Legacy of Secrets (63 page)

“Finn O’Keeffe!” Ciel leapt to her feet and ran toward him. She grabbed his hands. “Can it really be you?” she demanded, looking him up and down. He was lean and darkly handsome and immaculate. “The last time I saw you, you were in a green striped vest and riding breeches, with two days’ stubble on your handsome face and a wicked gleam in your eye that was the scourge of every maiden from Galway to Westport.”

He grinned back at her. “The gleam’s still there, only the suit is different,” he said. “And maybe what’s inside, too, now I’ve had a chance to learn how to behave myself properly in good society.”

“And how to make money,” Ciel exclaimed, never one to hold back what she was thinking. “They tell me you are a rich man, maybe richer than Pa.” She grinned at him. “That wouldn’t be too difficult—the old boy was gambling
away a fortune at the end. I’ve come down in the world, and you have gone up.”

“We were not expecting you, Finn,” Lily said coldly.

“Dan told me Ciel would be here. How could I miss the opportunity to see my tormentor again?” He grinned at her. “Just don’t expect me to dance like a bear for you, little Miss Ciel.”

She laughed and he took a seat next to her, throwing Lily a mock pleading glance. “Can you spare a plate of food for a poor fella who has just made the long journey from New York City, and who’s starvin’ and in need of a jar or two?”

“Oh, stop with that silly brogue,” she said impatiently, signaling the maid to set another place.

Dan poured the wine and said, “I’m surely glad you are here, Finn. Now it’s the four of us together. A family. And that’s just the way it should be.”

Finn sipped the claret and looked admiringly at Ciel. “Nobody told me you had grown into a beauty,” he said.

She threw him a skeptical look. “Now stop with your blarney, Finn O’Keeffe. No one in their right mind would ever call me beautiful. So either you’re out of your mind or you’re a terrible flatterer.”

“Both,” he said firmly, and they laughed. “You look just grand,” he said sincerely. “So elegant, and so, so … carrot-headed and lively. I always liked you, Ciel.”

Lily quickly rang the bell for the maid to clear their plates. “If you are too busy talking to eat your dinner, Finn, then we shall just go on to dessert,” she snapped.

Surprised, Ciel stared at her; after all, Finn had only been there ten minutes.

“Do we get to see young Liam tonight?” he asked after dinner when they were back in the drawing room.

Lily threw him a venemous glance and he smiled sweetly back at her. “It’s too late,” Lily said. “He’s sleeping.”

“Oh, come on, Lily, you can’t keep a man away from his own
nephew,
” he said cajolingly. “After all, I don’t see him that often.”

“Sure you can see him.” Dan was always ready to show off his boy. “Why don’t we all go and take a peek at him.”

“He was coughing today. I had to send for the doctor,” Lily objected, and Ciel stared at her. She knew perfectly well the doctor had said there was nothing wrong with Liam.

“Oh, please, Lily,” she begged.

Lily led the way upstairs, resentment showing in the stiffness of her back and the flounce of her skirts. Liam was asleep. “Did you ever see anything so innocent and sweet?” Ciel whispered, glancing at her sister, thinking what a lucky woman she was. She had it all: a handsome rich husband who adored her, a beautiful home, and a son everyone loved.

“He’s surely a handsome little fellow,” Dan whispered. “And he’s so nearly mine now that, looking at him, you might almost think there was a bit of genuine O’Keeffe blood in him.”

“You might at that,” Finn agreed.

Lily’s cheeks burned as she bent over her son and pulled the blanket up to his neck. “He must be kept warm,” she admonished the under-nurse, waiting outside the door. But the tremor in her voice was not from worry. It was fear of Finn and the power he had over her. And there was nothing she could do about it.

Back downstairs again, Finn said to Ciel, “I shall be in Boston for a couple of days. Why not let me show you around.”

“I had planned to show Ciel the sights myself,” Lily protested, trying to keep him out of her life. “After all, we haven’t seen each other in years.”

“Then maybe you both can spare time to come and take tea with me tomorrow afternoon. And maybe later I can be the one to show you New York.”

“Maybe,” Ciel replied, walking him to the door. He turned to wave as he strode away, and with a sinking heart Lily noticed the little smile on her sister’s face as she watched him go.

“S
O THERE THEY ALL WERE, TOGETHER AGAIN,
Only this time they were equals,” I told Shannon, sitting next to me on the big blue brocade sofa with the broken springs that grab you when you sit down, causing unsuspecting ladies to imagine someone might have pinched their bottoms.

Shannon slid onto the rug where Eddie was already stretched full-length in front of the fire, his hands behind his head and his eyes closed, and I swung my legs thankfully up onto the sofa. I propped a couple of cushions behind my head, admiring my black suede high-heeled pumps and wishing that my ankles were not quite so skinny. I have been eating so much, with my two visitors to encourage me every night, that I thought I might have put on a bit of weight. But no such luck. The older I get, the thinner I get, and that’s just the way it is.

“Anyway,” I said, “Ciel told me that Finn was the best-looking man she ever saw: tall and broad-shouldered with a strong, wiry body, piercing gray eyes, and a lean jaw. He had thick black hair with a tendency to wave, which he wore brushed straight back. And he looked like the million dollars or more he was worth, in custom-tailored suits and fur-collared overcoats, and he certainly knew how to treat a girl.

“ ‘Obviously from experience,’ she told me, a little bitterly I thought, but that was before I heard what happened. Well, of course, he wooed her. He pursued her with telephone calls and surprise visits and flowers until Ciel said Lily was tearing her hair out with anger, and she couldn’t understand why, so she asked her.”

“H
E’S JUST SUCH
…
SUCH A PEASANT,
” Lily exclaimed with snobbish venom. “Then you are a peasant’s wife, because you are married
to his brother,” Ciel retorted. “And I can see no reason why I shouldn’t go to New York to see him.”

Lily flounced away up the stairs. “Oh, go if you must,” she called angrily. “But I’m warning you, you have to watch out for a man like that. He has a bad reputation with women.” She turned to look at her. “You have led a sheltered life, Ciel. You know nothing about men like him. I’m just looking out for my little sister, that’s all.”

She had no need to worry; Ciel wasn’t about to let herself be seduced by Finn, but she
was
falling in love with him. How could she not? He met her in New York and he treated her as though she were the most precious creature on earth; he filled her hotel room with apricot roses—to match her hair, he told her. He bought her jeweled trinkets: tiny parrots and bees and horses and spotted dogs in diamonds and onyx. They made her laugh and she said she didn’t know where she could pin such a large menagerie because her bosom was already so full of Mammie’s glittering stuff.

He showed her the city and dazzled her with the somber, monied splendor of his offices and the deference with which everyone from the doorman upward greeted him. He took her to see the Statue of Liberty and the latest musical show; he wined her and dined her at all the smartest restaurants, and he bombarded her with telephone calls even when he had only just left her and she had her head on her pillow, ready to go to sleep.

“Just to say I miss you, Ciel,” he said in that low voice that sent a shiver down her spine.

“Silly man,” she told him, “you’ve only just left me half an hour ago.”

“The longest half hour of my life,” he murmured, and she laughed as she hung up the receiver.

Finn O’Keeffe James was showing off for her and she knew it, and she loved it. And despite Lily’s uncalled-for objections, she went as often as she could to New York to see him, and he came to Boston more frequently than he ever had before.

“I don’t know what you see in the man,” Lily fumed.

“And I don’t know why you are so against him. He’s just fun to be with, Lily, that’s all,” Ciel said, afraid for some unknown reason to confess to her sister that she was in love with him.

He kissed her for the first time exactly three months to the day after he had remet her. “An anniversary kiss,” he told her, only somehow it felt like much more than that, and it sent unexpected quivers through Ciel’s veins and tingling little messages to nerve ends she hadn’t known she possessed.

“I’m afraid I’m falling in love with you,” he murmured, and she hung her head, shy for once, unwilling to admit to herself that she was falling in love with him, because she was too worried about what Lily might say.

A month later Finn invited the sisters to dinner at his Louisburg Square house. Lily wanted to kill him because of the way he was romancing her sister. She just knew he was doing it to torture her, to show her how little he cared about her. And to flaunt his power over her. And she was sure poor little Ciel was falling for his blarney, no matter how she tried to put her off him. She told herself he would soon be bored of his game, and she tried to think of some suitable men for her sister.

The week of the dinner party Lily came down with a bout of influenza and the doctor forbade her to set foot out of bed, so Ciel went alone.

The butler showed her into the drawing room where Finn was waiting. The weather had turned springlike; all the windows were open and a pleasant breeze ruffled the curtains, bringing the scent of the blossoming lilacs from the garden.

“Am I the first to arrive?” she asked, unaware that she was repeating her sister’s exact words, and that Finn had staged exactly the same performance.

“You are the only guest,” he told her. “I canceled everyone else when I heard Lily couldn’t come, because then I knew I should have you all to myself. It’s all right,” he
assured her when she glanced nervously around, “the servants will chaperone us. Don’t worry, I won’t try to seduce you.”

“Jayzus, Finn James,” she said with a laugh. “You are an impertinent old fellow to imagine you could even do such a thing.”

He took a ring box from his pocket and she stared, dazzled, at the enormous emerald surrounded by diamonds. Then he went down on one knee and said solemnly, “Ciel, I know I’m not worthy of you. You know my humble background only too well, but I hope you’ll see I’ve risen above it. My heart is in my mouth with fear you’ll refuse me, but I’m asking you to do me the honor of becoming my wife.”

She stared at him, smiling, pink-faced with pleasure. “That must be the longest proposal of marriage ever spoken.
And
the biggest ring.” She tapped him jokingly on each shoulder, the way a queen did when knighting her subject, and said, “Arise, Sir Finn O’Keeffe James. I have just promoted you to the aristocracy so you can ask me to marry you properly, and away with all that ‘humble’ nonsense.”

He threw his arms around her, laughing. “Dear God,” he demanded, casting his eyes questioningly to heaven, “why didn’t I meet her before—”

“Before what?” she asked. But he just shrugged and said, “You haven’t given me an answer.”

“You haven’t asked properly yet.”

“Ciel, will you please marry me?” he shouted.

“Yes, dammit,” she yelled, and they fell, laughing, into each other’s arms.

Ciel put her engagement ring on a ribbon and hung it around her neck, hiding it under her dress until she could pluck up the courage to tell Lily she was going to marry Finn.

A few days later, the time seemed right. Finn was in New York, Dan was in Washington, and she and Lily were alone.

Ciel put on her ring and went with her sister and Liam
for a walk on the Common. She watched Liam kicking a ball around and her sister trying not to rush to pick him up every time he fell. “I can’t bear it when he gets hurt,” Lily said. “Dan always tells him, ‘Buck up, old fella, there’s nothing to cry about. It’s only a scratch,’ and I always rush for iodine and bandages, thermometers and kisses.”

“That’s love,” Ciel said philosophically. “And talking of love …”

Lily looked suspiciously at her. “What about it?”

Ciel held out her left hand. The emerald glinted like green ice in the sunlight. “Finn asked me to marry him,” Ciel said, her eyes as starry as the diamonds on the ring.

Lily felt the blow to her heart; she turned without a word and ran after Liam. She picked him up and held him close, fighting back her tears. “The bastard, oh, the treacherous bastard,” she repeated over and over to herself. “How could he do this to me? How could he push it this far?”

“Lily,” Ciel said pleadingly, but she ignored her, clutching her son closer.

“Lily, I don’t understand. Why are you so upset? What’s wrong with my marrying Finn? After all, you married his brother. I hoped you would be pleased for us.”

Lily swung around. She was too hurt to cry anymore. If Finn didn’t care what weapons he used against her, then neither did she. All was fair in love and war. She said desperately, “You can’t marry Finn.”

Bewildered, Ciel shook her head. Liam was crying, but for once Lily didn’t seem to notice. “But whyever not?” she begged. “Just tell me one good reason.”

“You are looking at him,” Lily said in a dead little voice. “This is Finn’s son.”

Ciel stared at her sister and then at Liam. She could see Lily was speaking the truth.

“Well, you did it again, Lily,” she said bitterly, trying to stop her heart from jumping into her throat and choking her. And then she turned away and walked quickly back across the Common.

C
IEL SAID HER TRUNKS WERE PACKED
and she was out of the house and on her way to New York by train that very evening without so much as a good-bye.

Lily had locked herself in her room, but Ciel did not want to see her anyway. She never cared if she saw her sister again. She left for England the following morning on the
Etruria,
the same liner she had sailed on so joyfully just a few months earlier. And two weeks later she was back home at Ardnavarna again, licking her wounds.