The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark (40 page)

“Indeed it—”

A slamming sound cut into her reply, and all three heads turned toward the
Larkspur
’s door. Mrs. Somerville, wearing a burgundy silk wrapper and with her hair disheveled about her shoulders, hurried up the garden path. “Oh, Mr. Jones?” she called, waving an envelope.

The postman mumbled something Fiona couldn’t decipher, but when she looked at him, he was hefting his satchel upon his shoulder again. She and Ambrose traded curious glances.

“Forgive my dressing gown,” the young woman pleaded at the gate, “but I’ve a letter that simply must go out today.”

She was close enough now for Fiona to notice the circles under her eyes. “Have you another headache, Mrs. Somerville?” she asked.

“No, thank you.” Mrs. Somerville sent a quick preoccupied smile in her direction while handing the envelope to Mr. Jones. As she watched it disappear into the satchel, she said, “Have you anything for me today?”

“Mr. Clay has all of the
Larkspur
’s mail, madam.” There was no mistaking the relief in the man’s expression as he touched the bill of his hat again. “I must attend to my rounds. Good day to all of you.”

Mrs. Somerville paid him no attention, for she was now at Ambrose’s elbow. “Are you going to stand there holding them all morning, Mr. Clay?”

“Be my guest,” he offered affably, handing over the stack of envelopes.

She scanned each address, her face losing a little of its composure with each that was flipped to the back. Then she sorted through them again. “It’s not here.”

“Well, perhaps tomorrow—”

Face clouding, she shoved the envelopes back into his hands. “Yes, perhaps.” She turned and hurried back to the house with her wrapper flowing about her ankles.

Fiona took a step in that direction but felt Ambrose’s hand upon her arm.

“You don’t want to get involved, Fiona.”

“But she’s upset, Ambrose.”

“Then she’ll have to find solace from someone else. The house is full of people.” He gave her a tender smile, but his gray eyes were serious. “I still have an uneasy feeling about her.”

Though she trusted his instincts, Fiona had to wonder if he was overreacting. “We practically live in the same house.”

“I don’t propose that we ignore her completely.” Ambrose glanced at the
Larkspur
and then lowered his voice. “Please. She’s been here only a fortnight. Let’s wait a little while longer before you go reading each other’s diaries and all that.”

Though she felt much sympathy for the lonely young woman, her first loyalty was to her husband. She resolved to pray that Mrs. Somerville would find the solace she needed, then said, “Reading each other’s diaries, Ambrose? First I would have to write one.”

Offering his elbow, he walked her along the garden wall again, around the corner, and toward the carriage drive. “Surely you kept one when you were a girl. I thought young ladies liked that sort of thing.”

“I didn’t learn to read until I was eighteen. But perhaps I’ll start one someday.”

“You’ll mention me every now and then, won’t you?”

Pretending to think this over, Fiona replied, “I suppose I would have to. After all, I do see you fairly often.”

He chuckled. “And what will you write, pray tell?”

“Ah, but diaries are supposed to be secret, Ambrose.”

“That’s so, Mr. Clay,” came a grating voice from across the lane.

A sweeter voice added, “I’ve even heard of some with locks and keys.”

Caught up in each other’s company, they had forgotten about the dear old village sentries. They turned to greet the Worthy sisters across the lane, and Ambrose asked them, grinning, “Surely you don’t believe a wife should keep secrets from her husband, do you?”

Jewel Worthy nodded enthusiastically. “Indeed she should. I didn’t tell my Silas every thought that rattled through my head. A woman’s got to have a little mystery about her if she wants to keep her man interested.”

“Why, Mrs. Worthy.” Ambrose cocked his head to study her. “There is more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there?”

Giving him a beatific smile, the elderly woman replied, “Begging your pardon, Mr. Clay, but if I didn’t tell my husband all there was to me, I’ll not be telling you.”

Jewel’s dry laughter filled the air, and soon Fiona and Ambrose and Iris were joining in. Minutes later, when Fiona and Ambrose had reached the staircase leading up to their apartment, her husband realized the letters were still in his hand. “Go on up, why don’t you?” he said. “I’ll bring these inside.”

“See if there’s anything for us first,” Fiona suggested.

“Certainly.”

As it turned out there was one for her from Ireland, addressed in the uneven print of her sister, Breanna. She went upstairs and sat down on the parlor settee, broke the seal, and straightened the page.

Dearest Fiona,

Aileen is soon to be marrying the Mooney boy who tends sheep. Our mother longs to see you, as we all do…

“Mother…Ireland,” Fiona murmured.

Chapter 26

There was no sign of Mrs. Beemish or Mr. Jensen as Ambrose walked up the back corridor, and the noises from the doorway suggested that the kitchen servants were too busy with lunch preparation to be troubled about letters. He walked on to the hall, exchanged greetings with Mrs. Dearing, who was squinting at an open exercise book at the piano, and fanned the envelopes out on a tea table where they could be seen.

“I believe there is a magazine here for you,” he said to the elderly woman. “Would you like it now?”

“I’ll see to it later, thank you.” Mrs. Dearing glanced toward the corridor doorway and lowered her voice. “Have you happened to see Mrs. Somerville this morning?”

“Why, yes. Just a little while ago.”

She hesitated before continuing. “I was just upstairs when she came bounding up the steps with her face flushed as if she’d been crying. But when I asked about her, she ignored me, went into her room, and slammed the door.”

After sending a look to the doorway himself, Ambrose said, “I’m certain it had nothing to do with you, Mrs. Dearing. It seems she was expecting an important piece of mail.”

The older woman breathed a sigh of relief. “Here I’ve been wondering if I’ve done something to offend her. Hopefully she’ll get her letter tomorrow.”

“Yes, hopefully.” On his way back down the corridor, Ambrose thought about the woman who was no doubt weeping upstairs. He could not help but feel sympathetic, his having had more than a nodding acquaintance with despondency. But when weighed against his wife’s welfare, Mrs. Somerville’s troubles did not even make the scale.

And he was positive by now that the
Larkspur
’s newest lodger had something against Fiona. More than once Ambrose had caught a look of contempt in her eyes when she looked at his wife. Whether from jealousy or prejudice against the Irish, he didn’t know or particularly care. He only knew that if Fiona allowed her innate compassion to draw her close to this woman, she would eventually be hurt.

His wife was standing at the window when Ambrose walked into the parlor of their apartment.

“You’ve delivered the letters?” she asked.

“As far as the hall. They’ll find their way to the owners soon enough.” He noticed the creased page on the settee. “How is your family?”

“Very well. There is to be a wedding in four weeks—my sister Aileen.”

She turned back to the window, prompting Ambrose to walk over to stand behind her and put a hand upon her shoulder. “You want to go, don’t you?”

“No, of course not.” But then she turned, and he could see the sheen in her eyes. “I never thought I would, after what my father did,” she murmured.

Ambrose knew the story. At the age of fourteen Fiona was married off to a cruel older man. Bartered, actually, because her father gained a horse and wagon from the arrangement. But he understood how enduring family ties could be. Though his father’s drinking and mood swings and his mother’s complacency had strained their relationships, he would want to see them were they still living.

“It’s been ten years since I left Ireland,” she went on with the most melancholy of expressions. “I’ve nieces and nephews I’ve never seen.”

“Then we’ll go, Fiona.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Why, we simply take the train to Bristol and catch a boat,” he teased.

Her eyes were still somber in spite of a grateful little smile. “May I be perfectly honest with you, Ambrose?”

“When have you ever been otherwise?”

She sighed. “You would despise every minute of it. Whether we stayed with my family or Breanna, there are too many people living in too close quarters to allow for any privacy. Especially with the wedding. I daresay we wouldn’t have a room to ourselves.”

“Surely there is an inn….”

“Not for thirty miles. What if you slipped into a dark mood while sharing a room with some of my brothers or Breanna’s boys?” She shook her head and said in a resigned tone, “It’s just too impractical to consider.”

“I’m sorry,” Ambrose told her, stepping back a bit with a heavy heart. Over the two years of their marriage, she had almost convinced him that it wasn’t weakness which made him the way he was. What a vain fool he had been to ignore the facts. For she was right. Such a situation would be sheer torture for him. Just imagining it made the back of his neck break out into a sweat.

But even more agonizing was the thought of her going there alone. True, she had emigrated from Ireland alone at the age of eighteen without incident, but she hadn’t been his wife then, and he hadn’t yet made it his life’s mission to protect her.

There was no reproach in the violet eyes that sought his. “You’re my family too, Ambrose.”

That wasn’t enough and he knew it. How much longer would her parents be alive? Would she resent him, even unwittingly, when they were gone?

The solution that suddenly entered his mind was so simple, so reasonable, that he took her hands and smiled. “We’ll send them the money to come here.”

“The money—”

“All of them. Surely they could use a holiday. And what better place to have a wedding?” Warming up to the idea, he made plans. “There are plenty of beds at the
Bow and Fiddle
, and—”

She took a hand from his and reached up to put a finger to his lips. “They can’t leave their crops, Ambrose. And likely wouldn’t come if they could. My folks are old and set in their ways. Besides, there is the young man’s family to consider as well. Will you have the whole of Kilkenny here?”

He didn’t know how to respond except for an unimaginative, “Oh.”

After lunch they sat in rocking chairs in the
Larkspur
’s library to read—or at least
she
read, from Charlotte Bronte’s
Villette
, while Ambrose merely stared at the same page of Disraeli’s
Felix Holt
until the print wavered as if underwater—when another solution occurred to him. A much more difficult one, at least for him. Dare he mention it?
You have to
, he told himself.

“Fiona.”

“Yes, Ambrose?” she said, looking up from her book.

“What is that oldest Keegan boy’s name?”

“You mean Tom?”

“Yes. How old is he?”

“Sixteen, I believe. He’s still in secondary school.”

“Which lets out in June. And the willow-gathering season should be over by then.”

She studied him curiously. “Are you suggesting that Tom accompany me?”

“Surely he would be willing to earn some money and see a bit of his homeland again at the same time.” He was a strapping lad as well, who looked older than sixteen. His presence in Fiona’s company would surely discourage anyone with less than honorable intentions. And as the Keegan family had seven children in their small cottage, he would most likely not balk at being asked to share a bed with any of Fiona’s brothers or nephews.

Ambrose couldn’t stop himself from harboring a selfish hope that she would decline the proposed arrangement. He felt shamed when relief flooded her face.

“Oh, Ambrose, that’s a wonderful idea.” With the book still open in her lap, she pressed her palms together and rested her fingertips against her chin. “And I wouldn’t worry about your being lonely with so many of our friends here.”

“Why, I’ll hardly know you’re gone,” he quipped in a performance worthy of any stage.

“Ambrose.” She straightened in her chair, violet eyes appraising him frankly “I’m not so foolish as to believe that. But you can bear it for a fortnight, can’t you?”

A fortnight?
He had had in mind a week or less when he suggested the Keegan boy. But he had to remind himself that it would take about three days to get to Kilkenny, and the same amount of time to return.
Two weeks without her?

“Because if you don’t think…”

Mustering a little smile, he replied, “I’ll miss you terribly, Fiona Clay, but it’s important that you go. I would rather suffer for two weeks now than live with guilt years later that I kept you from your family.”