Claude bowed slightly before he could stop himself. Immediately he resented her all the more for making him feel so intimidated. After all, he was Claude Goubert, the Comte de Quentin.
He cast a doubtful glance over his shoulder at the Fitzgerald residence. He did not need Brigid’s reinforcement to know that he was not the Fitzgeralds’ choice as a husband for Deirdre. The fact that the Fitzgerald brothers were back in Nantes might be pleasant news for Deirdre, but it did not bode well for his own campaign to win her as his bride.
The Fitzgeralds gave little consideration to the fact that they had lived their first years in France on the Gouberts’ largess and that the house they rented was part of the
Goubert estates. It was quite extraordinary. These Irish cousins whom his father had welcomed as émigrés to Nantes eleven years earlier walked the streets as if they owned them and looked every man in the eye as an equal. They lived for battle, honor, and reckless daring. It never ceased to amaze him that this family of loutish soldiers had produced the perfect, radiant confection of loveliness that was Mademoiselle Deirdre.
“Mon Dieu!”
Claude murmured in astonishment as he remembered Deirdre’s kiss. He touched his fingers to his lips. For more than two years he had waited in anxious anticipation for the moment when he would first kiss her. Now it had happened, in a most unexpected manner and without the satisfactory results he had hoped for. Yet, the soft impression of her mouth burned sweetly enough for him to remember it. He might not yet have won Cousin Deirdre as his bride, but she was not indifferent to him.
Who knew what the summer might bring? Now that she was at last home from the convent school where she had spent the better part of the last four years, she would be easier to court. There would be parties aplenty to celebrate the season, chances to dance with her and talk with her and dazzle her with his intense love.
“
Alors
,
I must contrive to win her heart soon,” Claude murmured as he strolled away. After all, he had waited patiently for her to grow into womanhood, and the waiting had been more than worth it. She was exquisite, a beauty quite without compare. She was the darling of her family; they denied her nothing. If she chose to love him, nothing and no one would gainsay her.
*
Gazing down from the second-story window of her home, Lady Elva Fitzgerald shared the young Frenchman’s concerns as she watched her stepdaughter’s headlong race toward the house. It was she who had contrived the tryst between Deirdre and Claude Goubert in hopes that Deirdre’s interest in the young man would decide her father in favor of the match. After all, the Gouberts were distantly related to the Fitzgeralds, and a marriage would cement those ties. Yes, she suspected that Deirdre’s haste had nothing to do
with the young Frenchman. Due, no doubt, to Brigid’s meddling, Deirdre had learned that Conall and Darragh had arrived.
Lady Elva turned back from the window, two vertical lines marring her usually smooth brow. Despite her husband’s unconcern, she thought it unseemly that a lass should hold her brothers in greater esteem than she held any of the eligible young men vying for her attention.
“They’re home, lady!” Lord Fitzgerald announced loudly as he opened the door into his wife’s room without the formality of knocking. “The lads have returned this very moment. Will ye not come down to greet them?”
The frown instantly disappeared from Lady Elva’s face. “Aye, m’lord.” As he turned away, she glanced down at his legs. Instead of a stout calf to match his left, a mahogany stump protruded from the right leg of his breeches. Before she could reconsider she said, “Should we not wait for the servants to bring up the litter?”
Lord Fitzgerald swung around. Beneath his short military wig, his ruddy complexion had darkened. “Crippled I may be, but I’m nae an invalid. A cane has done me these last months, and ye know it!”
Lady Elva flushed in embarrassment before his anger. A full year had passed since the amputation, but he hated every reminder of the infirmity that kept him in Nantes while his sons took their places in the Irish Brigade fighting for the Bourbon King, Louis XIV. She was not like Deirdre or her husband’s sons. They always knew what to say and do. They treated him no differently since his illness. Yet, why could he not see that her concerns and fears were as genuine as their hearty, devil-may-care attitude toward him?
“I apologize for—for the impertinence, my lord,” she said softly.
Lord Fitzgerald muttered an oath. Once again he had rebuffed his wife when a smarter man would have held his tongue. Though they had been married fourteen years, he often treated his third wife more like a second daughter. Deirdre had more spirit than Elva and possessed a more mature sense of the world. Yet, Elva was his wife. ’Twas
not her fault that his leg pained him with special intensity this day. As he made painful progress across the carpet toward her, he shut from his mind the annoying
clump
and
thump
that his cane and stump made as he walked.
When he reached her, he lifted a hand and patted her cheek. “Och, lady. Have ye not known me long enough that ye cloud up at the first sound of thunder?”
“That’s better,” he continued with an approving nod when she smiled uncertainly. “Ye’ve nae changed a whit since that day I married ye. There’s still springtime in yer lips and cheeks. Ye’ve more the look of a lass than the matron and mother ye are.”
The reminder of Owen made Lady Elva blanch. Instantly Lord Fitzgerald wished he had held his tongue a second time. Not a man to mince words, however, he continued. “Aye, there’s pain for me, too, in the loss of Owen. He was the lad I would have offered to the Church. The ways of the Almighty are a mystery, and not ours to question.”
Lady Elva shook her head. “’Twas not God, ’twas the swine fever that took me son.”
“And hundreds of other sons and daughters,” Lord Fitzgerald added. “The epidemic took the youngest and best of the region. We might have lost Deirdre, too.”
Lady Elva bit back the words of reproach that flew to her lips. Her husband was a good man who cared for all his family, but Deirdre was another matter. Deirdre touched him to the quick. Had she been a jealous woman, she knew, she would have grown to hate her stepdaughter for having usurped a vital portion of her husband’s love. Yet, she did not hate Deirdre. There was in the lass a kindness of spirit and a natural generosity that prevented jealousy from taking root in those who knew her. Deirdre had wept the longest and most bitterly over Owen’s loss.
Lord Fitzgerald saw pain move through his wife’s expression. “Elvy,” he whispered roughly against her ear as he reached an arm about her waist. “We’ll nae be stopped by a loss.”
He looked down significantly at her waistline and Lady Elva blushed. He had hopes, as she did, that she would soon become pregnant again. The loss of four unborn
children had not dimmed her desire to give him more sons. Perhaps they, unlike Owen, would be like their stepbrothers Conall and Darragh, unafraid and adventurous.
Given new hope by her husband’s desire, Lady Elva squared her shoulders and smiled. “Shall we go below, m’lord?”
Lord Fitzgerald grinned. “Aye, that’s me lass. Starved as I am for news from the front, there’d be half a regiment of Irish soldiers under this roof before dark if I had me say.”
Lady Elva slanted a lively glance at her husband. “I shudder at the thought of so many booted feet tramping our carpets. Would the patter and chatter of bairns not be better?” She shook her head at his hopeful expression. “I was thinking ’twas time your sons looked toward marriage. ’Tis certain Deirdre’s thoughts run in that direction.” Her husband’s expression turned to surprise. “Deirdre’s showing an uncommon interest in le Comte de Quentin. They were walking in the topiary garden a little while ago. I sent Brigid after them, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she came upon a pair of cooing doves. Innocent kisses, of course,” she added hastily at her husband’s lowering brows.
“There’s nae such a thing as an innocent kiss. Ask any man,” he pronounced. Then he shook his head, smiling once more. “Deirdre will nae have him. She’ll have none but a full-blooded Irishman. I would nae fret over the new Comte de Quentin. She’ll nae encourage him above an afternoon.”
Lady Elva accepted her husband’s arm, saying, “If ’tis a Irishman she must have, then ’tis time to look for him. She’s no longer a wee lass. Deirdre should be thinking of marriage.”
Lord Fitzgerald frowned slightly. “Aye, perhaps ’tis so.” It was a question he had considered often in the months since his enforced idleness. Deirdre needed a husband’s protection, but what man was good enough? Since childhood she had sworn to marry only an Irishman who would take her back to Ireland. Though many in his regiment talked longingly of returning home, nary an
Irishman to his knowledge had returned to his native land. To the contrary, more young men than ever before were deserting Ireland for the promises of freedom and wealth offered by service in the armies of the Catholic countries of Europe. Ireland offered no future for its native sons. Only in foreign lands were they able to rise in wealth and station.
Lord Fitzgerald cast a proprietary eye about his wife’s comfortably appointed room. His courage and valor in the service of Louis XIV had earned him the French gold which made this luxury possible. Their home in Nantes was better furnished than Liscarrol Castle had been in his lifetime.
Deirdre was not the only one who felt the pull of the old country, but she was not practical. She could not know the danger and heartbreak that would greet her return. Perhaps Elvy was right. Perhaps it was time for Deirdre to fall in love. If she wedded an Irishman who made his home in France, she would give up her obsession with her homeland.
He ignored the feeling of having, by his thoughts, betrayed a promise. The pledge he had made Deirdre’s mother had been in another time and place. He was being practical. Ireland was no longer home to the Fitzgeralds. The lass could not go back. The promise could not be kept.
His eyes twinkled as he turned to his wife. “I’ll ask me sons about the younger officers in the brigade. There should be a man of passable face and form to satisfy Dee. We’ll host a ball. We’ve done naught since she returned from the convent. ’Tis time the lads had a chance to look her over.”
“And she they,” Lady Elva added.
*
“Put me down, put me down! You’re wrinkling my gown!” Deirdre squealed, her protests diluted by laughter as she was passed from brother to brother and swung high over their heads.
“You’re still a bairn! Where’s your height, lass?” Darragh teased when he had set her back on her feet. Though Deirdre was not tiny, her brothers towered head and shoulders above her.
Taking delight in stressing the difference, Conall clapped a broad hand on the top of her head. “Aye, I have it! You’re growing the wrong way. She’s a half a head shorter than when we left, is she not, brother?”
“That’s the truth of it,” Darragh declared in laughter. “In another year they’ll have you back in swaddling, lass.”
“You’re a pair of beasts.” Deirdre knocked Conall’s hand from her head. “Look at that,” she complained as a lock of hair fell into her eyes. “You’ve ruined me coiffure.”
“Serves you right for being disrespectful to your elders,” Conall answered.
“Coiffure?” Darragh mimicked.
“Ma foi, la belle mademoiselle, elle est sans coiffure!”
“Your French is abominable,” Deirdre snapped, “and you’ve the manners of an ill-bred Gael. Little wonder there’s nary a bride between you. Who’d have you, I’d like to know?”
The brothers exchanged glances. “Aye, well, there was a certain sloe-eyed beauty in Milano—”
“Conall! Darragh! Ye’ve taken the devil’s own time coming home!” Shaking off his wife’s arm, Lord Fitzgerald started down the stairway, biting off a pained sigh that escaped him as he put weight on his wooden leg.
“Look at ye, tricked out in yer finery! A pair of ungrateful curs, ye are, keeping yer father waiting these months for news. Ashamed of ye, that’s what I am!”
His sons laughed heartily, giving no indication that their father’s grimace of pain affected them, nor did they move to offer him aid. Preening like a pair of peacocks, they turned this way and that to show off the brilliant green velvet coats they had stopped in Paris long enough to have made.
“Da! You’re up and dressed,” Deirdre said in frank surprise before she could stop herself. When her father frowned in disapproval of her reference to his invalided state, she said, “Your sons are scarcely worth the honor. I for one intend to take to my bed until they’ve gone. Just look what Darragh’s done to my hair!”
“At least you can be proud of Conall,” Darragh replied
as he reached for the arm of his brother’s coat. “See there? He’s wearing a new stripe on his sleeve. Of course, ’tis nothing compared to the stripes on his back.”
Lord Fitzgerald’s eyes blazed, his pain forgotten. “Ye’ve been whipped? Who’d dare whip an officer?”
Darragh’s lips twitched as Conall glared at him. “I doubt the gentleman wielding the riding crop had the wits about him to search for Conall’s coat, what with me brother presenting him with the respectable target of his naked buttocks.” Chuckles sputtered from him. “Of course, he might have been distracted by his wife sprawled so invitingly beneath!”
“Darragh!” Lord Fitzgerald roared, taking the last few steps in an angry stride. “Ye’re nae to speak of such things beneath this roof, and certainly not before the lass!”