Scarlett (117 page)

Cat said goodbye and ran outdoors after breakfast, but Fenton stayed. “Bring more coffee,” he told the maid, without looking at her. “Tell me about your daughter,” he said to Scarlett.

“She only likes the white of the egg,” Scarlett answered, smiling to mask her worry. What should she tell him about Cat’s father? Suppose Luke asked his name, how he died, who he was.

But Fenton asked only about Cat. “How old is this remarkable daughter of yours, Scarlett?”

He professed astonishment when told that Cat was barely four, asked if she was always so self-possessed, if she had always been precocious, if she was very high-strung… Scarlett warmed to his genuine interest and talked until her throat was raw about the marvels of Cat O’Hara. “You should see her on her pony, Luke, she rides better than I do—or you… And she climbs everything like a monkey. The painters had to pluck her off their ladders… She knows the woods as well as any fox, and she has a built-in compass, she never gets lost…‘High-strung’? There’s not a nervous bone in her body. She’s so fearless that it terrifies me sometimes. And she never carries on when she gets a bump or a bruise. Even when she was a baby she hardly ever cried, and when she started walking, she’d just look surprised when she fell, then got right back up again… Of course she’s healthy! Didn’t you see how straight and strong she is? She eats like a horse, too, and never gets sick. You wouldn’t believe the number of éclairs and cream buns she can tuck away without turning a hair…”

When Scarlett heard the hoarseness in her voice, she looked at the clock and laughed. “My grief, I’ve been bragging for an age. It’s all your fault, Luke, for egging me on so. You should have shut me up.”

“Not at all. I’m interested.”

“Watch out or you’ll make me jealous. You act like you’re falling in love with my daughter.”

Fenton raised his eyebrows. “Love is for shopkeepers and penny romances. I’m interested in her.” He stood and bowed, lifted Scarlett’s hand from her lap and brushed it with a light kiss. “I leave for London in the morning, so I’ll take leave of you now.”

Scarlett stood up, close to him. “I’ll miss our races,” she said, meaning every word. “Will you be back soon?”

“I’ll call on you and Cat when I return.”

Well! thought Scarlett after he was gone. He didn’t even try to kiss me goodbye. She didn’t know whether it was a compliment or an insult. He must regret the way he acted when he kissed me before, she decided. I guess he lost control of himself. And he sure is scared of the word “love.”

She concluded that Luke showed all the symptoms of a man who was falling in love against his will. It made her very happy. He’d be a wonderful father for Cat… Scarlett touched her bruised lips gently with the tip of a finger. And he was a very exciting man.

L
uke was very much on Scarlett’s mind during the following weeks. She was restless, and on bright mornings she raced alone over the routes they’d followed together. When she and Cat decorated the tree, she remembered the pleasure of dressing up for dinner the night he first came to Ballyhara. And when she pulled the wishbone of the Christmas goose with Cat, she wished that he would return from London soon.

Sometimes she closed her eyes and tried to remember the way it felt to have his arms around her, but every attempt made her tearfully angry, because Rhett’s face and Rhett’s embrace and Rhett’s laughter always filled her memory instead. That was because she’d known Luke such a short time, she told herself. In time his presence would blot out the memories of Rhett, that was only logical.

On New Year’s Eve there was a great racket, and Colum marched in beating the
bodhran
followed by two fiddlers and Rosaleen Fitzpatrick playing the bones. Scarlett screeched with joyful surprise and ran to hug him. “I’d given up hope that you’d ever come home, Colum. Now it’s bound to be a good year, with a beginning like this.” She got Cat up from her sleep, and they saw in the first moments of 1880 with music and love all around them.

New Year’s Day began with laughter as the barm brack shattered against the wall, showering crumbs and currants all over Cat’s dancing body and upturned, open-mouthed face. But afterwards the sky darkened with clouds, and an icy wind tore at Scarlett’s shawl when she made the rounds of New Year’s visits in her town. Colum took a drink in every house, liquor, not tea, and talked politics with the men until Scarlett thought she would scream.

“Will you not come to the bar, then, Scarlett darling, and raise a glass to a brave New Year and new hope for the Irish?” said Colum after the last cottage had been visited.

Scarlett’s nostrils flared at the smell of whiskey on him. “No, I’m tired and cold and I’m going home. Come with me and we’ll have a quiet time by the fire.”

“A quiet time is what I dread most, Scarlett
aroon
. Quiet lets the darkness creep into a man’s soul.” Colum walked unsteadily through the door of Kennedy’s bar, and Scarlett trudged slowly up the drive to the Big House, holding her shawl close around her. Her red skirt and the blue and yellow stripes on her stockings looked drab in the cold gray light.

Hot coffee and a hot bath, she promised herself as she pushed open the heavy front door. She heard a stifled giggle when she entered the hall, and her heart tightened. Cat must be playing hide and seek. Scarlett pretended to suspect nothing. She closed the door behind her, dropped her shawl on a chair, then looked around.

“Happy New Year, The O’Hara,” said the Earl of Fenton. “Or is it Marie Antoinette? Is this the peasant costume all the best dressmakers in London are creating for costume balls this year?” He was on the landing of the staircase.

Scarlett stared up at him. He was back. Oh, why had he caught her looking this way? It wasn’t what she’d planned at all. But it didn’t matter. Luke was back, and so soon, and she no longer felt tired at all. “Happy New Year,” she said. And it was.

Fenton stepped to one side, and Scarlett saw Cat on the stairs behind him. Both Cat’s arms were held up for her two hands to steady the gleaming jewelled tiara on her tousled head. She walked down the steps to Scarlett, her green eyes laughing, her mouth twitching to keep from grinning. Behind her trailed a long, wide slash of color, a crimson velvet robe bordered with a wide band of ermine.

“Cat’s wearing your regalia, Countess,” Luke said. “I’ve come to arrange our marriage.”

Scarlett’s knees gave way and she sat on the marble floor in a circle of red, with green and blue petticoats spilling from beneath. A flicker of anger mixed with her shocked thrill of triumph. This couldn’t be true. It was too easy. It took all the fun out of everything.

*   *   *

“It seems our surprise was a success, Cat,” said Luke. He untied the heavy silk cords at her neck and took the tiara from her hands. “You may go now. I have to talk to your mother.”

“Can I open my box?”

“Yes. It’s in your room.”

Cat looked at Scarlett, smiled, then ran giggling up the stairs. Luke gathered the robe over his left arm, held the tiara in his left hand, and walked down to stand near Scarlett with his right hand reaching down to her. He looked very tall, very big, his eyes very dark. She gave him her hand, and he lifted her to her feet.

“We’ll go into the library,” said Fenton. “There’s a fire, and a bottle of champagne for a toast to seal the bargain.”

Scarlett allowed him to lead the way. He wanted to marry her. She couldn’t believe it. She was numb, speechless with shock. While Luke poured the wine she warmed herself at the fire.

Luke held a glass out to her. Scarlett took it. Her mind was beginning to register what was happening, and she found her voice.

“Why did you say ‘bargain,’ Luke?” Why hadn’t he said he loved her and wanted her to be his wife?

Fenton touched the rim of his glass to hers. “What else is marriage but a bargain, Scarlett? Our respective solicitors will draw up the contracts, but that’s just a matter of form. You know, surely, what to expect. You’re not a girl or an innocent.”

Scarlett set her glass carefully on a table. Then she lowered herself carefully into a chair. Something was horribly wrong. There was no warmth in his face, in his words. He wasn’t even looking at her. “I would like for you to tell me, please,” she said slowly, “what to expect.”

Fenton shrugged impatiently. “Very well. You’ll find me quite generous. I assume that is your chief concern.” He was, he said, one of the wealthiest men in England, although he expected she had found that out for herself. He genuinely admired her astuteness at social climbing. She could keep her own money. He would naturally provide her with all her clothing, carriages, jewels, servants, et cetera. He expected her to be a credit to him. He had observed that she had the ability.

She could also keep Ballyhara for her lifetime. It seemed to amuse her. For that matter, she could play with Adamstown, too, when she wanted to muddy her boots. After her death Ballyhara would go to their son, even as Adamstown would be his upon Luke’s death. The joining of contiguous lands had always been one of the chief causes for marriage.

“For, of course, the essential feature of the bargain is that you provide me with an heir. I’m the last of my line, and it’s my duty to continue it. Once I get a son on you, your life is your own, with the usual attention to maintaining a semblance of discretion.”

He refilled his glass, then drained it. Scarlett could thank Cat for her tiara, said Luke. “I had, needless to say, no thought of making you the Countess of Fenton. You’re the kind of woman I enjoy playing with. The stronger the spirit, the greater the pleasure in breaking it to my will. It would have been interesting. But not as interesting as that child of yours. I want my son to be like her—fearless, with indestructible rude health. The Fenton blood has been thinned by inbreeding. Infusing your peasant vitality will remedy that. I note that my tenant O’Haras, your family, live to a great age. You are a valuable possession, Scarlett. You will give me an heir to be proud of, and you won’t disgrace him or me in society.”

Scarlett had been staring at him like an animal mesmerized by a serpent. But now she broke the spell. She took her glass from the table. “I will when Hell freezes over!” she cried, then she threw the glass into the fire. The alcohol flared in an explosion of flame. “There’s your toast to seal your bargain, Lord Fenton. Get out of my house. You make my flesh crawl.”

Fenton laughed. Scarlett tensed, poised to spring at him, to batter his laughing face. “I thought you cared for your child,” he said with a sneer. “I must have been mistaken.” The words kept Scarlett from moving.

“You disappoint me, Scarlett,” he said, “you really do. I attributed more shrewdness to you than you are demonstrating. Forget your injured vanity and consider what you have in your grasp. An impregnable position in the world for yourself and your daughter. It’s unprecedented but I have the power to overthrow precedent, even law, if I choose. I shall arrange an adoption, and Cat will become the Lady Catherine. ‘Katie’ is, of course, out of the question, it’s a kitchen maid’s name. As my daughter she will have immediate and unquestioned access to the best of everything she will ever need, or want. Friends, ultimately marriage—she will have only to choose. I will never harm her; she’s too valuable to me as a model for my son to follow. Can you deny all that to her because your lower-class yearning for romance is unfulfilled? I don’t think so.”

“Cat doesn’t need your precious titles and ‘best of everything,’ Milord, and neither do I. We’ve done very well without you, and we’ll keep on the way we are.”

“For how long, Scarlett? Don’t rely on your success in Dublin too much. You were a novelty, and novelties have short spans of life. An orangutan could be the toast of a provincial setting like Dublin if it were well dressed. You have one more Season, two at the most, and then you will be forgotten. Cat needs the protection of a name and a father. I’m one of a very few men with the power to remove the taint from a bastard child—no, save your protests, I don’t care what tale you concoct. You would not be in this godforsaken corner of Ireland if you and your child were welcome in America.

“Enough of this. It’s beginning to bore me, and I detest being bored. Send word when you’ve come to your senses, Scarlett. You’ll agree to my bargain. I always get what I want.” Fenton began to walk to the door.

Scarlett called to him to stop. There was one thing she had to know. “You can’t force everything in the world to do what you want, Fenton. Did it ever cross your mind that your brood mare wife might give birth to a girl-child and not a boy?”

Fenton turned to face her. “You’re a strong, healthy woman. I should get a male child eventually. But even at the worst, if you give me only girls, I’ll arrange that one of them marry a man willing to give up his name and take hers. Then my blood will still inherit the title and continue the line. My obligation will be satisfied.”

Scarlett’s coldness was the equal of his. “You think of everything, don’t you? Suppose I was barren? Or you couldn’t father a child?”

Fenton smiled. “My manhood is proven by the bastards I’ve scattered through all the cities of Europe, so your attempted insult doesn’t touch me. As for you, there’s Cat.” A look of surprise crossed his face, and he strode back toward Scarlett, making her shrink from his sudden approach.

“Come now, Scarlett, don’t be dramatic. Haven’t I just told you I only break mistresses, not wives? I have no desire to touch you now. I was forgetting the tiara, and I must put it in safekeeping until the wedding. It’s a family treasure. You’ll wear it in due time. Send word when you capitulate. I am going to Dublin to open my house there and prepare for the Season. A letter will find me on Merrion Square.” He bowed to her with full courtly flourishes and left, laughing.