Daughters of Castle Deverill (42 page)

‘Leona, enough,’ said her husband in the same tone he would use for an insubordinate officer cadet. ‘Let’s be positive. There’s no point dwelling on the past. Digby
was perfectly within his rights to spend his money as he pleased. He’d earned it.’

‘And gambled it away,’ said Leona bitterly.

‘We have to work out how to proceed.’ Bruce turned to the grim solicitor who had remained quiet and watchful as the temperature in the room had begun to rise. ‘Mr Riswold, you
know Sir Digby’s affairs better than any of us, perhaps you can advise us.’

Mr Riswold pulled back his shoulders, licked his forefinger again and flicked through the pages of his document to the very end. ‘I anticipated your concern,’ he said in a monotone.
‘So I took the liberty of working out a plan for you . . .’ Celia knew then why her father had chosen this meagre, pedantic man to run his affairs, it was on account of
his composure under pressure. ‘Prepare yourselves,’ he warned ominously. ‘For the worst.’ They all felt the vertiginous sensation of falling, falling inescapably towards
poverty.

When Celia returned to Deverill House the butler handed her a letter on a tray. She recognized the handwriting at once and turned white. ‘A gentleman delivered it this afternoon,’
the butler explained when Celia asked, for there was no stamp on the envelope. The thought of Aurelius Dupree ringing her doorbell sent a chill coursing over her skin, like the march of a thousand
ice-cold ants. She pulled herself together, calmly thanked the butler, then strode into her father’s study, threw the letter in the grate with a trembling hand, and did what she had done with
the others: burned it. She hoped that by destroying them the whole situation would go away.

There was only one thing to do, return to Castle Deverill. Perhaps Mr Dupree wouldn’t find her there. The following morning she explained to the butler that she was leaving for Ireland
and, if that man was to turn up again, with or without a letter, he was to say that she had left indefinitely so there was no point in corresponding further. She hoped he wouldn’t turn up at
Deverill Rising and try to speak to her mother. If Beatrice knew what those letters had contained they’d most likely have another funeral to arrange.

Adeline watched Celia’s return home with concern. She sensed Celia’s fear as well as her determination to delve into her inner resources and find a strength she
wasn’t sure she had. Celia was alone. She might have Bertie in the Hunting Lodge and Kitty in the White House but she had never been as lonely as she was now. Adeline’s heart went out
to her; but there was nothing she could do to console her. Archie and Digby were gone from her sight; the fact that they were still with her in spirit meant nothing to someone who lacked the
sensitivity to feel them.

‘I envy the likes of Digby,’ said Barton, pushing himself up from the chair and joining Adeline at the window. ‘He’s a lucky Deverill, after all.’

‘If you mean because he’s free to come and go as he wishes, then you’re right,’ said Adeline, who found herself losing patience with these cantankerous spirits.
‘But he’s not very lucky to have left when he did. Much too early. He still had things to do.’

‘Didn’t we all, Adeline,’ Barton rejoined. He sighed and watched Celia stride into the castle, leaving the servants to carry in her luggage and the nanny to take in the
children. ‘This wasn’t the first time the castle had to be rebuilt,’ he added.

‘Oh?’ said Adeline, her curiosity mounting.

‘It has been burned down before.’

‘In your time?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Aye. In my time. History does indeed repeat itself. The people of Ballinakelly rose up against me and set it alight. I was summoned back to Ireland to defend it. There’s
nothing like seeing your home blazing on the horizon. A great furnace, like God’s own smithy at work, it was. Much like the great fire by the rebels that took Hubert.’

‘Those weren’t rebels,’ said Adeline crossly. ‘That was personal.’

‘Love and hate are very closely intertwined,’ he said and his voice was heavy with regret.

Adeline looked at him. His face was contorted with pain, his mouth twisted with remorse. ‘What did you do, Barton?’ she asked quietly.

He gazed out of the window but she knew he wasn’t seeing anything but the face of a woman, for only love can do that to a man. ‘I did something unforgivable,’ he confessed.
‘And yet unavoidable.’

‘To whom?’

He shook his head and closed his eyes. For over two hundred and fifty years he had kept the secrets concealed safely in his heart. He had barely dared even face them himself. But now, with
Adeline’s light so dazzlingly bright, he wanted to release his burden. He wanted to free himself from the guilt, from the darkness which hung about him like a shroud, from the intolerable
weight of shadow. He wanted to absorb some of her light. ‘I loved Maggie O’Leary,’ he said and his voice was so quiet Adeline wasn’t sure she had heard him.

‘You loved the woman who laid a curse on you and your descendants?’ Adeline gasped. ‘The very same woman who condemned you to this limbo?’

‘Aye. I loved her.’ The words left him like venom expelled from a wound. ‘I loved her to her core.’

‘But I don’t understand. If you loved her, why did she not undo the curse?’

He turned to her, shook his head and gave a small, hopeless smile.

Celia had never felt so alone. In spite of the castle full of servants and the corridors full of ghosts, she felt isolated and abandoned and desperately lost. She barely dared
look the servants in the eye for soon she would have to let them all go. She curled up in bed and felt ever more keenly the absence of her husband. His side of the mattress felt vast and cold and
she dared not put her foot into it, for while she lay coiled like a snake she could pretend not to notice the chill beside her. Tears trickled onto the pillow until the cotton beneath her head was
entirely wet. She felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The puppeteer had left her to her own devices, but she didn’t want independence and uncertainty; she wanted security. She
wanted things to be the way they were when she and Archie were in Italy, buying furniture and paintings for the castle. Before the money ran out, before Archie killed himself, before her father had
died of a heart attack, before everything had gone so horribly wrong. She pressed her eyes shut and prayed to God. He was her last resort. The one person she could count on not to take offence at
being the only remaining option. After all, wasn’t His love unconditional?

The following day she went to see Kitty. She needed to be with someone who understood; someone who didn’t criticize as Leona had done; someone who had suffered as much as
she
had.
Only someone like Kitty could empathize with her predicament.

She found her in her sitting room wrapping Christmas presents at a round table by the window. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had hosted Christmas. Her husband and father had been alive
then. Everything had been wonderful, privileged, blessed. She appreciated her good fortune now as she had never done before. There was nothing like losing something to make one value its worth.

When Kitty saw her, standing diminished and forlorn in the doorway, she rose from her chair and walked over with her arms outstretched and her face full of compassion. Words were superfluous to
cousins as close as they. Kitty wrapped her arms around Celia and squeezed her tightly. Celia gave in to her despair and bewilderment and sobbed loudly onto Kitty’s shoulder. Kitty, who knew
misery better than most, let her release her grief in gasps and hiccups and sighs, all the time murmuring words of encouragement and comfort. She knew time would dull the pain, it would no longer
throb and burn, and Celia would eventually grow accustomed to the constant aching in her heart. Indeed, it would become as much part of her as the beat itself; she would barely notice it. Yet it
would always be there, and in the quiet moments when she found herself left alone with her thoughts and her mind was not occupied with daily troubles, it would rise in her awareness and she would
remember all over again the terrible agony of loss. Kitty shut her eyes and tried not to allow Jack’s face to surface, as it so often did, when it caught her unawares. Hers was a loss she
would carry to the grave.

They sat by the fire and Celia told Kitty how her father had gambled everything away on the Stock Market. She told her of Leona’s resentment and Vivien’s weak attempts to stand up
for her. She divulged her thoughts about Harry and Boysie and was surprised when Kitty confessed that she had known for years, and she told her of her desolation and her pain, but she didn’t
tell her about Aurelius Dupree. She could never tell anyone about Aurelius Dupree, not even Kitty.

Then one day in early January Celia received another letter. Like those before, it was hand-delivered and presented on the silver tray as the afternoon sun sank into the sea. She was gripped by
an icy fear. Aurelius Dupree was in Ireland. He had followed her here to Castle Deverill. He had invaded her fortress. She didn’t dare open it. She couldn’t bear to read any more about
her father and what had happened in South Africa. She knew it was all lies. She knew her father would never hurt or deceive anyone. They were nothing more than vicious, evil lies. Once again she
threw the letter into the fire, but this time she knew that however much the paper was consumed by the flames the information in it could never be destroyed, as long as Aurelius Dupree was
alive.

She also knew it would only be a matter of time before Aurelius Dupree knocked on her castle door and she was obliged to let him in.

To distract herself from her worries Celia spent a great deal of time with Kitty. Kitty’s daughter Florence played with Celia’s daughter Connie, just as Kitty and
Celia had played together as little girls, while JP was too grown-up to be interested in small children. He was now a boisterous nine-year-old, as adept in the saddle as he was in the school room
and handsome with it. He seemed to have inherited the finest Deverill qualities – the piercing grey gaze, the intelligent expression, the ready humour and easy charm – so no one seemed
to give much thought to the qualities on his mother’s side.

Kitty was careful to keep him away from Ballinakelly for fear of bumping into Michael Doyle, that brutal humbug known to all as ‘the Pope’. The only time she had seen him had been
through the car window on her way to church and she had deliberately turned her head so as not to catch his eye. She was determined he should never have contact with JP. The boy was a Deverill
first and foremost – and secondly a Trench. Bridie had made her choice and started a new life in America. Kitty doubted she would ever come back. JP prayed for his mama who he believed to be
in Heaven, but his prayers were hasty and careless; Kitty was everything a mother should be and he felt no less for the absence of a biological mother. He had two fathers, Robert who was a constant
presence around the house and Bertie, who he sought out in the Hunting Lodge as often as he was able. Indeed, as he grew up he and Bertie had grown close. They both loved the same things: fishing,
hunting, tennis and croquet, tinkering in Bertie’s shed and playing word games in front of the fire at teatime. Kitty knew there was nothing a Doyle could give him that he didn’t
already have.

Bertie and JP had constructed a large model railway in the attic of the Hunting Lodge. It took up a whole room, which had once been a storage room, and was spread across a quadrant of trestle
tables. There were green hills with little model sheep grazing on grass, tunnels, bridges, lakes and tiny cottages and farm buildings. They had built a station complete with signals, moving tracks
and a pedestrian crossing. There was even a fishing boat on the lake with a tiny man holding a rod, complete with a line and a gasping fish on the end of it. The more sophisticated parts which were
unavailable in Dublin Bertie bought in London, but the hardware shop in Ballinakelly was well equipped with the essentials such as glue, paint, wood and card. It was on a particularly wet day in
January that Bertie and JP, seizing on the idea to build a castle with a greenhouse and a stable block, decided to drive into Ballinakelly to buy what they needed for such an ambitious project.

Thick grey clouds rolled in off the ocean, propelled by a strong easterly wind that blew cold gusts over the water, whipping about the cliffs and whistling around the chimney stacks. Bertie, who
drove a blue Model T Ford, sat at the wheel with his son by his side, relishing the project they were enjoying together. He was ashamed of having once rejected JP, of having all but disowned Kitty
for insisting on keeping him when she had found the small baby on the doorstep of the Hunting Lodge. How ironic that the very child he had believed would bring about his demise had in fact given
him a reason to live.

Father and son chatted excitedly about how they were going to design and build the castle. Bertie suggested various materials, but JP had his own ideas and was confident in voicing them. He
wanted it to look exactly like Castle Deverill. ‘That might be beyond us, JP,’ Bertie chuckled.

‘Nothing is beyond us, Papa,’ said JP cheerfully. ‘We can do anything, you and I.’ Bertie glanced admiringly at his son for whom anything seemed possible. ‘We will
build Castle Deverill with all its towers and windows and doors. We’ll even make the trees and vegetable garden. I know exactly how to make the dome of the greenhouse using an onion, papier
mâché and some green paint.’

‘I suppose the Hunting Lodge isn’t enough of a challenge for you?’ said Bertie, rather hoping JP would be inspired to build that instead.

JP looked horrified. ‘But that’s not home, Papa. Castle Deverill is
home.
’ And Bertie shook his head because he knew
that
could only have come from Kitty.

Ballinakelly high street was busy. People were walking beneath umbrellas or hurrying to find shelter from the rain in the public houses and shops. Men in caps and jackets strode briskly down the
pavement with their heads down and shoulders hunched and horses pulling carts plodded slowly up the road, too wet to care. Bertie parked the car outside the hardware shop and they dashed inside. Mr
O’Casey greeted them deferentially. An old man who remembered the days when the present Lord Deverill was a little boy, Mr O’Casey had an innate respect for the aristocracy and counted
the night the castle burned as one of the worst in living memory. He listened to JP’s elaborate plan to make a model of the castle and shuffled about behind the counter, even climbing the
ladder to reach the highest shelf, in order to find the right materials for the project. He piled them up on the counter. JP touched them excitedly. ‘We’re going to make a fine
castle,’ he said as Mr O’Casey put on his spectacles and began to punch the prices into his cash register. Just as he was finishing the little bell rang above the door and a damp wind
swept in with Michael Doyle.