Daughters of Castle Deverill (41 page)

There were no letters, or he had hidden them in a very clever place. If she couldn’t find them, her mother certainly wouldn’t. She was relieved; she didn’t want to read love
letters from a mistress. Of course she suspected that he had had mistresses, or certainly taken lovers. After all, he had been a very wealthy, attractive man who had mixed with socialites and
actresses – and women of ill repute no doubt, it would have been odd if he hadn’t cast his eye about. But that was a man’s business. She didn’t want to know anything about
it. She wanted to remember him as a good husband to her mother. She didn’t want anything to change the way she thought about him.

Celia went through the cupboards beneath the bookcases. She felt his presence strongly as she looked through old sepia photographs stuck into thickly bound albums. There were photographs of him
in his youth: sitting on top of a camel in a panama hat, on safari in Africa, at Ascot Races in top hat and tails, standing in front of the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids of Giza. He had been dashing
even then, always with a raffish smile on his face and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. There were a few photographs of his brothers, but they were strangers to Celia. Her grandmother Augusta, on
the other hand, had been surprisingly beautiful then but her grandfather hadn’t changed at all. Even his sweeping moustache was the same. She dwelt on the pictures of her father. He had
always been jovial as if he had found everything in the world amusing.

With the rug almost entirely covered in her father’s clutter she didn’t know where to look next. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was nearly midnight, and she was
beginning to feel tired. But she was frightened to go to bed in the mansion with only the servants upstairs, sleeping like mice beneath the floorboards. The place felt uneasy, as if it understood
that the master had gone and didn’t know quite what to do with itself. She wished she had asked Boysie or Harry to stay with her.

Wearily she stood in the middle of the study, casting her eye about the room in search of a secret place where her father might have hidden letters he didn’t want anyone to find. She
hadn’t even come across a safe and she had opened every drawer. Then her eyes rested on the library of books her father had never read, because it was well known in the family that her father
had never read a book in his life. Why so many? For a man who never read it suddenly seemed odd. Then an idea struck her. She hurried to the shelves and began pulling out all the books and tossing
them onto the floor. They clattered about her feet, releasing clouds of dust into the air. And then she found it, the safe hidden in the wall behind the row of innocent-looking books. Her
excitement injected her with energy and she no longer felt tired. She didn’t take long to find the key. It was sitting in an ashtray on the desk among various coins, golf tees and paperclips.
Behind the door were three letters, sitting loosely on top of other documents.

With her heart thumping in her chest she took the letters to the armchair where her father used to sit and read the papers beside the fire, inhaled deeply and pulled the first out of the
envelope. Just as she began to read, her father’s voice came back to her on a wave of guilt. He had told her to
burn
them; he hadn’t told her to
read
them. But, she
reasoned, he hadn’t told her
not
to read them. After a moment’s hesitation her curiosity overcame any reservations and she continued to run her eyes down the page.

Her greatest fear had been love letters from a mistress but now, reading the terrible words written on the page, love letters would have been preferable to
this
. Her heart plummeted
into her stomach and the blood drained from her face. The floor seemed to spin away from her as she drew the other two letters from their envelopes and hurried to read them. How she wished she had
just done what her father had asked and burned them. Hadn’t she been taught that curiosity killed the cat? Now she knew what these letters contained she could never
un
know it. She
felt tainted by the poison contained within the words. Cursed. There was only one thing to do.

Hastily, as if the letters had a life of their own and might suddenly make off out of the house and into the public gaze, she screwed them into tight balls and threw them into the grate. She
found matches on the mantelpiece and struck one. Bending down she put the flame to the paper and watched it grow into a small fire. The blaze consumed the letters until all that was left was ash,
sinking into the pile of cinders left over from her father’s many fires.

Aurelius Dupree. She never wanted to see or hear that name again.

London has lost its brightest – and richest – light
, wrote Viscount Castlerosse in his
Express
column.

‘Ridiculous!’ Maud sniffed, closing the paper. ‘Nothing will induce her to sell the castle.’

‘She’s planning on selling the contents,’ Harry informed her, stirring milk into his coffee.

‘That’s not the same as selling the castle. Viscount Castlerosse should write fiction not fact, he’d be much better at it. Honestly, the last thing on anyone’s mind
yesterday was the castle.’

‘I’m sure Digby has left Celia enough in his will to cover any of Archie’s losses,’ he said optimistically.

‘Archie left Celia in a terrible position. Imagine doing that to one’s wife. Shameful.’ She smiled at her son. Harry’s visits did much to raise her spirits. Autumn always
made her feel melancholy with the strong winds, falling leaves and thick smog. ‘So, what’s Celia going to do now?’

‘She’ll sit it out here in London for a while, I think. At least until the will is read and she knows where she stands. The nanny is coming over with the children.
Beatrice—’

‘Beatrice,’ Maud interrupted, pursing her scarlet lips. ‘Beatrice isn’t good for anything. She should remember that she has a family who needs her. I imagine Celia needs
her mother very badly right now because those sisters of hers are useless, but they’ve never been close. You’re good to her, though, aren’t you, Harry? I’m sure she’s
taking comfort from you.’

‘Beatrice has returned to Deverill Rising already,’ Harry continued. ‘She doesn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone.’

‘She needs to eat. She’s half the size she was in the summer.’

‘She’s unhappy, Mama. I’m sure it’ll pass.’

‘Of course it will. She’ll bounce back. We Deverills are a resilient lot.’

‘We have to be.’

‘No one more than
me
, Harry. What I have been put through would have felled most normal women. But I am made of tougher stuff Harry wondered what exactly she had been put through,
besides the odd scandal and losing a castle that she never liked in the first place. He did not disagree with her, however. He knew better than to argue with his mother. ‘What keeps me going
is my faith, my children and the certainty that I have always only ever done my best.’

Harry looked around her sumptuous sitting room, which she had spared no expense in furnishing, and decided to change the subject. ‘You’ve made a fine home, Mama.’

‘I have, but I cannot deny that I am lonely. You are my consolation, Harry. You, Charlotte and those adorable children. I have no regrets. None.’ She smiled at him again and the
satisfaction in it made Harry feel uncomfortable. ‘You have done me proud, my darling. I could not have wished for a better son.’

Celia closed the newspaper with a disdainful sniff. Her father had told her not to sell the castle. That place meant more to him than anyone could know. There was no way that
she was going to give it up without a fight.

She reflected on the memorial service. What Castlerosse hadn’t noticed was the strange man in the felt hat who had attended without invitation and had lurked at the back of the church,
watching them all keenly – the same man as the one who had been outside the church at the funeral, staring at her with such vitriol. Celia had noticed him. She was terrible at remembering
names but she never forgot a face, and his, gaunt, mottled and grey, had stuck in her memory like a thorn. She had seen him various times since, standing beneath the lamp on her street, watching
the house, watching
her.
To show up at her father’s funeral was one thing, but to attend the memorial service was audacious to say the least, but she didn’t imagine he had many
scruples. Not him. Not Aurelius Dupree.

She knew he wanted to get her attention, but she was determined not to let him. If she ignored him perhaps he would go away.

Beatrice was too unwell to attend the reading of the will. The meeting was held in a plush office in St James’s, and those present included Celia and her sisters Leona and Vivien, their
husbands Bruce and Tarquin, and Harry, who Celia had invited to stand in for Archie. The mood was sombre and formal. Mr Riswold, Digby’s solicitor, was not the usual plump, paternal
solicitor, but as cadaverous and dour as an undertaker. He sat at the end of the table and opened his briefcase. After the usual pleasantries he lifted out a neat pile of papers held together by a
staple and laid it carefully in front of him. ‘Let us begin,’ he said and the family waited expectantly to hear how their father had divided his great wealth.

Digby had in fact bequeathed everything to Beatrice, leaving it at her discretion to share money and property with their daughters. As Mr Riswold explained, Sir Digby’s money had been
gambled
– for that is the word he used, and he looked somewhat disapproving – on the Stock Exchange, which everyone present knew had crashed the year before. If Sir Digby had
lived Mr Riswold was sure that he would have recuperated his losses in time, as it was – and at this point small beads of sweat began to sprout on his forehead – he had lost a great
deal. He cleared his throat, avoided looking at any of them directly, and told them the grim truth. Digby’s financial troubles had been far greater than any of them had imagined. The
gambler’s luck had finally run out.

‘How are we going to tell Mama?’ Leona asked, her long face ashen with shock. They had entered the room believing themselves very rich, only to discover that they had been left
nothing.

‘We’re not going to tell Mama,’ said Celia decisively.

‘I don’t think we can keep this sort of information from her, Celia,’ said Vivien. ‘We will have to sell Papa’s assets. That includes Deverill House in London and
Deverill Rising in Wiltshire. Papa’s greatest joys.’ Her eyes glittered with tears. Tarquin put his hand on hers and squeezed it encouragingly.

‘Mama’s in no state to hear that her homes are threatened,’ said Celia.

‘Let’s not be dramatic,’ Leona cut in. ‘The only person who will be doing any selling will be you, Celia. Mama is going to struggle to pay off Papa’s debts with the
little he has left, but there’s certainly nothing in the pot to pay off yours.’

Celia stiffened. ‘I am perfectly capable of paying off Archie’s debts myself, thank you very much,’ she retorted crossly, aware that in truth she was incapable of paying off
even half of them.

‘Let’s not fight,’ Harry interrupted.

‘I agree,’ said Bruce. ‘We have to discuss this calmly, as one unit.’ His tidy brown moustache twitched as his mind, conditioned by a long career in the Army, set about
putting together a strategy.

‘Celia is right,’ said Tarquin, who had enjoyed as many years in the armed forces as his brother-in-law and was as much excited by schemes, plans and tactics as
he
was.
‘There’s no point upsetting Beatrice. She’s much too fragile at the moment and it might tip her over the edge. I suggest we work out exactly how much is owed and then we can
calculate how much is left to run both houses.’

‘I break out in a sweat just thinking about how much those houses cost,’ said Celia. ‘I know how much I spend on Castle Deverill—’

‘This isn’t about Castle Deverill,’ said Leona, her voice rising a tone. Vivien shot her a warning look, but Leona continued regardless. ‘If it wasn’t for Papa
throwing money at your stupid castle we might not be in the situation we are in.’

‘Leona, that’s not fair,’ Vivien cut in. ‘Castle Deverill was Papa’s dream.’

‘Well, it’s turned into a nightmare, hasn’t it.’

‘Please, let’s not fight,’ said Harry again. If anyone should be upset about Castle Deverill it was him – and he wasn’t.

‘I never liked the place. It was cold and damp and much too big,’ said Leona. ‘You’ve made it into a palace. It was never meant to be a palace. I’m sure Adeline and
Hubert are turning in their graves.’