Call Home the Heart (41 page)

 

 

Then he and the other men withdrew, leaving her alone with
Lochlainn's sister.

 

 

Muireann approached Ciara tentatively, and stretched out a hand.
"Come to my room now, please, and tell me what's wrong. What ever
has happened to you, it must be a terrible burden to have to carry
alone by yourself all the time."

 

 

Ciara crumpled to the floor of the stables and began to weep. "I was
trying to save you and Barnakilla! If you marry Christopher, you'll
be making the most horrible mistake of your life!"

 

 

Muireann knelt down and cradled Ciara against her shoulder. "I
already did that when I married Augustine, remember? Fortune hunter
that he was."

 

 

Ciara's sobs subsided then, but she trembled so violently that
Muireann began to fear she was really physically ill.

 

 

"What is it? What did I say?" Muireann asked desperately, trying to
get to the bottom of this mystery at last.

 

 

"I have to tell someone. But you must promise me you'll never say a
word to Lochlainn, not one word, do you hear me?"

 

 

"I swear, Ciara, I would never break your confidence. But surely it
can't be so bad..."

 

 

"It is worse than you can possibly imagine, Muireann. I beg you,
don't marry Christopher," she pleaded.

 

 

"What would ever make you think that I would?" she said, shaking her
head.

 

 

"I heard him propose to you through the window here. I know what
he's like. He's evil, and evil begets evil. And Augustine, he was
even worse. How you must have suffered, being married to him."

 

 

"What makes you say that?" Muireann asked, suddenly feeling very
uneasy.

 

 

"Because I know what he was like, the real man underneath the
surface. I know. I know. And Christopher is no better, though he
prefers women instead of young boys. He only wants you for your
money and the estate. He's committed all sorts of perversions on his
female tenants over the years.

 

 

"He'll do it to you. He'll do it to Barnakilla. He'll come here to
do the same thing. He must be stopped. You can't let him!" she
warned, with a wild look in her eyes. She clung to Muireann's
shoulders and shook her.

 

 

Muireann's mouth went dry, and she had to swallow hard past the lump
in her throat. Suddenly the barn seemed too confined and stifling.

 

 

She rose to her feet and urged, "Please, Ciara, we can't stay here.
Someone might be listening outside, or come in at any moment. Let's
go for a walk. It will calm you down, and we can discuss this
further."

 

 

Ciara assented tearfully. Muireann supported her as she rose from
the ground.

 

 

Keeping one arm around her waist, she escorted Lochlainn's sister
outside. Ciara continued to shiver, so that Muireann draped her own
shawl around her. They began to walk away from the avenue towards
the turf bog, certain no one would interrupt them there.

 

 

"I suppose I had better start at the beginning," Ciara sighed at
length.

 

 

"It would help."

 

 

"I was the housekeeper here for several years before Lochlainn went
away to Australia. It was during this time Christopher and I first
became er, acquainted. It's the age-old story of master seducing
servant, though I went along with it willingly enough at first, much
to my shame. Christopher flattered me, seemed to be kind, bought me
small presents. He made me all sorts of promises he never had any
intention of fulfilling.

 

 

"I wasn't the only one, though I was too blind to see it at the
time. He had dozens of women, some willing, some not so obliging. He
took them indiscriminately.

 

 

"I ignored it because I had been foolish enough to fall in love with
the worthless philanderer. He used me, the way he used all the other
women, for gratification of his every whim, no matter how perverse
or disgusting," Ciara revealed, her voice quavering with emotion.

 

 

"If he was so awful, why didn't you stop the affair?"

 

 

Ciara confessed, "I have one serious character flaw, as Lochlainn
does, and that's pride. Well, as they say in the old proverb, pride
comes before a fall. Everyone said I was Mr. Douglas Caldwell's
illegitimate daughter. Christopher used my own pride to get into my
bed. He promised me that I would get all the Caldwell fortune
indirectly once I married him. Cousins married all the time, he
said.  He dragged the affair out for years, always playing upon
my hope and pride whenever I tried to deny him and break it off."

 

 

Muireann was stunned. Ciara was the lord's illegitimate daughter?
How had that chain of events come to pass? But she didn't want to
stop Ciara mid-story to ask questions, so she let her press on.

 

 

Ciara paced up and down as she spoke, like a caged animal aching to
be set free.  "And I did try to stop the affair, believe me I
did. I wasn't totally lost to honor and decency. But he would come
to me with his winning ways. Because I loved him even though I knew
him to be unworthy, I gave in nearly every time. Those times I
refused to give in, he took me anyway, and called me a whore for
having accepted him back into my bed."

 

 

 "It was terrible, Muireann. He seemed to be driven by some
sort of need to punish, hurt, corrupt, debauch. Women are different
from men, they must be. There was excitement, danger, but never any
real pleasure for me. I put up with his attentions because I thought
he loved me. I thought I could change him. More fool me." She shook
her head sadly.

 

 

"Not foolish, but a woman in love."

 

 

"Aye, even though I knew what he was, I prayed I could redeem him. I
waited for the day he would set the date of our nuptials. But he
never intended to marry me, I know that now. And all the while he
enjoyed the degradation he put me through. Revelled in the fact that
I was so in love with him I would literally do just about anything
for him. Anything." She shivered, and wrapped the shawl more tightly
around her.

 

 

Muireann sighed.  "I can imagine what it must have been like,
though I thank God it's not within my own personal experience,"
Muireann said with a shudder at what the poor woman must have
endured.

 

 

"Count yourself lucky then. Lochlainn loves you, doesn't he? He
would never . . ."

 

 

Muireann raised her eyebrows in surprise, and was about to deny
their relationship was of that sort. Then she shook her head. "No,
not Lochlainn, but many men would, wouldn't they?" She shivered
again, recalling her terrible trip to Dublin.

 

 

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned anything so personal. But I'm
no fool. He's rarely home at night or in the morning. I'm glad you
and he have been happy for a time, but I know it can't possibly
last."

 

 

Muireann would have challenged that statement, but Ciara was already
pressing on with her tale of woe.

 

 

"I was a fool back then. I would give anything to turn back the
clock and undo the damage I caused unwittingly by trusting
Christopher. He used me, and even worse, he used me to get to Tara,
Lochlainn's fiancée."

 

 

"How?"

 

 

"He said it was just a bit of innocent sewing for her. The next
thing I knew they were having an affair. He even boasted about it,
wanted me to watch," Ciara revealed brokenly.

 

 

Muireann shook her head. "My God!"

 

 

"Tara also thought he would marry her. He lied to her just as he had
done to me and all the others. I tried to warn her, but she wouldn't
listen.

 

 

"Lochlainn never suspected, and I couldn't tell him. I felt so
guilty for my part in the whole thing. We began to drift away from
each other even further than we already had done. I had neglected my
brother sorely when the affair first started, and for that I'm truly
ashamed as well.

 

 

"Besides, Lochlainn was involved with Tara back then, though she
seemed to spend more of her time fobbing him off with excuses,
dangling her charms in front of him only to say, ‘Hands off', than
being with him."

 

 

"I see."

 

 

Ciara tried to give her a reassuring smile. "You're nothing like
Tara. She wasn't worth your little finger. But it's hard to admit
you can make such huge mistakes.  That you can be so deceived
in the person you love—or lust after.

 

 

"Both Lochlainn and I are cut from the same cloth. Proud, not easily
given to showing our feelings. I couldn't speak to him, warn him
about Tara. He would never have believed me. Or even if he did
believe me, he wouldn't have thanked me for the knowledge. I was
afraid he would do something desperate or foolish, he seemed so in
love with her at the start.

 

 

"Anyway, eventually Tara ran off with Christopher, or so it seemed.
It was more that Christopher went to the Continent and she followed.
He never actually eloped with her.

 

 

"Of course it was the perfect chance for Christopher to get even
with the bastard cousin he had always loathed and despised.
Lochlainn was a hundred times the better man than any of the
legitimate Caldwells."

 

 

She sighed and shook her head. "It's only a pity our father never
chose to acknowledge either of us openly. But he wanted a quiet
life, and his wife hated us and everything we stood for. The fact
that he had passionately loved another woman besides herself was
more than she could bear."

 

 

Muireann ventured to put one hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry.
Neither of you deserved that, no matter what the circumstances of
your birth."

 

 

Ciara looked surprised at Muireann's lack of concern over the
scandal of their birth, and gave a timid smile.

 

 

"Thank you. But it wasn't just the woman who might have been our
step-mother had she not been so jealous. Augustine hated Lochlainn
as well, envied him. At the end, Augustine realized he couldn't run
the estate without him. That would no doubt have made him hate
Lochlainn even more. If you hadn't come here to Barnakilla, God
knows what might have happened. All I can say is, it was a lucky day
for us all when Augustine Caldwell blew his brains out."

 

 

Muireann barely heard Ciara's last words, so stunned was she as it
all started to sink in and make sense.  Ciara and Lochlainn
were the illegitimate children of Douglas Caldwell? So Augustine had
been Lochlainn's half-brother?

 

 

But Ciara continued on with her narrative, heedless of Muireann's
astonishment. "I think that's really what motivated the affair in
the first place, though of course Tara was also a very beautiful
woman. She was ambitious too.

 

 

"I think she set her cap at Lochlainn at first because he was a
force to be reckoned with around here, because of his intelligence
and hard work. She never loved him. I'm convinced she truly believed
that the old man would leave him something in his will. She would
have bided her time, for Douglas Caldwell was quite frail by then,
if it hadn't been for Christopher seeming an even more attractive
prospect."

 

 

"She sounds as though she would have made Lochlainn's life a
misery," Muireann remarked quietly, trying to quell her feelings of
jealousy and resentment. And this had been the woman Lochlainn had
been pining over for nearly four years? He had loved Tara, while he
didn't love her, after everything they had shared for almost a year?

 

 

"You can congratulate yourself on your brother's lucky escape. After
all, what purpose would have been served if he had been told the
truth? He would have fought Christopher and been put in prison, or
worse," Muireann sighed.

 

 

Ciara nodded. "As it was, I lost him anyway, since he went to
Australia to try to forget all about us at Barnakilla. He picked up
one day and left without a word to anyone. I didn't hear from him
for months.

 

 

"I was lucky enough to have an address to write to when he did
finally contact me. Many of the workers in Australia just wander
around from place to place picking up jobs wherever they can find
them. Lochlainn got himself a good job on a cattle station, so I
knew where to write when things started getting really bad here, and
all the creditors were banging on the door demanding payment."

 

 

Muireann digested all she had been told so far in silence, staring
up at the slate-gray sky overhead. Then she rose from the rock she
had been sitting upon as the wintry wind whipped through her, and
took Ciara's arm to urge her silently back to the warmth of her
office. She met no resistance, so they headed up the path together
in step.

 

 

As they went, she spoke her confused thoughts aloud. "But Lochlainn
told me that you changed from the time he left until the time he
came back. Forgive me, I know it sounds as though we were gossiping
about you behind your back, but really, Lochlainn has been so
worried about you, and he wanted my advice as a woman. I had hoped
you would tell him in your own time, but . . ."

 

 

Ciara began to shake again. "There are some things you can never
speak about," she whispered.

 

 

Muireann stared at Ciara for a moment before insisting, "You're
going to have to tell me. I need the whole truth. It can't just be
what Christopher did to you before, and his affair with Tara. I've
seen the way you behave when Christopher or Augustine are mentioned.
And you've said some things to me which suggest you knew Augustine
very well also.