Nell (9 page)

The police came immediately. Frankie heard the sing-song whine of the sirens long before they turned into the gates of the Hall, and he knew that they came for him.

Upstairs in her garden bedroom, Jilly also heard the sirens. She glanced over at Kathleen, who hadn't said more than two words in the entire hour they'd been together. Jilly frowned. “What is happening, Kathleen? Tell me now.”

The older girl's face crumbled. Jilly, who had never considered her pretty, noticed for the first time the striking bones of her face and was reminded of Frankie.

“I never meant for this to happen,” Kathleen sobbed.

Jilly unfolded her legs, slid off the bed, and crossed the room to the chair where Kathleen sat wringing a sodden handkerchief. Inside her chest she felt the weight of her own heart. “What have you done, Kathleen? Tell me now, or I'll tell them the truth about you. Whatever it is, I'll tell them it was all you.”

Kathleen gasped and stared at the girl she had once dismissed as too young to notice anything. Jilly, dressed in her white nightgown with her hair curling around her face, looked like an avenging angel sent down to earth for the purpose of punishing Kathleen. “I'm in trouble, Miss Fitzgerald,” she burst out, “and the baby is your brother's.”

“You've been running after Terrence for years. That news won't surprise anyone except my mother,” said Jillian baldly. “The police are downstairs, Kathleen. As far as I know, getting a girl pregnant isn't illegal.”

Kathleen swallowed. “I told Terrence that I needed money t' go away. He wouldn't give me any.” Her hands shook as she pleated and smoothed the handkerchief in her lap. “He started t' walk away. I grabbed his arm. He slipped and hit his head on a rock.” Her eyes filled up again. “He's dead, Miss Fitzgerald. I never meant for anythin' to happen, but he's dead.”

Jillian hadn't blinked in a long time. Her eyes ached with the effort it took to keep them open. The magnitude of what she had just heard was slow to wash over her. Terrence was dead. Good God, Terrence was dead, and Kathleen was responsible. The horror of it seeped through her. “Frankie,” she whispered. “What has Frankie to do with it?”

“He was goin' back to the lodge to be sure Terrence was really dead,” Kathleen said. “I told him not to go. I told him Terrence wasn't breathin'.”

Jilly raced for the door and pulled it open. Her heart slammed in her chest as she ran down the stairs, through the long hallway to the front parlor. She barely registered the five policemen, the
ghillie,
and her father. Jilly had eyes only for Frankie. He sat in a chair, his head in his hands. With no thought but to offer comfort, she crossed the room, sat down at his feet, and curled her arms around his legs.

“Go away, Jilly,” he whispered fiercely. “I can't do this with you here.”

She only tightened her grip and rested her head on his knees.

“Jillian.” Her father's anguished voice pierced the low hum of conversation. “Stay away from him. Go find your mother.”

Jilly ignored him and buried her head between Frankie's knees.

Pyers's voice was very high. “For God's sake, Jillian—”

Just then, two more policemen walked through the door, bearing Terrence's lifeless body on a stretcher. Pyers forgot Jilly and leaned over his boy. Tears streamed down his face. “Yes,” he said brokenly. “He's my son. There's no mistake.”

Jillian refused to look up. Something was terribly wrong. They thought Frankie had killed Terrence. She must tell them it was an accident. If anyone was to blame, it was Kathleen. She lifted her head to meet Frankie's gaze. Gray eyes met hazel and locked. His message was unmistakable.
You
promised,
he said without once moving his lips.

She shook her head and mouthed the words. “They'll put you in jail. It was an accident, Frankie. Kathleen told me what happened.”

His eyes blazed, and his hand tightened on her arm. “Do this, Jillian. Do this for me. I've never asked you for anythin' before. Do this one thing, love. If y' care for me at all, do this.”

She shrank from the agony in his expression. Every instinct told her this was wrong. Why couldn't he see it? Frankie, always so wise, so dependable, was making a terrible mistake.

Her father's strong hands slid under her arms and lifted her across the floor away from Frankie to where Margaret Fitzgerald stood in her bathrobe and slippers. Jilly looked up at her mother. Mum had never liked Terrence much. Surely she would defend Frankie. But Margaret stood there without speaking, her face white as bleached bone, her eyes wide and strange and colorless in the artificial lamplight.

A yellow-vested police officer reached out to grab Frankie's arm. “Y're comin' with us, lad. I'll send a man around to get a message to y'r father.”

Frankie stood, his face ashen, his mouth silent.

“No,” Jilly said into the silence. “Frankie didn't do anything. You can't take him away. Frankie,” she appealed to the stone-faced boy, “say something. Tell them it wasn't you. Please tell them.” Her mother reached for her hand.

“That's enough, Jillian.” Her father had never spoken to her in that tone of voice before.

“But Da,” she sobbed, pulling at her mother's hand. “They're taking Frankie away.”

Frankie cleared his throat. “I'll be all right, lass. Don't take on so.”

“No!” she screamed, on the verge of hysteria. “No. I love you. I won't let them take you!” Rage gave her strength. With a mighty tug, she pulled away from her mother and threw herself against Frankie's chest.

He buried his face in her hair, and his free arm came around her shoulders, hugging her fiercely. Reluctantly, the policeman released him.

“Don't cry, Jilly,” Frankie muttered under his breath. “It will be all right. I'll come back t' you, lass. I promise I will. Wait for me, Jilly. Let me go now, and I'll come back.”

She lifted her head. “Truly, Frankie?”

“I promise.”

“Swear it,” she said.

“Jilly.” His voice had an edge to it as if he were living on nerves alone. “What will I do with you, lass?”

“Swear it on this.” Her fingers slipped inside his collar to find the chain that held a tiny gold cross against his heart The metal was warm against his neck. She held it to his lips. “Swear that you'll come back to me, Frankie. Kiss it and swear.”

For a single, piercing moment, Frankie looked into the eyes of the girl who loved him. Awareness dawned, and he realized what he had lost. His words came harshly on the jagged edge of his pain. “I love you, too, Jilly,” he said, dropping a quick kiss on the cross.

Then he reached out and gripped her shoulders, kissing her full and fiercely on the lips. “Y're just a wee lass now,” he said in a voice that was strong with purpose, “but when y're grown, I'll come back here one day t' remind you of another promise I made. If y' still want me, I'll take y' away from here and be damned t' all of 'em.”

Margaret Fitzgerald gave a low moan and stretched out her hand to her daughter. But Jilly paid no attention. Her eyes were riveted on Frankie's back as he walked freely out the door, down the wide stone stairs of Kildare Hall and out of her life.

Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, Ireland, 1978

Kylemore Abbey, located in the heart of remote and breathtakingly beautiful Connemara, was home to fifty-two Benedictine nuns and one hundred twenty female boarders between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Kylemore, whose focus was academics and character building, attracted girls from all over the world. Although students were instructed in Catholicism, the nuns did not discriminate, and Irish Catholics found themselves in the minority at the Abbey.

At first, Jillian was too overcome with grief over leaving home to notice the spectacular landscape on the N59, better known as the Clifden-Westport Road. But when she did, she understood why her parents had chosen it. The fairy-tale appeal of a glass lake and haunted forests framing a Gothic palace complete with a mini-cathedral, tree-lined walkways, and the purest air in Ireland made it the perfect sanctuary for a young girl who believed in magic and ached for home with every beat of her broken heart.

It was at Kylemore that Jilly's resolve was formed. Amidst the stern discipline of the Irish Benedictines, her ideals materialized, were challenged, sharpened, and set in stone. In the mahogany-appointed library surrounded by ancient manuscripts, written by the finest minds in Anglo-Irish history, she came to an understanding of her country and the role of her family in its struggle.

Slowly, painstakingly, like the unfolding of a moth from its chrysalis, she understood why Frankie had been so reticent about publicizing their relationship. Jillian's cheeks burned when she remembered how she had forced herself on him, demanding his attention, his acceptance, his loyalty, his undivided allegiance, even his love.

It did not surprise her that she never heard from him again. All requests made to her parents to know his whereabouts were met with stony silence. She would have appealed to Kathleen, but the girl was no longer employed at Kildare, and Peter Maguire had been pensioned off shortly after the night Terrence was found with his head split apart. Once, after her sixteenth birthday, when she was of an age to have earned some unsupervised time, she'd used her quarterly holiday money to ride the train to Belfast and consult a prominent barrister, the father of one of her school chums. His efforts turned up the astonishing news that Frankie Maguire had escaped from Long Kesh prison along with a number of other inmates. No word of him had ever been heard. He was believed to have left Ireland permanently.

And so, realizing that a poor Catholic boy from Kilvara could no more claim the daughter of Pyers Fitzgerald than he could become king of England, she forced herself to put that part of her life behind her and focused her efforts on something she believed Frankie would approve of: finding his sister and her child. Somewhere there was someone who had attended Kathleen Maguire when she gave birth. It was only a matter of time.

For Jillian, the road from freedom-loving, adored only daughter of Pyers and Margaret Fitzgerald to a female boarder at Kylemore Abbey, where every waking moment was shared with schoolmates and every sleeping one with three roommates, was not as difficult as she had anticipated. She adapted well, and by her second year at Kylemore, it was clear to the reverend mother and to most of the nuns at the abbey that Jillian Fitzgerald, their most despondent and prickly first-year student, had been transformed into an unqualified success.

Jillian was happy at Kylemore. The nearby village of Letterfrack, less than five kilometers to the west, provided the girls with an occasional movie, a chemist, a café, a grocery store, and several dress shops. It also provided male attention, if not companionship. Local lads frequenting the village pubs fell over themselves for glimpses of the Kylemore girls dressed in navy sweaters and pleated skirts going about their business on the streets.

Not that they would have entertained the notion of doing anything more than looking. Kylemore was the local Catholic school, and girls from Kylemore and Letterfrack were able to attend at no charge, but few did. Ireland's rigid class system was even more rigid in the Republic, and the Kylemore girls were as untouchable as if they were a different species.

Jillian had just passed her sixteenth birthday. It was near the end of the term, and she had earned some precious time alone. Walking paths cutting through the hills surrounding the abbey, forested with oak, pine, ash, and one of the few natural yew trees left in Ireland, gave her the few moments of rare privacy that she craved. One day, she changed into slim-fitting blue jeans and set out on her walk. The day after, she would take her exams and then return to Kildare Hall for the summer. If all went well, she would attend Trinity in the fall, her father's alma mater.

Her mother had campaigned for a come-out in London, but Jillian had been adamant. It was college she wanted, not a husband, and her father had agreed with her. Jillian knew that his acquiescence had to do with Terrence. If her brother had lived, or if there had been other children, Pyers would not have considered her education to be important. Some good had come out of Terrence's death, after all.

At the foot of a rise, a patch of deep gray that Jillian had dismissed as a boulder moved unexpectedly, disturbing her reverie. Her eyes followed the patch as it changed shape, sat up, and scratched. Her eyes widened. Then she laughed and held out her hand, calling softly. “Here, girl. Come here, love. Whatever are you doing here? Are you lost?”

The huge wolfhound whimpered deep in her throat and crawled forward in supplication, burying her nose in the girl's palm before lying quietly at her feet. Jillian frowned, knelt down, and ran her hands over the animal's flanks. The dog's hair was matted, rank-smelling, and not terribly clean, but she looked well fed, and her manners were exquisite. The hound, a rare breed in Connemara and obviously alone, had been carefully trained. But why was she here? Except for thick foliage around the abbey, the terrain of the Irish Gaeltacht was rocky and barren of trees, similar to the remote harshness of the Scottish Highlands, sheep country. Wolfhounds were territorial and did not do well with sheep.

A soft breeze from the lake brought the dog's pungent odor to Jillian's nose. The corners of her mouth turned up in a bittersweet smile. Dogs always reminded her of Frankie. Everything warm and sweet and male and smelling of sweat reminded her of Frankie. Would she ever be through with him? Would she ever want to be?

The dog was restless now, her long legs unfolding from beneath her. Jillian gasped at the sheer height of her. Her head was nearly at the height of a man's shoulder. Just now, she was fixed on something beyond the rise, in the thickest part of the trees. Jillian rested her hand on the dog's head. “What do you see out there, girl?”

The hound moved forward, ears perked, eyes focused on an unknown spot beyond Jillian's vision. Suddenly, she turned, grabbed Jillian's sweater in her mouth, and pulled.

“My goodness.” Jillian laughed, allowing herself to be pulled along by the dog's gentle mouth. “Why didn't you say so in the first place?”

Another whine came from deep in the wolfhound's throat.

“I'm coming,” Jillian reassured her. “I only hope this isn't a wild goose chase. I'm ruining my shoes.” Regretfully, she looked down at the dull film coating the loafers she had polished only that morning. Parting the branches, she followed the dog deeper and deeper into the undergrowth, until the misgivings she felt when she first left the path became full-scale doubts. “This is it, girl,” she called out, leaning heavily against a moss-covered tree trunk. “I'm not going any farther.”

There's no need to go any farther, Jillian,
a voice spoke softly from the undergrowth.

Tiny hairs lifted on the back of Jillian's neck. She'd heard that voice before, a long time ago. Hesitating, she moved forward and stepped into the darkest part of the growth. But it wasn't dark at all. She could see quite clearly. The dog was gone, and a woman stood before her, a young woman in a green gown with exaggerated sleeves, slashed and foaming with lace, trimmed in fur. Above the molded busk, her breasts swelled, forming a hollow from which an emerald pendant reflected the green flecks in her eyes. Moon-gold hair was pulled away from her face by a satin headpiece. It fell thick and straight across her shoulders and past her waist.

But it wasn't the woman's clothing, more suited to the sixteenth century than the twentieth, or her hair, thicker, longer, and lighter than hair could possibly grow, that bleached the color from Jillian's cheeks and sucked the breath from her chest. It was her face. She had despaired of ever seeing that face again. “Hello, Nell,” she said softly. “It has been a very long time.”

Nell smiled.
You've grown up. We are finally of an age. You're very lovely, Jillian.

“I've missed you.”

And
I
you.

Jillian sank to the ground, where she wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked. “Why did you leave?”

Nell leaned against a tree trunk.
There
were
pressing
matters
that
needed
my
attention. My father, the ninth earl of Kildare, was killed.

Jillian nodded. “I know. So was his son, Silken Thomas, and all the Geraldines of his line except for Gerald.” She smiled. “But you know that. It's your history, isn't it?”

Nell's eyes had brightened, and twin spots of color burned her cheeks.
Aye, 'tis my history, and yours. But much of it lies ahead of me.
She knelt down and leaned forward until her face was level with Jillian's.
I
need
your
help, Jillian. Too much is at stake to wait for time to show me the way.

“I don't understand.”

Don't you see? You will tell me if Gerald is to live or die. Tell me, Jillian, whether the house of Fitzgerald dies with Silken Thomas. If so, there is little reason to sacrifice my own happiness.

Jillian shook her head. She had never seen Nell in such a state. “You're asking the impossible,” she said slowly. “I'm surprised you don't see it. You want to know the future so that you can arrange the past, but it doesn't work that way. If you change the past, the future is already affected. If you decide differently from what fate originally intended, entire generations may be harmed.” A horrifying thought occurred to her. “I might never even be born.”

How
long
have
you
known
who
I
am?

Jillian thought for a moment. Had there ever been a time when she didn't know Nell's identity? “I'm not sure,” she said slowly. “Maybe I always knew. I remembered things you said. Every time I looked into the mirror, I was reminded of you. Then there were the portraits lining the dining hall at Kildare. We are both definitely Fitzgeralds. The resemblance is unmistakable.”

Nell's lower lip trembled. She caught it between her teeth.
Please, Jillian. I'm in love, and I carry his child. What is the harm in knowing if I may go to him?

Jillian's forehead creased in thought. “You should decide on your own. Whatever you do will be right, for you and your child, and for all the children to come.”

You're exaggerating.

“I don't think so.” Jillian rested her hand on Nell's stomach. “What if the future of the Fitzgeralds lies right here? Or what if your baby dies before it's even born and the next child you carry is the one from which my family is descended? How would you ever know if you'd done the right thing? If you tamper with fate, the entire world might be a different place.”

Nell straightened and looked down at Jillian's bent head.
You've changed. I thought you would help me.

“I am helping you.”

What
if
I
did
something
for
you?

“Oh, Nell.” Jilly's laugh hovered on the cusp of exasperation and amusement. “You've already done a great deal. No one was closer to me than you were. I couldn't have managed without you.”

There
was
someone
else
you
loved
even
more
than
me.

Jillian's heart gave a great thump in her chest.

What
if
I
show
you
what
happened
to
Francis
Maguire?

Jillian thought she had shouted the words, but they came out in the merest whisper. “How can you show me that when you can't see your own future?”

Nell shrugged.
I
can
see
everything
after
my
own
lifetime
but
nothing
within
it.

Jillian stood. “I'm going now. I don't care to see Frankie. It wouldn't do either of us any good.”

You
were
never
a
coward, Jillian.

“I'm still not.”

Aren't you?

Jillian parted the bushes and began climbing through the thick foliage to the path. “I know what you're doing, Nell, but I'm not a child any longer. You won't get what you want that way.”

Tell
me
how
I
can
get
what
I
want.

A branch slapped Jillian in the face, leaving a red welt across her cheek. “You won't this time, but in the future you might try convincing me that it might be of some importance to others beside yourself.”