The Pleasures of Spring (39 page)

‘What are you doing out of bed?’ Poppy was all concern. ‘I really wish you would see a doctor.’

‘I already did, Mum, but that’s not important. We need to talk.’

He had to hand it to Poppy, she listened to his story without comment but her eyes glistened with tears when he told her about the baby.

‘Oh my dear, I’m so happy for both of you. Of course I’ll help. And we’ll have the wedding here at Lough Darra as soon as I can arrange it.’

Wedding? He threw back his head and laughed. He hadn’t actually got her to say yes, but he would. He was going to marry Roz Spring.

‘Is something wrong, Andy? I know I’m old-fashioned but you can hardly expect the next heir to Lough Darra –’

Andy sobered. ‘Of course not. I’ll speak to Roz.’

He climbed the stairs back to their room to wake Roz for dinner. He hoped that she was willing to marry him after tomorrow.

Roz blinked at the time displayed on her phone. 11am. How had she slept for so long? She lay still for a few
minutes, waiting for the inevitable urge to barf. Nope. Nothing was happening. Maybe this was going to be a good day. Her stomach growled, protesting the lack of breakfast. She’d ask Maggie to rustle her up something baby-proof.

She showered and went to the blue room in search of the clothes she had left behind, then got dressed. Three months pregnant and everything was a little loose. Only the waistband of her jeans was uncomfortable. She caught a glimpse of a car driving up and parking out front but it wasn’t familiar. Dougal and Poppy must have visitors.

On the staircase, she heard voices from below before the closing of a door silenced them. One of them sounded like Niall Moore. She hoped he wasn’t here to drag Andy away. She hurried to the kitchen, relieved to find Maggie there. Her mouth watered when she spotted a tray laden with warm scones.

‘I’ll get this,’ Maggie picked up the tray and Roz followed her to the library, as eagerly as a stray dog looking for scraps.

Distracted by hunger, Roz didn’t notice the woman standing at the window until she turned. Sinead. What was her sister doing here? It was a trap. This couldn’t be a coincidence. She had been set up. None of this could have happened without Andy’s knowledge. He had betrayed her.

Maggie departed quickly. Roz ignored the tea tray.

Sinead raised her hand but Roz was silent, unable to respond to her sister’s greeting.

‘Hi, Roro.’

The use of her childhood nickname made her heart
ache and Roz fought against the welling tide of emotion that rose inside her. Sinead stepped closer, her loose silk top swaying with the movement, and only then did Roz realize that her sister was pregnant too.

‘Sinead,’ she finally choked, wishing she had a more eloquent response prepared. In her darkest moments, this was what she had dreamed of – the chance to confront the sister who had abandoned her, the one who had left her to live in poverty while she had everything.

Her anger ebbed a little when she saw her sister’s pale face. The dark circles beneath her eyes were testament to more than one sleepless night. A mirror image of that face had stared back at her each morning when she was living at the O’Haras’ ranch.

Things were different now. She wasn’t poor any longer. She didn’t have to buy her clothes in charity shops or scour the supermarkets for marked-down food. She was going to be the next lady of Lough Darra, if she didn’t kill Andy first. And she had serious money in the bank.

She gestured to the tray that Maggie had left. ‘Will you have tea or coffee?’

‘Tea, please. Very weak, with lots of sugar.’

‘I can’t stomach coffee anymore either.’ Roz didn’t know why she was sharing that with her. She reached into her pocket for the supply of barley sugar sweets she always carried. She couldn’t find the magnanimity within her to hand them over, but pushed them to the middle of the coffee table.

‘These might help.’

Sinead gave a tentative smile as she took one. ‘Thanks.’

Roz poured tea the way she had observed Poppy doing
it. She sat up straight in her chair and nibbled on a dry scone while she sipped from the china cup. The picture of a perfect lady. Sinead had loaded a scone with butter, home-made jam and clotted cream.

The tables were turned now. Weren’t they? So why didn’t she feel good?

Sinead picked up her scone and put it down untouched. The tick-tock of the library clock filled the silence.

‘When are you due?’ Their questions emerged simultaneously and they both laughed nervously.

‘Just before Christmas. You?’ Roz asked.

Sinead picked up her cup and sipped her tea before replacing it on the china saucer. ‘End of October.’

Roz nodded politely. She didn’t know what to say. The last time she had spoken to her sister was in the back of a police van in Paris. She had caught a glimpse of her at the trial in Geneva, but since then there had been no contact.

Neither encounter had been enough to satisfy her hunger for revenge. All the years she had spent dreaming about meeting her sister. She would laugh at Sinead. Taunt her. Find the perfect words to make her cry and plead for forgiveness for abandoning her. Roz had planned out every situation possible. Except sitting across from her in a library, sipping tea and making polite small talk.

She had no plans for this. Her usual response when dealing with a situation she couldn’t handle was to run. But Lough Darra was her home. She was damned if she was leaving it.

Roz gestured around the vast library. ‘What do you think of my home? It’s bigger than O’Sullivan Manor. Not what you expected, is it?’

Sinead stood up quickly, bumping into the table so that her cup rattled in its saucer, splashing tea across the table. The hurt in her eyes was unmistakeable. ‘I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I have to go.’

She was halfway to the door before Roz realized she was leaving and she got up, spilling more tea. ‘You can’t do what? Did you think that I’d be delighted to see you? That we’d play happy families? Get real.’

Sinead paused with her hand on the door and shook her head. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears. ‘I don’t know what I expected. But you’re my sister and I searched for you for so long. I just didn’t believe you’d be such a … such a bitch, Roro.’

The words were a slap. Roz was the one with the terrible childhood. She was the one who’d lived with a series of ‘aunts’ while Dad was in prison. No one had cared about her then.

Roz didn’t realize that she’d spoken the words out loud until a sob caught in Sinead’s throat.

‘You weren’t the one who was abandoned. Dad took you with him. He didn’t want me.’ As if her knees couldn’t hold her, Sinead slumped to the floor. Her shoulders heaved. ‘They took Mammy away. After everyone left I was in that rat-infested place for days with no food. But you had Dad. And you never came back for me. I cried for you all the time, Roro, but you never came …’

Roz stood helplessly watching her sister cry. When had she become the bad guy? A vision popped into her head of another O’Sullivan woman crying in the bathroom of the FitzWilliam Hotel.

‘You knew where we were. You could have come
to us at any time.’ Her grandmother’s tearful words taunted her.

Her stomach churned with a sickening realization.

Granny O’Sullivan was right. Roz could have contacted the O’Sullivans years ago. Turned up on their doorstep and announced who she was. As a teenager, she’d fantasized about doing that, but her father told her that they didn’t want her.

Her father had told her a lot of things.

What if he’d been wrong? Her dad lied for a living. He twisted the truth to suit himself. But he was her father. He wouldn’t do it to her. Would he?

A tangle of emotion that she couldn’t name burst to the surface, carrying with it waves of anger, regret and bitterness. She had to find a way to fix this, to stop hurting herself and her sister.

With tears welling up in her eyes, Roz staggered across the room and knelt beside Sinead. Awkwardly, she put her arms around her sister and hugged her shaking frame. ‘I’m sorry, Sis. I’m sorry. So sorry.’

‘Come to Daddy.’ Andy held out his arms and Emma Sinead Poppy Campbell McTavish almost wriggled out of her mother’s arms in her attempt to reach him.

‘You are such a tart.’ Roz nuzzled the tender skin of the baby’s neck as she handed her over.

Glancing in the mirror, she jammed another hat-pin into the black velvet creation and hoped that it wouldn’t blow away. Cheltenham in late March was cold and she was willing to bet that the racecourse would be even colder. ‘Are we mad? Dragging a baby to watch a horse race?’

‘I’m sure that Tim has a box and, besides, she’d never forgive us if we left her at home.’

Roz suppressed a smile. That was always Andy’s excuse. The truth was that he was utterly besotted with the new girl in his life, and Emma could wrap him around her little finger with a flash of her gummy smile.

She watched as Andy deftly dressed the child in a tiny velvet coat and matching hat. He was a more hands-on father than she had expected. Nothing fazed him, not even the nuclear explosion nappies, which he changed without complaint.

Roz shook her head, remembering the previous day when she had gone shopping with Sinead, leaving the fathers in charge of their respective daughters. The former Rangers and their offspring had managed to destroy her
sister’s house in three hours. Sinead had not been impressed, and their explanations about ‘Training the next generation of Rangers early’ hadn’t gone down well. She knew who was really to blame for the damage.

She glanced at her watch. ‘Come on, or we’ll be late.’

The racecourse was thronged with fans, fashionistas and punters eager to have a flutter. They made their way to the O’Sullivan box where an excited crowd was gathered around Tim O’Sullivan.

Roz wasn’t looking forward to the race. She had made several attempts to buy Nagsy back and Tim had sneered at all of them.

‘How is he?’ Tim asked his trainer.

‘Grand, Mr O’Sullivan. He’s dying to get out for a bit of a run.’

‘Did you hear that, Summer? I can’t wait to show this toffee-nosed shower what a real horse is like.’

His daughter peeked up at him from beneath her Philip Treacy hat. Roz grinned. She was willing to bet that Tim had spoken of nothing else for weeks.

‘Yes, Dad, but if he’s that good, why is he only running in one race?’

‘The element of surprise,’ Tim announced. ‘My boy is a complete unknown and the bookies are quoting a hundred to one.’ He rubbed his hands gleefully.

There had been a few rumours, but the O’Sullivan stables weren’t known for producing winners and they had rapidly died down. ‘Are you sure you won’t sell him back to me?’ Roz said.

‘I might. For ten million.’ He laughed at his own joke before turning his attention to the trainer again.

Tucking Emma into her sling, Roz scanned the crowd for Andy. Where could he have gone? She spotted him fighting his way through the crowd, balancing a glass of champagne and a bottle of alcohol-free beer.

‘Are we celebrating?’

He raised his drink to her. ‘We will be – in two and a half furlongs and twenty-two fences.’ He looked suspiciously pleased with himself, like a child who knew what Santa was going to bring.

Roz prayed that he was right. The Gold Cup was the most valuable non-handicap chase in England, with a prize fund of almost half a million pounds. An unknown hundred-to-one winner would take the racing world by storm.

The race announcement came over the PA, and they surged to the front of the box. ‘I’m not sure I can watch,’ she whispered to Andy. ‘It’s going to be a disaster.’

He held her hand. ‘Trust me. It will be fine.’

She gripped it. She was learning that when Andy said ‘Trust me’, she could.

The horses lined up at the start and Roz scanned them until she saw the O’Sullivan colours of green and yellow. Nagsy. Her heart fluttered. She missed her four-legged friend. ‘I hope he’s not hurt.’

‘Will you stop fussing?’ Andy laughed. ‘He’ll be fine. Finish your drink and see if you can get up to the front. I’ll hold Emma.’

Roz drained the remains of the champagne. Her first drink in months and she felt sick. She had never had to face the consequences of a scam before and certainly not one on this scale. Every bad thing she had ever done in
her life was coming back to haunt her. Nervously, she pushed her way to the front of the box and managed to squeeze into a spot beside her uncle.

The start of the race took her by surprise. One moment, the racers were at the starting gate and next they were thundering up the track in a frenetic jumble of horses and riders.

‘And it’s Lone Star making the first break,’ the commentary came over the speaker. ‘Followed by Giant’s Causeway, Silverado, House of Worth and Champion’s Dance.’

Where was Nagsy? Roz craned her neck. She couldn’t see him in the throng. The horses reached the first fence and there was a loud ‘ahh’ in the crowd as House of Worth lost his rider and galloped on without him.

The next four jumps were uneventful.

‘There he is.’ Tim almost deafened her with his shout.

Sure enough, Nagsy was hugging the inner rail in the group behind the leaders.

‘He’s only in an exercise canter!’ Tim pronounced.

Roz lost count of the jumps that followed. To her unseasoned eyes, there was little change in the running order until Champion’s Dance made what looked a dangerous move. He edged closer to Lone Ranger, and the two horses soon began a neck-and-neck race, duelling for the front spot. The horse in third place inched towards them, but then disaster struck on the next jump. Roz wasn’t sure what happened, but two horses fell heavily.

With three fences to go, Nagsy’s group raced to the fore.

‘And it’s Bobby’s Dazzler. Bobby’s Dazzler is launching a challenge to Lone Star.’ The commentator could barely
contain his excitement. Bobby’s Dazzler was the favourite and carrying most of the punters’ money.

As they approached the last fence, Bobby’s Dazzler hit the front and Roz could see when Lone Star began to weaken.

Nagsy must have sensed it too. As if he had suddenly woken up, Nagsy hit his stride. Roz couldn’t contain herself as he passed the other horses with ease. ‘Run, Nagsy. Run, you beauty.’

Tim O’Sullivan was beside himself with excitement. ‘Shift your ass,’ he roared.

Beside him, the expensively dressed crowd in the adjoining box tittered, but the smiles vanished from their faces as they watched the drama unfolding on the track below.

Nagsy’s lead widened and widened, until he was a full ten lengths ahead of his nearest rival. He raced across the finishing line, barely out of breath. The crowd erupted. The commentator ran out of superlatives in his effort to praise the unknown winner and place the remaining horses.

‘And it’s Hagar’s Son. Hagar’s Son followed by Bobby’s Dazzler, Lone Star, Giant’s Causeway, with Totem Pole taking fifth.’

‘Ten lengths. Did you hear that?’ Tim O’Sullivan elbowed his daughter. ‘Ten fecking lengths. What did I tell you?’

‘Yes, Dad.’ Summer rolled her eyes. She would never hear the end of this.

Tim turned to the crowd in the box and beamed. ‘Who wants to be first to announce to the media that I own Shergar’s great-grandson?’

Roz gasped. ‘Great-grandson?’

Tim’s grin turned evil. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I had my own DNA test done. Didn’t get quite the same results as yours, but he’s got the bloodlines all right.’

She was stunned when Tim swept her into a crushing embrace. ‘You’re a grand girl. A true O’Sullivan. Just like your mother.’

He released her and turned to greet the media who were doing their best to invade the box. Tim stopped and looked over his shoulder. ‘Tell that old coot at Lough Darra that when Hagar’s Son goes to stud, he can send down his best mare and I won’t charge him.’

With that, he walked into the excited crowd.

Roz clutched the railing, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
A true O’Sullivan – like her mother
. And maybe she was. Her mother had been young, and wild, but Maggie never had the chance to settle down.

Not like her.

Roz scanned the crowd and spied two dark heads close together. Emma was tired with all of the excitement and Andy was singing in an effort to distract her. Her heart welled up with love and pride and tenderness until she thought it would burst. Fighting her way through the crowds milling around the O’Sullivans, she wrapped her arms around both of them.

‘Let’s go home.’