The Triumph of Katie Byrne (13 page)

‘Of course, you must do that, and you should both have a rest, relax a bit before dinner. And I’m sure you’ll find your suitcases have been brought up from
the stables by Pell’s boy. Lavinia will have asked Jamie to do that earlier. You know what a sergeant major she’s become.’

‘I asked Verity to give you this bedroom, because it’s my favourite, after my own, that is,’ Xenia said. ‘And I hope you like it as much as I do, Katie.’ As she spoke Xenia flung open the door, placed her palm on Katie’s back and gave her a gentle push into the room.

Katie almost gasped out loud as she stood in the middle of the bedroom, glancing about her. ‘Oh Xenia, it’s really beautiful!’ she cried, and when she turned to look at her friend her face was wreathed in smiles.

Xenia walked in and stood leaning against a small, elegant armoire, watched Katie moving across to the tall, mullioned windows. ‘You won’t be able to see much tonight, it’s already dark outside, but trust me, the view’s spectacular,’ Xenia remarked. ‘Tomorrow you’ll see just how spectacular – the gardens, the terrace, and the parterres below. And across the lawns there are views as far as the eye can see…all the way to the ornamental lake.’

Katie nodded then turned away from the window and stood staring at everything, her eyes missing nothing as
they flicked around the room. The walls were wood-panelled, but they had been painted a soft green: not celadon, not lime, but a peculiar sort of faded tone, which was somewhere in between these two hues. What was unique was the painting on each central panel on all the walls. Each one had been decoratively painted with chains of pink and red roses looped together with ribbons and bows.

A white marble fireplace, Robert Adam in style, had a gilded French mirror hanging above it, and the four-poster bed was dressed with pale green taffeta; the same fabric hung on either side of the mullioned windows, sewn into swagged and tied-back draperies. There was no carpet on the floor, except for two rugs on either side of the bed, obviously because no one wanted to hide the lovely, honey-coloured parquet floor set in an intricate pattern.

Turning to Xenia, Katie exclaimed, ‘It has a distinct French feeling to it. Certainly it’s not a bit Elizabethan.’

‘True,’ Xenia agreed with a grin. ‘And guess what, it’s called Frenchie’s Room. Verity’s great-grandmother, the one who started the tradition for tea in the Great High Chamber, was a Frenchwoman, and this was her room. Almost a hundred years ago, she had it designed, decorated and furnished to her taste.’

‘And the family has kept it that way all these years. I’m not surprised they did. It’s a lovely room.’ Katie walked over to the kidney-shaped dressing table with
a pale-green silk skirt, and stared down at the pretty objects on it, admiringly.

Xenia continued, ‘From what I understand from Verity, her great-grandmother was a favourite with everyone. Very beautiful, charming, and flirtatious. Her name was Lucile, but her husband and her close friends called her Frenchie, hence the name of the bedroom.’

‘I’m glad you picked it for me, Xenia, it’s a room with a happy feeling to it.’

Xenia nodded in agreement, then indicated the door on the far side of the bedroom. ‘The bathroom’s in there, quite grand actually. And over there you have a big walk-in closet.’ Xenia went over and opened it and looked inside. ‘Verity was correct, your suitcase
was
brought up and Dodie’s already unpacked it for you. Probably when we were having tea.’ Swinging to face Katie, she asked, ‘Now, is there anything you need?’

Katie shook her head. ‘I was going to ask for some water, but I see there’s a carafe on the bedside table.’

‘Yes, and a bowl of fruit over there on that little table by the side of the armchair. And in that china biscuit barrel are Anya’s home-baked chocolate cookies.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ Katie laughed.

Xenia strode across to the door, opened it, then swung around. ‘I’m not far away, just one room down, so you know where I am if you need anything.’

‘Thanks, Xenia, and what time should I be ready for dinner?’

‘About eight-thirty, for a drink in the Great High Chamber.’ Xenia blew a kiss as she closed the door behind her.

Immediately, Katie turned the key in the lock and then walked over to a chest, began opening drawers, trying to ascertain where Dodie had put her things.

But Xenia, standing on the other side of the door in the corridor, did not move for a moment, stood gazing reflectively at the door, asking herself yet again why Katie had such a compulsion for locking herself in rooms. She did it continually at the London house, and now she was doing it here at Burton Leyburn. She was afraid, of course…but of what? Or whom?

Baffled, Xenia turned away, walked down the corridor to her own room, realizing that Katie’s strange behaviour was beginning to trouble her.

Once she had familiarized herself with the bedroom and bathroom, Katie took off her suit and sweater, hung them in the wardrobe and put on her dressing gown.

After drinking a glass of water, she took her Five Year Diary out of her carryall, found a pen in her handbag and went over to the
bûreau plat
in a corner of the room.

Seating herself at the desk, she opened her diary, realizing as she did that the events of the past five years hadn’t taken up that many pages after all.

She flicked through her diary, reading a page here and there, and discovered that mostly she had written about
her acting career, such as it was. There were quite a few pages about the professional things that had preoccupied her since she had left the American Academy of Dramatic Arts when she was twenty-two.

Suddenly, Katie saw Grant Miller’s name, and she stiffened, stared hard at it, frowning. Then she began to read the pages on which she had recounted their first meeting, their first date and the beginning of their love affair.

Sighing deeply, Katie finally sat back in the chair, biting her lip, wondering what to do about him.

Nothing, she thought. I’ll do nothing about him.

Deep down she hoped her lack of interest would send him a potent message, and that he would finally go away. Poor Grant, he tried so hard to please, and managed in the process only to irritate her. And irritation was hardly conducive to a good relationship.

But it had never been all that good anyway, and she wondered now why she had ever became involved with him. She who was so very wary of all men, and distrusting of them.

Initially, she had been attracted to him because of his looks. Yes, a physical attraction then, she knew that only too well. But there was also his extraordinary talent as an actor. She admired him on a stage. Off the stage he was…
dull.
No two ways about that. Grant was only interesting when he was playing the part of someone else. Perhaps that was why he was such a good actor.
In real life he was a little bland, a cipher of sorts, but as a cipher he could so easily lose himself in a role, make the person he was playing really come alive. He could take on the persona of any character he wished, because he had no persona of his own.

She frowned again, thinking this was truly a damning condemnation of someone, but however unpalatable, it was the truth. I’ll die of boredom and irritation if I stay with Grant Miller, she thought. Fortunately he was far away in New York, working in a play on Broadway. And so she didn’t have to cope with the problem of Grant and his constant pursuit of her right now.

Once she returned,
if
she took the role of Emily Brontë, it would be a different matter. He would be there, seeking her out, and he would be an unwanted suitor.

I’m not going to think about Grant tonight, she told herself, and pushed all thoughts of him to one side.

Turning to a new page in her diary, Katie wrote:

October 21st, 1999

Burton Leyburn Hall

Yorkshire

I want to put everything down while my first impressions are fresh in my mind.

Xenia has told me several times in the last year that Burton Leyburn Hall is special to her, the beloved house where she
spent so many happy days as a child. Yet she has never really told me about the house, as a house, I mean. What it looks like, how old it is, those kinds of things.

And so I was momentarily startled when I first saw it this afternoon…rising out of the faint mist at the end of the long, wide avenue of trees. It stood alone against the horizon, unencumbered by trees or hills or mountain tops, its chimneys and turrets precisely outlined against the backdrop of that fading pale sky.

From a distance it seemed so…dreamlike…magical, and I couldn’t wait to see it properly. And then Lavinia drove us to the stables instead, and I missed a close-up view of the front of the house. I was so disappointed.

Lavinia is going to take me to her studio tomorrow morning to see her paintings, but before she does I am going to take a walk around the outside of the house. In the ten months I’ve lived in England I’ve become interested in architecture, just like Dad. He favours American Colonial, although ever since he’s been coming to Ireland and England with Mom for the past nine years, his tastes have grown and expanded. Like me, he has developed a passion for Georgian and Elizabethan houses.

I feel the timelessness of this house…and when I stepped into the front entrance hall I sensed the weight of its history and of this family. When Xenia took me into the Great High Chamber, I thought of that phrase, ‘if only walls could talk’. Cliché though it is, it’s so very true…I can only imagine what the walls of this house have witnessed. Four hundred years of one family living here…Marriages, births, deaths.
Pain and suffering, joy and happiness, sorrow and heartbreak. Life eternal, from one generation to the next…

My room is beautiful, a mixture of soft greens, and mostly French antiques, at least the pieces look French. I want to see a portrait of the woman called Lucile, known as Frenchie, who came here as a foreign bride and put her own stamp on this house, in certain ways. Yes, Frenchie intrigues me.

So does Verity. She was such a surprise. Xenia has mentioned her sister-in-law, but she’s never described her, nor had I seen a photograph of her. Xenia’s house in London is short on photographs, so I’ve noticed. I wonder if Verity knows how glamorous she is? She has a natural glamour that comes from her classical blonde looks, the way she moves and talks, and presents herself with such grace. Xenia told me Verity’s forty-one, but she doesn’t look it. Xenia and she are more like sisters, but then they spent a lot of time together as children.

When Xenia confided on the train that she’s a widow I was really taken aback at first. But it has always been apparent that she loved Tim so much, it didn’t really make sense to me that they had been divorced. Now I understand why she’s not particularly interested in men…she must still be grieving…

Katie put down the pen, sat staring at the wall for a split second, then she pushed back the chair and rose. The room was suddenly icy cold and she felt chilled. Walking across the bedroom and into the bathroom, she turned on the taps of the huge tub, then seated herself on
a small, white-painted chair to wait for the bath to fill. A good soak would do the trick, she decided, then wondered, absently, how they kept warm here in winter.

There was a full-length mirror on the wall at the far end of the walk-in closet, and Katie stood in front of it, checking herself out before leaving the bedroom.

She had dressed in a dark, fir-green crushed velvet jacket, long and loose and falling just below her hips. With it she had teamed a silk shirt of the same fir-green colour, and a pair of narrow, black silk trousers. Highheeled black silk pumps and pearl earrings completed the ensemble.

I don’t look
too
bad, she thought, staring at herself critically, her head on one side. She had tied back her fiery red hair, fastened the pony tail with a black satin bow, and although the style gave her a certain severity, she liked the look it gave her…a touch of elegance, she thought.

Turning quickly, she went back to the bedroom, and immediately noticed her diary on the
bûreau plat
, where she had abandoned it earlier. After returning it to her carryall, she picked up a small black evening purse and left the bedroom.

Katie walked down the wide staircase to the second-floor landing, and pushed open the heavy oak door of the Great High Chamber.

The room was empty, and she hesitated for a moment
just inside the doorway, before walking across to the fireplace, where a huge log fire blazed on the stone hearth. The scented candles were still burning, Mozart played softly in the background, and there was a tray with drinks sitting on an antique chest.

Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was exactly eight-thirty, but the carriage clock on the chest near the fireplace read ten minutes earlier. Maybe her watch was fast. Stepping closer, she leaned forward to look at the photographs arranged around the clock, which she had caught a glimpse of during tea.

There was one of Verity in an elegant, pale-blue suit and a navy-blue picture hat, obviously quite recent. She had her arm linked through that of an attractive young man with a shock of blond hair like hers. He must be her son, whom Xenia had once mentioned.

Verity appeared in other photographs, with lots of different people. Then Katie spotted a picture of Tim with a small boy. She leaned even closer, her eyes resting on it for a moment, frowning slightly. The child bore such a strong resemblance to Xenia, Katie was startled. Had Xenia and Tim had a child?

‘You got down before me,’ Xenia said from the doorway, her voice sounding more clipped and English than usual as she strode into the room.

Katie swung around and nodded, feeling inexplicably embarrassed. Had Xenia seen her fascination with the picture? Would she think her rude for prying?

Xenia came to a stop at the drinks tray on the chest, asked, ‘How about a drop of bubbly? Or do you prefer white wine?’

‘White wine tonight. Thanks, Xenia.’

A moment later Xenia was handing Katie the glass. Her face was very pale, stark almost, and she was unsmiling. Her transparent grey eyes were sadder than Katie had ever seen them, and her manner was subdued.

Taking the glass quickly, Katie went and sat in one of the armchairs, her embarrassment now turning to discomfort. It was as though she had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Perhaps she had been. Suddenly, she knew that Xenia
had
seen her staring at the photograph of Tim…And her child? The boy in the picture was so like Xenia, Katie was suddenly convinced it was her son. But where was he? At school? And why had she never mentioned him?