“How did we get here, Bridie?” she asked. “How did we allow our estrangement to happen?”
“Because we are both stubborn,” Bridie replied.
“We are both fools!” Kitty exclaimed. “We love JP equally, and yet we allowed that love to destroy the love we had for each other. I feel sick to the stomach when I think of what we have lost.” Kitty’s eyes brimmed with tears.
“You did what you believed was right, Kitty. You looked after my son, and for that I thank you. You raised him well. He’s a fine lad.”
“But he’s your son, and he must know,” said Kitty. “I’m going to tell him the truth, Bridie. I’m going to tell him that you didn’t want to give him up, but you had to. I’ll tell him that you came back to get him, but I stood in your way. I will tell him what I should have told him long ago.”
“No, you mustn’t, Kitty. Don’t destroy his happiness, and don’t give him reason to resent you.”
“He has a right to know who his mother is,” Kitty insisted.
Bridie’s face creased into a frown, and she suddenly looked scared. “I don’t want him to see me like this, Kitty. I don’t want him to meet his mother on her deathbed.”
At the mention of death Kitty stood up and went to the window. She didn’t know how to tell Bridie that she had a daughter too, but she knew she had to and she was prepared to face the consequences. She gazed out onto the gardens and searched for guidance there in the place where she had grown up. “Bridie,” she began. “I need to tell you something else.” She turned around and looked at the small woman in the bed who had once been so full of mischief and vitality. “You don’t only have a son; you have a daughter too.”
Bridie stared at Kitty, confused. “What do you mean, I have a daughter? I think I’d know about it if I did.”
“The twin you believed died at birth was in fact alive. She was taken from you and adopted by an American couple.” Kitty wrung her hands. “Oh Bridie, forgive me. I should have told you earlier.”
Bridie pushed herself up into sitting position. She didn’t take her eyes off Kitty. Her confusion had turned to fear. “My little girl is not dead?” She looked so distraught that Kitty hurried to her side and sat on the bed to hold her.
“Your little girl grew up to be a beautiful young woman, Bridie.”
“My baby didn’t die? How is that possible? I saw her. I saw her and she was blue!” Bridie was trembling now.
“She wasn’t breathing, but she wasn’t dead.”
“In the name of God, how could anyone do that?” Bridie said with a gasp, sobbing onto Kitty’s breast. “How could anyone steal a baby straight from her mother’s womb?” Kitty thought of Grace Rowan-Hampton, and it was as if Bridie read her mind. She pushed Kitty away as it suddenly dawned on her who was behind such an appalling act. There could only be one person. There had always only ever been one person, whose manipulative fingers had repeatedly tied her life in knots. “Grace,” she said, wide-eyed and alert. “It was Grace, wasn’t it?” Kitty nodded, stunned that Bridie had instantly thought of her. “I should have known. I should never have trusted her. She was only ever self-serving, right from the beginning. But where is my daughter now, Kitty? What is her name? Is she happy?”
“You already know your daughter, Bridie. She’s Martha.”
Bridie put a hand to her mouth and gasped loudly. “Martha Wallace? My friend Martha?”
“Your friend Martha,” Kitty replied. “She came to Ballinakelly in search of you, but because Grace had put her own name on her birth certificate in order to fetch a greater price, she found Grace instead. That is when I found out. When Grace came to tell me. She lied to Martha and told her that her mother had died giving birth to her.”
“Martha thinks I’m dead? Oh, that’s dreadful!”
“I’m so sorry, Bridie. I collaborated to save JP from discovering the truth. I lied to you too to save my own skin, and I regret it bitterly. I’m as guilty as she is.”
“Of course, that’s why Martha and JP could never marry,” said Bridie, struggling in her agitation to put the pieces together. “Does she know? She never even mentioned that she was adopted. We talked about everything, but she never told me that.”
“And I assume that you never told her that you had given birth to two babies who were taken from you,” said Kitty sensibly.
“No, it’s true. I didn’t. Neither one of us told the other the truth, which would have united us as mother and daughter.”
“I think Martha should know that you’re her mother.”
Bridie sighed and lay back against the cushions and thought of Martha, the delightful girl who had brought her companionship and joy. “I could never have asked for a more wonderful daughter,” she said, suddenly dizzy with happiness. “She and I are so alike, you know, Kitty. We think the same and find the same things funny. We are like two peas in a pod, we are. To think we never knew . . .”
“And she’s joined the convent where you gave birth to her,” Kitty reminded her.
“Indeed she has. What a strange twist of Fate.” Bridie took Kitty’s hand. “Thank you, Kitty. I have lived my whole life believing my daughter dead, and now you have told me that she didn’t die but enjoyed a good life in America. I’m grateful that she grew up in a happy place.” Bridie wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. “I’m glad that she has parents who love her.”
Kitty had not expected Bridie to react like this. She had expected to be shouted at and banished from the castle. She had not expected understanding. She was humbled. “I should never have kept secrets from you or JP,” she said. “We should all have been open with each other.”
“Sometimes the truth is not the wisest path, Kitty; at least, there is a time for it. I forgive you. After all, if you had told Martha I was her mother, you would have had to tell JP. What a tangle of secrets and lies we’ve created.” Her face hardened as she considered the woman who, like a beautiful, beguiling spider, had spun all the lies. “But I will never forgive Grace,” she said. “Not in this world or the next.”
“I think you should meet JP and Martha together,” Kitty suggested. “There is a time for truth and it is now. I will tell them and bring them to you.”
Bridie shook her head and smiled beatifically. “I don’t want them to see me like this, Kitty, a woman with one foot in the grave. I want Martha to remember me the way I was when she stayed here. I don’t want her to remember a dying woman. And I don’t want JP to meet his mother who he believed dead, only then to lose her. Perhaps it’s selfish of me, but I don’t think I could take it, Kitty, the awkwardness of it. JP doesn’t know me, after all. Better that he holds on to the image he already has of me. An angel in Heaven perhaps. I’ll write them each a letter explaining everything, and you can deliver them when I’m gone.”
“Don’t say that,” said Kitty, appalled. “You’re not going to go.”
“Kitty Deverill, since when have you been afraid of death? Weren’t you the one who told me that there is no such thing?”
“But I’ve just found you again and now I’m going to lose you.” Kitty began to cry. “Oh, please don’t leave me, Bridie.”
“Had I not been dying you would never have come to see me. I’m glad I’m dying because I’ve not only found my old friend, but I’ve found my daughter too.” Bridie’s eyes glistened with contentment. “Do you remember when we were little girls here at Castle Deverill . . . ,” she began, and Kitty reminisced with her, for how could she ever forget those blissful, innocent days of their youth?
WHEN MICHAEL HEARD from Bridie what Kitty had told her he was filled with a violent and uncontrollable rage. He downed half a bottle of whiskey and then drove to Grace’s manor house, chewing on his lover’s betrayal as the car swerved dangerously in the darkening road.
He banged on the front door and shouted her name. At length a butler opened it, but Michael didn’t wait to be invited in. He pushed past the man who had on so many previous occasions welcomed him in without h
esitation and marched across the hall and down the corridor toward the drawing room, from where he heard the sound of sedate voices.
Grace looked up in alarm from the sofa when Michael appeared in the doorframe. He looked terrifying with his wild black hair and his angry black eyes. He was so tall and broad and his energy so intense that he seemed to fill the entire room and Grace was afraid. The butler caught up with him and tried to persuade him to wait in the hall. “Lady Rowan-Hampton is with guests,” he exclaimed in exasperation. But Michael wasn’t listening. He was staring at Grace, and she was wilting beneath his gaze.
“What the devil is this all about?” Sir Ronald demanded. The portly old gentleman was standing in front of the fireplace dressed in a green velvet dinner jacket and embroidered slippers, holding a crystal glass half full of whiskey. His face had flushed pink with indignation that this uncouth man was interrupting his dinner party, but he looked incongruous there in his finery, like a fat parrot squawking at a giant eagle. The two couples who had been invited to dinner glanced at each other in shock and embarrassment. There they were enjoying a dignified drink before dinner and now, without any warning, a drunken madman had burst into the drawing room insisting on seeing Grace. If this had happened thirty years before they would have feared for their lives; as it was they feared for Grace’s honor as the very coarse man began to launch a persuasive attack on her character.
“How well do you know your wife?” Michael asked Sir Ronald.
“I think you should leave,” said Sir Ronald bravely. The other two men stood up and rallied beside their host, albeit a little nervously.
“Oh, I’ll leave, but not till I’m done.” Michael staggered to the tray of drinks, which had been placed on one of the tables, and helped himself to a glass of whiskey from a crystal decanter. He downed it in one and poured another.
“Michael . . . ,” Grace began, but she recognized the deep color of his face and the cruel twist to his mouth and knew that trying to appease him would be futile: she was lost.
“Did you know that your Anglo-Irish, Protestant wife fought on our side during the War of Independence? In fact, it was she who lured Colonel Manley to that farmhouse on the Dunashee Road so that we could kill him. We couldn’t have done it without her. Did she tell you that?”
“What nonsense,” Sir Ronald scoffed.
“Or what about her conversion to Catholicism?” Sir Ronald made a huffing sound. “She never told you that, either? I didn’t think so. She’s a dark horse, your wife. But even I didn’t know how much of a dark horse she was.”
“Get out!” Sir Ronald shouted, losing all temper. His face swelled like a ripe tomato. “Call the Garda!” he bellowed to his butler. “Goddamn it!”
“Michael, please. . . ,” Grace whispered, but Michael ignored her.
He narrowed his eyes and spat out the words with vitriol. The three men stepped back as Michael edged toward them. “But to steal a baby barely out of her mother’s womb and sell her to an American couple, well, that’s something I would never have believed her capable of.” He turned on Grace and like a great bear rose to his full height. The two female guests blanched. “But you did that, didn’t you, Grace? You told Bridie her daughter was dead, and she’s lived her whole life mourning her child.” Michael was swaying now, pointing shakily with his finger and glaring at Grace with burning eyes. “Did they name a chapel after you at the convent? Did they pay you handsomely? What did you get out of the deal? Oh, sorry, I forgot an important piece of the puzzle. You were sleeping with Lord Deverill, weren’t you? You couldn’t bear it that he had seduced my sister and impregnated her. So you wanted those babies out of the way, and you wanted my sister out of the way too. As far away from your lover as was possible. Was America far enough?” The two female guests gasped and turned to Grace with their mouths agape like a pair of trout. “How could you do it, Grace? How could you do it and live with yourself? Bridie trusted you. She thought you were her friend. But when her daughter came looking for her mother you told her that her mother was dead! Why? Because you didn’t want your dirty little secret exposed.”
“This is preposterous!” Sir Ronald spluttered weakly. But he glanced uncertainly at Grace. “How dare you insult my wife like this?”
Michael laughed maliciously. “She won’t deny it. She can’t. Kitty Deverill has told us the whole story. Yes, Kitty Deverill betrayed you, Grace, like you betrayed her all those years ago, many times. We betrayed her together. For sure I’m going to Hell, but when I go I’m taking you with me.”
Sir Ronald turned to his wife. “Grace?” he said. “What do you say to this man?”
Grace hung her head. Michael could see that the glass she held in her hand was trembling. “Grace? This isn’t true. Tell me this isn’t true.” But Sir Ronald stared helplessly at his wife and from the bewildered look on his face it was plain that he now doubted the woman he thought he knew.
Michael heard the footsteps approaching up the corridor. A moment later a pair of Gardai entered the room. He put up his hands and laughed as he tossed Grace a final glance. “She’s a good fuck, I will give her that.”
WHEN BRIDIE LEFT the world she did so in peace. Leopoldo sat on the chair and held her hand while her mother held the other, begging God in mumbled prayers to forgive her daughter’s sins and open wide the gates of Heaven. Michael, Sean and Rosetta stood by her bed and at length the fire burned out in the grate and the light faded from Bridie’s eyes. She knew that Kitty was right; she was going to see Cesare, her father and her nanna, so there was nothing to be afraid of: they would show her the way home.
There was no resistance when she left, just an easy drifting into the next world. As she rose out of her physical body she felt as if she was a breeze lightly slipping out of the window into the night, a velvet night, and she marveled at how very bright the stars were. How very bright the moon was, too, shining over Castle Deverill as it had done the night of the Deverill Summer Ball. Bridie only remembered the love. As she made her final journey she suddenly realized that that was what it had all been about: love. How very foolish of her not to have known.
MARTHA RECEIVED BRIDIE’S letter in the convent. She sat down in a shady corner of the courtyard and read it.
My dear Martha,
There is no easy way to tell you that I am dying. But you more than most will understand that my heart is full of joy because I am going to see the face of God. Before I die, there is something I want to share with you. When I was a young maid working at Castle Deverill, I had a brief affair of the heart with Kitty’s father, who was then Mr. Deverill. I loved him, and I believed he loved me. I got pregnant and was sent to Dublin to have my child in the convent where you are now working toward becoming a nun. I gave birth to not one but two babies. My son survived, but my daughter, they told me, had died. They took her away before I could press my lips to her brow and say a prayer for her poor soul. I was sent to America to make a new life. Later my brother Michael took my son from the nuns by devious means and put him on the doorstep of the Hunting Lodge so that Kitty would raise him as her own. This Kitty did, and I bless her from the bottom of my heart for her kindness. Kitty called him Jack Patrick (JP), and later her father recognized him as his son. My daughter, I always believed, was buried in the gardens of the convent. Four years later I came back to Ireland for my son. When I was at the convent I asked to know where my daughter had been buried. There wasn’t a headstone, they told me, for babies not baptized were buried in unmarked graves. I went to Ballinakelly and saw my son. I realized that he was happy where he was. With a grieving heart I returned to America and tried to forget him. But I never did, and I never forgot my daughter either. I prayed for her soul, and I suffered daily because of the two children I had brought into the world yet lost so cruelly.
The reason I tell you this, Martha, is because I have discovered, to my joy, that you are my daughter, the child I thought was dead—now a beautiful young woman. I thank God that we had some time together,
even though we didn’t know we were so closely related. I am happy to know that you have found your vocation and that it fulfills you so. Your grandmother is a devout woman who cherishes her faith, as her mother, your great-grandmother, did before her. You must have inherited that from them.
I don’t want you to see me sick. I want you to remember me as I was. I want you to remember the laughter and the love, because I loved you then and I love you now, and I didn’t know why, at the time, you penetrated my heart, but now I do. We have come a long way, the two of us, and we have God to thank for allowing our paths to cross.
I have asked Kitty to give you this letter after I am gone and the solicitor’s letter, because I have provided for you in my will. You have my blessing to donate it to the convent.
Live well, Martha. Be strong, bold, fearless and full of love.
Your mother, Bridie
Martha stared at the letter until her vision clouded with tears and the words became black smudges on the paper. She pressed the page to her lips and closed her eyes.
JP READ THE letter Bridie had written for him with a strange detachment, as if he were reading something meant for someone else. Bridie told him her story and explained why Kitty had kept her identity secret all those years. He had always believed that his mother was dead, but he was desperately sad that he had had the opportunity to know her and missed it. What hit him like a bolt between the eyes, however, was the solicitor’s letter that informed him of his inheritance. He read it again just to make sure. Then he telephoned Kitty.
“The Countess has left me Castle Deverill,” he said, his voice quivering. Kitty had to sit down. “Are you there, Kitty?”
“I’m here,” she replied quietly.
“And a fortune. Kitty, she’s left me a fortune!”
Kitty’s heart was thumping so hard she could barely hear herself think. If Bridie had left JP the castle, that meant that the moment he moved in the Deverill heirs would be set free because his wife, Alana, was an O’Leary. “I can’t believe it,” she said with a gasp, but JP wasn’t thinking of the poor Deverill spirits, he was thinking of his father and the joy it would bring him to see his beloved Castle Deverill restored to his family.
The Secret of the Irish Castle Page 38