The pregnancy didn't show until the sixth month. Moira reluctantly admitted who the father was.

Liam laughed when his father confronted him. That wee bit of nothing? What did his father take him for? More likely the gardener did the dirty deed.

Liam's father, not wanting the scandal of an unwed mother in a decent household confronted the gardener.

"Nossir, not me!" Seeing as the gardener was already married, the scandal remained- with Moira stubbornly clinging to Liam as the father.

Liam's father had plans for Liam - marrying a penniless tenant's daughter was bad for business - Liam's father consulted the priest.

There were places in Galwaytown, places where wicked girls were sent to repent and give birth out of the sight of decent folk. The priest would take care of it as he had all the others.

Moira disappeared before she could be sent away to repent her wickedness in the coarse robes of a novice even as Liam, after a final argument with his father, stole his sister's trousseau for the money it would bring, and took the road to Galwaytown himself; free at last of all ledgers, priests, and responsibility.