Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [95]
Did Lorcan love her? He had seemed angry and embarrassed at the awful scene in the bedroom, rather than emotionally shattered. If she had been deceived by Pitt like that, her world would have ended. Lorcan looked far from so destroyed. But then, people do not always wear their emotions where everyone else can see them. Why should they? Perhaps his way of dealing with such pain was to hide it. It would be natural enough. Pride was important to most people, especially men.
Was Iona lurching from one disaster to another, looking for companionship, some passion or shared charm, where she would never find it? Was it to fire Lorcan with jealousy, to waken in him a hunger or a need which had grown stale? Or was it the simple outrageousness of it, something no one else would do, something to make her talked of, a name to run like fire on every tongue, a bid for her own immortality, another Neassa Doyle, only alive?
As Charlotte was thinking, Fergal came in. “Good morning,” he said politely, looking at each of them in turn. Everyone murmured a reply, Iona glancing up quickly and then down again.
Fergal took a portion of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes and kidneys, and sat down almost the length of the table away from Iona, but where he could look at her—in fact, where he could hardly avoid it. His face in the hard morning light was smooth, only the faintest of lines around his eyes, and a deeper score from nose to mouth. There seemed an inner complacency about him. If any emotion tore him apart, he hid it with a consummate skill. There were slight shadows under his eyes, but no tension, not the ravages of sleeplessness Charlotte thought she would have suffered in a like situation.
Was that what Iona saw in him, what she needed, some cold challenge to thaw with the heat of her dreams, some icebound heart upon which to exercise her magic?
Or was Charlotte being unfair because she did not like Fergal herself? And was that because she saw him through Kezia’s eyes, through her hurt and anger?
“Looks like another agreeable day,” Padraig observed, regarding the sky beyond the long windows. “Perhaps we shall have an opportunity for a little walk after luncheon.”
“The rain might hold off,” Fergal agreed.
“I don’t object to a touch of autumn rain.” Padraig smiled. “Patter of it among the fallen leaves, smell of the damp earth. Better than the conference room!”
“You’ll not get away from the conversation,” Fergal warned. He did not look at Iona, but Charlotte had the sense that he was acutely conscious of her, as if he had to exercise an effort of will to keep his eyes from her.
Iona was concentrating on her tea and toast as single-mindedly as if it were a complicated fish full of bones.
No one had brought in the morning newspapers. Was that because the verdict of the Parnell-O’Shea divorce would be in them?
The atmosphere was crackling stiff, like overstarched linen. Charlotte could not decide whether she should try to say something, artificial as it would sound, or if that would only make it worse.
Justine came in, greeting everyone.
“Good morning. How are you?” She hesitated a moment for the tacit reply of nods and half smiles.
“Well, thank you,” Padraig answered. “And you, Miss Baring? This can hardly be what you expected when you arrived here.”
“No, of course not,” she said gently. “No one ever expects tragedy. But we must support each other.” She took a small serving from the sideboard and then sat opposite Charlotte, smiling at her, not blindly in mere politeness, but with a sharp light of understanding, and not without a dry humor.
“I noticed a wonderful bank of hawthorn beyond the beech