Daughters of Castle Deverill Read Free Page A

boundaries of perception. Love binds us together for eternity. You’ll understand eternity when
it’s your turn. Right now there are more earthly things to discuss.’
    Kitty wiped her cheeks with her leather glove. ‘What things?’
    ‘The past,’ said Adeline, and Kitty knew she meant the prison of the long dead. ‘The curse
must
be lifted. Perhaps you have the strength to do it; perhaps
only
you.’
    ‘But Celia’s bought the castle, Grandma.’
    ‘Jack O’Leary is the key which will unlock the gates and let them all fly out.’
    ‘But I can’t have Jack and I don’t have the castle.’ The words gripped her throat like barbed wire. ‘With all the will in the world I can’t make that
happen.’
    ‘Who are you talking to?’ It was Celia. She swept her eyes over the empty room suspiciously and frowned. ‘You’re not speaking to those ghosts of yours, are you? I hope
they all go away before Archie and I move in.’ She laughed nervously. ‘I was just thinking, I might start a literary salon. I do find literary people so attractive, don’t you? Or
maybe we’ll hire a fashionable spiritualist from London and hold séances. Gosh, that would be amusing. Oliver Cromwell might show up and scare the living daylights out of us all!
I’ve got so many capital ideas. Wouldn’t it be a riot to bring back the Summer Ball?’ She linked her arm through Kitty’s. ‘Come, let’s leave the car here and
walk with your horse to the Hunting Lodge. I left Archie to tell Uncle Bertie about us buying the castle. What do you think he’ll say?’
    Kitty took a deep breath to regain her composure. Those who have suffered develop patience and she had always been good at hiding her pain. ‘I think he’ll be as happy as I am,’
she said, making her way back through the hall at her cousin’s side. ‘Blood is thicker than water. That’s something we Deverills all agree on.’
    Bridget Lockwood sat at the wooden table in the farmhouse where she had been raised as Bridie Doyle and felt awkwardly out of place. She was too big for the room, as if she had
outgrown the furniture, low ceilings and meagre windows from where she had once gazed upon the stars and dreamed of a better life. Her clothes were too elegant, her kid gloves and fine hat as
incongruous in this house as a circus pony in a cowshed. As Mrs Lockwood she had become too refined to derive any pleasure from her old simple way of life. Yet the girl in her who had suffered
years of clawing homesickness in America longed to savour the familiar comfort of the home for which she had pined. How often had she dreamed of sitting in this very chair, drinking buttermilk,
tasting the smoke from the turf fire and the sweet smell of cows from the barn next door? How many times had she craved her feather bed, her father’s tread on the stair, her mother’s
goodnight kiss and her grandmother’s quiet mumbling of the rosary? Too many to count and yet, here she was in the middle of all that she had missed. So why did she feel so sad? Because she
was no longer that girl. Not a trace of her remained except Little Jack.
    The farmhouse had filled with locals keen to welcome Bridie back from America and everyone had commented on her pretty blue tea dress with its beads and tassels and her matching blue T-bar
shoes, and the women had rubbed the fabric of her skirt between rough fingers, for only in their dreams would they ever possess such luxuries. There had been dancing, laughter and their neighbour
Badger Hanratty’s illegal poteen, but Bridie had felt as if she were watching it all from behind a pane of smoked glass, unable to connect with any of the people she had once known and loved
so well. She had outgrown them. She had watched Rosetta, her Italian maid and companion whom she had brought back from America, and envied her. The girl had been swung about the room by
Bridie’s brother Sean, who had clearly lost his heart to her, and by the look on her face she