‘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 any more. 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 to 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 offence is all the more cruel,’ he groaned, 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 towards 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.’
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been written without the following invaluable people. I thank them with all my heart.
My dear friend and co-conspirator, 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.
Also by Santa Montefiore
The Affair
The Italian Matchmaker
The French Gardener
Sea of Lost Love
The Gypsy Madonna
Last Voyage of the Valentina
The Swallow and the Hummingbird
The Forget-Me-Not Sonata
The Butterfly Box
Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree
The House by the Sea
The Summer House
Secrets of the Lighthouse
The Beekeeper’s Daughter
Songs of Love and War
Daughters of Castle Deverill
With Simon Sebag Montefiore
The Royal Rabbits of London
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2017
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Copyright © Santa Montefiore, 2017
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The Last Secret of the Deverills Page 39
