Daughters of Castle Deverill (33 page)

‘I’m happy that you decided to come back,’ said Bertie, gazing at his wife with appreciation. ‘I’m only sorry that your stay has been marred by tragedy.’

‘We’ve endured a great deal of tragedy,’ said Maud, lifting her chin to show that she wasn’t going to allow another to devastate her. ‘But we’ve survived.
We’ll continue as we always have. You Deverills are made of stronger stuff. I’m not, but you drag me along in your slipstream and that helps.’ She gave him a small smile.
‘Thank you, Bertie. Your concern is touching.’ Bertie smiled back and Victoria wondered whether the embers of their marriage hadn’t entirely been extinguished as she had
thought.

Kitty’s eyes strayed to one of the windows where she could see a group of Gardai in their navy uniforms and peak caps carrying Archie’s body across the lawn wrapped in a sheet.
‘Where’s Digby?’ Kitty asked as Robert joined her.

‘In the library talking to the inspector. I dare say we’ll find out shortly why he killed himself,’ said Robert. ‘He might have left a kinder note,’ he added.
‘Celia has no explanation, nothing.’

‘That’s because he was too ashamed to articulate it.’

‘About what? Do you know something, Kitty?’

‘I suspect he’s lost all his money, like so many have. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Celia that they have nothing left. I can’t imagine why else he’d want to
end his life. I’d put my money – the little I have of it – on shame.’

‘Good Lord. I hope she won’t have to sell Castle Deverill.’

‘I hope not. If she does, then we’re all in trouble.’

Robert took her hand and smiled affectionately. ‘Whatever happens, Kitty, we’ll be all right. We’ll weather anything that’s thrown at us because we’re united and
strong.’

Harry later found Charlotte in their bedroom. She was sitting at the dressing table, brushing her long strawberry blonde hair with a silver brush. ‘I was wondering where
you had got to. I’m sorry. I should have been more attentive.’

‘Come and sit down,’ she said, replacing the brush on the dressing table and turning round on her stool. ‘I have something important I want to say.’

Harry pulled up a chair and sat facing her. He dreaded that she was going to request a divorce. He didn’t think his mother would survive divorce, especially after the horrors of today.

Charlotte gazed at him and he noticed that her blue eyes had softened like water in springtime. They were no longer frozen with resentment but glowing with warmth. ‘I thought it was
you
who had hanged yourself today,’ she said quietly.

‘Oh my darling. Do I look so miserable?’

She smiled sadly. ‘Yes, you do. When I saw the empty bed and then heard what was in the note, I assumed that you had gone and done something stupid. So I made a bargain with
God.’

‘What sort of bargain?’

‘I told him that if you were alive I would forgive you and let you see Boysie again.’

‘Charlotte—’ he began.

‘Don’t interrupt. I’ve thought about this a great deal. I love you, Harry. I wouldn’t have been so hurt if I didn’t love you. I’m sure that you love me too,
in your own way.’

‘I do,’ he replied.

‘But I know you don’t love me in the way that you love Boysie. It’s not conventional, but it’s not for me to judge you. Love is a wonderful thing, wherever it
flows.’ She looked down at her hands which were folded neatly in her lap. ‘I don’t know whether Deirdre is aware of how Boysie feels about
you.
Perhaps she knows and it
is
I
who have been naïve. But I’m not going to be naïve any longer. I love Boysie too. I’m unhappy that he is not in our life any more. I miss him.’

‘Oh Charlotte . . .’ Harry unfolded her hands and took them in his. ‘I do love you. Do you think there’s room in our marriage for the three of
us?’

She laughed and blinked away the tears, all except for one, which glistened in her long eyelashes. ‘I think there is,’ she said.

The irony was, that in that moment of magnanimity, Harry realized that he loved his wife more than he had known.

New York, 1929

Bridie’s happiness was complete. She was engaged to the dashing Count Cesare di Marcantonio and living in a city drunk on optimism, opportunity and rising wealth. America
shared her confidence. President Hoover foresaw a day when poverty would be wiped out; economists defined a ‘new plateau’ of prosperity and predicted that the country’s affluence
was here to stay; ordinary people believed they couldn’t go wrong buying stocks and everyone, from the shoeshine boy to the wealthiest men in the city, played the Stock Market. Bridie sang
along to Irving Berlin’s ‘Blue Skies’ with the other New Yorkers who believed they had at last reached the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and she spent with the
extravagance of someone who believes that pot to be bottomless. She ignored Beaumont Williams’ warnings of an imminent crash, but Beaumont, so right about most things, was right about
this.

The Crash, when it happened, was devastating, falling as it did from such a great height. Bridie listened to the wireless and read the newspapers and her first thoughts were for herself. She
never wanted to return to the poverty of her youth. ‘How does this affect me?’ she asked Mr Williams as she settled into the familiar leather chair in his office in front of the fire
which had not been lit on account of the warm autumn weather.

‘It doesn’t,’ he replied, crossing his legs to reveal a slim ankle and a crimson sock. ‘I took the liberty of instructing your broker to buy you out before the
panic-selling,’ he explained casually, as if his ingenuity were but a trifle. ‘You might recall that I have been expecting this for months. Stocks have been grossly overvalued for years
and I decided you should take your profits. Rothschild wisely said, “Leave the last ten per cent to someone else.” You’re richer than ever, Mrs Lockwood.’ Indeed with
unemployment rising, farms failing and automobile sales falling he wasn’t the only person to sense the oncoming of disaster, but he was certainly one of the few to act in time to avoid
it.

Bridie flushed with gratitude. ‘Why, Mr Williams, I don’t know what to say . . .’

‘Your husband Mr Lockwood was a shrewd man. He invested much of your fortune in gold. I predict that the gold market will recover.’ He opened a leather book and rested it on his
knee. Then he pulled his spectacles out of his breast pocket and settled them on the bridge of his nose. ‘I suggest we arrange a meeting with your broker, but in the meantime I requested that
he send round your portfolio to put your mind at rest. As you will see, Mrs Lockwood, your money has been wisely invested in short-term bonds to the US government, in prime property and land. I am
not one to heap praise upon myself, but in this instance, I might concede that I have, indeed, been canny.’

Bridie listened as Mr Williams ran through figures and funds she barely understood. The only words that mattered to her were ‘gains’, ‘interest’ and ‘the bottom
line’. She watched this self-contained man, with his round belly fastened behind a pristine grey waistcoat, his clean, tidy hands and manicured nails, closely shaven face and shiny black hair
and felt a flood of gratitude that she was in the care of such a sensible man. If it hadn’t been for Mr Williams where would she be now, she wondered. What she didn’t ask herself was
where Mr Williams would be without
her
– his prosperity, and he was most certainly prosperous, was more closely linked to hers than she had ever imagined.

‘As you can see, Mrs Lockwood, you have nothing to worry about. New York can crash about your ears, but you will still be one of the few people left standing.’

‘I am very much in your debt,’ she said, watching him close the book and replace it on the table in front of him. She lifted her left hand and admired the diamond ring that glittered
there.

‘That’s a very fine ring,’ said Mr Williams. ‘May I?’ He reached for her hand, drew it towards him and held it in the light. He knew a thing or two about diamonds
and he could see, even without a loupe, that this one was of poor quality. ‘When are you going to tie the knot?’

‘We haven’t set a date,’ Bridie told him, her face glowing with happiness. ‘It’s all happened so fast. I need to catch my breath. Cesare wants to marry as soon as
possible.’

‘Does he indeed,’ said Mr Williams, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. But Bridie was too excited to hear the concern in his voice. ‘Might I give you a word of advice?’ he
asked. Considering the amount of money he had saved her she didn’t feel she was in any position to refuse.

‘Of course,’ she replied.

‘Take your time. There’s no rush to marry again. Get to know the man. Meet his friends and family. After all, getting
into
marriage is much easier than getting
out
of it.’

Bridie smiled and shook her head vigorously. ‘Oh, I know what it looks like, Mr Williams. Of course I do. I don’t know anything about him, do I? But I followed my head with Walter
and look where it got me. This time I will follow my heart. Life is not worth living without love. I know that now. I can be as rich as a Rockefeller, but if I don’t have love I have nothing.
I do believe I have found my soulmate.’

Beaumont observed her keenly. She was quite a different woman to the one she had been two years ago when she was pining for her Irishman and searching for solace in gin. Her cheeks were now
flushed with the blush of a first love, her eyes shone with good health and optimism, her demeanour was both confident and satisfied, and Beaumont realized that it didn’t matter whether this
count was genuine or not, because Bridie loved him. After all she had been through: a life of drudgery in the service of Mrs Grimsby, marriage to the aged Walter Lockwood, widowed at twenty-five,
deserted by the Irishman she believed she loved – and those were only the facts he knew, what shadows lurked in her deeper past could only be guessed at – he realized that she deserved
a taste of happiness.

‘I wish you luck, Mrs Lockwood,’ he said, settling back into his chair.

‘Thank you, Mr Williams,’ she replied and because she was so intoxicated with infatuation, she was oblivious to Mr Williams’ reservations. However, Beaumont Williams was not a
passive man. When there was something that troubled him he wasted no time in getting to the bottom of it.

Count Cesare di Marcantonio was an enigma. If Bridie knew little about him, his friends and acquaintances in New York knew even less. But Beaumont Williams had contacts in both Italy and
Argentina and after a gentle digging in the right places, he was able to throw some light into the Count’s murky corners. ‘He was born in Abruzzo, somewhere in Italy,’ Elaine told
Bridie over lunch in Lucio’s, a small restaurant on Fifth Avenue where the owner, a bearded Italian with a gift for making women feel special, always gave them the best table by the window.
‘But his family is really very aristocratic. His mother is a princess whose family is descended from the family of one of the popes, Barberini I think they’re called, but I can’t
for the life of me remember which pope he was. Their names all sound the same, don’t you think?’

‘Go on,’ said Bridie, elegant in a fashionable cloche hat, olive-green dress and a string of shiny pearls that hung down to her waist.

‘No one knows exactly why, but the family moved to Argentina when your count was a child. It sounds a little dubious if you ask me. They simply vanished into the night. I suspect it had
something to do with owing money. Anyhow, his father is one of those men who makes a fortune then loses it just as quickly, only to make it again. He made his first fortune in beef, then in
industry, investing in railways. He bought estates and cattle, exporting the beef around the world. That’s what Beaumont found out.’

‘And now?’ Bridie asked.

Elaine shrugged. ‘His father, Count Benvenuto, is a notorious character in Buenos Aires. He lives the high life, takes risks investing in pipe dreams and squanders his money on his
mistresses and gambling. His reputation is not entirely snow white. Who’s to say whether he’s managed to hold on to his fortune or whether he’s never really had one. Beaumont
suspects the latter and wishes to warn you that not everything about your count is, as we say in New York, kosher.’ Bridie put down her knife and fork and looked thoughtful for a moment.
Elaine felt bad and rushed in to soothe her doubts. ‘I’m not saying your Cesare is after your money, Bridget,’ which was exactly what she
was
saying. ‘But he
surrounds himself with rich people who are happy to absorb him into their world. He’s undoubtedly charming, entertaining and no one loves a foreign title more than the Americans.’ She
sniffed apologetically and glanced at her friend a little fearfully. ‘We thought it better that you know
before
you tie the knot.’

But Bridie smiled with indulgence, as if she were a parent who had just been told of her child’s latest antics by a worried teacher. ‘I don’t care about his family history,
Elaine. I don’t care where he comes from. God knows that
I
come from nothing. What have I got to be proud of: a farmhouse that was sinking into the mud, a few cows and barely enough
food to sustain us? I didn’t own a pair of shoes until I went to work at the castle. Cesare can be penniless and destitute and descended from peasants for all I care. It makes no difference
to the way I feel about him. If his father’s gambled all his money away, I have enough for the two of us. If he’s a womanizer, I’ll make him faithful. If he’s an adventurer
I’ll give him the adventure of a lifetime. Love will carry us like the wind and our feet will never touch the ground.’ And there was nothing Elaine could say after that.

Bridie closed her ears and her eyes to Count Cesare’s obvious faults. To her there had never lived a man more handsome and romantic and kind. Love blinded her to his arrogance and to his
shameless pursuit of the rich and powerful, to his vanity and his unwavering belief in his own success. She gazed into his sea-green eyes and felt the light of his adoration reach the darkest parts
of her being, reviving them like neglected gardens that are suddenly bathed in sunshine, bringing them into blossom and flower. She didn’t need gifts; she needed love. And Cesare had enough
of that to quench her most voracious thirst.