The Last Secret of the Deverills

by Santa Montefiore

  There were no secret compartments in her father’s desk, no love letters buried among his papers, no notes written in a woman’s hand that were not from her mother. Then there was only his veterinarian’s bag and it was locked as it always was to keep Aileen from playing with the medicines inside. Alana began to open it with her father’s silver letter opener. It was a surprisingly easy task for the bag was old and the catch weak and she was able to do it without breaking it.

  Alana took everything out piece by piece and laid it all on the desk. Once the bag was empty she delved into the two pockets that were sewn into the sides. In them she found two separate bundles of letters tied together with string. With her heart full of dread she analysed them closely. There were about a dozen, ranging from small notes of just a few words to long letters of many lines, and they were not from her mother. Alana sank into the armchair and read every one.

  It was clear that her father had loved Kitty his whole life. They had fallen in love as teenagers and that love had blossomed into the all-consuming love of adults. There were hasty notes arranging meetings at the Fairy Ring and gushing love letters sent to him in prison, reassuring him that she would wait until his release. From the dates on the letters it appeared that the years in America and Argentina were the only ones when Jack had truly belonged to her mother, but Alana wondered whether, even there, he had pined for his old love. Alana wished they had never come to Ballinakelly. From Kitty’s recent notes she deduced that their affair had resumed not long after he had set foot on Irish soil and she felt sick to her stomach that he had betrayed her mother who was only ever sweet and kind and saw goodness in everyone.

  One thing she knew for certain was that her mother must never know. Alana threw all the notes, barring the latest and most incriminating one, into the grate and struck a match. It took only a minute for them to be destroyed. She wished her father were alive so she could confront him and tell him what she thought of him. But she would confront Kitty instead, after the funeral. She had held onto one letter for that very meeting.

  Kitty was standing at her bedroom window, staring disconsolately out to sea, when Alana walked slowly up the drive. Kitty’s heart went out to the girl whose every laborious step revealed her pain and she hurried down the stairs to greet her.

  But the young woman who confronted her on her doorstep was not the gentle creature Kitty knew Alana to be, but a fiend, consumed with rage and loathing and full of accusation. Alana pulled the letter from her pocket and held it out in her trembling hand.

  ‘How could you!’ she seethed. ‘How could you carry on with my father when all the while my mother thought he was devoted to her? Have you no shame? You have a husband of your own and a daughter, what were you thinking?’

  Robert was drawn out of his study by the scene unfolding on the doorstep. When he reached the door Alana shouted at him too. ‘Did you know your wife was having an affair with my father?’

  ‘Excuse me . . .’ he began, fully prepared to defend his wife. But he saw the letter and two red stains flourished on his cheeks. He took it and glanced at the familiar writing. Then he looked back at Alana with his jaw clenched and his gaze steady.

  ‘Your wife has been sleeping with my father and it seems that everyone in Ballinakelly knows about it but us. I’ve burned the rest, a dozen of them, there were, and I hope to God Mam doesn’t find out because it will break her heart, truly it will. It will break her in half. She loved my father more than any other.’ Alana glared at them both. ‘Well, he’s dead now, so you can no longer get your claws on him.’ She put her hand to her mouth to suppress a sob. ‘And if you think I’m going to marry a Deverill, you’ve got another think coming,’ she added as she set off down the drive. ‘The Deverills have bad blood and I want none of it!’

  ‘Is this true?’ Robert asked Kitty.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kitty, dropping her gaze to her feet. There was no point in lying. Robert was holding the letter to prove it.

  ‘Come inside,’ he said in a calm voice, which Kitty knew was only a prelude to the storm to come. ‘We need to talk.’

  Just as Alana was striding through the gate into the lane, JP was walking towards it. He saw her stricken face and hurried to comfort her, but Alana stiffened and pushed him away. ‘Did you know about your sister and my father?’ she rounded on him and JP was so shocked by the hard fury in her features that he was lost for words. ‘Your sister Kitty and my father were having an affair,’ she hissed. ‘Did you know about it? Did everyone know about it but us?’

  JP took her by the shoulders. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I found evidence. Letters declaring their love.’ She began to cry. ‘Ask Kitty and she’ll tell you herself.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s some mistake.’

  ‘There’s no mistake. It’s true.’

  ‘My darling . . .’ he began, attempting to embrace her and confounded by her rejection.

  ‘If Mam finds out about this it will destroy her. I’ll never forgive Kitty for seducing my father for as long as I live.’ She pushed him away again. ‘And I cannot marry you.’

  JP stared at her, bewildered by her coldness. ‘You cannot blame me for my sister’s misconduct,’ he argued.

  ‘I don’t blame you, JP. But I won’t have anything to do with the Deverills and I will not carry their cursed name.’

  He reached out to take her hand but she snatched it away. ‘Please, Alana, you’re not thinking straight. You can’t destroy our happiness—’

  She cut him off briskly. ‘I’m not destroying our happiness, Kitty is.’

  ‘But you are letting her.’

  ‘I have no choice. I have to go.’ She marched past him and set off down the lane. JP stood there for a moment, hoping that she’d stop and reconsider, and when she did, that she’d be the warm and affectionate woman he loved. But she did not stop and she did not reconsider.

  ‘I will let you go, Alana, but I will not accept your decision,’ he cried after her, his heart breaking. ‘I’ll wait until you see reason, which you will, in time.’

  ‘Wait all you like,’ she shouted without a backwards glance. ‘You will die an old man waiting.’

  He watched her go and with it his happiness. Then he strode up the drive towards the house and Kitty.

  At last the funeral was over and the Americans had left; it was safe for Jack to come out of hiding. He knew he’d have a lot of explaining to do and poor Badger would have to have a proper funeral, but now Jack would be able to live without always glancing over his shoulder, expecting his enemies to appear at any moment.

  Hiding out in Badger’s farmhouse knowing his family thought him dead had been the hardest thing he had ever had to do in his life and he had almost quit, but Michael and Father Quinn had convinced him to carry through their plan. ‘You can only pretend to die once,’ Michael had told him. ‘Those Yanks have to leave Ireland believing you’re dead or they’ll finish you off themselves. This is the only way.’ So Jack had stuck it out in the hills, pacing the floor of Badger’s kitchen, while Badger was buried in his stead.

  Jack reached home and flung open the door. Emer was in the kitchen laying the table when she looked up to see him standing in the doorframe. She froze. Then she dropped the plates, which crashed on the floorboards and shattered, and stared at him in disbelief. ‘Emer,’ he said, taking off his cap. ‘It’s over. They’ll not be after me now.’ He moved towards her.

  Emer’s face went white, her knees buckled and she began to slowly sink to the ground. Jack hurried to catch her and she grabbed his jacket to stop herself from falling and let out a loud wail.

  The three children ran into the kitchen to see what the commotion was about. They saw their father back from the dead, lifting their mother into his arms and embracing her tightly. Like a rag doll, she was, limp and sobbing. ‘It’s all right. I’m back,’ he was saying, pressing his face against hers. ‘I’m back and I’ll not be leaving you again. Not ever. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
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  After a moment’s hesitation Aileen and Liam cried out with joy and raced to wrap their arms around their beloved da, risen like Lazarus, but Alana hung back. Love was swelling in her chest, expanding into every corner of her being, chasing away the resentment, but she clung on to her fury with all her might, reluctant to give it up, determined not to forget what her father had done with Kitty.

  Jack saw her standing there, ashen, and he mistook her pallor for shock. He assumed she would come to him in her own time. It was only fair to give her space to digest the fact that he had come back. ‘I’m sorry,’ he kept saying and Emer smiled through her tears and covered his wet face with kisses, understanding why he had done it and forgiving him.

  Alana watched from the shadows. She would never forgive him. Not ever.

  Chapter 27

  So it was true. Kitty had been having an affair with Alana’s father. Robert was devastated, Florence in tears and Kitty herself refused to come out of her bedroom. In despair JP went to see his father, who was the only person he felt he could talk to. He wished he’d died up there in his Spitfire rather than suffering as he was now. Hadn’t Alana promised him he would never suffer in love again? ‘We are cursed,’ he told his father. ‘The Deverills are cursed.’

  ‘Don’t believe that, JP,’ said Bertie from his armchair in the library where he liked to sit after dinner. He had become quite the creature of habit in his old age. He reached for his tea, which he still would have preferred to be whiskey, but he was not going to throw himself into a bottle again, not if he wanted to win back Maud. ‘We make our own luck and your sister has done a very good job of making bad luck. One learns, as one gets older, that one simply can’t have everything in life. Some things have to be denied for the greater good. I learned too late and lost my darling Maud. Kitty will learn now, but what is the cost of that lesson, eh? The destruction of not only her own happiness but yours and Alana’s too. It all boils down to selfishness in the end. If we were all less selfish the world would be a kinder place.’

  ‘But Alana won’t marry me, Father. I’ve lost her.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. She’s young and impulsive. Give her time. Go to Dublin and get on with your education. Leave the dust to settle here. It will. It always does in the end.’

  JP looked at his father sadly. ‘Will Robert leave Kitty?’

  In this respect Bertie wasn’t so positive. ‘I suspect he will, I’m afraid. I doubt he’ll be able to carry on, knowing that Kitty’s heart has always been elsewhere. He’s a proud man.’

  JP groaned and put his head in his hands. ‘This is a disaster.’

  ‘I dare say some good will come out of the ashes, but I can’t see what that might be in their case.’

  ‘We are cursed,’ JP repeated. ‘Ever since Barton Deverill built his castle on O’Leary land we’ve been cursed. Can’t you see? The Deverills have reeled from one disaster to the next. When will it all end? When an O’Leary returns to claim the land? Will that ever happen?’

  Bertie chuckled cynically. ‘I don’t believe in curses nor do I believe in prophecies. We make our own fortune. It’s up to you to make yours, JP.’

  Adeline watched JP leave. It was all very sad, this strange turn of events. She smiled on her son, for he had grown wise with the years. Bertie will be believing in ghosts soon enough, she thought with amusement. But JP had a point. The Deverills did seem to be cursed. Adeline had never thought beyond the part of Maggie’s curse that condemned the Deverill heirs to live in limbo within the castle walls, but her husband’s family did seem to suffer terrible misfortune. She watched Bertie pick up his book and start to read, but she knew he wasn’t seeing the words. He was thinking of Maud and contemplating his own troubles. How much hard luck had he brought upon himself and how much had been imposed upon him? Had he not seduced Bridie Doyle, Michael Doyle would not have burned the castle to the ground. Had Michael not burned the castle to the ground, Kitty would not have sought him out in the farmhouse and he would not have violated her. Every action has a consequence, she pondered. A small stone thrown into a pond sends out ripples that reach far and wide and every ripple touches something that affects something else and on it goes. Life is all about learning lessons and each adversity is designed to instruct. What will Kitty learn from this?

  It wasn’t long before the whole of Ballinakelly had heard about Jack’s sudden reappearance. The Weeping Women of Jerusalem deemed it a miracle and crossed themselves vigorously, but the truth about the Yanks and Jack’s involvement with the Mafia soon dispatched any illusions of divine intervention.

  Kitty’s joy at the news was tempered by the realization that she could never go near him again. It was over; this time for good. And her heart buckled beneath the weight of so much sadness. She had lost everything.

  Unable to withstand her family’s fury and Robert’s hurt Kitty packed her bag and took the boat to England to seek refuge with Celia. She settled into Deverill House, where Celia was living with her children and Boysie. In the drawing room over a large glass of wine and an openness that was not typical of her more secretive nature, Kitty told her cousin and her old friend about Jack, from the very beginning.

  ‘Gracious, Kitty,’ said Boysie, reeling from the drama he had known nothing about. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Yes, what happens now?’ Celia repeated, curled up into the corner of the sofa, riveted by every detail of Kitty’s extraordinary life, which made her own seem ordinary by comparison.

  ‘JP has gone to Dublin, blaming me for Alana’s refusal to marry him. Florence has taken Robert’s side and is at home comforting him. Robert is devastated. I don’t know whether he’ll leave me. I don’t blame him if he does. I’ve ruined everything.’ She looked helplessly at her friends. ‘As for Jack, what can I say? I love him. Not being able to have him won’t change that. Nothing will. But if I’ve learned anything from this terrible situation it’s that one can’t have everything one wants in life. Some things are out of reach and should remain so. I was only thinking of myself. But no man is an island. When I saw Alana’s distraught face I realized how selfish I’d been. I’ll never forget her unhappiness. It will stay with me forever.’ Kitty put her hand to her heart and her eyes filled with tears. ‘No precious moment with Jack is worth that. If I could rewind the clock I would save Alana from that moment and I’d save myself from seeing it. I’d let Jack go. I truly believe I would.’

  Kitty wasn’t surprised by JP’s reaction to her affair with Alana’s father and she wasn’t surprised by Robert’s fury, but she was surprised by her mother’s understanding. Maud and Kitty had never understood one another, ever. When Kitty had taken it upon herself to raise JP, Maud had all but disowned her. Now she turned up at Deverill House unannounced and full of compassion. What had life taught her for this sudden change of heart to take place? Kitty wondered as she followed her into the garden.

  Maud suggested she and Kitty sit on the bench. It was early autumn and still warm and the pink hydrangeas were only just beginning to turn brown. Since losing Harry Maud had aged considerably. Her skin sagged around the mouth where bitterness had been allowed to fester and her hands betrayed her age with a tangle of blue veins and sprinkling of brown spots. Her eyes, however, were that piercing, icy blue that had won her admirers all through her life, yet they seemed to have softened slightly, as if suffering had instilled some empathy.

  ‘Bertie has told me the whole sorry story,’ Maud said once they were sitting down. ‘I had no idea you were such a dark horse, Kitty.’ She wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, not because she was cold, but because she felt awkward being a mother to this child who had always made her feel deficient and foolish. ‘I had an affair, Kitty.’

  ‘You had an affair?’ Kitty exclaimed. It shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, she had discovered her father making love to Grace Rowan-Hampton when she was a child, so why should her mother have been any different? Perhaps everyone was at it.

  ‘I loved a man, a friend o
f your father’s, and I loved him for years.’

  ‘Why did it end?’

  ‘Because I got pregnant with you.’ She looked at Kitty and smiled apologetically. ‘I think I probably blamed you for that, although now, in my dotage, I realize that he probably seized the opportunity to end it. You weren’t to be blamed, how could you be?’

  ‘You were devastated, naturally.’

  ‘I was. Your father was carrying on with any pretty face that presented itself, but while I had Eddie, I was content. When he left me, I had to suffer your father’s affairs without anyone to look after me.’

  ‘Whatever became of him?’

  ‘Eddie? Oh, he married and had children and moved to India. The point is, Kitty, I know what forbidden love feels like and so I understand what you’re going through. I haven’t been a good mother. In fact, I admit that I haven’t been much of a mother to you at all. I regret that.’

  ‘Don’t regret, Mother. I wasn’t an easy child.’

  ‘No, you weren’t easy, but I should have been less selfish.’ Kitty was stunned by her mother’s candour. Maud had only ever thought of herself. Kitty wondered what had inspired her to change. ‘So, what are you going to do now?’ Maud asked.

  ‘I’m going to hide here and hope that Robert forgives me. I know that is asking too much. I’ve done a terrible thing and I regret hurting him. He’s a good man and he doesn’t deserve a wife like me.’

  ‘I know you’re comfortable here with Celia, you two have always been close, but you’re welcome to come and live with me. The door is open should you wish to step through it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kitty replied politely, although the idea of living with Maud was not an appealing one.

  ‘Tell me about your father. How is he?’