The Irish Bride (9 page)

“Monopolizing?” Rietta echoed. She’d been unaware that Blanche knew any words longer than three short syllables.

Blanche sniffed. “Mr. Joyce was most unkind to me when he met me at the milliner’s. He accused me of flirtation. As if I would.”

“You met Mr. Joyce at the milliner’s? I thought you said before that you had met Mr. Greeves there.”

“I did,” Blanche said, preening herself in the mirror. “Only Mr. Mochrie didn’t come, but as you say, he’ll be at dinner.”

“Blanche,” Rietta began, rising. “You didn’t let any of these men buy you anything?”

“Of course not,” she said, shocked. She ruined the effect of her anger by giggling. “They offered, but I naturally refused.”

“Thank mercy for that,” Rietta sighed.

“Of course, someone did bring me a box of caramels that he bought especially for me, but there’s no harm in that, surely.”

“Mr. Joyce, I wager.”

Blanche only hummed a light air as she rocked back and forth on her heels. She looked angelic, except for the smirk that twisted her rosy lips. “You lose,” she said after a moment in which she plainly hoped Rietta was suffering tortures of unsatisfied curiosity.

“I trust you didn’t eat them all before dinner.”

“Oh, I couldn’t resist being just the tiniest bit greedy. They were so good and he seemed to expect that I should. He was a dreadfully long time in getting them, too, so I had to show how much I appreciated his effort.”

“Too bad,” Rietta said, buttoning the grayish velvet pelisse that followed the lines of her dress. Though it was summer, the nights could still grow chilly after sundown.

“Yes, I had to try on ever so many hats while I was waiting for him, even ones that made me look completely hideous. There was one green straw that turned me bilious. And the clock kept striking the quarter hours till I was quite impatient. But Sir ... he came eventually.”

Rietta’s fingers stilled on the last button. “So it was Sir Nicholas who brought you the caramels? Was he before or after the other two gentlemen?”

“After,” Blanche said coyly. “It must have been a quarter to three before he came back with them. Even then, he had to rush away.”

Rietta clearly recalled hearing the bell in St. Nicholas of Myra chiming three as she returned from walking down Quay Street to the bay. She had stood by the water for a little while until the unusual heat generated by her meeting with Sir Nicholas had faded. She had not wanted to meet Blanche while her cheeks were still flying storm signals and her hands still trembled with suppressed feeling. Yet even while she was attempting to cool down, he was fetching sweets for her sister.

“Men are base,” she said coldly. “He was most likely rushing off to meet yet another woman—some other poor creature who has the misfortune to meet such a rake.”

“Is Sir Nicholas a rake?” Blanche looked as though she entertained a daydream or two of her own. “It’s always been my ambition to reform a villainous brute. I wonder if Sir Nicholas drinks?”

Rietta stared in wonder at her sister. “What have you been reading?”

“Reading? Nothing at all. Ooh, I wonder if he grows violent when he drinks. Wouldn’t it be marvelous to bring a man like that to heel?”

“Kindly don’t go through the world saying Sir Nicholas is a drunkard.”

“But didn’t you say he was?”

* * * *

Nick hadn’t been in the house ten minutes before he realized how intently Blanche watched him. Mr. Joyce had flown to her like a metal filing seeking a magnet, leaving Nick to the overpowering entertainment of Mr. Ferris. Yet even while she spoke to Mr. Joyce, Nick was aware of her gaze on him. Her lovely blue eyes widened with alarm when he accepted a glass of wine from his host’s hand.

Nick turned to Mr. Ferris. “I’d hoped that your older daughter might change her mind and be here this evening.”

“Not Rietta. She doesn’t change her mind. Stubborn as flint.” He seemed to recall suddenly to whom he spoke. He ducked his head ingratiatingly. “I’ll not hide her faults from you. You won’t be able to say I misrepresented her.”

“I had already realized that one.” Nick looked past his host, remembering her firm chin and steady eyes. “She told me she had a long-standing arrangement for Thursday nights. Where does she go?”

“She takes a basket to an old pensioner of her mother’s. M’wife’s old maid. A Mrs. Athy.”

Blanche overheard. “Are you talking of that old woman Rietta goes to? Dreadful creature. She’s as old as the hills.” She snickered. “Smokes a pipe, too, if you please.”

“How very charitable of your sister.”

Blanche seemed to catch something disparaging in his tone. “I prefer charities closer to home. There’s no need to walk outside the walls and into the Claddagh.”

“She goes into the village by herself?”

“Every week. I’ve only been once—that was enough for me. They spoke nothing but Irish the whole time. I couldn’t understand a word. And they expected me to eat herring!” She shivered throughout her frame in a wholly delightful way. Mr. Joyce’s eyes seemed fated to fall from his head.

Mr. Joyce roused himself from contemplation of Blanche’s figure. “The villagers are openly hostile to strangers wandering there. Especially, if you’ll forgive my mentioning it, red-haired women.”

“What’s wrong with red-haired women?” Nick asked, thinking there had to be a word more descriptive than “red” for that shifting mass of gold and copper.

“The fishermen think red-haired women are bad luck. If they see one on their way in the morning, they turn around and go home. Or so they claim. It’s a barbarous place, the Claddagh.”

“I can’t stop her,” Mr. Ferris said with a resigned shrug. “She sees it as her duty. Besides which, Mrs. Athy is very well respected among the fisher folk. She’ll see to it no harm comes to Rietta.”

“Why, what harm could come to her, red-haired or not?” Nick asked. “I have been out of the country for some time, but it hardly seems possible that lawlessness should have taken such a grip.”

“It’s just those people over there have their own laws, their own ways. They even claim to have their own king,” Mr. Ferris said with a chuckling contempt, adding, “It’s a wonder the government allows it in these unsettled times. Come now, Sir Nicholas, you must have heard that at least, born and bred in the West.”

“Yes, I know of it. My father was of the opinion that they were the original founders of Galway and when our lot came in, they were pushed back.”

“Your lot?” Blanche asked brightly.

“The Kirwans are Norman,” Mr. Joyce answered. “So are my people. We came here in 1140.”

It was obvious to Nick that Blanche had no interest in anything that had happened more than a day or two before, if so long as that. “I wonder where Mr. Mochrie has gotten to? You did invite him, Father?”

“Yes, just as you asked.”

Blanche pouted prettily when her father gave her game away. Mr. Joyce turned toward her with a half-wild expression. Nick had never seen the languid boy so active. She soon flattered him into a more compliant frame of mind that lasted even after David Mochrie arrived. Watching Blanche juggle her admirers was as good as a play. He declined to take a role himself, however, no matter how many encouraging glances he received.

After dinner, Blanche excused herself. Shortly after she’d left the room, the pensive strains of a harp song wound its way through the candle smoke. David and Mr. Joyce, daring each other with their eyes over the brandy glasses, excused themselves as one man and nearly tangled arms and legs in the doorway.

Mr. Ferris laughed low. “Like bees to a honey pot. It’s not her fortune that wins her so many admirers. Why, when she was but fourteen a poet attempted to run off with her. I never dared send her to school for fear she’d turn all the masters’ heads.”

“I’m surprised you are willing she should be the wife of a squire. Such beauty deserves a title, at least.”

Mr. Ferris winked at Nick. “You can’t have ‘em both, Sir Nicholas!” Perhaps Nick’s distaste showed, for the man poured more wine in his glass and sat back. “Oh, she’s had her opportunities to rise in the world,” he said matter-of-factly. “When she went south to her aunt, there were a few lordlings who wanted her. But not legitimate—I’m not rich enough for that! Besides, she don’t care to leave Galway and me.”

Milton’s lines about whether ‘twas better to rule or to serve depending on where one was occurred to Nick. Better to be the prettiest girl in Galway than one of a hundred charming faces at a London assembly.

“She’s a tender-hearted little thing. Wouldn’t give me pain for all the world. Still, time she was married.”

“I’m surprised, sir, that you cling to the tradition of marrying eldest before youngest. Surely with so many suitors, Blanche might marry tomorrow if you so choose.”

Mr. Ferris poured himself more wine. He wasn’t drunk, just loose enough to find confiding a pleasure and relief. “I’ll tell you ‘bout that. It’s all due to the curse.”

“The curse?”

“Right.” He drank, seeming to feel that he’d said enough.

Nick hadn’t seen anyone put away so much liquor without showing the effects of it since Gunner Barnes had wagered he could drink four bottles of the powerful local anisette liqueur which, as it turned out, was considerably less alcoholic than the stuff Mrs. Barnes had been making for years.

“What curse would that be, Mr. Ferris?” he asked, tipping the bottle over the older man’s glass.

“I shouldn’t pay any attention to it, I know. But m’father believed it. Wouldn’t allow my sisters to marry out of order of their birth and neither shall I!”

“So the curse is on your family.”

Mr. Ferris nodded as though the hinge of his neck no longer held. “Something to do with a girl from the hills who thought my great-great-grandfather should have married her instead of her sister.

“I don’t believe it,” Mr. Ferris added. “But I won’t go against it. If you marry my Rietta, you shall have a thousand pounds with her and, at my death, half my estates, providing I do not marry again.”

“And if you do?”

“If I do what?” His small, reddened eyes were blinking hard in order to focus.

“If you marry again?”

“Won’t. Not after my ... my Miranda. No one could ever take her place,” he said and sniffed. “She was a queen among women, fairest of all the roses. Sweet, modest, and tip over tail in love with me. Ah, m’darlin’, m’darlin’.”

Nick recognized all the signs. He’d pulled the boots off more than one officer or cadet who’d underestimated his capacity for strong drink. Mr. Ferris had reached the maudlin stage, where it became necessary to mourn lost chances. He’d even known one subaltern to weep because he’d not yet met the love of his life and feared he never would. He’d been all of nineteen. Nick had dumped that one none too gently on his cot. The subaltern’s plight had seemed minor indeed, compared with himself at twenty-seven with half a dozen love affairs behind him and yet no love to keep.

Nick stood up. “What time does Miss Ferris usually return from the Claddagh?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Ferris said, dabbing at his eyes with the edge of the tablecloth- “Ten, sometimes. She’s not often later than ten.”

* * * *

The stories and songs were over. The peat fire burned low in the earthen fireplace as Mrs. Athy saw out die last of her friends and neighbors. Rietta smiled at her hostess’s brother, his head fallen to his shoulder, his buzzing breaths faint. The whiskey had loosened his tongue and sent him eventually to sleep, as his sister had predicted.

Mrs. Athy returned, picked up the kettle from the hearth, and gave it a questioning shake. A satisfactory slosh within rewarded her. “Another cup of tea, m’dearie?”

“Not for me, Mrs. Athy, thank you. I shall gurgle fearfully as I walk home even if I don’t have another.”

“As you brought it, ‘tis only right you should have the drinkin’ of it.”

“Well, perhaps just a drop more. I shall have to be leaving soon.”

“Fit rouse himself to see you home.”

“Let him have his sleep. I know my way well enough by now.”

Mrs. Athy sat down on her second best chair with a sigh. “Good
craic
the night. Did you hear anythin’ new?”

“Yes, ma’am. The tale of Finn MacCool and the dragon was a fresh version of the one Will Darbes told me.”

Mrs. Athy shook her graying head. “ Tis still strange to me that anyone’d be wanting to write down our old tales. There’s many here tonight who think you clean out of your senses and me with you. But so long as you bring this good tea and the whiskey for the men, they’ll come to sing.”

The older woman’s eyes were gray as a stormy sea as they looked off into the shadowy corners of her one-room home. “But it is good to have them all about me and t’hear the good music and the laughter. ‘Twould be lonely for me else with himself goin’ off in the morning.”

She shook herself all over, as though throwing off raindrops. Dressed in the traditional style of her village, with a heavy woolen skirt covered by a red apron, clogs on her feet, and a shawl about her shoulders, she seemed almost elemental, like Ireland itself made flesh. Though perhaps no more than forty, only fifteen years or so older than Rietta, she seemed aged, her face red from wind and cold, her eyes sad through loneliness and loss. Yet her heart had embraced the daughter of her former mistress when Rietta had come to her to record the tales she’d told two fascinated little girls years ago.

Blanche had outgrown them the moment she’d discovered men. Rietta never forgot the ancient stories of giants, cattle raids, and fair maidens wooed by warriors from the sea. She’d often dreamed of herself as one of the Children of Lir, turned into swans and forced to wander the earth for nine hundred years.

When she read that scholars had begun to collect the folktales of Germany and France, she decided that no country in the world had tales as rich as those of Ireland. Determined to be as exact as possible, she wrote letters to the men mentioned in the book she’d read.

Some ignored her; others wrote back. Only a few scoffed, seeing in her the continuation of the Ossian controversy. Several others were encouraging, especially when she convinced them that she had not invented any myths or languages as had the late Mr. MacPherson. She did not need to create an Irish Homer as he had done-There was enough invention in the minds of the Claddagh villagers to fill a hundred books.