by Karen Swan
Connor looked down at her, making her stomach flip. ‘So then I’ll just kiss you once,’ he murmured, his gaze already on her lips. ‘And then she’ll have saved my life back and she’ll be freed from . . .’
‘The eternal bond of debt,’ Pip supplied for him.
But neither one of them heard her, because his lips were already on hers, his arms gathering her close. And Willow felt the world swirl faster around her as he held her tight. She was straight back to that first night in his arms – before Pip had dived into a lake, before he’d driven up to her castle – back when it had just been the two of them, subject to the twin mercies of chemistry and fate.
He pulled back, looking down at her, both of them breathless with longing.
‘See? You’re not getting in that car now, are you?’ Pip asked, her cheeky smile intruding on their private moment.
‘No,’ Connor said, not taking his eyes off Willow.
‘Good. Because those icy roads are a death-trap in a rear-wheel drive like that. Boom! Totally just saved your life,’ Pip chuckled. ‘And by the way, Will, if you want to make a call, you need a thing called a phone?’
Willow felt the weight of her mobile being stuffed into her back jeans pocket and groaned as she realized she had left it on the table. Pip laughed, enjoying herself immensely, as she went back into the pub, earning herself a rousing cheer
Connor grinned. ‘Interesting, your family.’
Willow laughed as he drew her back into him. ‘You don’t know the half of it!’
Epilogue
Christmas Day 2019
The fire crackled drowsily, spitting out occasional embers that curled and blackened on the old stone hearth, mere inches from the cold wet noses of Mabel and Dot snoozing in their prime spots on the rugs. The tray of breakfast Mrs Mac had left prepared was already demolished – her overnight porridge and Bircher muesli long gone, toast crumbs everywhere – and the four Lorne women were looking at the neat pile of presents beneath the tree with something approaching amazement. Had fairies been in in the night? No one had had much appetite for Christmas shopping this year; it had felt de trop against the backdrop of so much loss, and if the truckloads of Christie’s lorries carting away their worldly goods had proved anything, it was that they didn’t need any more ‘stuff’. Still, someone had been a busy Christmas elf, because a pile of boxes skirted the base of the tree.
Willow could feel the memories beginning to accrue at the Dower House already, all three sisters sleeping in their new bedrooms last night – Connor had flown back to London on the last flight and Ben had stayed with Taigh, before they descended here for lunch later, both men understanding the Lorne women’s needs for a quiet family affair. The Christmas tree itself had been ‘rescued’ from the garden, a small fir that had been growing slowly under the canopy of a beech and had been earmarked for chopping up as the garden was cleared to bring sunlight in. They had spent Christmas Eve decorating it using old silk ribbons found in the trousseau from the attic and some long ropes of their great-grandmother’s 1920s pearls (their usual decorations currently sitting in a box in a Christie’s warehouse somewhere). Pip had put her beloved old, tiny teddy Mr Bunts on the top of the tree – the best they could do for a fairy this year – and along the windowsills and ledges, they had lit all but one box of the tiny tea lights, which they always kept stocked from the village shop in case of power cuts. Someone – Pip – had even supplied Rusty with a purple paper crown.
The Gainsborough had temporary pride of place over the mantelpiece for the festive period. It would be boxed up and shipped off first thing in the New Year but they had all wanted to enjoy the portrait for a little while at least; and it had seemed only fitting that Black Bess – whose deviousness had brought them such luck – should finally have her moment in the spotlight, her fierce dark eyes watching over them imperiously as they sat curled up in the armchairs in their pyjamas. But in art as in life, her reign would be short-lived, for they had other hidden masterpieces that needed to be displayed now that – thanks to Ben – Ottie’s dramatic canvases had been rescued from her hiding place, and she and their mother and Pip had all ‘dibbed’ their favourites.
‘Who wants to go first?’ their mother asked. But it was a rhetorical question.
‘I will!’ Pip said eagerly, scooting off her chair and reaching for the first present with her name on. ‘Does it go glug?’ she grinned as she brought the long narrow box to her ear and rattled it. The contents shook inside, rattling slightly. ‘Hmm,’ she said, sounding perplexed as she pulled on the ribbon and tore off the paper.
‘What is it?’ Ottie asked, just as curious, as Pip lifted the lid, her mouth dropping open.
She drew out a red leather bridle. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered, her fingers pinching the padded cheek-pieces, brushing the cool brass hardware for the bit, tenderly plucking the intricate black stitching. She looked back at them all. ‘Who . . .?’
Willow looked at her mother and Ottie, for it certainly wasn’t from her, but they looked just as blank as she did. ‘Is there a card?’ she asked.
Pip peered into the box, under the tissue paper, checked the wrapping. ‘No. Nothing.’ She looked back at the bridle. ‘It’s got a black star embroidered across the browband . . .’ She looked back at them again in amazement. ‘It’s for Dark Star!’
Willow smiled. ‘It must be from Taigh then. He knows where your heart truly lies.’
‘Those three jobs of his must be paying well,’ Ottie quipped, warming her hands around her mug of tea.
‘I’ll kill him,’ Pip said softly, kissing the noseband. ‘We agreed no presents this year. There was no time . . . Oh, I can’t wait to put this on him.’
‘Who? Taigh?’ Ottie quipped, giving a little shrug. ‘Well, if kinky’s your thing—’
‘Dark Star!’ Pip protested, blushing furiously.
Their mother smiled at their teases. ‘Ottie, why don’t you open yours next?’ she asked, handing over the box with her name on it.
‘It’s suspiciously light!’ Ottie said, shaking it as her sister had done.
Everyone waited expectantly and very patiently – even Pip – as she pulled off the ribbon and carefully rolled it up, before managing to open the paper without ripping it. Willow watched her face as she opened the box, seeing how her expression fell.
‘It’s an envelope.’
‘Oh, I love envelopes!’ Pip trilled, getting her own back, the bridle draped lovingly over one bent knee as she sat with her back against their mother’s armchair and allowed her to absently play with her hair.
‘It’ll be tickets to New York, I bet,’ Willow said. ‘Ben can’t get you there fast enough. Am I right?’
Ottie pulled out the tickets from the envelope. ‘Yes and no.’ She looked back at them all, astonished. ‘He’s taking me to Florence.’
‘Oh, darling!’ their mother laughed, clapping her hands together happily. ‘You’ve always wanted to go there. The art capital of the world!’
‘I can’t believe it. We said no presents too.’
‘Well, those boys have clearly been plotting behind your backs then,’ Willow said, sipping her tea.
‘So maybe behind yours too?’ her mother asked, handing over the box with her name on it. But she and Connor had already given each other their gifts, yesterday afternoon before he’d left to catch his flight to London – from her, a diecast model of an E-type that Dave Nolan, the mechanic, had had sitting on a shelf in his garage for the past twenty years from a long-ago promotion; from him, a tiny bronze elephant he had picked up on a recent trip to India for his niece and which was still in his case. He had said she was to keep it in her room as a reminder of the attraction between them which they had tried to ignore – and would never deny again. She smiled at the memory of the kisses that had come with the gift; he would be flying back to Dublin to be with her and Caz and all their friends for New Year’s Eve and already she was counting the hours.
She handled the pr
esent, intrigued. It felt weighty. Substantial. ‘Heavy,’ she murmured. ‘Paperweight?’
‘You’ll need one of those with all the bills you’ve got coming your way,’ Pip guffawed.
Willow shot her a ‘ha-ha’ grin but couldn’t help chuckling as she pulled on the ribbon. As usual, Pip had a point. Her fledgling notion of setting up the castle as a luxury spa and yoga retreat was going to take vision, organization and a lot of cash. But Connor had contacts he was going to introduce her to and he had already, loosely, mooted the idea of Lorne becoming somehow ‘affiliated’ with the Home James group, perhaps as a partner venue . . .?
She lifted the lid and pushed back the tissue paper. Inside was a frosted crystal sculpture of a bird, its feathers exquisitely rendered, even the downy plumage beautifully conveyed as the bird nestled its beak downwards, its eyes contentedly shut into slits.
‘Is that Lalique?’ her mother gasped, holding a hand out. Willow passed it over and watched as her mother examined it, a small frown puckering her brow. ‘. . . I could swear I’ve seen this before,’ she murmured, turning it over. ‘It’s an antique . . .’
Her voice failed suddenly, but Willow already knew what she was going to say. Because, caught forever in a single moment, she realized that little bird was roosting. It was a little bird that had come home.
‘It can’t be,’ Willow murmured, feeling her heart rate suddenly bolt as she reached for the wrapping paper by her knees and checked the handwriting on the gift tag. She looked up at her mother, both of them pale. ‘. . . Mrs Mac wrote these.’
‘These pressies are from Mrs Mac?’ Pip spluttered, still stroking her bridle, her bent knee doubling as a horse’s head.
‘No,’ Willow whispered, feeling the tears press against the backs of her eyes. ‘But she must have found them . . . They’re from Dad.’
Silence erupted into the room, all of them looking at their gifts afresh: Pip’s bridle – commissioned for the horse he’d been on the brink of buying for her; Ottie’s flights to Florence – tickets back to the world she had forsaken for him; Willow, his little bird who had flown away, come home again.
‘We saw this little thing at the Lapada Antiques Fair in London in September,’ her mother murmured, cupping it in her hands, feeling the reassuring weight of it. ‘He just loved it on sight; he kept coming back and back to it, even though I told him we didn’t need another trinket . . . I had no idea he went and bought it.’
Pip and Ottie had their hands pressed over their mouths, silent tears beginning to fall as they felt his presence and his absence all at once.
‘But Dad never bought us presents,’ Ottie murmured eventually. ‘It was always you, Mam.’
But it didn’t need to be said: by September, their father had known he was a marked man – that any minute might be his last, that a ticking time-bomb in his head was waiting to go off.
‘You’re forgetting the time he was left in charge of Willow’s fifth birthday and he got her a photo frame,’ Pip said. ‘Don’t you remember?’
Their mother giggled at the memory, her teary eyes suddenly mixed with flushed cheeks. ‘I do. I thought I’d never forgive him for that. He was abysmal at buying presents!’
‘Well, he’s redeemed himself this year,’ Pip said, pressing the bridle to her cheeks, cherishing it even more than before; Willow fully expected her to slip it over her own head any moment and she wondered how pleased her father would have been to have learned that Bertie had been called to account at long, long last – sprawled on the floor in the kitchen, for Pip’s silence he had readily agreed to simply give Dark Star to her; for Ottie’s silence, he had agreed to accede to Shula’s demands for an uncontested divorce; and for Willow’s silence – and the secret only she and her mother now carried – he had agreed to make a significant donation to the Headway charity in memory of Declan Lorne by his youngest daughter. But he hadn’t thought to negotiate Ben Gilmore’s silence and in the Christmas period, as lawyers’ offices were closed around the country, his lawsuit remained live, with rumblings of further claimants coming forward with other allegations of negligence. Ultra was fast becoming toxic.
‘So then . . . what’s he got you, Mam?’ Willow asked, looking down at the last remaining present beneath the tree.
Pip reached over to pass it up to her and they all straightened up, waiting expectantly. She pulled on the ribbon and lifted out a flat blue Tiffany box. No one breathed as she slid off the lid and tearily stared down at her husband’s final gift. His final words on a thirty-year marriage.
‘Oh, Mam!’ Ottie sighed, clambering out of her chair. ‘I’ve never seen this photo of you and Dad before.’
Pip got up on her knees and walked around to the side of the armchair. It was a black and white image enlarged, her mother’s head thrown back in laughter at something, her father standing just behind her and gazing on with a look of rapt adoration.
It took her mother a moment to place it. ‘That was taken the night I met your father – at Archie O’Malley’s twenty-first birthday.’ She squinted, smiling, falling back into the memories. ‘I think we had this on a slide somewhere. He must have had it printed up.’
‘Can’t be many places left with the technology for doing that, can there?’ Ottie asked.
‘What does it say at the bottom?’ Pip murmured, turning her head at an awkward angle to get a better look. ‘. . . Eternally.’
He would love her eternally.
Her mother’s gaze rose to meet Willow’s, neither of them having to say a thing. Because in that promise, nestled another one: that she was forgiven. He had died loving her as fiercely on his last day as he so clearly had on their first. The last knight in Ireland may be dead. But his legacy was his love.
And that was enough.
Acknowledgements
This story is set in a fictitious village in south-west Ireland but the original idea for it came from reading a magazine article about a mother and her grown-up daughters trying to make their ancestral seat a going concern. There are many castles in Ireland so it wasn’t that which particularly caught my attention, but the single line referring to the woman’s late husband as having been the last surviving knight in Ireland. My mother is from Cork and I knew we were – incredibly distantly – related to an ancient king of Munster, but I hadn’t realized the Irish peerage had continued into modern times. It made me think though – what must it be like to know you are the last of a line? The break in a chain? And what does that pressure do to a family? How do you take those first steps forward when a seven-hundred-year-old legacy has been suddenly stopped and life needs to start again?
This was not an easy book to write – that’s just how it goes sometimes – and I really must thank my agent Amanda Preston, and the entire team at Pan for not completely freaking out when the first draft was submitted. I was freaking out, but they kept calm and carried on, devising beautiful marketing and advertising campaigns, getting the books onto all the most important bookshelves and making sure those who needed to know about it, knew about it.
There’s a big team behind every one of these stories and I’m so hugely grateful to everyone involved in the journey, but I’d like to make special mention of a few people in particular: Louise Davies, my editor on this book. She really held her nerve when this story was just a collection of bones and calmly helped me flesh it out and shape it; I really needed that clear-sightedness, so thank you! Also Natalie Young, my desk editor, for her patience and for coping with my abysmal handwritten notes on the page proofs. And to Mel Four for conjuring that most beautiful cover! It was actually so strong I felt under pressure to deliver a story that could live up to the promise of that image, but I hope I’ve delivered and that you, my lovely readers, feel all the girls end up with their differing Red Dress lives by the end. I hope we all get that!
The
CHRISTMAS PARTY
Karen Swan is the Sunday Times top three bestselling author of sixteen books and her novels sell all over the world.
She writes two books each year – one for the summer period and one for the Christmas season. Previous winter titles include Christmas at Tiffany’s, The Christmas Secret, The Christmas Lights, and for summer, The Rome Affair, The Greek Escape and The Spanish Promise.
Her books are known for their evocative locations and Karen sees travel as vital research for each story. She loves to set deep, complicated love stories within twisty plots, sometimes telling two stories in the same book.
Previously a fashion editor, she lives in Sussex with her husband, three children and two dogs.
Visit Karen’s author page on Facebook, follow her on Twitter @KarenSwan1, on Instagram @swannywrites, and her website www.karenswan.com.
Also by Karen Swan
Players
Prima Donna
Christmas at Tiffany’s
The Perfect Present
Christmas at Claridge’s
The Summer Without You
Christmas in the Snow
Summer at Tiffany’s
Christmas on Primrose Hill
The Paris Secret
Christmas Under the Stars
The Rome Affair
The Christmas Secret
The Greek Escape
The Christmas Lights
The Spanish Promise
First published 2019 by Pan Books
This electronic edition first published 2019 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
The Smithson, 6 Briset Street, London EC1M 5NR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5290-0607-0
Copyright © Karen Swan 2019
Images: Shutterstock
The right of Karen Swan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
