An Embarrassment of Riches (14 page)

Maura nodded.

Isabel blanched. ‘Oh God! I thought it was going to be bad enough our being separated by the North Sea, but the
Atlantic!'

‘It only takes ten days or so to cross it,' Maura said, dismissing the Atlantic as being of very little consequence. ‘All I have to do now is to scrape my fare money together.'

Isabel stared at her with fresh anxiety. ‘But how can you? You have no money of your own and I am dependent on whatever allowance Lord Clanmar chooses to give me, and goodness knows how long it will be before he decides what that is to be.'

‘Stop worrying,' Maura chided gently, grateful that Isabel had accepted the inevitable without undue hysterics. ‘I shall manage.'

‘But how? A cabin will cost at least twenty guineas …'

‘Steerage costs only eight.'

‘
Steerage!
But you can't! It will be overcrowded and dirty and …'

‘And it will only last for ten days.'

‘But even eight guineas is more than we have between us, unless Miss Marlow …'

‘I am not going to Miss Marlow for money,' Maura said, rejecting the suggestion immediately. ‘I shall be able to raise it quite easily myself by selling my clothes.'

The blood drained entirely from Isabel's face. ‘Your
clothes!
You can't possibly mean it!'

‘Oh, but I do,' Maura said with an indifference that was quite beyond Isabel's understanding. ‘Mrs Connor will leap at the chance of buying my silk dresses and both Ellen and Kitty will offer something for my muslins. Miss Marlow will buy my parasols and my gloves, and Rendlesham and Kieron will be more than happy to buy some of my books from me.'

At the mention of Kieron's name her voice faltered slightly. He had been right in his assumption that the new Lord Clanmar would wish to appoint his own land-agent. Word of his intention to do so had come immediately after the reading of the will.

‘When does Kieron leave?' Isabel asked bleakly, wondering how she was going to bear life without Maura and Kieron and everything that was so familiar to her.

‘The day after tomorrow.'

They avoided each other's eyes, not able to speak of it further, knowing they might never seen him again.

They sat side by side on the fence of the main paddock. Maura was in her riding clothes, a dark green velvet jacket nipping her waist, the skirt skimming her neatly booted feet. It was the last time she would wear either the habit or the boots. Both had been promised to eager buyers, as had the rest of her wardrobe.

‘America?' Kieron said, raising a winged brow. ‘Well, there'll be a sight more opportunities there than there will be in Dublin or Killaree.'

He was dressed for travel, a jacket slung nonchalantly over one shoulder and held by his thumb, a battered travelling-bag at his feet. He had had very little sleep the previous night. Should he ask her to marry him and take her with him to Waterford? He wasn't by nature or by inclination a marrying man, but it was a tempting thought. In a way he had never before realized, they had been together all her life.

He had been eight years old when Mary Sullivan had returned to Killaree, Maura in her arms. From then on he had given the two of them whatever aid he could. Once she had been taken under Lord Clanmar's wing, and once he had become Lord Clanmar's land-agent, they had grown even closer, riding almost daily together, discussing her lessons, his work-load on the estate, talking and laughing with an ease born of a shared history. And now they were saying goodbye. If she went to America as she intended, he would in all probability never see her again.

He said laconically, as if his question was of no importance, ‘If you had the choice, would you not prefer to stay in Ireland, sweetheart?'

‘No,' she said without hesitation. ‘Not unless it was to be at Ballacharmish.'

Ballacharmish. He could offer her a lot. As Lord Bicester's land-agent he would have a stone-built house and be a man to reckon with. But he couldn't offer her Ballacharmish or anything approaching Ballacharmish. And he didn't relish the prospect of a wife heartsick for a home and a way of life that could never again be hers. Other factors stayed his tongue. Marriage was often a damned inconvenient affair. There would be babies; constraints. And he was, after all, only twenty-five. The whole wide wonderful world lay before him and to enjoy it to the full a man needed to be single.

The words he had so very nearly uttered remained unspoken. It was a moment he would always remember. A moment he would come to bitterly regret.

‘Write me when you get to New York,' he said abruptly, and not trusting himself to remain with her any longer he kissed her for the first time full on the mouth, picked up his bag and strode away.

For several disorientated minutes Maura remained where she was, her hands clasped tight on the fencing to prevent herself from tumbling off, her senses reeling. Should she run after him and tell him that she had changed her mind? That she couldn't bear the thought of never seeing him again and would he mind if she looked for a position for herself in Waterford or nearby Kilkenny?

Already he was a hundred yards away. She watched in a frenzy of indecision as he tossed his bag into the waiting donkey-cart, vaulting up beside the odd-job boy who was to drive him to the train station at Rathdrum.

‘Kieron.' She jumped from the fence and began to run. ‘Kieron!' It was too late, there was a breeze blowing against her and her words were lost on it.
‘Kieron!'
she shouted again, running, running, running.

The trap bowled towards the dirt-road to Killaree, turned a comer and vanished from sight.

She slowed to a halt, gasping painfully for breath, her emotions in tumult. Was his failure to hear her all for the best? Her suggestion that she accompany him would probably have horrified and embarrassed him. His kiss had probably been no different to the kisses he had given the housemaids when he had made his goodbyes to them. She hugged her arms about her tightly, her breathing steadying. Fate had decreed that he had not heard her calling him and now he was out of her life as completely as Lord Clanmar and her mother were. It was a loss she was going to have to accept and to come to terms with. Just as she was going to have to come to terms with saying goodbye to Isabel.

Isabel had adamantly refused to leave Ballacharmish before Maura's ship sailed. A distraught Miss Marlow had telegraphed Lord Clanmar with the information that they would not now be arriving in London until three days after the date he had stipulated. With deep reluctance, knowing that if she did not do so Isabel would make the journey unchaperoned, she had agreed to accompany Isabel and Maura on the stressful rail journey to Queenstown and the docks.

Maura had not looked behind her as she had walked out of Ballacharmish. To do so would have been to collapse utterly. She had climbed into the brougham with her one small bag, her face white, her eyes tortured. Killaree had been deserted as they had driven through it and she had been grateful. Isabel had slid her hand into hers, remembering the day so many years ago when she had driven towards Ballacharmish for the first time and a diminutive figure high on the hillside had waved her an exuberant welcome.

At Queenstown they had travelled the short distance from the station to the docks by carriage. As they came to a halt alongside the carriages of departing first-class passengers, the coachman said awkwardly, ‘I can't drive any nearer to the gangplank you require, madam. There aren't any carriage facilities for steerage travellers.'

The noise and the confusion was nearly overpowering. To the right of them, near the bows, a gangplank led high into the ship and well-dressed passengers were boarding, minions scurrying in their wake carrying mountains of luggage. To their left a dense, ill-clad crowd was pushing and shoving towards a gangplank leading deep into the bowels of the ship's stem.

Seeing his elderly customer's bewilderment, the coachman said helpfully, ‘The gangplank on the left is the one for steerage passengers, madam.'

Miss Marlow took one look at the heaving crush of half-starved emigrating Irish, their worldly goods in bundles in their arms, and said faintly, ‘Then we can go no further.' She turned towards Maura, ‘We must say goodbye to you here, my dear. May God take care of you.'

Maura kissed her on her cheek, fighting down a sudden, unexpected onrush of tears. As she stepped down from the brougham, Isabel followed her.

‘Isabel! Come back at once!' Miss Marlow demanded agitatedly. ‘It is most unsafe! Isabel!
Isabel!'

‘I'm going with Maura,' Isabel said implacably, and ignoring Miss Marlow's continuing cries of protest she slipped her arm through Maura's and together they began to push a way into the throng of departing and destitute Irish.

‘Oy, nobs board near the bows!'
a sailor called out to them as he caught sight of Isabel's black silk crinoline entering the crush.

Maura was not nearly as hampered. In order to scrape up the fare money she had sold everything she possessed, including the mourning dress she had worn since Lord Clanmar's death. Her one remaining dress was as near to a mourning dress as possible. The colour of crushed blackberries, it was high-necked and made of serviceable, hard-wearing, coarse cotton. Her only other possessions were her shawl and the chemises and night-dress that were in her travelling bag.

‘Nobs near the
bows!'
the sailor shouted again towards them.

Maura was beginning to wish earnestly that she could take notice of him. The stench of stale perspiration was nearly overpowering and she knew that it would be far worse once she boarded. Envying the nobs who would have cabins that would provide them with privacy and a semblance of comfort, she clutched her carpet-bag to her chest and continued to press forward towards the stern.

Never in her life had Isabel been in such close proximity to the poor. ‘This is terrible!' she gasped, as they reached the foot of the gangplank. ‘You can't possibly live communally with these people! You'll catch lice! Fleas!'

Maura was about to remind her that if she did, it wouldn't be for the first time; she had caught them often enough as a child, in Killaree. As the sea of unwashed bodies pressed in on her she suddenly felt a great wave of empathy towards them. They were dirt-poor Irish, as she had been. And they were leaving a country they loved out of sheer necessity, just as she was doing. Their hope was that in America they would be dirt-poor no longer, hers that she would be able to put her years of privileged education to good use. They all had a lot in common, far more than Isabel could ever realize.

A seaman asked her to show her ticket and she forgot about her fellow travellers, saying with stunned disbelief, ‘This is where we have to say goodbye, Isabel. You can't come any further.'

Isabel could hold her tears back no longer. ‘Write to me – write to me every week. You promise?'

‘I promise.' She dropped her travelling-bag, uncaring of its fate, hugging Isabel for the last time.

‘Come on there!' the seaman exhorted. ‘There's a hundred and fifty people trying to get past. Make way for Gawd's sake!'

Hardly sensible of what she was doing Maura retrieved her bag and made way. As Isabel was swallowed up in the crush she entered the dark bowels of the ship, unable to see more than a foot or two in front of her, barely able to breathe.

The allocation of deck space for steerage passengers was meagre. With every emigrant desperate to wave goodbye to family and friends, it was almost impossible to squeeze a way through to the front and the deck-rail. By the time she succeeded, the hawsers had been freed and the ship was making its way out to open sea.

There was no sign of Isabel or Miss Marlow. Beyond the clutter of the docks and the crowded roof-tops of Queenstown, the Nagles Mountains shimmered in the distance, blue-green and blue-grey. Ireland. She was seeing it for perhaps the last time in her life.

‘I won't forget,' she whispered as the sea wind tugged tendrils of hair from the knot in the nape of her neck, blowing them across her face. ‘I won't forget. Not ever.'

Victor Karolyis sat in his ornately carved, wood-panelled study and smiled to himself with satisfaction. Alexander would be in Europe for approximately a year. It was long enough for him to put his plan into action and to see pleasing results from it. He had been looking out of his first-floor window at the teeming activity of Fifth Avenue, now he swung round in his leather swivel-chair, facing the door.

‘Fetch Miss Burrage in,' he instructed his secretary.

The girl who entered did so with an air of nervous defiance. Her dress and coat were cheap, her well-polished boots the serviceable ones of a household servant.

‘Please be seated,' he said, continuing without preamble. ‘You have been told what it is I wish to see you about?'

The girl sat with great unease on the edge of the hard-backed chair facing the desk. ‘Yes, sir. I have been told that my present employment places me in a position to render a service I will be highly paid for.'

Victor regarded her thoughtfully. She was a plain girl and as such there would not be many extra-curricular ways in which she could successfully supplement her income. That being the case, she might very well be prepared to overlook a few scruples. She was also obviously intelligent, which was vital. A stupid girl could quite possibly do more harm than good.

When she had first entered the room he had been indecisive. He was so no longer. Resting his clasped hands on the enormous surface of his antique desk, he said, ‘You act as Miss Genevre Hudson's personal maid?'

‘Yes, sir,' she said dutifully, her eyes sharpening.

‘And you have served her in that capacity for how long, three months … six months?'

‘Three months, sir.'

He knew very well that it was three months, but her answer pleased him. No matter how deceitful his employees often had to be in carrying out his wishes, he expected them to be utterly straight where he was concerned.