Lovers: The Irish Castle

by Lila Dubois

  “I do, too. Twice I’ve almost made the same mistake she did.”

  He searched her face. “You’re saying…”

  “I’m saying that I’m falling in love with you. I didn’t expect this, and I’m scared to trust these feelings, but what we have is too special not to give it a chance. In a way, I was about to do what the ghost woman did—throw away something special and beautiful.”

  “I agree that what we have is special, but there’s more to it than that.”

  “There is?”

  “Did you hear a voice last night? Before the second ghost showed up?”

  Mary thought back. “I did, but it was just one word.”

  “She was talking. Talking to you.”

  “I heard it, but didn’t understand.”

  “The ghost said iníon. The ghost called you iníon.”

  Mary shook her head. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Iníon means ‘daughter’ in Irish. The ghost called you ‘daughter.’”

  Mary felt her mouth drop open. She met Michael’s gaze, expecting him to laugh and tell her he was kidding, but he was serious.

  “So that ghost was…”

  “Your great, great, great, many greats later, grandmother. Maybe. Or maybe great, great aunt. Either way, I’m guessing she’s family.”

  Mary shook her head. Somehow this information was more alarming than the ghost had been.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not? The Callahans have been in the glen as long as anyone can remember. The Callahans, the Donnovans and a few others are names as old or older than Glenncailty.”

  Mary shook her head. It felt like Chicago and her life there were worlds away from this pretty, haunted place.

  “So she was trying to protect me from making the same mistake she had.”

  “I think so. Though to be fair, I doubt that if you went back to Chicago you’d end up imprisoned and tortured by a power-mad Englishman.”

  “I’d hope not, but you never know…”

  They sat silently for a moment.

  Mary thought of the voices she’d heard coming from behind the door to the west wing. She had an uneasy feeling that there were more sad stories lingering in the castle. She shivered and Michael squeezed her shoulders.

  “What does it say that a ghost had to warn you not to let such a fine man get away?” He wiggled his eyebrows and Mary laughed, glad for a light moment. Then his face grew serious. “Welcome home, Mary Callahan. It seems Glenncailty has been waiting for you.”

  Mary absorbed that, taking a deep breath. For the first time, hearing “welcome home” didn’t make her defensive, didn’t inspire her to counter that Chicago was home, not Glenncailty. She was part of this place, and it was part of her—she felt that, believed that, now more than ever. What that meant for her future she didn’t know.

  “What happens now?” she asked quietly.

  Michael put down his cup of tea. His eyes were shadowed from lack of sleep, and she could tell he was tired—same as she was. He took her hand, shifting on the couch to face her. In the early morning light, his hair was a gold halo around him, his eyes a clear green. “I’ve never met a woman I wanted the way I want you. I’ve never been so drawn to someone as I am to you, and I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

  Warmth filled her and she exhaled, closing her eyes as happiness spread through her.

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” she admitted. “Even when I thought that it was crazy, that we were a mistake.”

  “I didn’t want to scare you. It seems mad to tell a woman you’ve only just met that you’re falling in love with her.”

  “I feel the same about you.” Mary laced her fingers with his. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to make it work, but I want to be with you. You make me feel…beautiful and special.”

  “You are both those things, and more, to me.”

  As the sun rose higher, flooding the room with light, Michael cupped her head, drawing her to him for a slow, soft kiss.

  They rested their foreheads together. “Are we really going to do this?” she asked, more scared now than she’d been when faced with the ghosts.

  “Yes. We’ll stay here tonight, and then we’ll go to Dublin. I want to show you the city, and when it’s time for you to go home, I’ll take vacation and go with you. I’d like to meet your grandparents.”

  “And after that?”

  “As Yeats says, ‘Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.’”

  Her lips twitched in a smile. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that after that we’ll live, pretty Mary, we’ll live and be happy.”

  Morning light bathed the gray stones of Glenncailty, pushing back the shadows, and the ghosts, with the clean light of day.

  Chapter 11

  Happiness was easier than she’d imaged it could be. Mary Callahan had always assumed that being happy required constant maintenance, as if it were a car. But it turned out that all she needed to be happy, to be truly happy, was to let go, and let herself fall in love.

  Two weeks after their encounter with the ghosts, Mary knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she loved Michael Baker. It wasn’t lust or infatuation. It was love. She’d essentially moved into his house in Dublin, and had already pushed back her return ticket twice. Her grandparents had decided to come to Ireland sooner than Mary had imagined. They’d be here next week. She needed to change her plane ticket again, and was tentatively planning that she and Michael would take the same flight back to Chicago as her grandparents. Mary wanted a turn at playing tour guide, and couldn’t wait to show Michael her city.

  She and Michael were still learning about one another, but the more she knew, the more she fell in love. Their biggest fight to date had been when she discovered he torrented American and Canadian TV shows. After a blistering lecture about how illegal downloads screwed over people who depended on residuals, they’d compromised with spoofing the IP address on his laptop so they could access her US Netflix and HBO GO account. Not exactly legal, but better.

  She was sure there would be other fights, real fights, but was also sure they’d overcome any difficulty.

  There were two things that worried her. When the fear that this was all too good to be true caught up with her, she focused on these things—a pair of dark spots in an otherwise blissful period.

  One of which she intended to take care of today.

  “You alright, pretty Mary?” Michael took his hand off the gearstick and touched her cheek.

  Shifting in the passenger seat, she faced him. The rolling green hills on either side of the country road were the same ones she’d seen when she first came to Glenncailty. She vividly remembered how lonely she’d felt that day.

  “I’m okay.”

  “We can do this later.”

  “No, it’s time. And it’s the last item on my list.”

  Of all the places her grandparents had told her to come and visit, this was the one that scared her, and this was the one she hadn’t been able to face until now. They turned off the road and wound down into Glenncailty. Skirting Cailtytown, they headed into the farmland, toward the parish church.

  The small stone chapel, and the even smaller parking area, were deserted. Michael got out first and came around the car, helping her out. She smoothed the front of her black skirt, and then took the two small bouquets out of the bag from the florist. One bunch was of white lilies and September flowers, the other of white roses and ivy.

  Mary hooked her arm through Michael’s, glad of his presence. She’d considered coming alone, but if he was going to be part of her future, she wanted him here with her when she faced her past.

  They followed the path along the side of the church to the small iron gate in the wall around the graveyard. This cemetery wasn’t as old as some they’d seen in Kells, but it wasn’t like the modern flat park-like places Mary was used to either. Assorted two-feet-high crosses or blocks, most carved with Celtic patter
ns, marked the graves. Before they came, Michael had asked his mother where they’d find the graves they were looking for. Mary followed his lead, her footsteps slowing the deeper into the cemetery they went. When Michael stopped, she closed her eyes, taking a moment for composing herself before she looked at her parents’ final resting place.

  They shared a single cross. It was larger than the others, four feet high, with the distinctive Celtic ring around the intersection. In the center space was a carved inscription.

  Andrew John Callahan, beloved husband, son and father

  Siobhan Mary Callahan, beloved wife, daughter and mother

  Mary knelt, her fingers shaking as she laid the bouquets at the base of the cross. Her parents had been dead 28 years, and this was the first time she’d visited their grave. Even as a child she hadn’t come. Her grandmother said she’d been terribly upset at the funeral Mass and friends had taken her home immediately after, sparing the child the sight of the coffins being lowered into the ground and the graves being filled.

  Mary hadn’t wanted to come here. She would never admit this out loud, but part of her felt that if she never saw the place where their bodies lay, her parents might never really be lost to her. She knew they were dead, had always known that, but seeing the stone bearing their names made it real in a way she’d been avoiding.

  Michael stepped back, leaving her alone with them. Mary fussed with the flowers, then traced their names with her fingers.

  She didn’t know what to say, or if she should say anything at all. She couldn’t remember speaking with them when they were alive, and so it felt strange to do so after death. Mary bowed her head and let the tears spill down her cheeks, speaking not with words but with her heart. She grieved for them and all the years they’d lost. She grieved for her grandparents, who’d had to face not only the loss of their son and his wife, but shoulder the responsibility of raising a child. She grieved for Cailtytown, the little community her parents had been so much a part of, and which had been rocked by their deaths in a way Mary had never imagined. And she grieved for herself, that she’d never known these amazing people, that she hadn’t had the opportunity to live the life they might have imagined for her. She didn’t regret anything, and couldn’t imagine having grown up any other way, but still she grieved.

  When the tears were done, she rose to her feet. Michael was there, his hands warm and steady. “Come here.”

  She curled against his chest, accepting the comfort he offered. They stood there until the emptiness inside Mary eased, giving way to a sort of calm acceptance.

  “Thank you.” She stepped back and touched his cheek. “Thank you for coming with me. Thank you for helping me connect the pieces of my life together. Without you I’m not sure I ever would have really understood where I came from, and who my parents were.”

  He turned his head and kissed her wrist. “I’m glad you came back. I know now that I’ve been waiting for you.” He took her hands in both of his, squeezing them gently. “There’s something I want to say. I’ve been waiting for the right time, and this feels like it.”

  Mary smiled, hope welling up inside her.

  “I love you, Mary Callahan. I love you deeply and forever. I didn’t know what love was until I met you, and I promise you I will spend the rest of my life making you happy.”

  Joy flooded her and Mary let out a happy little laugh. “I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. Visiting my parents and hearing that you love me are the two things I’ve wanted.”

  “Then know that I love you, and will until my last breath.”

  “And I love you. Before I met you I was lost, and I was alone—more than I was willing to admit, even to myself. But now I have you, and I know it doesn’t matter where we live—here or Chicago or Dublin or the moon—because home isn’t a place. It’s a person. You’re my home.”

  They wrapped their arms around each other, holding tight to the future they’d been lucky enough to find in one another. Michael made a silent vow to Mary’s parents that he would do everything in his power to make her happy.

  Together they left the graveyard, the white flowers of mourning at the base of the cross catching the rays of the sun. If there were ghosts there, silent figures watching the lovers take the first steps into a new life, they were unseen. And when the car pulled away, headed for the world of the living, the figures in the graveyard melted into rays of sunlight, departing at last.

  Epilogue

  Sorcha dropped into her desk chair. Her hands were shaking. Clenching them into fists, she stared at the phone, wondering what she should do. This wasn’t the first time one of Glenncailty’s guests had seen a ghost, and after what had happened to her friend and roommate, Caera, Sorcha was starting to worry that the castle wasn’t safe.

  Someone had warned her—tried to warn her—two years ago when the castle first opened, but she hadn’t listed. Now she was afraid she might have put people at risk by ignoring that warning. Elizabeth, the hotel manager, needed to know about this latest incident, as did Seamus, the owner. But before she explained her fears to them, she needed to understand exactly how great the danger was. As far as she knew, the ghosts had only harmed one person, but it seemed that last night Mary Callahan and Michael Baker had come close.

  There was a knock at the door. “Sorcha? We need you, I can’t find a reservation.”

  Rising from her chair, Sorcha put her best greet-the-guests smile on and followed Kristina to the front desk, making a mental note to come back to the problem of the ghosts.

  Before she did anything, she had to talk to Sean Donnovan.

  The End

  Preview the next book

  Ghosts

  The Irish Castle

  The Glenncailty Ghosts, Book 3

  Lila Dubois

  Prologue

  Ten Years Earlier

  He was milking with his father when the call came. His mother rushed out to the milking parlor, phone in hand. Séan didn’t see her, but felt his father stiffen beside him. He looked up and knew by his mother’s expression that something was wrong.

  He joined the search party, leaving his father to finish the dawn milking. A girl from the village had gone missing at Glenncailty Castle. She and some friends had decided to spend the night in Finn’s stable, one of the few relatively intact buildings on the deserted castle grounds, as a daring celebration of the end of their exams. When her friends woke the next morning, the girl was gone.

  Twenty men made up the search party. At any other time they would have been a boisterous bunch, talking and telling tales, since everyone knew each other. Cailtytown village was small and close-knit. It was that closeness that kept faces somber and voices hushed as small groups were assigned search quadrants. The girl wasn’t from Cailtytown, but a larger town ten kilometers away, and yet everyone there feared for her as if she was their own. They scoured the grounds all day.

  Séan tramped through waist-high weeds as they checked the outbuildings. The main building—the castle—was really three buildings, connected by covered hallways, and had seen many masters, and many uses. The grounds showed that with outbuildings, barns, mews and even a church in architectural styles spanning hundreds of years. By dusk there was nowhere else to look but the castle itself. The search party had dwindled to a few as men headed home to tend to their livelihoods, shaking their heads as they climbed into cars.

  There was little hope of finding her alive.

  Glenncailty Castle was in the process of falling to disrepair, with stones tumbled from their moorings at the corners of the buildings and upper windows broken or missing. All the past misfortunes associated with it seemed to hover around the massive gray structure like a dreary fog. Séan and a handful of others entered through a broken window on the first floor—the same broken window they assumed the girl had used. The foyer had a black and white stone floor set in a check pattern, though the colors were muted by dirt and dust. In front of him, a grand staircase led up to the second floor. The stai
rs weren’t original—they were wood with beautifully carved rails and intricate details on the posts. They must have been from one of the castle’s many renovations.

  They found her on the first floor of the west wing, which was in the worst shape of the three. A hole in the floor above and the tumble of rotted wood that blanketed her broken body told the story of her death. They’d pulled the boards off her, hoping by some miracle she’d survived.

  There was no miracle. The bright young woman was gone, now nothing more than a twisted mess of bone and skin, her eyes open, forever staring at the stone walls.

  When the others had taken her body away, Séan stayed, using hammer and nails and scraps of wood to board up any entrance, hoping to stop anyone else from paying a dear price for their curiosity. When the first floor was secure, Séan tapped the hammer against his other hand and looked up at the stairs to the second floor. Though he doubted that anyone would climb the outside of the building to enter through one of the broken windows there, he mounted the steps, planning to close up what he could.

  The air grew colder as he mounted the steps, and he could almost see his breath. The stairs under his feet were silent, without a squeak to betray their age.

  He circled the second floor of the main building first, boarding up three of the windows. Most of the second floor was taken up with what he assumed was once a ballroom. There was a third floor, but the steps up to it were rotted away. He went back to the ground floor and the covered hall to the two-story east wing. The second floor there was in good shape, with all the windows already boarded up from the inside. Finally he crossed over into the west wing. They’d already done what they could with the first floor, though Séan had left one window uncovered to give himself a way out, since all the doors were chained closed or too old to open. He tried and failed not to look at the spot where the girl’s body had been.