Chapter 30
Seventy-five tenants ejected here, and a whole village in the last stage of destitution there … dead bodies of children flung into holes … every field becoming a grave, and the land a wilderness.
My heart leapt with every creak as I tiptoed my way down the hall, descended three flights of stairs, and snuck through the kitchen toward freedom.
With each step, I expected the woman in white to appear—to frighten, to halt me in my tracks.
Surely she knew what was afoot? What Cormac and I planned to do?
Then again, perhaps it mattered not. Her pact was with Lady Catherine, not me. My woes, my vengeance were merely the means to achieve Lady Catherine’s goals, not the woman in white’s.
I’d opted for the simplest dress—lest it was thought I’d coveted and pilfered the fine silks—the day dress peppered with sunflowers. Beneath, I wore the heaviest petticoat in my coffer, a fine chemise, and o’er it all, the heaviest woolen cloak I could find.
The child was alive. The child was mine. Diarmuid.
And Teddy … no. Teddy was no victim in this farce.
Had they lied and told him I’d died? Fine, I’d believe it.
But that didn’t excuse his defamation of Da, the months of unanswered letters, and him never deigning to visit.
He might claim he’d never received them—may have even told himself so over and over ’til he believed his own lie.
Until it became truth, uncontested, to ease his conscience.
The Cailleach was wrong, and I knew it. For contained in those letters, each and every one, was a postscript asking what he thought of the name Diarmuid and whether he’d be amenable to bestowing that name upon our child.
Theodore Moore-Vandeleur had received my letters.
And Theodore Moore-Vandeleur had ignored them.
Because Teddy realized his folly and determined to marry another with inheritance and connections. What father, no matter how supportive of a “love match,” would deny his child the opportunity to marry for betterment?
Perhaps his lordship devised the scheme to have me “die” in childbed to ease Teddy’s conscience. Keep the child and gain a suitable bride for the family—win, win. But my return jeopardized everything.
Greed destroyed my life and the lives of my family. My greed? Perhaps, in part. But ’twas Teddy’s greed, in the end, that set the wheels in motion.
“Ow,” I muttered, wincing as a pebble slipped beneath my stockinged feet. Shoes in hand—to avoid crunching through gravel—I wound my way through the storm-tossed garden, grateful the rain had given way to light drizzle.
Leaves and petals lay strewn, in need of raking come morning, but with luck we’d be far from here by the time anyone raised the alarm.
The gardener’s cottage loomed in the near distance, and I hopped onto one of the flower beds to save the skin of my feet the indignity of tearing in my haste.
They sank into the saturated soil, popping with a slurp each time I stepped forward.
Not my finest idea to date, but with luck, Cormac might have a spare pair of stockings I could borrow.
Close to the cottage now, I leapt onto the paved path, and within three strides, I was at the door.
I knocked, heart pounding in my chest—from fear, exertion, or exhilaration, I knew not—and in the space of a breath, Cormac opened the door. Well, no. He cracked it, enough to see who stood beyond.
“’Tis ye,” he sighed, breath whooshing in a rush as he pulled open the door. “Quick, and in ye come.”
I ducked into the cottage, and he glanced down at my filthy stockings.
“Shoes?” he asked, crossing the main room.
“In my hand.”
With a nod, he hoisted a sack onto his back. “We’ll away, and get ye dry when we’re clear.”
“Where’s Diarmuid?” I asked, eyes wide as I looked around the cottage.
“Asleep. Howld on there.” Cormac dipped beneath a low door near the back of the cottage and emerged with the child.
A lump formed in my throat as I equated the little boy with the babe I’d mourned, but I was given no time to think as Cormac deposited the heavy, sleeping weight into my arms.
My eyes widened, and I quickly adjusted my grip, cradling his precious head close to my heart.
“We’ll head out the back way. It leads beyond out the garden and toward the stable.
I fetched Dr. Brady this evening and returned him to the village in the carriage.
” Cormac gestured toward a split door on the opposite wall and unlatched it.
“I never unharnessed the horses. After confirming him in the guest wing as the man who’d wronged ye, I feared we might need them. ”
“Won’t they come for us?” I whispered, stepping through the door as Cormac opened it.
“With what?” he scoffed, following before closing the door behind us. “They have naught if we take the carriage. We’ll be well on our way before any notice our absence.”
“What if—” I broke away and glanced at the lad, safe beneath my cloak. What if the Cailleach had lied? What if this child was not, in fact, mine? What if I was simply losing my mind?
Cormac frowned, then took my hand, adjusting the sack on his shoulder with the other. “The what-ifs can wait. Your safety, and the child’s, are my only priority.”
I nodded and let him lead us toward the stable, where the carriage-and-four waited.
“Ye should sit inside with the lad,” Cormac hissed as I mounted the driver’s bench and settled beside him. “Ye could take ill in this weather.”
“He’s safe within,” I whispered, pulling my cloak tighter.
I’d tucked the babe, securely, onto the floor of the carriage, swaddled in enough blankets to ease the journey.
“When we’re clear, I can check on him. But I can’t sit in there, suffocating, while yer out here doing all the work. We can suffer together.”
Suffer the rain, the terror, the fear of being caught.
With a nod, Cormac snapped the reins, and the team of four lurched forward, sending me sprawling into the coach wall at my back.
“Easy,” Cormac murmured—to me, or the horses, I knew not.
Righting myself, I glanced right, staring at the house as we wound our way down the eerie, fog-obscured drive, but all seemed well.
No flickering candles in the windows. No shadows staring. In a way, that frightened me more, and my palms turned slick as I gripped the rail afore me. Shouldn’t someone have heard? Shouldn’t someone have tried to stop us?
I strained my neck as we rode on, leaning out so I could glance back, to keep my eyes on the house, and terror seized my lungs as I squinted into the distance.
What need for shadows or candles haunting the windows, when the house itself stared back?
I was right, back then … when I’d first arrived.
Now more than ever. For in the dark, with heavy storm clouds obscuring the moon, and the heady scent of rain-churned soil hitting the back of my throat, Browne House truly was alive.
The semicircular windows on the top floor serving as brows above large rectangular eyes …
in the dim, they seemed wrong. Squinting, perhaps?
Nay … furrowed, more like. And the wide, stone staircase sweeping from ground to entrance?
The one I’d likened to a tongue rolled out afore a hungry, double-doored maw, waiting to devour me whole?
Something about the shadows screamed snarl and growl, no longer a beast awaiting its daily feed, but a predator now, on the hunt, and I its prey.
“Right for Galway, left for Liscannor,” Cormac muttered as I tore my gaze from the disappearing house. The entranceway to the drive loomed up ahead, and I made the sign of the cross afore reciting the Lord’s Prayer in my mind.
ár n-Athair, atá ar neamh, go naofar d’ainm, go dtagfadh do ríocht, go ndéantar do thoil ar an talamh mar a dhéantar ar neamh—
One of the horses whinnied, and I glanced up.
Ahead, where the great entranceway curved right and left—where Cormac had to make his decision to take us north to Galway or south to Liscannor—the fog roiled.
It dipped and flowed, an ocean current awash with whorls, its pale wisps toiling against an absent gale.
A chill wound its way up my spine as we approached. As two, long, dark shapes took form in the mist, reaching to meet a torso, a chest, shoulders, arms, and head.
A figure, but one not of this world.
Maggie, its voice called, resonating somewhere in the depths of my mind.
“Michael?” I breathed, pushing upward in a half stand, bracing myself against the rail.
“Christ, sit back!” Cormac ordered, but I couldn’t hear.
Not as the figure held up an arm and pointed toward the village.
South, came the voice again, and my eyes widened.
“Left, Mr. O’Dea. Left to Liscannor, as fast as ye can.” My words rang clear, and Cormac gave a sharp nod as I sat back on the bench, watching as the ghostly figure raised a hand—a wave?—and dissipated into the fog.
“Thank ye, Michael,” I whispered, dipping my head as Cormac banked left toward the village.
“Eh?” Cormac asked, but I shook my head. He glanced at me as he righted the horses. “’Tis the right call. I’ve nay plan but to head for home, and this is the surest route.”
“Home?” I echoed.
“My home, that is. Mam and Dad will welcome ye kindly, and we can decide what to do once we’re safe and sound.”
We?
It had been “I” for so long, that the thought of “we” shook me to the core. Focused solely on surviving, on keeping the promise I’d made to Michael—that had been my only goal.
But now I was a “we” once again—if not with Cormac, then with Diarmuid.
I turned and slid the shutter aside so I could peer through the driver’s window. One singular lump lay sleeping on the floor, with one chubby thumb firmly wedged between plump lips.
“Is he all right?” Cormac asked, snapping the reins as the shapes of civilization rolled into view—a spire, a village cross, houses packed close.
“Grand,” I replied, closing the shutter once more.
“Christ, what a disaster,” said Cormac, and I looked at him—at the clenched lines of his jaw, the furrow of his brow.