Dark Angel

It was beneath Paola’s dignity to look anything other than supremely bored.

But not a single one of them showed any sign of making a move to leave and Luciano recognised that he had a problem…unhappily for his conscience-free libido, Rochelle, who had a seriously liberal attitude to loose living, was totally out of the question. Lesley? Not when he still had current dealings with her legal firm, for, even if she was willing to risk her reputation by consorting with a male still shadowed by criminal charges, he was not willing to help her to make that mistake. And Paola? As exquisite, perfect and downright practical a proposition as she was, it was far too soon for him to contemplate that level of commitment.

Every muscle straining at the effort required, Kerry heaved the log into the wheelbarrow.

When the barrow immediately tipped over beneath the weight and the log rolled out again, she could have sat down and howled like a baby. Snatching in a steadying breath, she blinked back tears of frustration, set the wheelbarrow straight and made herself start again. The spring days and nights were cold. She had two fires to keep going for her grandparents’ benefit and only the largest, heaviest logs burned for any appreciable length of time in the massive hearths at Ballybawn Castle.

Unfortunately, her sleepless night had drained her of energy. Was it any wonder that she was still in shock about Luciano’s successful appeal against his conviction? For hours she had tossed and turned while her mind ran round in tortured circles, continually throwing her back in time to Luciano’s arrest on charges of false accounting and theft, and her own initial disbelief. But brick by brick the evidence against Luciano had mounted. When a single fingerprint had been identified as his on a damning document, she had accepted that he was guilty. Then she had also believed that fingerprinting was an exact science and irrefutable proof. How could she ever have foreseen that, five years on, respected forensic experts would enter a court of law on Luciano’s behalf and discredit the reliability of the fingerprint which had played such a heavy part in the original prosecution case?

Yet that was what had happened only yesterday, Kerry acknowledged, shaking her head in lingering bewilderment as she finally got the log into the barrow and trudged back along the wooded lane to the castle. Luciano was free…and a tension headache was pounding behind her brow. Why could she think of nothing but Luciano? What did his freedom have to do with her? But was he innocent? That was what the newspapers were saying. Could she have misjudged him on that score at least?

Yet the male being deified by the Press was the same male whom she had loved more than she had ever dreamt she could love anyone and he had hurt her more than any soul alive. He had slept with Rochelle and in her heart of hearts had she really been surprised by that? After all, her stepsister was everything she herself was not: gorgeous, sexy and irresistible to men. Even her own father preferred Rochelle, Kerry reminded herself painfully. Possibly only a woman with the looks and personality of Helen of Troy could have kept Luciano faithful.

Just as she was comforting herself with that reflection, a car slowed up behind her, drew level and then stopped. It was Elphie Hewitt, whom Kerry had been friendly with since childhood. Now an artist, Elphie rented the Georgian wing of the castle as a trompe l’oeil showroom to display the decorative special paint effects at which she excelled.

‘What are you doing with that wheelbarrow?’ Elphie questioned with a frown. ‘Didn’t Dad offer to bring you over a load of logs?’

Although embarrassed by that reminder, Kerry was reluctant to accept a favour which she could not return and, even worse, the kind of favour that the older man might well have felt obliged to repeat. ‘Your father has enough to do on the farm—’

‘He would still be glad to help out. Only the other day he was saying how sorry he felt for you,’ Elphie confided. ‘You’ve such a battle to keep the estate going. And your grandparents…bless them, they’re lovely people…but they’re a big responsibility for a woman your age!’

Kerry was mortified when she pictured the Hewitts, both of whom were her grandfather’s tenants, discussing her in such pitying terms. Not for nothing was Elphie renowned for her excessive lack of tact.

‘How’s business?’ Kerry asked in the hope of changing the subject.

Elphie groaned. ‘All right…just. The interior designers are hiring my services but I need to be working for clients direct to make a decent profit. Heck, is that the time? I’ve got an appointment!’

As soon as Elphie had driven off Kerry forgot that the conversation had even taken place, for her own restive thoughts had zoomed straight back to centre on Luciano again. In fact, only twenty minutes later, having finally carted a fresh supply of firewood into her grandmother’s sitting room, Kerry could no longer keep the lid on her own emotional turmoil.

‘How do you feel about all this stuff about Luciano in the newspapers?’ Kerry asked the older woman tautly. ‘I don’t know what to think or how I’m supposed to feel about it but I can’t get it or him out of my mind.’

‘I do so worry that you don’t sew,’ Viola O’Brien remarked in startling disregard of the subject which Kerry had opened, her gaze resting on her granddaughter with vague concern. ‘A talent with a needle and thread is so essential these days. How else can you hope to repair the torn sheets in the linen cupboard and re-cover the dining-room chairs?’

‘Grandma…’ Kerry frowned and then said gently, ‘Didn’t you read the newspapers that I gave you this morning?’

‘Yes, darling. Luciano has been set free. Of course he’s innocent. I wasn’t surprised to hear that news,’ Viola O’Brien declared in the same even tone as if the events that had shattered Kerry over the previous twenty-four hours were no more worthy of surprise than a mild change in the weather.

As she received that discomfiting response, Kerry’s slender figure tensed even more. It was not a moment to easily bear the reminder that her grandmother had refused to contemplate the possibility that Luciano might be guilty as charged five years earlier. If Kerry had not been impressed by that partisanship at the time, it had been because she was well aware that the older woman had always been reluctant to deal with anything unpleasant in life. A burglar caught red-handed in the castle would also have received the benefit of the doubt. In much the same way, her grandmother preferred to ignore the reality that those dining chairs which she had just mentioned as requiring recovering had long since gone to the saleroom.

‘It would have been very romantic had you been waiting outside the court when Luciano emerged a free man,’ her grandmother contended in misty-eyed addition. ‘I do wish that you’d paid heed to my little hints. There are times when it would be quite improper for a young woman to be that forward but there are also special occasions when too much reticence might even appear ungracious.’

At that assurance, Kerry just closed her eyes in despair, gritted her teeth and flopped down into the worn armchair opposite. ‘I expect there are but that wasn’t one of them.’

When she opened her eyes again, Viola O’Brien was still sitting in perfect tranquillity, stitching at her embroidery. A slight woman of eighty years of age, she wore her hair in the same plaited coronet she had favoured since her girlhood and dressed in layers of fluttering draperies as though the clock had stopped ticking at some grand dinner party in the 1930s and never moved on again.

‘Well, there has to be some reason why I heard Florrie crying every night last week…Florrie usually only wails when there’s a wedding in the offing,’ Viola reminded her granddaughter of the O’Brien legend. ‘One would think that after four hundred and fifty years, Florrie could learn to be more cheerful. Still, I suppose there’s no such thing as a happy ghost.’

‘I wouldn’t know….’ Kerry sighed. ‘I’ve never heard her.’

‘I expect you tell yourself that the noise she makes is the wind in the trees.’

Breathing in deep and slow, Kerry parted her lips and said, ‘Grandma…it’s been five years since I decided not to marry Luciano.’

‘Yes, darling, I do appreciate that. Do recall too that at the time I was rather concerned that we didn’t hear Florrie when your wedding was only supposed to be a few weeks away.’

Kerry ground her teeth together so hard it hurt while also wishing that she had had the nerve to tell her grandparents the real reason why she had broken off her engagement instead of settling on the less humiliating pretext of a simple change of heart.

‘But I can’t believe that Luciano will hold your past misgivings against you. I expect he’ll make a great deal of silly noise about it in the way that men do,’ Viola opined in continuation. ‘But you remain the woman who rejected him and he will know no true happiness until he regains your love and trust—’

‘There is no question of any reconciliation between L-Luciano and me!’ Kerry broke in to protest in frustration, her voice sharp and laced with the stammer which she had overcome in her teens but which still returned to haunt her in moments of stress.

Viola O’Brien raised her fine brows in mild reproach but her clear surprise at even that slightly raised voice having been directed at her sank her granddaughter into discomfiture and won her an immediate apology.

‘I understand, darling,’ Viola murmured in instant forgiveness. ‘Having to wait for Luciano to make the first move is very tiresome and must be a considerable strain on your nerves. Unfortunately that is why putting in an appearance outside that court room yesterday would have been the easier path to follow.’

At that very trying repetition of an outrageous proposition, Kerry sprang in a restive motion out of her armchair again. She knew that the older woman could have no idea how much such fanciful suggestions and expectations could still wound and hurt. But then perhaps she herself was more at fault for being oversensitive, Kerry thought guiltily. She adored her grandparents for the unquestioning love which they had always given her. Her reluctant father, Harold Linwood, had never been prepared to offer his daughter a similiar level of affection.

‘Eventually Luciano will wend his own way over to Ireland,’ her grandmother forecast with an obvious wish to proffer that prospect as a comfort.

‘That is very unlikely.’

‘I think not, darling. After all, he does more or less own Ballybawn Castle,’ Viola countered abstractedly while she rustled for fresh embroidery thread in her hopelessly messy work basket.

Kerry studied her grandmother in open-mouthed astonishment. ‘Sorry…what did you say?’ she queried, convinced that she must have misheard that staggering statement.

‘Your grandfather will be annoyed with me…’ Viola O’ Brien’s soft brown eyes revealed dismay before she returned with almost frantic purpose to her search for thread. ‘He did ask me to keep that a secret.’

For several taut seconds Kerry hovered in sheer bewilderment, her mind refusing to handle that additional piece of supporting information.

‘It’s vulgar for a woman to discuss business,’ her grandmother declared in harassed and obvious retreat from the threat of further questioning. ‘I don’t believe I understood what your grandfather was trying to explain.’

In dismay and concern, Kerry noticed that Viola O’Brien’s thin hands were trembling and she paled at a sight she had never seen before. ‘I’m sure you didn’t,’ she forced herself to say with artificial calm.

Her mind whirling, Kerry left the sitting room as soon as she could. In the dim corridor, she sucked in a slow, steadying breath. How could Luciano virtually own her grandparents’ ancestral home? Yet it was evident that her grandmother believed that he did. That her grandfather should have broken the habit of a lifetime to discuss a business matter with his lady wife was a very alarming factor that suggested that the impossible might be more possible than Kerry wanted to believe.

After all, Kerry was already uneasily aware that on the strength of their brief engagement five years earlier Luciano had insisted on giving her cash-strapped grandparents a very large loan. Soon afterwards a proportion of the roof had been mended though some of it remained in disrepair. Kerry had concentrated her own energies on cutting costs and striving to raise extra income on the estate in an effort to ensure that the older couple could at least live out their lives in their vast and dilapidated home. However, her grandfather had never allowed her to take charge of the accounts or, indeed, even examine them but she had naturally assumed that the loan repayments were being kept up to date.

Perspiration dampened Kerry’s short upper lip. The very idea that Luciano might have some kind of claim on Ballybawn Castle horrified her. Could her grandfather have been struggling to handle major financial problems which he had kept from her? Regardless of his granddaughter’s degree in business and her strenuous efforts to make Ballybawn Castle a paying proposition, Hunt O’Brien still cherished the gallant if impractical outlook of a bygone age when it came to his womenfolk. He believed that even Kerry was a poor, vulnerable little woman who had to be protected at all costs from the frightening stress of monetary woes. Therefore, Kerry conceded worriedly, that the older man should even have considered mentioning such an issue to her grandmother suggested that a very serious situation had developed…

Running Hunt O’Brien to earth within his own home was rarely a challenge. In his younger days, eager to follow in his own father’s footsteps, he had been a keen inventor of elaborate mechanical devices but, sadly for him, technology had repeatedly outstripped him in pace. Abandoning his workshop, her grandfather had turned to scholarship instead and, rain or shine, he was now to be found in the library happily surrounded by books. In fact, books were heaped on the bare floor, stacked on the threadbare chairs, and his enormous desk was so covered with them that her eighty-two-year-old grandparent preferred to squeeze himself into a corner of an old sofa and use a battered antique lap desk instead. There for the past half-century he had been weightily engaged in writing his definitive multi-volume work on the history of Ireland. Nobody at Ballybawn had ever been honoured with the opportunity to read a word of his life’s work and Kerry rather doubted that any publisher would ever be permitted the privilege either.

‘Is it time for lunch, my dear?’ Having finally registered her presence, Hunt O’Brien peered at her over the top of his round-rimmed spectacles in enquiry.

Luciano, Kerry recalled with a sharp unwelcome pang, had once remarked that her grandfather must be very much in demand to play Santa Claus. Small and portly with the still-bright blue eyes that were the O’Brien inheritance, he was given a rather merry aspect by his shock of silver hair and his beard. And, in truth, he was an exceptionally kind man but possibly not very well matched to the challenges that had unexpectedly become his when he, rather than his elder brother, had inherited Ballybawn.

‘No,’ Kerry replied. ‘I’ll see to lunch soon.’

‘What’s happened to Bridget…is she ill?’ Hunt enquired absently, his eyes already roaming back to the notebook he had been writing in seconds earlier.