Chapter Thirteen
Startled, Rynn tried to dodge around him, but he reached out and caught her by the arm.
“What . . . ?” she said. He had squinty eyes and a mouth like a frog, she saw as she tried to pull away.
“I’m Ori Sullivan. Your man owes me five thousand pounds,” he said.
Rynn’s heart leaped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You do,” he said with conviction, and Rynn realized he’d probably read the truth in her thrice-damned face. “You tell the
O’Reillys that I want my money, or the cargo I was promised, and if I don’t get one or the other there’ll be consequences.”
“I don’t know where they are,” she said, and jerked her arm free.
He laughed, an ugly sound, and as she walked away called after her, “You tell them.”
Higdon, clearly having seen the encounter, was stepping out of the car by that time. As he came toward her, Ori Sullivan strode
away.
Granny and Glenna both pounced on her the moment she walked into the cottage.
“Did they harm you?” Granny’s question was fierce as she looked Rynn up and down. Her eyes were black as coal, which Rynn knew was a sign that she’d been laboring under extreme emotion.
“They did not.” Rynn spoke to Granny over Glenna’s head as her sister wrapped her in a hug. She was still shaken from both
encounters, but she tried not to let it show.
“I knew they’d let you go. Lord Thomas said he’d see to it.” Glenna was exultant as she released Rynn and stepped back. “Even if
he is a Brit, I like him.”
“You telephoned him.” It was the only way word could have reached him so quickly.
“I know you told me to wait, but Granny had a bad feeling. So directly after you left, I went to the doctor’s house and asked
to use their telephone. Lord Thomas was really worried about you.”
“He’s become a friend. And he’s very kind,” Rynn said.
Behind Glenna’s back, Granny’s eyes met Rynn’s. In them Rynn saw a question: Had her bad feeling been justified? Rynn answered
with an almost imperceptible nod.
“I can’t stay, but I wanted to let you know that I’m all right. And to tell you they’ve brought in a man from London, from
Crime Special Branch. A Detective Major Kenney. He’s terrifying. He asked me questions—there was nothing I could tell him—and
they showed me a pair of women’s shoes they’ve fished out of the bay. He asked me if they were mine. Apparently, they feel
the shoes are somehow connected to what’s happened. I didn’t have a chance to answer, but if I had I would have said they’re
not mine. For all I know, they might come around asking every woman in Bundoran if the shoes belong to her. If they were to
ask either of you any such question, you must say that they are not yours and you have no idea whose they are. That, in fact,
you have no knowledge of them at all.”
That last was directed as a warning to Glenna more than Granny—Granny’s feet were as small as the rest of her—but while Glenna nodded solemnly Granny looked at Rynn with dawning comprehension.
She’d watched Rynn take her mother’s dress and shoes from the trunk where they were kept and knew she’d planned to wear them to the hospital’s Christmas party.
“Do you think they will come?” Glenna breathed.
“They can come if they like, and we’ll say we’ve no knowledge of their wretched shoes,” Granny said. She looked at Rynn. “You’d
best stay put at Ballyshannon Court for the next little while. The young lord there appears to wield considerable influence.
Keep near him.”
“I will.” Not wanting to worry them further, Rynn didn’t say that Lord Thomas was leaving soon and so his protection would
only be available for a brief time. Instead she looked at Glenna. “Stay away from the Garda station, and the soldiers. And
stay home at night.”
Glenna nodded, looking frightened. Rynn hugged them both and left.
By the time the car reached Ballyshannon Court, she was so tired she was beyond feeling any emotion at all. Darkness had fallen,
which made her thankful for one thing: this horrific day was finally ending.
But then she saw the military lorry pulling away from the front entrance, its headlamps flashing past in a burst of blinding
light before it gained the road and roared off toward Bundoran. The fear that had coiled itself into an unpleasant but largely
quiescent knot in her stomach sprang back into shrieking, clawing life.
“That lot’s been up to no good, I’ll be bound,” Higdon prophesied darkly. Pulling up to the front entrance, he added, “You’d
best be watching out for yourself, miss.”
Rynn’s nerves were on edge as she walked through the front door, which she as a member of staff was discouraged from using, into the imposing entryway.
Knowing that, between patients and staff, there were at least thirty other people in the building should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t.
Rational or not, her feeling that the soldiers’ visit had concerned her was strong.
Cyril, the footman, was the first to confirm it. As she headed toward the kitchen, where she knew Mrs. Frampton and Anna and
Lynnette would be bursting to talk about whatever had just occurred, he appeared from the bowels of the house to greet her
with open alarm and an urgent whisper.
“Soldiers were here, Miss Carmichael. They searched your room.”
They searched her room? Fear shot through her. With a wordless nod of thanks, she hurried to the back stairs and raced up to her room. What she found
as she entered made her go cold with dread. It was obvious from the way things had been left that they’d gone through everything:
the wardrobe, the small chest, even the box of cosmetics and personal items that she kept on the shelf beneath the table that
held her water pitcher and basin. The bedcovers had been pulled back, the pillows tossed and the trunk at the foot of the
bed disturbed. She saw all that with scarcely more than a glance around before she rushed to the window embrasure where she’d
stored the clothes she’d been given that night on the Reaper. Concealed by heavy curtains, drawn now to keep out the cold, a bench seat was built in beneath the dormer-style window.
It opened for storage. Rynn pushed aside the curtains and threw open the lid. Then, slowly, she sank to her knees in front
of it. She’d rolled the clothes up, thrust them into a spare pillowcase and hidden them away among the extra linens that were
kept in the bench seat.
The pillowcase was there in a crumpled heap on top of the linens.
The clothes were gone.
On their own, the clothes mean nothing, she told herself.
But if whoever had seen her that night identified them as the clothes the woman he’d described had been wearing . . .
Would that be enough to get her dragged back in for more questioning? Or even arrested?
If they add in the shoes . . .
Panic made her chest feel tight.
Such was her anxiety that a timid-sounding knock on her door was all it took to send her leaping to her feet to face it.
“Miss Carmichael?” Anna. The voice on the other side of the door belonged to Anna. If Rynn had been in a normal frame of mind,
she would have realized at once that the knock was too soft and tentative to be the soldiers returning, which had been her
instant fear. Drawing the tattered remains of her composure around herself as best she could, she crossed to the door and
opened it.
“Lord Thomas has been asking for you. He told us to send you to him in his room the minute you got back,” Anna said. Her eyes
were wide with sympathy.
Rynn nodded. Then she went down to Lord Thomas’s room.
“You must marry me,” Lord Thomas said. “It’s the only way you’ll be safe.”
She’d told him almost everything. About Christmas night. About the guns. About how Paddy had died, and Donal and Seamus and Fergus had not. About
refusing to go with them to America, and about breaking her engagement. About what had happened today, with Detective Kenney.
About Kenney’s threats. About Ori Sullivan and his threat. The only thing she’d left out was Owen Maguire and the Reaper, claiming instead that as the Merrow had started to sink, they’d been rescued by a passing boat that had delivered her to shore, and carried the men on. That
omission was because Maguire and the Reaper were still within reach of the Crown forces if her trust in Lord Thomas should be misplaced.
He’d listened intently and hadn’t questioned her account.
Instead this marriage proposal, uttered as he frowned at her in concern as they sat before the crackling fire in his room, was his most unexpected response.
“Marry you? I thought to accept your offer to go to England with you, as your nurse.”
“If they find solid evidence that you were involved in gunrunning, they’ll come for you even in England. And my father strongly
condemns any who would support an Irish rebellion. The only reason I’ve been able to secure his help so far is because I’ve
told him that you’re an innocent wrongly suspected. If he’s presented with anything that seems to him like proof of your guilt,
he’ll do nothing to save you.” Lord Thomas’s eyes bored into hers. “Unless you’re his daughter-in-law. My father’s a proud
man. He would never stand by and see a member of his family arrested.”
“I can’t marry you.”
“You can.” He reached out and took her hands. Their eyes were on a level and his were a deep, earnest blue as they held hers.
“It wouldn’t be a love match, not like the one you were planning with O’Reilly, I know. But it could be a good thing for you,
and for me as well. This Kenney, and his investigation, could never touch you. Nothing that’s happening here, or is going
to happen here, could touch you. Whichever way Ireland goes, you’d be safe. And you would have a good life with me. Once I’ve
recovered a little more—yes, I’m now determined that will happen—we could travel. I could show you the world, and you’d have
your own home, and—” He faltered, and his grip tightened on her hands. “Forgive me, I know you too well to think that money
matters to you, but I’m a rich man. You could have anything you wanted. You’d be secure for the rest of your life.”
“Money always matters,” Rynn said. “But I wouldn’t marry for it.”
“Do it for me, then. You’ve given me so much. The will to fight to get better. A reason to hope I can have a future that’s
more than just being an invalid in a chair. I want you to be a part of it. You know my medical condition. You know I can’t
be a real husband to you, at least not right now, not in a physical sense. And I give you my solemn promise that if that were
to change, I would not hold you against your will. You could have an annulment anytime you wished. And even if that were to
be what you ultimately choose, you would still have my undying regard. And I would see to it that you were taken care of.”
“Stop.” Rynn shook her head at him. “You can’t be serious. You haven’t thought this through. You’ve told me all the ways this
marriage would benefit me. But what do you get out of it?”
“You. I get you.” For the briefest of moments, naked adoration blazed at her out of his eyes. Rynn recognized it for what
it was, before he, too, seemed to realize and glanced elsewhere. The room around them seemed to recede, to grow shadowy and
indistinct. The fire’s warmth no longer touched her. Lord Thomas himself seemed to fade away. As if looking on from a distance,
she could so clearly see the future he described, see a new path opening before her, see the life they could have together,
see the happiness she could give him and maybe even find for herself. Possibility twinkled like a bright star in a dark sky,
drawing her almost irresistibly in a direction she never could have imagined.
“Please say yes, Rynn.” It was the first time he’d ever called her that.
She was back, instantly, totally in the present, with the fire blazing away and his hands warm and firm on hers and everything, the hearth and his chair and hers, and the table and the bed, as solid and real as it could possibly be.
And yet the future she’d seen was still there in all its infinite possibility for her to seize if she wished.
“There’s Glenna. And my grandmother. I can’t just leave them.” It was the first, and largest, objection that came to mind.
“I would never ask you to leave them. They can join us whenever you want. But for your safety, I would want you to come away
with me on Friday, as my wife.”
“That could never be arranged so soon.”
He smiled. And she caught another glimpse of the man he would have been had the war never happened, had mustard gas and an
exploding shell not decimated his body, had pain and despair not eaten away at his soul.
“You’d be surprised what I can arrange when it’s important to me.” He leaned toward her, his eyes intent now, purposeful,
the adoration she’d glimpsed in them gone or masked. But she had seen it and wouldn’t forget. “Will you do me the honor, Rynn?
Will you marry me?”
Another crossroads. Another time to choose, to decide. The way forward was murky, the future unknowable, either way. But she
could feel a tug in a certain direction, like a magnet being drawn toward the north.
Unlikely as it seemed, she knew where it was urging her to go.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Thomas, I’ll marry you.”