Legacy of Secrets (20 page)

They were a happy family. William was too often the butt of Lily’s teasing, but he knew that she loved him and
she could be counted on to protect him from his father’s impatience and anger by diverting his attention.

They were proper young ladies. Ciel was what she always was: loud, bubbly, and joyous. She had such a zest for life and her laugh was irresistible—people simply had to join in. She was guileless, with none of Lily’s subtle lingering glances and flirtatious ways. With Ciel, what you saw was what you got.

And Lily was just Lily. She grew up a beauty. Everyone adored her, no matter what she did. In London and Paris and Dublin, she drew eyes wherever she went. She was like a bright shining star, trailing magic in her wake, with young Ciel basking in her starry glow.

Finn watched her change from an impetuous, willful child into a beautiful young woman. Like his passion for her it seemed to happen overnight. One minute she was just a girl riding along the strand in men’s britches and a fisherman’s navy blue jersey; the next she was a young woman, gowned in pale pink silk with pearls at her throat.

She was standing at her parents’ side, greeting their guests for a ball they were giving to celebrate Lord and Lady Molyneux’s twenty-fourth wedding anniversary, and Finn’s hopes sank to zero when he saw her. It was his first night as a footman and he was dressed in green livery, taking the guests’ fur wraps and silk hats and scarves.

He often helped out when the family threw their grand house parties. Whenever nobility and foreign royalty and celebrities came to stay, he and Dan acted as gillies or gamekeepers, or followed the hunt. And he often worked as a porter, hefting bags from carriages and carting them upstairs. He had noticed with awe the grandeur of the rooms and compared them with his own bare earthen-floored, smoky cottage. He had observed how different Lily was then, no longer the laughing high-spirited companion of their dawn gallops along the strand, now the young lady of the house. But he had never seen her as she was the night of the anniversary party.

She was an elegant grown-up young woman, gleaming
with jewels and just as haughty and proud as her lordly father. And he was Padraig O’Keeffe’s boy, a crack horseman who knew the best beat on the river for the salmon, and where trout were to be found in the lough any time of day or night. He was the hefter of bags and the footman in too-tight breeches and white gloves to prevent his peasant’s hands from soiling the plates these lordly people ate from.

That night Finn finally understood the distance that separated him from Lily and her life at the Big House. It was a chasm he could never hope to cross.

Lily could feel Finn’s burning eyes on her. She sipped her very first glass of wine and made a little face at its dry taste. She smiled at him, but he did not smile back and she wondered what was wrong. She glanced down the long table at her parents’ sixty guests and the twenty liveried footmen serving them. The vermeil service kept for grand occasions was being used and the table glittered with fine silver and crystal. There were tall candelabra and bouquets of flowers and showy silver ornaments, and a dozen five-tier epergnes cascaded with exotic hothouse fruits, including the Moscovy grapes and fat purple figs she used to steal from the greenhouses when she was a child.

Lily smiled to herself as she realized what she had just thought.
When she was a child.
Because there was no doubt that tonight she felt different. And from the admiring glances the men gave her, and from the way their eyes held hers and the way they lingered over her hand as they bent to kiss it, she knew she looked it. She felt heady from the wine and her new sense of power. Men would do her bidding, they would dance to her tune, all for a special smile, a flirtatious glance, a touch of her hand. She felt that sweet ripple of excitement in the pit of her stomach. But promising what? She sighed impatiently; she could hardly wait to find out, and she consoled herself with the thought that soon she would be seventeen. She would make her debut, meet her Prince Charming, and marry him. And then she would know all the womanly secrets.

From the underground gossiping at tea parties and the social events she attended she knew that, like her, none of the girls her age knew what “it” was all about. And neither would she until the eve of her marriage and even then she might just be told to “be kind” to her new husband, and be reminded that “men had different needs” and that as a good wife she would be expected to take care of those, and naturally, to bear his children.

Of course, she was always around the stable yard and the paddocks and fields and she just couldn’t help noticing the dogs and farmyard animals copulating. They looked so silly that she laughed, along with the stablelads, when she saw them. Until one day Finn had caught her and he had dragged her angrily away.

“You’re forgettin’ yourself, Lily,” he had hissed, red-faced with anger. “That’s not for your eyes, so don’t you go sniggerin’ with the stablelads.”

“And what do you think you are then, if not a stablelad,” she had retorted angrily. “Don’t I laugh and talk with you?”

“That’s different. And you know it,” he had shouted as Lily stalked away.

She sipped her wine again, throwing a troubled glance at Finn. The fact was, though, Finn had changed. He had become serious, quieter, and he flinched from her touch as though it were a red-hot poker. She could feel his burning eyes on her back and she turned and winked mischievously at him, but he pretended not to see. She glanced irritably at the boring old general
sitting
on her left, and then at the man on her right.

Dermot Hathaway was twice her age and the handsomest man in the room, barring Finn, of course. He had a wide, fleshy face, prominent dark eyes, a curving mustache, and smooth dark hair brushed back from a widow’s peak. He was the tallest man there, with massive shoulders and a muscular body. He was attractive and different and he had a bad reputation with women.

Dermot was descended from a family as old and noble
as her own; their great-grandparents had been friends, and their grandparents and parents. But Lily had never met him before tonight. She knew he owned great tracts of land in Wicklow and County Clare and that he had business interests abroad that kept him constantly on the move, traveling to exotic places like China and India and America.

He hadn’t yet spoken to her, except to say “good evening.” Glancing covertly at him she realized that though he was quite old, at least thirty-five, he was rivetingly attractive. She batted her eyelashes flirtatiously at him and said, “I can only imagine how disappointed you must be, Sir Dermot, to be placed next to the daughter of the house. And she only sixteen.”

He turned to look at her. For a long few seconds he said nothing; only his eyes absorbed her, sucking her in as though he were printing every inch of her onto his memory.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” he said drily, at last.

She felt herself blushing. No one had ever looked at her like that before. Besides, she knew he had seen past the pink silk and the pearls and the upswept hair to the silly flirtatious child she still was. Well, damn
him,
Lily thought, sticking her chin arrogantly in the air.

“Then I can only apologize for my mother’s error in seating me next to you,” she said stiffly. “And hope that you won’t be too bored.”

“Indeed I shall not,” he agreed, turning to speak to Margaret Donoghue on his right, who was, Lily knew, twenty-six and married.
And
she had skin like velvet.
And
she wore rouge and scent.
And
she was rumored to be bolder than she ought to be. Dammit, she groaned inwardly, the woman was gorgeous.

She stared resentfully back at her plate, ignoring every course until the sweet, which she demolished with childlike intensity.

Dermot watched her, a half smile on his lips.
She’s going
to be a little bitch,
he thought, but what he said was, “I see you like chocolate, Lily.”

She glanced sideways at him. She had thought he was so busy with Margaret Donoghue that he hadn’t even noticed her, and now she wished she had remembered to toy with the dessert, like the young lady she was supposed to be.

“I only ate it because I was bored,” she said, meeting his eyes. Again they seemed to devour her, just the way she had devoured the sweet.

“Then if you were bored it’s my fault. I apologize.” And then he turned back to his companion, leaving her to talk to the old general on her left who was, she thought despairingly, even more boring than she was herself. She stared resentfully down at her plate again, smoldering with rage at Dermot Hathaway.

She remembered her mother saying he was a rich bachelor and that all the women were after him, but that only made him more intriguing.

She toyed in a proper ladylike fashion with the cheese savory on her plate, sneaking little glances his way every now and again, assessing his progress with Margaret Donoghue, wondering how it was though they never touched, they somehow looked as though they were touching.

On the other hand, she decided, with a hot little quiver of excitement, it might be fun to have handsome Dermot touch you. It might even be fun to be married to a man like that. To be the one finally to capture him. She stared down at her plate, seeing herself walking down the aisle, radiant in white duchesse satin just like her cousin Kate who had married last year. Except with dashing Dermot Hathaway waiting for her.

She imagined how people would talk, marveling that young Lily Mojyneux had married such a catch when women had been trying for over a decade to pin him down. She caught Finn’s eye again across the room and blushed, hoping he could not read her thoughts.

When dinner was over her mother rose and led the ladies
to the drawing room, leaving the men to their port and cigars and masculine stories.

Dermot stood politely for her to pass, but Lily barely glanced at him. Yet later, when French champagne and coffee from Brazil and tea from China were served with candies and sugar-frosted fruits in the yellow drawing room, she contrived to sit near him. And when her father called on her to play the piano and sing for their guests, it was Dermot she saved her beguiling, long-lashed glances for, as she sang a sweet little French love song.

Standing at attention by the drawing room door, Finn closed his eyes, imagining she was singing just for him.

Then it was Ciel’s turn. She had been allowed to stay up late because it was a special occasion, though she had not been allowed to attend the dinner because her mother thought it would not be fair to sit any of her guests next to a nine-year-old child. “Lily is child enough for one night,” she had said firmly.

Ciel climbed onto the piano stool, gave a too-brisk rendering of a simplified Chopin etude, and clambered hastily off again to laughing applause. “Lily,” she said in a loud whisper so that Dermot heard, “who is that man you are making eyes at?”

He turned to look at her and Ciel stared back at him with an engaging smile. He said, “I think it is the good-looking young footman.”

Then he laughed as a hot blush of humiliation burned Lily’s face and she turned and fled with Ciel, as always, at her heels.

Finn hurried after them, but Ciel turned to him, her finger to her lips.

“No, Finn,” she whispered. “Not here. You can’t.”

He stepped back. Even little Ciel understood. Of course he couldn’t be with Lily. He was Paddy O’Keeffe’s lad and he knew his place.

A
S HER SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY
drew near, Lily spent more time in Dublin, shopping in Grafton Street with her mother and Ciel for lacy stockings and satin slippers and the long white kid gloves she needed for her double debut: one in Dublin and one in London.

Mrs. Simms, who was as famous in Dublin as any French designer in Paris, was making her presentation gown and half a dozen other ball dresses, in shades of cream and lemon and rose, ice-blue and nile-green. Only the presentation gown would be white, with a tight duchesse satin bodice and a sweeping skirt, as pure and virginal as a bride’s. Except, as Ciel said breathless with envy, twice as much fun.

Her mother hurried Lily off to London to sit for her portrait, and for a round of tea parties, and then it was home to Ardnavarna, and the Big House crammed with friends, with roaring fires and enormous dinners. And long rides with Finn through the woods or along the beach.

“Do you niver miss me when yer away there in the big city?” he asked moodily one morning.

They had tethered their horses and were walking through a sheltered glade in the woods. Lily kicked at the soggy mulched leaves around the base of a tree, thinking about it. The truth was she didn’t miss him: she was just too busy; and besides, Finn belonged to her life at Ardnavarna. Still, she couldn’t bear to hurt him. “Of
course I think about you sometimes,” she said. “It’s just that there’s so much to do: shopping and fittings for my dresses, and luncheons and tea parties. You can’t possibly understand what it’s like there.”

“That’s true enough,” he said bitterly, “since I’ve niver been to the city. I’m stuck here at Ardnavarna.”