Legacy of Secrets (22 page)

Dermot looked down at her, taking in her beauty and her youth and her deceptively innocent sapphire eyes. He had known a thousand women and he knew trouble when he was looking at it, and he smiled. “Why not?” he asked.

A shiver rippled down Lily’s spine as he looked at her. There was a knowingness in his eyes she had never seen in any other man’s. It was a hot, searching glance that left her bewildered yet excited. Even Finn, with his beseeching, adoring eyes, had never looked at her like this.

“The dance before supper, Lady Lily,” he said, with a little formal bow. And then he turned and walked off to claim his next dance with his hostess.

Lily looked down at her dance card. He had scrawled out the name of the boy she was to have had supper with and substituted
his
own. Her spirits rose like a fresh souffle. She had no pity for the scorned young man. Dermot Hathaway was taking her in to supper.

Dermot had no real interest in having supper with a girl
as young as Lily, beautiful though she was. He was only doing it to pique the woman he was really pursuing. She was married, attractive, knowledgeable, and sexy, and that’s the way he liked his women. So far she had resisted his advances but he knew she was interested, and he also knew the best way to gain a woman’s attention was to feign indifference. He was especially adept at using one woman as a weapon to get at another and tonight gorgeous young Lily Molyneux was that weapon.

He felt Lily shiver as he put his arms around her to claim his dance. He glanced mockingly down at her and said, “Are you cold, my dear?” And Lily thought she would die from blushing as he swung her masterfully into the waltz. She was a wonderful dancer, graceful and confident, and she leaned away from him trying to concentrate on the music and not his nearness.

“I’m afraid you have caused me a little trouble,” she said as the music ended and he took her arm to lead her to the buffet. “It took a lot of explaining to convince the man who thought he was taking me into supper that I had quite forgotten that I had already promised you. Now I’m afraid I’ve lost a friend.”

He shrugged, uncaring. “No matter. You have a thousand others. They say you are the most popular girl of the Season.”

She looked modestly down. “Oh, that’s all meaningless gossip. And besides, it’s so juvenile. I’ve put it all behind me now.”

“Have you indeed,” he replied drily.

She bit her lip again, glancing anxiously up at him. But Dermot wasn’t laughing at her. In fact he wasn’t even looking at her. His eyes were locked with those of the married woman standing alone by the dining room door. Lily stared from one to the other, her mouth open in dismay, but then, as quickly as if it had never happened, Dermot guided her to a table.

“Can we take it that, as you have put all things juvenile
behind you, you will no longer be devouring dessert?” he asked, glancing across the room at the enormous buffet tables piled with golden platters of pink salmon and coral lobsters, orange shrimp and lustrous oysters; and silver platters of pheasant and woodcock and spiced mutton; and crystal cornucopias of fruits and quivering colored jellies and lacy confections of spun sugar, chocolate, and cream.

Lily’s mouth watered as she looked at the display. She was starving and felt she could have devoured the lot. Instead she said in her most bored grown-up voice, “I would like a glass of champagne.”

Dermot summoned a footman bearing drinks, then he leaned his elbows on the table, watching as she gulped it down quickly. Lily said she would like another and the footman placed the second glass on the table in front of her.

“Is this a replacement for the chocolate?” Dermot asked, bored with the idea of being in charge of a young girl who was bent on getting tipsy.

Lily banged her glass angrily on the table and the wine slopped over the sides. “Jayzus, Dermot Hathaway,” she exclaimed angrily, “why did you ask me to supper if you hate me?”

His eyebrows rose in surprise. So, the beautiful bland fairy-tale princess had another side to her, after all.

He said, “My dear Lily, I asked you to supper because you are by far the most beautiful woman in this room.”

A hundred men had already told her that, but this time all she could say, nervously, was, “Oh.”

“I’m sure your father can look forward to a very successful marriage for you,” he said softly. “Any man would be proud to possess a woman like you.”

“Oh,” Lily said again. Her lips were parted and her eyes wide with surprise. She had thought she was losing her fight for his attention, especially when she had seen that woman and Dermot lock glances like gladiators in battle. She thought maybe it was because she was acting more
grown-up, drinking the champagne and all, and maybe pretending to be aloof, that had finally caught his attention. Now he knew
she
was a woman too.

“I’m going to get you some food,” he said. “It’s my experience that two glasses of champagne, a young girl, and an empty stomach do not mix.”

She stared after him, thrilled, thinking how kind and thoughtful he was after all. Although she wished he would stop calling her “a young girl” when she felt as grown-up as the woman he was talking to this very minute. The same one, she realized jealously, who had eyed him so possessively earlier. But it was nothing, just a brief few words, a mere politeness she was sure, and then Dermot was back with a footman carrying a tray of food.

“Jayzus,” she said teasingly. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”

His prominent dark eyes roamed restlessly around the room and he barely touched his own food, but Lily did not even notice. Her tongue and her inhibitions were loosened by the third glass of champagne she insisted on having and she chattered gaily about Ardnavarna and her hunters.

His eyes rested momentarily on her and he said with a flicker of interest, “I hear you are a fine horsewoman, Lily. Almost as good as your father.”

“Did Pa tell you that?” she asked eagerly.

“I believe it was your brother.”

“Oh, William.” She shrugged her creamy shoulders, hitching up her satin bodice as it slithered perilously down her breasts. “He’s no good on a horse. Never will be.”

“I’m having a house party for the hunt the weekend after next,” he said suddenly. “Your parents were invited. Why don’t you come with them? You might enjoy it.”

Her huge blue eyes shone with excitement and triumph. “Oh. I’m sure I shall.”

The music had started up again in the ballroom and she saw the boy to whom she had promised the next dance standing by the door, looking for her.

“Oh, dammit, dammit,” she muttered as he came to claim her.

“Thank you for the pleasure of your company, Lily.” Dermot took her hand, but instead of bowing as was proper, he carried it to his lips, and Lily felt the world explode into a thousand stars as the tremor of excitement reached from his mouth to her breast to her loins. His hot dark eyes burned for a few seconds into hers and then with a bow he was gone.

Minutes later, she saw him deep in conversation with the beautiful blond woman. And then she did not see him again for the rest of the evening.

At midnight, dizzy from the champagne and with a pounding headache, she said good night to her hostess and wound her way slowly up the curving Georgian staircase to her second-floor room. The lamps were lit and a maid was waiting to help her out of her dress and to hang up her clothes. Lily washed her face in ice-cold water from a jug and held a compress to her head to stop it throbbing. She flung off the rest of her things and climbed into the flannel nightdress that Mammie always insisted she take, because, despite the roaring fires in every grate, Irish country houses were notoriously cold.

She flung open her window and hung her head out, taking great gulps of the icy air. Then, feeling stronger, she turned back to the cosy fire and picked up a small leather-bound book of Lord Byron’s poems. She fluttered through its pages but she was really thinking of Dermot. She just couldn’t forget him and she threw down the book with a groan of despair. The man was destined to haunt her for the rest of her life; she just knew it. She remembered that she had not seen him since supper. Perhaps he had felt ill? Maybe he was all alone in his room, just down the corridor from hers? Maybe he was feeling sick and lonely, with no one to take care of him? She looked at the book of poems. What better excuse than to take him a book in case he couldn’t sleep.

Without stopping to think, she threw on her long blue
woolen dressing gown, grabbed the book of poetry, and opened her door. The corridor was at least twenty yards long, and the candles in the wall sconces cast mysterious shadows. She peered anxiously from side to side. The sounds of music and laughter floated faintly up the stairs, but the servants were still on duty downstairs, and up here all was quiet.

She closed the door softly behind her. She knew Dermot’s room was across the corridor from hers and four doors along because she had made it her business to find out, and she glanced apprehensively over her shoulder as she tapped on the door, wondering what she would do if she were caught knocking on a man’s door in the middle of the night. There was no response and she knocked again. Suddenly she heard footsteps on the stairs. She glanced wildly down the corridor at her room, but there was no time to reach it. She opened Dermot’s door, stepped inside, and closed it quickly. She leaned against it, her eyes shut and her heart still pounding. And then she opened them again and saw Dermot.

He was standing by the bed looking at her. He had taken off his shirt and she noticed the dark hair curling across his broad chest, and then the blond woman sprawled, naked as Manet’s scandalous “Olympia,” on his tumbled bed.

The book of poems she was carrying fell to the floor with a thud. “Oh,” she gasped. “Oh, oh …” And then she turned and fled back out the door, not caring who might see her.

The sound of their mocking laughter followed her down the corridor, and she pressed her hands over her ears to shut it out, remembering the amusement in the woman’s eyes as she lay there naked, uncaring who saw her in Dermot Hathaway’s bed. And the strange, knowing gleam in Dermot’s eyes as he had watched her staring at them.

She hurled herself into her room and slammed the door behind her. Tears streamed from her face as she flung herself onto the bed. “Jayzus. Dammit, dammit, dammit,” she
roared, pounding her clenched fists into the pillow. She just knew she would never forget the scene. And their cruel laughter. And the look in Dermot’s eyes. Never. Never. Never.

T
HE DAY BEFORE
they were to go to Hathaway Castle for the hunt, Lord Molyneux came down with an attack of gout. Lady Nora said she had to stay home with him because he was like an angry bear when he was sick and only she could cope, and that the visit to Hathaway Castle would have to be canceled. Lily was devastated. Despite what had happened, she desperately wanted to see Dermot again, but her mother firmly said no. Still, when she pouted and stamped her foot, telling Pa she dearly wanted to see the famous castle and how disappointed she was, he finally agreed she could go. She would take her old nanny as chaperone, and Finn would go on ahead with the horses.

Hathaway Castle crouched malevolently on the top of a hill by the ocean in County Clare. To the east it faced the plains and valleys where, for centuries, the warlike Hathaways had been able to spy their enemies approaching.

The western facade of the castle faced the ocean and the Atlantic gales swept over and around and, some guests said, shivering,
through
the castle walls, howling like a banshee when the winter storms struck.

As she stepped from the carriage, Lily wished she had never come, but she had just not been able to stop herself. Dermot Hathaway lured her like a salmon to the leap in springtime. She was crazy for him. He was in her head, waking and sleeping. He was different from all the other
young men she knew, and he had the fascination of the unknown. And the forbidden.

She followed the footman along stone-walled corridors and through vaulted archways, noticing the fine Persian silk rugs and the suits of armor in the hallways and the ancient battle weapons—axes, swords, and cudgels—displayed in glass-topped chests. Her room, entered through a creaking Gothic door, was enormous and looked out over the castle grounds to the sea.

She flung open the window while her nanny unpacked her bags, listening to the ocean hurling itself onto the rocks and watching the black clouds piling up in the windy sky. The weather did not look too promising for tomorrow’s hunt and she crossed her fingers, praying the storm would go away because she so badly wanted to show off how good an equestrian she was for Dermot Hathaway.

The storm struck at eight o’clock, just as the twenty guests were congregating for drinks before dinner. Fires roared in the huge stone hearths at either end of the great double-height room, and charcoal braziers were placed along its length for extra warmth as the Atlantic gales whistled through the rafters, echoing down the chimneys and hurling a skyful of rain at the windows.

The guests, grouped on sofas or standing near the fires, chattered about how ‘elemental’ Hathaway Castle was, and debated the odds for the hunt the next day.