Dark Angel

by his brooding silence, her expectant eyes clinging to his impassive profile. ‘Before my friend, Elphie Hewitt, made this her base, the paper was hanging in strips off the walls and there was no decent furniture. Grandpa didn’t have the funds to re-decorate but now these rooms are habitable again and they are better used than left empty.’

Having decided to save the atmospheric and charming heart of the castle to the last, and with the light fading fast, Kerry took him outside again at that point to walk the several hundred yards to the old stable yard. There Luciano gazed without surprise—for he was way way beyond surprise—at the superb architecture of buildings built to last and in infinitely better order than the castle itself. Kerry’s ancestors had spent much more on housing their horses than they had on their own home. Without any apparent awareness of the incongruity, she then showed him round a holiday cottage that offered a first-class luxury comparison.

Her enthusiasm and pride in what she was showing him undimmed, Kerry led him back indoors. A parade of sad, shabby rooms followed. Some of the multi-paned windows sported little boards where panes were missing and rickety furniture was propped up on bricks and books. Nowhere could he see anything of any true value: just the obvious spaces and marks on the walls that revealed where pictures had once hung and where pieces of furniture must have stood before being removed to be sold. That she had spent five years struggling to maintain a castle in the midst of such pitiful poverty shook him even more. That she should want to fight to remain within the cold, damp, comfort-free walls struck him as certifiable insanity.

He also saw that she did not see what he saw. Love for her family home had blinded her to defects that screamed at him. He was asked to admire the great hall, which was embellished with collections of strange metal implements hung on wall-grids apparently made of rusty chicken wire, curtains that hung in rags of faded grandeur and a peculiar floral arrangement of weeds.

‘That portrait is of Florence O’Brien. She’s supposed to be the family ghost,’ Kerry informed him with determined cheer.

Almost desperate to find something worthy of the appreciation she seemed to expect, Luciano duly studied the remaining primitive, smoke-stained oil above the massive hearth. He was disappointed yet again, for the canvas featured an unattractive redhead with protuberant, staring eyes which seemed to follow him round the room. He almost quipped that any self-respecting ghost ought to have long since shipped out for more impressive surroundings but thought better of levity. After all, Ballybawn was no joke and he did not feel like laughing: he had just been landed with the biggest and most expensive white elephant in the history of the world.

The tour finished in the tower, where he discovered that Kerry was still occupying the bedroom below his.

‘I liked to be close to my grandparents in case they needed me,’ Kerry muttered awkwardly. ‘I’ll move out tonight—’

‘There’s no need to do that.’ Luciano expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss. ‘Look, your grandparents can keep all the contents of the castle. I don’t want any of this stuff.’

Kerry gave him a surprised, questioning look. ‘You…don’t?’

‘No.’ As an expression of bemused gratitude covered her delicate features, Luciano was lacerated by raw discomfiture and he swung away in a restless movement to approach the window. Darkness was rolling in fast and the lake was becoming a mere reflective gleam of still water at the foot of the gently sloping hill on which the castle stood.

Even as relief swept through Kerry and she marvelled at his change of heart, she wondered what had brought it about. ‘Does that mean that you’ve already decided what you’re going to do with Ballybawn?’

He could set a match to it and put it out of five hundred years of misery, Luciano reflected with a complete lack of humour. He had taken her beloved castle from her and he didn’t want it. Nor could he even begin to imagine what he might do with a castle that promised to be a money pit of nightmare proportions. Realistically, he had no need of a home in the Irish countryside and the amount of restoration required would ensure that investment from a business point of view would be wildly unprofitable. Regret was a rare emotion for him and shame rarer still. Yet what possible satisfaction could he receive from an act of revenge that he could only now appreciate had consisted of kicking the unfortunate when they were already literally down and out?

His objectives, Luciano recognised with grim reluctance, had become set in stone while he paced his prison cell like a caged animal. When he finally won his freedom, he had been too impatient to reconsider those targets. He had had no idea how impoverished the O’Briens were. Nor could he ever have dreamt that Kerry and her grandparents might be living in appalling conditions just to keep a giant hovel in the family.

But then, if he was honest with himself, it had not suited his purpose to acknowledge that the older couple ought to have had their advanced age and needs taken into compassionate account. He had refused to make a more personal appraisal of their situation. Determined not to be deflected from his driving desire to punish Kerry, he had remained one careful step removed from the whole unpleasant business of repossessing Ballybawn Castle. Now, he conceded grimly, he was paying the price for being the ruthless bastard he had always wanted to be: he was ashamed of himself.

Bewildered by his failure to respond to her question, Kerry stared at Luciano. Although his back was turned to her, nothing could have concealed the savage tension etched in the rigid set of his broad shoulders. He seemed troubled, angry…or did he? In her experience, Luciano was outspoken when anything annoyed him. When he went silent he unnerved her, for she found herself worriedly awaiting a sudden explosion of temperament. Yet what could he have to be angry about? He had got the castle, hadn’t he? What more could he want?

In an abrupt movement, Luciano turned, golden eyes glittering below the dense screen of his lashes, lean strong features taut with indefinable emotion. ‘I’m going out…I don’t know when I’ll be back.’

As he followed that announcement with immediate action, Kerry was taken by surprise. From the entrance hall, she listened to the telling screech of car tyres quarrelling with gravel as he reversed his sports car at speed and drove off. What on earth was the matter with him? The reproachful eyes of her grandfather’s wolfhounds reminded her that she had yet to feed them their third meal of the day.

It was only later while she was making up a fire in Luciano’s bedroom that she allowed herself to think again about that disturbing letter relating to her mother. No matter how upsetting it might be to learn how and when Carrie had died, she needed to know the facts for her own peace of mind and, what was more, her grandparents had an even greater right to learn what had happened to their only child. After a snack in place of the ruined evening meal, she sat down to write a reply explaining that she was Carrie’s daughter. Afraid that the solicitor might refuse to advance information without further proof of her identity, she enclosed a copy of both her birth certificate and her mother’s. Ashamed of the manner in which she found herself listening out every moment for Luciano’s return, she climbed into her grandfather’s twenty-five-year-old car and drove down to the village to post the letter.

Only when she was getting into bed did it occur to her that she had responded to a letter that had been sent over four years ago as if it had arrived only the day before. She would wait a couple of weeks and if she’d heard nothing from the solicitor she would try phoning the firm. Where had Luciano gone? Why didn’t she just face it? Hard as she found it to comprehend, he had seemed almost impervious to the charm of Ballybawn. Had he decided to sell the castle? Was that why her grandparents were now to retain all the contents? Her heart sank.

Having had to drive a very long way before he finally, accidentally, came on a bar where only the most basic of meals was on offer, Luciano returned to Ballybawn. As it was barely eleven, he was surprised to find only the light in the entrance hall burning and Kerry nowhere to be found. Was she out or in bed? The sight and sound of

a triple-decker sandwich of snoring wolfhounds in a giant, shaggy mat on the tower landing below his suggested that she had retired for the night. Utilising the torch from his car, he passed on up to his own room, where a big fire cast leaping shadows on the panelled walls. He imagined her hauling those logs all the way up the steep spiral staircase and he grimaced. For a woman who had done him wrong she had an inspired grasp of how to make him feel bad.

He explored the en suite facilities and all hope of a shower died fast. History rather than modern plumbing had triumphed and an ancient discoloured copper bath tub sat below the stone window. There was no doubt about it, Luciano decided. An almost biblical amount of personal suffering and discomfort featured in life at Ballybawn. He turned on a tap and water that had a brackish green tinge and remained resolutely cold gushed out. Without hesitation, he headed for the holiday cottage and its irresistible parade of mod cons. With very little persuasion, he could have stayed the night there glorying in the joy of unrestricted electricity, but promptings he was reluctant to examine sent him back to his tower bedroom.

By his bed he found a dog-eared copy of an old guide book about the history of Ballybawn. To remove his mind from the reality that, in spite of the fire, he was cold, he began to read and it was riveting stuff. Buckets of bad luck had pursued the O’Briens from their earliest beginnings, for in every war and rebellion they had supported the losing side. In the seventeenth century, he read that, ‘Florrie’, Florence O’Brien of the staring eyes, had drowned herself in the lake after finding her bridegroom carousing with her maid and her restless spirit was said to wail in mourning whenever an O’Brien woman was on the brink of marriage.

In the sardonic act of wondering whether or not that little book had been left out quite by accident for his perusal, Luciano flung it aside. He had decided to view his sojourn at Ballybawn as a much-needed period of enforced relaxation in a novel and bracing environment, and in the morning he was calling in every builder, plumber, glazier, roofer and electrician he could find.

It was wonderful what a difference a few hours could make to one’s convictions, Luciano mused. His loan to Kerry’s grandparents had not been misspent: it had been eaten alive by pressing need. All he had to do was figure out a cool way of backing himself out of the tight corner he had put himself in so that he could give them back the home from hell. Of course, he would have to make at least part of it habitable, not only because it was a crime to put tenants at risk but also for his own occasional visits and comfort. Kerry would be very grateful. He would figure as the soul of forgiving generosity.

While he wondered how long it would take him to seduce her into his bed to keep him warm, a noise intruded on his concentration: it was a dog howling. Springing out of bed in exasperation, Luciano strode from his room stark naked to give the dog the benefit of his opinion on baying to the moon. However, having opened the door, he discovered too late that the canine contingent had sneaked up a level and had just been waiting their chance. All three hounds hurtled past him in their frantic eagerness to gain entry to his room. He watched in astonishment as the dogs flopped down on their bellies and shot below the bed at impressive speed.

‘You’re not staying,’ Luciano warned them.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard another, longer bout of that same keening cry and it provoked a chorus of anxious doggy whines in response. It was a woman crying and with such solid walls and doors the sound could only be carrying up to his room through the chimney. Kerry was sobbing her heart out and frightening the dogs.

‘I wouldn’t give you house room,’ he told the spineless animals shivering beneath the four-poster as he pulled on his jeans at speed. ‘You’re supposed to be guard dogs and you’re hiding just because of a stupid echo!’