Laws in Conflict by Cora Harrison

and the rosy glow seemed to be reflected in the adoring face of the boy who stood before her, carrying her hand to his lips in a courtly gesture.
    ‘My little Scottish primrose has been abandoned by your son for the Spanish rose,’ murmured Mara in Margaret’s ear. Fiona had tossed her blonde head and turned back to the other boys, giggling with Aidan over some silly joke.
    ‘Walter’s been in love with Catarina since he was five years old,’ said Margaret. She tried to sound apologetic, but a smile of pride and triumph curved her lips. ‘It will be a good match. Philip Browne is a very successful merchant and Catarina will have a fortune from her mother. The Gomez family from Cadiz,’ she said settling into a comfortable gossip mode, ‘is fabulously rich. There was no heir for years and Philip Browne hoped that his son might inherit the Spanish fortune through his mother, but when David was ten years old Señor Gomez married again and had a son – Carlos. He, of course, will be a very rich young man,’ she said enviously, ‘but Isabella has her own fortune and that will be for Catarina.’
    ‘Is this the first visit that Carlos has paid to Galway?’ Mara thought that the hopes of an alliance between young Walter Lynch and the well-endowed Catarina might not work. The girl seemed to be paying more attention to her cousin Carlos than to him and when she did address a remark to Walter, it seemed to be made in a rather condescending fashion. Boys and girls, brought up together, did not always marry. Carlos did not have the shining beauty of Walter, but, although probably only a year or so older, he had an air of authority, of experience, and, of course, the glamour of his Spanish gold to set him up as a serious rival.
    None of my business, thought Mara and with a murmured excuse to Margaret, she got up to inspect a flamboyantly decorated wall-hanging of Spanish leather, which was displayed quite near to the cushioned bench where James Lynch was sitting, and then, when he made no move to her side, she gave up the pretence and sat down beside him.
    ‘So much to see here in the city of Galway,’ she said. ‘I was admiring your very fine walls earlier when our host took me up to The Green.’
    The mayor looked at her suspiciously. ‘We have to maintain them well,’ he said stiffly. ‘We are surrounded by a hostile people.’
    ‘And then this very fine harbour,’ said Mara, ignoring his attempt to start an argument.
    ‘Talking about the harbour, James, just as we were passing on our way into here, there was a very fine ship from Spain arriving,’ called out Philip Browne, rather rudely interrupting an anecdote about Walter’s babyhood which Margaret was relating to him and his wife. He crossed the room, studied the mayor’s face from under his eyelashes as he added maliciously, ‘Plenty of taxes for you, my friend. I’d say that there was as much as a hundred tuns on board.’
    Mara absorbed this with interest. A hundred tuns meant about two hundred thousand gallons of wine. The tax on this must be absolutely enormous. James Lynch, however, showed just a placid satisfaction.
    ‘Good,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘So that’s arrived. That means we can get building.’
    A splendid place like Valentine’s palatial residence, wondered Mara, but then, almost as though the strange man sitting beside her had read her thoughts, he said to her abruptly, ‘I want to build a grammar school for the town. They have them in all the major towns in England – they even have one in Dublin. This will be built beside the church and will educate the sons of the merchants and will have free places for ten poor, but deserving, town boys.’
    ‘And will be known as the James Lynch Foundation,’ said Valentine. His tone was teasing and Mara thought he might be revenging himself for some of his brother-in-law’s remarks earlier. It was obvious that there was little love between them. Not a likeable man, James Lynch.