The Darkling Bride

by Laura Andersen

  “Yes, yes, go along with Louise, darlings. I’ll see you in the morning.” Kyla Gallagher was tall and long-legged, with the elegant bone structure of Nessa and thick russet hair. The caustic edge to her voice was so like Aidan it was eerie.

  The girls whirled around their nanny—or au pair, possibly governess?—like miniature tornadoes before the older one came to an abrupt halt. The younger fell against her sister, and stopped with the same sudden air of concentration. They were fixed on Aidan.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?” The older girl stared at him with bright blue eyes just like his. “Our uncle.”

  “You can call me Aidan.” It was the softest Carragh had heard him sound. “And you are Ellie.”

  “I’m nine, and Kate is six.”

  “I know. I send you birthday gifts.”

  “But you never come and see us. Mama says we met you in London years ago. I don’t remember you.”

  Carragh realized her fingernails were digging into her palms as she tried to cope with the terrible tension that had sprung up. What kind of family went years without seeing each other?

  “I’m seeing you now,” Aidan told the child. “I hope you like the castle.”

  “If we do, does that mean you won’t give it away?”

  Ellie should have been cross-examining in courtrooms, Carragh thought. It was one thing you could always trust children to do: speak the truth.

  Aidan’s cheek twitched, but his voice was even. “If you go up to bed now, you’ll find Mrs. Bell has put scones and jam in the old nursery.”

  Ellie pondered that, then nodded decisively. “We’re going.”

  The little one, Kate, hadn’t said a word. But the look she gave her uncle as the girls left with Louise was thoughtful beyond her years.

  “I do apologize for my terrors,” Kyla said, addressing Carragh. “I hope they haven’t frightened you off all children.”

  “I have five nephews and nieces under the age of twelve,” Carragh replied quickly. “They don’t frighten me.”

  “My sister, Kyla Gallagher,” Aidan interposed. “And this is Carragh Ryan. Whom Aunt Nessa seems to think is some sort of servant to be hidden away in her room.”

  “Aidan—”

  Ignoring her great-aunt’s protest, Kyla looked Carragh up and down. “So you’re the archivist who’s cataloging the library. You don’t look like an Irish expert.”

  “Because I’m half Chinese?” There were times when Carragh truly tired of making other people comfortable with the dichotomy between her name and her appearance.

  Kyla had the same polite, distancing smile as her brother. “Because you are young and pretty. But then, as my husband would say, I’m likely just jealous.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” Nessa intervened decisively.

  There was only so far Carragh was willing to go to prove she wasn’t a servant, and sitting down with this barb-tongued, wary group of three was too far for tonight. “I’ve already eaten, and I have work to do. It was nice to meet you.” She didn’t know what to call Aidan’s sister. He’d introduced her as Gallagher, and she had no idea of the woman’s married surname.

  “One moment.” Aidan stopped her. “It’s only right you should hear this news, since there will be strangers coming in and out of the house for several days. It seems the Siochana Garda has decided to review the…incident of 1992.”

  That seemed a wild understatement. In what world did “incident” mean your parents’ murders?

  “I took a call from an Inspector McKenna from Serious Crimes Review a few hours ago,” Aidan continued. “She and her sergeant are coming tomorrow to speak to all of us who were here at the time.”

  “And you have agreed to allow this?” Kyla asked icily.

  “It’s not a matter of allowing. The case remains open. Until it is closed, it will always be subject to review. It would be as well to be helpful to the police.”

  “Are you advising me as my brother or as a police officer?”

  His eyes darkened. “Both.”

  “And you really want to rake it all up again, to talk about it and think about it and dream about it…”

  Carragh was already edging her way to the door, for she had no wish to be caught in the middle of this.

  “Kyla.” Aidan spoke in the same tone of command that Nessa had used to quiet the children. “Are you afraid of dreams? Or of answers?”

  “I am not afraid,” she replied firmly. “I am annoyed at what the press might make of it. And so would you be, if you hadn’t abandoned Ireland long ago.”

  Aidan shrugged. “I won’t apologize for my choices.”

  “I would die of shock if you did.”

  That was the last Carragh heard before she managed to slip through the door and escape to her room. She knew all about sibling rivalries. Her brothers had settled their differences with shouting and the more-than-occasional wrestling bout. But never had she felt such vicious tension as evinced by Aidan and Kyla in just a handful of sentences.

  Better stick to the library and Evan Chase. At least those griefs were too old to cause damage.

  * * *

  —

  Aidan had a punishing headache by the time dinner was over and he could go to bed without incurring his great-aunt’s displeasure. But it was the same bedroom he’d had since birth, which just now seemed unbearable. He didn’t want to sit there surrounded by Lego sets and comic books and the ghosts of nights spent reading in bed with only his torch to hand. One learned early at Deeprath Castle not to mind the dark.

  Tonight it was too much. He snagged a bottle of scotch from the butler’s pantry and went back to the music room. It was an elegant, refined space, but its greatest virtue just now was that he had very few memories of being in here. Just the times he and Kyla had come investigating in the dead of night, waiting to hear the phantom music of the unhappy French girl who’d married a Gallagher and wasted away in the wild Irish mountains.

  Aidan had never heard so much as a note.

  He sat in the pool of amber light cast by the chinoiserie lamp on the table next to his chair and opened the folder of documents copied for him by Winthrop’s assistant. It was thinner than he’d expected—hoped—but no doubt the Garda had not released everything to the solicitor.

  As a detective in the Arts and Antiquities squad of the Metropolitan Police, most of Aidan’s cases had involved an abundance of data analysis, research, and interviews. He knew not only how to read a police report and witness statements, but how to assess them. And he was not overly impressed by the quality of the Rathdrum Garda station’s work.

  It must, he conceded, have been overwhelming. Violent crime was fairly rare in Ireland, certainly outside of Dublin and the drug networks and/or political affairs. As an officer, he could sympathize with the police constable who had answered the urgent call from Deeprath Castle and arrived to find a viscount lying dead in his own library. But those who came after appeared to have done no better. Yes, they had secured the crime scene in the library. Yes, Aidan read now, they had instituted an immediate search of the house and grounds—which resulted in the discovery of his mother’s body at the base of the Bride Tower. They had continued the search in hopes of finding evidence, but only halfheartedly, it seemed. It wasn’t their fault that the castle was almost fifteen thousand square feet and had more than a hundred rooms. And the grounds were no less extensive, giving way rapidly from decorative and kitchen gardens to the ever-encroaching mountain landscape. Aidan could forgive them for those things outside their control.

  But the witness statements were almost laughable in their brevity. He flicked through those of the adults who had been in the castle at any point on that September day: Robert and Maire Bell, estate manager and housekeeper by description, friends and trusted companions in reality; Mrs. O’Toole, who had cooked at Deeprath for forty years; the gardener and his assistant; the cleaners who came twice a week and had the bad luck to have been there that day; Nessa, who was spending the week with
them; the solicitor, Winthrop, who had stayed the previous night while doing business; and Philip Grant. He’d come back to Philip Grant later. For now, he shuffled and recounted and examined every piece of paper front and back to make sure he hadn’t overlooked something.

  He hadn’t. Which meant there were two critical witness statements missing from these reports: Kyla’s and his own. Surely the police had talked to them both. Aidan could just recall the mustache of one of the policemen who’d asked him…what? They must have asked him something. He was the one who had found his father’s body, after all. Of course they’d interviewed him. So why couldn’t he remember it? And why wasn’t that statement, or his sister’s, accounted for here?

  Aidan dropped his head and ground his hands against his closed eyes. Only now did he acknowledge that he’d been almost as eager to read Kyla’s statement as his own. He had gone long years without consciously thinking about that day, but there were a handful of impressions he’d carried with him, which arose now and then to disturb the surface. One was the sight of his father’s body on the library floor. Another was the memory of Kyla, looking over her shoulder as though ensuring she wasn’t being watched. Aidan knew he had seen her somewhere that day. No, not just “that day”—somewhere and some time perilously close to his discovery of their father.

  He had never been able to remember more. He’d never wanted to remember more.

  Until now.

  CHAPTER NINE

  June 1972

  “Susa!”

  Lily Morgan threw her arms around her cousin, suffocating her in an enormous hug, until Susa laughingly protested. “I can’t breathe, dearest.”

  Lily loosened her grip enough to look at her while still keeping Susa trapped in her arms. “You have no idea how relieved I am to have you here! Cillian’s family is lovely, of course, but I am rather drowning in Gallaghers at the moment.”

  “That’s what happens when you decide to get married at your fiancé’s home in back-of-beyond Ireland instead of in New York like a rational woman. Or London, even. But who’s going to come all the way out here?” Susa pulled a hand free to wave at the surrounding landscape. Despite the lightness of her tone, Lily knew her cousin was truly baffled. But that was all right. She’d understand soon enough.

  “Thank you, Rob,” she said to the steward, who was directing the gardener’s assistant in taking Susa’s luggage. “To the Jade Room in the Jacobean wing, please.”

  She stepped away from her cousin to give her an uninterrupted view. “Welcome to Deeprath Castle, Susa.”

  Lily knew that Susa would be impressed—as who wouldn’t be? The cousins had grown up in New York City, with summers in Newport or the Berkshires, traveling to London and Paris and other chic European cities. Ireland was not chic. Nor was Deeprath Castle. But how could anyone fail to be impressed by the sheer weight of age and history embodied here? Yes, the cousins had toured many Renaissance palaces. But this was not a showplace. This was a home.

  For all that, Lily also knew that Susa’s first comments would be critical. No one could pick out flaws like she could. It’s isolated. It’s crumbling. It’s ridiculously outsized. It’s positively medieval. The lights/plumbing/heating are going to kill you all…

  But Susa surprised her. “I can feel why you love it, Lil. You have always had one ear tuned to the past.”

  Yes! Lily wanted to say. That is right. And this place speaks to me. Not the ghosts, not the history—the castle itself. The first time Cillian had brought her here, her immediate impression had been of an enormous, imposing specimen composed of hundreds of years of architectural styles, but nothing that made it substantially different from dozens of other castles dotted across Ireland.

  And then, she had touched a wall. Like a jolt of electricity, the castle had come crashing into her, flooding every inch of her body with the power and passion of seven hundred years, until she couldn’t breathe. Just as suddenly, it pulled back…and took her heart with it. She’d known in that moment that she belonged to Deeprath, though Cillian would not propose to her for another six months.

  “Come along.” She squeezed Susa’s arm. “We’ll say hello to Cillian.”

  He was in the drawing room with his mother and aunt. Tall, broad-shouldered, and with a quiet intelligence and sensibility that kept Lily grounded, Cillian went straight to Susa and kissed her on the cheek. “Welcome to Ireland,” he said.

  “I don’t think I really am in Ireland,” she retorted. “It isn’t raining.”

  He laughed and made the proper introductions. “Mother, this is Susan Morgan, Lily’s cousin. This is my mother, Lady Gallagher, and my aunt, Lady Nessa.”

  “Call me Fiona, please,” his mother said. “We’re so delighted to meet you. Lily sings your praises day and night.”

  “Lily sings everyone’s praises,” Susan retorted drily. “She’s incapable of seeing faults in anyone.”

  Aunt Nessa—though Lily was pretty sure the woman would have asked to be called Lady Nessa, if only Aidan’s mother weren’t so determinedly informal—greeted Susa with a cool nod. “A charming trait in Lily, I’m sure. If not always a practical one.”

  “That’s why I’m here, Aunt Nessa.” Cillian drew Lily to his side. “I’ll be practical, and she’ll be everything else. This castle could use some fresh and enthusiastic blood.”

  Nessa’s expression softened. Perhaps the only thing she appreciated about Lily was her love for Deeprath. “I’m sure all of the Gallaghers are very pleased to have such an enthusiastic advocate.”

  Lily met Susa’s eyes, her cousin conveying whole phrases in her expression: Does she really talk like that all the time?

  Lily answered in the same silent manner. You haven’t heard anything yet.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the twenty-six hours between being assigned the Gallagher case and arriving in Wicklow, Sibéal spent all but five immersed in study. She had no memory of the case—she’d been eleven at the time, and though it certainly made the news, her family had little interest in nonpolitical crimes. The domestic murders of a rich lord and his eccentric American wife paled beside IRA ops and hunger strikes.

  By the time the train pulled into Rathdrum, Sibéal had pulled together not only the information she needed to be getting on with, but also the persona demanded of an inspector about to trample all over a family’s most painful memories. Sergeant Cullen had been admirably silent while she studied and when they exited the station he asked, “Deeprath Castle first?”

  It had not been their plan. She’d told the solicitor, Winthrop, that they would call on him first, and courtesy dictated she also make their presence known to the local force. If Cullen continued reading her mind like this, they’d do very well together.

  “Right,” she confirmed. “Find us a cab.”

  It wasn’t a cab, per se, but the car was adequate and the driver willing. Sibéal had never been to County Wicklow before. Growing up in Donegal, so far removed politically and geographically from the rest of the Irish Republic, she was not easily impressed by landscape. What could be more dramatic than the sea lochs or the Slieve League sea cliffs?

  Still, the Wicklow Mountains in April had an eerie feel, she decided as they drove into the hills, though she knew that impression was likely influenced by her recent reading. Ireland was a country alive with ghosts. She was just particularly sensitive at the moment to those of Cillian and Lily Gallagher.

  Her first sight of Deeprath Castle left her breathless. At her side, Cullen whistled softly. “I’m surprised there haven’t been dozens of murders out here,” he said. “Looks exactly the kind of house people are dragged to on purpose to be murdered.”

  “It’s just old,” she said sharply, reproving her own response, not his. “And damp, no doubt.”

  Sibéal, who preferred her architecture modern, clean, and minimal, felt a reluctant appreciation as Cullen paid the driver and extracted a promise for him to return at four o’clock if they hadn’t called before. She stud
ied the various frontages of the castle before her, neck craned to an uncomfortable degree. What would it be like to be responsible for such a place? she wondered. And could that responsibility have had anything to do with the Gallagher murders?

  Considering the size of the castle, it didn’t take an inordinate amount of time for the elaborately traceried door to open. Disconcertingly, two little girls stared up at them.

  Fortunately, Sibéal was not cowed by little girls, being the mother of one. “Hello. Is your mother here?”

  The woman who followed the children was too old to be their mother. She addressed the girls first. “Back to your au pair now, and no more dashing about on your own.” Only then did she acknowledge Sibéal and Cullen.

  “I’m Maire Bell. I assume you are the Dublin police?” She would have looked more enthusiastically at a rat catcher. If there were such things still. A place like this could no doubt use one.

  Sibéal showed her warrant card. “I’m Inspector McKenna, this is Sergeant Cullen. I believe we’re expected.”

  When Sibéal offered nothing more, Mrs. Bell narrowed her eyes and allowed them in. Sibéal knew that the woman had been the housekeeper at the castle when the murders occurred; it appeared she’d never left. They were kept waiting in the echoing space of the hall, complete with original wood paneling, beamed ceiling, and a fireplace that could have roasted a whole cow. Add in the family crest carved into stone—she’d seen a drawing of it in the case notes, with its winged lion/eagle creature dead center—and Sibéal didn’t know if she wanted to burn the aristocracy to the ground or find a wall to put at her back. Beneath his breath, Cullen said, “Colder in here than outside.”

  The woman who returned was elderly, of the type that age had distilled into the essential qualities of bone and personality. She was well-dressed, with a decorative cane used, Sibéal guessed, for balance.

  “I’m Lady Nessa Gallagher. It has been a long time since we’ve had police at Deeprath Castle.” The introduction was unnecessary. She could not have been anyone else.