Dark Angel

‘I haven’t a clue but, if he didn’t take that money, obviously someone else at Linwoods did. He did say that he would fight until he had cleared his name,’ Ker

ry reminded him. ‘If he succeeds, the police will have to reopen the investigation.’

‘They won’t find any new evidence this long after the event. Da Valenza’s got his precious freedom back. What more does the guy want?’ Hailing the waitress, Miles ordered another drink and then excused himself from the table.

A few minutes alone were welcome to Kerry at that moment, for instead of her finding Miles’s company a comfort his revelation that Rochelle was seeing Luciano that very evening had only cast her into deeper conflict with herself. Why was the very idea of Rochelle and Luciano being together hurting her so much? Was it her pride? Or even a rather shameful dog-in-the-manger feeling? No matter how badly Rochelle behaved, she always seemed to get what she wanted. But surely she herself ought to be used to that by now? In any case, how could she allow herself to agonise in any way over a guy set on evicting her grandparents from their only home?

Miles returned from the cloakroom full of jokes and entertaining stories. Just keeping up with his lively conversation helped Kerry to suppress her own emotional conflict. She boarded her flight home, more properly engaged in wondering just how she might still fight Luciano and stay on the right side of the law, for she was fully convinced that her grandparents would not long survive any move from Ballybawn.

The castle had been in the O’Brien family for over five hundred years. Like most fortified tower houses in Ireland, Ballybawn had a chequered past. The castle had withstood hostile neighbours, seige and flames and had been razed to ground level more than once. But throughout those challenging times, Ballybawn had remained in family hands and had only ever been occupied by an O’Brien.

Through poverty, war and famine her ancestors had fought tooth and nail to retain their heritage even when it was just a heap of rubble. No sacrifice had been too great for them, Kerry reminded herself bracingly. In the eighteenth century, the O’Briens had been reduced to sharing a lean-to with their livestock in the shelter of the ruined walls. Offered a fortune to sell their land, had they surrendered an inch of it and snatched at the chance of an easier life? No way! It had taken them forty years to amass enough money to rebuild Ballybawn but against all the odds they had pulled off that meteoric achievement.

Gathering inspiration from that stirring fact, Kerry told herself that where there was a will, there was a way…

CHAPTER FOUR

‘MOST thoughtful of Luciano, don’t you think?’ Hunt O’Brien passed the letter complete with oily fingerprints to Kerry and bent over the ancient generator again. ‘Life will go on just as before for all our dear friends. ‘

Frowning in surprise, Kerry scanned the letter from Luciano’s solicitor, which in the event of the repossession order being granted not only promised ongoing employment to O’Brien employees but also urged that estate businesses should continue to trade as normal. Her troubled turquoise eyes clouded. Luciano was willing to be generous to everyone involved with one notable exception: her grandparents. Were her grandparents being punished for their association with her? How could Luciano offer such a far-reaching assurance unless he intended to maintain the castle as a private dwelling?

‘Next month, your grandmother and I will as usual be visiting Cousin Tommy,’ her grandparent remarked. ‘Tommy always enjoys the company. Perhaps we could make it a more permanent arrangement…what do you think?’

While making noncommittal sounds, Kerry thought that the elderly bachelor’s other relatives might be distinctly dismayed if the O’Briens were to demonstrate a desire to become more than biannual guests in his Dublin home. Yet she was reluctant to rain doubt on her grandfather’s fond hope when she had as yet failed to come up with any alternative. In just three days, the High Court would deal with the repossession order but there was no chance of a miracle in that line when Hunt O’Brien had refused to even try to fight the order.

Indeed, on that score Kerry had found the older man immoveable.

‘I owe money I can’t repay…I won’t interfere with the course of the law,’ he had sighed.

‘But people would have a lot of sympathy—’

‘No. I must do what’s right and behave with dignity,’ he had insisted.

The generator kicked nosily into life again and the old man beamed with pleasure. It had always been a source of huge satisfaction to Hunt O’Brien that Ballybawn Castle was not joined to the national electricity grid. Since 1897, Ballybawn had generated its own power from a complex water system originally designed by her great-grandfather. Mercifully the years when rain had been less than plentiful had been few. However, blackouts were not unusual and, owing to the finite nature of the output, the ground floor alone of the castle was wired for electric light.

Only when Kerry gave that brief letter a second perusal did it dawn on her that it could be the loophole and the very escape clause that she had been frantically seeking to buy some time. What if…she was to become an official estate employee? As long as she was signed up as such before ownership of the castle passed into other hands, she too would be protected from the threat of immediate eviction. Of course, it would have to be a job that included live-in accommodation. She would become the housekeeper, she decided. It had been some time since Ballybawn had rejoiced in such a luxury but the former cook’s quarters were spacious, for Bridget, the previous occupant, had raised a large family there.

In the tiny estate office in the old stable yard, Kerry filled out an application form and backdated it for the files. Printing out an employment contract, she went off to find her grandmother. Viola, who had always maintained that flowers ought to stay in the garden to enhance the view, was fixing ground elder, dandelions and reeds from the lake in a vase in the great hall.

‘If only it wasn’t too early for the convolvulus to bloom,’ Viola lamented.

‘It still looks lovely.’ Kerry gave the arrangement of what the unimaginative might have regarded as weeds an admiring appraisal, slotted a pen into her grandmother’s hand and showed her where to sign on the dotted line.

‘Have we engaged a new member of staff?’ Viola asked, twitching the reeds to a more prominent position with careful hands.

‘A housekeeper,’ Kerry advanced, deadpan.

‘Oh…how nice that will be!’ Viola trilled with warm approval. ‘I shall be able to give my menus to her instead of to you and inspect the linen cupboard again.’

Back in the office, Kerry filed her new employment contract and organised a tenants’ meeting so that she would pass on the contents of the solicitor’s letter, for naturally the estate tenants had been very concerned about their own future. Ballybawn was, after all, the centre of a thriving cottage industry. At the same time, however, Kerry’s business enterprises had, through lack of investment capital, been based more on the principle of bartering and exchanging services than on market forces.

Thus, a local builder, who rented premises on the estate at a favourable rate, had over the years helped Kerry to create two holiday cottages from what had once been staff quarters at the rear of the castle. The imposing reception rooms in the Georgian wing used by Elphie Hewitt to showcase her own artistic talent were also rented out for parties and receptions. The castle gardens were maintained by a landscaper, who also ran a nursery on the estate. His plants were on sale in the stable yard, which also contained an artist’s gallery and the studios of several local crafts people. In Kerry’s hands, Ballybawn had become the trading heart of the community.

Three days later Kerry waited for her grandfather to emerge from the local court sitting, and when he reappeared he had tears shining in his blue eyes. She was too distressed by the sight of his pain to intrude by asking questions. As he climbed into the car, he paused to say heavily, ‘The officials will be coming in to do valuations and such. We’ll have a month to move…’

Exactly four weeks later, Luciano braked at a tiny junction that boasted an embarrassment of signposts.

Two of them pointed in opposing directions to Ballybawn Castle. Deciding against the potholed