Chapter Fourteen
The rain that had held off on the day they’d buried Molly Kincaid was not so accommodating on the day Thomas brought Rynn
home to Ashtonbury Park as his wife. Cascades of water pounded the roof of the car, sluiced the windows, soaked the earth.
The downpour had doubled the time it usually took to drive from London, where they’d holed up at Claridge’s, the impossibly
luxurious hotel in Mayfair, to Surrey, where Ashtonbury Park was located. Thomas assured her that on their journey they were
passing through some of the most delightful pastoral scenes that existed on God’s earth, but Rynn could only take his word
for it. It was nearly dusk by the time they arrived. Quite apart from the falling darkness it was impossible to see much of
anything through the deluge.
“Nervous?” Thomas reached for her hand as they rattled through a pair of enormous stone pillars and along an avenue that,
in summer, would be shaded by the tall trees that were now skeletal and black with rain. They sat side by side in the rear
while Meadows, the family chauffeur who’d been sent to fetch them, drove. He was obviously pleased to see Thomas and was properly
deferential to his new wife, but Rynn, as much as she fought against it, could not help but feel that she was being silently
judged and found wanting by this, the first of the longtime family retainers to meet the new Lady Thomas Dunne.
“Who wouldn’t be?” she replied as the house, a large pale blur seen through the windscreen as they left the dubious shelter of the trees, loomed before them.
She was familiar with the grand houses of the British aristocracy, of course, at least to some extent.
Bundoran was home to several, including Ballyshannon Court.
But those were their summer homes, their second or third or fourth residences.
This enormous Palladian mansion—Ashton, Thomas called it, with the easy affection of one who considered it home—was the Duke of Hartford’s principal seat.
It stood three stories tall, with a huge central section flanked by two equally large, forward-protruding wings in the shape of half an H.
With its slate roof, innumerable chimneys and dozens upon dozens of windows looking down on the paved courtyard where the car was now pulling in, Ashton put those paltry dwellings to shame.
“Don’t be. They’re going to love you.”
“I hope so.” Rynn wasn’t so sure. Loathe as she was to admit it, she felt a little queasy at the prospect of meeting Thomas’s
family. London, huge and crowded to bursting point with returning soldiers, its streets packed with a mix of cars and bicycles
and horse-drawn vehicles and electric trams, with its constant noise and never-ending activity, had already proved nearly
overwhelming to one whose only previous experience of a large city had been Dublin. Being introduced as a new daughter-in-law
to the famously testy (by his own son’s account) Duke of Hartford and his blue-blooded wife was something she did not look
forward to with pleasure, although her growing trepidation was something she never intended to reveal, to Thomas or anyone
else.
Thomas smiled. “I know so. How could they not? My mother, for one, was over the moon when I told her I’d married and was bringing my new bride home with me.
She’ll have assembled the whole gang, believe me.
They were expecting us earlier, but the rain put paid to that, I’m afraid. Hopefully they’ve saved us some tea.”
“Yes, hopefully.” She spoke with a calm she wasn’t feeling. To make the coming meeting even more anxiety producing, the first
Dail Eireann, Ireland’s own rebel parliament newly formed in an act of defiance against British rule, had met yesterday—January
21—in Dublin’s Mansion House and immediately issued the Irish Declaration of Independence in which they proclaimed themselves
to be a sovereign nation. Clearly determined to rub salt in the wound, they also issued a Message to the Free Nations of the
World stating that Ireland and Britain were in an “existing state of war.” As the newly elected members, most of whom were
pledged to the hardline Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, had refused to take up their seats in Westminster and indeed had
vowed to boycott Westminster forever, the assembly itself was provocative even without its revolutionary agenda. To make the
situation more fraught, only twenty-seven of the sixty-nine new members were present. That would be because most of the others
were either on the run from or imprisoned by the British, the latter group having been rounded up in May after being falsely
accused of treasonously plotting with the Germans. Among the imprisoned were Countess Markievicz and Sinn Fein’s president,
Eamon de Valera, over which circumstance the British gloated and the Irish fumed. This morning she’d awakened to discover
that the Dail with its fiery proclamation was the lead story in The Times and all the newspapers were apparently full of it. So far, the British reaction seemed to be mainly one of toff-nosed affront
at the nerve of the upstart Irish, but still it made for an uncomfortable atmosphere in which to meet her new in-laws.
“Chin up. They can’t eat you, you know. And I wouldn’t let them if they could.”
“Oh, very comforting.” She made a face at him, and he smiled again.
The one heartening thing in all this was that Thomas was smiling more, had in fact smiled more since their wedding than he had in all the previous time she’d known him, which had to count for something.
Perhaps she hadn’t married for all the right reasons, but he at least seemed to have no regrets.
Squeezing his hand, she freed her own to smooth her hair, brushed and twisted and pinned into ebony perfection by the hotel
maid Thomas had summoned to attend to her during the course of their sojourn there, and settled her lovely green hat with
its turned-up brim more firmly on her head.
As guilty as it made her feel, one of the most enjoyable aspects of her new life was that she was no longer obliged to scrimp
and save and count every shilling. Instead, she found herself in a world that offered her the best of everything: beautiful
clothes, luxurious surroundings, the finest food—things Thomas took for granted, but she didn’t think she ever would.
Best of all was the absence of fear.
They’d been married for twelve days. The strangeness of it had not abated. Being Lady Thomas Dunne still felt uncomfortable,
like an ill-fitting dress. But with Thomas himself she was now totally at ease. Beyond their nurse/patient role, which hadn’t
changed appreciably, they had developed an affectionate camaraderie which, she felt, boded well for their life together.
“We’re here.” Thomas looked past her out the window as the car stopped. Looking out through that same window herself, Rynn
blinked at what appeared to be an entire household’s worth of servants, each wielding a large black umbrella, rushing out
to greet them.
Her expression must have been typically revealing, because he grinned. “Don’t look so scared.”
Her door opened before she could do more than throw him a quelling look.
Compelled by his encouraging “Go along in, don’t wait for me,” she had perforce to step out and immediately found a puddle, which soaked her foot and splashed up past her shoe to splatter her ankle in its silk stocking with cold water.
The umbrella that instantly appeared over her head protected her from any further assault by the downpour.
The bowing footman holding it while murmuring “Welcome to Ashtonbury Park, my lady,” ushered her around more puddles that lay like landmines across the pavers.
A glance back as she went up the steps to the open front door told her that two more servants plus Meadows were engaged in getting Thomas’s chair from the boot and then helping Thomas himself into it, all under the protection of umbrellas being held over the operation by a gaggle of maids.
The following car, which held their luggage—the acquisition of what Thomas called a basic wardrobe for them both had occupied a fair portion of their time in London—was directed by someone to drive on, presumably to another entrance.
Then she was inside, in a vast entryway with oak-paneled walls and a high, vaulted ceiling. Her lightning first impression
was of welcome warmth to counteract the cold day, a faint scent of lemon polish with an underlying trace of cigarettes and
generations of acquired magnificence everywhere she looked. The dripping umbrella was whisked away as yet another footman
asked if he could take her coat. She was just handing it and her hat over when a stately gentleman in a black tailcoat appeared
out of seemingly nowhere to say, “Welcome to Ashtonbury Park, Lady Thomas. I am—”
“Jansing!” Thomas broke into a broad smile as he was rolled into the entry hall on a huff of rain-scented wind, his chair
wheels squeaking as they left wet tracks on the marble floor before the waiting carpet silenced them. “Still here, I see.”
“As I hope to always be, my lord! May I say from all of us what a pleasure it is to welcome you home?”
“It’s a pleasure to be home, believe me, and an even greater pleasure to bring my wife home with me. Rynn, this is Jansing, who’s been at Ashton longer than I have and is the real master of the house.” As Rynn smiled and nodded in greeting, Thomas added more quietly, “Where are they, Jansing?”
“In the Blue Salon, sir, and I was to bring you directly in the moment you appeared. The Duchess has had tea held back for
your arrival.”
“And my father hates waiting. Yes, I know. Rynn, would you like a moment to freshen up before we beard the lions in their
den?”
Rynn dearly wanted a moment—several moments—to herself but for no other purpose than to delay the inevitable. She was growing