The Secret Rose (3 page)

Quenton had not set out to beat his daughter, but she had provoked him beyond all reason. Life had cheated him of every pleasure. He had deliberately set out to marry into Irish nobility in hopes of becoming a gentleman of leisure. Instead, he was the impoverished recipient of a castle ruin and a wife who repeatedly lost his sons but had given birth
to this strange daughter whose only purpose in life seemed to be to defy him. He must have his revenge, and he would.

Reason slowly reasserted itself, scoring through the whiskey fumes of his mind. If he injured or crippled her, he would lose the opportunity for revenge against her. The Gilliams expected a quiet, modest lass as their daughter’s companion. What they would get was Aisleen. It was a fitting curse on them. They would come to rue the day Aisleen Fitzgerald came into their lives as much as he did the day she was born to him.

His arm fell heavily to his side, and the belt slipped from his grip. “Get out! Get out of me sight, lass, before I kill ye!”

Aisleen rose from her knees, onto which the blows had forced her, and brought her hands tightly over her mouth. For a long moment, a rage to match her father’s pumped blood heatedly through her abused body. Something seemed to catch fire within her soul, to burn and blacken and shrivel as she fought against the consuming pain of his hatred. He hated her and she…she hated him.

The thought so frightened Aisleen that she turned and ran out of the room.

When she was gone, Quenton Fitzgerald sank heavily back into his chair and reached again for the silver flask. Seeing his daughter’s fearful, tear-blurred face had not given him the satisfaction he thought it should have. There had been something else in her expression, and it had quite astonished him. In the golden brown depths of her eyes, he had seen strength and courage, a determination more powerful than his own. He had not bested her; he had only made her hate him.

A shadow passed before the sun, casting the Great Half in shadow, and Quenton shuddered. Someone had stepped on his grave.

Quickly he tipped the silver flask to his lips and drained
it.

*

“If the twelve Apostles in heaven came down asking me to say a single kindly word about Himself, I could nae give them satisfaction!” Nuala muttered as she bathed the long red welts on Aisleen’s exposed back. “The devil knows what’s to become of us! Skelping bairns with a great ugly belt ’til they bleed! May the devil choke him!”

Aisleen lowered her head onto her crossed arms on the table, tears running down her face. Her arms and back stung horribly, but she did not whimper as Nuala applied a cool lard and laurel-leaf poultice to her skin. The effects of the beating would heal, she told herself. Yet the wounds caused by her father’s words gaped wider with every heartbeat. If Liscarrol was lost, forever and ever future generations of Fitzgeralds would remember the name of Aisleen Fitzgerald with a mutter and a curse.

She squeezed her eyes shut to prevent more tears. Was there nothing she could do to change that? She was not the son her father desired. She was not the obedient daughter he demanded. Worst of all, she was not the magical creature he needed. Because of her lack, was she doomed to dishonor and shame? “Do you believe in magic, Nuala?”

Nuala’s brow rose halfway up her forehead. “Now why would ye be asking such a question?”

“Da believes,” she said very softly.

Nuala exchanged enlightened glances with Alvy. “Poteen’s addled him, that’s what!” she said. “Ye’re to keep shy of yer da these next days. Alvy and me will be making a place for ye at our cottage. Aye, that’ll serve.”

Aisleen lifted her head. “I cannot. I’m going away.”

“Of course ye are,” Nuala agreed, “and never soon
enough, I’m thinking. Meanwhile I’ll be having a word with yer ma about ye stopping with us.” She winked. “On account of ye come down with the ague and her so great with child.”

Aisleen shook her head. “Da’s sending me away. To England.”

Nuala’s hearth-reddened complexion blanched. “Away? To great bloody England? The man’s that mad!”

Aisleen’s dark-honey eyes shone with tears, but her voice was calm. “You’re not to tell Ma. He might hurt her if she pleaded for me.”

Nuala balked. “I’d like to see Himself raise a hand to the lady of the house!” Instantly, she realized what she was saying, and her eyes slipped from Aisleen’s. “Oh, the Lord save us!”

“Can I go now?” Aisleen asked as she pulled up the shoulders of her gown.

“And where would ye be going?” Nuala asked suspiciously.

“Down to the river,” Aisleen answered. “I like dangling my feet in the coolness.”

“Stay away from the castle!” Nuala called as the girl slipped out the door. “’Tis a queer business, that,” she said to Alvy. “And Himself as drunk as any lord before the sun’s good and proper in the sky. Magic, is it, he’s thinking about? Himself should steer clear of the doings of the
Sidhe
.
If ’tis true and the lass is one of their own, they won’t take kindly to the morning’s business. Mark me words, Alvy, dark times ahead! And nae just the bairn will suffer!”

*

A week later, Aisleen lay in the tall grasses which shielded her from view and chewed a spearmint leaf she had plucked from the herb garden by the kitchen door. The sharp tang of it tickled her tongue as she lazily dragged her toes in the
bracing water. She did not think about the fact that she was crushing the new velvet gown her father had bought especially for her journey to the Gilliams. She did not think about the grass stains that were seeping into the white silk stockings she had cast aside. Nor did she care that her new dress shoes, black and hard as iron pots, were soaking up the damp. She thought only of the moment, with no past and no future, only the deep resonant hum of insects and the incessant bickering of birds.

Colleen?
The question was tentative, as if the poser doubted her reply.

Aisleen closed her eyes. “Go away! I did not call ye!”

Aye! Ye did, and ye know it.

Aisleen rolled over onto her stomach. It was true. Without realizing it, she had allowed herself to drift into thoughts of
bouchal
for the first time in a week.

Colleen?

“Aye,” she answered reluctantly.

There was a moment’s pause.
’Tis been so great a time since ye called me I thought ye was terrible sick or hurt. But then, I always feel that, ye know?

Aisleen did know. He knew things about her not another living soul knew. That was why she had deliberately closed him off. If he knew what had happened, that Liscarrol had been lost forever and, that it was her fault, then he might curse her name, and she could not bear that.

His voice was strangely hesitant as he said,
There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell ye.

Aisleen sat up. “What is it?”

I’m going away.

The words came matter-of-factly from him, yet Aisleen shivered as though the sun had suddenly slipped behind the shoulder of a rain cloud. “Going away? Why?”

Come with me.

She felt his presence surrounding her, as warm and
enveloping as a summer breeze. He smelled of sweet grass, sea air, and—Aisleen wrinkled her nose—fish.

Ye hate it here. Ye’re paining and ’tis yer da’s fault. Do nae lie. I know he beats ye. Ye’ve called out to me though ye did nae know it. I could nae take the pain away, but now I can free ye. Come away! We’ll have grand adventures, ye and me. Say ye’ll come!

Aisleen sat perfectly still. It had never before occurred to her that she could escape her father’s plans for her by running away. Da was sending her away, but that was different from running away. Besides, there was her mother. Her father might not ever want to see her again, but her mother would write to her, perhaps be allowed to come and see her. If she ran away…

Come along!
he pleaded with a hint of impatience.
Are ye afraid, then?

Was she? For years she and
bouchal
had plotted and planned and dreamed of the things they might do if only they could. But it was only make-believe. It was not real. It was impossible. “You’re not real!”

She had not meant to say that, had not even meant to think it, but it was out. “No! I did not mean it!”

It was too late. She felt
bouchal
withdrawing from her. “Don’t you see, there’s no magic. It was me who made you and…and—”

And if you don’t believe, then I don’t exist
,
he finished in a sad, weak voice that trailed back toward her like a distant echo.

“Go then!” she cried in frustration. “See if I care!”

Appalled, she clamped both hands over her mouth. He was gone. Would he ever speak to her again? The fear that he might not overrode the suspense of what lay ahead of her. Would it not be better to run away, even with a phantom friend, than to be carted off to a strange place to live among strange people?

“Wait!
Bouchal?
I’ve changed my mind! Take me with you!”

For a long moment, there was silence.

Before she could cry out to him a second time, the reeds parted and Alvy appeared. “Ye best be coming quick! Himself is calling for ye.” She looked at Aisleen’s rumpled gown and muddied stockings and water-logged shoes and shook her head, glad that the master was not waiting for her.

Aisleen gathered her stockings and shoes with a heavy heart. The moment was gone, gone forever, and with it
bouchal
.

“I did not mean it!” she whispered fervently as she cast a last look at the place where
bouchal
had been beside her. “Even if ye never answer me, I did not mean it when I said that you’re not real. I believe you’re real! Please take me with you! Please!”

Only the breeze sighed in answer, and she knew in that moment that she had lost everything, her home, her family, and
bouchal
.

The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,

To these Old Night shall all her mystery tell…

—The Rose of Battle

W. B. Yeats

Chapter Two

Somerset, England: 1844

Miss Emilia Burke regarded her two new pupils with dispassionate interest. Ella Gilliam, the elder of the girls, was plump, with a weak but pleasant face that bespoke the personality of a spaniel, eager to please and simply directed. Miss Burke always summed her girls up by attributing to them the character of an animal. It made it much easier to remember how to deal with each. The pugnacious bulldog must be dealt with differently from the stubborn mule or the skittish colt.

She reached out and rubbed one of the girl’s golden curls between her fingers. The hair was of good quality, the cheeks rosy, the mouth small and pink. “Show your teeth, miss,” she directed and nodded in satisfaction to see a full set on display.

As she walked slowly around the girl who stood ramrod
straight in the middle of the office, Miss Burke took note of each and every detail of her clothing, frowning when she detected the frayed edge of her collar. Really, it was too much to expect her to perform miracles on an Irish-reared English lady. She smiled a tight self-satisfied smile. That was why the Gilliams had paid handsomely for the girl’s entrance. They hoped for a miracle that only she could work.

At fourteen, Ella Gilliam was late in coming under her tutelage. Every effort must be made to further her quickly, for the parents expected much more of Miss Burke’s Academy for Young Ladies than simple schooling in deportment, art, and music. Girls who finished her course were meant to set a standard, to become a divining rod between what was acceptable in polite society and what was not.

Miss Burke nodded finally. “You will do very well if you study hard and work hard and pay the strictest attention to the other ladies who have had the great good fortune to be under my care a number of years. Your posture needs improvement. Your speech is lacking in the vowels and your hands, well, the less said the better. Miss Crockett is quite brilliant with cremes and softening agents. We shall see, yes, Miss Gilliam, I believe we shall see rapid improvement.”

Less interestedly, she turned to the second girl. There was little to be seen beneath the brim of her bonnet: a round chin, short nose liberally sprinkled with freckles, downcast eyes. “State your name, child.”

“Aisleen Meghan Deirdre Fitzgerald’s me name,” Aisleen answered proudly as she lifted her eyes from the carpet.

“Gracious!” Miss Burke exclaimed at the young girl’s thick accent. “What sort of heathen gibberish does the child speak?”

“’Tis English, I’m thinking,” Aisleen answered, not realizing that she had been spoken of, not to.
Miss Burke’s usually serene features puckered, betraying the age lines about her mouth and eyes. “Do not speak until spoken to!”

“But you
did
speak to me,” Aisleen replied, puzzlement clouding her eyes.

“Impertinent chit!” Miss Burke said, mentally attaching the designation “sly fox” to the girl’s character. “Remove your bonnet.”

Aisleen reached up to do just that, her eyes curiously on the tall woman in black who stood staring down her long nose at her. When she slipped her bonnet off she saw the woman’s mouth form a perfect “O” of surprise and her brows—“Why, miss, you’ve been drawing brows on your forehead with a pencil!”