Chapter Twenty-One
Twilight had, indeed, fallen while she’d been inside. The streetlights were lit, adding an eerie yellow glow to sidewalks
teeming with pedestrians from all walks of life and a street crowded with traffic. The clanging of an oncoming tram was only
the loudest of the city sounds that, paradoxically, lent their conversation a necessary degree of privacy. Although Rynn’s
intention was to head straight for where Donal had been waiting for far longer than she could have anticipated, Maguire insisted
on putting her into a taxi for home as soon as they left the hotel.
“You want to attract exactly the kind of attention we don’t need, you go ahead and walk into that pub. Believe me, it’s no
place for a lady. Every man there will be looking at you.” He caught her arm, restraining her from going farther as he nodded
at the grimy windows of the Star Tavern, where Donal waited. This was in response to her stated determination not to leave
before she put the two men together and judged the outcome. “You either trust me to handle this or you don’t.”
“I trust you. Truly. But—”
“Then go home and leave me to it. At this point you’ll only get in the way. I’ll say goodbye to O’Reilly for you, if that’s
what’s worrying you.” He was waving down a taxi as he spoke.
“That is not—”
“Isn’t it?”
“No!”
He smiled mockingly at her as the taxi stopped.
There was no time for her to reply with anything more than a hopefully crushing frown before he had the door open and she had, perforce, to slide inside.
He gave the driver her direction and was closing the door behind her when she stopped it with an outstretched hand.
“Thank you,” she said quietly in response to his inquiring look.
“You’re welcome.” Leaning closer, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard, he added, “This is the second time that I
know of that O’Reilly has put your life at risk. Before I put any woman I supposedly loved in that kind of danger, I’d throw
myself in front of a train. Next time he comes for you, you might want to think about that.” Stepping back, he closed the
door. The last glimpse she had of him was of him striding across the busy street toward the Star Tavern.
She thought about what he’d said all the way home.
Fortunately, none of the family was about when she arrived at Hartford House.
Hideously conscious that whoever was slated to take Bingle’s place, or even several people searching for Bingle, might be watching the house, she hurried inside without, she hoped, giving the least appearance of hurrying, and gave an inward sigh of relief as the door closed behind her.
To Granger, the butler, and the footmen hovering in the entry hall, she merely said good evening as she would on any evening after arriving home and went upstairs.
To Parry, who came to help her undress, she trotted out the explanation that she’d come up with on the taxi ride home if a question were to be raised about where she’d been for so long: she’d witnessed a poor dog getting run down in the street and stayed to try to help the animal while its owner was located.
That also explained the blood on her clothes, and she was quite proud of herself for coming up with so believable an excuse.
Then she’d pleaded a headache, requested dinner on a tray in her room and, after writing letters to Granny and Glenna—both were poor correspondents, but she couldn’t complain because she wasn’t much better—she tried to read, finally tossing the book aside in frustration after she found herself unable to concentrate.
As it happened, Thomas didn’t get home until very late, and in no condition to do anything but go to sleep. Still shaken by
what had happened, she was long abed, if not asleep. As much as she was dying to know if Maguire had joined him at any point
during the evening she was afraid of revealing too much with her questions, and thus could do nothing but listen as Thomas’s
valet helped him to bed and, later, to the coughing spells that still plagued him as he slept.
Rynn went downstairs to breakfast the next morning to discover to her surprise that her half-sister, Penelope, had called
at Hartford House with her mother, Lady Somerset, the previous afternoon on their way back from the gathering at the Criterion.
She, Rynn, had been out on her walk at the time, but Alice and Maud, having just arrived home, had received the visitors.
As a result, the agenda for that afternoon was rearranged to include making a return call on Lady Somerset and her daughter.
The streets were as crowded as usual as the three younger ladies plus the Duchess were driven toward Grosvenor Square, where the Somersets’ town residence was located.
Tucked into the twin seats in the back of the family’s big black Daimler with Meadows at the wheel, with each of them wearing fashionable ensembles in the latest spring pastels, they made quite the picture, Rynn was sure.
In her old life, she could never have afforded the slim lilac gown that brought out the blue tones in her hair, nor would she ever have had an occasion to wear it or her charming confection of a hat.
Now she possessed a wardrobe full of equally costly ensembles, and all she could think about was how much she would rather be wearing one of her old skirts and jumpers and tramping along the Roguey cliff walk with a stiff ocean breeze blowing in.
“This means they’ve decided to acknowledge you,” Alice said in a congratulatory tone as she glanced around at Rynn, who rode
with Maud in the seat behind her and the Duchess.
“Perhaps I don’t wish to acknowledge them,” Rynn said. The truth was, the thought of coming face-to-face with her half-sister, and her half-sister’s mother, had her
stomach in a knot. Combine that with the gnawing fear that she was being watched, that someone might come nosing around looking
for Bingle at any moment, that the authorities might somehow already know everything and be biding their time, plus her worry
over Donal’s and Seamus’s well-being, and she was, inwardly, a bundle of raw nerves. It was not the state in which she’d hoped to first meet her unknown half-sister.
But the best way to keep suspicion at bay was to go out and about as though she had no knowledge that anything was wrong.
Thus she was paying an afternoon call that she really didn’t want to pay, in the company of her aristocratic in-laws whose
presence could only make the ordeal worse, because that was what well-bred innocent ladies did.
“It would be so very rude not to return their call,” the Duchess said. “And such bad form for it to be publicly seen that
there is discord in your family. You cannot wish to figure in the kind of gossip that would occasion. And Lord and Lady Somerset
are well-liked, and with her daughter having made her come out only last year they may be encountered everywhere.”
“You’ll have to meet them sometime,” Maud chimed in. “If it were me, I’d prefer to do it in private rather than publicly.”
That would have been the deciding factor if Rynn had needed convincing, but as she’d already made her mind up to it, she did not.
As it happened, they were not the only visitors to the imposing brick mansion that took up half a block in the exclusive Mayfair
district that afternoon. Several other ladies were in the lavishly appointed drawing room with Penelope and Lady Somerset
when the butler announced them with “Her Grace the Duchess of Hartford, Lady Wycomb, Lady Thomas Dunne and Lady Maud Dunne,
Your Ladyship.”
All conversation stopped. All faces swiveled toward the newcomers. And then seven pairs of eyes—Penelope, Lady Somerset, and
Lady Amanda Davies, Lady Colin Hughes, Mrs. Tarrant-Combs and her two daughters, who as it turned out were the other visitors—fastened
exclusively on Rynn.
She knew then that the gossip about her had reached fever pitch.
“Sister!” was how Penelope greeted her. It was said with every evidence of delight as she rose from the sofa where she was
seated beside her mother to bestow an air kiss on Rynn’s cheek. Rynn realized two things in that moment: Penelope was at least
as sensitive to the negative effects of the gossip as she was and, at only eighteen, she was much better at masking her feelings.
Looking into her half-sister’s eyes, a bright cornflower blue the exact shade of her—their—father’s, a fact she hadn’t even remembered until she’d seen them again in this little sister who was a total stranger to
her, sent her mentally reeling. It was all she could do to keep the polite smile on her face.
“Such a contrast as you two make,” Lady Somerset marveled as she rose to shake hands. “One might almost be tempted to characterize
you as the light and the dark.”
It was said with a smile, but Rynn wasn’t fooled. The words were a subtle jab. Behind Lady Somerset’s placid face lurked a
seething jealousy of her husband’s previous family.
“I’m held to closely resemble my mother.” Rynn turned her polite smile on Lady Somerset.
“While dear Penelope looks like her father” was Lady Somerset’s rejoinder. “Fortunately, she inherited my hard head. He was
the softhearted one, always easily influenced.”
“Which is why we loved him so, as I’m sure you must have, too,” Penelope said to Rynn as they all sat down. Rynn’s unwavering
smile hopefully masked the truth: My most vivid memory of him is of seeing him walk out the front door of our house in Dublin, where we lived at the time,
carrying a suitcase in each hand. I ran after him, a small girl crying because her mother had just died and she was afraid
of losing her father, too. He picked me up, gave me a hug and a kiss and promised to come back soon. It was years before I
saw him again, and then only for about half an hour one afternoon.
“There is a third sister, is there not?” Mrs. Tarrant-Combs asked. That she should know such a thing was evidence of just