Nell (32 page)

He thought for a minute. “We aren't actually related, are we?”

“Not by blood,” replied Casey, who had already worked out the details.

He grinned. “Then I don't mind at all.”

Frankie cleared his throat. “Tim, about your mother. I loved her very much. I hope y' know that.”

The young man nodded. “I do know it, Da.” His eyes rested on the possessive hold Frankie had on Jillian's hand. “Perhaps we should take over in here while you two sort out things.”

Frankie looked at Jillian, really looked at her, and saw what he'd been too proud and too stubborn to recognize. He hadn't wanted to love an Englishwoman, even one whose veins ran with the blood of Irish royalty. But this was Jillian Fitzgerald. Despite her Sean Ghall roots, she was Ulster born, and somehow, the cool remoteness of the English conquerors with their pale eyes and their long faces and their thin-lipped humorless smiles had transformed itself into this woman with a spine of Irish steel, an infinite reserve of compassion, and a desperate courage that had brought her to the brink of a love that all but those bordering insanity would proclaim impossible.

Frankie no longer saw Jillian Graham, British aristocrat, English rose. He saw a woman whose eyes were as blue-green and as secret-filled as the churning Atlantic, whose mouth had softened and opened under his, whose lips had marked his skin in private places, a woman who wasn't afraid to say with words what was in her heart, a woman whose mind was razor-sharp, who covered the ground like the Kildare thoroughbred that she was, whose voice seduced and promised and caressed until he was mindless with wanting and waiting, until all reserves were spent, leaving him open and vulnerable, stretched out at her mercy, like a molting crab waiting for its shell to grow.

“You are going to get married, aren't you?” Casey dropped her bombshell as calmly as if she were asking for nothing more than buttered bread.

For the first time in her life, Jillian refused the bait. This was Frankie's cue. He was eyeing her warily. She met his glance without blinking.

“Have you thought it through, lass?” he asked, once again uncomfortably aware of their audience.

“What?” she asked sweetly.

“This marriage thing.”

“No.”

He glared at her. “Jillian—” Exasperated, he tightened his grip on her hand and led her out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the firelit drawing room. There, he closed the door, locked it, and faced her. His expression in the flickering light was stark and angry. “What in bloody hell did you mean by that?”

“By what?”

“You know we've discussed marriage.”

“Have we? My recollection is that I've mentioned it, and you wouldn't hear of it, unless, of course, you'd gotten me pregnant. Has anything changed?”

“I'm Francis Maguire again.”

“Congratulations.”

“I love you.”

“You're Catholic.”

“You said you'd convert.”

She gasped. “I never did.”

“You did, when you were ten years old.”

She crossed her arms and remained silent.

“Will you?” he demanded.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I have to?”

Across the room, hidden in the shadows of the netherworld, Nell frowned. This was not going well at all. These two people so made for each other were being unusually obstinate. If only she could show herself. Jillian always responded when Nell materialized. But she no longer had the power. She would have to rely on Frankie. He was pure Celt. His powers of perception would be stronger than Jillian's.

Nell closed her eyes and willed her thoughts to travel across time and take hold in Frankie's mind.
Tell
her
you
can't live without her. Tell her the child has nothing to do with it. Tell her that you've always loved her.

Frankie swayed and pressed his fingertips against his forehead. His head felt as if it were splitting apart.

“What's wrong?” Jillian asked.

“I've a headache, that's all.”

Cool hands rested on his shoulders, urging him down on the couch. “Lie still,” she said. “I'll fetch something.”

Tell
her
that
you
need
her, that your happiness depends on her.

“Jillian.”

She stopped at the door. “Yes.”

“Don't go.”

She hesitated. “What about your head?”

“I don't need aspirin.”

Fool, you know nothing of women. Tell her now.

Frankie groaned. He wasn't prone to headaches. What on earth was wrong with him?

Jillian knelt by his side and felt his head. He wasn't feverish. “I can call the chemist. Perhaps he'll recommend something.”

I
need
you.

“I need you,” Frankie whispered.

“What?” Could she possibly have heard him correctly?

“I've always needed you,” he confessed, reaching up to touch her cheek. “I've loved you since I was fourteen years old. Don't abandon me now, lass. I want desperately to marry you, whether or not there's a child.”

Better. Much better. You're doing very well on your own now.

“I'm not Catholic.”

“I don't care what you are, so long as you'll have me.”

Jillian closed her eyes and lifted a shaking hand to her lips. “You have no idea how long I've waited to hear you say that.”

Miraculously, Frankie's headache cleared. “I won't have much t' offer you, not for a while. But I've plans, lass.”

“Tell me.”

He pulled her down so that her head rested on his shoulder. “What would y' say t' being the wife of a country veterinarian?”

“What about Sinn Fein?”

“I'll do my share,” he said, drawing circles on her head with his fingers. “Twenty years is a long time. I've earned a bit of life for myself and my family.”

“When did you change your mind?”

He smiled against her hair. “I always knew how I felt about you, Jilly. But when I saw you servin' tea to the biddies as if nothing had happened, I knew I'd made a mistake. The signs were all there. There's nothing you can't do. You came to the hospital for Colette, and you showed up at the Garvaghy Road march. That day when Connor was shot and you drove in front of the tanks, I should have told you how I felt. I was too set in my thinkin' to see it, but you aren't an English lady, Jilly.”

“What am I?”

“You're one of the
buannada.
”

“What is that?”

“A warrior of ancient Ulster.”

She laughed. “Are you telling me that I'm scrappy, Frankie Maguire?”

His words were gruff and low and filled with rare emotion. “I'm saying that you've taken me hostage, Jilly, and I'm more than willing.”

***

Nell stood on the cliff of Inishmore where the ancient Celtic fort of Dun Aengus had partially collapsed into the sea. By her side was a large gray wolfhound, and on her lips was a satisfied smile. Her debt was repaid. There had been moments when she wondered if it would happen, but now there was no more doubt. Jillian had found her own happiness, with a bit of help, of course. And that was how it should be.

Just above the horizon, the sails of a ship had come into view. Nell waited patiently for another hour. The narrow wooden hull and its arc of sails were completely visible now. The ship was listing portside, and she could barely see the man on deck, but she knew. That black hair and upraised arm belonged to only one man, Donal O'Flaherty, and soon he would be home. Nell sighed. It was difficult to be alone so often, but her husband was an O'Flaherty. Legend said that the O'Flahertys were the descendants of men and mermaids. The sea was in their blood. But Donal was here now, and she would not shadow the time they had together by thinking of when he would leave again.

Turning, she followed the wagging tail of Donal's hound as he ran down the rocky trail to the hidden harbor where the boat would dock. She saw him clearly now, his face, sun-warmed and smiling, gray-eyed, with a gold pirate's ring in his ear. Later, when he caught her in his arms and she smelled the sea-salt smell of him, she knew that, difficult as he was, she would have no other.

On April 10, 1998, the eight political parties of Northern Ireland entered into a peace settlement that was twenty-two months in the making. A sense of relief tempered with caution was the mood at Stormont Castle. The unionists were better served by preserving the status quo, the nationalists by insisting on change. The result was a bit of both, with a Northern Ireland-Republic Council, a Bill of Rights, and the hope of Nationalists for a United Ireland some time in the next millennium when a majority of the people in the Six Counties vote themselves into one country.

On May 22, 1998, expatriated Irish and their descendants watched as seventy-one percent of the people of Northern Ireland, Protestants and Catholics, voted to end the violence in Northern Ireland and uphold the agreement reached by the eight parties.

Still up in the air are the fate of political prisoners, Catholic unemployment, whether British troops will, in fact, pull out of Northern Ireland, and the restructuring of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Northern Ireland's police force.

Jillian Fitzgerald and Frankie Maguire are fictional characters. Robbie Wilson and Thomas Putnam are fictional names for contemporary English and Northern Irish leaders and members of Ireland's warring political parties. For the most part, their conversations within this novel are fiction, created for the purpose of moving the story forward.

Robbie Wilson's comparison of the Garvaghy Road march to Nuremberg in chapter twenty-two was taken from an editorial written by Irish journalist Mairtin O'Muilleoir. Jillian's press conference speech was taken from Mo Mowlam, secretary to Northern Ireland, when she attempted to pacify the nationalist population on July 7, 1997, after the Garvaghy Road march.

The source of the Northern Irish conflict lies in the Geraldine conspiracy of the sixteenth century, when Henry Tudor executed every living Fitzgerald male at Tyburn with the exception of ten-year-old Gerald Fitzgerald.

Eleanor Fitzgerald was young Gerald's aunt, not his sister, and she married Donal McCarthy, not Donal O'Flaherty. For an entire year, she defied Henry Tudor and managed to keep her nephew safe until he could be spirited across the sea to France and safety.

The glory of the Fitzgeralds and their role in Irish history is well documented. From Italy, they settled in Wales, and from Wales, they married into Irish families, becoming more Irish than the natives and more beloved than the Celtic chieftains. Their holdings were vast, and they ruled Ireland, uncontested, for four hundred years, from their arrival with the Anglo-Norman conquerors to their destruction in the sixteenth century.

I have taken an occasional liberty with history in order to create a more evocative and timely story.

Please email me at
[email protected]
.

Visit my website,
jeanettebaker.com
.

A special thank you to:

Pat Perry and Jean Stewart, as always, for their valuable edits and comments.

Lauren McKenna of Pocket Books for helping me through this novel while Kate Collins, my editor, was busy having twin boys with beautiful Irish names.

Maeve Binchy for never disappointing me.

Loretta Barrett for understanding what I mean to say before I say it.

Angie Ray for playing devil's advocate and bringing a new perspective into the business of writing.

My mother for allowing me to finish this book without interruptions.

My sister for her unconditional support.

The wonderful Irish people on both sides of the fence who open their homes and their hearts and who never give up the struggle for peace in the Six Counties.

The O'Flahertys of Inishmore, a people who pass on to their descendants a love for the sea, a gift for laughter, and an appreciation for a well-told story.

Author of fifteen novels, including the RITA Award-winning paranormal,
Nell
, Jeanette Baker has been hailed by
Publisher's Weekly
as a forceful writer of character and conflict whose novels are “irresistible reading.” She graduated from the University of California at Irvine and later earned her master's degree in education. Jeanette lives in California during the winter months where she teaches literature and writing and in County Kerry, Ireland, during the summer.