Mrs. Montague smiled. “I’ve been waiting nearly twenty years for someone like you to come along.”

75

Scarlett hurried across the kitchen bridge to Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s rooms as soon as Charlotte Montague left. She didn’t care that she was supposed to send for the housekeeper to come to her; she had to talk to someone.

Mrs. Fitz came out of her room before Scarlett could knock on the door. “You should have sent for me, Mrs. O’Hara,” she said in a low voice.

“I know, I know, but it takes so long, and what I have to tell you just won’t wait!” Scarlett was extremely agitated.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s cold look calmed her down rapidly. “It will have to wait,” she said. “The kitchen maids will hear every word you say and repeat it with embellishments. Walk slowly with and follow my lead.”

Scarlett felt like a chastised child. She did as she was told.

Halfway across the gallery above the kitchen Mrs. Fitzpatrick stopped. Scarlett stopped with her and contained her impatience while Mrs. Fitz talked about improvements that had been made in the kitchen. The wide balustrade was plenty big enough to sit on, Scarlett thought idly, but she stood as erect as Mrs. Fitz, looking down at the kitchen and the exceedingly busy-looking maids far below. Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s progress was stately, but she did move. When they reached the house, Scarlett started talking as soon as the door to the bridge closed behind them.

“Of course it’s ridiculous,” she said after she reported what Mrs. Montague had said. “I told her so, too. ‘I’m Irish,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be sought after by the English.’ ” Scarlett was talking very fast, and her color was high.

“Quite right you were, too, Mrs. O. The woman’s no better than a thief, by the words out of her own mouth.”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s vehemence silenced Scarlett. She didn’t repeat Mrs. Montague’s response. “Your Irishness is one of the intriguing things about you. Striped stockings and boiled potatoes one day, partridge and silks the next. You can have both; it will only add to your legend. Write to me when you decide.”


Rosaleen Fitzpatrick’s account of Scarlett’s visitor infuriated Colum. “Why did Scarlett even let her in the door?” he raged.

Rosaleen tried to calm him. “She’s lonely, Colum. No friends save you and me. A child is all the world to its mother, but not much company. I’m thinking some fancy socializing might be good for her. And for us, if you put your mind on it. Kennedy’s Inn is nearly finished. We’ll have men coming and going soon. What better than to have other comings and goings to distract the eyes of the English?

“I took this Montague woman’s measure at a glance. She’s a cold, greedy sort. Mark my words, the first thing she will do is tell Scarlett that the Big House must be furnished and furbished. This Montague will play games with the cost of everything, but Scarlett can well afford it. And there will be strangers coming through Trim to Ballyhara every day of the year with their paints and velvets and French fashions. No one will pay heed to one or two more travelling this way.

“There’s wonder already about the pretty American widow. Why isn’t she looking for a husband? I say we’ll do better to send her out to the English at their parties. Otherwise, the English officers may start coming here to court her.”

Colum promised to “put his mind on it.” He went out that night and walked for miles, trying to decide what was best for Scarlett, what was best for the Brotherhood, how they could be reconciled.

He’d been so worried of late that he didn’t always think clearly. There had been reports of some men losing their commitment to the Fenian movement. Good harvests for two years in a row were making men comfortable, and comfort made it harder to risk everything. Also, Fenians who had infiltrated the constabulary were hearing rumors about an informer in the Brotherhood. Underground groin were perpetually in danger from informants. Twice in the past uprising had been destroyed by treachery. But this one had been so carefully, so slowly planned. Every precaution taken. Nothing left to chance. It mustn’t go wrong now. They were so close. The highest councils had planned to give the signal for action in the winter, when three-fourths of the English militia would be away from their garrisons for fox hunting. Instead the word had come down: delay until the informer is identified and disposed of. The waiting was eating away at him.

When the sunrise came, he walked through the rose-tinted ground mist to the Big House, let himself in with a key, and went to Rosaleen’s room. “I believe you’re right,” he told her. “Does that earn me a cup of tea?”

Mrs. Fitzpatrick made a graceful apology to Scarlett later that day, admitting that she had been too hasty and too prejudiced. She urged Scarlett to start creating a social life for herself with Charlotte Montague’s help.

“I’ve decided it’s a silly idea,” Scarlett replied. “I’m too busy.”

When Rosaleen told Colum, he laughed. She slammed the door when she left his house.


Harvest, Harvest Home celebration, golden autumn days, golden leaves beginning to fall. Scarlett rejoiced in the rich crops, mourned the end of the growing year. September was the time for the half-yearly rents, and she knew her tenants would have profit left over. It was a grand thing, being The O’Hara.

She gave a big party for Cat’s second birthday. All the Ballyhara children ten and under played in the big empty rooms on the ground floor, tasted ice cream for probably the first time, ate barm brack with tiny favors baked in it as well as currants and raisins. Every one of them went home with a shiny coin. Scarlett made sure they went home early because of all the superstitions about Halloween. Then she took Cat upstairs for her nap.

“Did you like your birthday, darling?”

Cat smiled drowsily. “Yes. Sleepy, Momma.”

“I know you are, angel. It’s way past your nap time. Come on . . . into bed . . . you can nap in Momma’s big bed because this is a big birthday.”

Cat sat up as soon as Scarlett laid her down. “Where’s Cat’s present?”

“I’ll get it, darling.” Scarlett brought the big china dollbaby from its box where Cat had left it.

Cat shook her head. “The other one.” She turned on her stomach and slid down under the eiderdown to the floor, landing with a thump. Then she crawled under the bed. She backed out with a yellow tabby cat in her arms. “For pity’s sake, Cat, where did that come from? Give it to me before it scratches you.”

“Will you give it back?”

“Of course, if you want it. But it’s a barn cat, baby, it might not want to stay in the house.”

“It likes me.”

Scarlett gave in. The cat hadn’t scratched Cat, and she looked so happy with it. What harm could it possibly do to let her keep it? She put the two of them in her bed. I’ll probably end up sleeping with a hundred fleas, but a birthday is a birthday.

Cat nestled into the pillows. Her drooping eyes opened suddenly. “When Annie brings my milk,” she said, “my friend can drink mine.” Her green eyes closed and she went limp with sleep.

Annie tapped on the door, came in with a cup of warm milk. She told them when she got back to the kitchen that Mrs. O’Hara had laughed and laughed, she couldn’t think why. She’d said something about cats and milk. If anybody wanted to know what she thought, said Mary Moran, she thought it would be a lot more seemly for that baby to have a decent Christian name, may the saints protect her. All three maids and the cook crossed themselves three times.

Mrs. Fitzpatrick saw and heard from the bridge. She crossed herself, too, and said a silent prayer. Cat would soon be too big to keep protected all the time. People were afraid of fairy changelings, and what people feared, they tried to destroy.

Down in Ballyhara town, mothers were scrubbing their children with water in which angelica root had steeped all day. It was a known protection against witches and spirits.


The horn did it. Scarlett was exercising Half Moon when both of them heard the horn and then the hounds. Somewhere close by in the countryside people were hunting. For all she knew, Rhett might even be with them. She put Half Moon over three ditches and four hedges on Ballyhara, but it wasn’t the same. She wrote to Charlotte Montague the next day.

Two weeks later three wagons rolled heavily up the drive. The furniture for Mrs. Montague’s rooms had arrived. The lady followed in a smart carriage, along with her maid.

She directed the disposition of the furniture in a bedroom and sitting room near Scarlett’s, then left her maid to see to her unpacking. “Now we begin,” she said to Scarlett.


“I might just as well not be here at all,” Scarlett complained. “The only thing I’m allowed to do is sign bank drafts for scandalous amounts of money.” She was talking to Ocras, Cat’s tabby. The name meant “hungry” in Irish and had been given by the cook in an exasperated moment. Ocras ignored Scarlett, but she had no one else to talk to. Charlotte Montague and Mrs. Fitzpatrick seldom asked her opinion about anything. Both of them knew what a Big House should be, and she didn’t.

Nor was she very interested. For most of her life the house she lived in had simply been there, already as it was, and she’d never thought about it. Tara was Tara, Aunt Pittypat’s was Aunt Pitty’s, even though half of it belonged to her. Scarlett had involved herself only with the house Rhett built for her. She’d bought the newest and most expensive furnishings and decorations, and she’d been pleased with them because they proved how rich she was. The house itself never gave her pleasure; she hardly saw it. Just as she didn’t really see the Big House at Ballyhara. Eighteenth-century Palladian, Charlotte said, and what, pray tell, was so important about that? What mattered to Scarlett was the land, for its richness and its crops, and the town, for its rents and services and because no one, not even Rhett, owned his own town.

However, she understood perfectly well that accepting invitations placed an obligation on her to return them, and she couldn’t invite people to a place that had furniture in only two rooms. She was lucky, she upposed, that Charlotte Montague wanted to transform the Big House for her. She had more interesting things to do with her time.

Scarlett was firm about the points that mattered to her: Cat must have a room next to her own, not in some nursery wing with a nanny; and Scarlett would do her own accounts, not turn all her business over to a bailiff. Other than that, Charlotte and Mrs. Fitz could do whatever they liked. The costs made her wince, but she had agreed to give Charlotte a free hand and it was too late to back out once she’d shaken hands on it. Besides, money just didn’t matter to her now the way it used to.

So Scarlett took refuge in the Estate office and Cat made the kitchen her own while workmen did unknown, expensive, noisy, smelly things to her house for months on end. At least she had the farm to run, and her duties as The O’Hara. Also she was buying horses.

“I know little or nothing about horses,” said Charlotte Montague. It was a statement that made Scarlett’s eyebrows skid upwards. She’d come to believe that there was nothing on earth Charlotte didn’t claim to be an expert on. “You’ll need at least four saddle horses and six hunters, eight would be better, and you must ask Sir John Morland to assist you in selecting them.”

“Six hunters! God’s nightgown, Charlotte, you’re talking about more than five hundred pounds!” Scarlett shouted. “You’re crazy.” She brought her voice down to normal sound, she’d learned that shouting at Mrs. Montague was a waste of energy; nothing bothered the woman. “I’ll educate you a little about horses,” she said with venomous sweetness. “You can only ride one. Teams are for carriages and plows.”

She lost the argument. As usual. That was why she didn’t bother to argue about John Morland’s help, she told herself. But Scarlett knew that really she had been hoping to have a reason to see Bart. He might have some news of Rhett. She rode over to Dunsany the next day. Morland was delighted by her request. Of course he’d help her find the best hunters in all Ireland . . .

“Do you ever hear from your American friend, Bart?” She hoped the question sounded casual, she’d waited long enough to get it in. John Morland could talk about horses even longer than Pa and Beatrice Tarleton.