The Irish Bride

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  As he walked into the house, his mother clinging to his arm as if afraid he’d vanish should she let go, he saw that even more had changed. The two paintings of horses that had hung on either side of the hall were gone. Instead of an ornate silver-gilt candelabra on the console table, there stood one of pottery. It was pretty, all white and blue, but it obviously belonged to a bedroom. The red carpet was worn almost to the drab drugget liner beneath.

  His mother escorted him into the drawing room, where a cheery peat fire burned, sending the incense of Ireland through the room. A few candles—too few-burned close to the chairs, leaving the rest of the room lost in obscurity like the background of a time-blackened oil painting.

  The tea tray, just brought in, to judge by the crumb-free plates, was scantily supplied, only enough for the girls. The glass case against the wall, once so full of small treasures and amusing objets d’art, now held only a few things, and they were the least valuable of the lot.

  Most damning of all, his sisters had obviously been darning, for the sewing basket stood by the threadbare settee, and a sock, perhaps hastily thrust inside at the sound of his approach, dangled a shredded toe over the edge.

  “Mother...,” Nick began, then halted. Now was not the time to bring up any subject except his delight at being home.

  “You must be ravenous as a lion,” Lady Kirwan said. “Emma, ring the bell. Tell, Jean to bring the ham ... oh, and a bottle! If we had but known you were coming today, Nick, we would have set out a feast.”

  “ ‘Tis a feast for my eyes to see you, Mother.” He kissed her hands in their thread-net mittens. “Still the prettiest girl in the county....”

  “Did the Belgian ladies fall easy victims to your Irish tongue, my son? You’ve been practicing somewhere.”

  “Everywhere,” he said, grinning at her. She laughed, bringing color into her cheeks, and told him that he’d not changed.

  Turning, he held out his hands to his sisters. They stood together in the doorway, one with tears sliding in glistening trails down her cheeks, the other smiling at him with a grin so like his own that he was taken aback. Then they came and put their hands in his.

  “Greenwood grows the fairest flowers,” he said.

  “Oh, Mother, you were right,” the younger said. “He has the gift, sure enough. We’ll have to keep our friends away from him.”

  She tossed a bouncing head of curls and laughed at him. Amelia still possessed a youthful plumpness of cheek and chin but her audacity had increased by leaps and bounds in his absence. Nick liked it. She’d always seemed a little in awe of him on his earlier visits.

  “Minx,” he said, and Amelia just laughed.

  “Now tell me how much I’ve changed.”

  “That would take all day and half the night, Amelia. You’ve grown to be a fine-looking woman.” She dipped a thank-you curtsey, then stuck out her tongue. “Or perhaps you’ve not changed so very much. Do you remember telling me that you’d not be a lady, no matter what your governess said. What was her name? Miss Talent... ?”

  “Miss Tanager,” Amelia said. “I haven’t thought about her in an age. I will tell you, Nick. I’m as good as my word. I’m afraid I never have been a lady.”

  “Amelia’s been as good as the son of the house while you’ve been away, Nick. ‘Tis she who scolds Barry, sees to the marketing, and tallies the accounts.”

  “And it’s glad I’ll be to be shut of that,” she said fervently. She added, “My head for mathematics has never been strong.”

  “When I did it,” Emma said, “it took me days to find a shilling I’d misplaced while adding up.”

  Nick felt that his sisters were attempting to convey something of importance, but it had been a long day and he was too tired to work it out.

  He turned to his other sister, the quieter, graver elder. After kissing her cheek, he held her hands and swung them lightly while he studied her. For a moment, he was afraid she would cast herself on his chest and howl. But instead she sniffed, wiped beneath her eyes, and gave him a tremulous, half-drowned smile. Tears had little effect on her smooth, nearly colorless skin.

  “It’s good to see you looking so well, Nick. When we heard of your fever ...”

  “ ‘Twas nothing compared to the time I took the typhus,” he said. For his mother’s benefit, he added, “I only had a mild case, thank God.”

  "Thank God,” Emma echoed.

  He looked around. “It’s good to be home at last,” he said. Then he noticed anew the shabbiness of the room and how many things were missing.

  “Mother,” he began, “what has happened to ... ?”

  Amelia kicked him lightly on the ankle. Lady Kirwan didn’t see it happen but Emma looked shocked, and giggled.

  “You’ll have to wait to find out about your old sweethearts, Nick,” Amelia said brightly. “Come and have a wash before you eat. You may not know it but your hands are all-over mud.”

  He glanced down. “I helped a lady in distress—two ladies, come to think of it.”

  “Someone I know?” his mother asked.

  “I doubt it. Their father’s a mill owner. Their name was Ferris, Blanche and Rietta Ferris.” His three ladies looked blank. Nick added, “Blanche Ferris is possibly the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  “We shall have to call on them,” his mother said with a decisive nod. “Ferris? Yes, I believe Mrs. Halloran mentioned that family. Highly respectable.”

  They could not do enough for him. Amelia drew off his boots, falling over backward with a laugh, while Emma brought down a pair of slippers she’d been embroidering against his return. His mother sat with him while he ate and gazed at him as though she could not look at him enough. Nick enjoyed being spoiled almost as much as his family seemed to enjoy spoiling him. Yet after his mother had kissed him and gone to bed, he rapped gently at Amelia’s bedroom door.

  “Come in, Nick,” she called.

  He opened the door and saw both his sisters, Emma seated before the glass and Amelia standing by the window. She said, “You’ve come to find out the truth, haven’t you?”

  “I’d like to know why Mother has been selling things.

  Half the silver seems to be gone, as well as pictures, furniture, and other oddments.”

  The girls exchanged glances. Emma rose to her feet and came to take Nick’s hand. With tears welling up in her eyes, she said, “I’m afraid it’s bad news. Father...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Let me,” Amelia said. “Father began gambling again just before he died.”

  “Gambling? He swore to me the last time I was home that he’d given it up.”

  “He swore that often enough,” Amelia said, bitterness clear in her tone. “And that’s not all. There was a woman.”

  “We don’t know that,” Emma said in protest. “It’s all conjecture.”

  “True, but what else could it have been? Money just vanished like water poured into the desert sand. It was bad enough before he died, but afterwards even what little income we had dried up.”

  “Does Mother know about his ‘woman’?”

  Amelia shook her head. “Mother doesn’t say anything to us. She wouldn’t tell us a word, as if it weren’t so obvious that she has no money. She’s tried hard to keep up appearances but I’m afraid people are beginning to talk.”

  Emma gave a sudden, convulsive sob and turned her face away from her siblings. Amelia put her arm about her sister’s waist. “It’s harder for Emma than for me. She wants to marry and there’s no money to give her her rights under Father’s will. The money’s just not there.”

  “Who do you want to marry?” Nick asked.

  Emma sobbed again. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s leaving Ireland. I’ll never...” She broke from Amelia’s comforting arm and bolted from the room.

  “Why wasn’t I told?” Nick demanded. “I could have come home sooner.”

  “Mother wouldn’t hear of it. When you couldn’t get leave for Father’s funeral, she said that the ar
my had first right to your time.”

  “I could have gotten leave,” Nick said, thudding his fist into his hand. “But things were heating up in the Peninsula and I wanted to be with my battalion. I should have come home after Napoleon went to Elba. There was no need for all this sacrifice on your parts.”

  “It’s all right, Nick,” Amelia said. “You’re home now.”

  “Yes, I am. First thing in the morning, I’ll want to see the account books. I’ll talk everything over with Mother. I’m sure the situation isn’t as black as you’ve painted it. Go tell Emma she’ll get her inheritance if I have to cut down every tree at Greenwood. You’ll get yours as well. I don’t suppose you’ve a young man waiting?”

  “As a matter of fact... ,” Amelia grinned. “But my case is even more hopeless than hers. She wants to marry a gentleman—I’m going to marry a farmer.”

  “Have I anything to say in the matter? I am head of the family.”

  She shook her head with a gleeful grin. “We’re quite used to making our own decisions,” she said. “You have only to approve them.”

  Growing serious again, Amelia added, “You won’t distress Mother, wilt you? None of this is her fault. It’s all Father. Why, oh why, wouldn’t he stop gambling?”

  “I’ve known officers like that. It becomes more to them than a battle or their honor. It’s like a hunger that can never be satisfied.”

  “Do you gamble, Nick?” Her eyes were intent as she worried a fold of her dress between her hands. He owed her his honesty.

  “From time to time. But there’s no lust in me for the cards or racing. It’s an occasional pastime; nothing more.”

  Her sigh was one of relief. “We didn’t know, you see. You’re something of a stranger to us.”

  Nick put out his hand and shook hers. “I won’t be a stranger anymore. I need you to put me in the way of things here. Do that, and the Kirwans will be a paying proposition in no time.”

  He was not so certain come the morning.

  Chapter Two

  Nick spent the morning poring over the accounts. After an hour, his head was pounding like the hooves of a charging cavalry squad. Neither his mood nor his headache improved when he discovered his father’s diaries in the back of his wardrobe.

  With a resigned sigh, Nick tied a cold towel about his brow and began to read the diary for the last year of his father’s life. As it was written in the not-very-difficult shorthand that the late Sir Benjamin had invented, which Nick had first to decipher, it was not until Amelia came to tell him about luncheon that Nick closed the book.

  “Have you found a thousand pounds lost in my arithmetic?” she asked with a hopeful laugh.

  “Unfortunately, no. Not even that lost shilling.”

  Amelia’s brow wrinkled as she bit her lip. “It’s bad, isn’t it, Nick?”

  “Bad enough. But cheer up! We can always take in washing.”

  “Or I could hire out as a maid of all work,” she said, responding to his tone. “And Emma is a marvelous cook, you know, though Mother doesn’t like her to do it. If it weren’t for Mrs. Beattie being in the family so long, we should have replaced her with Emma.”

  Nick encouraged her to prattle in this light spirit as they came downstairs. He saw his mother look up and smile, the worried lines fading as she heard him laugh. Not for the world would he reveal what he’d read in the diary.

  In addition to betting heavily on horses and losing large sums at cards, Sir Benjamin had been an adulterer. He had paid for his pleasures with diamonds or, more indirectly, with “loans” his estate could ill afford to make.

  Reading between the lines, Nick had realized that his father’s wildness came partly from his nature and partly as a way to assuage his growing fears about his wife’s health. The notation of a dizzy spell or a visit from the doctor would be followed shortly by a visit to the mistress of the moment or by a romp with a stranger. Nick had often seen soldiers fend off thoughts of mortality by such a debauch; he could almost sympathize with his father. Nevertheless, it was Sir Benjamin who had fallen down dead of an apoplexy while his wife survived, indifferent health or no.

  After luncheon. Lady Kirwan followed him into the study. She entered hesitantly. This had been Sir Benjamin’s sanctuary against domestic upsets and neither she nor her children had ever been welcome.

  Nick stood up as soon as he perceived her. “Sit down here, Mother,” he said, bringing her to the chair behind the desk.

  “No, that’s your place now. This one will do for me.”

  “Nonsense. You’re not a tenant behind in the rent. You sit there, and I shall sit here.” He put aside the feeling that he was committing an act of sedition and perched on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling to the carpet.

  His mother clasped her mittened hands in her lap and looked up at him. “In what case do we stand, son?”

  “Well enough.” He spoke lightly, hoping to put her off.

  “No, do not treat me so. Take me into your confidence.”

  “I am, Mother. Believe me. All will be well. Father did play heavily, but he was honorable about his debts. Except for what he owed on the last night he played—

  “The night he died,” Lady Kirwan said levelly.

  “Yes. Except for those debts and a few bills from tradesmen and the like, he left nothing for me to pay. I confess I was afraid I should find myself owing more than that. Most of those debts I can pay immediately through what I made in the war.”

  “I am relieved to hear it. Yet I wonder, what are we to live on?”

  “You’re not afraid of starving, Mother? Things are not so dire as that. We shall have to be careful of expenditure for a few years until our estate regains its health. I shall have to look into matters more deeply to be certain, yet I believe that if we are thrifty, we can regain our former status within four years.”

  “Four years?” Her mild eyes filled with tears.

  “Come. That’s not so long. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Lady Kirwan shook her head, her jet earrings swaying. “Yes, there is. I’m afraid for the girls. If we are impoverished, how are they to get husbands?”

  “Early yet to think of such things. They’re hardly out of the schoolroom.”

  “They have been out longer than you realize, Nick. Besides, what has that to say to anything? I was married myself long before I reached Emma’s age.”

  He took her hand and kissed it. “And it’s grateful I am to you for it.”

  Nick had done it to make her smile and so she did, though the tears still stood in her eyes. “But my father had a thousand pounds to go with me. How shall we find them decent young men without a like sum?”

  “It sounds uncommon like you have someone in your eye, Mother. Tell me who it is. I knew most of the young men for forty miles around before I went away.”

  “It is less who I have in mind than who it is your sisters have chosen.”

  “Have chosen?” Nick echoed. “Can it be they’ve already given their promises?”

  “Oh, no,” Lady Kirwan said. “No, I don’t believe it’s gone so far as that. They would have told me so if it had.” She smiled proudly. “I cannot think of many mothers who have such confidences from their daughters as I have. These last months have drawn us ever closer.”

  “Mother,” Nick said. “Why didn’t you write to tell me things had become so bleak? I would have come home at once. Wellington had enough officers and to spare without me.”

  “I couldn’t have asked it of you. My father said that every man should have his war to fight if he was ever to hold up his head among men. I couldn’t have stolen your war from you.”

  Her eyes glowed with such loving pride that Nick could hardly bear to meet her gaze. He knew too much about himself to feel any arrogance about his war service. Yes, he had acquitted himself well time and again. He’d been mentioned in dispatches and had the right to wear more than one decoration. Once, after a particularly hideous affray, the great Duke, des
pite his dislike of the Irish under his command, had shaken his hand.

  Yet his clearest memories were of the fear, loathing, and hatred toward his enemy that had filled him again and again, combining to turn him into something less than an animal. He’d looked into men’s eyes as he had killed them and known no remorse. He had picked his way over the bodies of his comrades to close with the enemy and had never given the groaning wounded a second thought.

  He’d committed no atrocities, nothing that contravened the laws of war, but he’d washed blood from his hands and sponged it from his uniform over and over. If he could have killed Napoleon thus, breast to breast, he would have done it and rejoiced, but killing instead the emperor’s duped soldiers left him feeling soiled, weary, and sick.

  “Yes,” he said, staring out the window. “I have had my war.”

  Lady Kirwan laid her hand on his knee. “What is it?”

  He couldn’t tell her. She had never experienced the horror that would have given her common ground with her son. No woman could understand what he had seen and done. Even now, the memory of his war service was sharper than his memory of last night’s homecoming.

  “You were going to tell me the names of my sisters’ suitors. Dare I hope even one of them is rich as Midas?”

  “Neither of them,” she said with a sigh that seemed yet to have something of happiness in it. “Emma is very fond of Robbie Staines, Lord Bellamy’s youngest boy. It will never do, of course. I’m afraid he’s so very shiftless that they are sending him to his uncle in Boston,”

  “That sounds like Robbie. He’s some years younger than I am but I never heard any good of him. How did Emma come to grow fond of such a shabby fellow?”

  “She is bosom friends with his sister. They were much thrown together when Emma visited Belmont last summer. I’m afraid her heart is deeply engaged. I believe that if she had the money, she would follow him to America.”