“For, of course, the essential feature of the bargain is that you provide me with an heir. I’m the last of my line, and it’s my duty to continue it. Once I get a son on you, your life is your own, with the usual attention to maintaining a semblance of discretion.”

He refilled his glass, then drained it. Scarlett could thank Cat for her tiara, said Luke. “I had, needless to say, no thought of making you the Countess of Fenton. You’re the kind of woman I enjoy playing with. The stronger the spirit, the greater the pleasure in breaking it to my will. It would have been interesting. But not as interesting as that child of yours. I want my son to be like her—fearless, with indestructible rude health. The Fenton blood has been thinned by inbreeding. Infusing your peasant vitality will remedy that. I note that my tenant O’Haras, your family, live to a great age. You are a valuable possession, Scarlett. You will give me an heir to be proud of, and you won’t disgrace him or me in society.”

Scarlett had been staring at him like an animal mesmerized by a serpent. But now she broke the spell. She took her glass from the table. “I will when Hell freezes over!” she cried, then she threw the glass into the fire. The alcohol flared in an explosion of flame. “There’s your toast to seal your bargain, Lord Fenton. Get out of my house. You make my flesh crawl.”

Fenton laughed. Scarlett tensed, poised to spring at him, to batter his laughing face. “I thought you cared for your child,” he said with a sneer. “I must have been mistaken.” The words kept Scarlett from moving.

“You disappoint me, Scarlett,” he said, “you really do. I attributed more shrewdness to you than you are demonstrating. Forget your injured vanity and consider what you have in your grasp. An impregnable position in the world for yourself and your daughter. It’s unprecedented but I have the power to overthrow precedent, even law, if I choose. I shall arrange an adoption, and Cat will become the Lady Catherine. ‘Katie’ is, of course, out of the question, it’s a kitchen maid’s name. As my daughter she will have immediate and unquestioned access to the best of everything she will ever need or want. Friends, ultimately marriage—she will have only to choose. I will never harm her; she’s too valuable to me as a model for son to follow. Can you deny all that to her because your lower-class yearning for romance is unfulfilled? I don’t think so.”

“Cat doesn’t need your precious titles and ‘best of everything,’ Milord, and neither do I. We’ve done very well without you, and we’ll keep on the way we are.”

“For how long, Scarlett? Don’t rely on your success in Dublin too much. You were a novelty, and novelties have short spans of life. An orangutan could be the toast of a provincial setting like Dublin if it were well dressed. You have one more Season, two at the most, and then you will be forgotten. Cat needs the protection of a name and a father. I’m one of a very few men with the power to remove the taint from a bastard child—no, save your protests, I don’t care what tale you concoct. You would not be in this godforsaken corner of Ireland if you and your child were welcome in America.

“Enough of this. It’s beginning to bore me, and I detest being bored. Send word when you’ve come to your senses, Scarlett. You’ll agree to my bargain. I always get what I want.” Fenton began to walk to the door.

Scarlett called to him to stop. There was one thing she had to know. “You can’t force everything in the world to do what you want, Fenton. Did it ever cross your mind that your brood mare wife might give birth to a girl-child and not a boy?”

Fenton turned to face her. “You’re a strong, healthy woman. I should get a male child eventually. But even at the worst, if you give me only girls, I’ll arrange that one of them marry a man willing to give up his name and take hers. Then my blood will still inherit the title and continue the line. My obligation will be satisfied.”

Scarlett’s coldness was the equal of his. “You think of everything, don’t you? Suppose I was barren? Or you couldn’t father a child?”

Fenton smiled. “My manhood is proven by the bastards I’ve scattered through all the cities of Europe, so your attempted insult doesn’t touch me. As for you, there’s Cat.” A look of surprise crossed his face, and he strode back toward Scarlett, making her shrink from his sudden approach.

“Come now, Scarlett, don’t be dramatic. Haven’t I just told you I only break mistresses, not wives? I have no desire to touch you now. I was forgetting the tiara, and I must put it in safekeeping until the wedding. It’s a family treasure. You’ll wear it in due time. Send word when you capitulate. I am going to Dublin to open my house there and prepare for the Season. A letter will find me on Merrion Square.” He bowed to her with full courtly flourishes and left, laughing.

Scarlett held her head proudly high until she heard the front door close behind him. Then she ran to shut and lock the library doors. Safe from the eyes of the servants, she threw herself onto the thick carpet and sobbed wildly. How could she have been so wrong about everything? How could she have told herself that she could learn to love a man who had no love in him? And what was she going to do now? Her mind was filled with the picture of Cat on the stairs, crowned and laughing with delight. What should she do?

“Rhett,” Scarlett cried brokenly, “Rhett, we need you so much.”

87

Scarlett gave no outward sign of her shame, but she condemned herself savagely for the emotions she’d felt for Luke. When she was alone, she picked at the memory like a half-healed scab, punishing herself with the pain of it.

What a fool she’d been to imagine a happy life as a family, to build a future on that one breakfast when Cat divided the eggs on their three plates. And what laughable conceit, to think she could make him love her. The whole world would ridicule her if it was known.

She had fantasies of revenge: she would tell everyone in Ireland that he had asked her to marry him and been refused; she would write to Rhett and he would come kill Fenton for calling his child a bastard; she would laugh in Fenton’s face before the altar and tell him that she could never bear another child, that he’d made a fool of himself by marrying her; she would invite him to dinner and poison his food . . .

Hatred burned in her heart. Scarlett extended it to all the English, and she threw herself passionately into renewed support of Colum’s Fenian Brotherhood.

“But I have no use for your money, Scarlett darling,” he told her. “The work now is in planning the moves of the Land League. You heard us talking on New Year’s, do you not remember?”

“Tell me again, Colum. There must be something I can do to help.”

There was nothing. Land League membership was open only to tenant farmers, and there would be no action until rents came due in the spring. One farmer on each estate would pay, all the others would refuse, and if the landlord evicted, all would go to live at the cottage where the rent was paid up.

Scarlett couldn’t see the reason for that. The landlord would just rent to someone else.

Ah, no, said Colum, that’s where the League came in. They’d force everyone else to stay away, and, without farmers, the landlord would lose his rents and also his newly planted crops because there’d be no one to tend them. It was the idea of a genius; he was only sorry he hadn’t thought of it himself.

Scarlett went to her cousins and pressured them to join the Land League. They could come to Ballyhara if they were evicted, she promised.

Without exception every O’Hara refused.

Scarlett complained bitterly to Colum.

“Don’t be blaming yourself for the blindness of others, Scarlett darling. You’re doing all that’s needed to make up for their failings. Aren’t you The O’Hara and a credit to the name? Do you not know that every house in Ballyhara and half of them in Trim have cuttings from the Dublin papers about The O’Hara being the shining Irish star in the Castle of the English Viceroy? They keep them in the Bible, with the prayer cards and pictures of the saints.”


On Saint Brigid’s Day there was a light rain. Scarlett said the ritual prayers for a good farm year with a fervor no other prayer had ever held, and she had tears on her cheeks when she turned the first sod. Father Flynn blessed it with holy water, then the chalice of water was passed from hand to hand for everyone to drink and share. The farmers left the field quietly, with bowed heads. Only God could save them. No one could stand another year like the last one.

Scarlett returned to the house and removed her muddy boots. Then she invited Cat to have cocoa in her room while she got her things organized to be packed for Dublin. She would be leaving in less than a week. She didn’t want to go—Luke would be there, and how could she face him? With her head held high, it was the only way. Her people expected it of her.


Scarlett’s second Season in Dublin was an even greater triumph than her first. Invitations awaited her at the Shelbourne for all the Castle events, plus five small dances and two late-night suppers in the Viceregal private apartments. She also found in a sealed envelope the most coveted invitation of all: her carriage would be admitted through the special entrance behind the Castle. There’d be no more waiting in line for hours on Dame Street while carriages were allowed into the Castle yard four at a time to put down guests.

There were also cards requesting her presence at parties and dinners in private houses. These were reputed to be much more entertaining than the Castle events with their hundreds of people. Scarlett laughed, deep in her throat. An orangutan in fine clothes, was she? No, she was not, and the pile of invitations proved it. She was The O’Hara of Ballyhara, Irish and proud of it. She was an original! It made no difference that Luke was in Dublin. Let him sneer all he liked. She could look him in the eye without fear or shame, and be damned to him.