Legacy of Secrets (29 page)

The de Lowrys had been arrested more than once on charges of indecency, but they had always managed to skip town.

For the actors, life with the de Lowry Famous Traveling Players was either spent onstage or on trains or on the run. From debt collectors, disillusioned theater owners, irate landladies, barkeeps, stores, and restaurant owners. They told each other that one day Jacob would run out of towns that didn’t know about him and his “Famous” reputation and they would all be out of a job. Meanwhile they had work and ultimately they were always paid, though not very much.

Ned thought he was in heaven just being near a stage and he was bewildered by the professional cynicism of his fellow actors. Especially the “ingenue” Jeanette Foyle, whose ingenue days were long over and whose fading prettiness was edged with disillusion. She took him to her bed immediately and for a few weeks kept him in a permanent state of semiexhaustion. He only managed to get through his onstage performances and his chores for de Lowry on sheer youth and joie de vivre, and he was relieved when Jeanette found herself a new lover and he was free again to devote all his time to learning his craft. And from then on he followed the advice of his fellow actor Harrison Rob-bins, to keep his sex life outside the Players and save himself a lot of grief. “Because, old friend, ‘a woman scorned is a fair demon,’” Harrison warned him solemnly.

And Ned thought Harrison should know. He was thirty-two, dark, mustached, and a winner with the women in the audiences. He was also a dedicated gambler, a fair-to-middling drinker, a bad actor, and good company. And he and Ned were friends. Or “companions in arms,” as Harrison called it, because working with the de Lowrys was a constant battle: they battled to get a decent role because de Lowry insisted on playing all the leads regardless of his age; they battled to get new costumes and enough time to learn the lines of each new “play” de Lowry had dreamed up overnight; and they battled to get paid.

One night in a barroom in Worcester, Massachusetts, Ned told his friend about Lily. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Can you imagine any reason a wonderful, young girl like that—with everything to live for—could
die,
Harry?”

Harry shook his head. “Forget her, Ned, that’s my advice to you. She sounds like nothing but trouble.”

“I can’t forget her.” Ned remembered her sapphire eyes, the curve of her lips, the way she felt in his arms. “I have to go back to her,” he said, climbing from the barstool.

Harrison grabbed his arm. “Oh, no you don’t. You have a show to do tonight, young fella, and an obligation to the
rest of us. You can’t go running off because some girl—a total stranger you just happened to have rescued from the deep—might die. Besides, she doesn’t need a lovesick swain loitering at her bedside. Take it from me, women don’t like you to see them when they are sick. Save it for when she’s looking her best.”

Ned Sheridan was no stranger to love. He was still only twenty-three, but there had already been several women in his life. And he had loved some of them too. He could still remember his first true love, as well as the first girl he had ever made love to. He recalled the trembling exhaustion of his passionate affair with Jeanette and the purity of his love for a professor’s daughter at Brown. But he had never in his young life felt this heart-vaulting, all-consuming passionate love for any woman before, and he knew he never would again.

He sighed. Harrison was right, he couldn’t let the Players down. He realized he did not know Lily, but it didn’t stop him from thinking about her constantly and he told himself that one day when he was a famous actor, he would be rich and successful and he would give her the world on a golden plate.

T
HE HOUSE ON
M
AIN
S
TREET
was quiet. A beam of January sunlight dappled the green-and-white quilt worked by Alice Sheridan’s grandmother over a hundred years before, touching Lily’s face with warmth. She opened her eyes and stared at the crisp blue winter sky outlined in the glittering many-paned windows, wondering where she was.

Puzzled, she glanced around the room. The walls were plain white, there were rugged ceiling beams and wooden floors, a multicolored rag rug and a rocking chair. A model of a whaling ship in a bottle stood on a plain pine dresser, and over it hung an embroidered text in a dark wooden frame. It was like a room she had seen in a dream; she remembered it and yet she did not know it.

She looked at her plain cotton nightgown and her own hands lying limply on top of the coverlet and asked herself
whether darling Pa had sent her off to school after all. And then she saw her two sea-stained trunks standing in the corner and the horrible events of the past flashed through her mind.

She stared at the cavernous cedar trunks, remembering the terrified maids cramming them with everything they could lay their hands on. What had not fit in, her father had ordered them to burn. Her hunters had been sold, her Connemara ponies banished to another county—because her father would never harm a horse—and her beloved dogs had only been allowed to remain because Ciel had flung herself weeping at Pa’s feet, pleading that they belonged to her too.

All that remained of her past was in those trunks. Except for one thing. The baby. She ran her hands over the undeniable roundness of her belly, knowing that it was still there, leaching life from her like a parasite, and she knew that she would never be able to look at its face.

She pushed back the covers and swung her legs over the side and tried shakily to stand up. Her knees trembled and she sank back again, moaning as she remembered the shipwreck and Finn, with his hands on her throat trying to choke the life out of her. And then the icy waters closing over her head and herself sinking deeper, knowing she was going to die.

“And I should have,” she cried pitifully. “I should have died for my sins.” Flinging herself against the cool linen pillow she wept for the loss of her past and fear of her future.

Alice Sheridan came quickly up the stairs. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her arms around Lily. “It’s all right,” she said, patting her back soothingly the way she had patted her babies’ backs when they were fractious. “You are safe now, and I promise you everything will be all right. We shall look after you. You may stay with us as long as you wish. You will be like one of my own daughters.”

She could not have said a more comforting word. Lily stopped sobbing and glanced hopefully up at her through
her lashes. She did not know who Alice was, but those were the first loving words she had heard since she had been banished.

Then she shook her head miserably. “No,” she sobbed, “when you hear about my wickedness you will not want me either. You will throw me out just the way my own family did.”

“Dear child!” Mrs. Sheridan exclaimed, shocked. “Of course I shall not throw you out. And you are far too young to have been very wicked.”

Lily stared at her. She saw a slender, smooth-faced woman, plainly dressed and with work-reddened hands. Mrs. Sheridan’s brown eyes were filled with sympathy, but Lily knew that when she told her the truth, she would send her away from this refuge.

Mrs. Sheridan plumped her pillows and tucked her back into bed. She said, “You have been so ill we were afraid we might lose you. But God sent you back to us and we shall not let go of you so quickly. You must drink some broth and we shall have you on the road to recovery in no time.”

Her broth was delivered by a little blond girl who stared curiously at her and told her she was Betsy Sheridan and that she was ten years old and that she had been forbidden to say anymore.

Her next visitor was seventeen-year-old Abigail, blond, fair-skinned and pale-eyed like her sister, who came with a shy smile to take her tray away. “We are so glad you are feeling better, dear Lily,” she said warmly, and tears of surprise misted Lily’s eyes as she wondered why these total strangers should care whether she lived or died when her own father did not.

She lay awake all night thinking about what to tell them. The only thing the Sheridans knew about her was her name and that she was en route to stay with a relative in New England. She could tell any story she liked and they would believe her, and she spent the night reinventing her past so the Sheridans would not throw her out of their peaceful little paradise.

When Mrs. Sheridan came up the next morning with her breakfast tray, Lily said humbly, “I have no way to repay you for all your kindness, and I must explain why.” Mrs. Sheridan sat on the edge of her bed to listen and she said, “You see, Mrs. Sheridan, I married young. I was just seventeen and he was a soldier in the queen’s army. He was not much older than me and so handsome and kind and gentle.”

She hesitated, as though it pained her even to talk about him, and then continued in a sad voice, “We were very much in love, but my father had an important title; he was rich, he owned big estates and grand houses, and my young captain had nothing. My father said I would be marrying beneath me and he refused his permission. But Mrs. Sheridan, love cares nothing for all those things. I know now it was wrong, but we ran away and got married and we were so happy. And when I found out I was … when I found I was going to have a baby, I felt sure my family would rejoice with us and welcome us back into the fold. But it was not to be. They hardened their hearts against me. And when, a month later, my lovely young husband was killed in an accident, they refused even to come to his funeral.”

She gazed piteously at Alice Sheridan. “They refused to have anything more to do with me or his child. I had nothing left, just a very little money and these two trunks with my things. So you see, Mrs. Sheridan, there is no ‘relative’ in New England. It was all just a story. And that’s why I was traveling alone and unchaperoned on that tired old cargo ship. I was coming to America, like the rest of the poor Irish immigrants, hoping to find a better life for myself in the New World.”

She hung her head. “If it were not for the child my husband would not have taken the new commission. It meant more money but it also meant he had to travel abroad. And it was on that journey he was killed. So you see, it’s all the baby’s fault. Because of it, my husband died. I don’t want this baby I’m carrying,” she said passionately. “I would rather die than have to look at it.” And though
she was lying about what had happened, she was telling the truth about the baby. She couldn’t bear to look at the child of the man who had ruined her perfect life.

Alice shook her head in shock. Then she said comfortingly, “Just remember this, my dear. A miracle happens every time a baby is born, and somehow love is born with it.”

She put her arms around her and Lily rested her head against her shoulder. It was the first time since she had been banished that she had the warmth of human contact and affection, and she sobbed with relief. If she could not die, then at least the child would have a happy home with the Sheridans. She would be free of Dermot Hathaway at last.

Her heart sank as she thought of Finn and Daniel. But later Obediah Sheridan himself came to tell her that a total of twenty-one women and children had drowned and half were unidentified. “Our townsfolk took up a collection for the survivors,” he said, “and a few days later they sailed off to Boston to begin their new lives.” He sighed, sorrowfully contemplating their plight. “At least they had food in their bellies and decent warm clothes instead of their own pitiful rags. And a little money in their pockets to give them a start.”

But Lily did not hear him. She was imagining the icy green waves closing over Finn’s head, seeing him sinking deeper and deeper, his dead gray eyes wide open, staring at nothing. But she knew Finn could swim like a seal.
And
he was strong. He and Daniel used to go out in the bay in all weather to catch fish for their suppers, and he had capsized more times than he cared to remember. He just couldn’t be dead. Not her friend. Nor her handsome, reckless Finn.

I
WAS TIRED,
and with all my characters about to begin new lives in the New World, I thought it appropriate to leave Lily’s story there for the night. It had been many a year since I had had the company of young people and their energy amazed me. They talked all night, snatched an hour or two’s sleep, and were off for a dawn gallop, just like Finn and Lily. Except that Eddie cannot ride a horse. Shannon has set herself to teach him and very smug she is, too, to have something over him.

But here I am, talking as though Shannon and Eddie were falling in love. Now, whatever could have put such an idea into my head, I ask you? I’m just dreaming, I suppose. Though it would be nice.

I climbed into bed and sank, relieved, against the pillows, listening to the nighttime country sounds. Town people always complain that country nights are too quiet, but there are always owls hooting and foxes barking, horses neighing and the wind sighing in the branches. Sometimes there’s a cacophony out there.

I couldn’t sleep, and when I woke it was raining. The morning air coming in through my window was chilly and my view of the sea was lost in mist. I thought anxiously about my roses and climbed from bed to take a look, but found my legs like jelly. Suddenly weak as a foal I sank
back down again and leaned my dizzy head against the pillow. After a few minutes I was forced to admit that I felt odd: my heart was pounding and my hands were all a-tremble.