The Bracelet (41 page)

He squeezed her hand, and she felt the warmth of his hand through their gloves. “It will be over soon,” he said.

The black hearse, pulled by a magnificent span of four, halted at the cemetery gates. In a cold silence broken only by the rattle of harness and the snuffling and stamping of the horses, pallbearers carried the coffin to the place where Papa was laid to rest among the senators, bishops, and businessmen who had been his companions in life. After the committal, Celia knelt with the rector and Sutton at the grave for a final private good-bye.

Despite her deep love for him and her bottomless sense of loss, she couldn’t help feeling a lingering disappointment that he had never told her everything he knew about what had happened in the house on Madison Square. The story still felt unfinished. Incomplete. What family secrets had he taken to the grave? Had the keeping of those secrets changed who he was? Who she was? When was it justifiable to keep secrets from those we love?

Despite her questions, she could not wish Papa back to face more days of agony. He was at peace. In the high country. And as the old hymn promised, she would see him again one day in that bright place above. She rose and stepped away from the raw wound in the earth.

“Miss Browning?”

Celia turned to find a young man with green eyes and a neatly trimmed red-gold beard standing half hidden behind a marble tombstone. His black suit appeared to be new, but it was ill-fitting—the sleeves too long and the shoulders too tight. He held a worn watch cap in his work-roughened hands.

“I’m Mrs. Mackay now.”

“Oh. O’ course. Beggin’ your pardon.” He took a step closer. “I was sorry to hear of your da’s passin’. People say he did a lot o’ good for the town.”

“Thank you.” Celia frowned. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

He glanced around the cemetery. It was still crowded with black-clad mourners who stood in small groups, murmuring together. “I’m Michael Gleason. I was hopin’ to see Miss Lorens.”

Celia bristled. “My cousin is abroad. But I doubt she’d care to see you, after you feigned an attraction to her, then asked for money for your political activities.”

The Irish drayman blushed. “I admit it looks unseemly. I ought not to have pressed her for money. But I had a good reason for—”

“Yes, I know,” Celia said, taken aback by the force of her own anger. “A reason named Sylvie Kelly.”

Mr. Gleason shook his head. “Sylvie wasn’t the reason. I’m—”

“What then?”

He paused and squared his shoulders, as if gathering himself. “After I met Ivy, I found out we’re kin.” He crushed his cap in his hands and stared at spot just past Celia’s shoulder. “I’m Ivy’s brother.”

Celia
stood in the middle of her old bedroom, surrounded by trunks and hatboxes. Maxwell played among the jumble of dresses, jackets, crinolines, and shoes littering the bed. When he attacked one of her best white kid boots, she rescued it from his mouth and kissed the top of his head. “No you don’t, you little scamp.”

Celia could barely keep her mind on preparations for her departure. Michael Gleason’s startling claim had been keeping her awake at night. Was his story true? Had her aunt destroyed pages from her diary in order to keep the secret? Maybe it was foolish to pursue such questions now, but the Irish drayman’s story was too stunning to ignore.

“Spoiled that pup silly, that’s what you’ve done,” Mrs. Maguire said, coming in to dump another armload of jackets onto the bed. “I won’t be able to do a thing with ’im after you’re gone.”

“Oh, he’ll be a perfect little gentleman.” Celia scratched the dog’s belly, and he closed his eyes. “Won’t you, sweetheart?”

“You see, that’s just what I mean. Calling him ‘sweetheart’ and lettin’ him loll about on your bed like he was the king of Siam. Back in County Waterford, people were people and dogs were dogs, and niver were th’ two confused.”

Celia laughed. “I supposed I have indulged him these last few days. I’m going to miss him terribly. I wish I could take him with us.”

“On your honeymoon?” Mrs. Maguire shook her head. “Mr. Mackay might have something to say about that.”

“Sutton loves Maxwell as much as I do. He gave him to me, after all. But Maxwell is still growing. The ship would be too confining for him.”

“Humph.” Mrs. Maguire held up a dark-green velvet jacket. “Will you take this one or leave it behind?”

“I’ll take it. Springtime in Paris can be quite chilly.” Celia
fingered the cuffed sleeves. “I won’t have much occasion to wear it, though. I’ll be mostly in mourning clothes.”

A deep silence settled over them like dust over a vacant room. Celia watched Mrs. Maguire fold more chemises and petticoats into a leather trunk. “May I ask you something?”

“What is it?”

“Why did you try to hide Aunt Eugenia’s writing box from me?”

The permanent flush beneath the older woman’s pale Irish skin deepened to crimson, but she denied nothing and calmly continued with her folding. “Are you happier now for havin’ read that poor woman’s diary?”

“Happier?” Celia made a space for herself on her bed and plopped down, Maxwell at her side. “Not really. More unsettled than ever, if you want to know the truth. I wish you would tell me what you know. Surely you remember what happened when Aunt Eugenia and Ivy came here from St. Simons.”

“Won’t change anything.”

“Of course not, but I still want to know. And there’s much more to the story. Aunt Eugenia’s diary mentioned that she was grief stricken when she first met Uncle Magnus and hinted that she was keeping a secret from him.” Celia looked pointedly at the housekeeper. “I think I know now what that secret was.”

Mrs. Maguire’s hands stilled above the half-filled trunk. “My mam used to say if you don’t want flour on your hands, best stay out of the bin.”

“Now that Ivy and Papa are gone, I can’t see the point of keeping me in the dark.”

With a resigned sigh, Mrs. Maguire moved a pile of clothes from the chair near the window. “Sure and ’tis a complicated tale. Heartbreakin’ too.”

“Even so, why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were a child at the time. You didn’t need to know such
things. And then, after you grew up—well, ’twasn’t my place. I’ve been in this house for most of my life, but I’m still a servant, and I never forget it. Besides, I thought it would make things worse if that story started goin’ around again. What good could come of it?”

“Is that why you locked me in the attic? That was you, wasn’t it? Were you trying to frighten me so I’d stop looking?”

“Of course not. I didn’t even know you were in there.” Another massive sigh. “I passed by on my way to tidyin’ up your father’s room and saw the door ajar. I thought somebody had left the door open by mistake, so I closed it. ’Twasn’t till after you were rescued that I saw the empty valise a-sittin’ next to the stair.” The housekeeper frowned as Maxwell shook himself awake and turned in circles before climbing into Celia’s lap. “Then later on when you asked about Miss Eugenia’s writin’ box, I figured you wouldn’t rest till you found it—and her diary. And then you’d know what a terrible man your uncle was. So I took it from the attic and put it in my kitchen where you found it.”

Mrs. Maguire plucked at a loose thread on the pillow. “If you want my opinion, Magnus Lorens never was worth Miss Eugenia’s little finger, but there was no talking her out of marryin’ him.” She pulled her handkerchief from her sleeve and blotted her nose. “We
niver
discussed it, but I suppose she saw his proposal as the best way out.”

“Way out? Of what?”

“The day she wed him, she was already with child.”

The room spun. Celia blinked. “Go on.”

“Well before she met Magnus Lorens, your aunt was in love with someone else, but her parents thought he was all wrong for her. Unsuitable was how they put it. So her mother—your grandmother—took both her and Miss Francesca to Europe and stayed there for a whole year, waitin’ for Miss Eugenia to forget all about him.”

“But it didn’t work.” Celia could imagine her aunt’s feelings. Even if she were kept apart from Sutton for a thousand years, her heart wouldn’t change.

“No, it didn’t. And eventually they had to come home. Miss Eugenia continued living at home, pretending she’d let go of her affections for that young man—Sean Gleason, his name was. But one day he showed up on her doorstep with his own sad tale to tell.”

Sean Gleason. Celia’s stomach clenched. She hadn’t wanted to believe Michael Gleason’s wild story—a story he’d claimed to have learned at his parish church shortly after Leo Channing began publishing his newspaper articles. A story that linked his family with hers.

Mrs. Maguire stared out the window. “He and Miss Eugenia each thought they’d been forgotten by the other. While she was away, he married, and his wife had a child born too soon and sick as they come. The boy survived, but his mam didn’t. So there Sean Gleason was, a-standin’ on her veranda, widowed and with a baby to raise. And there was Miss Eugenia, heartsick and as besotted with ’im as ever.”

Celia put the pieces of the puzzle together. “So Sean and Aunt Eugenia got married after all?”

The housekeeper shook her head. “That was the plan the two o’ them cooked up, all right—to marry in secret and then tell her parents when it would be too late. But before they could do it, Sean got himself killed workin’ on the wharf, and he wasn’t even cold in the grave when Miss Eugenia realized she was going to be a mother.”

Celia took in a shaky breath. So it was true. “Uncle Magnus is not Ivy’s father.”

“He is not. He knew Sean Gleason from the docks—I think he was working in one of the shipping offices—and I suppose Sean must have told him about Miss Eugenia. Anyway, Mr. Lorens
came to pay his condolences, and once he realized her family had money, he started courtin’ her. She was frightened and ashamed and afraid to tell her parents the truth. So when Mr. Lorens proposed marriage, she accepted.”

“And when Ivy was born she let him think—”

“That she did.”

“Does Ivy know?”

“Nobody knows, far’s I can tell. Except the dead, o’ course.”

The dead and Michael Gleason. And the parish gossips. Celia tried to sort out her feelings, but they were in a worse jumble than the clothes littering her bed. At least Michael hadn’t turned away from Ivy because he found her undesirable or because she couldn’t give him money. Celia felt a wave of sympathy for her cousin and a rush of anger for Michael Gleason. He ought to have explained everything to Ivy, but he’d waited until it was too late. And she had sailed for Cuba feeling more unloved than ever.

“Mrs. Maguire.” Celia shifted on her bed, and Maxwell raised his head before returning to his puppy dreams. “You’re the one who ripped out those pages?”

“I am. And I’m not sorry for it, either.” Mrs. Maguire clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I should have destroyed the whole thing. I don’t know why I didn’t. ’Tis all in the past.”

“But Ivy deserves to know who her real father is. If it was me, I’d want to know.”

“The Gleasons are only poor Irish, like me. Nothin’ to brag about.”

Celia digested this news. But still she had questions about the day her aunt died. “Aunt Eugenia knew about Uncle Magnus’s affair with Septima, and she knew there was a child. But her diary seems to indicate that most of her friends’ husbands behaved the same way. Would she have taken her own life over it?”

“She was beside herself the night she and Ivy arrived here
from St. Simons with Mr. Lorens on their heels. But after a few days she seemed better. Reckon she got used to the idea of him takin’ up with another. But that’s not to say she still wasn’t madder than a hornet. I was surprised when she invited that wench into this house.”

“She asked Septima here?”

“Miss Eugenia wanted to talk to her. She asked me to make tea and bring it up to her room. I don’t know why she didn’t want to meet the woman in the parlor, but I did what she asked me to do. That woman arrived all decked out in satin and lace like the Queen o’ England herself. Miss Eugenia out came into the upstairs hallway and called for her to come on up.”

Mrs. Maguire closed her eyes. “Miss Ivy had been sick the whole night, and I went back to the kitchen to fix her some broth. When it was ready, I took the tray and started up the stairs, and I heard the two of them—Miss Eugenia and that mulatto woman—arguin’. I went on in to tend to Miss Ivy. Then I heard Mr. Lorens running up the stairs, calling for Miss Eugenia.

“I went into the hallway, intending to tell him Miss Ivy was sick and asking for him, but by the time I got to the door, he was already in Miss Eugenia’s room. The door was standin’ wide open, and I could see all the way through to Miss Eugenia’s balcony. The three of them were still fightin’. Mr. Lorens was trying to grab Miss Eugenia by the arm, and she was cryin’ and yellin’ at him to leave her alone. When he wouldn’t leave, she climbed onto the railing. To scare him into going away, I guess. Or to convince him she meant business.

“Miss Ivy came out of her room. I stepped in front of her so she wouldn’t see anything. When I looked again, Mr. Lorens was standing right in front of Miss Eugenia. He raised both his arms. The mulatto woman pushed at him and screamed. And then”—Mrs. Maguire shrugged—“Miss Eugenia was no longer there.”