Never Call It Love (27 page)

Instead,
he had married that gray-eyed Englishwoman. And at last, Moira, after eight
years of frustration, had capitulated and become his mistress. Now she was more
in love with him than ever, more determined than ever that their union would
become permanent and legal.

She
felt the pressure of tears behind her eyes. What had she ever had out of life?
A childhood and girlhood shadowed by her mother's madness. Four years of
marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather. And now, when she was more
than ever in love with Patrick, more than ever needing to become his wife, she
found her way barred by a whey-faced creature who did not love Patrick and
who—oh, surely!—was not loved by him.

Damn
Elizabeth Stanford! Damn her!

She
whirled around, seized the cup from which her guest had drunk, and hurled it.
Leaving a trail of spilled drops across the pastel floral rug, it shattered
against the door.

***

Two
nights later the Stanford carriage emerged from the grove of oaks and alders
and moved across the meadow toward Stanford Hall. In one corner Elizabeth sat
with her gaze fixed on the rows of mullioned windows reflecting the light of a
three-quarter moon. In the other corner Mrs. Corcoran slept, her chin sunk on
her chest

As
she had told Moira Ashley, Elizabeth had no intentions
of even
considering a divorce unless Patrick asked her to. And yet, all during the
journey from Dublin she had been aware of the irony of those elaborate gowns
back there in the carriage trunk, gowns that in all likelihood she would seldom
if ever wear. As their relations were now, it was unlikely that they would be
giving many parties, or going to them. And she felt sure that if Patrick went
to London for the season, it would be without her.

Was
she going to live out her life like this, bound in marriage to a man who had
ceased even to desire her?

She
reached over and touched the housekeeper's arm. "Wake up. We are
here."

As
Mrs. Corcoran straightened her bonnet, the carriage clattered through the
wrought-iron gates and into the courtyard. The hall's door swung open, and
Clarence came down the stone stairs to open the carriage door and let down its
steps. Elizabeth asked, "Is Sir Patrick at home?"

"No,
milady. He has not been here since this morning."

Of
course not, Elizabeth thought. Leaving Dublin well before she herself had,
Moira must have reached Wetherly last night. Undoubtedly Patrick was there with
her right now.

Elizabeth
was wrong about Patrick being at Wetherly. He was a good five miles from there
in an upstairs room of the fishing village's one public house. With a
companion, the
same vaguely foreign-looking man Elizabeth once had glimpsed in the taproom of
that fashionable Dublin inn, he sat a rough table, drawn up close to the fire
on this crisp night. On the table, amid the remains of the meal they had
shared, lay a map of Ireland and several sheets of paper, each covered with
writing in Patrick's bold hand.

With
the tip of a quill pen, Patrick was pointing to some of the score of inked X
marks on the map. "Near Londonderry we now have almost a hundred muskets
hidden in the vaults of a ruined abbey. Here in an inlet of Sligo Bay, in a
cave, are fifteen cannon your people shipped to us a year ago. Near
Castlebar... But perhaps you would rather read the information. On those sheets
of paper are the lists of arms and gunpowder stored at each of the locations
marked on the map."

Georges
Fontaine nodded and then pulled the map and sheets of paper close to him. He
was that rarity, a taciturn Frenchman. Over the years he and Patrick, without
becoming friends, had developed respect for each other. It was not a respect
that extended to the separate causes for which they worked. To Patrick, France
was a country sadly misruled by fat, stupid King Louis and vain and extravagant
Marie Antoinette. To Georges, the Irish were a people so feckless, so divided
among themselves, that the rebellion Patrick strove for probably would not
succeed, any more than had the Irish rebellions of the past.

But
they had a common enemy, England. And each man was fully aware of the courage
and determination of the other.

Patrick
got up, walked over to the fireplace, and stood, as he often did, palms propped
against the edge of the mantlepiece, gaze directed at the blazing logs. Then,
unable to stand quietly, he began to pace the room. Within a few months, all he
had worked for these past ten years would bring the beginning of a glorious
triumph, or a
bloody shambles of defeat, just one more of the defeats that island had
suffered in its six-hundred-year struggle against the English invader.

In
one respect he had been reckless. Unlike previous landowners who had led
rebellions, he had not counted upon using mercenaries—usually Scots—to do the
fighting. Instead, he planned to do something that no rebel leader—whether
Irish or Anglo-Irish, Catholic or Protestant—had yet dared to do. He would
distribute to desperately poor tenant farmers the arms, smuggled in from
France, that he had been stockpiling over these past years.

But
if he had been daring in one respect, he had been cautious in others. Always he
had maintained the facade of the self-indulgent Anglo-Irish landlord, breeding
fine hunters, maintaining a pack of foxhounds, and going to London each winter
to attend balls and royal levees and to throw away money at the gaming tables.
With a very few exceptions, not even the men who would take leading roles in
the uprising knew the identity of its chief planner. During his recent tour of
Ireland he had inspected firearms sufficient to supply seventeen thousand men,
but he had met face to face with only six. Among them was a young baronet with
an estate near Limerick, one of the few men of property willing to risk their
lands in an attempt to shake off the English yoke. The other five were all
either tenant farmers or owners of only a few acres.

As
for the great mass of men who for years had drilled by night in isolated
fields, and who would use those hidden arms when the time came, they knew only
their local leaders. Most of them, far from knowing that Patrick Stanford was
the chief architect of the coming rebellion, had never even heard of him.

Georges
Fontaine, studying the map and the handwritten sheets of paper, began to drum
his fingernails against the table. The sound reminded Patrick not only of
the Frenchman's
presence, but of Henry Owen, the man who had sat with him and Fontaine at a
taproom table in that Dublin inn the previous summer.

At
one time Owen had been a tenant of Patrick's. Through his own efforts, plus a
small loan from Patrick, he had managed to buy a few acres near Waterford.
Patrick had felt that if he could trust anyone, he could trust Henry Owen. The
man was intelligent and hardworking. He had risen too recently from the tenant
class to be callous to their sufferings. Until that meeting in Dublin last
June, Patrick had confided in him almost as completely as he had in the French
agent, Fontaine.

But
in that Dublin taproom Patrick had received an impression of something false
and overhearty in Owen's manner. That impression had been reinforced when, only
a few days ago, Patrick had visited Owen at his small farm. The next day in
Waterford he had seen Owen's wife coming out of a shop, clad in a brown velvet
gown and an ostrich-plumed hat. At sight of her, a coachman had scrambled down
from the box of a smart new carriage and opened its door for her.

How
could a farmer make enough from a few acres of potatoes and wheat to buy velvet
and ostrich plumes, and a carriage and pair? Well, perhaps Owen had not. Once
he had mentioned to Patrick that his wife's uncle, a Belfast merchant, had
"done very well in the tobacco trade." Perhaps Mrs. Owen had
inherited money.

Nevertheless,
Patrick was glad that he had never turned over to Owen a master list giving the
size and location of arms caches all over the island. Always he had told Owen
that he would be supplied with such a list "later."

Behind
him the Frenchman said, "I see from this list that our recent shipment of
eighty muskets reached you."

Patrick
turned. "Yes, four days ago. I was waiting in Waterford when they
arrived." Transferred by night from a French merchant ship to an Irish
fishing boat, the arms
had been concealed not only by false deck but by a day's catch of herring.

Fontaine
asked, "May I keep this list and the map?"

"Yes.
I have duplicates in my strongbox at the hall."

Rising,
Fontaine stuffed the papers inside his greatcoat. "I had best leave.
Tomorrow afternoon I have an appointment with a wine merchant in Cork." It
was in the innocent guise of an agent for a French wine-exporting firm that
Fontaine traveled all over Ireland. "I want to ride part of the way yet
tonight."

Patrick
waited a few minutes after the Frenchman had gone. Then he too left the public
house, rode through the sleeping village and up the steep path to the
moon-flooded headland and the rolling, uncultivated land beyond it. There he
turned, not toward Stanford Hall, but Wetherly.

Nevertheless,
he found himself wondering if Elizabeth had returned from Dublin. As always
when he thought of her—and he avoided doing so as much as possible—he felt a
mixture of anger and guilt. Perhaps that morning last September he should have
realized that a quarrel might endanger the unborn child. Perhaps he should have
turned there on that hillside and ridden away, and never even let her know he
had seen her in Weymouth's arms. But he was not capable of such restraint.

And
later on, certainly, he had tried to be gentle with her. Despite the fact that
the uprising for which he had risked his property and even his neck all these
years was now imminent, he had been willing to go with her on a frivolous errand
to Dublin, just as soon as he had the opportunity. But that had not been enough
for her. While he waited in Waterford for that arms shipment, she had gone off,
not even leaving him a message. He'd had to question the servants to learn the
whereabouts of his own wife.

With
an effort he turned his thoughts from Elizabeth to the woman he would see in a
few minutes. Early that
morning a Wetherly servant had brought him a note from Moira, demanding that he
come to her as soon as possible. He hoped that she did not plan to bring up
again that preposterous idea that he petition for divorce on some trumped-up
grounds.

He
hoped also that she had gone no further with her plan to invest heavily in that
South American diamond company. The little fool! She had no need to gamble
recklessly. She was sufficiently rich. But where money was concerned, she was
insatiable, just as that ivory-skinned body of hers was insatiable for
lovemaking.

That
particular thought brought him a pleasant glow. Busy with other matters, he had
not been to bed with her for more than a week. He urged his mount to a brisker
trot.

When
he entered the long-familiar room with its thick Aubusson carpet, its blazing
candelabrum on a dressing table covered with scent bottles and little silver
pots of rouge, he knew at once that she had not given up hope of seeing him
that night. Her hair, falling around shoulders left bare by a diaphanous green
nightshift, had been brushed to blue-black luster. Her full mouth was rouged.
Smiling, she came into his arms. He kissed her, one hand between her
shoulderblades and the other on her hips, pressing the whole length of her
full-breasted body against him.

She
looked into his dark face, its eyes half-lidded with desire. Should she talk to
him about it now, or later? Now, she decided, while his hunger for her would
lend force to her arguments.

"I've
been to Dublin since I last saw you."

He
said, not sounding very interested, "You have?" With one hand he drew
the bodice of her nightshift lower and kissed one ivory breast.

She
stepped back from him. "I stayed at the same inn as your wife. We had tea
together." She saw his face grow
rigid, but nevertheless rushed on.
"Oh, Patrick! I don't think she will oppose a divorce, not if you tell her
you want it."

He
said slowly, "Let me understand this. You took it upon yourself to go to
Dublin and talk to my wife about—"

"I
had to, for both your sake and mine! Otherwise we would have gone on like this
year after year, just because you're too softhearted to—"

"Softheartedness
has nothing to do with it." His voice was ice-cold now. "I have told
you several times that I will never try to divorce my wife. A marriage is a
bargain. And an honorable man keeps his bargains."

She
smiled at him. "But, my darling, it was such a foolish bargain! I'll never
understand why you thought you had to marry her, just because she was weak and
silly enough to let you get her with child. In fact, I'll never understand why
she let you, a cold-as-a-fish woman like her..."

"Moira!
I've told you before that I will not discuss that"

She
said hurriedly, still with that coaxing smile, "But think how happy we
could be, Patrick. It's not just that we love each other. I'm rich, and I'm
going to be even richer, and you need money. We could give her money, too, enough
that she could live comfortably back in England."