The Darkling Bride

by Laura Andersen

He’d thought himself so clever, hiding in plain sight. Looking back, he supposed he’d mostly appeared lonely. If he were to see a little boy today, following couples and families with wary intensity, he would guess at an unhappy home life. A child substituting an imaginary world for a colorless reality.

  But he had not been unhappy. There were the normal tensions of families with disparate personalities—especially Kyla, moody and erratic as any teenage girl. She’d had screaming matches with their mother that last year. Or would have, if Lily Gallagher hadn’t been so unprovokable. Not serene, no—no one would have called his mother that; but her enthusiasms were just that. Enthusiasms that might swing from highs to lows, but never to anger. Of that, Aidan was certain. Lily Gallagher could never have murdered her husband in a fit of fury.

  What did that leave? Thieves after the antiquities? Aidan had spent his professional life working exactly those kinds of cases. Thieves like that rarely made mistakes and were never that messy. A demented stranger, then, stumbling across the castle, killing his parents and vanishing without a trace? A hired assassin sent by one of his father’s business rivals? Highly unlikely on either count. That left the people who’d been in the castle: the Bells, the gardener and his two boys, the cook and maids-of-all-work from the town, Winthrop visiting for business matters, Philip interning for his father…and the family.

  He startled when Carragh touched his arm. “Are you all right?”

  Just trying to solve the twenty-three-year-old murders that unraveled my life. Thinking about it had leached the pleasure from the day. “We’d better go back. I have work I can do outside the library until the police are finished.”

  Carragh had remarkably dark eyes that seemed to reflect back everything he was feeling but without losing herself in the process. There was a clarity to her gaze that was almost as refreshing as the Wicklow air.

  Her words, however, were not as soothing as her expression. “Do you really think you’ll stumble across fewer memories in the castle than out here?”

  “I moved away more than twenty years ago, but I never really left Wicklow. I thought I had grown beyond the pain. I was wrong. And I appear to be taking it all out on the only wholly innocent person at Deeprath. I apologize.”

  “You do not consider your nieces innocent?”

  “Are you always this direct?” He looked at her compassionate eyes and opinionated mouth and bright streaks of blue and green and purple in her black hair. She’d worn it conservatively down at dinner last night, hiding the colors, but he preferred it pulled up and back like this.

  “Only when it’s other people,” she conceded. “I can delay and avoid and lie to myself with the best of them.” She gestured to the monastic ruins all around them. “It’s a pity to go back without finishing the tour. I’d love to hear more about these mercenary monks who profited from an early form of spiritual tourism.”

  Aidan shook his head, but conceded. As long as he kept the conversation firmly set in the Middle Ages, he should be all right. “I can spare another hour. What do you want to know about Glendalough?”

  * * *

  —

  Once Carragh distracted Aidan from brooding, he continued to be an engaging tour guide. Unlike Nessa, he didn’t recite a list of facts, but wrapped information in stories. Before she knew it, their conversation had ranged from the missionary efforts of the Glendalough monks to the Book of Kells to the holy islands of Lindisfarne and Iona. They argued about the relative influence of Irish and Scottish ballads on American country music, and Aidan told her some of the strangest places he’d recovered stolen art (including buried beneath the dirt floor of an eighteenth-century Welsh barn).

  Upon their return to Deeprath Castle, Aidan thanked her courteously and vanished, leaving Carragh to decide what to do next. She didn’t feel like staying in her bedroom, so she went up just long enough to grab the Trollope novel and make sure Jenny’s portrait was still on the wall. It hung where she’d replaced it, two pairs of unrevealing eyes watching her.

  Did you enjoy yourself?

  Carragh was not in the habit of speaking to paintings. But without thinking, she answered aloud. “At Glendalough? Yes.”

  And with Aidan?

  Now that was her imagination taking things one step too far. She was not going to stand in her bedroom and engage in a one-sided conversation with herself about Aidan Gallagher.

  After careful scouting to ensure she was alone, Carragh settled down in the music room with Framley Parsonage. She was busy giving passionate advice to Lucy Robarts when the sudden strumming sound of music jolted her to her feet. But because she’d been sitting curled up in a chair, her legs had locked and she tripped, dropping the Trollope. “Damn it!”

  For a moment she thought of the ghostly Marthe. But the Frenchwoman’s music was supposed to be delicate and faint, and this had been anything but. A rush of giggles confirmed it. Carragh got herself balanced and confronted the two Gallagher-Grant girls.

  “How did you get away from Louise?” she asked mock-sternly.

  Ellie wasn’t fooled. With a defiant tilt to her chin, which had disconcerting echoes of Aidan, she said, “We’re playing hide-and-seek. It’s not our fault if Louise isn’t very good at it. What are you doing?”

  “Reading.”

  “We saw you go out with Uncle Aidan.”

  If she was to be interrogated by these little spies, why not turn them to her own use? “Do you know where he is now?”

  Kate piped up. “Play with us and maybe we’ll find him.”

  Carragh could only laugh at the steely little negotiator in yellow tunic and leggings. “As long as we don’t play hide-and-seek.”

  As she’d told Nessa, she was used to children. She understood the combination of overexcitement and boredom she saw in the girls, but she wasn’t accustomed to the edge of anger beneath their interactions. Children were meant to express all their emotions at full volume. This kind of hidden, denied anger was likely because of their parents’ strained marriage, Carragh thought, and then felt a wave of guilt at the realization. What a mess people could make of other people’s lives without ever meaning to.

  The girls’ idea of play seemed designed mostly to explore the family castle that they’d never before seen. Carragh went into so many rooms trooping after them that she lost count; most of them were bare or contained only a few dust-shrouded pieces. She supposed all of it would go to the National Trust—or maybe Kyla was here to choose any pieces she wanted to keep.

  They ended in the vast kitchens that stretched through three rooms. Carragh tried to name each as they might have been used in Jenny’s time: pantry, scullery, kitchen proper. Though the Victorian bones were still there, they had been turned into a warm and welcoming combination of cooking and sitting space. This was clearly the domain of the Bells.

  Mrs. Bell was warm and welcoming, not self-effacing, as she seemed around the older Gallaghers. “Call me Maire,” she told Carragh, then proceeded to make a great fuss of Ellie and Kate.

  “Do you have children?” Carragh asked.

  “Two girls, and three grandchildren.”

  “Were your daughters raised here?”

  The housekeeper laughed. “No, the days of live-in servants had passed by the time Rob and I married. We have a house in Laragh. Sometimes, in the last twenty years, we’d spend a week at a time here when repairs were under way or there was a great push on to get something done to the house or grounds. But this house has seen little enough of people of late. I think it’s happy to have family here again.”

  Maire Bell had settled the girls at the long table with its marble top, shortbread and milk at their elbows, and she looked down at them fondly. Ellie had Kyla’s russet coloring, but Kate had the same black hair and bright blue eyes as her uncle Aidan.

  “You go on, love,” Maire said comfortably to Carragh. “I’ll keep them busy with me. They can learn how to wash dishes.”

  With shortbread in hand, Carragh made her way back to the
music room to retrieve the book she’d left behind. She bent over the chair to pick it up and a voice said, “Hello. Who are you?”

  Carragh faced the woman, whom she’d missed standing near the harpsichord, and said with annoyance, “Who are you?”

  “Inspector Sibéal McKenna. Siochana Garda, Serious Crimes Review.”

  Carragh felt immediately foolish. “Of course. Sorry. Everything around here is out of sorts today. I suppose you’re used to dealing with that.”

  The DI smiled briefly without replying. She was mid-thirties, maybe, with the creamy skin of the natural redhead, but Carragh could not decide whether the woman was attractive or not. Compelling was perhaps the best word, for despite her no-nonsense bob and inoffensive trouser suit, she was hard to look away from. And it wasn’t just that she was a police officer. DI McKenna had a presence beyond her warrant card.

  “I’m Carragh Ryan. I was hired to help catalog the library before its contents are donated. I arrived three days ago.”

  “Were you previously acquainted with the family?”

  “No. I’m American—well, my father’s from Dublin but has lived in the States for forty years. I only came to Ireland to live three years ago.”

  “So you knew nothing about the Gallaghers?”

  How had she ended up on the defensive so quickly? “I knew about the library and the castle. And of course I looked into them before coming. But all I know of the family is what I learned from the Internet.”

  DI McKenna paced thoughtfully between the harp and the grand piano. “What, exactly, are you looking for in the library?”

  “I’m not looking for evidence of murder, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  That actually made the officer laugh, which in turn made her look younger and far more approachable. “Miss Ryan, I promise I’m not trying to trap you into anything. You would have been…what? Four or five years old when Lord Gallagher was murdered? Even if you had been in Ireland, I’d hardly suspect you of involvement.”

  “Then what is it you do want?” Carragh asked impulsively. Maybe it was because she’d spent so much time alone the last few months, but this place seemed to be turning her into her mother. A woman who always asked the things she wanted to know.

  “I’ve heard that Lady Gallagher was interested in family history before she died. I wondered if you’ve come across anything that would add to that picture. There must be family records in there.”

  “Those are not part of my job description. I’m working on items of general, not personal, interest.” But Carragh’s curiosity was piqued. So Lily Gallagher had been looking into the family’s past. Trying to keep the interest out of her voice, she asked, “What do you think you can learn from history?”

  “I won’t know unless or until I find it…and then, like as not, only in retrospect. This job is a matter of sifting information. The more of it I have, the more likely I am to find what I need.” She studied Carragh thoughtfully. “So what do you think of the Gallaghers?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do they get along? Do they seem happy to be gathered all together in their castle once more?”

  Choosing her words with care, Carragh replied, “I’ve hardly met Kyla, and Nessa has not interested herself in me since I was hired.”

  “And the viscount, Lord Gallagher?”

  Lord Gallagher. The reminder of his title threw her for a moment, until she remembered that he was just a man. Carragh thought of the things Aidan had said and the more things he’d left unsaid, of the twist of his mouth when he’d spoken of finding his father’s body and the way his smile managed to be both mocking and sweet. “I think Aidan Gallagher does not know if he wants to be here or not. He is doing his duty. We speak of the library and its contents and that is all.” Or mostly all, she amended to herself.

  “Right.” DI McKenna had the same trick Carragh’s mother did—to speak neutrally and yet imply volumes of disbelief. “Well, I’m sure I’ll see you again before this is all finished. If you think of anything else, let me know.”

  “Right,” Carragh parroted back.

  That made DI McKenna grin widely. “I do so love Americans.” She sounded wholly sincere.

  * * *

  —

  It was dark and rainy when the train returned to Dublin, and Sibéal went straight home after planning to meet Sergeant Cullen at eight in the morning at Phoenix Park. After two days of traveling back and forth to Wicklow, she needed a quiet, safe space in which to think. Her promotion was too new and her office too bare to provide that yet.

  Sibéal lived in the same one-bedroom flat she’d had since she was twenty-four. West of Christ Church and north of St. Patrick’s, the neighborhood went from privileged to struggling in a matter of blocks. She and Josh had bought it in their first year of marriage. When Josh left, she’d struggled for a while to make the rent, but she loved her oddly shaped corner flat with its view of St. Audoen’s Church. She could lie in bed and touch the window that framed the medieval spire across the street and it always made her feel safe.

  But her daughter, May, was nearly eight, and it wasn’t fair to keep her sleeping on a fold-out couch behind a screened section of the lounge. May was with her father this week, and Sibéal had promised they would look for a new place when she returned. Josh had more than two thousand square feet in his detached Ranelagh villa, so May could have her own room, even with two little half brothers.

  She spoke to her daughter on the phone (“Daddy says I can go with them to France this summer.”), and then, wanting to soak up however much time she had left in this flat, Sibéal sat at the dining table and spread out the files and notes she’d made from the last two days, St. Audoen’s lit up outside the bay window.

  The Gallaghers and their ilk were a species of Irish she hadn’t come across much. The McKenna family was decidedly downmarket and owed their connections to clannishness rather than birthright. She’d tried to go into Deeprath with an open mind, but it was hard not to be affected by wealth—especially the old blood, old money wealth that made a virtue of threadbare furniture and a casual elegance that meant their jeans and jumpers cost more than Sibéal had spent on her wedding dress.

  But once she’d stopped looking at the high coved ceilings and antique furniture of the castle and focused on the family themselves, she’d found her footing. Sibéal knew people. She had a knack for discerning the motives and emotions that most people kept locked away—often even from themselves. Her first partner had disliked a lot about her, but he’d admitted without grudge that Sibéal was the best officer he’d ever met at going to the heart of a story.

  And that’s what crimes were: stories. Of lust and love and anger and hate, of boredom and alcohol and principle.

  Well, here was a story unlike any she’d ever encountered in life. Lily Morgan, an orphaned American heiress, meets Irishman Cillian Gallagher in New York, and following a whirlwind romance, becomes Viscountess Gallagher. After twenty years of marriage and two children—including the all-important male heir—Lily Morgan Gallagher is a lovely, bubbly, generous woman who is equally at home entertaining her husband’s business partners in London or Paris as she is doing her marketing in the local village. The most critical thing said about her—from both twenty years ago and in the last two days—was that she flitted from project to project, not out of boredom, Sibéal judged, as much as an excess of curiosity and a desire to do everything.

  No obvious problems in the marriage (though she knew how difficult it could be for outsiders to crack a carefully constructed and agreed upon façade), and the family’s finances had been in excellent order. A fifteen-year-old daughter who’d been squabbling with her mother, but Sibéal was more inclined to be suspicious of daughters who didn’t. And a ten-year-old son who had realized only yesterday that some questions that should have been asked of him at the time had not been.

  The most difficult of all the Gallaghers to gauge was Nessa. Lady Nessa, as she could properly be called
, had been married once—Cullen had tracked down the information—to a landowner and MP in Kilkenny when she was thirty-six. He was thirty years older, they didn’t have children, and he’d died just three years after the wedding, leaving her to add his fortune to the family name she refused to relinquish.

  The only significant witness Sibéal had still to meet was Philip Grant, Kyla’s English husband. When reached by phone, he’d promised to meet her in Dublin tomorrow, then left a silky voiced apology on her voicemail while she was on the train, saying he’d actually gone down to Deeprath “to be with my wife in this difficult time.” If Grant thought she wouldn’t bother to run him down, he was sadly mistaken.

  Tomorrow, she’d assign DS Cullen to track down Cillian Gallagher’s former business interests and see if there might be anything of interest after all this time. But in her gut, Sibéal knew this was not a crime about money. Everything about Deeprath Castle shouted to her that the two deaths were a crime of great and terrible passion. The question was: what kind of passion?

  There was something else pressing on Sibéal, a tiny detail—the fact that the Deeprath Castle library had been locked up since the murders. Had opening it again released an atmosphere from the past, something to stir the echoes of time and place and lead her to a killer?

  Because that was what she was looking for. Just as she doubted this was a story of a robbery gone wrong, she didn’t believe it was a simple story of murder and suicide. Maybe she could not wholly discount the possibility that Lily Gallagher had killed her husband and then herself, but if so, then it had been done for a deep purpose. Or else it was double murder, plain and clear. Either way, she was going to solve it.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  December 1879

  Proposing to Jenny was easy. Facing down her father was an altogether different matter. Evan had always proudly proclaimed himself unaffected by issues of class and background—but when sitting across from a man in the house his family had built over the course of seven hundred years, a man of title and wealth and enormous family expectations, it took all Evan’s control not to let either his hands or his voice shake.