Authors: Elizabeth Adler
The maid came in with a tea tray and John smiled apologetically at Finn as they went to sit by the fire. “I’m sure my wife will join us in a few minutes,” he said genially. “Meanwhile, tell me about your books.”
Finn told him that he knew they were old, and maybe they were even rare and valuable. But all the while he was waiting for the sound of Lily’s quick familiar footsteps in the hall.
She must have had velvet soles on her shoes, because he didn’t hear them, only the sound of the door opening. “Ah, there you are at last, Lily,” John said. “Come and meet our new neighbor, Mr. James.”
Lily thought she was going to faint; for a few seconds she was transported back to Ardnavarna and it was just she and Finn again, the two friends, inseparable as ever. She wanted to run to him, to throw her arms around him shouting joyously, “It’s you, Finn.
You.
You did come back for me after all.”
The color rose in her cheeks and she just stood there looking at him.
“Are you all right, Lily?” her husband asked, concerned.
“Perfectly all right,” she said quietly. “It’s just that Mr. James reminds me of someone I once knew. It is Mr. James? Isn’t it?”
“Quite right, ma’am,” he said, taking her cold hand in his. She was trembling and he smiled. “Finn O’Keeffe James, to be exact. It was one of the conditions of Mr.
James’s bequest,” he explained. “He wanted the chairman to still be called James.”
“You’re very young to be chairman of a brokerage house,” John commented.
“The youngest on Wall Street, sir.” Finn threw a triumphant grin at Lily. He could swear there was a glitter of tears in her astonished eyes. This was his moment of triumph. It was what he had worked for, hoped for, waited for, all these long years. His heart and his belly clenched with love, even as he told himself that he hated her, that he would get even with her.
Lily’s hands shook as she passed him a cup of tea, and he gave her a knowing little smile that said he had power over her. The power to tell her husband the truth and wreck her new life the way she had once wrecked his.
John talked enthusiastically about Finn’s new library, but Lily scarcely heard.
“I am thinking of giving a small dinner party next week,” Finn said later as he was leaving. “I would be delighted if you and Mrs. Adams would be my guests.”
John quickly said that because of the pressure of work he would have to decline.
“Then perhaps Mrs. Adams would like to come alone.” Lily threw him a furious glance and he smiled at her, amused. He knew that expression so well: the tightening of the nostrils, the quick glare, the feigned indifference. Oh, he knew when she was mad all right.
John glanced at his silent wife. “What a good idea—you’ll enjoy yourself for once.”
“On Friday then. At eight.” Finn said.
Lily went to the window and watched him walking jauntily down Mount Vernon Street, and then she ran upstairs to her room and threw herself on her bed, trembling with excitement. Finn O’Keeffe was back in her life; he was living around the corner in Louisburg Square. He was rich and successful. And dammit, he was as devilishly attractive as ever.
She went over every detail of his visit, marveling at the
contrast between the last time she had seen him and now. Then he had been a raving madman, black with coal dust, and now he was well dressed, suave, a man of the world on equal terms with her husband and an equal with her.
And she shivered with foreboding: she knew he was up to no good, could feel it in her bones. She had seen it in his knowing smile, in the lingering touch of his hands on hers that let her know he had the power to ruin her life. If Finn ever told John the truth, she knew he would divorce her. A Boston Adams did not suffer a trollop with an illegitimate child, no matter how well-born she was. Even her own father had thrown her out, and she knew she could not expect anything else from her husband.
She thought despairingly of all the lies and the half-truths she had told, and she sighed. It had all gone too far; there was no way to explain the simple truth anymore. The chance had gone long ago, when she was a stupid seventeen-year-old girl who thought she knew it all.
She told herself a hundred times that she would not go to Finn’s dinner party. But, of course, when Friday evening rolled around, she just couldn’t resist. She changed her mind about what to wear a dozen times, right up to the very last minute, tearing off the blue velvet dress she had just put on and ordering her maid to get out the red silk, telling herself if Finn wanted to see a scarlet woman, then he would get one. She put on a black corset that pinched her waist, red silk stockings, and matching gloves. She added the Adams’s heirloom ruby-and-diamond earrings, necklace, and two matching bracelets. She flung a floor-length silver-fox cape over her shoulders, and then she was ready.
She glared at herself in the mirror, telling herself she was a fool for going to all this trouble for Finn O’Keeffe, and she kicked off her shoes, threw the cape onto the floor, and hurled herself despondently into a chair. She put her head in her hands, groaning. What was she doing? What was she even thinking of? She would not go. She definitely would not go.
She paced the floor, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her fists clenched. Anguished, she stared out of the window at the carriage waiting beneath the streetlight. It was a clear, frosty night and she shivered.
“Jayzus,” she yelled, dashing impetuously back across the room and thrusting her feet into her shoes. She slung her fox cape around her shoulders, grabbed her little gold evening purse, and headed quickly for the door before she could change her mind.
The house on Louisburg Square was only minutes away. She walked slowly up the wide stone steps and rang the bell, shivering as she remembered arriving alone at Hathaway Castle that fateful day.
Finn threw open the door. “There you are, Lily,” he said, taking her hand and drawing her inside. “Welcome to my home.”
“Good evening, Finn,” she said coldly. “Do I take it the pretense that we do not know each other is over?”
“It is. When we are alone,” he said with a laugh. “I promise all your secrets are safe with me, Lily.” He did not add “for the moment,” but she read it in his eyes.
A butler came to take her wrap and she said, “It’s good to see you have come up in the world. I hope you are grateful. After all, if it were not for me you would still be cutting peat from the bog and rotting your guts drinking poteen.”
“So I would, Lily,” he said with a quiet little smile. “And I’m thanking you now for the slur you put on my character. Thank God it took a finer man than your father to decide there was something worthwhile beneath the grime and the horse shit. I started out as a stableboy in this very house. Mr. James made me coachman, then later he gave me my chance. I never looked back. Except to Ardnavarna, in my memories. When it was just you and me together, Lily, riding our horses into the dawn.”
He stared at her. She was even lovelier than she had been as a girl. Her black hair was piled in shining waves, a delicate strand or two curved around her face and at the
nape of her neck, and her deep-blue eyes were brilliant with anger. His heart did the same somersault as when he was sixteen and had fallen in love with her. But he knew she had not come to beg him to forgive her. Lily had never done that, not even for her pa.
She stared around the empty drawing room. “Am I the first to arrive?” she asked, surprised.
“Why not sit here, Lily,” he said, leading her to a chair by the fire. “And yes, you are the first.” He gave her that old taunting smile. “And the last.”
Shocked, she stared at him, then she leaned back in her chair with a regretful sigh. “I should have known it,” she said. “You are still not a gentleman, Finn, despite your fancy clothes.”
“And there are those of us, Lily, who suspect that despite your own fancy clothes,
you
are not a lady.”
Their eyes blazed at each other for a minute, and then despite herself she began to laugh. “Jayzus, Finn O’Keeffe,” she exclaimed. “Who ever would have thought it?
Just look at you.
Pa would turn in his grave if ever he saw you.”
“Is your father dead then?”
“No, he’s not dead, though he might as well be. But Mammie is. And William. In a riding accident.”
He said, genuinely sorry, “Poor William. Even I couldn’t make a horseman of him.”
“Ciel stays home and looks after Pa now,” she said. “He’s become old and doddering. She says half the time he just sits and stares at the library walls. It’s miserable for her, but she can’t leave him all alone.” Her eyes met his. “Oh, Finn,” she whispered, “I dream every night about going back. Even though I know it can never be the same.”
They gazed at each other, remembering the way things used to be. Then he stood up and said briskly, “Maybe your memories are better than mine. All I remember is the hard work and being at your pa’s mercy. Whether I had a roof over my head, whether I had food in my belly; was a matter for his lordly whim. I remember when he promoted
me to groom and I thought I had achieved the pinnacle of my ambitions.”
He poured champagne and glanced coolly at her. “It took you to show me that there was more to my ambitions than to be a poor Irish stablelad, good with a horse and good for little else. Still, the past is the past. It’s time we put it behind us, Lily. Let’s drink to our future.”
She looked warily at him. “Do you really mean that?”
“Oh, I mean it all right.” He raised his glass.
“To the future then,” she said.
“To
our
future,” he corrected her, smiling as he noticed that telltale blush again.
The candles were lit in the silver candelabra and Finn dismissed the butler and said he would serve them himself. “After all,” he said to Lily, “I know how. From my footman days.”
“You’ll ruin my reputation,” she warned as the butler closed the door discreetly behind him and they were alone.
He grinned. “And then we’ll be equal. An eye for an eye, a reputation for a reputation. Besides, Lily, you have no reputation to ruin in this town. I found that out soon enough.” She glared at him across the table and he said, “Everyone in Boston knows about John Adams marrying his Irish housekeeper. Everyone who counts, that is, and it seems you don’t count in this town. It must make quite a change for you, not being accepted.”
She said defensively, “I have my own friends.”
“Yes. I heard about him too.” Her chin shot up and she stared at him. “Ned Sheridan,” he added. “The handsome young actor.”
“Ned’s family took me in after the
Hibernia
sank. They looked after me like their own daughter. Ned’s a good man, he’s my friend … Oh, what’s the use?” she said with a shrug. “I refuse to make excuses. I admit I married John because he was my only way out of a life of drudgery. What other way was there? And besides, he’s a nice man, he’s kind and gentle and I truly do love him. Only …”
“Only?”
She stared pleadingly at him. “Need I explain … ?”
“You need never explain anything to me, Lily. I think I know you better than I know myself.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “Lily, what happened to the child?”
Lily felt the blood drain from her face, from her veins, from her heart, which had suddenly turned to a lump of stone. She had trained herself never to think about the child—no one knew, except Ned, and he never spoke about it. She had buried her son in the depths of her mind, along with Dermot Hathaway. “I—I don’t know,” she said at last.
“You don’t know? … But you must. Did you miscarry after the shipwreck? Did it die, Lily?”
She leapt to her feet and ran to the door, but he grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her around to face him. “You’d better answer me, Lily,” he said roughly. “We are talking of a child who almost ruined both our lives.”
“I gave him away,” she said limply. “I couldn’t even bear to look at him. To me, he never existed.”
He helped her into a chair and stood looking down at her. He said, “Tell me whose it was, so I can know who to kill for it.”
She glanced up at him, frightened. She could see he meant it. “Then you must kill me,” she sighed, “because I am the guilty one. I put the blame on you, the way I always did, thinking I would make it all right later.” She put her head in her hands. “God, I was so naive,” she wailed, “and so stupid.”
Finn looked pityingly at her; she wasn’t crying, and he knew it was because she had already shed her tears. He wanted to put his arms around her, but he didn’t. Instead he took her hand and said, “I’m sorry. We just agreed to bury the past. Let’s forget it, Lily. Let’s just enjoy tonight, being together again.”
She glanced at him, hoping he meant it and that she was reprieved, that he wouldn’t tell her husband.
“Oh, Finn,” she said tremulously. “I’ve missed you so.”
“Aye, and I missed you. Did you ever think that you and I would be dining together like this?”
She smiled. “Never. And in your own grand house. You must be cleverer than I thought, to have achieved so much.”
“I worked damned hard for it. And so did Dan. Ah, but I can tell you don’t know about my brother. Surely you’ve heard of Daniel’s stores? He started out with one and now he has two dozen, and growing all the time.” He smiled proudly. “Did y’ever think Dan would turn out a businessman? You haven’t heard the best bit yet. I thought you might have read about him in the Boston newspapers. He was a Massachusetts state senator, and now he’s been elected to Congress. My big brother is down there in Washington, helping make policy and change laws.” He looked challengingly at Lily, as though asking her to beat that if she could.
She remembered the two young Irish brothers, and how elated they had been that day in the stables when her father had promoted Finn to groom and Dan to gillie. “How clever you both are,” she marveled. “I only married money, but you and Dan found the secret of success.”
Finn forgot the past in the sheer pleasure of having her here, in his house, sitting opposite him, so close he could reach out and touch her. And he wanted desperately to touch her, more than anything else in the world. He sighed. Things would never change.