Irish Lady (23 page)

Meghann entered the roundabout, flipped on her left turn signal and exited from the far left lane toward the N63 at Balyclare. County Roscommon and Clonalis House, principal residence of Denis and Georgiana O'Conor, lay ahead. Although Georgiana had invited her often, it was the first time Meghann had ever visited the remote seat of the ancient O'Conor chiefs.

Georgiana Reddington had been the first Protestant with whom Meghann had ever carried on a conversation. They had met years before at Queen's University while searching the boards for their exam results. Scores had been posted since morning, but Meghann's shift at O'Malley's Tea Shop began at 7 a.m. It was after five before she wiped down the last counter, locked the door, and caught the coach to the Gothic buildings that were Belfast's proudest landmarks.

Behind the pointed wrought-iron gates, blue papers boldly marked with the black ink of matriculation or failure were visible through the glass display cases mounted on the walls. The courtyard was empty except for a slim blond in black jeans and a blue, too-large pullover.

Meghann recognized her immediately. Lady Georgiana Reddington was the only daughter of Nigel Reddington, duke of Somerset, and his ex-wife, American film star Hilary Wade. Before enrolling at Queen's, Georgiana spent summers with her mother amid the glitz of Beverly Hills, California, and the remainder of the year in the rolling hills of Somerset, her father's estate in England.

For the past several years her Nordic good looks had been a common sight in the tabloids, beginning with her break from convention when she attended the opening at Ascot on the arm of a married Brazilian soccer player. From the soccer player she had moved on to the lead singer of a rock band recently paroled after serving time for a heroin conviction. Her newest conquest was the owner of a controversial pornography magazine for which she had posed as a centerfold, tripling the magazine's circulation. Her mother's amusement angered her even more than her father's fury, which had resulted in her banishment to Queen's.

Meghann didn't buy the tabloids, but the magazine rack was located at the market stand where she bought her groceries. The celebrity status of a fellow classmate was too tempting to ignore. Openly, Meghann shook her head at such an obvious bid for attention, but secretly she admired the girl. Georgiana Reddington was a rebel and she wasn't afraid of public disapproval. She was also extremely intelligent. The scores posted behind the protective glass reflected the girl's honors standing.

Generally Meghann's reserve with strangers reflected itself in cool politeness, which was why she never quite knew what made her volunteer her unsolicited comment. “I wonder what y' could have done if you'd come t' class now and then.”

The blond girl turned her cropped head in Meghann's direction and stared. “Do you disapprove of me, Miss McCarthy?”

Meghann looked startled. “Not at all. How do y' know my name?”

The girl shrugged carelessly, pulled out a roll of peppermints from the pocket of her jeans and offered one to Meghann. “Everyone knows you.”

Meghann took the mint and transferred it to the zippered compartment of her handbag. The girl looked amused. “You didn't have to take it if you didn't want it.”

“I want it,” Meghann replied, “but I may want it even more later.”

“You're very careful, aren't you? I mean, that's why you're at the top of the list.”

“Am I?” Meghann turned away from Georgiana's probing gaze and looked for her student number. It was on top, just as she'd expected it to be. “How did y' know it was mine?”

“The same way you knew mine. We've got the same number except for the last digit. I'm competing with you.”

At that, Meghann laughed. “It's a poor sort of competition you're offering. You never attend class, you don't participate in study groups, and there are zeros next to your last three themes. I'd have to be an idiot t' come in after you.”

Georgiana lifted one darkened eyebrow and motioned toward the posted scores. “A great many did.”

Meghann sighed. “Yes, they did. Perhaps I have more at stake.”

“What
do
you have at stake, Meghann McCarthy?”

Somehow Meghann knew that the question wasn't a formality, a well-brought-up girl passing time until she could leave her present company. There was something desperate about this pale-skinned blond with the dreadful haircut and garish lipstick, some-thing desperate and sad. Under her speculative gaze the girl flushed. It was that, and the unexpected trembling of her mouth, that caused Meghann to make a decision completely out of character. “Have y' had tea, Lady Reddington?”

“Call me Georgiana. No, I haven't.”

“Will y' join me?”

“With pleasure. I'm stuck in student lodging. Shall we go to your flat?”

Meghann swallowed. Her flat on the outskirts of Queen's was a poor setting for a girl whose father was a duke. She was about to refuse when she looked once more into the red-rimmed blue eyes. What she saw made her change her mind.

Straightening her shoulders, Meghann linked her arm through Georgiana's and took a deep breath. “I'm sure it isn't what you're used to but I can't afford any more.”

“You'd be surprised at what I'm used to,” the girl said wryly, allowing herself to be pulled along. “Lead on, Meghann. I'm starved.”

Rain drummed on the roof, fogging the windows and drowning the newly planted seeds in the flower garden outside Meghann's flat. But inside the small sitting room the air was warm, the tea milky-sweet, the day-old biscuits crisp, and the conversation satisfying.

From that day on an unusual friendship was forged, a friendship based on little more than a shared setting and an appreciation of opposites. Meghann's protective reserve melted before the blond girl's greater need, and Georgiana, raised in England and liberal America, had no patience for the prejudice of the Northern Ireland problem. She simply refused to allow Meghann to dwell on it.

Although never mentioned, an unspoken agreement existed between the two that prevented them from extending their relationship beyond the confines of university life. Never once did Meghann set foot on the massive estate in the south of England that was Georgiana's home. Nor was Georgiana invited into Annie's spice-scented kitchen with its plastic-framed pictures of the Virgin Mary, although the entrance to the Falls was only a ten-minute ride to the west of the university.

Both respected the sanctity of the other's right to live and behave as she wished until May 5, 1981, when the Irish political prisoner, Bobby Sands, died from starvation in Long Kesh prison camp.

Meghann never knew Bobby Sands. He wasn't from Belfast and he'd already been in prison for more than eight years before he died. Sinn Fein stood him for their MP and he won by more than two thousand votes, a slim majority but more than Margaret Thatcher's lead when she ran for prime minister. To protest the loss of political status, Bobby Sands began a hunger strike that led to the death of thirteen men and brought the Irish problem to the doorsteps of the world.

For Meghann, intent on removing herself from the torturous inequity of life in Northern Ireland, the hunger strike was one more stake in the bleeding heart of a population that would forever live in the throes of war. For Georgiana, it was the first real cause of her life, and she embroiled herself completely, so completely that had it not been for Meghann, and Meghann's careful nature that her friend so deplored, it would have cost the young Englishwoman much more than the money that appeared regularly every quarter in her bank account.

Driving through the haunting beauty of Roscommon, the county that had inspired so many Irish laments, Meghann knew that Georgiana would not have forgotten the circumstances of her debt. The fear that kept her knuckles white and her foot pressed to the pedal around hairpin turns and country roads crowded with sheep had everything to do with whether Georgiana was finally prepared to pay.

Clonalis House was everything the guidebooks promised it would be. Located just outside of Castlerea at the end of a long, winding, tree-studded drive, it stood, a three-storied Georgian structure covered in lichen, sentinel to a distant age. A tour bus sat in the gravel car park, testimony to the historical significance of the O'Conor home. Meghann swung her compact into the lot near the bus, collected her bag and walked up the stone steps.

The door was ajar. Stepping into the wood-lined entry, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the typical dimness of a country manor house. No one was about. A Louis XVI couch done up in a floral pattern stood behind a cherry hunter's table, its center dominated by a priceless Waterford vase filled with Queen Anne's lace, fuchsia, wild mustard, foxglove, and rhododendron, flora that grew wild along the roads of Ireland. Beside an ornamental mahogany screen carved in an Oriental style stood a sideboard covered with neatly stacked leaflets advertising the sights of Roscommon. Elegantly faded Persian carpets covered the oak floorboards, and a magnificent mantel clock announced that it was past four o'clock. Hanging on a side wall, reflecting it all, was a beveled mirror in an intricately carved and gilded frame. Voices came from the hallway, faint at first and then growing stronger.

Meghann sat on the couch and waited. A slim young woman with Irish skin and clear blue eyes led a group of men and women wearing anoraks and cameras into the entry, where she thanked them for booking their tour of Clonalis House and pointed them toward the tearoom. Then she turned to Meghann. “May I help you?” she asked politely.

“I'm here to see Georgiana O'Conor,” Meghann explained. “She's expecting me.”

“I'll tell her you've arrived,” the woman said, disappearing through the hallway once again.

Meghann hadn't long to wait before Georgiana, beautiful and serenely confident, welcomed her warmly. “I hope you intend to stay the weekend,” she said, leading Meghann into a meticulously restored drawing room. “I told Denis to cut short his golfing plans and hurry home. I'm dying to have him meet you.”

Meghann stared at her friend in admiration. It was true that she hadn't seen Georgiana in years, but she would never have imagined that anyone could change so completely. Gone was the unevenly cropped hair, the bitten-down fingernails, the blood-red lipstick and the jittery laugh that, more than anything else, had reflected insecurity. The new Georgiana sported a shoulder-length bob, a cashmere pullover and tailored slacks. Her dark eyes were artfully made up, and her lips were outlined in a flesh tone a shade darker than her skin. She radiated such contentment that Meghann's heart sank. How could she bring up the past and destroy what Georgiana had achieved?

“You'll love Denis,” Georgiana continued. “I've told him all about you.” She waved Meghann into a chair across from her own and pulled the bell rope. “Do you like it?” she asked, waving her arms to encompass the room. “This house isn't all that old actually, only a little over a hundred years or so, but we've so many artifacts that it seems much older. Denis says we're sleeping with ghosts. Of course, he doesn't mind a bit. He grew up here.”

The young tour guide entered the room with a tray of tea and pastries. “Set it here, Lucy,” Georgiana said, scooting to the edge of her chair. “You're welcome to join us if you like.”

“Thanks all the same,” the girl said, placing the tea tray on the card table beside Georgiana, “but I'm in a rush to get back to Dublin. If you don't need anything else, I'll be leaving now.”

Georgiana laughed. “Run along then. I can remember when Dublin was more to my liking than a quiet place like Castlerea.” She turned to Meghann. “Do you still take your tea with milk and sugar?”

“Yes, thank you.” Meghann accepted the cup and saucer.

“I was sorry to hear about your husband, Meghann. My father said David Sutton was a fine man.”

Meghann sipped her tea. “Yes, he was.” She changed the subject. “How did you meet your husband?”

Georgiana's eyes danced. “In a pub.”

“You're joking.”

“I was tipsy. No, I was more than tipsy. I was sloshed. It was quite humiliating really, but it's the truth. It was after—” she hesitated. “Well, you know. I was about to leave when I fell flat on my face. The next thing I remember was waking up in a strange man's bed with all my clothes on. I don't know which shocked me more, finding myself in bed with a strange man or finding myself in bed with a stranger with all my clothes on. He was deliciously handsome, even though I didn't notice it at first. It took a while, but he was patient, and by the time I knew that I couldn't live without him, he asked me to marry him.” She looked up and the laugh lines deepened around her mouth. “Father hates him, which is a point in Denis's favor, don't you think?”

Meghann frowned. “Why would your father hate him?”

“Because Denis is Irish Catholic, of course.” She waved away her father's disapproval. “Don't worry. We're not entirely estranged. That ended after the children were born. The duke of Somerset couldn't very well resist his own grandchildren.”

Meghann looked down at her teacup. “No, I don't imagine that he could.”

Georgiana sighed. “You look as if you've the weight of the world on your shoulders, Meghann. Would you like to talk about it?”

Shaking her head, Meghann set down her cup. “I've come on a fool's errand. Let's not talk about it. You said you had a baby. Boy or girl?”

“Two girls and a boy, and they're not babies anymore. Sarah, the youngest, is visiting her aunt in Dublin.” She probed gently. “Is it about this case you've taken up?”

Meghann looked directly at her friend. “Yes, it is.”

“You were wondering if I could help.”

Meghann nodded. “Yes,” she said again. “But now I see that it's impossible.”