Laurel McKee Read online

“She takes after her sister, then, I think. Full of energy and life.”

  Eliza glanced at him, surprised. Full of life? Nay, of late she had felt weighed down by seriousness. Until she saw him again.

  But there was no time to say anything else. They had returned to the ballroom doors, to all the overly bright sparkle of crystal chandeliers and frantic laughter. Will bowed to her and disappeared back into the crowd.

  Eliza rubbed at her bare upper arms, shivering despite the overly warm room.

  “Eliza, dear? Are you unwell?” she heard Anna say, and turned to find that she didn’t have to seek out her sister after all. Anna’s trail of admirers hovered in the background, but she paid them no mind.

  Their mother had sent Anna to Dublin not just because she was bored at Killinan, of course, but also in hopes she would find a suitable husband. Perhaps not the duke or prince Anna teased about, but someone who could control her and her “high spirits” and not let her independence fly out of control, as Eliza’s had. It seemed that plan would meet with no success, for she cared for none of her respectable suitors.

  “I am just a bit tired,” Eliza said. “I think it is time we departed.”

  For once, her sister made no protest at leaving so early. “Of course,” she said, going along quietly as they reclaimed their wraps and sent for the carriage.

  As they jostled through the empty streets, Eliza gazed out the window, wrapped up in thoughts of Will, just as when they had arrived. She could feel their old bond tightening again. Something in their hearts still called out to each other, a soft, irresistible whisper.

  But it was too late. They had chosen their paths, and they were separate ones, indeed.

  “It was good to see you smile again tonight, Eliza,” Anna said.

  Eliza took her sister’s hand. “Have I been so dour of late?”

  “Perhaps just a bit. But it is hardly a wonder. Everyone behaves so oddly these days. Yet, Will Denton made you smile.”

  Was it so obvious, then, that irresistible seed of old happiness she felt when she was with him? She would have to be much more careful in the future.

  “It is pleasant to see him again after so long,” she admitted.

  “Yes. I am sure that is all there is to it.”

  Was that sarcasm in Anna’s voice? Eliza studied her sister’s angelic face in the moonlight, but Anna just smiled.

  The carriage halted at their own front door, light shining faintly from the fanlight. The house seemed quiet, almost deserted. Mr. O’Connor had gone, slipping away from the cellar before dawn to head for France to avoid arrest and plead for French allies. One task accomplished. Yet, another always awaited.

  “You go ahead, Anna,” Eliza said. “I have a quick errand.”

  “At this time of night?” her sister cried.

  “I shan’t be gone long,” Eliza answered soothingly.

  “But the patrols!”

  “They won’t bother me, not while I’m in my own carriage.”

  She could see that her sister wanted to argue, maybe insist on coming along. Finally, Anna nodded and let the footman help her from the carriage. “Be careful, Eliza.”

  “Of course I will,” Eliza said, blowing her a kiss. Once the front door was safely shut and the house quiet again, she told the coachman, “One twenty Green Street, please, John.”

  Green Street was the site of a respectable-looking coffeehouse. Eliza left the servants with the carriage a few doors down, drawing her cloak’s hood close around her face as she hurried past the sparsely filled tables, through the warm coffee- and spice-scented air. The proprietor behind the counter paid her no mind.

  She went through a door at the back and up a narrow, creaking flight of stairs. At the top was a landing with one door made of stout wooden planks with sturdy new iron fittings. It smelled of coffee even there—coffee, lilac perfume, and fear.

  She knocked twice in quick succession, then twice slowly. She held her breath as she listened carefully to any sign of movement behind that door.

  At last there was a thump, a squeal as the lock was peeled back. The door was opened a crack, and a woman’s pale face, framed with a cloud of dark hair, peeked out cautiously.

  “Eliza!” she cried, her voice heavy with a French accent. “You are here.”

  She opened the door wider, letting Eliza slip inside before shutting and locking it again. The chamber was small, windowless, and cold, lit only with a branch of candles on the one table, which also held wine bottles and the remains of supper. An open traveling case spilled clothes and papers onto the floor, and on the bed slept a little girl under a pile of quilts.

  “Of course I am here,” Eliza said, embracing the woman, who was heavily pregnant under her black muslin gown, her pretty oval face shadowed with exhaustion. Pamela Fitzgerald looked like she would give birth any day—without her husband nearby and no family. Her husband, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, son of the Duke and Duchess of Leinster and leader of the United Irishmen of Dublin, had been on the run from the British for months. Eliza had helped him find hiding places, and she had promised she would help Pamela if she could. She always kept her promises.

  Pamela sat down carefully on the edge of the bed, tucking the quilts closer around her daughter. “How has it been for you, petite amie?” she said. “Have you been much harassed?”

  Eliza smiled at the sparrowlike Pamela calling her “petite.” “I have not been harassed at all, so far. No one dares accuse a countess of sedition, not without solid proof. And I am careful.”

  “I’m glad for that at least.”

  “But you, Pamela—I was surprised to hear you were here in Dublin. You should have stayed at your home at Kilrush or gone to Edward’s family. They are powerful; they can protect you.”

  Pamela shook her head. “Edward’s maman, la duchesse, is in London. She has my little Eddy with her. She and her Mr. Ogilvie are trying to get Edward out of the country, I think, though he will never go.”

  “You could go to Castletown, then. No one would dare bother you there.”

  A wry smile touched Pamela’s pale lips. “Lady Louisa would not want me there. She might be Edward’s tante, but she and Mr. Conolly are Ascendancy through and through. Vraiment?”

  Eliza had to admit that was true, indeed. “It’s not safe here. And this stuffy little room cannot be healthy for you.”

  Pamela shrugged. “I am strong, Eliza, don’t worry, and so are my bébés. We are here just for a few days, to see my husband. Then we will go back to Kilrush. It is safe for us there, even if it is not for Edward.”

  Eliza reached into her reticule and drew out the object of her visit—Mr. Boyle’s note, pressed into her hand as they watched the regiment on St. Stephen’s Green. “You will give him this when you see him? He must receive it as soon as possible so he will know where to go next, and I do not know when I will see him again.”

  “Certainment. He will be happy to hear you are well and that your own work progresses.”

  “And you? Do you need anything? Food or milk for little Pam?”

  Pamela looked down at her sleeping daughter. “Non, nothing. Lady Lucy sends things. She looks after her brother’s family well.”

  Eliza stayed a while longer, telling Pamela what meager news she had. Then she reluctantly left the little family to their sparse lodgings, with Pamela’s assurances they would move elsewhere the very next night.

  As Eliza climbed into her carriage, she thought she glimpsed a shifting shadow across the street. She peered closer, her shoulders stiffening, but she saw only a bit of windblown debris and the cast of the moon in a shop window.

  Feeling foolish, she laughed at herself and turned toward home.

  Will stared after Eliza’s departing carriage, pressed tight to the stone wall deep in the shadows. Only after he was sure she was gone, the coach rattling back toward Henrietta Street, did he turn his attention to the building she emerged from.

  A coffeehouse, one of several in this respectable neigh
borhood. Small, quiet, half full of genteel-looking patrons, but distinctly mercantile class. What was a countess doing there, slipping inside in the middle of the night with her cloak hood drawn up?

  He would wager it was not just for their blend of coffee.

  As soon as Eliza’s coach was gone, a shadow detached itself from a wall across the way and followed at a fast pace. The man was not tall, but he was quick and muffled in a black coat and wide-brimmed hat. At the corner, he glanced back and held up his hand as if to signal someone else.

  So Will was not alone in watching Eliza at the coffeehouse. He wasn’t the only one tracing her movements, keeping track of where she went and who she talked to. But who sent this man? What did they hope to gain?

  Will, in turn, followed the follower, keeping the man in his sights as they made their way through the quiet streets. He would not let anyone hurt Eliza.

  Will trailed him at a discreet distance, but the man did not go to Eliza’s house on Henrietta Street. He went toward the Castle, dark and ominous in the night. Before he could reach the locked gates, he stumbled on the paving stones.

  “Blast it all,” he muttered in a rough accent, the words unnaturally loud in the dark silence. A twist of paper and a few coins fell from his pocket. For a flashing instant, Will wanted to grab the man, to hit him viciously until he confessed his mission, confessed who sent him to watch Eliza. To beat him bloody for daring to threaten her in any way. But cold reason held him back. He could not help her at all if he was in prison for attacking a Castle lackey.

  And he would learn nothing behind bars, either.

  A guard let the man in through the gates, so obviously he was expected. Once all was quiet again, Will scooped up the twist of paper left behind when the man collected his dropped coins. It was probably nothing, but who knew what could be useful.

  Will unrolled the scrap, his blood freezing as he saw what it was—another seditious pamphlet from By A Lady. The Castle knew about her writing, then.

  Stuffing the paper into his own pocket, he turned back toward the coffeehouse, intent on discovering what led Eliza there in the first place. What sort of secret meeting had she attended there? What was she up to now? And who exactly at the Castle ordered her followed?

  He was determined to find out—and to stop her from destroying herself.

  Chapter Six

  But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon…’ ”

  Eliza peered down at the stage through her opera glasses, watching Romeo gaze up at Juliet on her balcony. She leaned her elbow on the gilded balustrade of the box, wrapped up in that little dreamworld.

  It hardly mattered that the painted backdrop behind the balcony depicted the solid bulk of the Dublin Parliament building, pale gray against a blue sky, where there was no evidence of a moon, envious or otherwise. The carved allegorical figures of Theater and Music to either side of the stage looked on stolidly, unmoved by this or any other spectacle they beheld here at the Crow Street Theater.

  But the audience was not so hard-hearted. Usually Dublin theatergoers were loud and rowdy, conversing between themselves, shouting at the actors, even causing riots, as Edward Fitzgerald had several months ago when one of those actors shouted too enthusiastically, “Damn France!” and he took it as an insult to his French wife. The new decorum of London theaters had not yet found its way across the Irish Sea. Tonight, though, everyone, from the glittering gold and blue boxes down to the rough benches of the pit, was transfixed by the romance unfolding onstage.

  As was Eliza. It had certainly been a long time since she was a teenaged girl, giddy with first love for Will Denton. And the actors, too, looked as if it had been some time since they saw fifteen. But none of that mattered. Their acting skills and the eternal power of Shakespeare’s beautiful words made her remember it all. The soaring highs of love; the dark despair when it was over.

  Except she feared it was not over. Not yet.

  She raised her glass from the stage to a box just across the U shape of the theater. Will sat there with General Hardwick and Mrs. Hardwick, along with their pretty daughter Lydia. His gaze was focused on the stage. He looked handsome as always in his red and gold coat, his bright hair tied back in a queue that shimmered in the house lights. But a frown etched his brow as if he, too, remembered those sunlit days of their infatuated youth.

  “ ‘I take thee at thy word,’ ” Romeo declared, climbing up the ivy-covered stones of Juliet’s tower. “ ‘Call me but love and I’ll be new baptized…’ ”

  “ ‘What man art thou, that thus bescreened in night so stumblest on my counsel?’ ” Juliet protested, modestly gathering close the neck of her gauzy night rail.

  Eliza reluctantly smiled, remembering Will climbing the ivy up her own wall. Perhaps they were not past such youthful follies after all.

  “ ‘By a name I know not how to tell thee who I am,’ ” said Romeo. “ ‘My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself because it is an enemy to thee.’ ”

  An enemy to thee. Eliza lowered her glass. Romeo and Juliet’s deep-seated enmity, through no fault of their own but part of their essential natures, led to their doom. What would happen here and now?

  Next to her, Anna sat perched on the edge of her seat, her eyes wide and shining with tears as she watched the lovers embrace. Anna was young and so romantic, so fragile. Eliza feared so much for her, as she did for all who felt so deeply.

  She raised her glass again, glancing back across the theater to find Will watching her. That frown was gone, but his face was smoothly expressionless. Utterly unreadable.

  Eliza feared she would cry. She felt the ache of tears behind her eyes, a new, sharp sadness for what could not be. She did have feelings for Will; she had to admit that to herself. The old feelings had never quite gone away, even over the years of his absence, and now that he was back, they, too, returned. Deeper, fuller—a woman’s desire.

  But she could not be turned from her course. Irish independence was just and true, far bigger than herself and her desires. And she was sure Will would not be turned from his course, either. One of them would be defeated in the end.

  Yet, for this moment, it was the calm before the storm. Just like Romeo and Juliet’s moonlit balcony.

  The blue velvet curtain dropped over the lovers’ futile plans, signaling the interval. The audience stirred back to life, stretching and laughing as the girls selling oranges and sugared almonds took to the aisles.

  Anna dabbed at her eyes with her lace handkerchief. “It’s so beautiful, Eliza. I’m glad we came here tonight.”

  Eliza laughed, despite the tight lump in her own throat, and squeezed her sister’s hand. “I am wondering if a comic opera might not have been better for you, my dear.”

  “Oh no! What can be better than love, love against all odds? It is glorious.”

  Glorious until the wrenching end. “Mama would say a sensible marriage, based on parents’ good advice, would be far better.”

  Anna shook her head. “Did your sensible marriage make you happy, Eliza?”

  “Mama would say happiness is irrelevant. Duty is all,” Eliza said carefully.

  “So she would. But would you?”

  “My marriage was no Romeo and Juliet tale, to be sure. But it was not so very bad.” It gave her the independence to pursue her own work, to find out who she really was. That was more than most women had.

  “I don’t want ‘not so very bad,’ ” Anna said stubbornly. “I want passion and joy! I want someone who makes my soul sing. Mount Clare didn’t make your soul sing, did he?”

  Eliza laughed. “Not at all. I am not sure that would be such a pleasant sensation.”

  “Oh, sister, always so sensible. Haven’t you ever met anyone who made you feel like Romeo and Juliet, just a bit?”

  Oh yes. She certainly had. And he sat right across the theater, making her feel those things all over again.

  Or he had
been there. When Eliza peeked over at the Hardwicks’ box, she saw that Will was gone.

  “Mama would say such things are unimportant, and even dangerous,” Eliza murmured. “They disrupt the natural order of things.”

  Anna sighed. “I know what Mama would say. She lectures endlessly at Killinan. But what do you say, Eliza?”

  “I say… I am thirsty, and I need to stretch my legs. I shall go and find someone to procure us some negus.”

  “By yourself?” Anna said. “Now, Mama would say that is most unwise.”

  Eliza laughed. “I will be gone for only a moment. Surely you can behave yourself without me for that long, sister dear.”

  “Perhaps,” Anna said teasingly. “But can you behave yourself without me?”

  Eliza left the box, still laughing, her gray silk skirts rustling. The corridor outside was crowded with others seeking refreshment and gossip. Eliza eased around them, headed toward the staircase to seek out a footman to send for the drinks.

  She found Will instead.

  He was just coming up the stairs, a look of intent concentration on his face, as if he thought of something far away. They nearly collided on the dimly lit landing, and his hand shot out to clasp her arm, steadying her.

  “In a hurry for an appointment, Lady Mount Clare?” he said. A half-smile curved his lips, but his gaze studied her intently.

  “Yes, indeed,” she answered. “An appointment with a glass of negus. I am perishing of thirst.”

  “How appalling. We certainly cannot have that. Come, let me be of assistance.”

  He held out his arm to her. Eliza glanced over her shoulder, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. “Are you sure you should, Major Denton?”

  “Fetching refreshments in a theater is shocking, I know, Lady Mount Clare. But I think my reputation can bear the strain.”

  “But can mine?” She slid her hand through the crook of his elbow, just as she had at the ball, letting him lead her downward. The blue-carpeted stairs were narrow, lined with framed sketches from past plays. As the stairs turned on a landing, she and Will were momentarily alone, caught in a second of silence.