Page 39 of The Lady’s Deception

She smoothed a hand over the wrinkled bed linens, carefully avoiding his coat. “Now, listen. On that road that don’t exist, men ferry goods that don’t exist neither. Irish goods goin’ out, French ones comin’ in. All kept in the belly o’ Kilready Castle. Men have died to keep that secret, but I see no reason why you should be one of ’em.”

Smuggling, just as Graves had suspected. Paris’s heart began to gallop so hard he felt sure the ends of his cravat must be fluttering over it. Pray God if Mary noticed, she would think his response driven by fear. “Thank you for the warning, ma’am,” he said with a catch in voice. “I want no part of any bad business that might go on in these parts.”

Absently, he started to rise, uncertain what his next move ought to be. Though a bit of poking and prodding might provide a great deal of evidence that Dashfort was implicated in the smuggling ring, would exposing it, exposing him, ultimately wreak further havoc in Kilready?

“Sit, sir. Sit,” she commanded, thumping her palm on the mattress for emphasis. “Have ye forgot about th’ ghost?”

“I really don’t—”

“God’s truth. He exists, and I know it.” She lifted one hand and laid it over her heart. Shining spots of pink and white speckled the skin of her forearm; one burn was fresh and purplish red. “Didn’t I bring him into th’ world?”

It took an inordinate amount of time for him to process her words. “You mean—?”

“My son. You’ve heard, I know, about my boy. An’ you know who th’ boy’s da is, likewise.”

Reluctantly, Paris nodded. “I know you were a servant at the castle, exploited by your master—”

“No.” Her face grew hard. “Twasn’t like that, no matter what folks think.” A pause as she studied him. “You don’t believe me, do you? But he was young an’ handsome then, an’ I…well, I wasn’t always a washerwoman.” Her voice softened a little as she spread her arms and turned her attention to their myriad injuries. No matter what she said, however, her willing participation in the affair did not make Dashfort less of a wretch. “He was mine long before he was hers,” she insisted, referring he supposed to the late Lady Dashfort, “and she knew it, too. That’s why she sent me away.” Slowly, she shook her head. “When he went t’ Lon’on, he never looked back… I didn’t expect him t’ marry me. But I never thought he’d leave me flat like he did. Well,” she added after a moment with a shrug, “an’ maybe he was grievin’ too. Her Ladyship had just lost her babe, after all. Don’t s’pose he ever knew when his other boy, my boy, was born.”

Her eyes were glazed now, lost in memory. “I didn’t think he’d live, my Tommy. A strange, sickly thing. Bore th’ mark of our sin, he did.” Paris’s breath caught, though he should not have been surprised by such a misguided explanation for the boy’s albinism. “He was only a few days old when Mr. Quin came t’ take him from me. Promised t’ see him well cared for. Oh, I shouldn’t have let him go…” Her words broke off on a moan of anguish. How Paris wished he could offer some reassurance, but he could think of nothing but the grim cell in Kilmainham Gaol. “Not long after that,” she continued when she had composed herself again, “the Kilready servants began to tell tales about th’ ghost what first cried in th’ nursery and then walked through th’ halls and now wanders—”

“Along a certain path,” Paris inserted, his understanding beginning to grow. Quin had seen an opportunity to use the child to prey on people’s fears. In order to keep them away from his illicit activities. Perhaps even to keep the earl himself away. “But how do you—? Ah. That’s why you became Kilready’s washerwoman. It gives you an excuse to visit the castle.”

“Once t’ month. Since he was a babe. I see him, an’ he sees me. But last week, sir, when I took the clean linen, he was gone. Vanished like the ghost they say he be.” She spoke in a surprisingly matter-of-fact voice about the disappearance of her child. It seemed her arms were not the only part of her that had been toughened by scars.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked softly, in the way he might prompt a witness to say more than she intended.

“Because there’s somethin’ else foul afoot at the castle, Mr. Trenton. My boy went missin’ the same day as th’ girl.”

“The girl?”

“A month or so ago, an old friend of his Lordship’s came to Kilready with his sister. An Englishman. They say ’is Lordship did hope to marry the girl.”

“Did hope?” Paris echoed, reluctantly intrigued. “Does he have that hope no longer?”

“The girl didn’t take a fancy to ’im, as I heard tell.”

Perhaps the young lady in question had heard what had become of the previous Countess of Dashfort.

“And you think the two disappearances are related somehow?” A strange coincidence, certainly.

She shrugged. “Dunno. But I’d hate to see it be three.” She gave him a knowing look as she rose and he followed suit. “Folks do say there’s no snakes in Ireland,” she said as she stepped once more to the door. “I say the last one’s slitherin’ about Kilready Castle.”

“Does Lord Dashfort know his agent’s reputation among his tenants?”

“I don’t reckon he wants to know,” she replied with a bitter laugh. “All those years in Lon’on, don’ s’pose as he ever cared where th’ rent money came from, only whether it came when it was supposed to. It means dangerous business for some o’ the folks around here. But needs must, Mr. Trenton.”

He nodded. Needs must when the devil drives… and he had very little doubt the sort of devil Dashfort employed. Sadly, the unscrupulous landowner’s agent was a species of serpent that still thrived throughout the island.

Paris fished in the pocket of his greatcoat for his purse. “Wait. For the blacksmith,” he said, laying a few coins on her outstretched palm. “And for you and your father.” He poured out more than enough to cover his bill. “Do you read, ma’am?” he asked, as she let the coins run through her fingers like water, pooling into the palm of her other hand

“A little.” She didn’t look up. He’d send a simple note, once he’d returned to Dublin. To let them know what had become of the boy. Oh, how he hoped he would not be writing to report the lad’s death.

It took but a moment to gather his things. In the lane he found his broken-down gig and the equally broken-down horse waiting for him. He could feel the eyes of the village on him as he swung onto the seat and slowly made his way up the hill to Kilready Castle.

He’d hunched in its shadows once before, trying and failing to stanch Henry’s blood with his bare hands. As Paris rolled beneath the portcullis now, he glanced up at its teeth, surprisingly sharp and free of rust, having too recently been put to the castle’ defense. Unsettled, he guided the horse to a stop and jumped from the gig. He swept his gaze around the courtyard. From here he could see nothing of what lay below, neither the village nor the foaming waters of the Irish Sea. Easy enough to forget on what Kilready’s master depended for his—no, not for his survival. For his elegant charade as an almost-Englishman in London.

But the death of Lady Dashfort had put paid to that performance. The gossip columns had made much of the earl’s Irishness, despite his repeated assertions of his English birth and his English education and his English residence. In the end, though a peer, Lord Dashfort had been a mere Irishman in English eyes, volatile and prone to violence. And when Paris thought of the bloodshed that had occurred on these grounds not a year ago, he wondered if they hadn’t been right.