The Truth Behind Their Practical Marriage

by Marguerite Kaye

  ‘He was. I didn’t realise that his first wife was musical.’

  ‘She was certainly fond of this harp.’

  ‘My husband has just informed me that his first wife was a relative of yours,’ Estelle said diffidently. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t aware of the connection until now.’

  ‘I did wonder, madam, but it wasn’t my place to tell you.’ The tell-tale flush was mottling Mrs Aherne’s throat. ‘It obviously makes things more than a little awkward.’

  ‘Not least of all for you. Would you mind my asking why you have stayed on, all this time?’

  The housekeeper ran her hand over the frame of the harp, her eyes fixed on the floor. ‘There was no one to look after him, when she died. No one who knew how he liked things done.’ She looked up, a sad little smile quivering on her lips. ‘He endured some dark times. I know what it’s like to feel that the world has ended. I couldn’t do much, but I could at least see that he was left to grieve in peace.’

  ‘But you were grieving too,’ Estelle said, touched.

  Mrs Aherne nodded. ‘He’s uncomfortable with me being here, I know that. I’m clumsy with my words, I say things that remind him—I don’t mean to, but I can’t seem to help myself. Aoife was such a presence.’ The housekeeper snatched her hand from the harp. ‘But there, he has you now, madam, and you’re a breath of fresh air.’

  ‘That’s what Finn said.’

  ‘Did he? Well, he’s right. When the master wrote to tell me he was bringing a new bride home, I thought to myself, that’s your time at Cashel Duairc up. If the master can move on, then so can I. I was going to offer to stay on until you were settled and had found a replacement, but perhaps it would be better if I leave sooner rather than later?’

  ‘Of course that’s entirely up to you, but if you’d like to stay for a trial period, see how we get along?’

  ‘That’s very generous, but I think I’d rather not. You’ll be having a party, I take it? Well then,’ Mrs Aherne said, after Estelle nodded, ‘I’ll stay for that. I arrived here not long after Aoife’s bridal party. It’s only fitting that I leave after yours. Now, if you’ll excuse me I’ll go and see if I can find a crate to have the harp packed up in.’

  * * *

  ‘Ee-feh,’ Estelle mouthed. She finally knew the mysterious first wife’s name. Aoife. Before her parents died, one of the more resilient governesses they had employed to look after their daughters had been fascinated by Irish folklore, the Irish language and the traditional songs. Bridget had taught Estelle and her sisters next to nothing of arithmetic, grammar or geography, but there had been many pleasurable hours listening to her tales of fairies and giants, joining in the chorus of her ballads and laments. Aoife had been one of their favourites, because she was a warrior princess. The name came from the Irish word for beauty.

  Byron’s lines came into Estelle’s head.

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies.

  And all that’s best of dark and bright

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

  A woman called Aoife must have been a rare beauty. She would have hair the colour of a raven’s wing and eyes of midnight blue. She would be fairy-like, as delicate as gossamer, with the smile of an enchantress.

  Aidan had endured rather than relished this morning’s tour. There had evidently been ghosts lurking in the corner of every room. She’d watched him brace himself as he opened each door, listened to him describing it in wooden tones. Which room got sun when, which room was easier to heat, which room subject to damp. Practical information, but he’d provided no sense of the lives that had played out in these rooms. Save the ones that had been closed up for decades, she remembered now, the ones he remembered from childhood.

  Some of the larger, formal rooms were more recently decorated than others. Aoife’s doing, she knew now. She had a taste for pomp and ceremony, for traditional furnishings, a preference for appearance over comfort. There had been no sign of any portraits of Aoife. The family portraits were hung on the wall of the long corridor on the first floor of this, the main wing. There was one of Aidan as a babe in arms with his parents and toddler Clodagh. In another, painted just after his father died, he was eighteen. But there was nothing more recent of Aidan, and nothing of his first wife. Surely there would have been a wedding portrait?

  She could ask Mrs Aherne. Poor woman. It was odd that Aidan so completely misread her intentions. Odd that Aidan had so completely lost his temper at the sight of that harp. It was a very lovely instrument, no wonder Aoife had been so fond of it. Estelle’s fingers itched to tune it, but the very thought of playing it was sacrilege.

  Instead, she set off to tour the bedrooms, opening doors at random, refusing to acknowledge to herself what she was looking for, hoping that someone would come to find her if she had not returned by dinner time. Aidan wanted her to be herself. She had absolutely no desire to step into his dead wife’s shoes. She was a stranger, a usurper, barely even Irish, and her predecessor, who died so tragically young, must surely be a saint in the eyes of those who had known her, for one could not think ill of the dead. Estelle would not allow herself to be compared unfavourably to a saint.

  The master suite was in the central wing of the castle, facing out over the river. There was no mistaking it for what it was, a grand affair comprising two interlinked bedrooms flanked by dressing rooms with a view not of the gardens but of the river. The knotted serpent, the conceit of Aidan’s great-grandfather, was embossed in gold on the ceiling of both chambers. But both rooms were empty and stripped of all furniture. Her footsteps echoed on the bare boards. If the first Mrs Malahide had occupied this suite with her husband, no trace of her remained. It was as if her very presence had been expunged.

  Aidan’s first marriage had ended in tragedy. He and his wife had been desperate for children. When she died, he’d locked up most of the castle, and by the sounds of things, locked himself away here, for two whole years. In Florence, he’d come alive again, he’d told her, thanks to her. She’d thought he meant he’d recovered his joie de vivre. She hadn’t realised he meant he’d been all but dead and buried here.

  But all that was going to change. Not overnight, that was too much to expect, for one thing there were bound to be other echoes of the past like that blasted harp lurking still. On reflection, Mrs Aherne’s offer to leave was a godsend.

  Estelle studied the master suite with a fresh eye. The rooms would make an excellent nursery suite, with ample room for a day and night nursery. Were they too far from her own bedchamber? She wanted to be able to hear her little ones if they cried out in the night. She’d suffered terrible nightmares for months when they first moved to Elmswood Manor, though Eloise was always on hand to soothe her. Thinking back, she wondered if her elder sister ever got a full night’s sleep in those early days when they were first orphaned.

  The children she and Aidan adopted would also be orphans. Funny, it hadn’t occurred to her to make that link before. How she would love them. Estelle wrapped her arms around herself, smiling. This was why she and Aidan had married. She would remind him at dinner. Talking about the future would make him forget all about the past.

  Chapter Seven

  The next day, the Irish weather grudgingly decided to acknowledge that it was indeed summer. Bright sunshine flooded through the leaded glass panes of the breakfast parlour, lifting Aidan’s mood. The damned harp was gone, and soon Mrs Aherne would be joining it, he had been astounded to discover. Last night, over dinner, they had talked of the future. Estelle was full of plans, her enthusiasm infectious. It had been unrealistic of him to expect her simple presence to act like a magic wand. What he had to do was reclaim the castle, fill it with new memories of his new marriage, so that he was no longer confronted by the ghosts of the old one every time he entered a room.

  His musings were interrupted by Estelle peering uncerta
inly round the door, her face brightening when she saw him. ‘Good morning, Husband.’

  ‘Good morning, Wife.’ Aidan set down his coffee and went to greet her. His wife! She smiled at him, and his spirits soared. Her glorious hair was loosely fastened in a knot on top of her head from which a vibrant tress was already trying to escape. She was wearing one of his favourite gowns, the pale-blue one with the lace trim that she claimed was too tight, but which was, in his opinion, quite perfect.

  ‘What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘I’m trying to persuade myself that you’re real and you really are here. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘After the permanent bustle of Florence, I can’t get used to the quiet of the Irish countryside.’

  She reached up, smoothing her hand over his freshly shaved cheek then down to his beard, a gesture that never failed to make his pulses jump. He caught her hand, pressing a kiss to her palm. She swayed towards him, her eyes wide, her mouth curving into the most sensual of smiles. It was impossible to resist the urgent need to taste her lips. Putting his arm around her waist, he pulled her closer, and she lifted her face for the kiss they both craved.

  She tasted so sweet. Their kisses were so achingly familiar, so ardently missed. He kissed her hungrily and she kissed him back just as hungrily, melting into his arms, her breasts crushed against his chest, sending the blood rushing to his groin, making him so hard so quickly that he groaned with the effort of keeping a respectable distance between them, forced to break their kiss as he did so, startling the maid who was hovering uncertainly in the doorway.

  ‘Begging your pardon sir, madam, but I have brought Mrs Malahide’s tea.’

  Estelle flushed scarlet. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Cook told me to ask if you would like some ham with your eggs, or there’s sausages if you would prefer, or some of her blood pudding, which she says to tell you is fresh made and much tastier than it sounds.’

  ‘Please tell her that I’d very much like to try that. No, leave the tea, I can pour it myself.’

  ‘My sisters and I drink a great deal of tea,’ Estelle said, when the maid had left and they were seated at the breakfast table together. ‘It’s one of the things I missed the most when I was travelling. I don’t want to sound like one of those awful people one meets abroad who talk very loudly about how superior everything is in England, but until yesterday morning, I hadn’t tasted a decent cup of tea since I left London.’

  ‘I take it you’ve met Cook,’ Aidan said. ‘You’re probably not aware of what a privilege it is to be allowed to sample her famous drisheen, but I assure you, it is.’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon, I decided to brave the kitchens, and I’m very glad I did. The fact that I’ve a hearty appetite endeared me to her. Having a sister for a chef, and a notebook full of receipts from foreign climes made her wax lyrical. I am thinking of trying a few of them out on our party guests, what do you think?’

  ‘You’ve decided that a party is a good idea?’

  ‘I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but I’d rather get it over with sooner rather than later and put an end to all the speculation.’

  ‘What speculation?’

  ‘Who is the new Mrs Malahide, what does she look like?’ Estelle said, taken aback, for he had snapped at her. ‘What did you think I meant?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Aidan took a sip of his coffee, making a concerted effort to smile. He had to stop looking for trouble where none existed. ‘Whatever they are imagining, they’re going to be pleasantly surprised.’

  Estelle opened her mouth to speak then changed her mind. He knew what she was going to ask, it was the obvious question. Did she look very different from her? Thankfully she did not ask, but it pained him, to see her guarding her tongue, knowing it was his fault she did.

  ‘I was a single lady traveller when you met me. They will be expecting one of those earnest women who reads excerpts from her journal. Although the Florence section might be a bit rich for their blood.’

  Aidan laughed, as she had intended him to. ‘Shall I draw up a list of guests?’

  ‘Yes, please. I was thinking that we should have it on your birthday, which is three weeks away.’

  ‘Why not? Here’s your breakfast.’

  * * *

  ‘That was delicious.’ Estelle poured herself the last cup of tea and buttered the last bit of toast, frowning over at Aidan’s plate. ‘You didn’t eat very much.’

  ‘I never do, at breakfast.’

  ‘It’s rather odd, isn’t it, how little we know about each other’s daily lives? I don’t even know if you’d prefer to take breakfast alone, in future. Or in silence. Eloise is like a bear with a sore head in the morning, if you talk to her before she’s had at least two pots of tea. Phoebe and I, on the other hand, are both morning people, but if you prefer not to chatter over the breakfast cups...’

  ‘I like it.’

  She raised her brows sceptically. ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m not used to it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised you’d been quite so alone. Since she died. Your first wife. I mean, the castle has been more or less closed up, you told me yourself that you’d got out the habit of socialising and—I hadn’t realised...’ Estelle trailed off awkwardly ‘...how lonely you must have been.’

  Lonely. Her death had released him from one level of hell only to place him in another. He remembered sitting here, in this room, the morning after the funeral, looking at her empty chair and feeling relieved that the day wasn’t going to begin with recriminations or worse, pleas, only to be immediately swamped by guilt, for it was his fault she wasn’t there. He’d been lonely for a long time before she died. He had been beyond grief, but overcome with regret.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Aidan blinked. ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘You don’t like to be reminded, and I seem to do nothing but remind you,’ Estelle said. ‘It’s only that I know so little about her, and I want to make things different, but I’m not sure how. I want us to be happy, Aidan. I don’t want to let you down.’

  ‘You have no idea how impossible that is.’ Nor any idea how terrified he was that the boot would be on the other foot. He pushed his chair back, irritated by his self-indulgence. This wonderful woman was his wife, for heaven’s sake. ‘Shall we go outside, make the most of the sunshine?’

  ‘Haven’t you got a hundred other things to do?’

  ‘A thousand, but every one of them can wait, for there’s nothing I want to do more than to spend the day with you. What do you say?’

  ‘I say, yes, please.’

  * * *

  Outside, Aidan was himself again and Estelle was accordingly more herself too. She read him some snippets from the letters she’d received that morning, her sisters and Aunt Kate having written in response to the missives she had sent from Florence.

  ‘And she wishes me luck, sends her love, and looks forward to meeting you in due course,’ she concluded, tucking Eloise’s letter back into her pocket with the others.

  ‘She sounds remarkably sanguine about your news,’ Aidan said. ‘In fact they all did.’

  ‘Oh, they will all have countless questions, but they’ll save them until they can ask them in person. Though I have to admit, reading between the lines, I suspect that Eloise has dispensed reassurance.’

  ‘Your silent guardians in Florence reported back?’

  ‘It looks like it. I shall have words with Eloise when I see her. You don’t sound surprised. Do you know something I don’t?’

  Aidan shrugged. ‘It seems an obvious conclusion, that’s all. Shall we take a walk?’

  * * *

  They spent the rest of the day outside in the sunshine, talking, reminiscing, laughing, and Estelle relaxed, for Aidan was just as he had been in Florence, and the spark between th
em was just as bright as it had been in that city too. Cashel Duairc had extensive parklands, swathes of rolling green and shady groves, with the river forming one boundary, the edge of the lands belonging to the tenant farms on the other. They would be expected to host a party for the tenants, she learned, separate from the one to introduce her to the local gentry, but Aidan seemed disinclined to talk about either, and Estelle was perfectly happy to consign them to her list of future worries.

  Though the kitchen garden was extensive and well maintained, the formal gardens seemed to her rather sad-looking. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ she said as they strolled through what looked as if it had once been a rather lovely parterre, ‘your garden looks like one owned by a man who cares for vegetables and nothing else.’

  ‘Does it? I must admit, I’ve never taken much of an interest in it. My mother created much of it, and when she died—well, you see what has happened.’

  Aoife was not a gardener then, Estelle noted. ‘I enjoy gardening. My Aunt Kate is a keen gardener, and we girls helped with the restoration work at Elmswood.’

  ‘I remember now, you said something about finding the plans for a walled garden. Would you like to restore these gardens? No one has touched them apart from my mother, I promise.’

  She wouldn’t be treading on his dead wife’s toes, he meant. ‘I’d like that. Do you know if any of the original plans still exist?’

  ‘If there are, they’ll be in the attics in the west wing. I know that secretly it’s the only reason you married me, to get your hands on all those fascinating old documents.’

  ‘May I have a look for them?’

  ‘If getting covered in cobwebs rummaging around in a dusty old attic makes you happy, then please do. We have a walled garden here too, you know. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Aidan led the way across one of the few remaining paths of the parterre, towards a row of succession houses. ‘Tell me more about Aunt Kate.’