The Kilternan Legacy (34 page)

“Anyway, you two,” Shay went on, “how could you tots know I’m the proper husband of her and stepfather of you?”

“Ha! We knew right off,” Snow said with a toss of her head, her eyes twinkling. And I thought to myself that Shamus Kerrigan would at least have the handsomest pair of stepchildren in the Island. “You’ve got hands!”

“Hands?” Shamus looked at them, mystified. “Most people do.”

“Naw, you don’t know what we mean,” and Snow was tolerant of his ignorance and quite willing to enlighten him at length.

“Look, children, that can wait.”

“What?” Snow obviously felt the topic was of vital importance.

“Right,” said Shay firmly. “We do have more urgent… if not as fascinating … business to attend to this morning. Mihall Noonan’s coming over. He needs the details about this visitation from the ISPCC, and also what you plan to do about Purdee.”

“What do you mean, what I plan to do? Like prosecute?”

Shamus nodded. He was serious.

“What about the buckshot? Couldn’t they prosecute me?”

He shook his head. “You have every right to protect your property from unlawful intruders.”

“Invaders, you mean,” put in Snow.

“And Nosy?” I wondered what sort of ammunition his report would give Teddie.

Shay drew his face into a lugubrious expression. “You had no notion you were under surveillance … which will be removed, I can promise … so if you shot at one intruder and got two …” He shrugged.

“Nosy’s removed anyhow … with a rear full of buckshot,” said Snow, chortling. “Do you think he gets double pay for risk?”

“But what about Purdee?” I said. “Ann won’t have a restful moment now that he knows where she is—” I broke off. “And it was Auntie Alice who told him where she is.”

“By Jasus, you may be right,” said Shamus, blinking his eyes at my suspicion. “Winnie’s in the fish business, after all, and while she may babble like a brook, she doesn’t say much. But if Alice were interested, she’d know where to look and who to ask about Paddy Purdee, sure and she would.”

“Great!” I said sarcastically. “Then as soon as he’s well, we can expect a return engagement.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” replied Shay in the slow way that I was beginning to realize meant he had a trick unplayed. “Between ghosts and buckshot, and by the time Mihall gets through with him … If you’ll go along with our strategy, he won’t be likely to show himself.”

“Yes, but will Ann believe that?”

“Sure and she will… if you say that you’ll threaten to prosecute him for breaking and entering
unless
he agrees to sign a legal separation agreement for Ann.”

“Oh, Shay, would that work?”

“Mihall suggested it. She can have legal custody of the children and legal protection from his … physical presence. That’s all she wants right now.”

Snow cocked a sophisticated eyebrow and jerked her head toward Kieron’s cottage. Shamus saw her.

“Make haste slowly, young Sara,” he advised kindly. “You lot have upset quite a few barrows in the short time you’ve been in Ireland. Let the mud settle a while.”

“Say, Mom, now that we know Shamus didn’t father Sally’s baby,” Snow began, and I stared at my precocious daughter. She grinned knowingly.

“Snow, if you and I are to have a congenial relationship,” Shamus began.

“This is for
your
good,” she replied archly.

“I’ve got access to the property, Sara Virginia,” he said, and took the wind right out of her sails. For one split second

“Evidently, but does it have to be right in front of our house? Mom owns
that
field, doesn’t she?” Snow gestured out the window to the meadow beyond Kieron’s cottage. “Be smart, wouldn’t it, to carve a hunk off the far side of that and have two routes into the development… all well away from us?”

It boded well for that same congenial relationship that Shamus took the time to consider that proposal, and the look he then turned on Snow was approving.

“I think I’d better listen to you, pet, when you come up with sensible notions like that.”

“And it would make me feel a whole lot better about the Glenamuck thingie,” I said.

“Oh, I’ll make that outlay up in the purchase price of the houses,” Shamus assured me blandly.

“Speaking of purchases, Mom,” Simon said, “you forgot to get more coffee … and someone”—he looked at his sister—“ate the whole box of cookies and …”

“I’ll spot you all to dinner at Lamb Doyle’s tonight,” said Shamus, and the offer was cheered.

“Could Jimmy come, too? I mean, like we are celebrating, aren’t we,” said Simon, eagerly, “and he’s been in it from the first, so to speak.”

“Speaking of whom, guess who just turned in the lane?” said Snow, and the twins nearly got jammed going out the door together, each vociferously claiming the right to tell Jimmy first.

“Oh, good Lord, Shay, should we broadcast it so soon?”

“Trying to back out on me already?”

There was that sort of a grin on his face as he folded his arms around me that made me want to see what would happen if I did.

“Think what a relief it will be to his mother and father,” Shay went on in that low, deliriously teasing voice.

“And how distressing to half the female population of Dublin!”

“Each with a bastard under her arm?” he asked, his eyes glinting.

“You
know
I never believed that.” I hadn’t meant him to take that interpretation.

“Why not?” He wasn’t about to let me get away with it.

“Because … because … because you’ve got hands! And
they
don’t lie!”

Those same hands were arousing rather dangerous sensations in my body, so I grabbed one of them, to give him as good as I’d got, and dragged Shay out to the safety of the great outdoors.

There was no questioning Jimmy’s reaction: all systems green and go. When the shouting died, Simon reminded me about “coffee, Mom, you’ll die,” so Shamus masterfully popped me into his car and took me off, muttering about falling into uxorious ways before the banns could be published.

We went to Sally’s store and waited in Sally’s register lineup, and Shay kept up the most ridiculous stream of patter with me, then Sally, nodding now and then to people he knew. He seemed to know rather a lot of people. Teddie had, too, but faces didn’t light up when Teddie hailed them: They sort of closed up, like defensive clams.

“Good thing we’re making it formal, Rene,” said Shay with the devil in his eyes as we left the shop. “Or Nosy could really play hare and hounds with your reputation.”

“What? Being seen grocery shopping with you?”

“Do American husbands go grocery shopping with their pretty wives?”

“Great American pastime.” Of course, Teddie never had. “But we don’t have to do it the American way, you know.”

His left hand covered mine, and he shot me a brief amused look. “Not going to reform my feckless ways?”

“Good Lord, no. You’re just the way I like a man to be.”

“And from the back bench a vote of confidence!”

“I am not a reforming woman.”

He chuckled. “Oh no?” And I heard his opinion of all I’d got myself into already in Ireland.

“Oh dear.”

“Rene, love,” and his voice was tender, “not to worry.”

And for the first time, I didn’t.

AS SOON AS we pulled up behind my Mercedes, the kids piled out of the house for the groceries and a message for Shamus.

“Shay, the guy up the road, Mick something or other,” said Simon, “needs you on the site.”

“I’ll leave the car here, if I may.” Shamus grinned. “Now I’ve got a handy field office too. You see what a conniver I am?”

He didn’t kiss me, but the pressure of his hands on mine was a promise.

“I thought you only went for coffee and cookies,” said Snow as each of them hauled in a large sack.

“I was talking,” I said haughtily, and suggested that she had better do the beds, as I was much too stiff to bend down. I made pointed comments to Simon about the length of the front-garden grass and wasn’t there a lawn mower somewhere in this queendom? Actually, I wanted a few moments of silence so I could assemble my scattered wits. I also wanted to savor the elation of Shamus’s proposal. I hadn’t been so absolutely euphoric since … since the twins were born? Good Lord, fourteen years ago? Oh, no, I’d had some brief spells of happiness. Into each rain some life must fall?

I was, at this precious moment, happy, and I would wallow in the experience, knowing it might have to last me a bit. Disenchantment has a way of creeping up on you. I thought back to the day Teddie had proposed. Good God, I’d had to shop that day too. And he couldn’t find the brand of tomato ketchup he preferred. You’d’ve thought the shop had not ordered it to spite Teddie. Of course, I agreed with him that day.

I shook myself. I was not superstitious. I said it out loud. I also told myself that Shay was a much more stable personality. I couldn’t imagine Teddie patiently enduring Aunt Irene’s ostracism of him. No, Shay was a man.

I’d thought Teddie was a man too, hadn’t I? At nineteen who knows what’s a man?

Maybe I was rushing into marriage again. I’d been separated two years, true, but my divorce was barely seven months old. The twins liked Shamus, but as a permanent fixture? But he did seem to know how to cope with Snow without steamrollering her the way her father had started doing.

And it’s lovely to get swept off your feet in a romantic fashion, but…

Dully I found places for cans of beans and tins of fruit.

Shay really could be marrying me for the land. I’d have to be very cautious and keep the queendom in my name. Surely a wife could hold property in her own right in Ireland—and if Shamus Kerrigan was marrying me for me, he wouldn’t object.

I heard a car driving up the lane: Michael coming to extricate me from my latest escapade. And he wouldn’t be all that happy about the latest development with Shamus, now, would he?

I sighed and straightened my shoulders. Thinking pleasant thoughts, I went to admit my caller.

Teddie’s angry face glowered down at me.

“What the hell are you still doing here?” demanded Teddie, his eyes popping from his skull and his face flushing violently, as it did when he was upset.

“Where else would I be?”

He rallied quickly, more quickly than his second wife did. Florence stared as if I were the last person she had expected to see. She also looked slightly embarrassed.

“Is this hovel where you’ve stashed my children?” he demanded.

“As it’s an excellent example of Georgian farmhouse architecture, and I’ve already been offered seventy-five thousand dollars for it, it can’t be classed as a hovel.”

“Seventy-five thousand bucks for this?”

In the shock of seeing Ted Stanford on my once-safe Irish doorstep, I had responded with the first things that came into my head. By instinct, I had chosen the one effective stopper: snobbery. Teddie instantly reassessed the place, as did Number Two. She wasn’t a bad thing, after all.

“So … where the hell are they?”

“The children?”

“I sure as hell didn’t come three thousand miles to see your face again, Irene.”

I didn’t flinch under that old twisting sneer of his. I couldn’t. I was frozen solid. He’d come to see the twins? That made as little sense as his coming three thousand miles to see me.

“I’ve got a legal right to see my own kids,” Teddie went on. “Only don’t try shooting at me, Annie Oakley, or you’ll be in more trouble than you already are. They deport undesirable aliens, you know. And it is Saturday, the legally agreed-upon visiting day.”

Because I was clutching the door frame, I remained upright, and my mind parroted,
It is legal. He does have the legal right… but I don’t want them to see him. It’ll upset them terribly.

“They’ve made other plans for the day.”

“They can damned well unmake them.
I’m
here.”

“
Quod erat demonstrandum
.”

An angry flush reddened his cheeks still more. “Quit the stalling, Rene. Where are they? And I’m warning you, I’m looking into this business of your firing a shotgun irresponsibly around minors.”

“Speaking of firing, that Mayday you gave the ISPCC has backfired. They were looking for kids in their diapers.”

“Oh?” Teddie affected smug innocence. “My secretary must have mistranscribed her dictation.” He took a step closer to the door. “Simon! Your dad’s here,” he yelled. “Ready and waiting. Sara? Where are you, dollface? Your daddy’s come to see you.”

His yell was superfluous.

“I’m here,” Snow’s voice came from behind me. She was crouched on the stairs, her fingers gripping the banister so hard that the knuckles were white.

“Dad.” Simon’s voice announced his presence right beside me. And I wanted to burst into tears at the sound of defeat in their subdued voices.

“Snow, honey, I can’t see you. Come give your old daddy a big smacker.” Teddie had executed one of those lightning changes of his. Now he was Ye Affable Sire, Doting Daddy, Popular Papa. He peered over my head toward the stairs, Eager Smile #3 splitting his face in two. He took another step, but I blocked his way. I did not want Teddie’s aura to contaminate my house. As he moved to push me aside, Simon stepped into the breach, his hand formally extended to his father. Teddie shook hands absently, then frowned as he realized he was being prevented from entering the house.

“Simon! What a formal way to greet your old man after all this time!”

“I saw you three weeks ago, sir.” Simon took a deep breath. “Sara and I resent the way you’ve been persecuting Mother.”

“Persecuting her? Ah, now, Simon boy, I didn’t persecute her.” Teddie displayed incredulous, jocular denial.

“With a private detective watching us? With that nonsense of the ISPCC? You only thought that up to embarrass Mother.”

I stared at Simon, as astonished as his father. Then I felt Snow’s hand fiercely latching on to mine. She edged close between me and Simon, her young mouth taut and her face very pale.

“Not to mention embarrassing us with all our friends,” she said, “with stupid questions they couldn’t have answered. And what excuse do you have for hanging on to the support money? Mother didn’t fleece you, as she should’ve. You’re getting off easy and you know it. You laugh about it often enough with those precious friends of yours—”