Epilogue
Six Months Later
Therese’s breath caught in her throat when she walked into Maeve’s bedroom at the gardener’s cottage.
Maeve stood in front of a full-length gold-framed Victorian mirror, bathed in sunlight. She turned slowly to face her sister.
“You look amazing,” Therese said. “Turn around again and let me see the back.”
The gown was creamy satin with three-quarter sleeves, a deeply cut simple bateau neckline, and approximately sixty tiny satin-covered buttons marching down the back that cinched the bride’s waist to stunning effect.
Maeve did another twirl, demonstrating her favorite thing about the dress. “And it has pockets!”
Both Maeve and Therese had rejected their mother’s wedding dress as too small, too fussy, and too “not Maeve.”
Three months ago, on her last trip home to Savannah, they’d browsed every bridal shop in town, but it was Aunt Frannie who’d come up with the perfect solution.
Fran and Bernie had arrived at the Blueberry Hill house with a huge cardboard box, which they’d carried into the house with deliberate pomp.
“This,” Frannie said, removing the lid of the cardboard box with a ceremonial flourish, “is Nana’s wedding dress. It’s been up in the attic all these years and I’d almost forgotten about it.”
Bernie folded back layers and layers of brittle tissue paper and lifted Julia Mary’s dress out of the box and shook it.
All four of the women sighed in unison as the satin layers rustled to the floor.
“Yes,” Maeve said. “Definitely yes.”
“Hell yes,” Therese chimed in.
The wedding gown had been her maternal grandmother’s, but the bridal veil was her mother’s. It was tulle, fingertip length, with edging of re-embroidered Alencon lace. Therese pinned the veil to Maeve’s updo.
“You look like a dream, Maevey,” Therese said. “Like a fairy princess.”
Her sister squeezed Therese’s hand. “You’re not looking too shabby yourself.”
Therese, the maid of honor, was wearing a vintage sleeveless periwinkle-blue silk slip dress with a dropped waist and a fine gossamer netting overlay decorated with hand-sewn sequins set in flower patterns.
She’d accessorized the dress with a long rope of pearls that had been Esme’s, and opera-length kid gloves in the same hue of blue.
They’d found the dress, along with dozens of other examples of period clothing, packed away in the boxes of what Esme had termed “rubbish” sent over to the gardener’s cottage by her stepmother after the manor house at Tarrymore was turned over to the National Trust.
Therese had laid claim to the dress immediately, and both sisters had been thrilled when they found old black-and-white family photographs showing Delia Rossington wearing the same gown at a fancy dress party in the Tarrymore ballroom.
“You look like Zelda Fitzgerald in that flapper dress,” Maeve told Therese, who smoothed the dress over her hips.
“It’s the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever had on my back,” Therese agreed. “The handiwork is so exquisite. I can’t believe this was balled up in a foot locker all these years.”
She’d brought a small satin drawstring bag into the room. “Put out your hand and close your eyes,” she said, and then dropped a pin into Maeve’s outstretched palm.
“Now open.”
Maeve held the brooch up to the light. The center stone was blue and oval-shaped with a circlet of tiny pearls outlining it, all in a gold setting.
“That’s your something blue,” Therese said. “Let me pin it on your collar.”
But Maeve had turned the pin over and was studying the back.
“Where did you get this brooch?”
“Remember Mama’s junk jewelry box? I unearthed it from the very back of her closet shelf. I guess you missed it when you were doing your Swedish death clean.”
The junk jewelry box had been a favorite treasure trove of the two sisters when they were playing dress-up.
“I don’t remember seeing this brooch among the plastic pop-beads and silver charm bracelets,” Maeve said.
“I was surprised to find it too,” Therese said. “Maybe someone gave it to Mary Helen after we were grown and gone.”
“Don’t think so,” Maeve said slowly. She showed Therese the back of the pin where the number 14 was stamped in gold. “This means the brooch is fourteen-karat gold. Definitely not fake.”
“Therese, remember the letter from Kathleen where she was telling Tommy about the jewelry Delia gave her along with the painting the night she sent her away?”
“Sort of. I remember something about pearl earrings and a diamond bracelet, but I thought her letter said she’d sold them to help finance her new husband’s tavern.”
“In that letter she described a pin—with a large sapphire in the middle, encircled with pearls. I’m pretty sure this sapphire is the real deal. It’s literally the Rossington family jewels.”
Therese held the brooch now. “Maybe Mom kept it with her good stuff, not that there was much of it, because she didn’t want us playing with it and taking it to school for show-and-tell.
Or maybe she didn’t know herself that it was real.
She must have gotten it from Nana. Did you ask Frannie and Bernie if they’d ever seen it before? ”
“I did, and they had no idea where it came from.”
She fastened the pin to Maeve’s dress and beamed. “Have you got everything now?”
“Yup. Kathleen’s lace handkerchief is my something old.
” She touched her ears. “My new sister-in-law Angie gave me the diamond earrings for something new, and Cormac’s wife, Siobhan, gave me the same sixpence for my shoe that she wore for her wedding.
So now I’m set. We’d better get going. If we’re late Liam will be thinking I changed my mind. Did Scotty bring the Rolls around yet?”
“He’s downstairs and I’m pretty sure he’s still buzzed from that rehearsal dinner after-party at the distillery last night. That’s the last time I let him hang out with the wild and crazy Grogan brothers. Those dudes don’t play! He came crawling back to our room at the inn at four in the morning.”
“Hopefully Liam checked out way before that,” Maeve said.
Scotty Childress was standing beside the gleaming black Rolls, and his face lit up when he saw the Dunagin sisters approach. “Wow,” he said. “You two look … magical.”
Maeve laughed and patted the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. “Thanks, sport. How’re you feeling?”
He touched his forehead. “The truth? I’m a little, uh, headachey. But I’m feeling awesome now, seeing you ladies.” He held the back door open and helped the women slide onto the seat.
Scotty glanced in the rearview mirror. “All set?”
“Definitely,” Therese said. “You know where we’re going, right?”
“St. Bonaventure Church,” he said. “Cormac took me by yesterday, and I’ve got it in my GPS.”
He pulled the car slowly away from the curb. “I still can’t believe I’m driving a Rolls-Royce Silver Phantom.” He gave the dashboard a reverential pat. “Where’d you get this puppy?”
Maeve chuckled. “You might call it a petty revenge purchase. Esme’s brother Geoffrey owned it, but he had to unload it quickly at a fire-sale price to pay his lawyer’s fees after he was arrested. We’ve been using it a lot for events at the inn. Guests seem to love it.”
“What’s not to love?” Scotty said.
Because the Grogans knew all the right people in Tarrymore, the parish priest had agreed to allow the wedding to be held at St. Bonaventure.
Liam and his brothers and cousins and the rest of the family, along with Maeve and some of the staff from the inn, had spent weeks cleaning and refurbishing the boarded-up church.
They’d discovered the original stained-glass windows shoved behind the altar, and Cormac had managed to reinstall them.
The church organ’s innards had been chewed to bits by mice, so a new organ had been rented for the day.
The Rolls-Royce glided to a stop in front of the newly paved driveway in front of St. Bonaventure, and Angela and Siobhan Grogan were waiting as the bride and her maid of honor emerged from the back seat.
Siobhan handed small bouquets of local flowers—roses, peonies, daisies, and sprigs of heather—to the sisters. Maeve led the way as she and Therese walked past the church and into the cemetery. The smell of new-mown grass was heavy in the air, and bees and butterflies buzzed over patches of clover.
“Here,” Maeve said, pointing down at the modest granite grave marker. They placed the bouquets on the headstones of Kathleen’s family, held hands, bowed their heads, and said a brief silent prayer.
“What do you think Kathleen would make of all this?” Therese asked. “Of you moving back here to Ireland, living in the shadow of the manor house? Wearing the brooch Delia gave her the night she left and getting married in the same church where her parents were married, and later buried from?”
“I don’t know,” Maeve admitted. “But I think maybe she’d be happy. I know Mary Helen would be busting her buttons she’d be so proud. Of you.”
“Of us,” Therese corrected. “Do you think she’d be pissed about us selling the portrait?”
“I think she’d be okay with it,” Maeve said. “Mainly because we proved she was right—the painting was authentic and valuable, and we figured out our connection to Lady Geraldine.”
“I kinda think she’d like the idea that the painting is right back where it started—in the manor house, thanks to that anonymous donor.”
“Can you keep a secret?” Maeve asked. “Word on the street is that the anonymous donor was Liam’s brother Luke. Angela is on the trust’s board of directors, and I think she put him up to buying it.”
“I knew I liked him,” Therese said.
“None of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on proving to me that Lady Geraldine was the real thing, and if you hadn’t pushed me out of my comfort zone and onto that flight to Dublin,” Maeve reminded her.
“And just think of how different things would have been if I hadn’t hidden your passport,” Therese said, giving her sister a playful poke in the ribs.
Maeve was looking up the gently sloping hill to the church, where guests were arriving and filing into the sanctuary of St. Bonaventure.
When a restored shiny racing-green 1972 Jaguar pulled up, she slowly exhaled.
Liam got out, but instead of following the guests inside, he stood, gazing down the hill.
Their eyes met. She waved. He nodded, blew her a kiss, and then hurried inside.
Afterward, Maeve would be hard-pressed to remember all the details of the most joyous day of her life.
Yes, she’d remember the sight of Cormac’s twins, dressed in ridiculous mini-tuxedos trying to corral Lucy and Sinead and then lead them to the front pew of the church, and their flower girl, Claire, smiling and waving as she ran up the aisle scattering rose petals with wild abandon.
She’d remember Uncle Keith greeting her in the church vestibule, dressed in a slightly rusty tuxedo with a sprig-of-heather boutonniere on his lapel, and on his head a sporty green tweed fedora with a feather cockade.
“Oh…” Maeve covered her mouth. “Uncle Keith, is that Daddy’s Hibernian Society hat? The one he always wore to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade?”
“It is,” Keith said. “Therese found it and she brought it all the way here so I could wear it to give you away today and represent the Dunagin side of the family.”
For years afterward, whenever she’d hear “Ave Maria” being played in church, Maeve would remember it as the processional for her wedding day, floating up the aisle on her uncle’s arm.
She’d remember pausing at the pew where her aunts Bernie and Frannie were seated, along with their newfound cousin Isabel, seated in her wheelchair, and leaning down to kiss their warm familiar faces.
And the most important detail of all she would never forget: Liam Grogan, his hands clasped in hers, his usually merry face solemn as he promised to love and cherish her forever.
The baby-faced young priest, barely out of seminary, pronounced them husband and wife, and then they were kissing, so long and so passionately that Father Barry coughed nervously, and forgetting he was wearing a microphone, whispered, “Er … that’s enough now,” which earned waves of laughter from the attendees.
“Never enough, Father,” Liam said loudly.
And then everyone in the church was standing and clapping, and led by the boisterous Grogan brothers they were chanting, “Kiss ’er again! Kiss ’er again! Kiss ’er again.”
And so he did.