Chapter Eighteen #2
“Should you not share quarters with your husband?” he questioned. “What will people think?”
“I am not returning to Klare Fields, my lord,” she said as the tears flowed more freely down her cheeks. “Mr. Felix is to see me to Cork City so I might book passage to England.”
“We are married,” he growled. “You may not leave without my permission.”
“You may force me to return with you, but know that my blood shall be on your hands, sir,” she countered.
“I may be made to remain by your side and made to follow your orders, but a servant is entitled to the privacy of her own bed.” When he glared at her as if she had opened a gulf between them, Annalise finished her accusation.
“Tell me, my lord, how am I better off with you than I was with either Alexander Dutton or Jacob Moran? You promised before God that you would protect me, and I would follow your lead. Therefore, if you demand it, I shall return to your grandmother’s home and be surrounded by people who do not speak the same language as I and continue to be forbidden the pleasure of company, not even yours, and where I have been confined except on the one evening of the Sangran wedding.
Whatever occurs there will rest on your shoulders. ”
A soft knock at the door brought the innkeeper. Beaufort opened the door to the man. “I have the other room available, but I must have the young girl stay with me own daughter. The inn be full, my lord.”
Her husband glanced at her. “The girl may stay with my lady wife. If we could have another mattress to place before the fire, we three men could stay together.”
Though Annalise did not understand the man’s Gaelic response, the innkeeper sounded pleased when he said, “You are quite gracious, my lord.”
After he closed the door, Beaufort obviously thought to reach for her, but he dropped his hand back to his side. “I do not wish to lose you, Annalise. There is no need for you to leave.”
“If you say so, my lord.” She easily assumed an obedient stance, one very familiar to her.
“Please do not stand as if you are still under Moran’s influence again,” he ordered.
“As you wish, my lord,” she responded meekly.
Obviously angry with her response, he jerked open the door and stormed away, leaving her in a room, not hers.
She remained as such, not even moving from the spot where she had made her stand against her husband’s orders, until the innkeeper and Miss Felix arrived with her trunk.
“This way, my lady,” Miss Felix said as she carried several bags.
“It was very kind of you to permit me to stay with you.”
Beaufort went looking for Mr. Felix. “It is impossible,” he grumbled under his breath as he approached where Felix and O’Connor awaited him at one of the tables near the rear of the inn.
He caught up a nearby chair to place it with the spindle back against the edge of the table, where he might straddle it. “Speak to me,” he ordered Felix.
“Should I leave?” O’Connor asked.
“You may be required to keep me sane,” Navan declared. “Though this stays among us three.”
Felix warned. “I doubt such might be possible, me lord. There be a dozen or more folks about when her ladyship sought protection in the manor’s kitchen.”
Navan had hoped for a different outcome, but he said, “Tell me what you know.”
Felix said solemnly. “You know this be secondhand. My sister-in-marriage shared it with me, but only when she asked me to escort your wife to Neidín. Our Agnes be very closed mouth and not prone to gossip.”
Navan said, “I am listening.”
Felix nodded his agreement. “You are aware how much your grandmother dislikes the English. She still believes the English had something to do with the death of your mother. Lady Klare not be the same after Lady Aine’s death, but, originally, she had to be strong for you.”
“It was not the English,” Navan protested, “but rather my father’s brother.”
“We all know this,” O’Connor said. “In your sister’s opinion, why does Lady Klare despise Lady Beaufort?”
“Agnes does not think Lady Klare truly despises Lady Beaufort. Agnes says Lady Klare’s memory is no longer right.
Her ladyship believes the English stole Lady Aine away and then there was the time the English sent the Scottish lord to rescue you before your uncle moved against you.
Your grandmother believes the reason she lost Lord Klare was that he sustained a wound protecting you from Lord Ruxart Beaufort. ”
“Lord Klare was not with us the day of Ruxart’s attack,” Navan protested.
“That is just it,” Felix explained. “Agnes says your grandmother be more ill than many know.”
“Ill?” Navan asked in concern. “How so?” He could not imagine losing his grandmother, for there were few with whom he actually shared blood. Even Ruxart Beaufort and many of his family had been executed for murder.
“She not be just growing old. Her thoughts be old, too. Agnes says her ladyship has what many of her age do. Her memory be going back to former times, and they are no longer accurate, for they are mixed together with other memories, and her ladyship not always be knowing what is real and what is not. Lady Klare sometimes thinks our Kella is your mother Lady Aine, when your mother was that age. We think it is because of the color of Kella’s hair. ”
“Why did no one speak of this before I arrived?” Navan demanded.
O’Connor looked as perplexed as Navan. “I’ve heard nothing of this, but I am not often in her ladyship’s company, and she knows me as working for you at Beaufort Court. When we speak, Lady Klare appears cognizant of what I ask.”
Felix said, “But you be asking the same thing each time. Our Agnes say, my lord, that your bringing Lady Beaufort to Lady Klare’s home would be, in your grandmother’s mind, as if your grandfather brought home a new bride to displace her.
I know you do not favor Lord Klare, but you be using his study and sitting in his chair at the table and are now considered the lord of the manor. ”
“Then it is possible that my grandmother wished to remove Lady Beaufort from Klare Fields’s Manor?” he asked in stunned disbelief.
“Such be what Mrs. Felix believes, my lord, and you know how much Lady Klare depends upon our Agnes. She still confides in Agnes when she would deny it being so with others.”
Beaufort had not dined with any of them that evening, but he had slid a note under Annalise’s door saying he would escort her to Cork City, and a ship would be available for the two of them to make the day’s journey to Cork on the morrow.
The next morning, she was waiting in the main hall of the inn.
Mr. Felix had carried her small trunk down.
Odd as it would be to say so, she had left part of her new wardrobe at Dutton Hall and another part at Klare Fields.
Basically, she had only brought with her the few pieces she had owned under Jacob Moran’s care, which felt quite appropriate, under the circumstances.
She adjusted her cloak and bonnet.
“It will be a miserable day to travel,” Beaufort said softly as he stepped up behind her.
“I am not afeard of the rain,” she responded, but she did not turn to speak to him directly.
“You are rarely truly afraid,” he remarked as he came to stand beside her.
“You err, my lord. I have known nothing but fear since my mother and I stepped onto Captain Lisey’s ship, for I have known neither home nor family for more than a few brief fleeting moments.”
“It will not always be this way, my lady,” he protested.
“Will it not?” she asked wearily. “We both know Ireland is your one true love, whereas I would be happy anywhere you are. I do not want the last of our days together to be filled with disagreements, but you must know, as long as Lady Klare is alive, I cannot willingly return to Klare Manor.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she raised her hand to prevent his threat.
“If you have a mind to do so, there is nothing I can do to prevent you from ordering my return to the estate and the manor house. But, if such ever is part of your thinking, I shall refuse to assist you with whatever stratagems you have concocted for the estate. I shall sit in my quarters all day, just as does Lady Klare. I shall be the countess you never wished to know.”
“There is no need for your continued protest, my lady. You win,” he said sarcastically.
“Neither of us win, my lord.”
Without further arguments, he escorted her to the small sailboat that earned extra coins by delivering supplies and passengers to Neidín.
It was good for Annalise to feel the ebb and flow of a ship beneath her feet.
Had she and Beaufort truly been at Klare Fields for barely a fortnight?
She did not despise her time in County Kerry, for she had spent her first night as Beaufort’s wife there.
However, she likely also lost him in County Kerry, as well.
Beaufort had chosen his grandmother’s future over hers, which was understandable.
He had known his grandmother since the first day of his life; yet, Annalise had hoped to have claimed a small corner of his heart.
“Each day has been more miserable than the last,” she told the Kenmare River as it began to open to the sea.
She stood along the railing and listlessly observed the passing scenery.
I simply cannot stay. His lordship is determined to keep me at arm’s length.
He is afraid to love me, and I cannot survive without his affection.
There is enough blame to spread across both our shoulders.
I should have insisted that we wait—that we know a more conventional engagement, but I feared if I asked Navan to wait, he would not ask a second time, and, like it or not, he holds my weary heart in his hands.
Her husband had enough pride for a half dozen men, and Annalise knew herself not strong enough to break though the invisible armor he regularly wore as protection from the world and more heartbreak.