Chapter Seven
By dawn, a steady rain fell, pattering on the slate roof, turning the world outside the tiny window through which Rynn observed
it a depressing gray. An earthy dampness pervaded the huge old mansion that was Ballyshannon Court, adding its own touch of
misery to the grief that throbbed like an open wound inside her. Though fires were lit below—she could smell them—it was cold
in the attic where she hurriedly fastened the last button of her blue nurse’s uniform even as she headed for the stairs. She
had to remind herself that it was St. Stephens Day, a holiday celebrated as enthusiastically as Christmas itself, which didn’t
mean that she and the other nurses were off duty. But it did mean that she would have to pretend to be in a festive mood—at
least until Paddy’s body was found.
Shuddering at the thought, she pushed it from her mind.
She must just get through this awful day as best she could, and not dwell on what was to come until it did.
Not much more than two hours before, she’d crept up all three flights of the servants’ staircase to her small room under the eaves, wincing at every creak lest someone should appear with questions about where she’d been.
But no one did, and she’d made it to her room unobserved.
She’d spent the ensuing time hiding her borrowed clothes and bathing and brushing her hair until all visible traces of the night’s ordeal were gone.
If her head hurt from exhaustion and her legs ached from her recent frantic journey, which had seen her walking from the beach where she’d been put ashore to Mullaghmore, where she’d “borrowed” a bicycle and then ridden on through the night until she reached Ballyshannon Court, those were minor discomforts.
Now, with her hair pinned up securely and, she hoped, her lack of sleep camouflaged by having splashed her face repeatedly with the icy water left in her pitcher, she would take up the familiar routine of caring for the convalescents, while doing her best not to be shattered by the knowledge that her life as she had known it was changed forever.
Paddy was dead. Donal was gone. Her heart broke over both. Shock and its accompanying sense of unreality provided a layer
of protective cushioning, but that would wear off, she knew. The practical repercussions of what had happened—she had no idea
what they might be. All she knew was that there was no going back. She had chosen her path and must live with the consequences.
“There’s sugar for your tea, brought special clear from Dublin,” Mrs. Frampton greeted her as Rynn emerged into the warm,
heavenly smelling kitchen from the narrow back staircase. Plump and white-haired, Mrs. Frampton was the long-time cook/housekeeper
for Ballyshannon Court, recruited with most of the rest of the staff to stay on when the Duke of Hartford had offered up his
Irish retreat to the war effort. She hovered protectively over the turkeys she was roasting for the evening’s feast while
the kitchen maids bustled about preparing breakfast for the dining room, where at nine o’clock sharp the patients would gather
to eat. Before then, medicine must be administered, wounds checked, dressings changed and all the other early-morning activities
associated with the care and feeding of the twenty-two remaining soldiers accomplished.
“What good fairy visited us overnight?” Rynn kept her response light as she went to add a bit of sugar to the cup of steaming tea Mrs. Frampton poured out for her, then carried it to the large wooden table that was the kitchen’s centerpiece.
Sugar had been the most precious of commodities in the last months of the war, and it remained scarce.
Under better circumstances she would have been excited at the treat, but as things stood it would take more than a little unexpected sugar to brighten her day.
“Colonel Pelly, although I dunno if I’d be calling him a fairy, good or otherwise,” Lynnette giggled. Lynnette and Anna were
the kitchen maids. Under Mrs. Frampton’s rule they worked, cheerfully enough, from before dawn until long after the rest of
the household was abed. Feeding so many hungry soldiers was labor-intensive work.
Rynn smiled as she was meant to—Colonel Pelly was the approximate size of a lorry—and sat down at the long table. The other
nurses—two professionals like herself, who needed to work for a living and thus had gone to school for formal training and
now got paid for their services, and six VADs, who were affluent enough to take the more socially acceptable route and volunteer—were
either already present or arriving in the kitchen more or less on schedule. There was much general talk along with the clatter
of plates and utensils as everyone gathered around the table and began to eat. Rynn drank her tea and took small bites of
the toast and jam that was her usual breakfast as she listened with half an ear to the morning’s gossip. Although the hot
tea was welcome, she had to choke down the bread. She was wound so tightly it was difficult to eat, but she thought it was
important to carry on as though this was a morning like any other.
Soon enough she would have to slip into the role of mourner for the man and the friends she loved, and the prospect was making her feel increasingly desperate.
She had ever been a poor liar. And to have to playact in the face of Donal’s family’s grief—and Seamus’s family, and Fergus’s—and mourn with Paddy’s family while being unable to tell them the truth was something she was unable to contemplate without feeling sick.
“There’s a rare kerfuffle over in the Ladies’ Cove.” Alberta Grisham rushed into the kitchen, her eyes wide, her face rosy
from her trip in from the village, where she lived with her parents. A VAD, she customarily rode a bicycle, and her route
took her past the part of the Strand closest to Ballyshannon Court that the villagers called the Ladies’ Cove, because in
earlier days modesty had restricted its use to bathers of the female sex. It included the sheltered beach where the Merrow had attempted to come in and where Rynn had entered the water last night to warn them off. “Soldiers everywhere, and I heard
some of them talking about finding a body washed up. A dead body.”
Rynn’s heart skipped a beat. Paddy! So Maguire had been right about his body turning up on this morning’s tide. Her stomach
knotted, her pulse leaped and it was all she could do to swallow the tea she’d just sipped. What her face looked like she
didn’t know, but her eyes were riveted on Alberta. Which, as soon as she realized, she remedied by glancing away, only to
discover that the eyes of everyone at the table were riveted on Alberta.
“A body?”
“Who is it?”
“Never say it’s someone we know!”
“Did they drown?”
The questions came thick and fast as Alberta, having scooped up a cup of tea and a scone, dropped into the chair across from
Rynn.
“I heard gunshots last night as I was getting ready for bed.” Alberta spoke in a hushed tone as she leaned in to share her
news with the table. “A lot of gunshots, like some sort of battle was going on. And they sounded like they came from that
direction. I think it might have something to do with that.”
Rynn blanched as she realized that Alberta had to be describing the soldiers firing on the Merrow. Had anyone else in the village or at Ballyshannon Court heard? They must have! Why had she not thought of that before?
The more pertinent question was, had anyone gone to investigate? Were there witnesses to what had happened after all?
Her stomach threatened to rebel against the toast.
But wait. A lightning review of the previous night’s events proved reassuring. Even if the gunfire had drawn someone out,
even if that someone had rushed immediately to the scene, by the time the soldiers had opened fire the Merrow would have been too far out and the darkness too concealing for anyone on shore to have seen anything, including her. It would, in fact, have been impossible.
She was—almost—sure.
No longer able to swallow, she put down her cup half finished as excited voices peppered Alberta with more questions.
A jingling bell caused a break in the conversation and had them all looking toward its source. Each of the mansion’s thirty-plus
rooms had a button to push if help was required by its occupant or occupants. The buttons were connected to small brass bells
fastened to a call board on the wall that summoned whoever was needed.
“It’s Lord Thomas,” Mrs. Frampton announced, and numerous pairs of eyes immediately turned toward Rynn. Lord Thomas Dunne
was assigned to Rynn.
“I’m going.” Glad of the interruption, she stood up. She was almost at the door when Ellen Green, another of the VADs, came
rushing in.
“Have you heard?” Pulling off her coat and in the process slinging raindrops everywhere, she included Rynn, who had stopped just short of the doorway, in the wide-eyed glance she sent around the room. “A woman’s dead down in Ladies’ Cove. The soldiers’ll be bringing her along shortly.”
“Someone from the village?”
“Why are they bringing her here?”
“What happened to her?” The questions came from multiple throats.
“A woman?” Surprise wrung that one from Rynn. There had to be a mistake, Ellen had to be mistaken. The body in Ladies’ Cove had to
be that of a man, because it had to be Paddy. Who else could it be?
Ellen nodded vigorously as she hung her coat on a hook by the door and went for the cup of tea that Mrs. Frampton held out
to her. She, too, lived in the village, and would have followed approximately the same path Alberta had followed. “They want
the doctor to look at her, they said. I passed them on the road.”
“Who is it?” one of the girls asked.
“I don’t know. They had the body all wrapped up. I couldn’t see,” Ellen replied, and then everybody was talking over each
other as speculation flew.
The call bell jingled again. Rynn almost jumped.