The Royal Secret

by Lucinda Riley

“Yes?”

  “Will I have to move into one of their houses?”

  “I don’t know, Jamie. I think that kind of decision is a long way off.”

  “I heard one of the masters laughing in his study with the PE teacher. He said that it wouldn’t be the first time a bastard has moved into a p-palace.”

  Simon cursed the cruelty of human nature under his breath. “Jamie, your mum is going to be home very soon. I want you to promise me you’ll tell her everything you’ve told me, so there’ll be no misunderstandings in future.”

  Jamie looked up at him. “Have you met him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Nice. He’s a nice man. You’ll like him, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t think I will. Do princes play football?”

  Simon laughed. “Yes.”

  “And eat pizza and baked beans?”

  “I’m sure they do.”

  “Will Mumma marry him, Simon?”

  “I think that’s something only your mother can tell you.” His mobile rang in his pocket. “Hello? Zoe? Did you get my message? Yes, Jamie’s safe and absolutely fine. We’re down in Dorset. Want a word with him?” Simon passed the phone to Jamie and stood up to leave the room and give him some privacy. When he returned once the call was finished, he saw a little color was returning to Jamie’s cheeks.

  “Will she be very angry with me?”

  “Did she sound angry?”

  “No,” Jamie admitted. “She sounded very happy. She’s coming straight here to see me.”

  “There you go then.”

  Simon sat next to him and Jamie snuggled down on his knee, yawning. “Wish you were the prince, Simon,” he said drowsily.

  So do I, he thought.

  Jamie lifted his head and smiled at Simon. “Thanks for knowing where to look.”

  “Anytime, old chap, anytime.”

  * * *

  At past three a.m., Zoe paid the taxi driver and opened the front door to Haycroft House. Everything was silent. She went first to the kitchen, then into the sitting room. Jamie was curled up on Simon’s knee, fast asleep. Simon’s head was resting against the back of the sofa, his eyes closed too. Tears came to her eyes at the sight of her son. And Simon, who had so generously helped them both when it seemed no one else would.

  Simon opened his eyes as she walked toward them. Very carefully, he extricated himself from beneath Jamie, substituting a cushion for his lap and indicating they should leave the room.

  They walked silently into the kitchen. Simon closed the door behind him.

  “Is he okay? Really?”

  “He is absolutely fine, promise.”

  Zoe sat down in a chair and put her head in her hands. “Thank God. You can’t imagine what was going through my mind on that interminable flight.”

  “No.” Simon walked to the kettle. “Tea?”

  “I’d love some chamomile tea. There’s some in the cupboard over there. Where did you find him?”

  “Asleep on your grandfather’s grave.”

  “Oh, Simon! I . . .” Zoe clapped a hand to her mouth in horror.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Zoe, really. I think what happened to Jamie was an unfortunate combination of some unkind but natural teasing at school, delayed grief, and . . .”

  “The fact that I wasn’t there either.”

  “Yes. There you go.” He put the tea in front of her.

  “So he knows about Art from the other boys?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Damn it! I should have told him.”

  “We all make mistakes, I did too, remember? I advised you not to tell him. But thankfully this situation is something that can easily be rectified.”

  “I knew he was too calm after James died.” Zoe took a sip of her tea. “I should have seen this coming.”

  “I think when he was in trouble, it hit Jamie for the first time that the man he adored—his father figure—really had gone for good. Especially when others were maliciously suggesting a substitute. But he’s a good kid, he’ll cope. Look, now that you’re here, I’m afraid I have to leave.”

  Zoe was startled. “To go where?”

  “Duty calls.” Simon tiptoed back into the sitting room to collect his jacket from the chair and then met Zoe in the hall. “Jamie’s still sleeping soundly. I think a dollop of TLC from his mum is the only medicine he needs.”

  “Yes. And boy, have we got some talking to do.” She followed him to the front door. “Simon, how can I ever thank you?”

  “Really, don’t think about it. Take care of both of you, and send my love to Jamie. Tell him I’m sorry I had to leave before I said goodbye.”

  “Of course.” Zoe nodded wistfully. “Simon?”

  He turned and looked at her. “Yes?”

  She paused, then shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Bye, Zoe.” Simon gave her a small, tight smile, opened the door, and left.

  31

  Joanna pulled her rented Fiesta alongside the curb in front of the Ross Hotel and switched off the engine gratefully. She was exhausted from another sleepless night in a cheap B & B in Dublin, jumping every time she heard a creak. Kurt’s turning up at the pub had really unsettled her. The question was, had he been tailing her or was she just totally paranoid?

  She sat there for a few moments, gazing out at the rain still pelting down on the picturesque square.

  “That bloody old lady,” Joanna muttered to herself. If only she had never met her . . . where would she be now? At home in London, still working the news desk, not sitting in the rain in a godforsaken Irish town.

  Enough was enough. She had decided she was going home to England as soon as she could, and would consign the last few weeks to the past and do her best to forget all about it. She would post all the information she had gathered to Simon and he could do what he liked with it. She reckoned he’d been planted in Zoe Harrison’s house to discover what she knew and what secrets the house held. Well, he could have everything she had. And that was an end to it.

  Joanna opened the door to the car, retrieved her holdall from the boot, and walked into the front entrance of the hotel.

  “Hello there. Did you have a good trip?” inquired Margaret, appearing behind the bar.

  “Yes. It was . . . fine, thanks.”

  “Grand.”

  “I’m going to check out now, Margaret, and fly home. If I can get a seat on a flight this evening from Cork.”

  “Right then.” One of Margaret’s eyebrows raised slightly. “Someone left an envelope for you while you were away.” She turned and grabbed it from Joanna’s pigeonhole. “There.”

  “Thanks.”

  “ ’Twill be a birthday card, no doubt?”

  “No, my birthday’s not until August. Thanks anyway.”

  Margaret watched her mount the stairs. She thought for a moment, then placed a call to Sean, her nephew, at the local garda station. “You know you were after asking me about that young man, the one who checked in yesterday, Sean? Well, maybe he’s not who he seems after all. He’s gone out, said he’d be away until sixish . . . I think you’d better, so.”

  Joanna unlocked the door to her room, put down her holdall, and tore open the letter. Skimming the lines, she sank onto the bed. It took her a while to decipher the erratically spelled scrawl.

  Deer miss,

  I hurd in the bar you talk of costgard house. I no bout it. you come talk to me un you will see the troot. pink cottige oposit costgard house is wear I will be.

  miss ciara deasy

  Ciara . . . The name rang a bell. Joanna searched her memory to find who it was that had spoken the name. It had been Fergal Mulcahy, the historian. He’d said Ciara was mad.

  Was there any point in going to see her? Surely, it would only lead to another wild goose chase—half-remembered stories that had little bearing on a long-ago situation she wanted nothing more to do with.

  Look at the trouble half-crazy little o
ld ladies have got me into already, she told herself firmly.

  Joanna screwed the letter up into a ball and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. She picked up the telephone, dialed nine for an outside line, and spoke to Aer Lingus reservations. They could get her a seat on the 6:40 flight out of Cork. She paid for the flight on her long-suffering credit card and began to pack her things into her rucksack. Then she picked up the telephone again and dialed Alec at the newspaper.

  “It’s me.”

  “Christ, Joanna! I thought you might have called me before now.”

  “Sorry. Time disappears here without you realizing it.”

  “Yeah, well, the ed’s haunted me every day, wanting to know where the doctor’s certificate has got to. He sent someone round to your apartment and they know you’ve not been there either. I did my best, but the upshot is, I’m afraid you’re fired.”

  Joanna sank onto the bed, a lump in her throat. “Oh God, Alec!”

  “Sorry, sweetheart. I don’t know whether he’s being leaned on, but that’s how it is.”

  Joanna sat there silently, willing herself not to cry.

  “Jo, you still there?”

  “I’d just decided to give up on the whole bloody mess! I’m flying back to London tonight. If I come and see the ed tomorrow, prostrate myself at his feet, apologize profusely, and offer to make the tea until he forgives me, do you think I stand a chance?”

  “Nope.”

  “I didn’t think so.” Joanna stared miserably at the flowered wallpaper. The faded roses danced in front of her eyes.

  “So, from what you’re saying, you’ve found out nothing?”

  “Virtually nothing. Only that a Michael James O’Connell was born a few miles down the coast from here, and possibly spent his early years working in a big house for the great-grandfather of someone I spoke to. Oh, and there’s an old letter from a British official—it says that a gentleman was shipped over to stay at the house as a guest of His Majesty’s Government. In 1926.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Don’t you think you should find out?”

  “No, I don’t. I’m in over my head. I want . . .” Joanna bit her lip. “I want to come home and have my life back like it was before.”

  “Well, seeing as that’s impossible, have you anything to lose by investigating further?”

  “I can’t hack it, Alec, I really can’t.”

  “Come on, Jo. As I see it, the only way you can relaunch your career is by getting a cracking story and flogging it to the highest bidder. You now have no allegiance to this newspaper. And if others won’t publish it here, they’ll publish abroad. I have a feeling you’re very close to some answers. For Christ’s sake, don’t fall at the final hurdle, Jo.”

  “What ‘answers’? None of it makes sense anyway.”

  “Someone will know. They always do. But watch your back. It won’t be long before they track you down.”

  “I’m going, Alec. I’ll call you when I get back to London.”

  “Okay, Jo. Make sure you do. Take care now.”

  For several minutes, Joanna sat paralyzed on the bed, thinking that so far this year, she’d lost her boyfriend, most of her possessions, her best friend, and now her job. Contrary to what Alec thought, she still had a lot more left to lose.

  “Like my life,” she muttered to herself.

  Five minutes later, she had picked up her holdall, locked the door behind her, and was walking downstairs.

  “You off, so?” chirped Margaret from behind reception.

  “Yes.” Joanna handed Margaret her credit card. “Thanks for making my stay so pleasant.”

  “Not at all. Hope you’ll be back to see us again soon.”

  Joanna signed the credit-card slip Margaret handed her.

  “There you go. Bye, Margaret, and thanks.” She picked up her holdall and walked to the door.

  “Joanna, you weren’t expecting anyone to come visit you here, were you?”

  “Why? Did somebody call me?”

  “No.” Margaret shook her head. “Safe journey home, and mind yourself.”

  “I will.”

  Joanna stowed the holdall in the boot of the Fiesta, then drove out of the square and down toward the estuary. As she indicated left and waited for a car to pass, she noticed a small, single-story pink cottage, standing solitary on the opposite side of the estuary from the coastguard’s house. The two dwellings were no more than fifty yards apart across the sandbanks. Joanna hesitated for a moment, shook her head in resignation, then indicated right. If she was fast, she could still make her flight. She didn’t notice the car behind her also change direction and follow some distance behind as the Fiesta drove down the narrow road.

  “Come in,” said a voice from inside, when she knocked on the front door. She did as she’d been bid. The small front room she’d stepped into was rustic, reminiscent of another era. A healthy fire burned in the large grate, a black kettle hung above it on a chain. The sparse wooden furniture was shabby, and the only adornments on the walls were a large crucifix and a yellowing print of the Madonna and Child.

  Ciara Deasy was sitting on a high-backed wooden chair on one side of the fire. Her face had settled into soft wrinkles, indicating that she was somewhere between seventy and eighty. Her white hair was cut into a savage short back and sides, and as she stood to greet Joanna, her legs did not betray a whisper of unsteadiness.

  “The lady from the hotel?” Ciara shook Joanna’s hand firmly.

  “Joanna Haslam,” she confirmed.

  “Sit down,” Ciara said, indicating a chair on the other side of the fireplace. “Now, tell me, why would ye be wanting to know about the coastguard’s house?”

  “Miss Deasy, it’s a long story.”

  “They’re my favorite kind. And call me Ciara, now, will you? ‘Miss Deasy’ makes me sound like an old maid. Which I am, there’s no denying it,” she cackled.

  “Well, I’m a journalist and I’m here investigating someone called Michael O’Connell. It just might be that when he returned to England, he was known as someone completely different.”

  Ciara’s eyes sharpened. “I’d be knowing he went by the name of Michael, but I never knew his second name. And yer not wrong about him changing his name.”

  “You knew he used a different identity?”

  “Joanna, I’ve known since I was eight years old. Nigh on seventy years is a long time to be called a liar, an inventor of fairy stories. The village has thought I’ve lost my wits since, but of course I haven’t. I’m as sane as you.”

  “And do you by any chance know if ‘Michael’ has any association with the coastguard’s house?”

  “He stayed there while he was sick. They wanted him hidden away till he was better.”

  “You met him?”

  “I wouldn’t say I was formally introduced, no, but I went there to the house sometimes with Niamh, God rest her soul.” The old woman crossed herself.

  “Niamh?”

  “My older sister. Beautiful, she was, so beautiful, with her long dark hair and blue eyes . . .” Ciara gazed into the fire. “Any man would have fallen for her, and he did.”

  “Michael?”

  “That’s the name he used, yes, but we know different, don’t we?”

  “Ciara, why don’t you tell me the story from the very beginning?”

  “I’ll try, so I will, but ’tis a long time since I’ve spoken these words.” Ciara took a deep breath. “It was Stanley Bentinck who suggested it; he lived up in the grand house in Ardfield. He told her there was an important visitor coming over and Niamh was a maid in the household at the time. So Mr. Bentinck had her look after the visitor in the coastguard’s house, as she only lived a stone’s throw away. She’d come back from there with her blue eyes shining, so she would, and a secret smile. She told me the gentleman was English, but she’d never say any more.

  “Of course, I was only a girleen at the time, not old enough to underst
and what was happening between them. I went across to help with the cleaning sometimes, and I caught them once, in the kitchen, embracing. But I knew nothing of love, or physical matters, at that age. Then he went, disappeared that night out to sea, before they came to get him—”

  “They?” interrupted Joanna.

  “Those as was after him. She’d warned him, see, even though she knew she’d lose him, that he’d have to go for the sake of his life. But she was convinced he’d send for her when he got back to London. Looking back now, there was no hope, but she didn’t know that.”

  “Who was it that was after him, Ciara?”

  “I’ll be telling you when I’ve finished. After he’d gone, Niamh and my daddy had a fierce fight. She was screaming mad, he was shouting back at her. Then, the next morning, she disappeared too.”

  “I see. Do you know where she went?”

  “I don’t. Not for the next few months, anyway. Some from the village said they’d seen her with the Gypsies up at the Ballybunion fair, others that she’d been spotted in Bandon.”

  “Why did she leave?”

  “Now, Joanna, you’ll stop asking questions and you’ll hear the answers. About six months after she disappeared, Mammy and Daddy went to mass with my sisters, but I stayed home, having a bad cold. Mammy didn’t want me to cough all through the preaching. ’Twas as I lay in bed I heard the noise. A terrible noise it was, like an animal in its final death throes. I went to that front door”—Ciara indicated it with her hand—“in my nightgown, and listened. And I knew it was coming from the coastguard’s house. So I walked across to it with that awful sound ringing in my ears.”

  “Weren’t you frightened?”

  “Terrified altogether, but it was as if I was drawn to it, like my body was not my own.” Ciara looked across the bay. “The front door was open. I went inside and found her upstairs, lying on his bed, her legs covered with blood . . .” She shielded her face with her small hands. “I can still see her face now, clear as day. The agony on it has haunted me for the whole of my life.”

  Cold fingers crawled up Joanna’s spine. “It was your sister Niamh?”

  “Yes. And lying between her legs, still attached to her, was a newborn babe.”