The Ballad of Gregoire Darcy (46 page)

He was used to her running outside after eating—she was with child and not used to such good food—but he sensed something was the matter. When she was done being ill, she sat down on the front steps, weeping.

“Caitlin? What is it?”

She just shook her head, trying to shoo him away. He would not be shooed, and sat down beside her, wrapping an arm around her. “What is it?”

“'S nothing.”

“It is not.”

She tried to meet his eyes, but failed, collapsing into his tunic. “I'm so sorry, so sorry—I shouldn't be doin' dis ta yeh.Yer so good—”

“You're not doing anything to me,” he said, “except making me happy.”

But she just kept sobbing, until she was so exhausted that he picked her up and carried her to her bed, where she remained for the rest of the day. Grégoire looked at the abandoned floor project and shook his head. He spent the rest of the day in prayer, even if he did not know precisely what he was praying for.

CHAPTER 29

THERE DIDN'T SEEM TO BE ENOUGH hours in the day. He had prayer, Mass, Caitlin, and chores around the house. He needed to get it into some semblance of shape. She was consuming food at the normal rate of a woman entering her fourth month, so it was not a surprise that he was at the market almost every day. Initially not a good cook, she was a fast learner, and Grégoire was a happy teacher.

One day, shortly after he had returned from the market and was trying to properly spice the potatoes before they went in the stove, she asked, “Why do yeh go ta Mass every day? Is it so Jasus'ill fergive yer sins?”

“Every person is a sinner,” he said, “but no, that's not why I go. I go because it's a sacrament.”

“Dat's somethin' the priest used ta say.”

It didn't mean, of course, that she understood it. He turned to her, wiping the last of the salt from his hands over the pot. “Through performing the sacraments and leading good lives, we thank the good Lord for all that we have been given. Even when it's not much, even when it's so terrible we can hardly bear it—it's the only life we have.”

“Yer 'onestly believe dat?”

“Have I ever said anything I did not believe?”

He put a cover over the pot. The potatoes could sit for a bit. “Let me take you somewhere.”

She was all obliging as he led her into the forest, to the little ruin where he had spent the night. It was much easier to see inside now, with full daylight instead of rain. Some dirt obscured the mosaic, and he wiped it clean again. “When I was lost, I found this.”

“'S St. Patrick,” she said. “I seen it before. In other churches.”

“I thought it might be.You see where he's pointing?” He gestured. “In the direction of your house. I didn't know which way to turn, so I followed him to you.”

Caitlin giggled, and then, realizing that he was serious, leaned into him. He kissed her. “I don't know what I would have done without him.”

Time passed, but Grégoire did not pay much attention to the calendar. He went to Tullow to check his mail and found a response from his brother, saying that he would be looking into the business of the missing soldier.

The summer heat was beginning to set in, and he was sweating by the time he returned to the house. Dropping off his bundle on the porch, he took the soap from it and headed off to the stream behind the house.The cow mooed at him as he passed; she was doing much better now that she was regularly fed.

Only in the privacy afforded by the forest and the bushes around the stream did he remove his outer tunic, and then his undershirt, which he proceeded to wash carefully in the tiny flow of water. Afterward, he hung it in the sun to dry and then sat down by the stream, bare chested. Removing his sandals, he let the water cool his aching feet.

“Didja get de feed?”

He scrambled to his feet, which involved a lot of splashing, to reach for his tunic. “Caitlin, please don't—”

She was standing in the sun, a wrap covering her hair. “I've seen de rest of yeh, yeh know.”

He held his tunic up over his bare chest. “I know—but this is quite different.”

“Well, now it's out, yeh might as well not be hidin' in shame.”

He blushed. “It is not…” but he couldn't contradict her. It
was
shame. “I'm sorry.”

She held out her hand, and he sighed and put the wool tunic in it. They sat down together on the grass, waiting for his shirt to dry. He had not seen his back in a long while—not since once in the mirror at Pemberley, some months earlier—but there were scars that would remain, and times when it was still tender and easily made raw.

“Does it 'urt?”

“Sometimes.”

Caitlin removed her headscarf, which was little more than a random piece of yellow cloth anyway, and dipped it into the stream. She took the soaked cloth and gently applied it to a shoulder blade. Beyond the initial contact with cold, he stopped flinching and his body relaxed.

“Does it fale better nigh?”

“Oh, goodness, yes,” he said. “I've never—I never had anyone else to do this for me. I mean, doctors did it, but it wasn't quite the same.” He played with his rosary as she applied the compress to his back. The feeling was heavenly. “Most of it I did for myself. The white stripes are from where they sewed me up the last time. I was being punished for disobeying the Rule—the monastic rule book—and my flesh was too weak. It broke. There was so little left after infection that the doctors had to take skin from my arm. That part, I don't remember. There are some things in between—I remember the abbot telling me he had to excommunicate me from the order. I remember talking to the archbishop of Oviedo. I remember sitting on the coast.” He shook his head. “It is all a jumble. I dreamed I was being hammered on an anvil, and it was the saints, taking turns with the—” he broke off. He couldn't continue. He had dreamed many dreams as he lay in fever, but he remembered only a few, and all of them haunted him.

“Some t'ings—'tis best just ta forget,” she said. He had a mental flash of what Mrs. O'Muldoon had told him about Caitlin when she came to the area, broken and bruised, not to mention with child. Meanwhile, the actual Caitlin put down her cloth and leaned over to kiss him. “Yer not so terrible ta look at. Not loike yer missin' an eye or somet'in'.” She smiled. “In fact, I kinda loike the way yeh look.”

He returned the kiss. “That is comforting to know, as I find you beautiful.”

His shirt had dried by the time they stepped back into the sunlight. Grégoire's mind was in a pleasant haze as he dressed himself and they returned to the house. While Caitlin sorted the packages and prepared lunch, Grégoire reread the letters from his family, which included one from Georgiana, eager to know if he would return home in time for Robert's first birthday. Had that much time really passed?

“'Sat from yer brad'er?”

“Sister,” he said. “Her name is Georgiana. Her first son was born last spring.”

“Yeh never blather aboyt yer family,” she said as she put his soup in front of him.

“You never talk about yours.”

“I 'ad a brad'er, little Connor, but 'e died of de fever a few years ago. And me ma and pa, but dat's it. Nothin' excitin'. Just a little farm. Not loike a great English house.”

“I didn't grow up in England,” he said. “I was born and raised in Mon-Claire, which is a wasteland at the top of a mountain in France. My mother went into exile after being fired from her job as a maid. I never would have known about my father if he hadn't come before he died to meet me. I was ten, I believe.”

“Why did 'e coom?”

“He was trying to make amends for the things he had done in his life. My mother was his wife's personal maid. She was with
child with Georgiana when I was conceived. When Lady Anne found out, she fired my mother on the spot, and never forgave my father. She died after childbirth, and her last words were to curse my father.”

“And your brad'er?”

“He's more than ten years older than me. He inherited everything and found out about me through some odd banking reports about an account in France. This was nine or so years ago. It came as quite a shock to him.”

“But he didn't toss you off?”

He shook his head. “He embraced me as though I were his real brother, not his fathers's…bastard. He did everything he could do for me—everything that I let him. He would have let me use the Darcy name if I could, legally.”

“'S not a noble, is he?”

“His mother was. And our sister married an earl.” He saw her look down in embarrassment at her plate. “It does not matter to me. I have no rights to anything under English law, being born out of wedlock. Father was just being kind when he left me an inheritance.”

“‘An
inheritance,
'” she said, as if the notion itself were absurd. “Can I ask yeh a question?”

He smiled. “Of course.” The soup was a little heavy on the ginger. She was not yet familiar with many roots and spices, but there were more successes than failures.

“What are rich people loike?”

He laughed. She hadn't meant it seriously—there was no way that she could have. That didn't mean he was exempted from providing an answer, so he took a piece of potato floating in the soup and put it in his mouth, chewing on it to give himself time to mull over the question. “Do you wish to know a secret?”

She squealed. “Aye!”

“They are terribly,
terribly
bored.”

Neither of them could hold back their laughter at that. He was glad that he had swallowed his food properly, as he could not have
held it in. “They have their servants do every menial task. They do not even dress themselves, and are left with nothing to do. So they read books and go on walks and then sit down for long dinners where they discuss reading books and going on walks. And then write people about it, because writing takes time.”

“Yer jokin'!”

“I was once privy to a discussion of how they were planning on replanting the garden so it might look more in fashion with something someone had read in a magazine. I nearly fell asleep! I mean, there is intelligent conversation, but still…” He shook his head, still smiling at Caitlin's bemusement. Whatever amused her amused him.

“One day, ye'll read me a letter.”

“One day, you'll read it yourself,” he said.

Time and time again, she resisted his attempts to teach her to read, mainly because of her own prejudices against her intellect, and because it seemed to be such a wasteful thing to do with her time. The unspoken message was clear: she did not know where her life was going beyond the birth of her child, if she even lived. They seemed to be neck-and-neck in terms of their esteem of themselves. Perhaps that was why it was so easy to relate to her, this other lost soul.