For she could not remain at the abbey any longer. She could not. Life was passing her by, and it was grossly unfair. This could not possibly be her fate. Her fate had to be something far more.
The abbess’s plump face registered worry and concern. “You wish to go home.” She sighed.
Katherine stood before the delicate mahogany secretaire where the mother superior was seated. “I cannot remain here. I am not suited for this life. I must return home, remind my father of my existence. Surely then he will arrange a marriage for me.” Her gaze was direct but pleading. “Mother Superior, all I have ever wanted is a husband and a home of my own and several children. I am already eighteen. In another few years no man will want me.”
The abbess doubted that. Katherine was an extraordinary beauty, in spite of her tall stature, with her perfectly oval face, her fine features and flawless ivory skin, her startling green eyes and dark wine red hair. She rose to her feet, the color returning to her cheeks. She was in a quandary.A terrible quandary. She studied Katherine. “My dear, you have a few years left, trust in that, before you are old and gray.”
Katherine began to protest.
The abbess lifted her hand, cutting her off. “I am well aware that you are not suited to this life. I have been aware of it almost from the first day you arrived here, a wild vixen of thirteen. I have no doubt now that you would be a superb wife. Clearly you are endowed by nature to bear many healthy sons. But what you ask is impossible. To send you home without your father’s permission? I cannot do it!” But even as she spoke guilt twisted inside of her. For she knew Katherine would never receive her father’s permission to leave. And she also knew what awaited Katherine—and was terribly uneasy.
Katherine wet her lips. When she spoke, her tone was strained. “Do not misunderstand me. I am very grateful for the charity you have bestowed upon me in allowing me to remain here. I am unhappy, but I am so grateful. You have been nothing but kind to me.”
The abbess winced, but Katherine did not appear to notice.
“There is another reason for me to return to Ireland,” Katherine continued urgently. “I am afraid that something is amiss. How could my father forget to send my pension to you? It makes no sense. I must return, I beg you, Mother, to learn why I have been forgotten like this. I cannot stay here. Perhaps my father needs me. Or—perhaps he is truly too busy to think of me at all.”
The abbess felt a deep pang of sympathy for her young charge. Gently, the older woman said, “If your father needed you, he would send for you, my dear.”
But the abbess did not know what else to say, or what to do, and she stroked her rosary, very worried. If ever there was a time to tell Katherine the truth, it was now, yet she had agreed to deceive her, for the girl’s own peace of mind. The abbess had had little choice, for it was either that or release Katherine unprotected and impoverished onto the streets. It had been wrong then, and it was still wrong now, to withhold all the facts from her. But now,even more, the abbess did not dare tell Katherine the truth. Fear prevented her from doing so, fear and some higher sense that Fate was at her mysterious work here.
“I have been here for five and a half years,” Katherine implored. “I never dreamed when I arrived that I would not be sent home after a year or two. Please, I must leave. I know that once I am home, all will be well, that Father will immediately seek to rectify my circumstances.” Her gaze locked with the abbess’s. “I can return with Juliet. There will never be a better time.”
The abbess looked at her beautiful, intelligent, willful charge. “I would counsel most of my ladies to trust their fate to God,” she said slowly, “and they would heed me. But you would not.”
“I cannot obey you,” Katherine said softly. “Not if you order me to remain.”
And the abbess made up her mind. Not because Katherine had been unhappy for so many years, and it hurt her to see any of her ladies so distressed. Nor was it because if any woman deserved to live in the outside world, it was a woman like this. It was because she understood Katherine’s meaning exactly. She knew her charge too well. If the abbess denied her permission to leave, Katherine would run away. The abbess almost swooned in terror at the very notion. A woman like Katherine traveling alone and unprotected, dear God. She would wind up terribly abused, perhaps even a concubine in some Turkish lord’s harem. Their gazes held for a long moment. It was clear that Katherine would not take no for an answer. This, then, was the best and safest way.
She sighed. “I will allow you to leave, Katherine. But I must caution you. The world outside is not as it appears. You may return home only to be gravely disappointed. Perhaps your father will even send you back.”
“Oh, Mother, thank you!” Katherine was smiling widely, ignoring the thinly veiled warning. “Thank you for your concern, but he will not send me back, I promise you that!” Impulsively she embraced the abbess.
“Very well,” the abbess said. Beaming, Katherine thanked her again. After she was gone, the abbess returnedto her desk, picked up a quill, and dipped it into an inkhorn. She no longer smiled. Her face was lined with worry. She was too soft. She should have refused her charge. But then Katherine would have run away, and the abbess would not allow that. The convent was not a prison, and the world was hardly a safe place.
The abbess trembled. It was not too late to tell Katherine some of the truth—or even all of it. Except…she did not dare. Like a puppet on a string, she must obey her own masters. And trust to a higher Fate.
The abbess bent over the parchment and, very carefully, she began to write, explaining in great detail what had just occurred and what Katherine was about to do.
Juliet’s guardian had sent six men to escort her home. With his men came a short letter in which Richard Hixley expressed some disapproval about the fact that Katherine would travel with his niece. It was not difficult for Katherine to understand why. Juliet was a rich English heiress, and Katherine was but an Irish one. This was not the first time she had encountered snobbery from the English. Some Englishmen considered the Irish naught but a race of savages.
It did not matter. What mattered was that she was finally going home, and in the past month, time had crept by at an infuriatingly slow pace. Katherine could not wait to set foot upon the fertile ground of southern Ireland. She could not wait to reach her home, Askeaton Castle, a stout stone fortress built in medieval times and set upon an island in the River Deel.
The convent was less than a half day’s carriage ride from Cherbourg, where the small ship they would cross the Channel in awaited them. The road to Cherbourg was not well used, and the hours again dragged by. But toward nooning the monotony of their short trip was broken. A group of traveling players passed them on the road. One of the men was darkly handsome, and quite bold and brazen. He only had eyes for Katherine. He wished to make her acquaintance, and did not seem willing to take “no” for an answer. Katherine tried to ignore him, but was flattered and bemused by his interest. Finally, professing undying grief, making his talent for theatrics quite clear, he had doffed his plumed hat and he and his troupe of players moved on.
The girls and their escorts arrived at the harbor and were quickly boarded onto the ship. The man in charge of their party, Sir William Redwood, advised them to remain within their cabin for the duration of the short Channel crossing. He informed them that they would set sail at first light the next morning and come abreast of Dover if the winds were favorable by the next night, or, at the outside, by dawn of the following day. Juliet thanked him prettily, and then the two girls were left alone in their cabin.
Katherine walked to a porthole and stared out at the dusky water of the bay. Twilight was creeping over the harbor. A star twinkled vaguely. She was trembling with elation. Home. Before it had been a dream. Soon it would be reality. She was on the precipice of a new beginning—and she could barely wait for the happy future that was surely hers.
Katherine had been sound asleep. Now she jerked up with a cry. She had been dreaming of the meadows in springtime in Munster. In her dreams, Hugh had been alive and she had been a young bride. She shook her head, to free herself of the foolish dream, noticing the bright sunlight streaming through the cabin’s single porthole. It was well past dawn from the look of it. They had set sail some time ago, but neither she nor Juliet had been awake or aware of it. Katherine was perplexed and faintly uneasy. What had caused her to awaken so abruptly? And what were the strange scratching noises above her head?
And then she heard a sound she had never heard before. A deafening boom. No one had to inform her as to what it was. She knew, instantly. It was a cannon.
Katherine’s heart seemed to stop. She prayed to Jesus, God, and Sweet Mary that she was still asleep, still dreaming. And then another boom sounded, even closer and more loudly than the one before, and she knew, dear Lord,that it was no dream.Oh, God—they were under attack. “Juliet!”
She raced to the porthole as Juliet shot upright, but could see nothing but an incredibly bright winter sun hanging over the endless, amazingly calm gray seas. If ever there had been an illusion of a perfect day, this was it.
Another boom sounded, and this time Katherine heard the sound of wood splintering before she clapped her hands to her ears. It had sounded as if an entire mast had been shorn right off the deck.
