Scandalous Ever After

by Theresa Romain

  The maid winked and waved at Kate as they went past.

  Free of the crowd, Driscoll urged his horse into a gallop. “Not a bad seat for a big man,” Kate murmured. Lucy’s ears pricked again, and she stretched out her head, taking the bit. “Quick as you like, girl. Quick as you like.”

  The mare needed no more encouragement than to be given her head, and they were off. Kate held the reins only to guide, laying her heart against the mare’s neck. The horse did best when given her head, allowed to choose her own speed and stride. She hadn’t raced for so long, and she loved it.

  Lucy wasn’t the only one. God, Kate had missed this. If they’d been galloping for any other reason, it would have been sheer pleasure. Lucy’s gallop devoured the path, scattering leaves already stirred by the strides of the white horse. Driscoll looked over his shoulder, muttered something, then guided his horse off the path and into the surrounding wood.

  Did he think they wouldn’t follow? The thrill of the chase was in her blood now, and in the mare’s too. Kate kept a light hand on the reins, just enough to guide Lucy along. A fallen log blocked them, and Lucy took it with a gather of her haunches, then a leap. They swooped through the air, landing with smooth strides and a whoop from Kate’s throat.

  Smaller branches they took in stride, curves around trees no obstacle. A puddle? Lucy ran right through it with scarcely a break in stride.

  “You’d be queen of the chase,” Kate gasped, the wind of the gallop taking her breath. “Better than the chase.” It wasn’t a loop around a track; it was real, and winning this race would mean something important. If they could catch him.

  Driscoll was guiding his horse back toward the road, where the larger animal’s longer strides would give him an advantage. “Enough of this.” Holding the reins in one hand, Kate worked free her pistol with the other. She had one shot, and she must make it count. Sighting her target between Lucy’s ears, she aimed, accounting for the bobbing of the horse’s stride.

  “Sorry, girl. This will be loud.” She squeezed off the shot.

  With a panicked whinny, Lucy reared up. Kate dropped the pistol, clutching the reins with both hands and soothing the horse with quiet words.

  Only once she had brought her horse under control did she take a survey of what else had occurred. Driscoll lay on the ground, groaning, his white horse already yards down the road and galloping quickly away. Beside him lay his hat—which, if Kate had aimed as well as she thought, was now adorned by a tidy bullet hole.

  She rode toward him, halting Lucy at the fallen man’s side. Yes, from here she could see the powder burn and the hole. Driscoll might have been injured by his fall, but Kate’s bullet had wounded nothing but a fine beaver-felt hat.

  “You shot me!” groaned the magistrate.

  “I shot your hat. You’re on the ground because you can’t keep your seat.” She lifted her chin. “Most people who fall are absolutely fine.”

  Most of them. But not all.

  She slid from Lucy’s back and was sick in a bush.

  When she straightened, she took in her surroundings. The bush was not simply part of the brushy growth alongside the road. It edged a garden, a riotous and bright garden belonging to a whitewashed stone cottage.

  From the doorway peeked a woman with red hair and a pocked face. When she met Kate’s eye, she hurried forth, a squirming toddler in her arms. At the sight of Driscoll, groaning on the ground, she gasped. “Good gracious! Lady Whelan, is everything all right?”

  Kate blinked. “Mary?” She knew the woman by sight, but they had never spoken.

  During Con’s life, they had existed side by side, each doing the other the courtesy of pretending she was not there. Each thinking hers was the greater claim, maybe. Kate had won Con’s hand, but Mary had his heart.

  “Yes, my lady. I’m Mary.” The woman dropped a curtsy.

  The graceful movement was familiar. “You’re the woman from the churchyard,” Kate said, not quite saying what she meant.

  “I am. And this is my son.” The woman paused. “His name is Conall.”

  So. They had all met at last.

  It was neither difficult nor dramatic, as Kate might once have feared. What had they to compete for now?

  “The earl would be very pleased,” Kate replied with perfect truth. “I have been curious about you, Miss O’Dowd. And I am so sorry, but I have just been sick in your garden.”

  “Sick!” shouted the little boy.

  “Think nothing of it,” said Mary. “Happens all the time.”

  “Does it really?”

  “Well, no. But here comes a constable, and Mr. Rhys not far behind, and they’re both looking a bit green. My! See if they don’t get sick as well.”

  Twenty-six

  Evan had awoken with a painful head and vague memories of telling Kate something about Mary, Mary. When he learned that Lady Whelan had ridden out that morning, he knew exactly where she must have gone. “I have to find them. I have to…” What he’d do, he didn’t know. Had Kate been devastated to hear of Con’s bastard child? Or had she already known?

  Was she angry? What was she going to do?

  Over the protests of the housekeeper whose turn it was to tend him, he jammed on his boots, caught up his coat, and bolted from the sickroom. Ignoring his aching head as best he could, he ran for the stables. There the chestnut gelding—returned safely after their outing to the castle, thank God—was just being saddled for a groom to take him out for exercise.

  And behind him, a stable hand was returning Lady Alix.

  “I’ll take her,” Evan said, and swung up onto the familiar back. A sentimental choice, maybe, to ride her rather than a fresh horse, but he knew this lady would run her heart out. He urged the mare into a gallop, setting his teeth against the jolt of each stride. Wind tickled his collarbone, his chest, and he realized he’d ridden out with the same old shirt, collarless and without cravat.

  “What a sight I’ll make, old girl,” he muttered. “Maybe distract the ladies enough to keep them from killing each other.”

  But the tableau he came upon when he rounded the turn to Mary’s cottage was the last thing he would have expected. There was a constable on horseback ahead, and the great bulk of Finnian Driscoll lying on the ground, and—and there was Kate, reins in hand, dropping a curtsy to her late husband’s mistress and bastard child.

  He reined in the chestnut, head thumping with agony, and slid from Lady Alix’s back. “Did I miss all of the excitement, or is there more to come?”

  “Evan.” Kate looked at him with some surprise. “You ought not be out of bed!”

  “I couldn’t stay away.” He tried for a sweeping bow, but it made his head pound more.

  “How did you know we’d be here?”

  “Where else would you be?”

  “I’m here by chance.” She looked at her horse, which Evan recognized as the mare Lucy, and then at the groaning figure of the magistrate. “I was trying to speak with Driscoll, and he fled. He led us here.”

  “Likely wanted to hide behind the cottage, by the river,” suggested Mary.

  Evan accepted this. “I assume there was a horse that dumped him off? Or is he a deceptively quick runner?”

  “She shot me!” Driscoll moaned.

  “Stop saying that,” Kate replied. “I only shot your hat. Yes, Evan. There was a white horse. I regret that he was frightened. I do not regret that he discarded his rider. Mr. Driscoll, you seemed eager not to encounter this constable. And why could that be?”

  The man moaned and turned onto his side.

  “Hullo, what’s this?” Evan handed the reins of the chestnut to the bemused Kate, then crouched beside Driscoll. “A pistol fell out of his pocket.”

  “Is it loaded?”

  “It is not loaded. It is also not his.” Evan took it in his hand, slapping it against
his palm. Lady Alix nosed him, bumping the pistol. “No, girl. We can’t play the dropping-things game right now.” He squinted at the small gun. “This is my pistol, which was taken from my coat while I was unconscious. Here, my initials are engraved on the stock.”

  “Very fancy,” noted the constable.

  “Thank you,” said Evan. “Mr. Driscoll, would you still like to say that I was set upon by footpads, now that you’ve been found carrying my pistol?”

  “Theft, Mr. Driscoll?” The constable whistled. “That’s mighty bad.”

  “It’s certain you will lose your post,” Kate said. “The question only remains, which crimes would you like your replacement to hear at the assizes?”

  Driscoll paled. “Help me up.” Still at his side, Evan hoisted the large man to a seated position. The effort left both of them perspiring. “No, there were no footpads. No attack either. You were found at Loughmoe Castle, grazed by a falling stone. It was an accident!”

  “And who found me?”

  “I don’t know exactly who.” The magistrate’s eyes—Evan could not stop thinking of them as reproachful hound eyes—shifted away. “It could have been anyone.”

  “Maybe we didn’t miss all the excitement after all,” Evan said.

  From the edge of her garden, Mary spoke. “I’ll be taking my boy inside now. If you need me for questioning…”

  “That’s fine, Miss O’Dowd,” said the constable. “Our business is with Mr. Driscoll. Now, then, who was there at the castle ruin? Sir?” He swallowed. A young man, this confrontation with a venerable magistrate was obviously coming difficult for him.

  The magistrate sighed. “There are ten families, maybe twelve, who work the stone in their spare moments. They’re the families hardest hit by the famine two years ago. I truly don’t know who found Evan. There were a half dozen, Lady Whelan, as you saw, who brought him to your house. They were all of a panic, afraid they’d be blamed, so I said I’d cover for them.”

  “I merely want to be clear about this,” Kate said. “You said you would cover for smugglers. Who brought you a man almost dead of a head wound?”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” Evan said. “I got out of the way of the stone.”

  “It was that bad. You didn’t see yourself.” Her mouth scrunched into an odd shape. “You don’t see yourself now, either.”

  Evan cursed, then picked up the hat on the ground beside Driscoll. He stuffed it onto his head. “Ignore the bullet hole in the hat and the bandage on my head. Driscoll, I’m just borrowing this. You’re to have it back as soon as the constable is ready to take you away.”

  Driscoll had gone a most unpleasant color.

  “If you need to be sick, there’s a suitable bush right over there.” Kate pointed.

  “It was Miss Ahearn’s idea.” Driscoll moistened his lips. “See, to the Catholics who stayed after the Jacobite movement failed, there’s nothing worse than the wild geese.”

  “Wild geese?” Kate asked.

  “Rich Catholics who fled Ireland,” Evan explained. “I learned that…what day is this?”

  “Thursday.”

  “Then I learned it two days ago.”

  “Right, that is,” Driscoll said. “They abandoned the cause, they took their money, and they left their tenants behind. Their castle became a shell. So Miss Ahearn, when she came to Thurles, had the idea of turning the wild geese to advantage. They could give us a living now, when a century ago they failed to.”

  “In what way?” asked the constable.

  “Copying the statues and things the nobs in England like. Carve old bits of stone into new, and leave a space to hide things inside.”

  “Such as?” Kate asked.

  “Whatever someone will pay us to hide. A note between lovers. A stolen necklace.” Driscoll shrugged. “It was just a bit of money at first, but enough to see me made resident magistrate once Dublin Castle set up a post.”

  “Miss Ahearn must be a dedicated Irish patriot,” Kate said drily.

  Something sparked in Evan’s battered memory. “She’s not Irish at all. She’s Welsh. Mary said so. Said she’d recognized the accent as being like mine.”

  “But her family is in Dublin,” Driscoll said. “She said she wanted to help them.”

  “You are ready to blame Miss Ahearn,” Kate said. “How sad for you that she’s left Thurles and cannot corroborate your story.”

  “Left Thurles?” The magistrate was now the color of a lovely split pea soup. “When?”

  “This morning. Surely you could hear her landlady screeching, even from your seat in the Prancing Pony?”

  Driscoll shook his head. Setting a broad hand against a tree, he hefted himself to his feet. “I didn’t know. She must have taken fright after you were hurt, Mr. Rhys.”

  “But she didn’t hurt him?”

  “No! No one was supposed to get hurt.” The magistrate-for-now heaved a great sigh then looked at Kate with kicked-dog eyes. “Not the earl either. It was a warning. He was to fall and to know he fell because someone had tampered with his tack. He was to take it as a threat and stop interfering. Stop trying to take a greater cut.”

  “A greater cut,” Kate murmured. She made some movement that set the two horses whose leads she held to shifting and stamping. “He was taking money.”

  “Had to get the earl to look the other way.” Driscoll sounded apologetic. “And if no one was getting hurt, what did it matter? We’re not Jacobites ourselves. All we want is full pockets and a safe life.”

  Full pockets and a safe life. Ha. “You’ve created nothing of the sort,” Evan pointed out.

  For emphasis, Lady Alix nipped the hat from his head and let it fall to the ground.

  “Full pockets,” said Kate. “You still want them. You pulled the earl into a crime, and you bought up his debts. How dare you.” Her light eyes were practically shooting sparks. “How. Dare. You.”

  “That was Miss Ahearn’s idea. I swear I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t died. I thought the operation would have to stop when he died.”

  “Yet it did not. And you did not.”

  Evan swooped up the man’s hat from the ground, handed it to him, then took a step back. “You asked what it mattered? It mattered because it was wrong. And how can you say if no one was getting hurt and talk about a safe life when a man died?”

  “An accident!” Driscoll waved his hands. “Accident, accident. Jones was devastated.”

  “I am so sorry that the groom was distressed by my husband’s accidental death.” The scorn in Kate’s voice was thick enough to bury them all. “You must permit me to send my condolences. To where did he flee in his devastation?”

  Driscoll, the fool, answered her. “Miss Ahearn found him a place in Wales, I think, somewhere nice and far away. He was Welsh himself, so he liked that.”

  “You can’t keep the Welsh out of Wales,” said Evan. “Do tell me. Was Ahearn her real name?” The blow to his head seemed to have jarred loose a memory. Sir William’s voice, asking for an Anne Jones. Forty or forty-five years old. Very pretty. A criminal genius.

  Janet Ahearn—the same initials, flipped—was the right age. Pretty? She tried hard not to look so. A criminal genius? That, he didn’t know.

  “Ahearn was what she always wanted us to call her.” Driscoll looked hopeful. A decrepit old dog being offered a bone. “Her real name, I think, was Jones.”

  “Well, shit,” said Evan. Everyone gaped at him, and he muttered an apology.

  Shit, though. He’d found Sir William’s Tranc, only to see her slip off again.

  “Was she related to the groom?” the constable asked.

  “I don’t think so,” said Driscoll. “They were both Welsh. There are a lot of Joneses in Wales.”

  “A realization that never ceases to amuse,” Evan said.

  “If you two a
re ready,” the constable said, “I’ll be taking this man off now.”

  Driscoll blanched. He really was turning ever so many food colors. “Don’t let him take me! Mr. Rhys—Lady Whelan—what did I do that was so wrong?”

  Evan looked at Kate. “How would you like to answer the man? What do you want to do? You’re a countess, and you’re guardian to an earl. You’ve the sway here, my lady.”

  For a long moment, Kate used her free hand to pet the necks of the horses she held. “We’ve no real proof of anything,” she said at last. “The only crime we can prove is that he stole your pistol. Since it’s worth more than ten shillings, he could be kept till the assizes for that, tried, and transported.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Driscoll said. “I…found it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Evan, I fault Driscoll for taking your possessions, and for not telling the truth about where you were found. I fault Adam Jones for cutting a strap that indirectly took a man’s life. I fault Janet Ahearn, or Jones, or whatever her name is, for developing a cockeyed plan that made a dozen families party to smuggling. If Driscoll is gone, and if it stops, I will be satisfied.”

  The pounding in his head quieted, soothed by her calm words. And yet… “Why, Kate? It was wrong.”

  She traced the line of Lucy’s mane, setting the mare to blinking her contentment. “Because there are many ways to be wrong. One way was to tuck up within Whelan House like a snail, trying to hold the world together by clutching pieces tightly. And another was Con’s, to befriend those who relied on him without ensuring their livelihood.”

  “You cannot think this was all your fault and Con’s.”

  “No, people made their own choices. But is the world the worse for a few stones being removed from Loughmoe Castle?”

  “I don’t know. Yes.”

  Kate’s smile was gentle. Sad. “The quality of mercy, Evan.”

  “How can you feel mercy when you lost a husband?”

  “I wouldn’t have at first. But time passed, you know. It’s a delightful beast. It took my loss, and it brought me you instead.”