Daughters of Castle Deverill (2 page)

Lord Deverill turned to his estate manager. ‘What did she say?’ The old factotum swallowed, afraid to repeat the words. ‘Well?’ Lord Deverill demanded. ‘Speak up,
man, or have you lost your tongue?’

‘Very well, my lord, but God protect us from this witch.’ He cleared his throat and when he spoke his voice was thin and trembling. ‘Lord Deverill, you have wronged me and my
descendants by taking our land and breaking our spirits. Until you right those wrongs I curse you and your heirs to an eternity of unrest and to the world of the undead.’ A collective gasp
went up behind him and Sir Toby reached for his sword.

Lord Deverill scoffed, turning to his men with an uneasy smile. ‘Are we to fear the empty words of a peasant woman?’ When he looked back she was gone.

Ballinakelly, 1925

Kitty Trench kissed the little boy’s soft cheek. As the child returned her smile, her heart flooded with an aching tenderness. ‘Be good for Miss Elsie, Little
Jack,’ she said softly. She patted his red hair which was exactly the same shade as hers. ‘I won’t be long.’ She turned to the nanny, the gentleness in her expression giving
way to purpose. ‘Keep a close eye on him, Elsie. Don’t let him out of your sight.’

Miss Elsie frowned and wondered whether the anxiety on Mrs Trench’s face had something to do with the strange Irishwoman who had turned up at the house the day before. She had stood on the
lawn staring at the child, her expression a mixture of sorrow and longing as if the sight of Little Jack had caused her great anguish. Miss Elsie had approached her and asked if she could help, but
the woman had mumbled an excuse and hurriedly bolted for the gate. It was such a peculiar encounter that Miss Elsie had thought to mention it to Mrs Trench at once. The ferocity of her
mistress’s reaction had unnerved the nanny. Mrs Trench had paled and her eyes had filled with fear as if she had, for a long time, dreaded this woman’s arrival. She had wrung her hands,
not knowing what to do, and she had looked out of the window with her brow drawn into anxious creases. Then, with a sudden burst of resolve, she had run down the garden and disappeared through the
gate at the bottom. Miss Elsie didn’t know what had passed between the two women, but when Mrs Trench had returned half an hour later her eyes were red from crying and she was trembling. She
had swept the boy into her arms and held him so tightly that Miss Elsie had worried she might smother him. After that, she had taken him upstairs to her bedroom and closed the door behind her,
leaving Miss Elsie more curious than ever.

Now the nanny gave her mistress a reassuring smile. ‘I won’t let him out of my sight, Mrs Trench. I promise,’ she said, taking the child’s hand. ‘Come, Master Jack,
let’s go and play with your train.’

Kitty went round to the stables and saddled her mare. As she brusquely pulled on the girth and buckled it tightly, she clenched her jaw, replaying the scene from the day before which had kept
her up half the night in fevered arguments and the other half in tormented dreams. The woman was Bridie Doyle, Little Jack’s natural mother from a brief and scandalous affair with
Kitty’s father, Lord Deverill, when she had been Kitty’s lady’s maid, but she had chosen to abandon the baby boy in a convent in Dublin and run off to America. He had then been
taken by someone from the convent and left on Kitty’s doorstep with a note requesting that she look after him. What else was she to have done? she argued as she mounted the horse. As far as
she could see she had done Bridie a great favour for which Bridie should be eternally grateful. Kitty’s father had eventually come to recognize his son, and, together with her husband Robert,
Kitty had raised her half-brother as if he were her own child – and loved him just as dearly. There was nothing on earth that could separate her from Little Jack now. Nothing. But Bridie was
back and she wanted her son.
I had to leave him once, but I won’t do it a second time,
she had said, and the cold hand of fear had squeezed Kitty’s heart.

Kitty stifled a sob as she rode out of the stable yard. It wasn’t so long ago that she and Bridie had been as close as sisters. When Kitty reflected on everything she had lost, she
realized that her friendship with Bridie was one of the most precious. But with the unsolvable problem of Little Jack between them she knew that reconciliation was impossible. She had to accept
that the Bridie she had loved was long gone.

Kitty galloped across the fields towards the remains of her once glorious home, now a charred and crumbling ruin inhabited only by rooks and the spirits of the dead. Before the fire four years
before, Castle Deverill had stood proud and timeless with its tall windows reflecting the clouds sweeping in over the sea like bright eyes full of dreams. She recalled her grandmother
Adeline’s little sitting room that smelt of turf fire and lilac and her grandfather Hubert’s penchant for firing his gun at Catholics from his dressing-room window. She remembered the
musty smell of the library where they’d eat porter cake and play bridge and the small cupboard at the bottom of the servants’ staircase where she and Bridie had met secretly as little
girls. She smiled at the memory of stealing away from her home in the Hunting Lodge close by to seek entertainment in the affectionate company of her grandparents. In those days the castle had
represented a refuge from her uncaring mother and spiteful governess, but now it signified only sorrow and loss and a bygone era that seemed so much more enchanting than the present.

As she galloped across the fields, memories of Castle Deverill in its glory days filled her heart with an intense longing because her father had seen fit to sell it and soon it would belong to
somebody else. She thought of Barton Deverill, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, who had built the castle, and her throat constricted with emotion – nearly three hundred years of
family history reduced to ash, and all the male heirs imprisoned within the castle walls for eternity as restless spirits cursed never to find peace. What would become of
them
? It would
have been better for her father to have given the ruins to an O’Leary, thus setting them all free and saving himself, but Bertie Deverill didn’t believe in curses. Only Kitty and
Adeline had had the gift of sight and the misfortune of knowing Bertie’s fate. As a child Kitty had found the ghosts amusing; now they just made her sad.

At last the castle came into view. The western tower where her grandmother had set up residence until her death was intact but the rest of it resembled the bones of a great beast gradually
decaying into the forest. Ivy and bindweed pulled on the remaining walls, crept in through the empty windows and endeavoured to claim every last stone. And yet, for Kitty, the castle still held a
mesmeric allure.

She trotted across the ground which had once been the croquet lawn but was now covered in long grasses and weeds. She dismounted and led her horse round to the front where her cousin was waiting
for her beside a shiny black car. Celia Mayberry stood alone, dressed in an elegant cloche hat beneath which her blonde hair was tied into a neat chignon, and a long black coat that almost reached
the ground. When she saw Kitty her face broke into a wide, excited smile.

‘Oh my darling Kitty!’ she gushed, striding up and throwing her arms around her. She smelt strongly of tuberose and money and Kitty embraced her fiercely.

‘This is a lovely surprise,’ Kitty exclaimed truthfully, for Celia loved Castle Deverill almost as much as
she
did, having spent every summer of her childhood there with the
rest of the ‘London Deverills’ as their English cousins had been known. Kitty felt the need to cling to her with the same ferocity with which she clung to her memories, for Celia was
one of the few people in her life who hadn’t changed, and as she grew older and further away from the past, Kitty felt ever more grateful for that. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you
were coming? You could have stayed with us.’

‘I wanted to surprise you,’ said Celia, who looked like a child about to burst with a secret.

‘Well, you certainly did that.’ Kitty looked up at the façade. ‘It’s like a ghost, isn’t it? A ghost of our childhood.’

‘But it will be rebuilt,’ said Celia firmly.

Kitty looked anxiously at her cousin. ‘Do you know who bought it? I’m not sure I can bear to know.’

Celia laughed. ‘Me!’ she exclaimed. ‘
I
have bought it. Isn’t that wonderful? I’m going to bring back the ghosts of the past and you and I can relive the
glorious moments all over again through our children.’

‘
You
, Celia?’ Kitty gasped in astonishment. ‘
You
bought Castle Deverill?’

‘Well, technically Archie bought it. What a generous husband he is!’ She beamed with happiness. ‘Isn’t it a riot, Kitty? Well, I’m a Deverill too! I have just as
much right as anyone else in the family. Say you’re happy, do!’

‘Of course I’m happy. I’m relieved it’s you and not a stranger, but I admit I’m a little jealous too,’ Kitty replied sheepishly.

Celia flung her arms around her cousin again. ‘Please don’t hate me. I did it for
us.
For the family. The castle couldn’t possibly go to a stranger. It would be like
giving away one’s own child. I couldn’t bear to think of someone else building over our memories. This way we can all enjoy it. You can continue to live in the White House, Uncle Bertie
in the Hunting Lodge if he so wishes and we can all be terribly happy again. After everything we’ve suffered we deserve to find happiness, don’t you think?’

Kitty laughed affectionately at her cousin’s fondness of the dramatic. ‘You’re so right, Celia. It will be wonderful to see the castle brought back to life and by a Deverill no
less. It’s the way it should be. I only wish it were me.’

Celia put a gloved hand on her stomach. ‘I’m going to have a baby, Kitty,’ she announced, smiling.

‘Goodness, Celia, how many more surprises have you in store for me?’

‘Just that and the castle. How about you? Do hurry up. I pray we are both blessed with girls so that they can grow up here at Castle Deverill just like we did.’ And Kitty realized
then that Celia had rewritten her past, placing herself here within these castle walls for more than merely the annual month of August. She was one of those shallow people who rewrote their own
history and believed in the absolute truth of their own version. ‘Come on,’ Celia continued, taking Kitty’s hand and pulling her through the doorframe into the space where once
the great hall had been. ‘Let’s explore. I have grand plans, you know. I want it to be just the same as it was when we were girls, but better. Do you remember the last Summer Ball?
Wasn’t it marvellous?’

Kitty and Celia waded through the weeds that grew up to their knees, marvelling at the small trees that had seeded themselves among the thistles and thorns and stretched their spindly branches
towards the light. The ground was soft against their boots as they moved from room to room, disturbing the odd rook and magpie that flew indignantly into the air. Celia chattered on, reliving the
past in colourful anecdotes and fond reminiscences, while Kitty was unable to stop the desolation of her ruined home falling upon her like a heavy black veil. With a leaden heart she remembered her
grandfather Hubert, killed in the fire, and her grandmother Adeline who had died alone in the western tower only a month ago. She thought of Bridie’s brother, Michael Doyle, who had set the
castle ablaze, and her own foolish thirst for recrimination, which had only led to her shame in his farmhouse where no one had heard her cries. Her thoughts drifted to her lover Jack O’Leary
and their meeting at the wall where he had held her tightly and begged her to flee with him to America, then later, on the station platform, when he had been arrested and dragged away. Her head
began to spin. Her heart contracted with fear as the monsters of the past were roused from sleep. She left Celia in the remains of the dining room and fled into the library to seek refuge among the
more gentle memories of bridge and whist and porter cake.

Kitty leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes with a deep sigh. She realized she was ambivalent about this canary, chattering away about a house whose past she barely understood.
Celia’s chatter receded, overwhelmed by the autumn wind that moaned about the castle walls. But as Kitty shut off her sight, her sixth sense at once became sensitive to the ghosts now
gathering around her. The air, already chilly, grew colder still. There was no surer feeling than this to drag her back to her childhood. Gingerly, she opened her eyes. There, standing before her,
was her grandmother, as real as if she were made of flesh and blood, only younger than she had been when she had died and dazzlingly bright as if she were standing in a spotlight. Behind her stood
Kitty’s grandfather, Hubert, Barton Deverill, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, and other unfortunate Deverill heirs who were bound by Maggie O’Leary’s curse to an eternity
in limbo, shifting in and out of vision like faces in the prism of a precious stone.

Kitty blinked as Adeline smiled on her tenderly. ‘You know I’m never far away, my dear,’ she said and Kitty was so moved by her presence that she barely noticed the hot tears
spilling down her cheeks.

‘I miss you, Grandma,’ she whispered.

‘Come now, Kitty. You know better than anyone that we are only separated by the boundaries of perception. Love binds us together for eternity. You’ll understand eternity when
it’s your turn. Right now there are more earthly things to discuss.’

Kitty wiped her cheeks with her leather glove. ‘What things?’

‘The past,’ said Adeline, and Kitty knew she meant the prison of the long dead. ‘The curse
must
be lifted. Perhaps you have the strength to do it; perhaps
only
you.’

‘But Celia’s bought the castle, Grandma.’

‘Jack O’Leary is the key which will unlock the gates and let them all fly out.’

‘But I can’t have Jack and I don’t have the castle.’ The words gripped her throat like barbed wire. ‘With all the will in the world I can’t make that
happen.’