Chapter Eighteen
Over the next few weeks, Maguire and his associates conferred several times with the Duke at Hartford House before a meeting
was arranged with Lloyd George, who was preoccupied with a hundred other matters including the race riots currently roiling
London and the other seaports and hammering out the finer points of the Paris Peace Conference, which effort was ongoing.
According to Thomas, who’d been invited to attend the meeting, the Prime Minister seemed to consider the unrest in Ireland
as little more than a bothersome distraction that could be crushed underfoot in short order, leaving him free to deal with
more important matters. But Maguire, employing what his chief associate, Ernie O’Malley, called his innate gift of the blarney,
talked the Prime Minister into agreeing not to send in more soldiers or otherwise escalate the situation as long as the rebels
eschewed further violence themselves.
The house-to-house searches in Manchester and Liverpool had so far come up empty. Maguire, who Rynn saw on those occasions
when he stopped by the house, did not appear concerned that that would change. What she took from that was that de Valera
and his associates, wherever they were, were no longer to be found in either Manchester or Liverpool, although the searches
continued.
During that same period, Rynn was shocked to pick up a copy of The Times to discover a photograph of herself dancing with the Prince of Wales dominating the front page.
The caption read, “HRH the Prince of Wales dances with Lady Thomas Dunne, the beautiful Irish bride of the Duke of Hartford’s younger son, at the fundraiser for wounded war veterans at the Goring Hotel. ”
The picture was picked up by other newspapers and even ran in the gossipy Sketch magazine, which added a horrifying-to-Rynn final line to the caption: “Has Mrs. Ward acquired a rival at last?” When Rynn
called on the Prince’s mistress at Thomas’s insistence—“If you want to convince everyone that the Sketch reporter has got it right, all you have to do is avoid Mrs. Ward at all costs” was what he said to persuade her—Mrs. Ward
laughed it off. But more pictures of her in the Daily Mail and other publications followed. In them she was inevitably described as “the beautiful Irish bride” of the Duke of Hartford’s
son, with the clear inference that for one of her race to be raised to so elevated a position in the social pecking order
was such an oddity that it was worthy of being touted far and wide. The unwelcome exposure made Rynn self-conscious. It also
brought what seemed to her like an avalanche of visitors eager to get a look at her to Hartford House, although Alice (as
she now called Lady Wycomb) assured her with a shrug that the deluge of callers was nothing out of the ordinary now that Parliament
was in session and people were starting to return to town. In other words, it had nothing to do with her at all.
“Pay no mind to her. She’s always been a jealous cat.
She hates that you’re getting more attention than her,” Thomas’s cousin Lady Maud, who’d come to town to stay with them for a few weeks, whispered after Alice exited the car delivering them to a ladies’ tea at the Criterion in Piccadilly on Thursday of the fourth week following the fundraiser.
Having looked critically at Rynn’s pale peach afternoon dress with its matching belted jacket and cunning veiled hat, Alice had just remarked on how fortunate Rynn was to possess neither a true womanly bosom or hips, as the new dropped-waist dresses such as the one Rynn was wearing were designed to most flatter females with boyish figures like hers.
“I prefer to think she meant it as a compliment,” Rynn replied as she stepped out of the car next and was followed onto the
sidewalk by Maud, who she was starting to consider a friend. She knew better, of course, but having been the recipient of
a number of Alice’s barbed compliments she’d learned that seeming to entirely miss the point was the best course and had the
added bonus of annoying her sister-in-law.
“If you say so,” Maud replied doubtfully. Then they were swept into the restaurant along with a tide of women who were all
coming together to hear Helen Gordon Liddle of the Women’s Social and Political Union, who’d endured forcible feeding to combat
her hunger strike while imprisoned for her “antigovernment” suffragette activities, talk about her experience and the vitally
important cause of women’s suffrage. Mrs. Liddle was a compelling speaker and was rightfully lauded for her role in winning
the vote for women over thirty in the last election, but the most interesting part for Rynn came at the end.
“Is that not your sister?” Maud whispered, nodding at someone in the exiting crowd. While Alice had gone ahead, Rynn had stayed
back with Maud, who’d wanted to get Mrs. Liddle’s autograph on the pamphlet on women’s rights they all had been given, so
they were among the last to leave. It took Rynn a moment to realize that Maud didn’t mean Glenna had somehow found her way
to London but was instead talking about her unknown half-sister, Penelope.
“I have no idea. I’ve never so much as seen her,” Rynn confessed.
“Oh, my,” Maud said, and nudged her again before pointing discreetly. “Well, it is her. Up there, in blue. With the feather in her hat. That’s Penelope Carmichael. Oh, and she’s with her mother, Lady Somerset. Behind her, in pink.”
Rynn looked. The woman, Lady Somerset, was plain faced, full-figured, beautifully dressed, with light brown hair twisted up
in an elaborate chignon. The girl was young—just turned eighteen, if she had her dates right—of medium height, slim and dressed
in the latest fashion. Her strawberry-blonde hair was cut into a fashionable short, wavy bob. Her complexion was fair. Rynn
was too far away to discern the color of her eyes, but she was as certain as she could be without actually seeing them that
they were blue. Her face was long and slim, with a decided chin. Her nose was a trifle on the long and thin side, too, and
her mouth was wide and full lipped. She was attractive and elegant rather than beautiful, and the overall impression she gave
was of aristocratic wealth. She looked, in fact, almost exactly like her father—their father—and seeing her brought the image of him, of the last time Rynn had seen him when he’d bade her and Glenna goodbye
from the doorway of Granny’s house, forcibly to mind. She’d been seven years old, and he’d been a stranger. She hadn’t even
realized she remembered until this, the sight of her half-sister who so unexpectedly resembled him, brought it back.
Rynn was surprised at the shaft of pain she felt. She’d thought she was immune to what had happened by now, but apparently
she was not. When her father had abandoned them after her mother’s death, this was the family he’d created instead. This was the daughter he’d chosen, the woman he’d chosen, the life he’d chosen, instead
of her and her sister and his life with them. He hadn’t bothered to send for them. Except for that one visit, in which her
vague recollection had him signing papers relating to them that Granny had needed, they’d had no other contact. He’d left
them behind like they were nothing, like they were trash.
Irish trash, which she supposed was the way he and his new family thought of them.
“Shall we try to catch up?” Maud’s tone was eager as she looked after the pair, who were exiting through the main door.
“No.” Rynn’s reply was sharp, instinctive. She caught herself, not wanting to give Maud, or anyone, a glimpse of the wound
that had not yet, to her dismay, healed. “Not today. I’d really rather not have the whole world as witness to what should
be a private family moment.”
“Oh. Oh, you’re right, of course.” If Maud was disappointed, she hid it well. They went outside and climbed back into the
car with Alice, where Rynn listened to the two of them discuss everything from the horror of Mrs. Liddle’s story to the quality
of the refreshments to the latest gossip attaching to several of the ladies present. When the car pulled up in front of the
gray stone mansion that was Hartford House in St. James Place, though, Rynn decided not to go inside right away. Instead,
she told them that she was going to take a walk in the park to clear the headache she could feel coming on. Alice would never
have volunteered to accompany her, Rynn knew, so she was safe in that regard. Maud, who would have, gave Rynn a sympathetic
look that Rynn suspected stemmed from her conviction that seeing Penelope Carmichael and her mother had upset her and as a
result she needed some time alone. Rynn once again cursed her telltale face, but at least it gave her the privacy she needed
to come to terms with the distress she most unexpectedly felt.
It was a beautiful sunny afternoon, warm for spring.
The sweet smell of a fresh new season was in the air.
Green Park was living up to its name: the trees had just unfurled their shiny new leaves, the grassy meadows were coming alive and drifts of early daffodils provided bright bursts of color everywhere she looked.
Thomas was out with his father, who was introducing him to influential friends with an eye toward moving him into a career in investing.
This evening, he was promised to an all-gentlemen engagement, which meant there was no need for her to hurry back.
She could regain her equilibrium at her leisure.
A fair number of people were about, including a rowdy group of newly demobbed American soldiers, hundreds of whom roamed the
city as they waited to be shipped home, but they paid no attention to her and she barely noticed them. She was breathing in
the fresh air and listening to the birdsongs and in general enjoying the solitude until she turned down a path bordered on
both sides by tall hedgerows. There, most unexpectedly, someone grabbed her arm from behind.
“Rynn.”