Free Ashworth Hall by Anne Perry Page A

landlords put it to grazing. The third, the youngest, was hanged by the British because they thought he was a Fenian.”
    She heard the pain in him, but she did not understand the story. She was perfectly familiar with poverty. The London streets in some areas could equal anything Ireland could offer. She had seen children starved, or frozen to death. She had been cold and sick often enough herself before she had been taken into service by Pitt.
    “Was a wot?” she said quietly.
    “A Fenian,” he explained. “A secret brotherhood of Irishmen who want freedom for Ireland, to rule themselves and follow our own ways—those of us that are left. God knows how many that is. We’ve been driven from the land by greedy landlords till there are only ghost villages left in the west and the south.”
    “Driven where to?” She tried to imagine it. It was the only part of his story which was outside her own experience.
    “America, Canada, anywhere as’ll have us, where we can find honest work, and food and shelter at the end of it.”
    She could think of nothing to say. It was tragic and unjust. She could understand his anger.
    He saw the compassion in her face.
    “Can you imagine it, Gracie?” he said softly, his voice little more than a whisper. “Whole villages dispossessed of the land and the homes where they were born and where they’d labored and built, driven out with nowhere to go, even in winter. Old men and women with babies in arms, children at their skirts, sent out into the wind and the rain to fend for themselves any way they could. What kind of a person would do that to another creature?”
    “I dunno,” she answered solemnly. “I in’t never met no one as’d do nothing like that. I only know landlords wot throw out a family ’ere or there. It in’t ’uman.”
    “You’re right about that, Gracie. Believe me, if I were to tell you all Ireland’s ills, we would still be here long after this weekend party is over and the politicians have gone back to London or Dublin or Belfast. And that would be barely the beginning of it. Poverty’s everywhere, I know that. But this is the slow murder of a nation. No wonder it rains in Ireland till the very earth shimmers green. It must be the angels of God weeping at the suffering and the pity of it.”
    She was still picturing it in her mind and trying to work her way through the sadness when they were interrupted by Gwen coming in to find some of the ingredients for making “Lady Conyngham’s lip honey.”
    “How do you do that?” Gracie asked, ever eager to learn.
    “Take two ounces of honey, one of purified wax, half an ounce of silver litharge and the same of myrrh,” Gwen answered obligingly, happy to share her knowledge. “Mix this over a slow fire, and add any perfume you care for. I’m going to use milk of roses. It should be up on that shelf.” She nodded to a point just above Grade’s head. She smiled at Finn Hennessey, and quickly he opened the cupboard and passed the container down to her.
    She flashed him a warm glance and looked disposed to remain a few moments longer. Gracie considered standing her ground, then decided it would look childish. She excused herself and went off, but wondering if he was watching her or if he had already lost himself in conversation with Gwen.
    At the corner of the corridor she could not resist turning her head, and felt a soaring of her heart to meet his eyes and know that his mind was still upon her.
    *   *   *
    Dinner was a very stilted affair to begin with. None of the women had forgotten the bitterness of the conversation over afternoon tea, and both Charlotte and Emily were dreading a similar scene.
    Fergal Moynihan arrived looking grim, but maintained a very formal courtesy with absolute, almost studied equality towards everyone.
    Iona McGinley looked beautiful in an intense way. She had chosen a very dramatic gown of blue, almost purple, and it made the skin of her neck and shoulders look very