Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (83 page)

Shane smiled. “I just wanted to say thanks.”

“For what?”

“For what ye did in there, getting them to talk about their time. It put things in perspective for me.”

“Aye, well, do yerself a favor an’ be certain yer not someday their age, an’ tellin’ the same story to another lad.”

“Merry Christmas, Casey.”

“An’ to yerself boyo,” he said. Behind him he could hear the boy go back to join the others, leaving him alone with the night. He settled the scarf more tightly around his neck, the smell of strawberries and grass and vanilla rising from it. His wife’s own particular scent, overlaid with a simple perfume.

In his mind’s eye, he saw the night as it might have been at home. Quiet after the madness of the day, Lawrence finally gone to sleep. Christ, what he’d have given to see the lad’s face this morning. He’d never had a Christmas before, at least not a real one with a tree and a family and love wrapped around you from morning until night. Hopefully the lad had had a good day despite his absence.

What he missed most, though, was the recounting of the day, beside Pamela in their bed, going over the details, tucking away the memories of another holiday, despite the fact that it would blur into the details of a dozen others. That, of course, was half the beauty of it. God and saints willing, he’d be there next year and every year after that.

The paper he’d crumpled up when Shane had joined him still lay damp within his hand, but he had taken a glimpse before the lad had come out and knew what it contained.

At the top, written in Jamie’s firm, elegant hand were the words ‘Merry Christmas’ and under them was the one thing Casey had asked for that Christmas.

The tidal charts for the lough for the second and third weeks of January 1972.

IT HAD BEEN MANY YEARS SINCE the Kirkpatrick home had held such a party. Of course, it had been many years since Jamie had felt like celebrating in such a manner. That he did now had Pamela somewhat worried. Over the holidays the febrile glitter he’d developed through November had become a blinding aura with a terribly sharp edge to it. He was headed for a spectacular fall, the likes of which he’d not experienced in years. She didn’t know how to stop it, however.

The scents of roasting beef and goose mingled festively with the exhaled breath of several bottles of decanted wine. Fires were lit in every downstairs hearth, the light reflecting off of bookbindings, polished floors, and stair rails. Maggie was ordering the catering staff about in fourteen different directions at once, and looked as thoroughly happy as only a woman in her element can. Fresh flowers floated in vases and bowls, glowing softly in dim corners.

The two hundred year old crystal had been dusted and polished until it glittered like diamonds on the long dining table. Above, the spun-sugar Venetian chandelier was ablaze with all two hundred candles lit. Guests milled through the rooms, glasses re-filled at the slightest suggestion of emptiness. The women beautifully gowned, bejeweled and perfumed, the men in formal attire that made even the least fair of them look wonderfully elegant. Strains of Bach wafted over the assembly like a subtle fragrance misted onto the air.

Pamela watched the spectacle from the safety of a corner in the long drawing room, a glass of wine clutched tightly in her hand. Jamie, as always, was the consummate host, his head a gilded lily in the crowd, his voice smoothing all paths and any obstacles that stood in his way. All eyes gave themselves to him, following in the light-ridden wake. He was, of course, intelligent enough to know it and wise enough to ignore it. On his arm, dressed in a pleated column of pale green Chanel silk, was Belinda.

A long mirror held Pamela’s reflection as though she were a painting, burning against the background of the long dimly lit hallway. The pale ivory skin of her shoulders in stark contrast to the blooded crimson she wore at her throat and ears, and in a snug velvet sheathe around her form. She wore her hair up, with long tendrils curling down around her neck. It had been awhile since she’d dressed up, or felt like doing so, but Jamie had been so excited about the party that his mood had become contagious.

Suddenly though, she felt deflated, as though her flesh had collapsed in on her bones along with her mood. These sudden feelings of despair had come upon her without warning several times since the loss of the baby. It seemed to her that her womb was an ash garden, where no child would ever survive to light and life. She wondered if it wouldn’t simply be better to be barren. At least then she could stop hoping.

She glanced once more in the mirror, noting the dark hollows that were permanently carved beneath her eyes these days. Compared to Belinda’s rose-gold charms, she looked positively ghostly. The absence of Casey was a constant ache in her chest, and so was the anger that he’d pushed her away. Yet right this moment she would have given up a year of her life just to rest in the secure strength of his arms. To know that he was safe.

Jamie caught her eye in the mirror, concern written clearly on his features. He raised one golden eyebrow almost imperceptibly, but she understood the implied question and managed a smile for him. She was aware that he was still watching her closely, and so she had endeavored to put a brave face on things. Some days it was exhausting, however.

Jamie turned away, and she let the smile go along with the pent up air in her chest. He had bent to talk to an elderly lady, and a blaze of light crowned his hair, his lithe form clad in a black dinner suit that managed to be less formal and more elegant than anyone else in the room. More than one woman watched him with a slightly unfocused gaze.

A large sigh sounded in her ear, a breath that conceived itself slightly lower than the person’s stomach and somewhat higher than his knees. “Oh Lucifer thou son of morning,” a voice murmured. Pamela recognized the voice, and turned to look at its owner.

“Comparing his Lordship with Satan?” she asked tartly, the wine tasting bitter on her tongue. “Others tend to think he sits much closer to the divine than that.”

Small Davey of Armagh, so named because of his less than imposing stature, gave her an inquisitive look, one bristly eyebrow raised. “Only in looks,” he replied imperturbably, “one could imagine even God being jealous of such a face and form.”

She treated him to an owlish look, taking in the stocky body, the green and scarlet kilt, black velvet dress jacket and the wiry hair that poked out of his shirt collar and curled over the tops of his Argyll socks. He was a remarkably hairy creature, she thought uncharitably. Unfortunately for Davey, nary a wisp of it adorned his head, which was as round, shiny and hairless as a cannonball. His abbreviated height put him at an eye level that would have made most men very happy. However it was common knowledge that Small Davey’s appetites did not run to the curves and roundels of the female form.

His eyes, however, were a warm, sherry brown, and at present filled with empathy.

“Does it hurt very badly?”

Her instinct was to prevaricate but some other process, with a greater wisdom, chose honesty. “Like a knife in your soul that never stops twisting,” she said baldly, feeling an odd relief in the admittance.

“Yes, I would imagine it does,” Small Davey said, voice gentle, brown eyes still intent on her face. “Does he know?”

“No—I mean—I don’t know,” she stuttered, hot blood flushing along her skin. “I am married you know,” she finished lamely.

“I had,” Small Davey gave a small smile, “heard that. However, if you’ll permit an observation by one who has never enjoyed the comforts of a legal union, it seems to me that one does not stop having inconvenient emotions once the rings are exchanged.”

“I must be terribly transparent,” she said, feeling as if the naked yearning that Jamie never failed to stir in her was printed in scarlet letters across her forehead.

“Perhaps only to one who takes the time to look,” Small Davey said kindly. “Smile dear girl, he’s looking this way.”

She glanced up, unerringly meeting Jamie’s eyes across the whirl of small talk and social eddying that was moving about the room in a great undulating spiral. He raised a questioning eyebrow, as if he knew they’d been talking about him. Likely the bastard did, he’d the radar of a bat and the ability to listen to several conversations at once, all the while seeming to pay complete attention to whomever was in front of him.

Just then the dinner bell rang.

“Shall we?” Davey offered his arm, as much, she suspected, in support as in manners.

MAGGIE HAD WORKED HER USUAL MAGIC, so that despite the harried crew hustling to and from the kitchen, there was a feeling that the whole thing had been beautifully effortless. The food had been divine; the wine poured with a generous hand. Now the whiskey had replaced it, so that there was a feeling of soporific content that pervaded the entire length of the table. The candles were burning down, and the dining room was bathed in a soft golden haze. The young man Jamie had hired to play piano for the evening was sounding out the first notes of Cole Porter’s
You Do Something To Me.
Even Pamela felt a slight thaw of the icy core that had sat in her chest for the last six weeks.

Conversation and laughter mixed agreeably with the tinkle of fine crystal and china. Pamela turned toward Jamie, and he flicked her a brief smile of complicity, as though to say “well it’s not turned out so bad then, has it?”

From the corner of her eye, Pamela could see that Belinda had caught the exchange and had put a proprietary hand on Jamie’s arm. A flicker of red-hot anger shot through her at the sight of that soft, white hand laying there in unmistakable possession. Though she was ostensibly giving all her attention to the old gent beside her, there was look of a cat with too much cream around its whiskers on her face that Pamela knew was for her benefit alone.

“Damned fine bit of new horse James has gotten. Will he be letting him race in the spring?” The neighbor was asking, the rough hand that held his whiskey glass testifying to his own years spent in and around stables.

Belinda smiled, tightening her fingers on Jamie’s forearm to turn his attention away from Geordie Cohen, one of the managers from the linen mill with whom he’d been discussing flax prices for the last ten minutes.

“I don’t know. James, will we be letting Phouka race?”

Pamela could feel the simmer in her blood begin a rolling boil. How dare this woman talk as though she made the decisions here, particularly when it came to Phouka.

“Phouka won’t be racing this year because he’s too young,” Pamela said smoothly, “and because it’s for me to say whether he races or not. He is, after all, mine.”

“Yours?” Belinda enquired, politeness barely covering her animosity towards the woman opposite her.

“Yes,” Pamela said, smile still firmly in place, though her eyes burned like wildfire. “Mine, my Christmas present actually.”

“Phouka,” Belinda narrowly missed choking on a swallow of wine, “Phouka was a Christmas present!”

“Er—yes,” Jamie said, beginning to look mildly alarmed by the hostility that was very nearly palpable between the two women.

“Jamie never misses giving me a Christmas present—hasn’t in years,” Pamela said, in a tone that was a direct challenge to the woman who sat so smugly across the table from her.

“That damn horse is worth a quarter of a million pounds!” Belinda said, as if Phouka, by merely being, had committed a crime.

“Jamie,” the two women said simultaneously, one in bewilderment and the other in outraged humiliation. Jamie noted that all his other guests had ceased even pretending to eat or attend to their own conversations and had turned raptly fascinated faces to the drama unfolding at the head of his table.

“You told me,” Belinda said, no longer bothering to speak in low tones, “that you bought him as an investment.”

“An investment?” Pamela said, turning her attention to Jamie as well. “An investment in what?”

“Yes, Jamie, an investment in what exactly?” Belinda asked, blue eyes hard as two points of cobalt. “The long term future, wishful thinking? It seems the sort of present one would give a wife, or perhaps a beloved mistress.”

“How dare you!” Pamela said, throwing her napkin down and rising from the table. Small Davey laid a restraining hand on her forearm which she abruptly flung off.

“How dare I?” Belinda queried coolly. “Tell me Pamela, does your husband know about Jamie’s gifts to you?”

“That’s none of your business,” Pamela said through clenched teeth.

“No, I didn’t think he knew. I doubt he’d be very pleased by the news, would he? Where is he now? Which prison, or internment camp as I understand you prefer to call it, is he gracing with his presence currently?”

“Belinda, please, not here,” Jamie said in a low tone.

“Not here? Where better, darling? I think, Jamie, your money would have been better spent on bribing all the officials and paying out all the hush money her husband will need to see the light of day again. Or is that where the two of you prefer to have him? Safely behind bars so you can continue to play your little game with each other. White knight and damsel in distress. How touching,” Belinda rose, slightly unsteady on her feet. “You’re a fool Jamie, you could have had her for a fraction of the price. I understand whores in her neighborhood come cheap.”