The Last Secret of the Deverills Read online

  When they reached the hall Mr O’Malley had gone and Cesare was standing in front of the fire with his hands on his hips. ‘Ah, there you are, tesoro,’ he said and his Italian accent was so pronounced as to sound almost comical. ‘Have you invited anyone for dinner?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t.’

  A shadow of irritation swept across his face. ‘Then you must begin. You must be the greatest hostess in Co. Cork,’ he said emphatically. Bridie was now sufficiently well-acquainted with the stiffening of his jaw to know when a suggestion had become a command. ‘We must entertain. We must throw dinner parties and lunch parties. We must invite everyone. It is not enough to live in the castle; we have to dominate the county too. We are the first family of Ballinakelly and you,’ he said, lifting his son into the air, ‘are an Italian prince. Count Leopoldo di Marcantonio, descended from Pope Urban VIII.’ The little boy squealed in delight, forgetting all about the ghost.

  ‘I will organize entertainment for you,’ said Bridie, desperately wanting to please this dashing, charismatic man who had chosen her out of a cast of thousands.

  ‘I know you will. But why the sad face, my darling?’ Cesare put his son down and settled his mesmerizing green eyes onto his wife with concern.

  ‘My grandmother died this afternoon,’ said Bridie.

  ‘That is a great pity,’ he replied carelessly. ‘But she was old. She is in a better place now.’

  ‘I know, but I feel—’

  He broke her off mid-sentence. ‘You must let your sorrow go, my darling. It will not get you anywhere and you have lots to do. I have had my fair share of grief but I have risen above it like sunshine. Life is too short to waste time in mourning. Life must go on. You have to keep yourself busy then grief will have no space to occupy.’

  ‘My brother and Rosetta are coming to live in the east wing,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I know we’ve just moved in but—’

  ‘Of course they must,’ he said enthusiastically, as if it was the most wonderful idea he had ever heard. ‘And what about your mother? Will Mariah be joining us too?’

  ‘She won’t be moved and Michael has decided to stay with her.’

  ‘Your mother is a proud woman. But Leopoldo will have cousins to play with,’ he said, smiling at the boy. ‘But don’t forget that they are not princes like you, Leopoldo. They are simple country children and will be guests in your home, so you must be nice to them.’ Neither Cesare nor Bridie ever noticed that Leopoldo was so spoiled that he was never nice to anyone.

  ‘Now I will go out,’ said Cesare.

  Bridie was a little hurt. ‘Now?’

  ‘As you have not invited anyone to entertain me, I have to find entertainment elsewhere.’

  ‘Will you be back for supper?’ she asked, watching him stride towards the door where the butler stood ready with his coat and hat.

  ‘No.’ He thought of the baker’s daughter’s plump thighs and knew that, once between them, he’d be in no hurry to leave. ‘I’ll most likely be back late.’ Then he was gone, leaving Bridie wondering how she could make his home more attractive so he would be inclined to stay.

  Chapter 4

  ‘Did you really have to frighten the boy?’ said Barton Deverill, slouching in the armchair with his feet on a stool as he had done for the best part of two hundred and seventy years. Although free to roam the castle, Barton had chosen the room at the top of the western tower and only a small handful of ghosts were permitted to join him there – most avoided it on account of his bad mood, which had prevailed now for nearly three centuries.

  ‘This Doyle woman does not belong here,’ his son Egerton retorted crossly. ‘She’s a usurper and must be forced to leave.’

  ‘I want her to go as much as you do, but frightening a small boy is not the way to do it.’

  ‘He’s odious,’ Egerton snarled. He walked over to the window and looked out onto the lawn, which was sparkling in the sunshine with a light sprinkling of frost. But Egerton was not the sort of man to be moved by the beauty of nature. His heart had been calcified long ago and the years imprisoned in this limbo had only softened it a little. ‘He throws sticks at birds, pulls the legs off spiders and kicks the dogs.’

  ‘You did a great deal worse when you were a boy,’ Barton reminded him.

  ‘And look at the man I became.’ He grinned grimly at his father.

  ‘You have paid for your sins,’ said Barton. ‘And I have paid for mine.’

  ‘When we get out of here I doubt I’ll be going to the same place as you. I never treated anyone with any respect or kindness when I was alive.’

  ‘Trust me, son, whatever you have done I have done worse.’

  ‘That cannot be true, Father.’

  Barton gazed at Egerton, the corners of his mouth turning down into bitterness. ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘If I’ve held my tongue for over two centuries I’m hardly going to let it loose now.’

  Egerton turned his attention to the gardens again. ‘This castle belongs to the Deverills, not to the Doyles or anyone else.’

  ‘Indeed it does. But you terrorizing a child will not bring the Deverills back.’

  Adeline Deverill floated into the room, followed by her husband Hubert, who had been a jocular, cheerful man in life but was now a dark energy full of regrets and self-pity. ‘You’re not still going on about Bridie Doyle, are you?’ she said, folding her arms. ‘There is no point descending into unpleasantness. You have to accept what is because you can’t change it.’

  ‘It’s all very well for you, Adeline. You can come and go as you please,’ said Barton.

  ‘But I choose to remain here with all of you. Goodness, what was I thinking? I could have floated up to the light. But no, it’s much more fun down here listening to you all complaining of your lot.’

  ‘If it was your lot, you’d complain worse than us, I dare say,’ he added.

  ‘You have to learn to accept the things you cannot change,’ she said, wandering around the edge of the room where she had spent the last years of her life. In spite of the extravagant rebuilding, this western tower still held on to its original charm.

  ‘Egerton thinks he can change it, by haunting the child,’ Barton growled.

  Adeline shook her head disapprovingly. ‘That’s not very nice, Egerton.’

  ‘Being nice won’t get rid of them.’

  ‘And if you do get rid of them, who do you think will come in their place?’ she asked. Egerton did not like to be disputed, especially not by a woman. He scowled into his beard. ‘Your freedom is in the hands of an O’Leary and it doesn’t look like any of them have the means to buy Castle Deverill. Perhaps an O’Leary daughter will marry this Leopoldo,’ Adeline said reasonably.

  ‘If he continues the way he’s going no one will want to marry him,’ said Barton.

  ‘Women are very stupid,’ Egerton added pointedly. ‘There are many who would gladly have a man with a castle, even if he’s a tyrant and a bully.’

  ‘You should know,’ said Barton.

  Egerton grinned wickedly. ‘My wife was the stupidest of the lot!’

  Hubert sank into the other armchair, opposite Barton, and folded his hands over his belly. ‘Let’s face it, we’re never getting out of here,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Darling, it’s not like you to be so pessimistic,’ Adeline replied, trying to rouse him out of his depression. ‘You were always a cheerful, optimistic fellow.’

  ‘In life, Adeline. This kind of half-death is very disappointing and as far as I can see, endless! What are the chances of an O’Leary coming to live here now that that housemaid has got her hands on it? A housemaid, I ask you! How the devil did that happen? In our day a person knew where he stood. He was happy to remain there, too. The ambitions of this woman are beyond belief.’

  ‘She married a very rich count, my dear,’ said Adeline, crouching by his chair and putting a hand on his.


  ‘She’ll not hold on to him,’ Egerton added. ‘They’ve been here but a week and he’s already seduced one of the pantry maids.’

  ‘There’s nothing new about that, Egerton,’ Adeline retorted. ‘I’m sure you didn’t behave much better when you were master of the castle.’

  Egerton took that as a compliment and grinned raffishly. ‘It was my right to enjoy the servant girls. They would have been mightily disappointed had I not.’

  ‘Human nature will never change,’ Adeline said wisely. ‘Modes come and go, but human nature remains the same. Beneath the trappings of civilization, we are closer to the animal kingdom than we realize.’

  ‘What nonsense,’ Barton scoffed. ‘You should concentrate more on getting us all out of here and less on the complexities of human nature. Leave that to the philosophers. If I have to spend the next two hundred years in this dastardly limbo I shall go mad and then see what havoc I will wreak on the inhabitants of this castle! It’s a wonder that I haven’t already. Unfortunately, I cannot kill myself because I am dead already.’

  ‘Don’t be such a misery, Father,’ said Egerton. ‘It was you who got us into this mess in the first place.’

  ‘And with all the will in the world, Egerton, I cannot get us out. How many times do I have to tell you? Only an O’Leary can by reclaiming the land.’

  Hubert dug his chin into his chest and stuck out his bottom lip. ‘And that’s as likely as a man on the moon,’ he said.

  Adeline smiled indulgently because her love for her husband was both profound and patient. ‘My dear, if a housemaid can rise to be lady of a great house, so too can an O’Leary.’

  ‘Man on the moon,’ said Hubert grumpily and he would have liked more than anything to pour himself a large glass of whiskey. If he’d known then what it was like to be dead, he’d have drunk a great deal more of it when he was alive.

  Since Bridie had moved into the castle Kitty had been in a fever of outrage. It was unbelievable that her childhood friend had swiped her family home right from under her nose. Unthinkable that, after their altercation at the bottom of the garden fourteen years before, when Bridie had returned to Ballinakelly and accused Kitty of stealing her son and threatened to take him, she should come back now and buy the castle. Surely, it was an act of revenge, Kitty reasoned. Bridie couldn’t lay claim to her child but she could have everything else – and she wanted Kitty to know it. She wanted to lord it over Kitty as Kitty had once lorded it over her. Kitty wondered whether Bridie had forgotten the bond they shared, the years they had played together as equals, the fun they had had when Bridie was Kitty’s lady’s maid. But their friendship was in ruins and no amount of money could rebuild it. JP stood between them like an unscalable wall. They both had a right to him, but it was Kitty who had raised him and she honestly felt that she had done the best for her friend. She couldn’t help the way things had turned out.

  And what a mess it all was. JP had no idea that Bridie was his mother and Bridie could never tell him. He believed his late mother had been called Mary, because that’s what Kitty and Bertie had agreed to tell him. The truth must never come out. Never. But now the truth had moved in only a few miles across the estate.

  Kitty’s father had reassured her that it wouldn’t be too hard to keep Bridie and JP apart. There was no chance of them meeting socially, Bertie said, even less chance of them being introduced on Sundays for they attended different churches, and if they passed each other in the street, they would be strangers. Besides, JP would soon be leaving for Dublin to study at Trinity College. Bertie had returned the day before from Dublin and reported that JP had fallen for a girl he had met in the tea room at the Shelbourne. This was welcome news to Kitty. The sooner he left Ballinakelly the better – not that she wanted him to go, but he was a man now and it was natural for a man to make his own way in the world. She had held on to him when other boys his age had been sent to England to be educated (partly because they didn’t have the money to send him to Eton and partly because her husband Robert, who had been Kitty’s tutor, was a more than adequate teacher). It was now time to let JP go.

  JP could think of nothing else but this girl he had met. Kitty noticed the faraway look in his eyes and the agitated way he moved restlessly around the house. He took his horse out and galloped over the hills. How she remembered doing that herself when her own agitated spirit could only be quietened by the wind in her hair and the sound of thundering hooves in her ears. She watched him set off and saw herself not only in his red hair and wilful nature but also in his passionate heart. He was a Deverill and it didn’t matter that he was also a Doyle because he was now a man and she had shaped him. As far as Kitty was concerned there was nothing of the Doyles in him.

  Kitty often thought of Michael Doyle. The memory of the rape in the farmhouse, when, in a frenzy of anger she had left her blazing family home and gone to confront him about his part in the arson, only for him to accuse her father of raping his sister and inflict the same violent act on her, was now distant as if it pertained to another life. The anxiety of bumping into him in town had eased so that now she no longer sweated with nerves or dreaded turning the corner. When she did see him, which she inevitably did, she simply looked away, held her chin high and crossed the street. She would never forgive him and she would never acknowledge him as JP’s uncle. As far as Kitty was concerned Michael did not exist, even in her nightmares, which had subsided too by the sheer force of her will. She had accepted the rape as part of her past and had buried it along with her love for Jack O’Leary. Both men were relegated to the dusty shadows of her being, one dark, the other light, but both once the cause of great anguish.

  Kitty had got on with her life. Her daughter Florence was now twelve. She was like her father: studious, kind and gentle-natured. Unlike JP she had few Deverill characteristics and unlike Kitty she didn’t have the gift of a sixth sense, which Kitty had inherited from her grandmother Adeline. Kitty loved her fiercely. Raising JP and Florence and being a good wife to Robert had fulfilled her. Once she had made the heartbreaking decision to stay in Ireland with Robert and Jack had left for America, Kitty had found a contentment she had never believed she could.

  Jack O’Leary had been her great love ever since she was old enough to know her own heart. They had been children together, playing in the woods and down by the river, hunting for frogs and beetles and caterpillars, watching badgers and rabbits and mice. Then they had grown into young adults and had ridden out over the hills together, talking about their hopes for Ireland and their dreams of independence in the Fairy Ring of stone circles high up on the cliff top while the sinking sun set the ocean aflame. Jack had kissed her there and in that moment, when their lips had touched, Kitty had understood that she would know no finer love for a man. Her love for Robert was of a different kind. It was deep, certainly, and it was tender, but how could it compete with the love she felt for Jack whose history she shared?

  The years of struggling for independence, the mutual love for their country, the risks they had both taken and the danger they had been in had bound them together in an unbreakable tie. Even though Kitty had relinquished her dream of being with Jack, she knew that Jack still held the roots of her heart, right down deep in the place where she had first learned to love. But she had taught herself to ignore the pull and to withstand the ache and over time she had managed to accommodate both.

  Kitty barely saw her mother Maud, for whom she had no affection, or her oldest sister Victoria, Countess of Elmrod. Maud, icily beautiful with slanting blue cat’s eyes, alabaster skin and white-blonde hair cut into a severe bob which emphasized the determined line of her jaw. She had never asked Bertie for a divorce but for a woman so concerned about what ‘Society’ thought of her it was extraordinary that she should be so indiscreet. Equally beautiful and insufferably entitled, her eldest daughter Victoria also lived in London but had the advantage of a grand estate in Kent where she retreated when the London season drew to a close. Her husband was the dull
est man in England and one of the richest, which was of greater value than character to Victoria who tolerated him in exchange for the life her mother had dreamed of for her. Kitty was close to her other sister Elspeth, who had not been blessed with beauty but was sweet-natured and modest with the temperament of a loyal dog. She had surprised everybody by defying their mother’s social ambitions and marrying Peter MacCartain, an Anglo-Irishman without title or fortune, and going to live in his cold and dreadfully uncomfortable castle a short distance from Castle Deverill. Hard-up but happy, Elspeth was Kitty’s dearest friend and her three children were only a little older than Florence. In Elspeth she found a loyal, serene and unexcitable companion, which was what she needed now after years of drama and heartbreak.

  It was a bright February morning when Kitty and her sister Elspeth drove into Ballinakelly. Gulls wheeled beneath blue skies and the sun managed to melt the frost although it clung to the ground in the shadows and on the hilltops where the air was colder. Wound up by Bridie’s underhand purchase of Castle Deverill, Kitty had been persuaded by Elspeth to go into town to do a little browsing to take her mind off it. A new milliner from Dublin had opened a small atelier on the main street. In fact, Kitty and Elspeth’s great-aunts, Laurel and Hazel, affectionately known as the Shrubs, had been sporting two of the milliner’s creations at church on Sunday and everyone had admired them. The scandal those two elderly women had caused by inviting Grace Rowan-Hampton’s father, Lord Hunt, to live with them in a very shocking ménage à trois had not abated with the years and the people of Ballinakelly still gossiped about it and wondered how on earth it worked. Kitty and Elspeth had done as much gossiping as the rest of them, but were less shocked. In a family such as theirs, a ménage à trois was hardly world-shattering.

  ‘I’m sorry to go on, Elspeth, but I’m devastated about the castle,’ said Kitty as they drove into town in Elspeth’s small Baby Austin. ‘I wish Celia hadn’t sold it. I wish it still belonged to our family. But it’s gone forever and I can’t bear it.’