“I must telephone Papa,” he said.
“He will be as happy as I am,” said Kitty, putting down the telephone. Poor Leopoldo, she thought. This must have come as a terrible shock.
LEOPOLDO WAS FURIOUS. He had always believed the castle would be his. Sean tried to explain that his mother had left him an enormous amount of money. “But it’s in a trust!” Leopoldo cried. “I have to ask you and Michael before I can have any of it. How am I going to have fun in London if I have to ask you for money all the time?” he asked.
“Perhaps you’ll just have to have less fun,” said Sean reasonably. Rosetta watched Leopoldo storm out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Bridie hadn’t been so oblivious, after all, she thought with a smile.
“Do you know, I never really liked this castle anyway,” she said. “I dream of a little house by the sea, just for us and the children.”
“Then you shall have it,” Sean told her, taking her hand. “The sooner the better.”
BRIDIE WAS BURIED in the churchyard beside her husband. It was the last golden day of autumn, before the winter gales would rob the trees of their leaves and the icy winds would blow in off the ocean. A day that, everyone would later agree, was charmed.
It seemed as if the entire town had come to say good-bye. The church had been so full that many members of the congregation had had to stand outside. Now, at the burial, JP Deverill stood beside his sister Martha and watched the coffin being lowered into the hole in the ground. He was going to be master of Castle Deverill; a great responsibility, which he would not take lightly. He remembered attempting to make a model of it with his father when he was a boy and fantasizing that one day, perhaps, he might have the money to buy it back. Well, he didn’t have to now; he’d been given it. He wondered at the unpredictability of Fate.
Kitty knew that Bridie was not in the wooden coffin, but in the sunlight, watching her children with pride and love as she should have been allowed to do in life. She silently thanked her friend for returning the castle to the Deverills and thought how fitting it was, because JP really belonged to both of them. Having been the reason for their animosity, he had become the catalyst for their reconciliation. Had Bridie lived, the two women would have taken equal pride in him. Now Bridie had not only healed the wounds of the past by restoring the castle to the Deverills but also she would release the spirits. Kitty was impatient to see that happen.
Mrs. Doyle held on to Michael tightly and sobbed quietly into a handkerchief, hoping that the Lord had answered her prayers and reunited her daughter with her father and her nanna. Sean stood on his mother’s other side with Rosetta and their children and wondered what would become of his nephew now that he had lost both parents—the only two people who had championed him. Leopoldo made a great show of his grief, which, in the opinions of the Weeping Women of Jerusalem, was overdramatic and mollyish in a young man. Everyone but Leopoldo was delighted that JP Deverill had been left the castle. There would be much celebrating in O’Donovan’s that night. Michael, who had fallen off the wagon with a spectacular thud, would drink with the best of them and, he thought with satisfaction, start looking for a wife. Released by Kitty, liberated from Grace and from his own inflated sense of piety, it was time to live again.
“I thought a nun was meant to wear a habit,” said JP, looking at Martha’s elegant black dress and coat. “Or perhaps this is what nuns wear these days.” He grinned, and the freckles spread across his cheeks.
“I’m not going to be a nun,” she replied.
“Oh.” JP was surprised. She had been so dedicated to the notion.
“I realized that I was running away from life,” she told him with a sigh. “I needed time to learn to live again, like a crippled person must learn to walk again. The convent gave me that time and that peace, and with God’s help I have healed. When Bridie wrote and told me that she was our mother, something shifted inside me. It was as if a great weight had been lifted from my chest. I don’t know how to explain it.” She looked at him bashfully. “Let’s just say, I no longer fear love.”
“You’re too beautiful to hide away in a convent, you know. You’ll make some man very fortunate one day.”
“I intend to. And I intend to be a good mother to my children.” Her eyes shone, and JP gave her his handkerchief. “Thank you. It’s been a rather emotional few days.” She dabbed her eyes. “If I love my children half as much as Bridie loved us, I will be the luckiest mother in the world.”
JP drew his sister into an embrace and realized with a surge of tenderness that it was possible after all to love Martha, only now in a different way. “Will you come and stay at the castle once we’ve moved in?” he asked.
“I would love to,” she replied as he released her. “I would love to, very much.”
Alana came and slipped her hand around her husband’s arm. “Are you going to stay for a while?” she asked Martha. “You’re always welcome to stay with us.”
“Thank you. That’s so kind of you,” Martha replied. “But I will be leaving tomorrow. I’m going to America first. I have a few bridges to rebuild over there. Then I don’t know where I’ll go.” She smiled with optimism and shrugged. “I’m a woman of means now. I can go anywhere I like!”
Chapter 33
Well, why are you still here?” Adeline asked, looking in bewilderment at the expectant faces of the Deverill heirs who had gathered in the hall of the castle to await their release. “An O’Leary has now taken possession of the castle,” she said. “I don’t understand. You shouldn’t still be here.”
Barton looked at Egerton, who looked at Hubert, who in turn looked at Adeline. The disappointment on his face was enough to break her heart into a thousand pieces. It wasn’t possible, she thought in desperation. The curse specifically said, Until you right those wrongs I curse you and your heirs to an eternity of unrest and to the world of the undead. Surely, now that the land had been restored to an O’Leary, the curse should be broken?
They watched JP and Alana walk excitedly up the stairs, hand in hand, while Kitty, Bertie and Maud looked on with delight from the hall. It was a moment of triumph, but it should also have been a moment of redemption, Adeline thought. She knew that Kitty could feel them there and was as confused as they were.
Adeline felt sick. Terribly sick. Not the kind of sickness one feels when one is in one’s body but a sickness in the soul, which is a very different kind of sickness altogether, and infinitely worse. It shrank her, as if a great, unseen weight was bearing down upon her. It was a dreadful sense of disappointment and fear. Disappointment for Hubert, who it seemed was destined never to leave this place, and fear for herself, for having willingly tied her soul to his. If he couldn’t be freed, then neither could she. Love tied them to each other: that was their Fate.
Suddenly Barton fell to his knees. His face was contorted with anguish. He opened his arms and squeezed his eyes shut. “Oh Maggie!” he cried out, and the room must have turned cold, for Kitty and Maud both shivered and Maud pulled her cardigan tightly about her. “Maggie! Forgive me for taking your land. Forgive me for taking your innocence and forgive me for burning you when it was within my power to save you. Oh Maggie! I have carried my guilt for long enough. I can’t take it anymore. I can’t hide my love for you. It is destroying my soul. I will gladly remain within these walls for eternity because it is what I deserve. It is better than I deserve. I lived a lie in life, and I’ve lived a lie in death. But now I appeal to you, Maggie. Forgive me so that I may at least spend eternity with your forgiveness to comfort me.” He put his face in his hands and began to sob loudly. His heirs gazed at him in horrified astonishment. If their illustrious ancestor, the first Lord Deverill of Ballinakelly, had lost all hope, what chance did they have?
The room grew colder still. Maud and Bertie decided to go into the library where there was a fire in the grate and tea in the pot, just like there always used to be. JP would join them after he’d shown his wife around their new home. Kitty chose t
o linger in the hall, for now another spirit was floating into their midst, and as Kitty focused, she was able to see her.
It was Maggie O’Leary herself in a long white dress, with her flowing black hair moving about her head as if she were underwater. She was even more striking in death than she had been in life, and the spirits stared at her in wonder. For a moment she looked as amazed as they did, as if she hadn’t expected to find herself here, in this hall, with so many eyes upon her. For reasons she did not understand, she had been released from her own dark limbo and brought to this place; the place where it had all begun, centuries before.
Maggie rested her gaze on Barton and her lips parted and her expression softened. She stopped in front of him and reached out her hands to peel his fingers from his eyes. He blinked up at her in surprise and a little fear, because of what he had done to her in the woods and because of what he had allowed to happen on the pyre. She held his hands in her elegant white ones and looked into his face with tenderness. “You gave me gunpowder to shorten my suffering. I should have known then that you had not forsaken me,” she said. “I know now that you did not turn away because you wanted to but because you had to. I understand you, Barton Deverill, and I understand myself. Centuries of dwelling between worlds have not been for nothing. They have given me understanding.”
The gloom in the hall slowly began to brighten. It started with a glow emanating from the joined hands of Barton Deverill and Maggie O’Leary and began to grow. As they locked eyes the light grew more intense until it filled the entire room with a dazzling golden radiance. Kitty knew it wasn’t sunshine that illuminated the hall because outside the winter’s day was dull and overcast. It was otherworldly, and it was beautiful.
“I forgive you, Lord Deverill,” Maggie said, and she smiled serenely. “Will you forgive me for the curse I placed upon you and your heirs?”
“I forgive you, Maggie,” Barton replied, standing up. “I forgive you from the depths of my soul.”
“Then let us go in love,” she said. “The blood of the O’Learys flows through Alana’s veins but also the blood of the Deverills. Our blood, Barton.”
Barton frowned. “Our blood?” he repeated.
“Our child, Barton,” she whispered, and he understood.
Barton pressed Maggie’s hand to his heart. “My offense is all the more cruel,” he said, groaning, but Maggie kissed his hand.
“It is as it should be,” she said. “The past is gone and all wrongdoing has been forgiven. Now let us rest in peace.”
Suddenly Adeline realized that the curse had never really been about land but about forgiveness, and it had never really had anything to do with anyone else but Barton and Maggie. How very unlike her not to have worked it out before.
THE LIGHT BECAME so bright that Kitty had to close her eyes. She sensed the spirits leaving, one by one, as if they were each dissolving in that glorious light. When at last she opened her eyes she found herself alone. Well, almost. There, standing before her, was Adeline.
“It is done,” said her grandmother with satisfaction. “Now it’s up to you, Kitty, to live well, with an open heart and a readiness to forgive, because it is only through forgiveness that wrongs can be put right. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I won’t,” said Kitty as her grandmother began to fade.
“And don’t cry, my child. I’m only a thought away.”
Then she was gone.
“WHO ARE YOU talking to?” JP asked as he came down the stairs with Alana close behind him.
“No one,” Kitty replied, wiping her eye. “Let’s go and have a cup of tea,” she suggested quickly.
“What a good idea,” said JP, taking his wife’s hand. They walked toward the library where Maud was laughing heartily at something Bertie had said.
JP grinned at Kitty. “Do you think Maud’s found some of Adeline’s cannabis?”
“How do you know about Adeline’s cannabis?” Kitty asked.
“Celia told me. Adeline was a right witch!” He laughed.
“She certainly was,” Kitty agreed, walking into the library with a buoyant step. “The very best kind of witch.”
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been written without the following invaluable people. I thank them with all my heart.
My dear friend and coconspirator, Tim Kelly.
My wonderful agent, Sheila Crowley, and her brilliant team at Curtis Brown: Abbie Greaves, Rebecca Ritchie, Alice Lutyens, Luke Speed, Enrichetta Frezzato, Katie McGowan, Anne Bihan and Mairi Friesen-Escandell.
My boss, Ian Chapman. My exceptionally talented editor, Suzanne Baboneau, and her superb team at Simon & Schuster, who work so hard on my behalf: Clare Hey, Dawn Burnett, Emma Harrow, Gill Richardson, Rumana Haider, Laura Hough, Dominic Brendon, Sally Wilks and Sara-Jade Virtue.
My parents, Charles and Patty Palmer-Tomkinson, my mother-in-law, April Sebag-Montefiore.
My husband, Sebag, and our two children, Lily and Sasha.
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About the Author
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Meet Santa Montefiore
About the Book
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Q&A with Santa Montefiore
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The Girl in the Castle
The Daughters of Ireland
About the Author
Meet Santa Montefiore
SANTA MONTEFIORE was born in England. She went to Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset and studied Spanish and Italian at Exeter University. She has written seventeen bestselling novels, which have been translated into thirty different languages and have sold more than four million copies worldwide.
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About the Book
Q&A with Santa Montefiore
Q: Has the Deverills’ story changed at all since original inception? Did the story take you anywhere unexpected in these three books?
A: Absolutely yes! I plan my novels as little as possible, because I’m really not very good at plotting—and I’m more likely to surprise my readers if I surprise myself. I’m good at finding my way and following my instinct once I start writing. So, I sketch a basic outline. I knew I wanted three very different women born in 1900. I’m very bad at math so I choose round numbers for all birthdays to make calculations easier! I wanted to set the story around a castle that begins as a ruin in book one, is rebuilt in book two and is very much the main character in the entire series. I also planned for Kitty and Jack to end up together. I was as disappointed as my readers, because it just didn’t work. In an earlier draft I have Emer falling off the cliff having found out about Jack’s affair, but that then made it impossible for them to ever be together, so I changed it. The fat lady hasn’t yet sung, as they say in opera! Besides knowing a little about Bridie’s story, I really hadn’t worked out much else. I put on my music—Howard Shore and David Arkenstone to name a couple of composers—and then let my imagination take me. Once I’ve begun it’s like entering a forest, lots of paths lie ahead of me and it’s fun to choose which one I want to take.
Q: Although this book is set after 1939, do you see parallels between the lives of your characters and people today? What are some themes you think resonate with modern readers?
A: I think human nature doesn’t really change. We’re all people and the things that are important to the Deverills are important to us today. Naturally, with the dire economic climate, life for many people is tough now as it was for my characters. But beside the struggles that arise out of dramatic global events like war and depression, Bridie, Kitty and Celia are three women trying to find love and fulfillment just like all of us. What is important to modern readers is important to women of all ages. We want to feel safe, loved, fulfilled, healthy and happy. That’s why the great stories from Shakespeare to Dickens, Austen and Tolstoy are timeless. We can identify with the characters because we’re all struggling to find the same thin
gs in our lives.
Q: Did you come across any interesting historical tidbits that weren’t able to make it into the final book?
A: Loads of things I found through my research couldn’t go into the books. I have files full of personal stories and anecdotes. But I have to keep my focus on the plot and the characters’ journeys and not get distracted. Quite a few real stories made it into the book. When Cesare is found dead on the beach, buried up to his neck in the sand, that really happened to three men who lynched an Irish boy who returned from the Great War, after having fought for the British. The grieving father emigrated to America but five years later sent a couple of hit men to Ireland to track the men down. They posed as tourists and left at the end of the week. A man walking his dog saw what he thought were three buoys on the sand. When he got nearer he saw that they were three heads, buried up to their necks and drowned. It must have been torturous to have died that way, very slowly, as the tide came in. A grim revenge.
Q: What’s next for you? Where do you think your next books will take you—is there a particular time or place that is intriguing you at the moment?
A: I’m writing the fourth Deverill book now. I couldn’t let them go! I love writing about Ireland and I feel the Deverills are friends now. So, this one starts in the sixties and flashes back to the late nineteenth century. The main character is Arethusa Deverill, Bertie and Rupert’s sister and Adeline and Hubert’s daughter. I was going to write her story in book three of the trilogy, but I didn’t have any room. I now have the perfect opportunity to make a whole book out of her and I’m loving it. I’m calling it The Forgotten Deverill at the moment, but that might very well change. My new novel, The Temptation of Gracie, comes out in the UK in July 2018 and is set in Italy, so very different.
The Secret of the Irish Castle Page 39