Irish Lady (4 page)

He shrugged. “I've seen better days.”

“So I've heard. Can I help?”

Something flickered in his eyes, something deeply personal and shockingly intimate. “Do y' want to?”

She wet her lips, forcing herself to hold that mesmerizing blue stare. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Meghann's throat worked and she turned away to hide the unexpected tears so appallingly close to the surface.
Breathe
, the voice of a fourteen-year-old boy from long ago Cupar Street sounded in her ear.
Breathe
and
the
pain
will
stop
. She breathed. The tears receded and her voice returned, but the words she spoke were low and close to her heart, not the ones she'd intended for him to hear. “If I owe anything to anyone in this world, it is to you and to Annie. Let me pay my debt, Michael.” She turned back, forcing herself to meet the remote, archangel beauty of his face. “And then you must let me go.”

For an instant, before the shutters fell again, his eyes blazed like living blue flame. “You've already gone,” he said softly. “Y' left your family, your religion and your heritage t' live in London and marry a bloody Brit. You've money and a title and all the respectability that beauty and brains and an Oxford education can bring. Just how much farther can a Catholic from Clonard aspire, Meghann? Are y' itching t' become prime minister?”

“I've no desire to have my body parts blown up all over Malone Street.” She winced, despising the sharpness in her voice.

He grinned. “You've changed, Meggie. But I don't mind. I imagine your tongue will serve me well.” The grin faded. “I didn't kill him.”

Relief washed over her. She believed him. “Who did?”

Michael pulled an unaltered cigarette from his jacket pocket, swiped a match against the concrete floor, brought the two together and inhaled deeply.

“No, thank you,” Meghann said sweetly. “I don't smoke.”

He blew out a blue-tinted curl. “I know. Not that I would have offered. We're rationed in here, or maybe y' didn't know that. Maybe y' think we get Guinness and lamb chops twice a day.”

Meghann released her breath. “Of course, I don't think that. You haven't answered my question. Who killed James Killingsworth?”

Michael shrugged and leaned back against the wall. “Not the Brits and not the IRA. Maybe Paisley's group. I don't know.”

They were getting nowhere. “Come, Michael. If you don't know, no one does.”

“You're giving me more credit than I deserve.”

Meghann shook her head. “I don't think so. News does reach England. I know very well what you've become.”

For an instant the blue eyes flamed again and Meghann thought she saw the old Michael. But then his flash of temper disappeared, except for a slight flaring of his nostrils. When he spoke, sarcasm and the accent of West Belfast were thick in his voice. “I'm flattered that y've kept up. What do y' do with y'r spare time, Lady Sutton? Read the
Irish
Times
or, better yet, the Sinn Fein home page?”

Gritting her teeth, Meghann willed herself back into the control for which she'd earned her reputation. She pulled out a chair, using it as a footrest while she sat on the table. It was an awkward position, but Annie's shoes made her feet hurt and she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of towering over her. “Tell me why they arrested you.”

“I was in the area.”

“Doing what?”

“Listening to a speech.”

“Whose speech?”

“Killingsworth's.”

Meghann's eyes widened. “Good Lord, Michael. Don't tell me they caught you inside.”

He flicked the cigarette into the far corner of the room and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Christ, it's cold,” he complained. “Of course they caught me inside. I was on the guest list.”

Pressure was building inside Meghann's head. “How could you possibly afford a five-hundred-pound-a-plate dinner?”

His mouth tightened and a muscle below his right eye twitched angrily. “None of your bloody business.”

She forced herself to speak calmly. “I'm afraid it is. That's the first question the prosecution will ask.”

“Let them. Their courts have no jurisdiction in Ireland.”

This time her voice rose. “Do you want to go to prison for the rest of your life, Michael?”

He didn't answer, which only infuriated her more. Kicking the chair away, she slid off the table and stood before him, her head tilted to look up into his face, her shaking finger pressed against his chest. “How dare you do this to us? Your mother has aged ten years. She can't sleep at night, which might be due to worry over you or it might be because every one of your brothers is home pretending to give her emotional support while eating her out of house and home. Even Bernadette came, and you know how dangerous it is for her to be in Belfast. As for me, I've lied to my associates, my housekeeper, my clients, and all of my friends, not to mention the fact that I'm here, in a prison, under false pretenses. I'm trying very hard to help you, Michael Devlin, but if you don't want my services, please let me know.”

Her words echoed against the metal door, reverberating off the walls, making the silence that followed appear even deeper than it was.

Michael stared at her, noticing for the first time how her mouth quivered and how the blood leaped in the hollow of her throat. Her hair was darker than he remembered and shorter, cut into a wispy, layered style that framed her face and rested on her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed, but beneath the scarlet her skin still had that curious golden sheen that only the darkest redheads have. Michael did not have the words to describe Meghann's eyes—Irish eyes. They were no true color, but a combination of green, gold, hazel, and amber, clear brook water running over peat moss shot with silver, only brighter, clearer, changing with every mood. Just now they were black with anger and something he had seen too often to deny. Meghann was terrified. She had moved to the other side of the room, as far away from him as possible.

Hand outstretched, he moved forward, his only thought to offer comfort. He stopped in midstride, turned his head to the window and listened. Without warning his hand snaked out, grabbing Meghann by the wrist, pulling her into the nearest corner. “Pretend y' like it,” he muttered, before his arms wrapped around her and his mouth came down on hers, hard.

At first Meghann was too shocked to protest. Then the door opened behind her and she understood. Reacting instinctively, she pressed herself against Michael's chest, slid her arms under his jacket, and kissed him back. His mouth gentled and moved against hers and for a moment Meghann forgot she was in prison under false pretenses, forgot that the man whose lips and hands were taking such shocking liberties was her client, forgot that eighteen years had passed since she'd kissed anyone with such wanton abandon.

“Are you all right, miss? We heard you call out.” The guard's sincere voice broke through her reverie.

Michael broke the kiss, lifted his head, and lashed out angrily. “Get out, y' bloody screw. Find your own girl. I'm allowed my thirty minutes.”

Purple with embarrassment, Meghann hid her face against his shoulder.

The guard, no more than a schoolboy, backed out of the room, apologizing profusely. He stopped for one brief look from the outside window. Michael saw him and deliberately turned his back. Threading his fingers through Meghann's silky chestnut hair, he pulled her head back and kissed her again.

Later, after the silent bus ride through the rain-wet streets and the long walk up Divas Road to Clonard, when she was back in the safety of Annie Devlin's kitchen, Meghann wondered why it had never occurred to her to stop him.

“I can't do anything without a full investigation, Annie.” Meghann paced back and forth in her hostess's small kitchen. “I need information, witnesses, anything. The only way to free Michael is to prove it might have been someone else. What we don't want is a Diplock court. Without a jury, he won't have a chance.”

“I'm thinkin' that he'll be made to confess.”

Meghann frowned. “What do you mean?”

Annie's hand shook as she folded towels. “We still live under the Emergency Provisions Act. The limit is seventy-two hours without a lawyer. Michael can't take another seventy-two hours of torture. The last beatin' almost killed him.”

“A case of this magnitude will have the eyes of the world on it. They can't touch him if they know someone other than a court-appointed attorney is watching out for his interests. It's the only way, Annie. Unless I come out in the open, my hands are tied. I can't request any files from the prosecution without legal authority.”

Annie shook her head. “Y'll have no peace, Meggie. Connor says they'll bring out the big guns if they know y're on the defense. Wait a bit,” she pleaded. “See if y' can find out more before they find out about you. Bernadette and the boys are workin' on it. They'll be here for supper. Please stay.”

Meghann sighed. Had it always been this difficult to get them to move forward? She couldn't remember. Maybe it was different looking out from the inside. Thank goodness for Bernadette. As a past Member of Parliament, she would offer a perspective that none of the others could.

When the news hit and Michael's face appeared on national television, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey had left her husband and children in County Tyrone to be with her mother. For Meghann, she was a breath of life and sanity among the sober, tight-lipped Devlin males. With a sense of déjà vu, Meghann looked around the table with its cloth napkins and lace-trimmed linen. Nothing had changed in fifteen years. They were older, of course, and although Dominic and Liam had the thick, straight Devlin hair, both had gone completely gray. Connor was an older, less personable version of Michael. Sean and Niall were dead, killed in a pub bombing on Divas Street. Cormack and Davie, the merry, freckle-faced lads who had played soccer in the narrow streets of Clonard, were now hollow-cheeked, hard-eyed men who wore the traditional black jackets and blue jeans of the cause.

Meghann stared at her soup. How could Annie bear it? Nine children and all of them marked targets. Later, while walking down the lamp-lit streets of Clonard, she posed the question to Annie's only daughter.

Bernadette linked her arm through Meghann's and shrugged. “She bears it because she was born to it. Every mother in West Belfast knows that her children will struggle with the notion of joining the IRA. Some will join, others find it doesn't suit them. Think of our history, Meghann. Two hundred years ago, a woman knew that only two out of her ten children would live past their fourth birthdays. We accept what is. There is no other alternative.”

“There was for me,” Meghann reminded her, “and for you.”

Bernadette laughed, a rich, clear sound that lifted Meghann's spirits and brought answering grins to two shaggy-haired young men sharing a smoke and a Guinness in the doorway of Feeney's pub. “We're the two, Meggie. Don't you see? We're the exceptions. You more than I. Never once were y' tempted out of your cerebral calm. 'Tis nothing short of a miracle, considering what happened t' your family.”

Meghann looked straight ahead, hoping Bernadette wouldn't notice the telltale blush staining her cheeks. Was that really how she appeared to the passionate, opinionated Devlins? Were they all so filled with themselves that they hadn't seen how it was between Michael and an orphaned refugee from Cupar Street? “I was tempted,” she confessed. “It just didn't work out the way I expected.”

“If you're telling me that you were in love with my brother, I already know that,” announced Bernadette matter-of-factly. “It was inevitable. The signs were all there for anyone with eyes t' see them. How could Michael, who read Yeats and Joyce until his eyes burned, whose mind was filled with rage and passion and romance, possibly overlook a girl like you?”

Meghann shook her head. “Michael was not a womanizer.”

“Of course he wasn't. But there y' were, living in his house, all wide-eyed and autumn-colored, with gorgeous legs and budding breasts. Only an idiot wouldn't jump at the opportunity.”

“The others didn't.”

“Now, Meggie.” Bernadette patted her hand. “I know he loved you, too. He told me the day he was going t' ask you t' marry him. I tried t' stop him, y' know.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you. Y' wanted no part of Belfast, at least y' didn't then. Michael had enormous potential t' help us. We needed him here.”

Meghann no longer felt the cold on her legs. They had walked much farther than they had planned. “Why do you think I want any part of it now?”

“Because you're here.” Bernadette stopped and stepped in front of Meghann, forcing her to stop, too. “I know y', Meggie McCarthy. Y' aren't here because my mother asked for you. Y're here because y've stopped running away. Y've bedded down with the enemy long enough. It's time t' reconcile Cupar Street.”

Bernadette Devlin was forty-six years old, but Meghann couldn't see it. Her blue eyes flashed with the same fire they had twenty-five years before when she crossed the floor of the House of Commons to slap Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary, after he had minimized the massacre of Irish Catholics at Free Derry Corner. She'd been twenty-one at the time, the youngest MP to be elected in over half a century.

Sixteen-year-old Michael had fairly burst with pride when he told how his sister, impervious to tear gas, had led the Bogsiders' resistance in the Rossville Street area of the main war zone. Pictures taken of her breaking bricks to throw at the police earned her a six-month jail sentence.

Now those remarkable blue eyes, so like her brother's, were staring at Meghann, insisting on a commitment the younger woman was not sure she could even begin to make.

Meghann wet her lips. “I'll do everything that I can for Michael. You know I will.”

Once again, Bernadette linked her arm through Meghann's, turning them back in the direction from which they had come. “I wonder if y' have any idea how much it will cost, Meggie.”

***

In the weeks to come, as Meghann waded through paperwork at her London office, commuted to Ireland on the weekends and endured the ghastly bus rides to the Maze and the even more ghastly interviews with an increasingly uncommunicative Michael, she was to think often of Bernadette's words and wonder where the woman had acquired her omniscience.

At the end of Michael's seventy-two-hour internment, the Crown appointed a lawyer to defend him. Miles French was a capable, soft-spoken Irish Protestant who, to his credit, believed in fair representation for Catholics. Meghann chafed at his inexperience and at the limitations the Devlins had placed upon her. But memories were long in the Six Counties, and until Michael gave the word, she would not divulge her role in his defense.

When Bernadette introduced her as a family friend, the young barrister had looked at her curiously but kept his thoughts to himself. If he wondered at her grasp of the facts or the pointed questions she asked, he never hinted that anything was other than it should be. Meghann didn't like deceiving him, but her loyalty was already determined.

She knew that, eventually, her services would be needed. Miles French was a fine lawyer, but he would never command the media attention needed to save Michael's life. Only Meghann could do that, and until she had something to go on, something other than an instinctive belief in Michael's innocence, she was like a swimmer floundering in a merciless current.

It turned out that maintaining Meghann's anonymity had been a wise decision after all. While ten-year-old Susan Killingsworth continued on life support, London buzzed with speculation about her father's murder. Meghann had no doubt that she would have heard none of it had she come out publicly as lead counsel for Michael's defense.

Meanwhile, inside the confines of the H-Blocks, Michael refused to compromise his prisoner-of-war status, thereby losing his monthly visitation privilege. Annie was terrified, Bernadette jubilant, and Meghann, when she found out in the receiving line at the St. Johns' ball, furious.

Theodore Thorndike had just introduced her to Lillian St. John's eldest daughter when the news broke, electrifying the crowd like a lightning bolt. The hunger strike of the eighties that had immortalized Bobby Sands and increased membership in the IRA a thousandfold was resurrected as the primary topic of conversation.

Meghann excused herself, found the study and, in the middle of a dozen cigar-smoking aristocrats, listened as the anchor reported the latest news from the Maze.

“The clever bastard,” she heard someone say.

“It won't help,” said another. “He's a marked man. He won't be set free, even if he didn't do it.”

Meghann turned, a slim regal vision in green satin. She recognized every man in the room except one. “On the contrary, gentlemen,” she said coldly. “This isn't 1974. The eyes of the world are upon us. We've a great deal to answer for after the Guildford debacle. If Michael Devlin is innocent, he will go free.”

“Come now, Lady Sutton,” Robert Gillette protested. “He's a self-proclaimed member of the Irish Republican Army. Who else would have done such a thing?”

Just in time, Meghann realized where she was. Her eyes widened and the corners of her mouth tilted in a smile intended to charm. “Who indeed?” she asked demurely.

Collectively, the men laughed and the tension lifted.

***

“Bloody Prov. Have it your own way.” The guard backed out of Michael's cell, leaving the chamber pot unemptied.

Michael tucked the thin blanket around his legs and lowered himself back down on the concrete floor. The cell was completely barren, stripped of furniture, books, clothing, everything except a chamber pot. The inmates had been on the blanket protest for six weeks now and the no-wash for two. Rather than wear prison issue that labeled them common criminals, they wore nothing at all except blankets. They would have washed, but the guards refused them new towels and they refused to wrap themselves in wet ones on their way back from the showers. Michael no longer smelled his own filth, but he could tell from the strained looks on the guards' faces that he stank like a pig. He grinned. It amused him to think he offended Protestant noses.

His cell wasn't as bad as some whose slop pots had overflowed. Some of the more outrageous had smeared fecal matter on the walls beside their mattresses, risking disease and body orifices filled with maggots. Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, who on his last visit barely managed to avoid vomiting, had compared prison conditions in the Maze to those of refugees living in the sewer pipes of Calcutta.

His grin faded. It was bloody cold here on the concrete. Soon Miles French was coming to go over his defense. Swearing under his breath, he consigned the young lawyer and his endless patience to a swift and merciful end. How often did he have to tell them, he wanted no English lawyer?

Flanked by two screws, Michael made his way down the hall to the visitation room. Miles French, briefcase in hand, waited for him. He stood when Michael entered and held out his hand. Michael stared at it pointedly but did not take it. For a long moment the two men stared at each other, one nattily dressed in tweeds and smelling of cologne, the other unshaven, filthy, and naked except for a gray wool blanket wrapped around his waist and another across his shoulders.

The barrister cleared his throat. “I've arranged for a court date on the seventeenth of June,” he began. “You'll be asked for your plea. I don't think there is any point to pleading guilty in the hopes of commuting your sentence. The press has already crucified you. The defense is asking for the maximum. They want to make an example of you.”

Michael continued to stand, saying nothing.

The lawyer balled his fists and shoved them deep into his pockets. “Does any of this matter to you, Mr. Devlin? Do you understand that unless you can come up with a reasonable suspicion of evidence that someone else was responsible for this act, your life as you know it will effectively be over?”

“I understand.”

“Then why won't you cooperate?”

Michael frowned, narrowing his eyes until the brilliant color appeared as a glittering turquoise line. “How long have y' been practicing law, Mr. French?”

The barrister flushed. “Four years.”

“Is this your first murder case?”

The flush deepened. “Yes.”

Michael laughed, pulled out a chair and sat down, motioning for the younger man to sit opposite him. “I'd like a smoke, if y' don't mind?” he said when they were settled.

French reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of American Camels, offering one to Michael.

After several satisfying drags, Michael blew out a ring and considered the glowing tip as he spoke. “Don't lose sleep over this one, lad,” he advised. “There isn't anything anyone can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I'm done for. They have their scapegoat.”

“But, if you're innocent—”

“From where do y' hail, Mr. French?”

“I was born in Belfast.”

“But recently returned, if I'm not mistaken.”

“How can you tell?”

“Y' know nothing about us.”

The barrister sighed and sat back in his chair. “I've been practicing in Manchester for the last three years. Before that I clerked in London.”

Michael's eyes narrowed. He tapped the ashes of his cigarette against the table leg. “London, y' say?”