Legacy of Secrets (61 page)

“There’s always something wrong with them, Ciel,” he roared, with a spark of his old spirit. “Dammit girl, they are all from good families, they all have houses and land and money. They are all
gentlemen.
What more does a woman want?”

Ciel looked him sadly in the eye. She said wistfully, “Oh, Pa, I don’t know. I think I want love.”

Freed from the melancholy of Pa and Ardnavarna, her naturally bubbly spirits suddenly rose again. “Jayzus, Lily,” she wrote joyously, “I’m after kicking over the traces and having myself a wild old time, party after party after party. There are more good-looking eligible young men in this city than you can count, and quite a few of them seem interested in your little sister. But I’m not ready for marriage yet. I’m only just tasting my first freedom. Remember, I did not have a debut at seventeen like you, and ever since I left the school I’ve been shut away at Ardnavarna like a cloistered nun.”

She spent every day happily shopping, buying all the pretty clothes she had been deprived of for so long. She even took a quick trip to Paris, where she ordered a dozen gowns from Worth and a red fox floor-length coat from Revillon that almost matched her hair; the vendeuse thought she was crazy, but Ciel loved it. She had her fizzy red curls cut by Paris’s most fashionable coiffeuse and bought a dozen little hats to perch on top of her newly elegant head. She scattered her mother’s heirloom diamond brooches across her bosom like glittering confetti and stuck a couple onto her hat for good measure. And she always wore her mother’s famous rope of pearls, large as quail’s eggs and with a massive diamond clasp, which had been a wedding present from her husband. She would waft into a party or a ball, all aglitter in her brightly colored silks and satins with a big eager smile on her charming little monkey-face, and she would be immediately surrounded by young men.

They spent that Christmas in London and Pa was as spry and chipper as a sixty-year-old, despite the winter’s chill.
“I’ve finally got Ireland’s damp mists out of my bones,” he told Ciel on New Year’s Day, stepping firmly down the street and barely leaning on his cane. He looked better than he had in years: there was a sparkle to his eyes and a purpose to his step as he strode down Belgrave Square, heading for his club, his morning coffee, and the
Times.

It was a surprise therefore when a few hours later his friend, Dr. Barnett, a man as old as Pa himself, called at Belgrave Square. “I’m afraid it’s bad news,” he told Ciel. She stared at him, white-faced, knowing before he even said it that Pa was dead.

“It was sudden,” he said comfortingly. “He’s always had high blood pressure and I suspect it was a coronary occlusion.”

Tears poured down her face. “At least he enjoyed himself these last few months,” she said. “That’s something to be grateful for.” And if he had to die, then she was glad it was at his club among his friends, and not alone at Ardnavarna with only his bad memories.

Ciel accompanied her father’s body on the ferry to Dublin, and on the long train journey to Galway and then by road back to Ardnavarna. She had sent instructions that the house was to be cleaned until it sparkled; that all the rooms were to be made ready for guests; that fires were to be lit in every grate and enough food prepared to feed the family’s hundreds of friends who all showed up for the funeral two days later. There were so many, they spilled over into the neighboring country houses and the funeral took on a party air. The weather was dry and crisp for once, and Pa’s leave-taking was accomplished with much lusty singing of hymns in the church and reminiscences over tumblers of whiskey in front of a roaring fire later at the Big House.

Everyone ate and drank and talked of Pa and gossiped about their friends, and Ciel thought, pleased, that he would have been delighted. The house looked almost the way it used to, filled with people and noise and snatches of laughter. Any moment she expected to see Pa striding into
the room in his shooting jacket with his favorite Purdy shotgun slung over his shoulder, calling everyone to attention and reminding them that it was time for the shoot.

But when they were all gone it settled back into its old somber silence and she paced from room to room in her black mourning dress, for once without jewels. She folded her arms, wrapping them close to her body to keep away a chill that came from inside herself, looking around at everything, seeing it with new eyes. She, Ciel Molyneux, was now mistress of Ardnavarna. And she was all alone there.

She dashed the tears from her eyes and ran upstairs to her room. She tore off her black dress and flung on a pink woolen robe trimmed with white fur that made her look like a cross between a Russian princess and Queen Elizabeth the first, and sat down at her desk and wrote a letter to Lily.

A week later, with fifteen cabin trunks of clothes, two dozen hatboxes, and an immense black leather jewelry case crammed with her ‘stuff,’ as Ciel called it, she set sail on the liner
Etruria,
for New York, where she had instructed Lily to meet her.

T
HE DAY HE HAD MARRIED
L
ILY,
Dan thought he would burst with pride and love, even though the wedding was not in St. Stephen’s where he would have liked it to be because Lily was not a Catholic.

So, to avoid gossip, because it was after all only six months after John’s death, they had settled on marrying in a judge’s chambers in a small New England town. For the sake of discretion they drove separately to the ceremony, and to Dan’s delight his brother Finn had managed to find time from his hectic schedule to act as his best man.

“Let’s not tell, Lily,” Finn had said when he had called with the news. “Let it be a surprise.”

Dan looked ruggedly handsome in his brand-new custom-tailored gray cutaway, and Finn looked just as handsome, though solemn and weary, in black. Dan said jocularly, “I hope you’re not overdoing it, brother. All work and no play makes a man dull. And anyhow, when can we be expectin’ yourself to marry? It’s time you and I produced a brood of young ones of our own. Imagine the Christmases we would have together, Finn, your wife and mine, your children and mine, all playing happily in front of the fire on Christmas Day, and sitting around the table together for Christmas dinner, just like they used to at the Big House.”

“Don’t be a fool, Dan,” Finn said coldly. “It’ll never be
like Ardnavarna and you know it. No matter how much money we make, we shall never be like them.”

Lily wore a tailored dress and jacket in her favorite color, a deep pinkish-violet. She wore an extravagant Paris hat trimmed with pink silk roses, the Adamses’ heirloom five-strand pearl choker and pearl-and-diamond earrings, and she carried a posy of sweet-smelling pink roses and violets. As she drove to her wedding she went over in her mind every detail of her affair with Finn.

She knew he had seduced her to get his revenge and she knew he would think she was just getting back at him when he heard about her and Dan. But it wasn’t true; Dan had restored her sanity when she was crazy with grief and disillusionment. He was kind and unselfish and he was a rock to cling to in the stormy seas of life. And she was just so tired of those stormy seas. With Dan and her son, and maybe even more children, she would settle for peace and contentment. It was her private bargain with God. She would be a good and dutiful wife and mother, and she hoped God would forgive her her trespasses the way the prayer said, and grant her contentment and companionship, if not great love. And she hoped that Finn would keep out of her life and keep their secret.

Still, as she drove to her wedding, she couldn’t help wishing that when Finn found out she had married his brother it would feel like a knife twisting in his guts, because that was the way she had felt the night he had thrown her out of his apartment. “I only took what I already paid for,” he had called after her, and she had turned at the door and glared at him. “Oh, no, you did not,” she had snarled. “You haven’t paid enough. Not nearly enough yet, Finn O’Keeffe.”

Well, now he was about to pay, and then it would all be over.

Waiting for Lily in the anteroom of the quiet little New England courthouse, Dan thought that she was like a girl in a fairy tale; even as a child she had been an enchantress, with her wild beauty and flashing blue eyes and her imperious
ways that made everyone run to do her bidding. Lily had entwined herself around his heart then, just as she had his brother’s, and now the best man had won her. And strangely enough, because the odds had seemed set against it, that man was himself.

He heard her quick, light footsteps in the hall and he rushed out to meet her, beaming with delight when he saw how beautiful she looked.

“Are you nervous, Lily?” he said anxiously, because she was shivering.

She thought, panicked,
There’s still time. You can go now. Run away. Think about it this time, Lily. Think about what you are you doing.

“Dan,” she said desperately, “I—I think …”

“Well, well, the beautiful bride has arrived,” Finn said mockingly.

She saw him standing in the doorway and she stared at him like a mesmerized rabbit at a fox.

“Finn agreed to be my best man,” Dan explained quickly, because he had broken his promise not to tell anyone about their marriage until it was over. “After all, he’s my only family, and I knew you wouldn’t mind old Finn.”

He looked hopefully at them, but Lily and Finn were staring silently at each other. There was a strange glint in Finn’s eyes as he looked at her. Dan thought for a minute it was contempt, but he laughed that away as ridiculous.

He took Lily’s arm and said jovially, “This is a wedding, not a funeral. Come on, you two, the judge is waiting.”

“Dan,” Lily said desperately. Then she caught Finn’s eye and saw the little satisfied smile on his lips and she knew why he had come. He had thought that when she saw him she would not be able to go through with it. Well, he was wrong. “I’m ready, Dan,” she said.

The ceremony was over in minutes; the groom placed a gold ring on the bride’s finger and kissed her gently, and then the best man called for his own traditional reward of a kiss.

“Congratulations, Mrs. O’Keeffe,” Finn whispered as he
took her in his arms and kissed her boldly on the lips. She froze and he let go of her. “Well, sister-in-law,” he cried, “on to the celebration wedding lunch.”

Even though his bride was silent for most of the lunch and on the drive home afterward, Dan thought his wedding day was the happiest day of his life. He took her on a honeymoon trip to Washington, where he introduced her to his colleagues, and they said, “That old son-of-a-gun has done well for himself. Lily O’Keeffe is a classy lady. And a beauty.” They were invited to dine with President and Mrs. Cleveland at the White House, and it was the only time on her entire honeymoon that Lily felt at home.

Washington was a small, unsophisticated city and she hated their hotel. She hated the food, the wine, the service. She loathed the mosquitoes and the surrounding countryside. The heat gave her a headache and she missed her baby. Dan was a passionate, loving man, but no matter how often she reminded herself of her bargain with God, every time he made love to her she wished it were Finn.

On the last day of her honeymoon she admitted to herself she had made a mistake. She locked herself in the bathroom and cried until her eyes were puffed and red and her face blotchy, and she still had not got the despair out of her system. But as usual it was too late to turn the clock back. She would keep her bargain.

Finn took to visiting them at their Back Bay house whenever he was in Boston, but he was always careful to make sure first that Dan was home. He didn’t trust himself alone with Lily and he didn’t want to hurt his brother. He wanted to see his son.

“He’s a fine boy,” Dan said, hefting the baby up onto his shoulder. “Looks like Lily, too, though she says he is going to take after the Adamses and become an academic.”

He grinned happily at the child. “There’s no chance your mother would let you start out in life selling red suspenders,” he chortled, and Lily glared at him. She was getting tired of Dan’s homespun philosophies and his tales of “how he got started.” Finn caught her look and she glared
at him, too, daring him to say something about the child. But he did not. For whatever reason, Finn’s lips were as sealed as hers, though he did spoil the boy, bringing him armloads of expensive presents every time he came to visit.