Legacy of Secrets (16 page)

The doors were suddenly flung open and a harried-looking thin-faced woman peered out. “There you are,” she cried angrily. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“We just went out for a ride, Miss Nightingale,” Lily said, smiling ingratiatingly at the governess. “Did you want us then?”

Miss Nightingale snorted angrily and her eyes misted over with tears of frustration. “You know perfectly well you were supposed to be here for your lessons. Now look at the time. The morning is wasted.”

“Not for me, Miss Nightingale,” Lily sang out as she ducked around her and ran, lightfooted, along another, narrower corridor to her room. She flung herself onto the bed, kicking her heels in the air and shrieking with laughter as she thought of Finn O’Keeffe dancing like a bear to her command and then fleeing down the lane naked as the day he was born.

“Did you see him, Ciel?” she demanded as Ciel bounced, laughing, on the bed beside her. “Did you just see him? Oh, he’ll never forgive me. Never. I’m sure of it.”

“To be sure, he will,” her little sister said, gazing adoringly at her. “Everybody always forgives you, Lily.”

And, of course, he did. She saw him the next day helping his brother polish the glistening coachwork of the carriages.

She and Ciel had been to the hothouses to steal the Moscovy grapes intended for the dinner table. There were telltale purple stains around their mouths and Lily tried to wipe them away with a corner of her pink cotton skirt. She glanced sideways at Finn. He was watching her out of the
corner of his eye though he was pretending not to, and she grinned conspiratorially at Ciel.

She thought he had an interesting face, now that she got a proper look at it instead of at his bottom. A handsome face too.

“Was I really rotten to him, Ciel?” she whispered, and baby Ciel nodded her red curls emphatically.

“Oh, yes, Lily,” she whispered loudly. “You were very rotten.”

“Was I
mean?”
she asked, biting her lip.

“You were
mean,”
Ciel repeated positively.

“Well, then. I suppose there’s nothing else to do.”

Smoothing down her skirt, Lily strode purposefully toward him. Sticking out her hand she said sweetly, “My sister says I was mean to you yesterday and I’ve come to apologize.” She gazed at Finn, her hand held out, her brilliant-blue eyes innocent, and he stared back at her thinking that today his tormentor looked like an angel from heaven.

“Well?” Lily demanded impatiently. “Are you going to accept my apology or not?”

“I am so, me lady,” he retorted, wiping his hand on his pants’ leg and taking hers gingerly. It felt soft as dandelion down and he smiled at her, his whole face lighting up.

“I like you better when you smile,” Lily told him. “Better than when you’re wailing like a banshee.” She grinned at him, and leaning forward whispered, “I won’t tell anyone what happened. At least not yet. Just so long as you do what I tell you.”

He backed off warily, his gray eyes full of suspicion. “And what’s that ye’ll be havin’ in mind?”

Lily sighed exaggeratedly. “There’s no need to be afraid …”

“I’m niver afraid of you,” he shouted, his face reddening with anger again.

“Oh, you are impossible, Finn O’Keeffe.” Lily stamped her foot, glaring back at him. “And all I was going to do was ask you to ride with me tomorrow.”

“Ride with you?” He stared at her, saucer-eyed with amazement.

“They tell me you are a fine horseman. Almost as good as I am myself. I thought we would put it to the test. A race along the strand. Tomorrow at dawn.” She shrugged her slender shoulders. “But naturally, if you are afraid …”

“I can outride you any day o’ the week.”

She had got his back up again and she knew it. Finn saw from her eyes she was enjoying it and he cursed himself for rising to her bait. He looked at her, tall and slender, still a child in her pink cotton frock with grape stains around her mouth, her glossy black curls tousled, her blue eyes set like jewels in her lovely face, and her baby sister clutching at her skirts. His heart did a double flip, then sank somewhere into his belly. “You’re only a girl,” he said with a cheeky grin. “And tomorrow you’ll find out you’re no match for a man like me.”

“A man?” Her chin tilted upward and her eyes flicked over him from head to toe and back again. “We’ll see whether you are a man or boy, Finn O’Keeffe. Tomorrow at dawn.”

She flounced off holding Ciel by the hand and he watched her, a happy little smile on his face, already seeing himself racing neck and neck along the strand with her.

“And what was all that about then?” Daniel demanded, polishing the barouche’s always-gleaming bottle-green bodywork. “And what’s that silly grin doin’ on yer face?”

“Sure and it was nothin’,” Finn said airily. “Just a bit of chat between me and the Lady Lily. And none of yer business with it.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
Lily was up and dressed before dawn. She glanced affectionately at her still-sleeping sister. Ciel’s mouth was open and her eyes were shut tight and her dark-red lashes looked like little curtains on the curve of her plump cheeks.

Lily smiled as she slid silently through the door with her two best-beloved dalmatians, Fergal and Mercury, trotting
at her heels. Her four other dogs slept in the stables and as she walked through the archway into the yard they barked joyfully and bounded to greet her.

Finn was leaning nonchalantly against the door of a stall, looking as though he had been there for hours.

She stared at the waiting horses and then back at him. Her own favorite, a fast five-year-old, was already saddled up alongside an old hunter, good in his day but well past his prime. “You can’t ride that hunter,” she said bossily, marching over to the mounting block and swinging astride her own mare, held for her by a groom.

“Sure and is it yer little sister’s pony you’ll be wanting me to ride so ye can have an easy win over Finn O’Keeffe?” he demanded truculently.

“He’s an old hack. Tell the groom I say you should have Merchant Prince.”

Merchant Prince was her father’s favorite horse and Finn knew it. He said forcefully, “I’ll not be riding his lordship’s best horse. Not for anything. It’d be more than me life is worth if anything bad occurred to that beast.”

Lily scowled; she had thought he would rise to the bait again, but he had had more sense. Merchant Prince was a stallion and the only man who could control him was her father. He was a valuable horse and Finn would risk neither her father’s anger nor damaging the beast. But if he didn’t have a good horse, it would be no fun.

“Oh, all right then. Ride Punch,” she said as she walked her mare under the stone arch and onto the gravel driveway toward the bridle path that ran behind the house down to the sea.

Finn was on Punch in a flash, cantering next to her between the avenue of trees. “My father’s in Paris, you know,” she called to him. “He wouldn’t have known about Merchant Prince.”

“No, Lady Lily, mebbe he wouldn’t.” He reined back his mount to keep pace with her. “It’s meself would have known.”

She threw him a teasing glance. “Then it was a matter of integrity? Not fear?”

He glanced angrily at her. “Oh, damn ye, think whatever ye like,” he yelled, and pounded off along the avenue and down the rocky path to the beach.

“This is where we start,” Lily said, lining up her horse next to his. “Here, by this piece of driftwood. We race all the way to the end, then we turn and come back again.”

He measured the distance. “That’s over a mile.”

“It is.” She smiled and shouted quickly, “Ready, steady, go.”

She shot forward like a bullet from a starting gun and Finn grinned as he dug in his heels and galloped after her.

Lily galloped astride like a man, feeling the horse move smoothly beneath her. The morning was cool and misty. The sand was hard under the horse’s hooves and the air felt moist on her skin and she yelled out loud with happiness. She felt in tune with her world and nature and as close to God as anyone could. She turned quickly to look for Finn, just as he shot past her.

He was crouched low on the horse’s neck like a jockey, keeping his weight off the beast to gain an extra burst of speed. She galloped madly after him, laughing and screaming as they swung around together and started back up the strand, neck and neck. It was only in the last ten yards that he pulled away from her to win.

He grinned triumphantly at her, waiting for her to berate him or accuse him sulkily of cheating. But she surprised him.

“They were right after all, Finn O’Keeffe,” she said breathlessly, an admiring gleam in her eye. “You do ride like the wind and twice as good.”

As they walked the horses back up the path she said, “Will you ride with me again tomorrow? At dawn?”

There was none of the old mocking tone to her voice and when she smiled at him it was with genuine friendliness. Her cheeks were pink and her damp black hair stuck close to her head. In her navy jersey and man’s britches he
thought she looked like a young boy. And when she stared at him with those wide, innocent deep-blue eyes, he would have happily ridden every dawn of his life with her.

“Tomorrow,” he agreed, feeling as though life could offer him no greater pleasure.

L
ILY’S PARENTS WERE AWAY
on a visit to the Continent and there was no one to stop her from befriending the most humble of her father’s servants. Anyway, she had always played around the stables, and she felt quite at home with him. She had picked up the stable yard language, to her mother’s horror, and she even called her mother “Mammie,” the way she heard the village children do. It was her own special term of affection for her mother, though it was only said in private, among the family. In society she and Ciel used the formal “Mama,” and even Pa became “Papa.”

She was out of her bed and into her jersey and britches, rain or shine, every morning before the sky was even pink.

“Where do you go all the time?” Ciel demanded jealously, waking up and catching her dressing.

“Out for a ride with Finn,” she whispered, a finger to her lips as she crept from the room they shared because Ciel had refused to stay in the nursery. She always wanted to be with Lily.

It wasn’t only the ride she enjoyed. She also liked it when they tethered their horses and sat companionably on the rocks, gazing out across the bay at the ocean pounding against Ireland’s western shores, talking of this and that.

“I remember you from when I was very small,” she said to Finn, lying on her back, gazing at the gray sky and twisting her braid around her finger. “You were always in the
stable yard lurking behind the door of the tackroom or hiding in the hayloft, watching.”

“And I remember you on yer pony when you were mebbe three years old. Your father had tied yer hands behind your back to teach you balance and the groom was walking you around the marshy bit of paddock where it would be soft if you fell off, and you were laughing as if it were all a big joke. There was no fear in you at all,” he added admiringly.

She gazed silently at the sky for a minute, then she said, “And I remember when your mother and all your little sisters and brothers died. I came to your cottage. My mother had brought a big basket of food for the wake and I remember the tears on her face when she looked at the two of you.” She sat up and looked into Finn’s eyes. “I remember how you looked, your face so white and tight, like a mask in the light of the candles set on top of each little coffin. I tried to imagine how you must feel, losing everyone you loved like that. But I couldn’t imagine it because I didn’t know. I wanted to tell you I was sorry, and I just couldn’t. But now I can.”

Leaning forward Lily planted a kiss on his cheek. “So there,” she said defiantly.

Finn put his hand to his face where she had kissed it, feeling as high as if he were flying with the sea gulls overhead. His heart did that funny little leap again and then settled somewhere deep in his belly. “That’s very kind of you, Lady Lily,” he said shyly.

“You are never to call me that,” she said crossly. “You are my friend and you shall call me Lily.”

He thought he wouldn’t dare call her by her name for ages, maybe even years; it just seemed too impertinent. But as the summer weeks passed they easily slid into being Finn and Lily, and they told each other things they would never tell anyone else.

He told her the truth about the way his heart was rent in two when his mammie and little brothers and sisters had died, and Lily told him she had cried for weeks when the
dog she had had since she was five years old had been caught in a poacher’s trap and she had found it, broken and bleeding. The poor thing had had to be shot and she would never forget it. He showed her where the faerie glades were in the woods and told her the old country stories of leprechauns and pixies, and tales of banshees and goblins. And she showed him the drawing she had made of him, sitting astride Punch with the wind blowing his black hair into his eyes. “You have nice eyes,” she added shyly.

The long days of freedom were quickly over. Her father and mother returned from their trip abroad and Lily and Ciel ran around the flagstone hall, screaming with excitement when they heard their carriage on the gravel. William, thirteen and solemn as an owl in his wire-rimmed spectacles, watched them disdainfully. “You’re nothing but a pair of ragamuffins,” he said scornfully.