Ashton Park (36 page)

“You’ll soon be healed up. You’re getting all your color back.” He bent down and pinched a rose off its stalk and twined blossom and stem into the knot of the scarf. “A few blemishes don’t mar your beauty. You rival a summer’s day.”

“Is that so? You didn’t steal that from your Shakespeare?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
?”

“I don’t know him. Friend of yours, is he?” Robbie peeled back the edge of her scarf. “I see some lovely sun-colored hair.”

She put her hand on his as he rubbed the short hairs with his fingers. “It’s come along nicely since your last visit,” she said.

He smiled. “It’s so soft.” He touched a scab and his smile was gone.

She squeezed his hand. “You haven’t done anything rash. Thank you.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by rash. The Black and Tans are still looking for O’Casey. And the Royal Irish Constabulary. And the British army.”

“I don’t know that it was him. I was blindfolded.”

“Our best informants told us it was him. It doesn’t matter what you didn’t see. Locking him up is only justice, Shannon. There’s nothing rash about justice.”

“It depends on how it’s achieved, doesn’t it? He thought he was serving up justice to me. Don’t you be like him, Robbie Danforth.”

“Making war on women—”

Shannon’s hands gripped both sides of his face. They had lost none of their strength. “Don’t you be like him. Promise me you’ll not act like he acts.”

“Look—”

Her one good eye was a hard, sharp green. “Should you come across him. Promise me you’ll not be like him.”

Robbie hesitated. Finally he kissed her lips again. “I won’t be the one to find him. He’ll wish I had. The Black and Tans will likely get to Jack O’Casey first and when they do they’ll tear him apart.”

“No more talk of him.” Robbie felt her body trembling as she sank against his chest again. “What did your commanding officer say about getting the two of us out of Ireland?”

“I was about to tell you. It’s in the works. No more than a week.”

She pulled back quickly and looked at him. “Are you serious? He said that? We’re as good as gone?”

“He did say that.”

“And you waited all this time to tell me?” She laughed and winced and struck his chest playfully with her fists. “You’re a Black and Tan yourself, you are, Robbie Danforth.”

Tavy extended a platter to Lady Elizabeth as she sat with her husband in the library. “Your mail, ma’arm.”

“Thank you, Tavy. How is everything today?”

“Running like a well-wound grandfather clock.”

“Anything from our four honeymooners in France? I wonder if Kipp has taught Christelle how to fly as he promised her he would?”

“I didn’t notice any French postage stamps, ma’arm.”

She sorted through the envelopes while Sir William read his newspaper. “Well wishes from our wedding guests. Well wishes. Well wishes.” She paused. “That’s very strange.”

“Hmm?”

“There’s a note here from Lord and Lady Scarborough.”

He did not look up from his paper. “Probably explaining their absence and sending the couples their regrets.”

“It’s weeks too late for that. No one expected them.” She used the letter opener Tavy had put on the tray to slit open the envelope. “I can’t imagine what’s on their minds.”

“Why—” She put a hand on her husband’s arm as she read the letter.

“What is it?”

Lady Elizabeth stood up quickly and dropped the letter on the table. “I’m sorry. I can’t sit any longer.” She crossed the library to stand and look out one of the tall windows.

Sir William folded up his paper and picked up the letter she had dropped. “What’s upset you?”

Lord and Lady Scarborough wish to announce the engagement of their daughter Lady Caroline Virginia Scarborough to Edward George Danforth, eldest son of Sir William Danforth, MP, and Lady Elizabeth Danforth of Ashton Park, Lancashire. Information on the date and location of the wedding ceremony will follow over the next few weeks. Please join us in extending our best wishes to the young couple for a wonderful life together. May God bless their marriage and the future that awaits them.

“Now you’re operating alone. This isn’t an army operation. It’s not sanctioned by the British government. You’re in plainclothes, so if your luck turns against you the IRA will put a bullet in the back of your head.”

“They haven’t shot anyone for being a spy yet, Mickey.”

“You’ll be the first if you muck up.”

Robbie was sitting in a civilian motorcar parked on a busy street. He wore rough clothing and a flat tweed cap that made him look like a dockworker out for a night at a tavern. The man beside him also wore civilian clothes. It was a Friday night in July and a warm drizzle fell over the pavement and cobblestones. Dozens of men walked in and out of a tavern a block away.

Mickey gestured with his chin. “The neighborhood is thick with IRA. We never send patrols here. That pub is an IRA meeting house. You may not see the barrels but you can be sure every bloke is carrying a gun. Are you sure you want to go ahead with this?”

Robbie stared through the raindrops on the windshield. “You were there when the boys cut Shannon down from the lamppost. O’Casey did everything but rape her. What if that were your girl, Mickey? Your daughter? Your sister? The woman you were going to marry? What then?”

Mickey glanced down at his gloved hands a moment. “Do you have his picture on you?”

“I don’t need it. I’ve been staring at it for weeks.”

“Don’t shoot the wrong man, Robbie.”

“I won’t.”

Mickey nodded. “Right, then.” He opened his door and slid out from behind the right side steering wheel.

“Mickey.” Robbie extended his hand. “Thanks for your help.”

Mickey half-smiled and shook it. “Make sure you have an escape route in your head. I want to come to your wedding and have a grand old time with you and the lads.”

“The invitations are already in the mail.”

“I’m sure they are. Best of luck.”

For the next hour Robbie sat in the car slumped in his seat, pretending he was sleeping. He was far enough away from the pub that no one even looked in his direction. There were cars parked in front of him and in back. For all the men and women who walked by knew, he was IRA. They left him alone.

It was getting dark. An informant had assured him O’Casey would be meeting with other leaders in the pub. O’Casey hadn’t left by the front door if he had left at all. As for the back door, Mickey was watching that. He’d toss a few stones at Robbie’s car if the man chose the alley.

But O’Casey was in his own territory and he went boldly out the front. Robbie had just looked up from checking his pocket watch. It was twelve minutes after ten, just past 2200 hours. O’Casey emerged from the tavern laughing and in the company of two other men. His beard and bushy hair were unmistakable. He glanced up and down the street and at the people walking near him. The two men with him got into a car. O’Casey waved and turned up his collar to the rain. Bareheaded, hands in the pockets of his coat, he started walking up the street in Robbie’s direction. A man Robbie assumed was a bodyguard detached himself from the wall of the pub and shadowed O’Casey from about twenty feet behind.

Surprised, Robbie slid further down in his seat. O’Casey had his eyes straight ahead and kept coming. Robbie tried not to look at him directly. He was sure the man would veer off to the left or right. When he realized the IRA leader was going to pass right by his car he pulled a Webley Mark VI revolver from his jacket pocket. His mind was empty and his hands and body cold. He saw the windshield, the drops of rainwater on its surface, the bodyguard, and the man who had beaten Shannon Dungarvan until she was almost dead.

Robbie threw the door open and it slammed into O’Casey, knocking him to the ground. Then he jumped out and grabbed him by the arm. The bodyguard had drawn a semi-automatic. Using O’Casey as a shield Robbie fired twice and the bodyguard clutched his leg and collapsed in the wet street. Robbie felt O’Casey’s hands grasping for his throat and hit him on the side of the head with the Webley. O’Casey sagged and Robbie crammed him into the passenger’s seat. Then he ran around to the other side of the car and got in the driver’s door.

Men were pouring out of the tavern, trying to figure out where the firing had come from. Robbie started the car and did a sharp U-turn as he spotted fingers pointing. There was the
crack-crack-crack
of gunfire and the banging sound of bullets hitting the trunk. He swerved down a side street to the right and was gone.

There were British army checkpoints at various parts of the city. Robbie avoided them, driving through alleys and across bridges until he parked behind a string of derelict buildings. All the time his gun was on O’Casey, who gradually fought his way back to consciousness. When Robbie came to a stop the Irishman tensed, waiting for the impact of the bullet. There was no shot.

“Get on with it!” snarled O’Casey. “Killing me won’t stop Ireland from winning her freedom.”

“I don’t care if Ireland wins her freedom. My father was always for a season of Home Rule and then full independence.”

“So why are you fighting us?”

“You killed my men. You tortured my woman. That’s enough reason for any man to fight, isn’t it, O’Casey?”

His eyes narrowed and darkened. “The Dungarvan girl. Is that what this is about?”

“I thought of tying you to a lamppost and beating you to death with the butt of this revolver. Or using all the bullets I have left in the gun and then dumping you in the river.”

“So what are you going to do?”

Robbie kept the revolver pointed at his head. “Are you a praying man, O’Casey?”

“No. I left God behind with Santa Claus and the leprechauns.”

“You can thank God that I am then. And that Shannon Dungarvan is. She didn’t want me to harm you. Except for a bump on the head, I haven’t. Though I had every intention of executing you for what you have done.”

“I’m a patriot.”

Robbie thumbed back the hammer on the Webley. “You’re a beast, O’Casey! Don’t tell me how great your cause is! You don’t do what you did to Shannon Dungarvan and have the right to say that anymore! You’re just a dirty little killer dressed up as a freedom fighter!” He pressed the barrel between O’Casey’s eyes. “It’s all the same to your lot. The more important and noble your cause, the more you people feel you have to beat and murder and maim. What are you going to do if you lose the war, O’Casey? Keep on making war on the innocent?”

“I’ll fight Britain until the last soldier of King George is off Irish soil.”

“That might be a long time if the people of Belfast don’t join your country.”

“They will.”

“What if they don’t?” Robbie’s eyes flashed and he pushed the barrel into O’Casey’s skull. “So help me, I hate your kind. You’ll shoot them and bomb them and slaughter them until they do. Am I right?”

“Blood is always shed for liberty.”

“So long as it’s not your blood.”

“Pull the trigger. I don’t mind.”

“Neither do I.”

O’Casey had kept his eyes cold as ice with the barrel cutting into his forehead. But suddenly Robbie’s hand began to tremble, and he saw the rage passing in and out of the Englishman’s face like clouds scudding over a moon. His eyes opened up in fear. Robbie wrestled with the gun and himself for several moments. Then he placed the hammer down.