Scarlett (118 page)

Scarlett held her head proudly high until she heard the front door close behind him. Then she ran to shut and lock the library doors. Safe from the eyes of the servants, she threw herself onto the thick carpet and sobbed wildly. How could she have been so wrong about everything? How could she have told herself that she could learn to love a man who had no love in him? And what was she going to do now? Her mind was filled with the picture of Cat on the stairs, crowned and laughing with delight. What should she do?

“Rhett,” Scarlett cried brokenly, “Rhett, we need you so much.”

S
carlett gave no outward sign of her shame, but she condemned herself savagely for the emotions she’d felt for Luke. When she was alone, she picked at the memory like a half-healed scab, punishing herself with the pain of it.

What a fool she’d been to imagine a happy life as a family, to build a future on that one breakfast when Cat divided the eggs on their three plates. And what laughable conceit, to think she could make him love her. The whole world would ridicule her if it was known.

She had fantasies of revenge: she would tell everyone in Ireland that he had asked her to marry him and been refused; she would write to Rhett and he would come kill Fenton for calling his child a bastard; she would laugh in Fenton’s face before the altar and tell him that she could never bear another child, that he’d made a fool of himself by marrying her; she would invite him to dinner and poison his food…

Hatred burned in her heart. Scarlett extended it to all the English, and she threw herself passionately into renewed support of Colum’s Fenian Brotherhood.

“But I have no use for your money, Scarlett darling,” he told her. “The work now is in planning the moves of the Land League. You heard us talking on New Year’s, do you not remember?”

“Tell me again, Colum. There must be something I can do to help.”

There was nothing. Land League membership was open only to tenant farmers, and there would be no action until rents came due in the spring. One farmer on each estate would pay, all the others would refuse, and if the landlord evicted, all would go to live at the cottage where the rent was paid up.

Scarlett couldn’t see the reason for that. The landlord would just rent to someone else.

Ah, no, said Colum, that’s where the League came in. They’d force everyone else to stay away, and, without farmers, the landlord would lose his rents and also his newly planted crops because there’d be no one to tend them. It was the idea of a genius; he was only sorry he hadn’t thought of it himself.

Scarlett went to her cousins and pressured them to join the Land League. They could come to Ballyhara if they were evicted, she promised.

Without exception every O’Hara refused.

Scarlett complained bitterly to Colum.

“Don’t be blaming yourself for the blindness of others, Scarlett darling. You’re doing all that’s needed to make up for their failings. Aren’t you The O’Hara and a credit to the name? Do you not know that every house in Ballyhara and half of them in Trim have cuttings from the Dublin papers about The O’Hara being the shining Irish star in the Castle of the English Viceroy? They keep them in the Bible, with the prayer cards and pictures of the saints.”

On Saint Brigid’s Day there was a light rain. Scarlett said the ritual prayers for a good farm year with a fervor no other prayer had ever held, and she had tears on her cheeks when she turned the first sod. Father Flynn blessed it with holy water, then the chalice of water was passed from hand to hand for everyone to drink and share. The farmers left the field quietly, with bowed heads. Only God could save them. No one could stand another year like the last one.

Scarlett returned to the house and removed her muddy boots. Then she invited Cat to have cocoa in her room while she got her things organized to be packed for Dublin. She would be leaving in less than a week. She didn’t want to go—Luke would be there, and how could she face him? With her head held high, it was the only way. Her people expected it of her.

*   *   *

Scarlett’s second Season in Dublin was an even greater triumph than her first. Invitations awaited her at the Shelbourne for all the Castle events, plus five small dances and two late-night suppers in the Viceregal private apartments. She also found in a sealed envelope the most coveted invitation of all: her carriage would be admitted through the special entrance behind the Castle. There’d be no more waiting in line for hours on Dame Street while carriages were allowed into the Castle yard four at a time to put down guests.

There were also cards requesting her presence at parties and dinners in private houses. These were reputed to be much more entertaining than the Castle events with their hundreds of people. Scarlett laughed, deep in her throat. An orangutan in fine clothes, was she? No, she was not, and the pile of invitations proved it. She was The O’Hara of Ballyhara, Irish and proud of it. She was an original! It made no difference that Luke was in Dublin. Let him sneer all he liked. She could look him in the eye without fear or shame, and be damned to him.

She sorted through the pile, picking and choosing, and a tiny bubble of excitement rose in her heart. It was nice to be wanted, nice to wear pretty gowns and dance in pretty rooms. So what if the social world of Dublin was Anglo? She knew enough now to recognize that Society’s smiles and frowns, rules and transgressions, honors and ostracisms, triumphs and losses, were all part of a game. None of it was important, none of it mattered to the world of reality outside the gilded ballrooms. But games were made to be played, and she was a good player. She was glad, after all, that she’d come to Dublin. She liked to win.

Scarlett learned immediately that the Earl of Fenton’s presence in Dublin had set off a frenzy of excitement and speculation.

“My dear,” said May Taplow, “even in London people can talk of nothing else. Everyone knows Fenton considers Dublin a third-rate provincial outpost. His house hasn’t been opened for decades. Why in the world is he here?”

“I can’t imagine,” Scarlett replied, relishing the thought of May’s reaction if she told her.

Fenton seemed to turn up every place she went. Scarlett greeted him with cool good manners and ignored the expression of contemptuous confidence in his eyes. After the first encounter she didn’t even fill with anger when she chanced to meet his gaze. He had no power to hurt her any more.

Not as himself. But she was pierced by pain again and again when she glimpsed the back of a tall dark-haired man clad in velvet or brocade, and it turned out to be Fenton. For Scarlett looked for Rhett in every crowd. He’d been at the Castle the year before, why not this year… this night… this room?

But it was always Fenton. Everywhere she looked, in the talk of everyone around her, in the columns of every newspaper she read. She could at least be thankful that he paid no special attention to her; then the gossips would have pursued her as well. But she wished to heaven that his name was not on every tongue every day.

Rumors gradually coalesced into two theories: he had readied his neglected house for a surreptitious, unofficial visit from the Prince of Wales; or he had fallen under the spell of Lady Sophia Dudley, who had been the talk of London’s Season in May and was repeating her success now in Dublin. It was the oldest story in the world—a man sows his wild oats and resists the snares of women for years and years until bang!—when he’s forty, he loses his head and his heart to beauty and innocence.

Lady Sophia Dudley was seventeen. She had hair the gold of ripe hay and eyes as blue as the summer sky and a pink-and-white complexion that put porcelain to shame. At least so said the ballads that were written about her and sold on all the street corners for a penny.

She was, in fact, a beautiful, shy girl who was very much under her ambitious mother’s control and who blushed often and attractively because of all the attention and gallantries paid her. Scarlett saw quite a bit of her. Sophia’s private drawing room was next to Scarlett’s. It was second best in terms of furnishings and the view of Saint Stephen’s Green, but first in terms of people vying for admission. Not that Scarlett’s was by any means unattended; a rich and well-received widow with fascinating green eyes would always be in demand.

Why should I be surprised, thought Scarlett. I’m twice her age, and I had my turn last year. But sometimes she had trouble holding her tongue when Sophia’s name was linked with Luke’s. It was common knowledge that a duke had asked for Sophia’s hand, but everyone agreed that she’d do better to take Fenton. A duke had precedence over an earl, but Fenton was forty times richer and a hundred times handsomer than the Duke. “And he’s mine if I want him,” Scarlett longed to say. Who’d they be writing ballads about then?

She scolded herself for her pettiness. She told herself she was a fool for thinking of Fenton’s prediction that she would be forgotten after a year or two. And she tried not to worry about the little lines in the skin beside her eyes.

Scarlett returned to Ballyhara for her First Sunday office hours, thankful to get away from Dublin. The final weeks of the Season seemed endless.

It was good to be home, good to be thinking about something real, like Paddy O’Faolain’s request for a bigger allocation of peat, instead of what to wear to the next party. And it was pure heaven to have Cat’s strong little arms nearly strangle her with a fierce hug of welcome.

When the last dispute had been settled, the last request granted, Scarlett went to the morning room for tea with Cat.

“I saved your half,” Cat said. Her mouth was smeared with chocolate from the éclairs Scarlett had brought from Dublin.

“It’s a funny thing, Kitty Cat, but I’m not real hungry. Would you like some more?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Yes, thank you. May I eat them now?”

“Yes, you may, Miss Pig.”

The éclairs were gone before Scarlett’s cup was empty. Cat was dedicated when it came to éclairs.

“Where shall we go for our walk?” Scarlett asked her. Cat said she’d like to go visit Grainne.

“She likes you, Momma. She likes me more, but she likes you a lot.”

“That would be nice,” said Scarlett. She’d be glad to go to the tower. It gave her a feeling of serenity, and there was little serenity in her heart.

*   *   *

Scarlett closed her eyes and rested her cheek on the ancient smooth stones for a long moment. Cat fidgeted.

Then Scarlett pulled on the rope ladder to the high door to test it. It was weathered and stained. It felt strong enough. Still, she thought she’d better see about having a new one made. If it broke, and Cat fell—she couldn’t bear to think of it. She did so wish that Cat would invite her up into her room. She tugged at the ladder again, hinting.

“Grainne will be expecting us, Momma. We made a lot of noise.”

“All right, honey, I’m coming.”

The wise woman looked no older, no different from the first time Scarlett had seen her. I’d even be willing to bet those are the same shawls she was wearing, Scarlett thought. Cat busied herself in the small dark cottage, getting cups from their shelf, raking the ancient-smelling burning peat into a mound of glowing embers for the kettle. She was very much at home. “I’ll fill the kettle at the spring,” she said as she carried it outside. Grainne watched her lovingly.

“Dara visits me often,” said the wise woman. “It’s her kindness to a lonely soul. I haven’t the heart to send her away, for she sees the right of it. Lonely knows lonely.”

Scarlett bristled. “She likes to be alone, she doesn’t have to be lonely. I’ve asked her time and again if she’d like to have children come play, and she always says no.”

“It’s a wise child. They try to stone her, but Dara is too quick for them.”

Scarlett couldn’t believe she’d heard right. “They do what?” The children from the town, Grainne said placidly, hunted through the woods for Dara, like a beast. She heard them, though, long before they got to her. Only the biggest ever came near enough to throw the stones they carried. And those came near only because they could run faster than Dara on longer, older legs. She knew how to escape even them. They wouldn’t dare chase her into her tower, they were afraid of it, haunted as it was by the ghost of the young hanged lord.

Scarlett was aghast. Her precious Cat tormented by the children of Ballyhara! She’d whip every single one of them with her own hands, she’d evict their parents and break every stick of their furniture into splinters! She started up out of her chair.

“You will burden the child with the ruin of Ballyhara?” said Grainne. “Sit you down, woman. Others would be the same. They fear anyone different to themselves. What they fear they try to drive away.”

Scarlett sank back onto the chair. She knew the wise woman was right. She’d paid the price for being different herself, again and again. Her stones had been coldness, criticism, ostracism. But she had brought it on herself. Cat was only a little girl. She was innocent. And she was in danger! “I can’t just do nothing!” Scarlett cried. “It’s intolerable. I’ve got to make them stop.”

“Ach, there’s no stopping ignorance. Dara has found her own way, and it is enough for her. The stones do not wound her soul. She is safe in her tower room.”

“It’s not enough. Suppose a stone hit her? Suppose she got hurt? Why didn’t she tell me she was lonely? I can’t bear that she’s unhappy.”