Chapter 26
“Sorry about that,” Liam said as he rushed Maeve out of the pub and toward the Jeep. “You never know what Donal is going to get up to after he’s had a few too many pints.”
Between running and laughing, Maeve was doubled over, hands on knees, trying to catch her breath and not wet her pants.
“It was … fun,” she finally managed. “Closest I’ve ever been to an honest-to-goodness bar brawl.”
“Not sure if that’s a compliment or an indictment,” he said, holding the passenger-side door of the Jeep open for her.
As they pulled away from the curb, the front door of the pub flew open and they watched as the bartender literally booted Donal out onto the sidewalk. The big man sat, stunned for a moment, then somehow staggered to his feet and bellowed “‘Galway Girl’!” before again collapsing onto the pavement.
“Should we go back and help him? See he gets safely home?” Maeve asked.
“Not on your life,” Liam retorted. “The lad’s been kicked out of every bar in Wicklow, and half the ones in the next county over. He can handle himself.”
He looked over at her, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Are you still wanting a real pub crawl? We could go down to Bannion’s, it’s not far, and I’m sure it’ll be a lot quieter.”
Maeve shook her head. “I guess I’m a second-rate Irishman. I’m afraid I’m still experiencing a bit of jet lag.”
“Plenty of excitement for one night,” he agreed. “I’ll take you back to the inn, shall I?”
Liam had left the Jeep’s windows down, and the fresh, chilly air was a welcome change from the smoke-filled, overheated pub.
She leaned her head out the window and looked out at the solid wall of trees pressing close against both sides of the roadway.
Above the treetops a huge crescent moon seemed painted onto a night-sky backdrop.
It seemed surreal. She was in Ireland, had just narrowly escaped a bar fight, and was in the company of a handsome man who was almost too good to be true.
Was this really happening to Maeve Dunagin, career wallflower?
“And what’s on your agenda for tomorrow?” Liam asked. “Ring of Kerry, Dingle Peninsula?”
“Maybe later in the week. Tomorrow we’re going to Cobh, to the Heritage Museum.”
“Lovely,” he said. “I’ve not been to that museum since I was a boy and my cousins came over from the States. You never take time to do the tourist things in your own part of the world, do you?”
“You have family in the US?”
“Sort of. I’ve a cousin who lives in Chicago, and she came over with her kids to visit years and years ago.
I remember being properly terrified by some of the exhibits there, especially the gruesome depictions of the convict ships bound for Australia.
Those mannequins were terrifying to a kid, and of course, the Titanic exhibit is quite sobering. ”
“The Titanic?”
“Cobh, or Queenstown, as it was called back then, was the final port of call before the Titanic went down after striking that iceberg. Only three days out of port. Have you not seen the film?”
“I think I’ve seen it at least three times, but it’s been years and years. I guess I forgot the part about the stop in Ireland,” Maeve said.
“Too busy ogling Leo DiCaprio in a wet undershirt, I’m guessing?”
“I was a teenaged girl. Guilty as charged,” Maeve said with a chuckle. “Anyway, I’ve also booked a consultation with a volunteer genealogist while we’re at the museum.”
“You’re that serious about finding the family roots, are you?” He shot her a quizzical look.
“Yes,” she said, annoyed at his tone. “And it’s not just idle curiosity. There’s actually something pretty big at stake.”
“I meant no offense,” he said hastily. “That is … I’m wondering why it’s so important. You found the village where your mum’s people were from. What else are you looking for?”
“Answers,” she said succinctly.
“About the Connors?”
“That and their connection to the Rossingtons.”
“Lord and Lady Rossington?” He looked incredulous. “Didn’t you tell me your mother’s people were poor farmers?”
Maeve remembered the look that had passed between Liam and his cousin Maddie when she mentioned the family name after her tour of the home farm.
“It’s a long story,” she said finally, not sure she was ready to trust a near stranger with the tale of the unexpected fork she and Therese had discovered in their family tree.
“It’s early yet. For me, anyway.”
She considered it. Liam seemed like a decent guy, sympathetic even. Why not get the perspective of a local?
“There’s this antique painting,” she said finally, unsure of where to start.
“It hung over our fireplace mantel my whole life. Of a very elegant, fancy lady. Mary Helen, my mom, always swore the portrait was priceless, and by a famous artist, and that the subject of the portrait, Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh, was our Irish ancestor.”
“Hmm.”
“You’d have to know my mom. She absolutely delighted in making up wild, utterly improbable stories.
What literary types call a fabulist. So I always assumed Lady Geraldine was another of Mary Helen’s tall tales, and probably the portrait was something she picked up at a yard sale, along with some old Tupperware and Hummel figurines.
I mean, we’re from a working-class family.
With the exception of my uncle Keith, who’s a pharmacist, I’m the first on both sides of my family to get a college degree.
How the hell could we be related to some wealthy Anglo-Irish aristocrats? ”
“Like the Rossingtons,” he said quietly. “Although, from what I understand, the Rossington fortunes have been somewhat diminished over the years. Look at Esme, living in what might be called reduced circumstances in the gardener’s cottage. Poor old dear.”
The way he said the last phrase left no doubt that he held no sympathy for the last of the Rossingtons.
“You know Esme?” she asked.
“Everyone around Tarrymore knows her. And her dog.”
“Sinead O’Cocker. Therese met her yesterday and chatted her up,” Maeve said.
“At the Willow, no doubt,” Liam said. “I’m shocked Esme spoke to a stranger, and an American at that.”
“Therese is a lot like our mom. She could charm the birds out of the sky.”
“Curious to know what they talked about. Does your sister follow cricket? Or is she perhaps a pool shark?”
“That’s part of my shaggy dog story,” Maeve said.
She launched into her tale and told Liam about her mother’s dying wish, that her daughters should take a road trip to Ireland to trace their family heritage.
“It’s the last thing either of us wanted to do,” she admitted. “Therese and I haven’t been close in years.”
“And yet, here you are.”
“There were … extenuating circumstances. We learned, shortly after her death, that our mother had been bilked out of her life’s savings by a sleazy television preacher.
She’d even taken out a new mortgage on our family home—the one Therese and I were set to inherit.
The news couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Therese is an actress and is perpetually broke.
And I found out, the day after the funeral, that I’d lost my teaching job, due to ‘budget cuts.’ We had nothing left.
Except for Lady Geraldine, and a rusty coffee can full of twenty-dollar bills Mom had set aside over the years from her paycheck to fund the trip she intended for us to take. ”
Maeve’s eyes filled with unwelcome tears.
She blinked them away and sat back, waiting for him to say something else, ask another question, but he kept his eyes on the road.
She returned her gaze to the sky, sprinkled with more stars than she’d ever noticed back at home.
Mary Helen would love this, she reflected.
All of it. Not just the scenery, but the drama of what they’d already discovered.
“And now, we find out that there’s another painting of Lady Geraldine, that was stolen from Tarrymore, by the IRA, fifty years after our great-grandmother supposedly brought ours to America on that ship she boarded in Cobh, or Queenstown, or whatever you want to call it.”
“You heard about the IRA raid, huh?” He shot her a look of sympathy.
“Through my research. Also the guide mentioned it when I was touring the estate, and then yesterday, Esme Rossington told Therese all about how the robbery was what prompted her father to donate the property, and most of the art collection, to the National Trust, or whatever they call it.”
“Not the answers you were hoping to find about your portrait.”
She let out a long sigh. “Look. I’m not a gullible person.
I quit believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy when I was in first grade after I noticed the guy at the mall’s beard was attached by an elastic strap.
I don’t want to allow myself to hope ours is real, but the thing is, there’s a chance, just a tiny chance, that it’s legit. ”
“Okay, not gullible, non-Santa fan, what makes you think that?”
“Therese showed our painting to an expert in Savannah. She was dubious, until she saw the painting. She couldn’t verify it, but she did say it looked like the real thing.
And then, yesterday, we went to visit the daughter of Kathleen’s little brother Tommy.
Her name is Isabel. Quite elderly and living in a nursing home.
She told us that Kathleen was sent to live at Tarrymore as a little girl, at the insistence of Lady Delia Rossington, who became Kathleen’s protector.
She was raised there, not back at that tenant farm with the rest of the Connors. ”
“Why was that, I wonder? The Rossingtons haven’t exactly been known for their generosity to the local peasants,” Liam observed.
Maeve shook her head. “Lord Rossington apparently liked at least one of the locals. Kathleen’s mother, Bridget, caught his eye.
He was married, of course, with two sons, and she was just a teenager.
Would have been quite a scandal, but arrangements were made, and the parish priest saved the day.
Bridget was quickly and quietly married off to an agreeable lad from the village… ”
“Named Connor.”
“Isabel heard the church got a new roof and Bridget’s father got a new horse out of the deal. And Lady Delia, the lord’s spinster older sister, brought the little girl, named Kathleen, to the manor house to be raised as her protégé.”
“Quite a tale,” Liam murmured. “But how does Kathleen end up with a priceless family portrait?”
“Another freakin’ mystery,” Maeve said. She recounted what Isabel had told them about the last time her father had seen his older sister.
“Out of the blue one afternoon, someone from the estate drove up and Kathleen hopped out and said she was leaving for America, right then. She promised to write, and then she gave him a little pin, like a stickpin, I guess you’d call it, which she said Lady Delia wanted him to have.
She made him promise not to show it to anyone. ”
Maeve dug her phone from her pocket and scrolled through her camera roll. She pulled up the photo of Isabel’s pin, enlarged the image, and held it up for Liam to see.
“Tommy gave her the pin. She still has it. Was wearing it on her sweater when we went to see her.”
He slowed the Jeep and swung into the inn’s parking lot. After he stopped the car he reached for the phone, studying the image intently.
“That’s the Rossington coat of arms. They plaster it on everything. The labels on my whiskey bottles, the signs at the estate…”
“The cocktail napkins at the inn,” Maeve added.
She put her phone away. It was past midnight and there was a light above the inn’s front door, but most of the other windows in the building were dark. Except for one window in one room, on the third floor. She spotted a profile in the window, briefly, before the light blinked off.
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” she murmured.
“Come again?”
“Just something my mother used to say, whenever we’d pull up to our house after being away. I haven’t thought of that in years. No idea where that came from.”
“‘To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,’” he chanted, his face breaking into a broad grin.
“‘Home again, home again, jiggety-jig. To market, to market, to buy a fat hog. Home again, home again, jiggety-jog.’” He noted the surprised expression on her face.
“I suppose it’s an old nursery rhyme,” he said.
“My granddad used to sing it, after he’d taken us to the shops to buy sweets. ”
She felt another unexpected pang of sadness. All those months of Mary Helen’s illness, she hadn’t realized the dementia had been slowly robbing her of her mother, bit by bit. Hearing that silly little verse reminded her again of her loss. Hers and Therese’s.
“I had fun tonight,” she said, turning to Liam.
He leaned across the steering wheel and held her face between both hands, his lips finding hers.
The kiss was gentle at first, and when she responded, his embrace deepened.
After a moment, he trailed a fingertip down her cheek.
“Lovely,” he whispered, his lips close to her ear. He pulled her closer, kissed her again.
“Can I see you again?”
“I’d like that,” Maeve said, feeling the heat rise in her cheeks as she thought about what she’d really like—which was to have Liam walk her inside the inn, take her to a vacant room, and do all the wild, sinful things she’d been told her whole life not to do with a strange man.
“Better go now,” she said reluctantly. “Big day tomorrow.”
He got out of the Jeep, came around, and helped her out of the passenger seat, casually slinging an arm around her shoulder as he walked her to the inn’s front door, where he kissed her again. “Home again, home again,” he whispered.