Daughters of Castle Deverill Read online

  Digby was the first to make it back. He heaved himself up with difficulty for his clothes were waterlogged and heavy. His boots were like rocks attached to his feet, pulling him down. He flopped onto the bottom of the boat like a fat walrus, fighting for breath. Then he remembered his cousin. He scrambled up and threw himself against the side. Bertie was struggling. His clothes and boots were making it almost impossible for him to tread water. ‘Do you want to die?’ Digby shouted. ‘Is that what you want? Because if you do, I’ll let you go. But if you choose to live you have to give up the drink, Bertie. Do you hear me? It’s your choice.’ Bertie coughed and gagged, sinking suddenly only to propel himself up with a desperate kicking of his legs and flapping of his arms. ‘What will it be, Bertie?’ Digby shouted.

  Bertie did not want to die. ‘Life!’ he managed to shout, taking a gulp of salty water and coughing madly. ‘Please . . . Digby . . . Help . . .’

  Digby lifted one of the oars out of its oarlock and carefully held it over the water so that Bertie could grab the blade and haul himself towards the boat. He remained for a moment with his arms flung over the edge, panting. ‘Come on, old chap. We’ve got to get you home before you die of exposure,’ said Digby gently. He grabbed Bertie’s sodden jacket and heaved him over into the body of the boat, where he lay shivering with fear as well as cold.

  ‘You bastard,’ Bertie gasped, but he was smiling.

  ‘You chose life, Bertie, and I’m going to hold you to it.’ Digby held out his hand and after a moment’s hesitation his cousin took it. Digby pulled him to his feet.

  Bertie tottered, then found his balance. ‘I won’t let you down, Digby.’

  ‘I know you won’t.’

  The two men embraced, wet and frozen to their bones, but the feeling of camaraderie had never been warmer.

  Kitty hadn’t been able to see Jack since their hasty meeting at his cottage after his father’s death. He had been staying with his mother, who was inconsolable with grief. They sent each other notes, just as they had done in the old days when they had used the loose stone in the wall in the vegetable garden, but this time Kitty sent the stable boy. They met at the Fairy Ring and snatched stolen kisses, witnessed only by the gulls that wheeled above them like kites on the wind. As the day of their departure loomed Kitty felt it more like the steady approach of an axe, poised to sever her from her home. She dreaded it and longed for it in equal measure. She grew short-tempered with Robert. She snapped at Celia and she cried at the smallest thing.

  And then God intervened.

  Once she knew her fate a calmness came over her. A resignation that comes from total surrender. It was as if she was letting out a long, slow breath and with it came a sense of peace. She was certain now of what she was going to do. There was no question, no doubt, no indecision, her mind was as clear as crystal. Even the pain of knowing how much hurt she was going to inflict seemed dislocated, belonging to someone else.

  The morning before they were due to take the train to Queenstown, Kitty rode over the hills to Jack’s cottage. She didn’t allow herself to cry. She set her jaw and clenched her teeth and let the cold wind numb her emotions. When she arrived she tied her horse to the fence as usual and pushed open the door. Jack wasn’t there, but his bag was packed and ready in the hall. She sat down at the table and waited as the weak winter light retreated slowly across the floorboards.

  At last she heard him outside, whistling for his dog. A moment later he opened the door and said her name. ‘Kitty.’

  Then he knew. Even before he saw the expression on her face, he knew. This time he didn’t sweep her into his arms, promise her he’d wait for her and kiss the pain away. He stared at her in utter disbelief and exasperation, knowing that what she was about to tell him would wound him as surely as a bullet. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

  Kitty stared at her fingers, knitted on the table before her. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she replied. Jack swayed as if struck. Then she added in a quiet, steady voice, ‘It’s Robert’s.’

  Jack sat down opposite her and put his face in his hands. There ensued a heavy silence. So heavy that Kitty’s shoulders dropped beneath the weight and her head began to ache. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I’m sure,’ she replied.

  ‘How could you?’ He looked at her in desperation.

  ‘He’s my husband. I couldn’t deny him.’

  ‘You could have. You could have, Kitty.’ He raised his voice. ‘If you had wanted to.’

  She lifted her chin and dared to look at him. Every twist and turn of their ill-fated love affair seemed to have dulled the light in his eyes a little further and he looked entirely desolate. He shook his head. ‘So this is it?’ he said. ‘This is what it’s come to? After all we’ve been through. After all the years we’ve loved each other. This is where we are?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  He banged his fist on the table. ‘Sorry! You’re sorry!’

  Kitty’s eyes stung with tears. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Well, sorry doesn’t cut it, Kitty Deverill. You’re sorry for spilling tea. Sorry for putting mud on the rug. Sorry for every little fecking thing. But sorry isn’t a word that even begins to put right the wrong you’re doing to me. Do you understand? I’ve waited for you.’ His face contorted with disgust. ‘But I’m done waiting.’

  A tear splashed onto the table. ‘There’s nothing more I can say.’

  ‘Did you ever truly love me, Kitty?’

  A flood of emotion filled her chest. She pressed her hand against the pain. ‘Oh yes, I did, Jack,’ she gasped. ‘And I do, with all my heart.’

  ‘No, you don’t. If you loved me you’d be ready to give up everything for me.’ He stood up and walked to the window, turning his back to her to throw his gaze over the sea. ‘God knows I’ve loved you, Kitty Deverill,’ he said wearily. ‘God knows too that I’ll probably never stop loving you. It’ll be a curse I’ll just have to live with, but I’ve survived worse, so I’ll survive this.’

  Kitty got up slowly, her body aching. She walked over and slipped her hands around his waist. He said nothing as she rested her forehead between his shoulder blades. She could smell the past on him. The scent of turf fires, hot tea, porter cake and horse sweat. The aroma of damp earth and brine. She closed her eyes and saw themselves as children, balancing on the wall, pottering about the river in search of frogs, kissing at the Fairy Ring, watching the sun sinking into Smuggler’s Bay. Then she heard the guns, the cries of men, the shouts of the Black and Tans dragging him off the station platform and she wanted to cling to him and never let him go. He invaded her every sense until she was too overcome to hold back her grief. She held him fiercely, but he remained with his hands on the window frame, gazing stiffly out to sea, and she knew that she had lost him.

  She left the cottage. Jack didn’t turn round. If he had she might have buckled. She might have run to him; she might even have changed her mind. But he didn’t. She mounted her horse and slowly rode back up the path, her heart a boulder in her chest. The wind dried her tears and the sight of those velveteen fields of Co. Cork soothed her beleaguered spirits as they always had done. Ireland was the one love she could count on.

  As she headed for the hills she knew that Jack was right. A pregnancy was the only thing that could keep her from running away with him – and she had known it and allowed it to happen. Fate had played no part nor had Destiny. Kitty had prayed for a child to save her from herself. She knew as surely as she lived and breathed that she belonged here, at Castle Deverill. Not even Jack O’Leary, with the extraordinary power he had over her heart, could tear her from her home.

  Kitty’s despair was Adeline’s frustration. If Kitty married Jack and somehow returned to claim the castle from Celia, the spirits caught in limbo might at last be released. She watched Kitty ride for home and knew, as well as she knew her own heart, that Kitty’s could not be changed. She had chosen Ireland, as she always had.

  Adeline stood on the hill ove
rlooking the sea. The wind blew inland off the water in chilly gusts. The waves rose and fell in ever-changing swells and their peaks extended upwards as hands reaching towards Heaven. They crashed against the rocks, their efforts reduced to white foam that bubbled and boiled as the water rolled in and out in a rhythm that only God understood. But Adeline heard the melody beneath the roaring and her soul swelled like the sea as she contemplated the land she loved so dearly.

  Ireland. Wild, mysterious and deeply beautiful.

  ‘If only Hubert could inhabit these hills as I can,’ she thought sadly, contemplating the red sky and fiery clouds that seemed to flee the setting sun like sheep with their wool aflame. But instead he had to remain in the castle with the other Lord Deverills and in her opinion the place really wasn’t big enough for the lot of them.

  Death had changed them little. They were still the people they had been in life, only unencumbered by their earthly bodies. They still grumbled and moaned, argued and complained and generally made a nuisance of themselves. Adeline wondered whether Celia would rue the day she’d decided to rebuild, for Barton’s son, Egerton, could be very tiresome when taken by the desire to create mischief. He enjoyed treading heavily down the corridors, making the doors creak and rattling the furniture. It was frustrating not being either on earth or in Heaven, burdened by all the grievances one had in life, only no longer limited in perspective. They had at least gained a little understanding of what their existences had been all about. Life after death was no longer an uncertainty. Time was simply an illusion. Yet, while their souls were drawn to a higher state, they were imprisoned behind bars they could not see, cursed to glimpse the light but remain in shadow, their mortal egos balls and chains about their necks.

  Adeline, on the other hand, could go where she pleased. Heaven awaited her with the gates flung wide. Only love tied her to Hubert. While she waited for the curse to be lifted she could see the whole world and as she turned her thoughts to other lands she was once again drawn to the small part of Ireland, and herself, that had strayed across the water . . .

  Chapter 8

  Connecticut, 1926

  Martha Wallace knelt on the window seat and stared in wonder at the snow that fell like fluffy white feathers onto the garden below. Today was her fourth birthday and her English nanny, the kind and gentle Mrs Goodwin, had told her that God’s present for her was snow. The little girl spread her palms against the glass and raised her peat-brown eyes to the sky to see if she could make Him out up there in the clouds, but all she could see were millions of fat flakes, constant and thick and falling fast, and Martha lost herself in the magic of them.

  ‘Right, time to go, dear,’ said Mrs Goodwin, walking into Martha’s bedroom with the child’s crimson coat slung over her arm and her matching hat in her hand. ‘We don’t want to be late for your party. Grandma Wallace has invited all the family to celebrate your big day. It’s going to be tremendous fun.’

  Martha wrenched her eyes away from the mesmerizing whiteness and slid off the window seat. She stood before her nanny. The lady smiled tenderly and crouched down to the child’s level. ‘You look very pretty, my dear,’ she said, tweaking the blue bows in her dark brown hair and running her gentle eyes over the blue silk dress with its white sash and collar, which she had taken great trouble to press so that not even the smallest crease remained. ‘I remember when you were a baby. Such a pretty baby you were too. Your mama and papa were so proud they showed you off to everyone. They love you very much, you know. So you must be good for them.’

  Martha put her finger across her lips in a well-practised gesture of conspiracy. ‘Shhhhh,’ she hissed through her teeth.

  ‘That’s right, my dear.’ Mrs Goodwin lowered her voice. ‘Your secret friends must remain secret,’ she reminded her firmly, helping her into her coat. ‘It’s not fun if you tell everyone. Then they’re not secret any longer, are they?’

  ‘But I can tell you, Nanny,’ Martha whispered, watching as her nanny’s fingers deftly fastened the buttons.

  ‘You can tell me, but no one else,’ Mrs Goodwin confirmed. ‘You’re blessed with a wonderful gift, Martha dear. But not everyone will understand it.’

  Martha nodded and gazed trustingly at her nanny. Something caught then in Mrs Goodwin’s chest, for when she looked deeply into the child’s eyes she was sure she could see the loneliness there. It wasn’t that Martha was lacking in love or company but that she seemed to carry an emptiness inside her that nothing was able to fill. She had come into the world with it, this tendency to stare out of the window as if searching for something lost or longing for something only half remembered. She was a melancholy, dreamy, solitary little girl – strange qualities in a child who had every material comfort to please her and drawers of toys to entertain her. Pam Wallace spoiled her only child unashamedly and anything Martha wanted she was given. But Martha didn’t want much and little that could be bought attracted her interest. She preferred to sit with her imagination, to watch the clouds float past, to play with insects and flowers, to talk to people no one else could see. In her more fanciful moments Mrs Goodwin wondered whether Martha could hear the echo of her homeland resonating in her soul or discern the vague memory of having come into the world as two, yet set off on her journey as one.

  Mrs Goodwin should not have heard Martha’s parents discussing the child’s origins – and she hadn’t intended to. Goodness, if she had known what was to be gleaned, she would rather not have eavesdropped. But as it was, she had heard and there was nothing she could do to unhear it now. It had happened when Martha was about two years old. Mr and Mrs Wallace’s bedroom door had been left ajar and Mrs Goodwin had chanced to be in the corridor outside, having left the little girl asleep in her bedroom, at the very moment that husband and wife were discussing Martha’s obvious loneliness and wondering what to do about it.

  ‘We should have adopted another child,’ Mrs Wallace had said to her husband and Mrs Goodwin had stopped mid-stride as if turned to stone. Barely daring to breathe she had lingered there, motionless, her curiosity overriding her sense of propriety. ‘We should have adopted her brother as well,’ Mrs Wallace had continued.

  ‘It was you who only wanted one child,’ Mr Wallace had replied. ‘You said you couldn’t cope with more than one. And you wanted a girl.’

  ‘That’s because a mother never loses a daughter.’

  ‘Sister Agatha did try to encourage us to take both babies,’ he had reminded her. ‘After all, they were twins. We could always go back to Dublin and see if there are any other babies up for adoption. I’d be very happy to give another orphan a home.’ An uneasiness had crept over Mrs Goodwin then as if she had suddenly realized that she was listening to a pair of thieves reviewing a terrible crime.

  ‘If I had known how lonely Martha would turn out to be I would most definitely have taken her brother too,’ Pam Wallace had conceded.

  Stunned and horrified, Mrs Goodwin had managed to lift her heavy feet off the ground and retreat back down the corridor to the little girl’s bedroom. She had leaned over the bed and stared at the child with pity and compassion. Martha had a brother, a twin brother, Mrs Goodwin pondered, gazing at the sleeping toddler. What had become of him, she wondered? Did he carry an emptiness in his soul too, as she was sure now that Martha did? Did they both know somehow, subconsciously, that they hadn’t always been on their own? And what of their mother? Why had she given up her babies? Mrs Goodwin was certain that Mr and Mrs Wallace would never tell Martha that she was adopted – this was the first Mrs Goodwin had heard of it and she wondered who else knew. As far as the world outside the Wallace family was concerned, mother and child looked very much alike. Both had dark brown hair, eyes the colour of peat and pale Irish skin. There was nothing in their appearance to raise a question about Martha’s birth – and Mrs Wallace loved Martha, there was no denying that. She loved her dearly. But still, there was something deeply wrong about splitting up twins as they had done – and the thought that Martha
might never know where she came from, or indeed that she had a brother, was a very uneasy one.

  Mrs Goodwin took Martha’s hand and accompanied her downstairs into the hall where her mother waited, fussing with her handbag. Pam Wallace was as pampered and precious as one would expect the wife of a very rich man to be. Her dark hair was cut into a chic bob that rippled with self-conscious waves, her eyebrows plucked into thin arches that gave her a permanent look of surprise, and her small mouth was painted scarlet to match her long fingernails, now hidden in a pair of long white gloves. She was tall and slender with a narrow frame so that the 1920s fashion of dropped-waist dresses and flat chests showed her to her best advantage. In Mrs Goodwin’s day, for she was young at the end of the previous century, a woman had to have ample embonpoint, but a voluptuous bosom was no good to anyone nowadays. However, Mrs Goodwin was no longer interested in men or fashion. After Mr Goodwin had left her widowed she had given her life to children and she knew from experience that small babies needed something soft to lie against.

  Mrs Wallace turned to watch her daughter walk down the stairs, holding her nanny’s hand in case she stumbled, and her scarlet lips spread into a satisfied smile. Martha did her credit, she knew. Her long hair had been brushed until it shone, the ribbons neatly tied into two little bows, her crimson coat done up at the front with shiny red buttons, and her shoes, oh the dainty little blue shoes, dyed to match the dress that peeped out at the bottom of her coat, were as pretty as a doll’s. Mrs Wallace was very pleased. ‘Well, don’t you look a picture, darling,’ she gushed, holding out her hand. One could only just perceive her Irish accent, concealed beneath her American twang. ‘You look quite the birthday girl. You will outshine all your cousins!’ Martha stepped forward and took her mother’s hand. Her chest swelled with pleasure for she liked nothing better than to please her mama.