Redemption - Leon Uris [320]
Atty lit another candle and held on, then flung herself on the bed, pounding the pillows with her fists and cursing Rory Larkin for arousing her. Oh, he was the Larkin, all right; she was totally intimidated by him. Her lifelong game of wilting men before her eyes didn’t work on a few of them, and he and Conor were two.
How dirty wrong would it be to have one more breath of Conor? How scummy would I feel afterward? But, to hell! I’m not a widow! I’m not lying alongside him in Ballyutogue! Did not Conor find a life with me after Shelley’s death? Am I forbidden? Conor! Conor, lad, what should I do, now? What should I do?
84
In that it was wartime, the southern part of Ireland was suddenly in a manufacturing posture. Their usual donkey-and-cart methods needed to be speeded up considerably. Weed Ship & Iron, for one, had a dozen subcontractors in Cork, Galway, and Dublin.
An entire new line of defensive security items were on the planning board and a meeting at the Belfast yard had been called with Weed’s engineers and the Army’s engineers working up a full shopping list of items to protect constabulary stations and barracks, mesh window coverings, and the like.
General Brodhead pounced on the conference as a viable reason to make the trip. Of course, he’d review the troops and constabulary in Belfast as well.
Rory was in charge of security en route to Belfast and back. Brodhead had an armored military train car, which was kept in a locked shed. The general’s quarters were in the center of the car with guard details on either end. Movements of the car were kept hush-hush, usually hitching on to a train at the last moment. After the under-carriages were inspected, a sweep engine was sent fifteen minutes ahead to make certain the tracks were clean.
At Weed Ship & Iron, Lieutenant Landers joined the military group and the subcontractors for an indoctrination tour.
Sir Llewelyn saw them off, after which he joined Lady Caroline in an exquisite small private dining room attached to her father’s office.
“No calls during lunch. The General and I will join the meeting at the conference center afterward.”
As she put the phone in the cradle, Sir Llewelyn touched her shoulder as soft as he was able, but rougher than he should have. Caroline had adjusted herself to the proposition that she was enjoying what she was deploring.
“I hope you haven’t regretted our last conversation,” he said.
“Not the thought of you and me, my dear,” Caroline said. “But it’s what we have to go through to arrange a forty-minute lunch alone. I’m getting qualms about the whole thing.”
“I don’t want to let go of this,” he said. “I realize looking back on my life, I’ve never come close to anyone like you. It was never part of my game. Now, I find myself absolutely struck and sleepless.”
“Llewelyn, we’ve known each other a long time. I say what is on my mind,” she said sending an unusual sensation of fright through him.
“Indeed,” he said.
“Maybe what we are trying to do is simply not on,” she said, watching the color drain from his face. “No less than ten thousand people know you are on the premises here. The truth is, there is probably no one in Ireland who doesn’t know either your face or mine. There are always a half-dozen people around me and God knows how many around you, all the time. Slipping away for a rendezvous is a puzzle for the gods. It’s probably dangerous for you to be unguarded, and virtually impossible for me. It’s not like Gorman and me, who are accepted as a couple. We can’t risk a chance that someone, obscure, might see us accidentally.”
“There has to be a way and we’re going to find it,” he said. “Listen, if you will. I was born into a breed that dictated things from the beginning, that being an Ulsterman of class means one has to be super-British to maintain his standing. The military, and no option, was clear-cut to me from childhood. A woman like Lady Beatrice was clear-cut. We have slept in separate bedrooms for almost seven years, and before that I wasn’t all that bully.”
She