by Penny Jordan
When there was no reply to her telephone-call she tried to contact Rothwell itself. To her astonishment she was told that Charles was in Ireland, at Castle Kilrayne.
Charles hated the castle. What was he doing there? Silver wondered as she replaced the receiver.
The staff at Rothwell had no idea when Charles was due to return and the impatience that now possessed her to have the whole thing over and done with wouldn’t allow her to wait until he did.
Soon Rothwell would be hers again, and once it was… Once it was… what then? She shivered a little. What concerned her now was the present, and not the future.
She flew out to Shannon’s International Airport with a small case containing a change of clothes and a large bundle of documents—photostats, of course; the originals were locked away in the vaults of her bankers. These documents held the incontrovertible evidence that she was Geraldine Frances. There were signed, dated statements from her bankers, from her advisers… from those whom she had admitted to the secrecy of her plans.
Charles held no power over her now. She had no fear of him any longer. There were no vulnerabilities within herself to him.
All she wanted now was to confront him with the truth, to hear him admit that he had killed her father. And then she would make him repeat that admission before witnesses. Now she was the stronger of the two of them. With the realisation that she no longer desired him, that she was no longer held in thrall to him, had come the knowledge that she was now at last free.
At Shannon she hired a car, and set out along the familiar road that let to Kilrayne.
Ireland was enjoying a rare spell of good weather. At the airport, American tourists had been marvelling at the warmth and sunshine, and Geraldine Frances, who had arrived at Shannon on many a summer’s day to find the airport wrapped in mist and the rain turning the earth and sky an impenetrable, even grey, had smiled herself at their pleasure, glad for them to be seeing this country she loved so much in the true beauty of its summer greens and blues.
She took the road that wound its way along the coast; the Atlantic shimmered blue under the high arc of the clear sky.
Where the road turned inland past the hauntingly sombre rocky outcrops of the Burren, she automatically slowed down. This bare expanse of limestone rock threw a powerful spell over whoever beheld it, and it had always fascinated her.
The valley which Castle Kilrayne guarded slumbered under the heat of the sun; beyond it the cliffs and headland on which the castle stood were stark and gaunt.
It had no fairy-tale prettiness, no gilded towers, no sleeping-beauty delicacy, this castle that was hers; it was no imitation French château, all airy towers and serene moat, nor did it possess the stalwart girth and squareness so beloved by a succession of British kings.
No, Kilrayne was an entity unto itself alone, a jumble of high, crumbling walls and towers that seemed to have been thrown up by some volcanic action of the earth and rock itself, rather than to have been constructed by man’s hand. It had no symmetry, no stout, square towers or protective curtain wall, no moat or drawbridge, but reared up out of the rock to stare watchfully down across the land at its feet.
It was a place that stood in a no man’s land between earth and sea; the rock of which it was built dropped sheerly down into the Atlantic, the water there so deep even at low tide that it was rumoured that during the Second World War a German submarine had surfaced there.
If it was true, which Silver doubted, there was no record of it in the family archives. She smiled to herself, remembering the hair-raising stories Bridie had told her about the castle’s past.
From the landward side it was impossible to see the magnificent walkway that ran along the ocean-facing side of the castle, linking its twin towers.
There even the hard granite of the stone had not been proof against the Atlantic gales that battered it. The parapet was dangerously low, the walkway so unsafe in places that her father had banned its use.
She stopped off in the village, more out of habit than anything else. It hadn’t changed at all during her lifetime, and her father swore it remained the same as it had been when he was a boy.
There was a small cluster of houses, very obviously built from stone ‘borrowed’ from the castle itself; one of them was the local store-cum-pub, and it was there that she stopped her car, ostensibly to buy a newspaper, but more for the pleasure of hearing the familiar soft accent, of knowing herself back in one of the few places she had actually felt welcomed and at home.
Here, in this remote part of Ireland, people were not judged on how they looked but what they were, and Geraldine Frances, poor, motherless child that she was, had been taken to their hearts with enthusiasm and love.
She wasn’t recognised, of course. How could she be? Silver was stared at openly, her expensive clothes and sleek, elegant appearance assessed openly.
‘You’ll be wantin’ the castle. American, are you, then?’ one woman asked.
Silver shook her head, both amused and saddened that she should be so completely accepted as a stranger. But what had she expected—that somehow, because Castle Kilrayne was to her her true spiritual home, its inhabitants should immediately recognise her?
‘Charles… Fitzcarlton is there, is he?’ she enquired, only to find the woman frowning darkly at her.
‘Aye, he’s there all right,’ she told her. ‘Arrived yesterday, they did; it fair set Bridie in a rare lather… Not seen sight nor sound of him in over a twelve-month, and then he ups and arrives without a word of warning, demanding bedrooms for himself and his guests… demanding all manner of fancy food and complaining…’ She gave a deprecating sniff. ‘Sure, and where does he think poor Bridie is going to get fancy stuff from way out here? He’s sent her off to Limerick this morning with his driver and a shopping list as long as your arm… And all that just to feed the three of them for a couple of days…’
‘The three of them?’ Silver asked her curiously. For some reason she had imagined Charles had come here alone. The fact that he hadn’t complicated things a little. She could scarcely confront him with the truth while he had guests.
It was so unlike Charles to come to Ireland in the first place, and to bring two people with him… Guests? For what purpose?
‘Aye, there’s a woman; some friend of his…’
Silver just managed to conceal her surprise. A woman…
‘Not his wife?’ she suggested, watching as the woman’s face became grim.
‘No, not her, poor soul. A wee useless bit of a thing she was, and to be miscarrying her bairn like that… And now he’s put her from him and I don’t doubt he’s looking round for someone else to provide him with an heir. Aye, he’ll want a man-child right enough. He won’t want to go the same way as his uncle, God preserve him. A rare fine man was Lord James…’
Silver smiled at the bastardisation of her father’s title. Here in Kilrayne they had always referred affectionately to him as ‘Lord James’; she noticed they did not refer in anything like the same way to Charles, who had never been well liked. Not at Rothwell, and certainly not here in Ireland.
‘Aye, a hard-faced creature she is an’ all, according to Bridie… and as for the other poor soul that’s come with him… a blind man come to see the beauty of Castle Kilrayne… why, it’s a wonder—–’
A blind man.
Silver knew she must have betrayed her surprise, because the woman broke off from what she had been saying and looked at her.
A blind man… It could only be Jake; Silver had to suppress the urge to question her about what this blind man had looked like… what he had said… why he was here, but she knew that the woman was unlikely to have any answers. The probability was that she only knew of his arrival via the village grapevine, and that she had not even seen him herself.
Jake here at Kilrayne. But why? And then she knew. It must have something to do with Charles’s involvement with the people Jake was trying to track down.
Surely he didn’t th
ink Charles was responsible for his wife’s death? But no… Jake had told her that she had been killed on the instructions of the man who ran the organisation’s London operation, and that man could not be Charles.
Charles wasn’t intelligent enough to mastermind that kind of operation.
So why were Charles and Jake here? Had Jake perhaps threatened to expose Charles if he didn’t co-operate with him and give him the information he needed? Had Charles brought him here to Kilrayne so that he could plead for clemency… so that they would have privacy… and secrecy? And who was this woman they had brought with them?
Was she with Jake, or was she with Charles?
Frowning slightly, Silver paid for her newspapers and got back in her car.
How like Charles to send Bridie to Limerick for food, when with a little forethought he could have telephoned ahead and she would have had time to get everything ready for their arrival.
As she drove in through the arched entrance of what had once been the castle’s outer bailey, the old familiar sense of homecoming and peace enveloped her.
Warm sunlight bathed one side of the empty courtyard, the bulk of the castle throwing dense shadows along the other. Weeds were growing up through the cobbles, adding to the castle’s air of neglect and desolation.
A solitary black cat emerged to inspect the new arrival, blinking green-eyed in the sunshine.
As Silver picked her way over the familiar cobbles, heading for the kitchen door, her serenity was replaced by a sharp sense of apprehension. She hadn’t expected to find Jake here… she had expected to find Charles alone. It was too late now to ask herself if she had been over-impetuous and if she ought to have remained in London to confront Charles on his return.
The kitchen was empty, its almost subterranean vastness warmed by the familiar range, but for once the air of the kitchen was not scented by one of Bridie’s mouth-watering concoctions.
Charles was a faddy eater; he had probably sent Bridie to Limerick to buy flavourless battery-produced chicken and equally tasteless sanitised vegetables, Silver reflected in disgust, remembering the delicious flavour of Bridie’s special stew, which more often than not had been supplemented by the addition of a plump rabbit or two caught in the woods beyond the castle.
As she made her way along the dark, uneven passage that led from the kitchens to the castle’s formal apartments, Silver reflected that she should more properly have made her way round to the main entrance instead of walking in unannounced.
She expected to find Charles in her father’s study, but the door to that room stood open and the room itself was empty.
In fact, the whole place had an air of desolation and emptiness, she reflected, frowning a little as she walked into the great hall, her heels echoing on the huge stone slabs that formed the floor.
Beneath these slabs of stone were reputed to be secret stairs that led down to what had once been the castle’s dungeons, and beyond them the passages cut through the solid rock out to the cliff-face.
Bridie had told her that these passages had been cut so that her ancestors could dispose of their prisoners by pushing them down the cliff-face and into the sea, but her father had laughed at this story and told her that it was far more likely that the passages had been cut for much more mundane purposes.
‘Smuggling,’ he had explained when she hadn’t understood him.
Now the floor was sealed and the dungeons rendered inaccessible because of the danger they represented, but throughout the ground floor of the castle there were stones which echoed when one stood on them.
Sharp prisms of sunlight speared through the narrow, high windows into the great hall, highlighting motes of dust in the air and on the furniture.
There were no sounds to disturb its silence other than her own breathing. Charles, Jake and whomever it was they had brought with them—where were they?
Frowning, Silver acknowledged that they too might have gone into Limerick, although why Charles should take the trouble to come all the way to Castle Kilrayne and then spend his time in Limerick she had no idea.
She hesitated, wondering whether to wait for his return or to go back to England and confront him there. Common sense dictated the latter course, but in the end it was curiosity and not common sense that won. That, and the knowledge that if she stayed here she would see Jake.
Jake… What had he done to her? What had he turned her into? Almost automatically her footsteps led her towards the stairwell, and without realising it she started to climb them, taking the familiar route to her old rooms in the west-facing tower that looked out across the Atlantic.
Outside the door she hesitated, half reluctant to enter, remembering the scene of devastation she had left here. And then, taking a deep breath, she turned the handle, ready to confront the fears she had locked away.
The destruction she had wrought was gone; the room had been returned to order and neatness. Only someone knowledgeable about its history could know of the missing furniture… the absence of its silk hangings and wallpaper.
The French furniture, or what she had left of it, was gone; the room was virtually empty, only with a few odd items remaining.
As she looked round it she recognised that a part of her had died here in this room and that that part of her could never be resurrected… Nor, in many ways, did she wish it to be.
As she stepped out of the room and closed the door behind her she acknowledged that finally she was closing the door on the anguish of her past and that finally she was free of the cancer of misery and pain that loving Charles had caused her.
On the stairs she hesitated, glancing upwards. On such a clear blue day there would be a marvellous view of the ocean; there was enough of the old Geraldine Frances left within her to tempt her up there to brave the buffeting of the wind and to stare out across its vastness.
As she walked upwards, gripping the handrail, force of habit led her to remove her shoes. Further up where the stairs came out into the open and had no protection from the elements the deposits of wind-borne sea-salt often made them slippery and treacherous. Bare feet would be safer than high heels.
She was halfway up when she heard the muted sound of voices. Frowning, she quickened her step, muttering under her breath as she caught her elbow on the rough stone and grazed her skin… As she paused to inspect the graze she could hear the voices more clearly; she recognised Charles’s angry hectoring tones, and then Jake’s voice with its deep male resonance and its pleasurable cadences.
Jake and Charles, up here… but why? Charles must know how dangerous the walkway was, and for Jake, who, for all his awe-inspiring ability to deal with his blindness, was still blind…
She pictured the parapet, crumbling in places, unsafe to touch, and anxiously hastened her footsteps.
When she re-emerged into the sunshine, pushing her hair off her face as the wind caught hold of it, she saw that Charles and Jake were standing by the parapet of the other tower. Charles had his back to the inner wall, while Jake…
She caught her breath as she saw how vulnerable Jake was, wondering why on earth Charles didn’t warn him of his danger.
She almost called out herself, and then realised that to do so might precipitate the very kind of accident she wanted to avoid.
Neither of them was aware of her presence, both of them concentrating on someone she could not see.
As she watched them she heard Jake saying flatly, ‘So you admit it, then. You gave the order for Beth’s death.’
He wasn’t speaking to Charles, Silver realised, her heart thumping frantically as she realised what she had walked into.
‘Not only did I give the orders, I executed them as well.’
Shock ran through Silver like a live current as she heard the gloating, amused words, and saw Helen Cartwright step out of the shadows of the tower towards Jake.
‘Not that my admission will do you any good. What a fool you’ve been, Jake, allowing us to lure you here. Didn’t it ever occur to you that we�
��d be watching you? You thought you could use Charles to lead you to me, but I was ten steps ahead of you all the way. You’ve disappointed me, Jake… I had hoped you would be less predictable, but it never even occurred to you that you might be looking for a woman and not a man, did it?’
‘Not until recently.’
It was obvious that his answer displeased her. ‘What do you mean?’ she demanded sharply. ‘You had no idea… you couldn’t have had…’
‘Not initially,’ Jake agreed easily, while Silver marvelled at his calm and control. If he felt any fear, he wasn’t betraying it. If he was aware of his danger he wasn’t letting it affect him. Three steps backwards, maybe less; that was all it would take…. She shuddered, aching to intervene, to step forward, but terrified that, if she did, Helen and Charles would send Jake plunging to his death before she could reach him.
‘But quite recently someone said something to me that made me wonder a little—–’
If she could just get a little closer to them… distract them for long enough for her to pull Jake to safety…
Without weighing the danger, she crouched down, hugging the inner wall of the walkway. She knew it so well that she could have walked it blindfolded… knew every stone… every crack in its masonry.
‘Look, let’s get it over with,’ Charles interrupted. ‘Why waste time delaying?’
‘Poor Charles, you’ve never liked heights, have you?’ Helen mocked him. ‘What a pity, Jake, that we had to be on opposite sides. Together we could have been invincible… If you were to tell us who else knows about our operation we could reconsider the need to take your life.’
Jake remained silent.
‘Come on,’ Charles urged. ‘We don’t want Bridie coming back and finding us pushing him over the edge.’
‘She won’t!’ Silver heard Helen snap irritably. ‘For goodness’ sake, Charles, you’re more fussy than a woman.’
‘I don’t like this place; I never have.’
