Legacy of Secrets Read Free Page B

cheerily. “Or rather, what’s left of it. It was a rabbit warren, fifty-two rooms, one for every week of the year. Cold as hell frozen over—even colder than Moscow in winter, my mother always said. And that with forty fireplaces going full blast—they never let ’em go out, even when the family was away. Heating that house was like fueling a ship and it cost ten times as much to run.
    “But you’ll be wantin’ to know what happened. Nineteen twenty-two, it was, when we Irish had ‘the Troubles,’ and
the boys
paid us a little visit. They were local lads, I knew them all despite their masks. They said they were
very, very
sorry but they had instructions to burn it. ‘Go ahead,’ says I angrily. ‘It’s the first time since it’s built the damned place will be warm.’
    “I was only twelve years old and I was alone, but for the stupid governess, who had run to hide in the greenhouses. The servants all knew what was to happen, of course, and they had disappeared like leprechauns at dawn.
The boys
gave me fifteen minutes to take what I wanted and I thought quickly. There were the Rubenses, the Vandykes, the family portraits, and the silver.
And
my mother’s pearls … all priceless, all irreplaceable.
    “In the end of course, I ran into the stables and got thehorses out and the dogs. I turned the chickens free and shooed ’em away, but the rest all went up in smoke, and I never regretted my decision for a single minute.” I laughed, remembering Mammie’s face when I’d told her. “But my mother never forgave me for the pearls.”
    The girl just looked at me, shy and big-eyed, not knowing whether to say she was sorry for me or glad, and I switched my riding crop impatiently against my thigh, waiting for her to introduce herself.
    “Well?” I demanded. “So who are you?”
    She straightened up, the way she might have done in front of the school headmistress, self-consciously smoothing her crumpled white cotton shirt. She had wildly curling copper-red hair and cool gray dark-lashed eyes, and she had freckles like my own. I softened toward her immediately. And then she said, “I’m Shannon Keeffe.”
    “An O’Keeffe, are ya?” She couldn’t have told me anything more surprising and I laughed again, vastly amused this time. “Well, well,” I said. “I always wondered when one of Lily’s bastards would show up.”
    She blushed a fiery red with confusion. “But that’s partly why I’m here,” she exclaimed. “To find out about Lily.
Who
was she?”
    “Who
was Lily? Why, Lily was notorious. ‘
Wicked
Lily’ they called her around here, and maybe they were right. Lily had the kind of beauty that trails legends in its wake; she dangled men from her fingertips and caused havoc wherever she went. She divided families, and brothers, sisters, lovers, and husbands and wives. Even children. And if you’re wondering how I know all this, Shannon Keeffe, it’s because my mother, Ciel Molyneux, was Lily’s younger sister.”
    Her eyes widened with interest. “Oh,” she said, sounding thrilled, “then you can tell me all about her?”
    “That depends on why you want to know,” I replied smartly. After all, I wasn’t about to unveil the skeletons in the family cupboard to a total stranger. I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled and Kessidy trotted through thetrees toward me. “But I’ll tell you this,” I added, leaping agilely astride the mare, “you’re not the first to be on Lily’s trail.” As I cantered off down the driveway, I called, “Follow me, Shannon Keeffe, down the boreen.”
    She maneuvered the Fiat behind me down the lane to the left of the driveway. It was little more than a horse trail, so narrow that the brambles threatened to take the paint from the car and the fronds of bracken almost closed over it. Then suddenly the trees thinned out and the bracken parted and we were looking at Ardnavarna.
    Sunlight glittered on the tall sash windows, pungent peat smoke drifted