The Memory of Lemon Read Online Free PDF Page B

O’Neils bled to death in the street. Eliza could only imagine how long they lay there before that shabby priest with the whiskey breath came to administer their last rites. Mr. Shawcross had their bodies taken in a cart for burial in St. Brigid’s cemetery.
    So it was in Ireland these days. Catholic. Protestant.
    Looking at the holy card, Eliza again felt the pain for what she was about to do.
    She had never been a beauty, and Eliza knew that Charles Shawcross had married her as much for her father’s estate as for the small personal charms she could claim. On the rare occasions when he came to her at night—in yet another attempt to produce a child—she gritted her teeth, even as she opened her body. It was always the same. He patted her much as he would a skittish horse he was about to mount. Then he turned her on her side in the dark and lay behind her. Without a word, he pulled up her linen shift, his hot breath on the back of her neck. He never spoke her name. Perhaps he pretended she was someone else.
    She was a brood mare who couldn’t foal. Yet Eliza still did her woman’s duty. The promise of a child made this bearable. When it was over, he gave her a kiss on her cheek, then went back to his room. She slept alone.
    Eliza got up from the desk and stood in front of the fire, holding on to the mantel as if for strength.
    Her husband had started looking at the boy with more interest than was seemly. Sean had assumed his father’s duties as head gardener of Ballykinsale shortly after Mr. O’Neil was gone, and he had performed admirably, impeccably, from the first. Anyone could see that.
    â€œHe needs my guidance,” Mr. Shawcross had said once again as he helped himself to kippers and boiled eggs at breakfast that morning. There was always an explanation for his seeking out the boy, offering a word of advice, a manly pat on the shoulder that had begun to linger like a caress. The boy didn’t see what was coming. Maybe her husband didn’t, either.
    â€œI’m riding to Queenstown today, my dear,” he had told her, sipping his tea from a thin china cup. “There’s a man with a promising dapple gray that I’ve had my eye on.”
    â€œShall I tell Cook to keep supper warm for you, then?”
    â€œNo, no, I’ll dine in town, and be back after you’re abed.”
    And so the time had come. Eliza rang for the maid. “Please ask Padraig to have the pony cart ready in an hour. I’ll be taking Sean with me on an errand to Queenstown. Then please go to the attic and bring down my large leather case to Mr. Shawcross’s room.”
    It was a risk to involve the maid, but the valise was too bulky for Eliza to manage on her own.
    With a feverish energy, Eliza unlocked the linen press in the upstairs hall and removed a small bag of gold coins from the back of a drawer. In her husband’s dressing room, she gathered two linen shirts and a paisley cravat. A silk waistcoat from their courting days. A fine broadcloth coat in bottle green that her husband had not worn in years and would not miss. A pair of breeches now too small for him. Silken hose and fine leather dress shoes. A warm woolen muffler she had knitted him for Christmas and he had yet to wear. She placed it all in the valise.
    Slipping into the gardener’s cottage, she quickly gathered what few clothes Sean possessed. He was already wearing hisgood boots and a thick sweater. She took Cathleen’s coral brooch and Thomas’s pipe so Sean would have something to remember his parents by.
    Padraig brought the pony cart around the circular front drive, where Eliza waited in her bonnet and cape. Sean helped her into the cart, and she handed the reins over to him. He didn’t notice the large valise behind the seat, but “hee-yupped” the pony to canter down the drive.
    At the dock in Queenstown, Sean took the valise from the back of the pony cart and handed it to