An Embarrassment of Riches (9 page)

‘It isn't that I
dislike
Miss Marlow,' Isabel said as her grandfather looked reprovingly at her. ‘It's just that she twitters so.'

‘She doesn't often enjoy the companionship of young people and so allowances must be made. We shall be setting off early so don't stay up over late tonight reading.'

This last remark was directed more at Maura than at Isabel and she smiled naughtily, saying, ‘If I promise not to read late tonight, can I bring my volume of Tennyson with me to read on the journey to Dublin?'

‘Only on condition that you allow me to read “The Revenge”, in a satisfyingly theatrical manner,' Lord Clanmar said good-humouredly.

Isabel groaned in mock anguish and as Maura giggled and he chuckled, he congratulated himself for the thousandth time on being an exceedingly lucky man. Unlike Miss Marlow and many of his peers, he was not enduring a lonely old age. He had made two unusual decisions in life and they had proved to be the best decisions he had ever made. He had his family around him and their worth was immeasurable.

‘I am not sure that I understand you correctly, my lord,' his Dublin solicitor said, perturbed. ‘You wish me to draw up a new will in which your granddaughter will not be the main beneficiary?'

‘I wish you to draw up a new will in which
both
my granddaughters will be equal beneficiaries.'

His young solicitor pushed his chair away from his desk, leaned back in it and stared at him. ‘Both your granddaughters, Lord Clanmar? I'm sorry. I don't understand. I thought…'

‘Isabel is my legitimate granddaughter, the child of my son, Sebastian. Maura is my illegitimate granddaughter, the child of that same son.'

The solicitor sat sharply upright, colouring deeply. ‘I see, my lord, and …'

‘And I wish her position to be regularized.' For a second he wondered if he wouldn't have done better to have waited until he could have explained the situation to his London solicitor who handled the bulk of his affairs. He remembered the unpleasant constriction he had been experiencing of late around his heart and continued, ‘and I wish formally to acknowledge her as my son's illegitimate offspring and to settle half my estate upon her.'

‘I see,' his solicitor said again, trying to gather his scattered wits.

‘Has the young lady in question taken upon herself your son's name …'

‘No. She has no knowledge of her paternity.'

‘I … see.'

‘There have been very good reasons for the discretion,' Lord Clanmar said, intensely irritated at feeling obliged to explain himself to a man less than half his age. ‘Her mother is still alive and remains one of my tenants. It would have been exceedingly embarrassing both for her, and for myself, if the truth had become common knowledge. I have also judged that until now my legitimate granddaughter has been too young to have to suffer being disillusioned as to her late father's moral character.'

‘Ah, yes. Quite so. Excuse me for my boldness, my lord, but won't this disclosure still come as a terrible shock to your granddaughter? For her to be suddenly confronted with an illegitimate half-sister she has never seen, and the information coming so hard on the heels of your lordship's death, as it necessarily will …'

Lord Clanmar stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘Don't be a fool, man. I thought you understood the situation? I took my illegitimate granddaughter into my home when she was eight years old. She and Isabel have grown up together. To know of their true relationship will bring both of them nothing but pleasure.'

‘I … see,' his solicitor said doubtfully for a third time. As his client frowned in annoyance he added hurriedly, ‘I will, of course, expedite matters immediately. I will have the new will drawn up and ready for your signature by the end of the week.'

‘Good,' Lord Clanmar said testily, only too well aware of why he had very rarely troubled the young man before. ‘Good-day to you,' and rising to his feet he took his leave.

Feeling extraordinarily tired he joined Maura, Isabel and Miss Marlow for afternoon tea in the lounge at the Metropole Hotel. The girls were prattling happily about the frills and furbelows they had bought on their shopping expedition and he was able to succumb to his tiredness without anyone becoming aware of it.

It was in the carriage on the way back to Ballacharmish that he began to feel not only tired, but distinctly unwell. It had been a wonderfully hot month and even though it was now after four o'clock the sun's heat was still oppressive. He settled himself as comfortably as he could and closed his eyes, hoping that sleep would put an end to his rising nausea. As the Dublin suburbs were left behind them and the girls talked quietly, endeavouring not to disturb him, his mind floated back to the hideous day in 1846 when Mary Sullivan had told him she could no longer remain in his employ.

She had been a lovely-looking girl, her glossy dark hair swept neatly over her ears and coiled in a heavy knot in the nape of her neck, her eyes vibrant blue, wide-set and thick-lashed. Maura had the same eyes, although where hers were invariably full of sparkling mischief her mother's eyes, as she had faced him in his study at Ballacharmish, had been red-rimmed and dark with pain.

She had not told him why she wished to leave his employment. She had simply repeated quietly and steadfastly that she could no longer remain at Ballacharmish. He had known, of course, that the reason had to be a catastrophic one. Mary Sullivan had been born into abysmal circumstances and he had long admired and respected the way she had dragged herself free of them. It was a rare achievement for an Irish peasant to speak English fluently, and still rarer for them to speak the language as pleasingly as Mary did. Her position at Ballacharmish was the fulfilment of all her dreams and aspirations and she was giving it up for what? To go where? To return to a one-room hovel in Killaree? It made no sense and he had determined that if she wouldn't give him a reason he would discover the reason elsewhere.

He hadn't had far to seek. His butler had been in his service for over thirty years and a rare degree of trust existed between them. Whatever the truth of the matter, if Rendlesham knew of it, he would tell him.

There was vast relief in his butler's eyes when he broached the subject with him and Lord Clanmar's heart immediately sank. If Rendlesham was relieved to be able to inform him of something he had not felt able to tell him in the normal way of things, then the information could only be unpleasant.

‘I believe Mr Sebastian is the best person to speak to about Mary Sullivan, my lord,' he said, his voice carefully expressionless.

Lord Clanmar stared at him. Rendlesham held his gaze, the expression in his eyes changing from one of relief, to one of pity. No more need to be said. In growing horror Lord Clanmar turned away from him and went in search of his son.

Sebastian. Even now, seventeen years later, he cursed himself for not having had the sense to have foreseen the situation. Mary Sullivan was a beauty. His son was easily bored and in the months prior to his recent marriage had obviously sought relief from boredom in a manner ages old. That Sebastian should have treated one of the household servants in such a shameful way appalled him to the very depths of his being. But it did not surprise him. Sebastian had always treated the Irish as if they were serfs in medieval Russia and he was their seigneur. It was a situation he should have envisaged and he knew that he would never forgive himself for having being so blind as to what had been occurring under his own roof.

His interview with Sebastian had been one that even now he had no wish to dwell on. He had merely shrugged when he had been questioned about his relations with Mary. The girl was a slut, as were all her fellow countrywomen. He had given her money in order that she could go to Dublin and have the pregnancy terminated. Having now discharged his responsibilities he couldn't conceive what the fuss was all about.

The carriage bumped and swayed as it climbed up into the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, jolting him back into the present. His nausea had increased and he was once again suffering from a sense of tightness around his chest. He tried to alleviate it by focusing his thoughts once more in the past.

Mary. When his interview with Sebastian had come to a painful conclusion he had sought her out in order to speak to her about her future, and the child's future. That there would be a child he had not a moment's doubt. Mary Sullivan was a devout Catholic. No matter how abject her circumstances she would never resort to the services of an abortionist. Even when he discovered that she had left Ballacharmish the second after she had spoken to him, and that she was not at her parent's cabin in Killaree, but that she had returned to Dublin, he still did not believe that she had gone there to avail herself of the service Sebastian had suggested.

Within hours of her departure he had received Peel's request that he accept the post as British Ambassador in St Petersburg. From then on there had been many other things in the forefront of his mind: his responsibilities in Russia; the agony of being half a world away when famine was sweeping Ireland; his anguish over Sebastian's neglect of the estate and its tenants.

And then at last, because of Sebastian's and his daughter-in-law's deaths, he had returned. He had known the moment his decision was taken that his illegitimate grandchild would feature in his future plans. For nine years he had known of her existence, ever since Liam Fitzgerald had included in a business letter the information that Mary Sullivan had returned to Killaree with a daughter. There and then, as he had sat at his desk, looking out over the frozen River Neva, he had begun to toy with the idea of one day rearing and educating her.

If it hadn't been for Isabel having been orphaned the idea would probably have remained only that, a fancy unfulfilled, but in deciding to care for Isabel he had been placed in a perfect position to satisfy his curiosity about his first-born grandchild.

What he had seen on that hot June day in 1854, he had immediately liked. As he remembered her arrival at Ballacharmish, clothed in a made-down dress totally unsuitable in both colour and fabric for a young child, her feet bare, her eyes bright with wonder, he smiled despite his growing physical discomfort.

He had invited her to Ballacharmish in order to make recompense to her mother for the way his son had destroyed her life and in order to be able to assuage his own guilt at not having foreseen the situation that had arisen. He had also invited her in order that she could become a companion for Isabel. She had done more than that. She had become his companion as well.

He grimaced as another spasm of pain racked his chest. How would she react when she learned the truth about their relationship? Was he being unfair to both her and Isabel by leaving it until he was dead and his will was read before the truth became known? Until now he had never had any doubt that his decision to remain silent on the subject had been the right one. Isabel had been too young to bear the burden of having her illusions about her father shattered. But was she still too young? Surely, at sixteen, she was old enough to know the truth? Whatever her grief over her father's behaviour, her joy at discovering that Maura was her half-sister would more than compensate.

He opened his eyes, smiling across at them, marvelling yet again at how two girls, fathered by the same man, could be so dissimilar in colouring. Maura was totally her mother's child in looks, though with an added vivacity about her that Mary had never possessed. Although Isabel had inherited Sebastian's grey-green eyes and fine-edged bone structure, there the similarity ended. Her mother's hair had been deep gold and Isabel's hair, so pale as to be almost translucent when she had been a child, had deepened to the same rich, burnished colour.

Smoke-dark hair and hair the colour of ripening barley. Eyes the colour of gentians and eyes the colour of a northern sea. His two granddaughters. Both beauties. Both with warm, generous natures that matched their beauty. He felt so much love for them both that tears rose in his eyes.

‘My dears,' he said, ‘there is something I have wanted to tell you for a long, long time,' and then he clutched at his heart, horror and agony flashing through his eyes as he toppled forward, falling dead at their feet.

‘I'm twenty years old, goddammit!' Alexander said furiously to his father. ‘You've kept me out of the war for a year already! Either you support Lincoln or you don't, and if you do you
have
to allow me to enlist!'

Victor pushed his chair away from his mammoth desk and bounced to his feet, apoplectic with fury. ‘I might very well have come to terms with Lincoln as President but it doesn't mean you have to get yourself killed at a Manassas or a Ball's Bluff! There's a draft, for Christ's sake, only greenhorns enlist! Young men from families with our kind of wealth don't have to prove their patriotism by risking their lives or sacrificing their health. Lincoln has my financial support and that's all that's necessary. If he wants more men he can get them any day of the week from the Five Points and the Bowery!'

‘And what sort of fighting men will they be?' Alexander demanded, his face flushed with frustrated rage. ‘Men who have never seen anything but a dray-horse? Men who would have to be tied to the saddle? Men who only a month ago were rioting and burning buildings in protest at being drafted when the likes of myself are exempt?'

He pushed his fingers through his hair, struggling to hold on to the remaining shreds of his temper. ‘Despite the losses, Shiloh was a colossal victory for us, Pa. The South is tottering on its knees. It only needs one final push, one last decisive battle, and the war will be over.'

‘In which case your enlistment would be a little late to be of any consequence.'

Alexander clenched his hands so tightly that the knuckles showed white. ‘On the contrary, my enlistment could be of
vital
consequence. When John Jacob Astor III enlisted he was given high rank immediately, even though he had no previous military experience. The Army wouldn't dare to give me a lesser rank. The one thing they are most short of are men with suitable backgrounds to lead cavalry regiments. Even you have to agree that Tarna was a more than suitable background and as an officer in the cavalry I would be in a position to affect events profoundly.'