“Actually,” Iona agreed, “neither have I. Looking at all those berries, I hope it isn’t.”
They walked under the smooth trunks of the beeches, the wind in the bare branches overhead, their feet crunching on the carpet of rust and bronze fallen leaves.
“There are bluebells here in the spring,” Charlotte went on. “They come before the leaves do.”
“I know,” Iona said quickly. “It’s like walking between two skies ….”
They accomplished the rest of the journey sharing knowledge of nature, Iona telling her stories from Irish legend about stones and trees, heroes and tragedies of the mystic past.
They returned in different order, except that Eudora still walked with Justine, still asking about Piers. Emily shot Charlotte a look of gratitude and exchanged Kezia for Iona.
They saw bright pheasants picking over the fallen grain at the edge of the fields bordering the woods, and Charlotte remarked on them. Kezia answered, but with only a word.
The sun was low in the west, burning flame and gold. The shadows lengthened across the plowed field to the south, its furrows dark and curving gently over the rise and fall of the land. The wind had increased and the starlings were whirled up like driven leaves against the ragged sky, spreading wide and wheeling back in again.
The sunset grew even brighter, the clear stretches of sky between the clouds almost green.
The thought of hot tea and crumpets by the fire began to seem very pleasant.
Gracie was very preoccupied as she helped Charlotte dress for dinner in the oyster silk gown.
“It looks very beautiful, ma’am,” she said sincerely, and the magnitude of her admiration for it was in her eyes. Then the moment after she added, “I learned a bit more about why them folks is ’ere today. I ’ope they really can make peace and give Ireland its freedom. There’s bin some terrible wrongs done. I in’t proud o’ bein’ English w’en I hear some o’ their stories.” She put a final touch to Charlotte’s hair, setting the pearl-beaded ornament straight. “Not as I believes ’em all, o’ course. But even if any of ’em is true, there’s bin some awful cruel men in Ireland.”
“On both sides, I expect,” Charlotte said carefully, regarding her reflection in the glass, but her mind at least half upon what Gracie had said. She looked at Gracie’s small face, pinched now with anxiety and compassion. “They’re working as hard as they can,” she assured her. “And I think Mr. Greville is very skilled. He won’t give up.”
“ ’E better ’adn’t.” Gracie stopped all pretense of attending to the shawl she had in her hands. “There’s terrible things ‘appenin’ ter all kinds o’ people, old women and children, not just men as can fight. Maybe them Fenians an’ the like is wrong, but they wouldn’t a bin there if’n it weren’t fer us bein’ in Ireland when we got no place there in the beginnin’.”
“There’s no point in going back to the beginning, Gracie,” Charlotte said levelly. “We probably shouldn’t be here either. Who should? The Normans, the Vikings, the Danes, the Romans? The Scots all came from Ireland in the first place.”
“No ma’am, the Scots is in Scotland,” Gracie corrected.
Charlotte shook her head. “I know they are now, but before that the Picts were. Then the Scots came across from Ireland and drove the Picts out.”
“Where’d they go to, then?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe they were almost all killed.”
“Well, if the Scots came from Ireland and took over Scotland”—Gracie was thinking hard—“who’s all in Ireland? Why don’t they get on wi’ each other, like we do?”
“Because some of the Scots went back again, and by this time they were Protestant and the rest were Catholic. They’d grown very different in the meantime.”
“Then they shouldn’t oughta gone back.”
“Possibly not, but it’s too late now. We can’t go forward from anywhere except where we are at the moment.”
Gracie thought about that for a long time before she conceded it as Charlotte was about to go out of the door.
Charlotte met Pitt at the bottom of the stairs and was caught by surprise at how pleased she was at the start of admiration in his eyes when he saw her. She felt a heat in her cheeks. He offered his arm, and she took it as she sailed into the withdrawing room.
Dinner was again uncomfortable, but eased in some part by the addition of Piers and Justine, which gave everyone something to talk about other than their own interests, or trivia, which were embarrassingly meaningless.
There were too few of them at the table to separate all those between whom there was friction. It was a hostess’s nightmare. There was order of precedence to consider. People might be insulted if one did not. If there was no title or office to dictate, then there was age. And yet one could not sit Fergal either next to or opposite Lorcan McGinley, nor could one sit him close to Iona, for reasons which were excruciatingly clear to some and quite unknown to others. Similarly, one could not sit Kezia near to her brother. The rage still simmered in her only just below the heat of explosion.
Carson O’Day was the savior of the situation. He seemed both able and willing to conduct agreeable conversations with everyone, finding subjects to discuss from areas as diverse and innocuous as designs of Georgian silver and the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Padraig Doyle told amusing anecdotes about an Irish tinker and a parish priest and made everyone laugh, except Kezia, a failure which he ignored.
Piers and Justine had real attention only for each other.
Eudora looked a trifle sad, as if she had just realized the loss of something she had thought she possessed, and Ainsley appeared bored. Every now and then Charlotte observed an expression of anxiety in his eyes, a difficulty
