She heard the pain in him, but she did not understand the story. She was perfectly familiar with poverty. The London streets in some areas could equal anything Ireland could offer. She had seen children starved, or frozen to death. She had been cold and sick often enough herself before she had been taken into service by Pitt.
“Was a wot?” she said quietly.
“A Fenian,” he explained. “A secret brotherhood of Irishmen who want freedom for Ireland, to rule themselves and follow our own ways—those of us that are left. God knows how many that is. We’ve been driven from the land by greedy landlords till there are only ghost villages left in the west and the south.”
“Driven where to?” She tried to imagine it. It was the only part of his story which was outside her own experience.
“America, Canada, anywhere as’ll have us, where we can find honest work, and food and shelter at the end of it.”
She could think of nothing to say. It was tragic and unjust. She could understand his anger.
He saw the compassion in her face.
“Can you imagine it, Gracie?” he said softly, his voice little more than a whisper. “Whole villages dispossessed of the land and the homes where they were born and where they’d labored and built, driven out with nowhere to go, even in winter. Old men and women with babies in arms, children at their skirts, sent out into the wind and the rain to fend for themselves any way they could. What kind of a person would do that to another creature?”
“I dunno,” she answered solemnly. “I in’t never met no one as’d do nothing like that. I only know landlords wot throw out a family ’ere or there. It in’t ’uman.”
“You’re right about that, Gracie. Believe me, if I were to tell you all Ireland’s ills, we would still be here long after this weekend party is over and the politicians have gone back to London or Dublin or Belfast. And that would be barely the beginning of it. Poverty’s everywhere, I know that. But this is the slow murder of a nation. No wonder it rains in Ireland till the very earth shimmers green. It must be the angels of God weeping at the suffering and the pity of it.”
She was still picturing it in her mind and trying to work her way through the sadness when they were interrupted by Gwen coming in to find some of the ingredients for making “Lady Conyngham’s lip honey.”
“How do you do that?” Gracie asked, ever eager to learn.
“Take two ounces of honey, one of purified wax, half an ounce of silver litharge and the same of myrrh,” Gwen answered obligingly, happy to share her knowledge. “Mix this over a slow fire, and add any perfume you care for. I’m going to use milk of roses. It should be up on that shelf.” She nodded to a point just above Grade’s head. She smiled at Finn Hennessey, and quickly he opened the cupboard and passed the container down to her.
She flashed him a warm glance and looked disposed to remain a few moments longer. Gracie considered standing her ground, then decided it would look childish. She excused herself and went off, but wondering if he was watching her or if he had already lost himself in conversation with Gwen.
At the corner of the corridor she could not resist turning her head, and felt a soaring of her heart to meet his eyes and know that his mind was still upon her.
* * *
Dinner was a very stilted affair to begin with. None of the women had forgotten the bitterness of the conversation over afternoon tea, and both Charlotte and Emily were dreading a similar scene.
Fergal Moynihan arrived looking grim, but maintained a very formal courtesy with absolute, almost studied equality towards everyone.
Iona McGinley looked beautiful in an intense way. She had chosen a very dramatic gown of blue, almost purple, and it made the skin of her neck and shoulders look very white and fragile. Charlotte had been told Iona was a poetess, and looking at her now she could well believe it. She seemed a figment of some romantic dream herself, and a curious, faraway smile played about her lips as though she were more often dreaming than thinking of the mundane politeness of a dinner party.
Piers Greville sat in his own little island of happiness. His parents were both fully occupied trying to behave as if the company were at ease and making small talk about innocuous matters.
Kezia also looked very fine in an utterly different manner. It would have been difficult to find two women more wildly in contrast than she and Iona McGinley. She wore a shimmering aquamarine gown with delicate embroidery asymmetrically down one side. Her shoulders were rich and milky smooth, her bosom very handsome. Her fair hair caught the light, and she seemed almost to glow with the richness of her coloring. Charlotte saw a flicker of appreciation on Ainsley Greville’s face, and on Padraig Doyle’s, and was not surprised.
Charlotte had dressed with Gracie’s help. She wore one of Aunt Vespasia’s gowns, not the oyster satin—she was keeping that for the most important occasion—but one in a deep forest green, very severely cut, which was a great deal more flattering than she would have supposed. It all lay in the cut of the bosom, the waist, and the way the skirt draped over the hips and under the tiny bustle, most fashionably reduced from previous years. She saw a flash of admiration in the eyes of more than one of the men, but more satisfying than that, a swift glance of envy from the women.
Fergal spoke to Iona, some trivial politeness, then Lorcan interrupted. Padraig Doyle smoothed over the situation with an anecdote about an adventure on the western frontiers of America and set everyone laughing, if somewhat nervously.
The next course was served.
Emily introduced some harmless subject, but she was obliged to work very hard to keep it so. Charlotte did all she could to help.
After the last course was completed the ladies adjourned to the withdrawing room, but were very soon followed by the gentlemen, and someone suggested a little music. Possibly it was intended to flatter Iona.
She did indeed sing beautifully. She had a haunting voice, far deeper than one might have expected from such a fragile figure. Eudora played the piano for her, with a surprisingly lyrical touch, and seeming at ease even with old Irish folk tunes which fell in unusual cadences, quite different from English music.
At first Charlotte enjoyed it very much, and after half an hour began to find herself relaxing. She looked across at Pitt and caught his eye. He smiled back at her, but she saw he was still sitting upright and every now and again his eyes would wander around the room from face to face, as if he expected some unpleasantness.
It came from the one quarter she had not foreseen. Iona’s songs became more emotional, more filled with the tragedy of Ireland, the lost peace, the lovers parted by betrayal and death, the fallen heroes of battle.
Ainsley shifted uncomfortably, his jaw tightening.
Kezia was growing more flushed in the face, her mouth set in a thinning line.
Fergal never took his eyes from Iona, as if the music’s beauty had entered his soul and both the pain of it and the accusations against his own people were inextricably mixed, paralyzing his protest.
Then Emily moved as though to speak, but Eudora kept on playing, and Lorcan McGinley stood between her and Iona, his fair face transfixed with the old stories of love betrayed and death at British hands.
It was Padraig Doyle who intervened.
“Sure an’ that’s a lovely sad song,” he said with a smile. “All about a relative o’ mine too. The heroine, Neassa Doyle, was an aunt o’ mine, on my mother’s side.” He looked across at Carson O’Day, who so far had said nothing, his expression impossible to read. “And the hero, poor man, could be a relative o’ yours, I’ll swear?”
“Drystan O’Day,” Carson agreed bleakly. “One tragedy among many, but this one immortalized in music and poetry.”