The Last Secret of the Deverills Read online

  ‘There’s no point in wishing. There’s too much to wish for: that the financial world hadn’t crashed, that Britain hadn’t been plunged into recession, that Archie hadn’t lost all his money, that he hadn’t committed suicide, that Cousin Celia hadn’t found herself not only a widow but a poor widow and been forced to sell the castle. It’s infuriating, I agree, but Grandma would say that if you can’t do anything about it you should let it go.’

  ‘And she’s right. But I’m beside myself.’ Kitty put a gloved knuckle in her mouth and bit on it.

  ‘You’re like a dog with a bone. You’ll drive yourself mad.’

  Kitty couldn’t tell her about her anxiety for JP. Besides her father Bertie, her husband Robert, Michael Doyle who had brought the baby down from Dublin, and Grace, in whom Kitty had confided after she had found the child on her doorstep, no one else knew that Bridie was JP’s mother. Elspeth couldn’t imagine why Kitty minded so much that Bridie now lived on the other side of the estate and Kitty was not going to enlighten her. Instead, Kitty put it down to the unnatural order of things. ‘I’m paying rent to her!’ she seethed. ‘It’s all wrong. She’s the daughter of the cook, for goodness’ sake. It’s not right that she is now mistress of Castle Deverill. It’s not right at all!’

  ‘You must put it into perspective, Kitty,’ said Elspeth wisely and a little firmly because, in Elspeth’s opinion, Kitty was overreacting. ‘No one is sick or dying. The castle is just a castle. I know it means more to you than that, we all know how much you love it, but it is only a building made of stone. Ah, here we are,’ she said briskly. ‘Let’s go and have a look at some hats. That will cheer you up.’

  They entered the boutique to find a large assortment of hats exhibited on stands in the bay window and crammed on shelves with reels of ribbons, rolls of fabric and reams of lace and sequins and other trimmings. Feathers peeped out of boxes on the top of the counter and inside the display below, carefully arranged behind glass, were brooches and baubles that glittered enticingly. Pretty hat boxes were piled against one wall in neat towers and Kitty’s eyes feasted on them with delight. Elspeth had been right to bring her. She was forgetting her troubles already.

  At the tinkling of the doorbell a woman came out from a room at the back of the shop. Her big brown eyes took in the two ladies and she wrung her hands, out of nervousness, because she knew who they were and she was a little in awe. Everyone knew of Kitty Deverill; with her long red hair and singular beauty she was unmistakable. Indeed, the milliner had heard of Kitty Deverill even before she had married and moved to Ballinakelly.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said politely in her lyrical Irish brogue, giving only a small smile so as not to reveal her crooked teeth.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Elspeth cheerfully. ‘What a beautiful atelier you have.’

  ‘Oh, I would not use such a grand word for my humble business,’ she replied.

  ‘It is most certainly an atelier. Didn’t I tell you, Kitty? Soon the whole of Co. Cork will be wearing your creations. Look at this one. Isn’t it lovely?’

  ‘Would you like to try it on?’ asked the milliner.

  ‘Yes please.’ Elspeth watched the woman lift the hat off the stand.

  ‘If you take a seat here in front of this mirror, madam, I’ll help you.’ Elspeth sat down and the milliner replaced the hat she was wearing with a very fine creation in a plum-coloured felt with a contrasting teal-coloured ribbon, which did much to lift the mousy-brown shade of her hair. ‘This one is called a Florentine, madam, and it sits on the front of the head like this.’

  ‘Very flirty,’ said Kitty admiringly, cocking her head. ‘And the colour suits you.’

  ‘Oh, I adore it,’ Elspeth gushed.

  ‘I can make it for you in any colour. You can choose your ribbons over there.’

  Kitty moved to the shelves to look at the fabrics and trimmings while Elspeth tried on another style with a wider brim. Soon Kitty was pulling out rolls of ribbon and laying them across different-coloured felts. ‘I love this green. With my colouring I’m a little limited,’ she told the milliner.

  ‘I disagree. I think your colouring is so striking you could wear scarlet and get away with it.’

  ‘Goodness, you don’t think it would clash horribly, do you?’

  ‘Not at all. I think it would be daring.’

  As Kitty took Elspeth’s place in front of the mirror another woman emerged from the room at the back. She was pretty with pale Irish skin sprinkled with freckles, blue eyes that were gentle and engaging and long curly hair the colour of sun-dried hay. When she saw Kitty and Elspeth she smiled in a friendly manner quite uncommon in a stranger. ‘Good morning,’ she said and her American accent was stark.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Kitty with a frown. She had never seen this woman before and her accent immediately aroused her interest.

  The milliner was apologetic. ‘Excuse me, ladies, I’ll just see Mrs O’Leary out.’

  Kitty stiffened. ‘Mrs O’Leary?’ she mumbled, forgetting to take a breath.

  ‘Yes, my name is Emer and I’m new in Ballinakelly. My husband and I have just arrived from America.’

  Although Kitty was sitting down the blood seemed to drain from her legs into her feet. ‘And which O’Leary is your husband?’ she asked, although she knew the answer. She knew it from the sudden pounding in her chest and the thumping against her temples. She knew it from the happy smile this woman wore upon her face and she was suddenly seized by a raging jealousy, as if a hand had grabbed her heart.

  ‘Jack O’Leary,’ replied the woman who did not notice Kitty’s pallor or the haunted look that had deepened the shadows around her eyes. ‘You might remember him. He used to be the veterinarian here before he left for America.’

  ‘We do remember him,’ Elspeth cut in. ‘I’m Mrs MacCartain and this is my sister Mrs Trench.’

  ‘It’s very nice to meet you,’ said Emer O’Leary. ‘I’m having a hat made in the most beautiful blue. Mrs O’Leary, Loretta, is a cousin of my husband.’ She turned to the milliner with a grin. ‘Well, she is now that she’s married his cousin Séamus.’ She glanced outside. ‘Ah, there’s my husband. I’d better be going or he’ll get impatient. He’s not very keen on shopping.’ With that she thanked her cousin and left the shop. The little bell gave a tinkle as the door opened and then closed behind her.

  ‘So you married Séamus O’Leary,’ said Elspeth to the milliner. While the two women chatted Kitty got up and moved slowly to the window. She peered through the glass with trepidation, holding the hat she had just been trying on so tightly that her knuckles went white. There, standing a few yards away, was Jack. Jack O’Leary. Her Jack. He was bending his head to listen to what his wife was telling him and there was an intimacy in the way they stood, with their bodies touching, that caused something in Kitty’s heart to snag.

  Jack looked just the same. The years had been kind. His hair, although mostly hidden beneath a cap, was curling at his neck and at the temples greying a little, as was his beard, which was not so thick that it covered the strong line of his jaw or detracted from the angular line of his cheekbones. He was even more handsome with age. Then, as if by default, the pull of her gaze attracted his and those eyes, which were so familiar, so deeply familiar, locked into hers. With a flush of surprise he stared at her staring at him through the shop window and the world around them stilled. Kitty’s lips parted and she gasped. Suddenly the hand that held the roots of her heart pulled down hard and Kitty remembered with a painful jolt her love and her sorrow in an excruciating recall of memory. In that short but seemingly endless moment, the years that had grown up between them fell away. Kitty searched for the silent communication in his gaze that had always been there; the wordless understanding of two people who knew each other’s thoughts, who were forever linked. But the world began to move again with a jerk and Jack pulled his eyes away. He put his hand around his wife’s waist and led her up the street without a backwards glance. Kitty pressed her p
alm to her chest and suppressed the impulse to sob.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Elspeth asked, trying to see what her sister was looking at through the window.

  ‘I’m feeling a little unwell suddenly,’ Kitty whispered. ‘I want to go home.’ I want to be alone, she thought unhappily. I want to throw myself beneath the quilt and cry into my pillow. Jack is back. Jack is back and he is married. God help me to endure this because I cannot endure it on my own.

  Elspeth accompanied Kitty out of the shop and helped her into the car. Kitty searched the street for Jack, frightened of seeing him again and yet wanting to so badly that her whole body ached. ‘What is it, Kitty?’ Elspeth asked again. But Kitty was used to lying and dissembling – the War of Independence had taught her to be a master of deceit – so she gave her sister a reassuring smile and replied that she hadn’t eaten that morning, which had made her feel faint.

  ‘We’ll come back,’ said Elspeth, putting her foot down and speeding out of the town. ‘I have my eye on that plum-coloured hat.’

  Chapter 5

  London

  Mrs Goodwin and Martha arrived in England on a rainy morning after a turbulent passage across the Irish Sea. They disembarked at Fishguard in Wales and travelled on the ‘boat train’ to Paddington Station in London. Martha had gazed out of the window of the train at the bleak English countryside, and wondered where on earth Wordsworth had got his inspiration from, for surely his poetry wasn’t about this dull and sodden land? Mrs Goodwin had told her that when the sun shone there was no place more beautiful than England, but to Martha it just looked desolate. The hills were a dismal, dreary green, the forests dark and damp and shivering beneath foggy clouds. Hamlets nestled in the valleys, the smoke from their chimneys wafting cheerlessly into the mist, and on the hillsides sheep huddled together against the gale, their woolly coats a dirty off-white colour like the sky. Martha’s thoughts were drawn back to Ireland, whose emerald hills seemed to have a deep and tender charm, even in the middle of winter. It didn’t occur to her that Ireland’s beauty was rendered all the more arresting because of JP Deverill’s attachment to it. In any case, she longed to return. She did not want to be in London at all.

  Mrs Goodwin’s brother, Professor Stephen Partridge, was an historian who had taught at Cambridge University for thirty years before retiring and writing large, indigestible tomes on eighteenth-century France. He was only too happy to welcome his sister back from America and to meet her young charge, about whom he had read a great deal in his sister’s regular letters home.

  Professor Partridge was tall and thin like a reed with a balding head of grey hair, a pair of round glasses and a tidy grey moustache, which sat pertly above his vanishing top lip. He had never married and preferred his own company, leading a solitary life of books, which were his greatest pleasure. However, he had a couple of spare bedrooms and a maid who came daily to clean and cook and wash and iron, so his sister and Martha were no imposition, as long as they didn’t stay too long. A couple of weeks would be more than enough. He wouldn’t mind his routine being disturbed for a short and finite period. He trusted his sister to be sensitive to his need for solitude.

  Martha was astonished by Mrs Goodwin’s brother. She had imagined someone warmer, softer, more cheerful and much less austere. Goodwin was a cosy, maternal woman. Her brother was quite the opposite. He was stiff, dry like an old bone and brittle. His three-piece suit was clean and pressed, his shoes were polished and he seemed clean, pressed and polished in them. ‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ he said in a high voice that surprised Martha, for she had expected it to be much lower. His English accent was more pronounced than Mrs Goodwin’s and his reserve more acute.

  Martha had told Mrs Goodwin to explain her situation to her brother in private. She didn’t think she could discuss it without getting emotional and she was loath to break down in front of a stranger. Judging by her first impression of Professor Partridge, she didn’t think he’d be comfortable with a weeping woman. So, while Mrs Goodwin and her brother drank tea in the parlour, in front of a tidy fire, Martha sat at the little writing desk in her bedroom and wrote two letters. One to her parents to let them know that she was safe and well in London and the other to JP.

  10 Ormonde Gate, Chelsea, London

  Dear JP

  I hope this finds you well. I have just arrived in London and my first impressions are nothing like as delightful as my first impressions of Dublin, but perhaps that is because I don’t have the advantage of a good guide. It is raining, which Goodwin tells me is perfectly normal. I so enjoyed our day together in Dublin. I think it could have drizzled to its heart’s content and we would still have found the sunshine in each other. You made it fun, JP, and for a girl enjoying her first taste of freedom far from home I am truly grateful.

  I am staying with Mrs Goodwin’s brother, Professor Stephen Partridge.

  I send you my fond wishes

  Martha

  Martha read the letter more times than she could count. She did not want to come across as forward and yet at the same time she did not want to be too formal. They had shared something special in Dublin and she wanted JP to know how deeply it had affected her. She wished that he had written first, but that was impossible given that he did not know her address. Therefore, she had been left no choice but to put pen to paper and hope that she hadn’t misread his feelings.

  When she had finished, she went downstairs for supper. Mrs Goodwin was still talking to her brother in the parlour. Mrs Hancock, the maid, had put another log on the fire and taken away the tea tray. Mrs Goodwin was now drinking a small glass of sherry while Professor Partridge was enjoying what looked like a glass of brandy. Martha sat on the sofa and answered questions about her home in Connecticut, when Mrs Goodwin allowed her to answer. So excited was she to be showing Martha off to her brother that she frequently interrupted before Martha could speak, jumping in with elaborate descriptions of their life in America. Professor Partridge did not mention Martha’s present predicament. It was only when they retired to bed after supper that Mrs Goodwin told her that she had discussed the matter with her brother and he had suggested they call on an acquaintance of his, a certain Lady Gershaw, who lived in Mayfair and knew ‘everyone who was anyone’, which would most certainly include a titled lady such as Martha’s birth mother. ‘We’re getting closer,’ said Mrs Goodwin with a smile. ‘I’m feeling very positive about the whole situation.’

  Martha was hopeful, albeit anxious that her expectations might not be met. She had imagined the reunion a thousand times. There were countless reasons why the mission might go wrong and Martha did not want to dwell on any one of them. But now that they were close to finding out who her real mother was, those reasons rose to the surface of her mind like little pins to pop the bubbles of fantasy there. ‘Thank you, Goodwin. You are too good to me.’ She embraced her tearfully. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’ve been my most loyal friend all through my life. I’m lucky to have you.’

  Mrs Goodwin was so touched that she squeezed her lips tightly to hold back her emotions and embraced Martha in return. ‘Whatever happens, Martha my dear, don’t forget that you have a loving family back home in Connecticut. I don’t blame you for wanting to find out who brought you into the world, and for all I know she might be looking for you too, but it’s Mrs Wallace who has loved you and cared for you from the moment she held you. That’s what being a mother is about.’

  ‘I won’t forget,’ said Martha. ‘But I won’t rest until I know why my birth mother gave me away. Why she didn’t want me. Why she couldn’t keep me.’

  The following morning the two women took the bus to Mayfair. The professor had telephoned ahead and Lady Gershaw had invited Mrs Goodwin and Martha for a cup of tea at eleven. They had devised a plan, because of course they could not reveal the real reason why Martha wanted to find Lady Rowan-Hampton. They were confident that their plan would be sufficient for Lady Gershaw to help them find her.

  Lady
Gershaw lived in a palatial white house a few streets away from Hyde Park. The two women climbed the wide steps leading up to large double doors with big brass door knobs and a heavy brass knocker and rang the bell. A moment later a butler in a pristine tailcoat and starched white shirt opened the door and peered at them. He looked from Mrs Goodwin to Martha and then said, in the accent of the King, ‘Lady Gershaw is expecting you.’ He invited them into the hall and led them across the shining floor to a grand and elegant sitting room, warm from the glow of a hearty fire. ‘Lady Gershaw will be with you shortly,’ he said and left them alone.

  Martha was wringing her hands nervously until Mrs Goodwin stopped her by placing her own hand on top. ‘You don’t need to be nervous, my dear. Stephen speaks highly of Lady Gershaw.’

  ‘I’m not nervous about her, Goodwin, but about what she might tell me.’

  Just as Mrs Goodwin was about to reassure her again, a short, rotund woman of about sixty, with a cheerful round face, bright green eyes and a wide, confident smile strode into the room in a pair of sensible brown lace-up shoes and tweed suit, followed by three small fox terriers. ‘How lovely!’ she exclaimed, putting out a hand. ‘You must be Stephen’s sister,’ she said, looking directly at Mrs Goodwin.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ replied Mrs Goodwin, shaking her soft, pudgy hand. ‘And this is Martha Wallace, my charge from Connecticut.’

  ‘Welcome, my dear,’ said Lady Gershaw fruitily. ‘Please, do sit down. Amy is going to bring us tea. I hope you like tea?’ She turned to Martha and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Oh yes, I do, Lady Gershaw, thank you.’ Martha waited for Mrs Goodwin to sit down on the sofa before taking the place beside her. Lady Gershaw chose one of the armchairs and the terriers, after sniffing the two guests with prodding, curious snouts, settled on the rug at their mistress’s feet.

  ‘I don’t suppose Stephen has told you why we are friends?’ Lady Gershaw said with a mischievous smile. ‘Well, let me tell you. I wrote to him out of the blue, because I adore his work. You see, I’m an avid reader and history is my passion. I’m an admirer. That’s how we met!’ She shook her grey curls. ‘Isn’t that funny? I bet you couldn’t have guessed.’