"What?" Remington asked.
"Oh, just remembering how I used a flock of sheep like that one to stop that woman who stole the race horse."
"Mrs. Armdale," Remington recalled. "And the race horse was named Xanadu."
"Ah yes," Laura sighed. "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan his stately pleasure dome decree…"
"I was thinking more along the lines of "Citizen Kane"," Remington told her. "Kane's mansion was named Xanadu."
"Oh, of course," Laura said. "How silly of me."
"Really, Laura, we've watched the movie countless times," he began, and stopped as he saw the teasing light in her eyes. Taking her hand, he said, "Thank you. For agreeing to come with me. I don't think I could have done this alone."
"You thought you could in London," Laura reminded him.
"But that was before I found out that Daniel might be the father I've been looking for. Thank you," he said again, lifting her hand to his lips, only to be forced to release it as a stray sheep wandered onto the road, forcing him to shift gears and go around. "How much farther?" he asked her.
Laura looked at the map. "According to this, another couple of miles," she said. "Of course, I'm not sure how trustworthy this map is. I mean, who would put a town out here in the middle of nowhere with only a road like this as access?"
"The Irish," Remington told her with a grin.
"More important, why would DANIEL have come to such an out of the way place?" Laura wondered.
"That's one of the questions I intend to ask him," Remington said, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel as his eyes caught sight of a cluster of buildings around the requisite church. As they neared, Remington could see that there were people beside the church, all wearing black, heads bowed. "Unless I'm too late," he added.
Pulling the car to the curb, he took a deep breath and got out as the mourners began leaving. There weren't many of them, six, seven at the most, Remington thought, but his eyes were on the scene beyond the fence that surrounded the little graveyard.
Two men were shoveling dirt into the grave. Remington felt Laura's hand slip into his, and he looked at her, grateful that she was here, at his side. They entered the churchyard, and paused to watch the men. Remington touched a white camellia on a stand nearby.
Laura spoke to the men. "Excuse me. Whose grave is this?" She winced as Remington's fingers tightened painfully on her hand, and glanced at him as he spoke.
"Daniel's," he told her, nodding toward the gravestone, already inscribed, waiting for the men to finish and place on the new grave. "He died yesterday," Remington said. "I'm too late."
"He hoped you'd be late," a woman said in a soft Irish brogue.
Remington and Laura both turned to find a small, frail looking old woman with iron grey hair and startling blue eyes, wearing a black coat that looked new. "He HOPED I'd be late?" Remington questioned, as if he wasn't certain he'd heard her correctly.
"Aye. He was afraid of having to face you. Of having to face the truth that he'd worked so hard to keep hidden all these years. Of your rejecting him."
"Who are you?" Remington asked the woman.
Those blue eyes so like his own searched his face for a long moment, as if looking for something. Evidently she found it, because she smiled a bit sadly. "I'm your grandmother, lad."
***
After her announcement, she refused to continue their discussion
in a cold, damp churchyard, and led them back to her small cottage
nearby. After allowing Remington to help her off with her coat,
she pointed to a doorway. "You two go on through to the fire,
warm yourselves while I get some tea and cakes."
"Please," Laura insisted, "Don't go to any bother-"
"No bother. We had the wake last night- and a grand wake it was. Daniel would have loved it. But there's more than enough food left over. Now off with you. The Irish winter can put a terrible chill in your bones, you not being used to it and all."
Laura followed Remington into the main room of the cottage, where a peat fire burned warmly in a small stove. As she warmed her hands, Remington went to the window, his hands in his pockets. Laura knew he was hurting, but at the moment was at a loss as to how best to help him.
Remington glanced around the room, noticing something shining in the lamp light and froze. Dear God. He picked up the pocketwatch and opened it. As the strains of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" filled the small room, his eyes met Laura's.
"Aye," the woman said as she returned, carrying a tray laden with a silver tea service and various cakes. "It was Daniel who sent that to you-" Laura moved quickly to relieve the woman of her burden. "Thank you, lass. Set it there, on the table." She sat down in a chair. "You'd be Laura, I imagine," she said, making conversation as she poured the tea into bone china cups that were incongruous with the surroundings. "Daniel spoke often of you during these last weeks. About how grateful he was that Harry had found you."
"I gave this watch back to the Earl of Claridge," Remington told the woman. "How did Daniel get it?"
"The Earl gave it to Daniel when Daniel left his employ," she explained gently and held out a cup and saucer in his direction. "Now come have your tea and I'll try to explain."
Remington thought about grabbing Laura's hand and getting the hell out of here. But something about this woman instilled more confidence in her than he'd had in anyone- except Laura. He took the cup and sat down beside Laura on the love seat that was as out of place as the cup and saucer. Looking around, he realized that the entire cottage- what he could see of it, anyway, was the same. Furnishing, bric-a-brac that wouldn't have been out of place in a far grander house.
"There's a good lad."
"Mrs. -" Laura began, only to stop as she realized that she still didn't know the woman's name.
"It's Mrs. Donahue. But most call me Mary. I grew up in Glen Carey," she told them. "In this house. It was only after my husband died a few years ago that I moved back here."
"And you say that you're my grandmother," Remington said.
"I'm certain of it. I had one child. My daughter, Maeve." She rose stiffly to take a photograph from a shelf. "Loveliest child who ever walked the earth," she told him, handing him the photograph of a waifish-looking woman child, with curling dark hair and wide eyes. "Her eyes were as blue as yours- or mine. And she had a way of looking at people and things. Always saw the good 'em. Which was her downfall, in a way."
"What happened?" Laura asked as Remington gazed at the photograph of his mother.
"My husband was a wealthy man. Fine house house near Dublin, nice clothes. Fancy friends. Oh, lived the life of Riley, we did. And Maeve- Maeve was the apple of her father's eye. And everyone knew it. She met a young man at a party- she was only twenty one- fresh out of university. They started seeing each other frequently-"
"Daniel." Remington's single word as he looked from the photo to Mary was surprising, since he hadn't spoken.
"Yes. Daniel Chalmers. Oh, that man could talk the birds out of the trees, he could. And handsome- my poor Maeve never stood a chance. And she kept telling me that he was a good man, he just needed a chance to prove it. Even to himself. James- my husband, never trusted Daniel-and I must admit, I had misgivings myself in those days. It's not easy to watch a child you've raised and nurtured rush headlong into disaster. James had him investigated- and found out that Daniel had been in prison for running a scam. He was a confidence man, plain and simple, and James offered him a choice: either leave, or he'd turn him over to the police. Daniel tried to say that he wasn't after money, that he was really in love with Maeve. But James would have none of it. Maeve told her father that if Daniel left, so would she. That she loved him as much as he loved her. To this day," Mary said, putting her empty cup on the table before them, "I'll never know whether or not James thought it was a bluff. But he picked up the telephone to call the police, and Maeve said she'd leave anyway, that if he turned Daniel in, she would never forgive him."
"So he let Daniel go," Laura guessed.
"And Maeve went with him," Mary confirmed. "James declared that she was no daughter of his, and refused to hear her name spoken in the house- even when she called to tell us that they'd married. Daniel told me that he tried to convince her to come home, to forget him, but she refused, convinced him that they could conquer the world as long as they were together."
"But they didn't stay together, did they?" Remington said, rising to look at another photo, this one of Maeve and a smiling, much younger Daniel.
"No. Daniel tried, or so he claims. But he couldn't find work that would support Maeve in the manner that she was accustomed to. Knowing Maeve, it didn't make a bit of difference whether they lived in a fancy house or a one room walk-up, but it did to Daniel. So he took a chance, was convinced by some friends to help them rob a bank- he said he was going to use his part of the money to set he and Maeve up, because she was going to have a baby. But they got caught- and Daniel was sentenced to a year in a Dublin prison." Mary tried to pour another cup of tea, but her hands were shaking. So Laura took the tea pot and refilled the woman's cup. "Maeve swore that she'd wait for Daniel-. She came home, wanting a place to stay until he was free, but James refused to see her at all. He said she'd made her bed, now she could lie in it. I tried to convince him, to tell him that she had no other place to go, but- he wouldn't listen." She lifted her eyes to Remington. "Your grandfather was a very harsh man. Betrayal wasn't something he accepted easily. And he saw Maeve's choosing Daniel over him as precisely that. Betrayal."
"What happened to her?" Remington asked, returning the photo to the shelf and sitting down.
"Well, I told her to come here, to Glen Carey. I had a cousin that I hoped would take her in- but Elisabeth was on holiday, and wasn't to be found. There was an orphanage just up the road back then- run by a group of nuns. They took in unwed mothers, women with no other place to go. They closed the order several years ago- after some improprieties came to light regarding their lack of record keeping and placement of infants in their care. It wasn't until it was too late that I discovered that Maeve had wound up there, alone, with no one to take care of her. And all the while, she was still sending Daniel letters in prison, telling him how grand things were going, that she was safe with her cousin here in Glen Carey, and that once the baby was born, they'd wait here for Daniel's release."
"She- died when I was born, didn't she?" Remington asked, his gaze on the tray of cakes that he had yet to touch. Laura's hand found his again, and he covered it with his other one.
"Aye, that she did. The nuns had no way of knowing for sure that she was married, all they had was her word for it. Thinking you were an orphan, they placed you with a family in Glen Cree, then you somehow became lost in the system. I'm afraid the nuns were terrible record keepers. To my knowledge, none of the babies they placed have ever been located. Things are different now, thank the Lord."
"What happened when Daniel was released?" Laura wanted to know.
"He came to Glen Carey, and found out from Elisabeth that Maeve hadn't been there- so he went to see James and me. I'll never forget that awful day. Daniel came tearing into the house like a mad man, demanding to know where we'd hidden his wife and child. I had been looking for her without James' knowledge ever since I'd discovered that she wasn't with Elisabeth, and had only just found out about the orphanage. I told Daniel what I knew- that he had a son, but that the nuns had no idea where he was. James said it served Daniel right- that he wasn't fit to raise a child, anyway." She closed her eyes at a memory. "I had to pull Daniel off of James, drag him from the house, and promise to do everything I could to help him find his son- and my grandson. But James couldn't know what we were about. It was the only time I'd ever stood up to James, really. And he never knew it. Daniel and I searched everywhere, but couldn't find you," she told Remington. "I could see how hard it was on Daniel- and after awhile, I insisted that he leave Dublin, leave Ireland, let me continue the search. But there was no sign, nothing."
"Daniel just- left?"
"Against his will," Mary assured him. "He told me later that he sank into a bottle when he got back to London, very nearly killed himself before pulling himself up and deciding that if he was ever going to find his son, then he had to keep going. It was during that time that he first stole that watch right after the Earl gave it to Patrick O'Rourke." She smiled at Remington's recognition of the name. "Patrick was another cousin. Worked on and off in a bar in London. Patrick knew Daniel had it, but told the Earl he had no idea where it was."
"So you kept looking in Ireland for -Harry," Laura said.
"And you can imagine my surprise when Daniel contacted me, told me that he'd found you in London. I was shocked when he described your appearance, wanted to come and bring you home to Dublin. But Daniel quickly informed me that you wanted nothing to do with your father. And to reveal myself as your grandmother would be too much of a risk- Daniel refused to consider losing you again for any reason. It tore him apart a few years later when you left to go out on your own."
"He made me promise to keep in touch," Remington recalled. "I never thought about it until now, but he seemed rather desperate for me to agree."
"I must say, I never approved of his encouraging your- larcenous pursuits," Mary said disapprovingly. "But he insisted that it was the only thing he knew how to teach you to help you survive. Then he told me that you were safely ensconced in Los Angeles, as Remington Steele, - you should have heard how proud he was of you that day. Showed me all kinds of news photos-" she rose again, and this time found a scrapbook that she came back to place in Remington's lap. "Go on," she told him, urging him to look at the contents. "Daniel put a great deal of love into that."
Laura moved closer to Remington as he opened the scrapbook to reveal page after page of newspaper and magazine articles about Remington Steele and the Agency. There was picture after picture of Remington- and Laura. The first one was from the case that had brought them together- The Royal Lavulite. "Good Lord, Laura," Remington said in an amazed voice. "He'd been keeping a complete record of my life in Los Angeles. Everything's here," he told her, turning to the last pages. The last interview he'd given, in which he'd declared Laura to be a full partner in the agency and in everything else, was there as well. But what fascinated Remington were the little notes beneath each one, in Daniel's neat hand. The one under that last interview caused Laura to squeeze Remington's arm gently.
"Good show, Harry, my boy. About time you gave the lady some credit."
Remington smiled, touching the inscription. "I never knew that Daniel was doing this," he said.
"Neither did I- until he came here a month ago, asking if he could stay for awhile. It was nearly a week before he told me that he'd come here to die. He wanted to be buried beside Maeve- in the churchyard."