Legacy of Secrets (25 page)

Without turning his head he said, “Send Lily here to me.

Lady Nora got up and walked to the door. She glanced worriedly back at him. “You must be gentle with her, Augustus,” she said. “Remember the girl’s condition.”

“Dear God, Nora,” he roared, agonized, “how can I ever forget?”

W
HEN HER MOTHER TOLD
her she was to go down to speak to her father in the library, Lily ran to look for Ciel. She found her sprawled in front of the nursery fire, the dogs beside her, reading.

“How can you just lie there so cosily?” she demanded, close to tears, “when I am summoned to see Pa and I know he is going to kill me.”

Ciel’s huge gray eyes were full of pity as she ran to her sister. “Oh, Lily, Lily. What shall you tell him?”

“Nothing!” Lily’s eyes flashed with contempt as she thought of Dermot. “I’ll never tell and nobody will ever make me. I’ll kill myself first.”

“No. No. Oh, Lily, please don’t. I love you. I will help you. And maybe Pa won’t be too angry once he gets used to the idea—”

“Oh,
Ciel,”
Lily said with a despairing half smile at her ingenuous little sister. “You were always a foolish optimist.”

She washed her face, brushed her black curls, and tied them back with a pink ribbon. She put on an old pink cotton dress and rubbed the toes of her muddy boots on the backs of her woolen stockings. Then, unable to put off
the moment any longer, she walked slowly downstairs to face her father and her fate.

Ciel ran down the steps, at her heels as always, but even she didn’t dare go into the library this time when Lily knocked and her pa called “Enter.” Creeping closer, she put her ear to the door to listen.

Lord Molyneux was standing by the window, staring out, and he did not turn to look at Lily. He could not allow her to see his pain. He said, “What have you to say for yourself, Lily?”

His voice was aloof, impersonal, as though he were sacking a maidservant, and whatever flicker of hope Lily might have had sank like a stone to the bottom of a pond.

“I’m very sorry, dearest Pa,” she whispered, hanging her head. Her muddy brown boots stuck out from the bottom of the too-short cotton dress and she wished miserably she had changed them.

“Sorry? And is that supposed to be enough? Will being sorry absolve you from your responsibilities to your family? To your name? To your position in life? Will being
sorry
take away our disgrace?”

He swung around and stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at her as though he could scarcely believe she was the same beloved daughter. “I have given you everything, Lily,” he said, and she could see his anger rising like steam in a boiling kettle. “Everything you ever wanted. And you betray me like this.”

“Oh no, Pa, I didn’t betray you … it was … it was …” She couldn’t think of anything and she hung her head, silent again.

“It was
what?”
he demanded. “What
are
you, Lily? A peasant who knows no better? Bah! Even peasant women have moral standards.” He paced the floor, controlling the rage she could still see simmering. He gripped his hands tightly together behind him and she wondered, terrified, if he were going to strike her.

“Your dear mother has thought of a solution,” he said finally. “You will tell me this blackguard’s name and,
though it means humbling myself to admit that my daughter is no better than a slattern from the streets, I shall speak to the boy’s father. I intend to make sure he marries you immediately. Is that clear, Lily?”

She stared silently down at her boots and he said angrily, “There appears to be just one flaw in this plot. Your mother informs me that you will not tell her the boy’s name. But you will tell
me,
Lily, and you will be married within the week. Is that clear?”

Lily still stared down at her boots, saying nothing. She told herself he would never make her marry Dermot, never. She had meant it when she said she would kill herself first. She hated him. He was a beast. With a shiver of fear she remembered how frightened she was of him.

Her father said warningly, “Lily, I give you exactly one minute to tell me his name. If you do not, you will pack your things and leave this house immediately.”

Her head shot up and she stared at him, horrified. He stared implacably back at her, then he took out the gold half-hunter watch from his waistcoat pocket. He flicked it open and began counting off the seconds.

Lily searched desperately for some way to save herself. Maybe she should just lie, maybe she should tell him the name of any one of the hundred boys who had wanted to marry her so badly just a few weeks ago? But it wouldn’t work and she knew it. Her pa would speak to the boy’s family and they would scorn her as a liar and a slut just as her own family had. No. There had to be another way, there had to be someone so far beneath them socially her father would never dream of making her marry him. The name came to her like a ray of hope from heaven.

“It was Finn O’Keeffe,” she said.

Outside the library Ciel clapped a hand to her mouth to stop the scream she was about to utter. Her ear still to the door, she heard her father say slowly, with a terrible flat anger in his voice,
“Who
did you say it was, Lily?”

“It was Finn. Finn O’Keeffe, the groom.”

“Dear God.”
Her father’s roar of anger could have been
heard in the very stables and Ciel leapt back from the door, terrified. “I’ll
kill him,”
her father shouted. ’
I shall kill the dirty bastard
…”

Ciel didn’t wait to hear any more. She ran as fast as she could down the corridor, through the green baize door, through the butler’s pantry and the kitchens, out the back door, and down the shortcut to the stables. The rain pelted down on her and the dogs splashed muddily along beside her, but she didn’t even notice. She had to get to Finn O’Keeffe before her father did.

Because of the rain the stables were quiet and only a young lad was on duty. Ciel flung herself onto her pony and charged, bareback, across the cobbled yard, through the archway and down the lane that led to the O’Keeffes’ cottage.

Daniel opened the door. He stared at her, astonished. Her red curls were plastered flat against her skull, her eyes were popping out of her head with terror, and her face was ashen. “What is it, Ciel?” he cried. “Has there been an accident at the Big House?”

Ciel shook her head; she started to cry. “Oh, no. No. It’s Lily. She’s having a baby and she told Pa it’s Finn’s and now he’s coming to kill him. You must run away, Finn,” she cried. “Pa means it. He was going to get his gun. You must go right now.”

Daniel flung himself onto his younger brother, livid with anger. “Can this be true?” he yelled, grabbing his brother by the throat. “That you are to be the fayther of Miss Lily’s child?”

A dagger of pain seemed to strike through Finn’s heart, leaving a wound from which he knew he would never recover. His lovely, beautiful, perfect Lily had betrayed him. She had lied and cheated and gotten herself in trouble with one of her fancy friends and now he was to die for it.

“It’s niver true,” he shouted, throwing off his brother and grabbing hold of Ciel, ready to kill her for what she had said. But it was Lily he wanted to kill. He wanted to strangle her with his bare hands. “If it were true,” he said,
letting go of Ciel, “I’d willingly take me punishment. But it’s not true, brother. That child will be none of mine.”

“Oh, Finn, Finn,
please
go quickly,” Ciel urged. “Pa will surely be here any minute.”

“How could Lily do this to me?” he cried.

“I don’t know,” she said helplessly. “All I know is you must run.”

“God save us,” Daniel yelled, frenziedly. “The child’s right. We must run for it, Finn. We must put an ocean between us and his lordship’s wrath, for he’ll surely never quit his search for ye.” Grabbing his jacket, he thrust his brother out through the door in front of him. “Tell our fayther we’ve gone,” was all he said to Ciel as the two of them fled into the lane. They leapt over the hedgerow and ran across the field into the woods.

Ciel watched until they were out of sight and then she climbed back onto her pony. Taking the route over the fields so she would not meet her father on his way to kill Finn, she rode back to the Big House.

L
ORD
M
OLYNEUX DID NOT FIND
F
INN,
but everyone for miles around knew that he had gone searching for him with his shotgun. They knew he was out to kill him and they knew why. The word went around like wildfire, everyone from the servants to the stablelads to the farmers and the fishermen and their wives knew that Lily Molyneux had claimed that Finn O’Keeffe was the father of the child she was carrying. And not one of them believed it.

“Finn O’Keeffe worshiped that girl,” they said. “He would have killed anyone who touched her.
And
Finn, for all his blarney, knew his place. He would never, never have been crazy enough to take advantage of his lordship’s daughter, no matter how wild he was for her.”

They muttered angrily about her in the shebeen as Paddy O’Keeffe, who had been thrown out of the cottage where he had been born and lived all his life, drowned his sorrows in whiskey. It was whiskey he could no longer afford because he no longer had a job and two fine sons to look after him in his old age.

Nobody was surprised when a few days later Paddy O’Keeffe just upped and wandered off, losing himself in a place where nobody knew him and nobody had heard that he had a son named Finn. And it wasn’t till months later that they heard his body had been found by a roadside in Westport, miles away.

Lily did not believe it when her father told her in a
remote, ice-tipped voice that she was to leave her home and never return. “You will go to your aunt Mallow’s in Cork City,” he told her, standing with his back to her, staring out the window so he need not look at her beautiful face.

“You will be placed on the first ship sailing for Boston, and from Boston you will journey to a distant relative, a cousin in New England. Your bags are being packed this very minute. You will take whatever fits into two trunks and the sum of fifty pounds. Your cousin will look after you until the confinement.” He stammered over the word, then paused until he had himself under control again. “After that you will make your own way in the world. But one thing is clear, Lily. One thing is very clear,” he repeated remorselessly. “You will never return to Ardnavarna.”

L
ILY STILL DID NOT BELIEVE
it when she saw her two hastily packed trunks waiting in the hall; she didn’t believe it when her mother and her sister flung themselves weeping at her father’s feet, imploring him to relent, and he did not. She didn’t believe it when all the curtains were drawn and the mirrors covered with black crepe, like a house in mourning. She did not believe the grief and terror on her mother’s face, nor Ciel’s imploring screams as her father dragged her mother away and locked her in her room so she could not see her daughter leave.

Lord Molyneux shut himself in the library, pouring whiskey with a trembling hand as the wheels turned on the gravel, taking his beloved daughter, the child of his dreams, away from him forever. Then he put his head in his hands and wept.

The servants had been forbidden to watch her leave and they huddled together in the kitchen. The wailing women threw their aprons over their heads, and the men stood grim-faced and silent.

William was away at school and only Ciel saw Lily go. She climbed from her bedroom window and shinned down the tree outside. She ran wildly down the driveway after
the carriage, screaming her sister’s name, begging the coachman to stop. He looked back and saw her then flicked his whip at the black-plumed funeral horses, urging them faster.

“Lily,” Ciel screamed, heartbroken. “Oh, Lily. Come back. Please come back.” But Lily could not hear.

Everyone for miles around knew what was happening and they lined up along the lane, staring at Lily the traitor. They had known and loved her all their lives, but now their contempt for her showed in their grim, expressionless faces and stony eyes.

“It’s going to be all right,” Lily told herself shakily. “Pa will come after me any minute now.” The roses on her extravagant little straw hat nodded as she stuck her chin haughtily in the air, staring back at everyone so they would not think she was afraid. Pa would never send me away … never … he’s just frightening me until I come to my senses, or he comes to his …”

But the carriage had already reached the bend in the lane and still her father had not come. Even at this distance she could hear the dogs howling and she looked desperately back, searching for her father. But Ardnavarna was silent and shuttered. And her beloved pa did not come riding to rescue his “darling girl.”

And, throwing back her head, Lily howled, too, a great wail of pain like the terrified dogs. Because she knew now it was true. She was locked out of paradise. She would never go home to Ardnavarna again.

I
GLANCED AT MY TWO YOUNG LISTENERS
and saw tears in Shannon’s eyes. I knew what she was thinking. “You are right to feel pity for her,” I said. “She was raped by an unscrupulous man, a sexual adventurer who should have known she was different from his usual experienced women. She was just a silly child who didn’t know what she
was doing until it was too late. Her whole life changed because of it, and the joyous young girl was no more.”