house and have Padraic drive you home a little later,” Niall said above the growing clamor. His face was grim as he held his arm out to her.

A woman leading a small girl and boy hurried past them, looking terrified, and a one-horse gig did an abrupt turn in the street and trotted smartly away. Other pedestrians, farther away in the fog, could be heard hurrying away from the site of the strife.

There was a shout nearby and a sharp, unpleasant
crack!
as if something had been struck. Pen remembered the constable’s stick and felt ill. “Yes, I think you’re right.” She took his arm, and they turned away.

Another figure materialized suddenly out of the fog behind
them as they walked. Pen heard whoever it was moaning as he breathed heavily, trying to run, and looked over her shoulder.

A tall, thin youth, hatless and with his coat trailing from one arm, half staggered, half ran behind them. Blood as bright as his red hair streamed down his face and over the hand he held clapped to his head.

She froze. Though the man was bent almost in half at the waist, she knew immediately who he was.

“What?” Niall turned as well.

“’Scuse me,” Eamon Doherty mumbled, trying to hurry past them. “Gotta go. Can’t let them find me, not this time. . . .” He stumbled against Pen, then straightened and lurched forward.

Without thinking, she reached out and grabbed his arm. “Mr. Doherty,” she murmured urgently.

“M’ name’s not Doherty,” he said, head still down as he tried to pull away. “You’ve got the wrong man, lady. Lemme go.”

“Eamon!” she said, more forcefully. He looked up then. Gore ran down his face from a gash on his forehead and from his nose, and one of his eyes was almost squeezed shut by a bruise that seemed to darken even as she looked at it, but it was definitely he. As their eyes met, a look of horrified recognition covered his face. “Jesus!” he cried, and tried again to yank his arm from her grasp.

“Hold still, you idiot!” she hissed. “You’re hurt.”

“I’ll be hurt worse if you don’t let me go. The damned constables are after me, and I’ll be sent down from the university if they catch me! Not to mention tossed in gaol for the next year or more.” He succeeded in breaking her grip and nearly fell sideways. Niall caught him.