King of the Castle

by Heather Graham

  Mike was playing down below. It seemed that all the boys were wearing worn blue jackets, but she could pick Mike out in a second. His hair was a blonde that reflected even pale sunlight like gold. Her mother had always told her that her own hair had started out that way, then deepened to its darker chestnut hue.

  Kit smiled, as always a little awed when she watched her son. The ball the boys had been tossing rolled into the street, and rather than chase it, Mike stopped short on the curb and watched it lodge beneath a truck on the opposite side of the street. As she had expected, his blond head tilted up, and he stared toward the window.

  Mike was Kit’s one great source of pride. She had never managed to convince herself that he was anything less than a beautiful child. His eyes were neither green nor brown, nor even hazel. They were a truly unique color that seemed to match the gold of his hair, and they had a slight tilt to them. When he smiled, deep dimples showed in his cheeks.

  His hair was a little long, but she liked it that way. He was mischievous, but his disposition was sweet, and in things that really mattered—like not running out into the street—he was obedient.

  Kit threw open the window, returning her son’s smile and wave. “Hang on, guys!” she called. “I’ll get your ball!”

  She closed the window, left her second-floor apartment and ran quickly down the stairs. She smiled at the boys, rumpling Mike’s hair as she passed him, checked the crazy New York street and hurried to retrieve the ball from beneath the truck. She threw it back to the boys, and her maternal soul thrilled a little bit as Mike leaped high to catch it.

  He had the makings of a fine ball player, she thought.

  “Thanks, Mom!” He rewarded her effort with another dimpled smile.

  “Sure thing. But keep it out of the street, huh?”

  Mike nodded and turned back to his friends.

  Her son, she decided, also had the potential to grow into a heartbreaker. People—teachers, neighbors, other children—fell very easily for his golden smile.

  When her foot touched the first step, she heard a phone ringing. She paused a second, listening, then realized it was her own. She raced up the stairs, threw open the apartment door and hurried to the phone.

  For all her effort, the line was dead when she picked it up.

  Frustrated, Kit eyed her pack of cigarettes. She was trying to quit, but missing that call had irritated her, and with a sigh she knocked a cigarette from the pack and lit it. She exhaled a long plume of smoke.

  She stared at the cigarette, grimacing. She had never smoked in high school, when most of her friends had started. She hadn’t started smoking until she’d come back from Ireland.

  She’d taken it up because of the dreams. She’d never been quite able to shake them. The suave psychiatrist down on Park Avenue had told her that the dreams were natural—she’d lost her husband, she’d been alone in a strange land, and she’d been very young. They would stop, he assured her, in time.

  Maybe she hadn’t really explained the situation to him. Her parents had paid the man a fortune, but she’d never been able to tell him the whole truth. She’d never been able to tell him what had happened between her and Justin barely three months after her husband had died, nor had she said anything about her dreams, in which Michael had melted into Justin, who had donned the strange mask of the horned goat.

  The psychiatrist would probably have told her that she was crazy. At the least, he would have called her paranoid, especially if she’d told him that she was sure she’d been drugged. Finally she had stopped seeing him, since there didn’t seem to be any point.

  Kit started violently when the phone shrilled again. She grabbed it after the first ring. “Hello.”

  “Hi, sweetheart. This is your hardworking and brilliant agent.”

  “Robert! Well?”

  “How about lunch?”

  “Robert.” Kit tried to sound annoyed. “Just give me an answer. Did they say yes or no?”

  “It isn’t as simple as that, Kit. Lunch?”

  She sighed. “Only if I can bring Mike. School doesn’t start until next week.”

  “You know I love Mike, Kit, but see if you can’t get a sitter for a couple of hours. You’ve got some decisions to make.”

  A curious frown puckered her brow. Robert did care for Mike, and if the conversation was going to be a simple one, he wouldn’t have minded in the least if she brought her son along. At first she had thought that Robert was only trying to lure her into having lunch with him, but now it didn’t sound like that at all.

  “The Italian place on Madison—on the agency, Kit.”

  “Let me call you back, Robert.”

  Kit hung up, hesitated a minute, then called her across-the-hall neighbor. She frequently kept Christy’s son Tod, so Christy shouldn’t mind making an extra sandwich for Mike.

  She didn’t. When Kit got off the phone, she went to the window and threw it open. “Michael!”

  He looked up at her, shading his eyes with his hands. “I’ve got to see Robert for lunch. Be good for Tod’s mom, okay?”

  He nodded, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the serious business of the ball game.

  Kit called Robert, changed into a knit suit and locked up the apartment. She gave her son a kiss on the head, waved to the other kids, and started walking.

  Mike called her back. She paused and waited as he ran down the street to catch up with her.

  “What is it, Mike?”

  He hesitated, then shrugged, looking down at the ground.

  “Mike?”

  Hands in his pockets, shuffling his feet, he looked back up at her.

  “You’re not going to leave again, are you, Mom?”

  Something caught at her heart. Last May she had accepted an assignment in the Caribbean. Mike had been in school, so she had left him behind, in her mother’s care.

  He was an only child, and sensitive, and she knew that her leaving had hurt him.

  “No,” she said, softly but firmly. “I won’t leave you again, Dickens. I promise.”

  He smiled, accepted a hug with only a little squirming, and ran back to his friends.

  Kit had intended to take a taxi, but Mike’s question put her in a pensive mood. The day was pleasant, and before she knew it she was halfway to the restaurant—still fidgeting with her little Celtic cross as she walked. She kept walking and reached the restaurant only a few minutes beyond her appointment time. Robert Gruyere was standing by one of the checked-cloth-covered tables, waving her in the right direction.

  She hurried to him, accepted his kiss on her cheek and took the chair opposite him. “Okay, Robert, the suspense is killing me. Do I have a sale or not?”

  “White wine or red?”

  “Robert!”

  “White or red?”

  “White.”

  Robert signaled to the waiter and ordered a bottle of white wine. Kit fumed as she waited for the wine to be poured.

  “Robert, is this a celebration?”

  “That depends on you, Kit.”

  Robert had been Kit’s literary agent since she had come to New York City four years ago. She’d had nothing to go on except a degree and a desperation to succeed. Robert had been the youngest member of an old and established agency, and as the new kid on the block he had seen something in Kit. She hadn’t gotten rich, but she had managed to stay afloat and gain a certain reputation in her field, which was travel books.

  “What do you mean?” she snapped.

  “Heinze and Brintz have turned down the idea for the New York book, Kit.”

  She lowered her eyes and sipped her wine, trying hard not to show the extent of her disappointment. Heinze and Brintz was a new hardcover house, already drawing critical acclaim for the quality of their nonfiction. They had shown an interest in Kit’s work, and she had allowed herself to daydream that she could spend a year in the city working—without having to worry about time away from Mike.

  She also needed some advance mo
ney soon—from somewhere.

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that at first, Robert?” she asked, reaching into her bag for a cigarette.

  Robert flicked his lighter for her. “Because,” he said, “they do want you to do a book for them.”

  Kit inhaled, watching him suspiciously. “On what?”

  “On Ireland.”

  “Ireland!”

  Her dismay must have been obvious, because Robert made a disapproving sound. “Kit, I know your husband died in Ireland, but for heaven’s sake, that was eight years ago. And, Kit, you can’t afford to turn down this advance.”

  She tapped her cigarette distractedly. “What about Mike?” she asked in a tight voice.

  “If you’re so worried about him, take him with you.”

  “There’s school—”

  “Hire a tutor.”

  Kit fell silent. The waiter came by again. Robert suggested something, and Kit waved her hand in the air, barely aware of what he ordered for them.

  “Well?” he asked after the waiter had left.

  “I don’t know, Robert.”

  “How can you not know, Kit? Most writers would sell their souls for an opportunity like this. If you haven’t forgotten, publishing is a tough industry.”

  “I know.”

  “Look, Kit, I’m half convinced they’re fools to offer such a large advance on this kind of book, but they’ve hired a new managing editor, and she’s one of those fanatical Irish-Americans herself. She was impressed with your credits, and with the fact that your senior thesis was given such attention. She wants something not just on the country, but on the ancient times, the legends, the old customs, all that stuff. Talk to her, if nothing else.”

  Kit nodded. The waiter put her plate in front of her, and she automatically began eating, realizing only then that Robert had ordered calamari. And she hated squid—no matter what you called it.

  She set her fork down and began to play with a roll. Robert kept talking. She kept nodding.

  Eventually their plates were taken away, and they ordered coffee. Robert took out a pen and began luring her with the sums he wrote down on a napkin. Somehow she wound up with the pen herself, and the sums she wrote down continued to sound astronomical.

  “Kit.” Robert leaned across the table. “Kit, you don’t have to go anywhere near the town where your husband died.”

  “I know,” she murmured.

  He stared at her piercingly, and she flushed and lowered her lashes. He reached his hand across the table, his fingers curling comfortingly around hers.

  “Talk about it.”

  “What?” she said, startled.

  He leaned back, releasing her hand, watching her more gently now. “Tell me about it. Okay, I’ll start with what I know. You graduated from high school and married Michael McHennessy, a young man with a master’s in literature from Princeton. You went to Ireland for your honeymoon, and he died the day you arrived. Fell off the cliffs. Tragic, Kit, but no reason to hate a whole country.”

  “I don’t hate Ireland. I love it.”

  “Then…?”

  She shrugged.

  “Kit! Tell me what really happened. Why did you stay there so long afterward? What is it that has stayed with you so long?”

  “I…” She lifted her hands. “I—I don’t know!” That was a lie; she owed him some kind of an explanation. After all, he was working so hard for her. She couldn’t tell him the truth, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try to talk out some of the confusion. She sighed.

  “Michael grew up in an American orphanage,” she began, nervously lighting another cigarette. “He did have his birth certificate, though, and he knew he’d been born in Ireland, in a place called Shallywae, on the southwestern coast. He wanted to go back.” She smiled, remembering those first hours when she’d been such a radiant bride. “He teased me all the way out. He could feign a marvelous brogue, and he spent the drive talking about leprechauns and banshees and druids.” Her smile faded, her voice faltered, and she was suddenly looking at Robert a little desperately, as if he could give her some kind of explanation. “Michael had studied all the ancient writing in Gaelic. I remember that when we reached the cottage he was fooling around, teasing me. He was talking about a time before Christianity when the people worshipped a fertility god from the sea. They called him Bal, and he was supposed to have been a man with a goat’s head. Michael told me that every year they would offer up a virgin to Bal and—”

  “She was sacrificed?”

  Kit flushed slightly, sadly, remembering Michael’s twinkling eyes when he’d described the rite. “Not at first. You see, they’d gather on All Hallows’ Eve, and the high priest would take the virgin.”

  “Aha! And then she wouldn’t be a virgin anymore.”

  “It’s not funny, Robert.”

  “Oh, my God, Kit! We’re talking about centuries ago!”

  Kit ignored him. “The girl was supposed to bear a son to be the new ‘god.’ Then she was sacrificed.”

  “Kit, what does this have to do with Michael? You told me that he fell off a cliff.”

  “I know.” Kit stubbed out her cigarette and picked up her wineglass. “But you see, the same night that Michael died, a girl named Mary Browne—a girl with an illegitimate, newborn baby boy—was murdered.”

  “And you think the two deaths were connected?”

  “Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know! I never did understand what happened. They all came out for Michael’s funeral. Even the poor murdered girl’s mother. And she kept muttering about how they belonged to the land in death. I don’t know. Maybe I was just too young and impressionable. My parents were in Europe then, too, and I didn’t know how to reach them. I had to leave everything up to Justin O’Niall, and that was strange, too, because I first met him in the middle of the night when I was wandering around looking for—”

  “Justin O’Niall? The Justin O’Niall? You know him?”

  Kit looked at Robert with a frown. “‘The’?”

  “The architect!” Robert said impatiently.

  “Well, yes, he’s an architect.”

  “The one marrying the ‘Love Buns’ heiress.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know him?” Robert’s voice squeaked a bit.

  “Yes, well I did,” Kit said uneasily. “Is he that famous?”

  “Right next to Frank Lloyd Wright. He’s brilliant! He was here about three years ago. My God, you could have introduced me to him! Shallywae, yes! I had heard that he came from some little village! That he’s the hereditary lord or something like that.”

  “Oh, yes, he’s quite the lord,” Kit said with a surprising trace of bitterness. Robert arched a curious brow. Kit lowered her head; she wasn’t about to tell him the whole truth.

  “It’s like going back hundreds of years, Robert,” she murmured. “The people…they go by his wishes. That night, Michael was in the living room, and suddenly he was gone. He must have—I think he saw or heard the murderer. He must have run out quickly. He didn’t take his coat or anything. I came back in from the kitchen, and he was gone. I ran out to the cliff looking for him, and I stumbled into a man. Justin O’Niall. I remember that there was music from the glen, and bonfires, and Justin was there, listening, I guess. And I was lost and alone and afraid, so he said that he’d help me find my husband and he—he was with me when I did. I found Michael. I saw him down below, and I scrambled down all those rocks and…”

  “And then?”

  She shook her head, swallowing. “He whispered something to me, and then he died.”

  “What did he whisper?”

  “Kayla.”

  “Kayla?” Robert repeated. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. It isn’t Gaelic, so I’ve never been able to discover what it means. Anyway—” she straightened in her chair, and her voice hardened “—I think I passed out. I woke up at Justin O’Niall’s castle—”

  “You’ve been in the castle?”

  Kit he
sitated, looking wryly at Robert. Nothing that she had written had impressed him this much.

  “Yes, I’ve been in his castle. He took me with him—he probably had nothing else to do with an unconscious woman. He called in the constable, his housekeeper looked after me, and he made the arrangements for the funeral.”

  “My goodness,” Robert murmured, fingering his wineglass. He leaned forward. “So go on!”

  “There’s nothing else,” Kit said, and she could have bitten her tongue. She sounded so defensive.

  “You stayed, though, didn’t you?”

  She lifted a hand vaguely. “I, uh, yes, for a while. I stayed in the cottage for about three months.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Then I came home. I took care of Michael. I went back to college. I began writing. I moved to New York. I started a new life.”

  Robert wagged a finger at her. “Aha!”

  “Aha what?”

  “Aha, there’s simply no reason in the world to avoid a whole country because of what happened eight years ago. It would probably be good for you to go back. You’re twenty-six now, not eighteen. You’re neither naive nor impressionable. If you do go back to your little village, you can laugh at the past.”

  “Really?” Kit sipped her wine.

  “Really. And if you should run into your old friend Justin O’Niall, you could maybe suggest that he write a book.”

  “And hire you for his agent, I assume?”

  “You wound me, Kit.”

  She grinned. “I’m not going to run into him.”

  “But you are going to go. You need the money.”

  Kit took out a pen and idly wrote down figures on her napkin. She really could use the money. In fact, that was an understatement.

  “I’ll do it—if I can take Mike.”

  “Great!” Robert called for the check. While he pulled out his credit card, Kit glanced down at the napkin where she had been doodling. Kayla.

  A shiver ran along her backbone.

  Kayla. The word Michael had murmured before he had died. What did it mean? Probably nothing. He had probably been incapable of real speech….

  Robert stood, pulling back her chair for her. He passed her a business card. “Call your new editor today. Her name is Kelly O’Hare.”