Passion's Joy (49 page)

Sean caught sight of Pansie, motioning to him from around the corner. She seemed all smiles, and recognizing a woman who was anxious to tell all, Sean came quickly to her side to hear what he simply could not believe.

"They came to terms," Pansie said in a rush of whispers. "Oh! ‘Twas all so unexpected!

Took us by surprise it did, but one day my lady wasn't in 'er rooms anymore. Milord locked 'er in 'is rooms, 'e did, and for a week afterward she never came out, not once. Meals and little Sean were sent in but she never left. And oh, we 'eard nothn' but the 'appy sound of ‘er laughter all week long.

"After a long week, they finally came out, so to speak, with a 'andful of instructions, mostly to Mr. Wilson. Cancel this and cancel that. Then 'is lordship says, 'We're off to Ireland!' They left

that day, they did, and this is it—they took only common traveling clothes, their 'orses and the little master, that's all! No maids or footmen, or even Mrs. Thimble, trunks or a carriage. Imagine that!

They planned to book passage on a passenger ship for the crossing, just like commoners! And 'is lordship says, 'We're going to camp under the stars,' then 'e kissed 'er in front of everyone. Oh, to see 'er now—my lady was lovely before, but 'twas like she suddenly blossomed, she was so beautiful!"

Seanessy got the point. Turning from Pansie, he made his way into Ram's study and found Mr. Wilson, who confirmed everything. Sean fell into a chair, nodding distantly as Mr. Wilson excused himself and left. He found himself staring blankly out the window onto the gardens.

My God Ram, what are you doing to her?

Joy would not drink the tea, Sean knew just as well as Ram. She probably wouldn't have even before little Sean was born, but she certainly would not after knowing a mother’s love! It was as Ram oft said—Joy would see the act as synonymous with the unconscionable; drinking the tea would be one and the same as taking little Sean's very life. Of all the women he knew, Joy would not be able to drink that tea.

It was conceivable that, in a moment of passion, Joy had thought she could drink the tea.

Conceivable but unlikely, and even Ram had thought of it. “I could see her saying yes, even believing she could for me," Ram said once as they talked of it, "until she actually got with child. Once she felt the life within her, it would all change. I know it would, and I'd be put in the same position as that night I'll never live long enough to forget."

If Ram knew this, then what the hell was he doing? How long before she had to drink that tea? Knowing well the magnitude of Ram's desire for her, not long, not long at all. What chance would Joy have of saving her second child's life? None, Sean knew for a certainty, though what concerned him was that a second battle of will with Lord Ramsey Edward Barrington the Third would destroy her like nothing else.

God's curse Ram, what are you doing to her? What have you done to her?

Sean suddenly stood up and imaging a grim future, cursing Ram, he slammed his clenched fist into the three-hundred-year-old wall.

Each and every time he loved her it was with the intensity of their first and last time; it was a love that indeed knew no limits, as Ram had said as they first started out on their odyssey: "We

are looking for our limits, the limit to our love. We will search under star-filled skies and no doubt some cloudy ones, buried in nothing but a bedroll with our son. We shall wander over the countryside, looking in glens and meadows, forests and villages. We shall look upon the Irish sea and then upon the Irish land."

The pretty words made her laugh. "And my lord, do you anticipate finding this limit?"

"My dear girl! If there is any one thing I've learned in my years as an adventurer, it's that the treasure hardly matters; the joy is in the search!"

Ram proved it right there and then. Lulled by the rocking of the traveling sack in which Ram carried him, little Sean’s eyes closed before they had even got off Barrington land and Ram had made love to her on the forest floor beneath a blue springtime sky.

They had found ho limits the first month and a half it took to cross England, and the happy fact was celebrated with laughter, nothing but laughter and love. They had camped beneath the stars and traveled over the countryside, stopping at inns only for supplies, an occasional meal and to trade the cold spring water baths for a hot one. They finally reached the coast, where they sailed the short distance to Ireland aboard the passenger ship, the Holland. They continued their odyssey from Dublin, taking two weeks to finally reach Galoway, then headed north to Kilkorian Castle, where Ram and Sean had been raised. They collected nothing more than memories, memories that would last a lifetime.

Joy learned a good deal more about Ram. Though English and non-Catholic, he had a deep affinity for Ireland and her Catholic people. He would always be sympathetic to the oppressed of any land. As they traveled across gray mist shrouded hills, she felt suspended in time, and in a manner she was, for Ram talked at length about the troubled history of the country he knew so well. The history of Ireland was one of his great interests, second only to the history of the Greeks and of course, England. He talked of it all—starting with the Celts, eventually leading to the centuries of strife and bloodshed between England and Ireland, Protestants and Catholics, two opposing forces destined to battle upon this ancient island. He knew everything, not just dates and facts but causes and effects, the historical players and their motivations as well. While in between history lessons, Ram shared the folk tales and songs, hauntingly beautiful songs that had the power to make her laugh and cry in turns.

Though the history was troubled and the people poor, it seemed a magical, mysterious land.

Mary Seanessy had taught Ram the language, and he spoke it well; a Gallic tongue opened the people's arms to them everywhere they went.

Her fulfillment went beyond happiness, and if not for the unanswered question between them, she would have known only this dreamlike satiation brought by their love. Many times she pressed him to tell her why he had waited to give his love, but each time he resisted answering, stopping her finally with: "We will not talk of my mistake now. Not now my love. Someday but not now." There were a few times she experienced the rationality necessary to be frightened by the truth hidden from her, and her desperation created many different explanations for the pain that now felt so distant; but all of these were eventually abandoned, leaving the question: What did it matter now?

For now she had his love and it consumed her every moment. His love was all she knew, all he allowed her to know. Passionate and intense, Ram's love was almost savagely physical, and though his love was pure, there was malice afoot. He purposely consumed her in her entirety, leaving no part of her heart, mind or body untouched, leaving no place where the shadow of doubt might grow.

Soon after Galoway, the day came when they rode along the jagged cliffs of the coast, turning onto a road that led through rocky hills to Kilkorian Castle. Against the gray overcast sky, the landscape was desolate, nothing but sparse grass and rocks, a smattering of wind-blown pines. They rounded a bend and stopped, the small stone castle set against the rocky hillside rose in the distance. The gloomy looking place had been barred and closed these many years, left to ruin the day Ram's father had died. It looked haunting and forlorn. Even their normally boisterous son fell silent as they stared at the place.

A strange sadness rose from the sheer desolation of the land, and Joy thought of Barrington Hall, lovely and grand, surrounded by miles of gardens and forests beyond that, all of it so close to the frantic pulse and life of London. She thought then of: "Your poor mother, Ram."

"Aye, my poor mother. She growing up amidst the beauty of the lake district. I don't know how she bore this ... I don't know why my father had her removed here."

"How did you bear it?" she asked in a whisper as she still stared.

"I was hardly ever there. Mary had found me and took me away before my memories even start, and by the time I was five, I lived day in and out with her and Sean in their small cottage.

Even the tutors my father sent came to the cottage. The only time I was ever really at the castle were the few times my father returned from abroad and then only briefly."

Their silence filled with the solemnity of their surroundings. "Let's go see the village," she finally said. "Do you think the cottage will still be there?"

"Oh, I know it is. Sean and I know the tenants; we pay them an outrageous amount to keep fresh flowers on Mary's grave."

"Then, we shall have to make certain those flowers are there, and when I am at that dear woman's grave, I shall give her my thanks and gratitude for raising two such fine men." She brightened with a smile, "Knowing the two of you, it could not have been easy for her."

Ram smiled, and as Joy snared his saddle in front of him, he brushed back her hair, tilted her head and kissed her mouth. Trapped on his father's back, Sean thought this a wonderful idea and wanted his turn with his mother, too. He interrupted the kiss with a loud voice; Ram felt a furious pounding on his back, and the kiss broke with laughter. Such was the way they left the dark past of Kilkorian Castle.

Ram shared memory after memory of his boyhood with Sean and these were happy memories indeed as they visited the tenants and set out for Mary's grave, about two miles from the village. A little used, weed-grown road led through the forest pines and oaks, eventually opening to a small clearing. A wood fence surrounded the graves, many of these unmarked—the common pauper's grave. She spotted Mary Seanessy's grave at once, for it was the only well-tended and flower-marked place in the yard. A small white marble tombstone marked the much-loved mother’s resting place.

The quiet sang in the mid-morning air. The sun broke through gray clouds, falling in grayer streams to earth. They tied their mounts on the fence. Little Sean was napping, and after Joy carefully spread the bed roll away from the horses, Ram gently laid him down before they walked through the gate and stopped at the tombstone.

Mary Seanessy

May she rest in Peace

Staring down, Ram's sadness and regret infused his soft tone. "I wasn't here when she died, you know. Sean swore it was an easy death, her influenza, but I'll never know for sure. He would have told me that no matter what."

"I know you loved her as a mother," Joy whispered quietly.

"Aye, and she was." He smiled. "Sean was her son by birth, but I might have been, too. I knew only her kindness and love, the occasional and futile attempt to discipline us."

"Where's Sean's father?" she asked after a thoughtful pause. "Why isn't he here, too?" "Sean's father? Why isn't he here? Well, nobody knows who the blackguard is, that's why." "What? Sean told me—"

"That his father was an infamous sea captain?" Ram questioned with a lift of brow. "Yes, that he died before Sean was born in a horrible ship wreck off the Dover coast."

Ram shook his head with another sad smile. "Nobody knows who Sean's father was. Sean's a bastard, as was Mary and her mother before her. The story of the sea captain is the product of Sean's imagination, a fanciful one at that."

"That devil!" Joy felt properly duped.

Ram knelt on a bent knee, idly pulling weeds from the field. "Don't blame him, my love. It would be hard on any man not to know who his father was, where he came from or what he was like."

"Didn't Mary ever say who he was?"

"No, though God knows we tried, I don't know how many times, to pry it out of her. We knew someone had been supporting her all that time. She died over fifteen years ago now, a year before my father. All she would ever tell us was that the affair happened when she was young and that there is no creature on earth more foolish than a girl of fifteen. She always added that God blessed her mistake by giving her Sean, and then said to me, 'in a roundabout way you, too, Ram.'"

He continued to study the grave, lost in these memories. He remembered how badly Sean wanted to know. He must of made up a dozen stories to answer the question of the identity of his father.

"There was a rumor that Mary Seanessy had a young girl's crush on the village priest, a Father Patrick Shaw, but—" he paused, "Mary was never particularly religious and true, a few priests inevitably fall from their vows of celibacy, it's hard to imagine Sean coming from anyone so virtuous.”

This story immediately earned Joy's keen romantic fancy. "Do you know this priest? Did he look like Sean?"

Fear came to his expression suddenly as his gaze lifted to the gray sky where he watched the flight of three ravens. "No," he said softly, looking down again. "The priest died the year Sean and I were born." Inexplicable pain entered his voice, "He was murdered, stabbed to death, the murderer never named, never known. The villagers thought he fought with the devil that night, and in their peasant wisdom, they burned the church to the ground as sacrament. They say my own mother was known to see this priest, and sometimes I've thought, with my father so close—"

"No," she knelt beside him and took his face in her small warm hands. "No, don't torment yourself. Leave the past behind, Ram; it has no part of us now."

Ram stared at the unmasked love in her eyes. If he had one wish it would be that the past would have no part of them. He’d offer up his entire fortune and more to make that true. The Barrington family history would always shadow his life, and this nightmarish past would soon come between them. The thought brought his lips to her with a kiss brutal in its intensity, as he laid her to the bare ground of the graveyard.

"Love me Joy," he whispered. "Love me now as though it is the last time we ever shall." She felt his pain and fear; it became her own beneath a gray sky in an isolated graveyard.

The desperation of her love for him and his for her fueled a soaring passion, one that fueled their lovemaking.

The thought echoed through her mind—as though it was the last time they ever would…

The carriage rolled steadily forward, at last luring little Sean asleep in the bassinet on the floor. Joy sat comfortably on the seat, thinking she knew insanity when she felt it. For the first time in three months, she and Ram had separated. Ram had to go to port for two days, and not having accommodations there for her and little Sean, she had been forced to quit London for Barrington Hall alone. He had trouble getting work done with her near, which was a good deal better off than she, for she had trouble holding a coherent thought in her head when he was near.