Dark Angel

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.

It was well over a year since Bridget, the very last of the stalwart old-style retainers employed as indoor staff, had entered a retirement home at the age of seventy-eight. But her grandfather had never in his life had to live without a cook in the household and continually forgot that fact. Had he not been called to meals, he would have gone without food and indeed was as incapable of looking after himself as her grandmother was. Remorseless time had ground on outside the walls of Ballybawn Castle while the elderly owners within remained trapped in the habits of the previous century.

‘Grandpa…’ Kerry cleared her throat to regain the old man’s attention. ‘Grandma said that Luciano more or less owned the castle.’

At those words, Hunt O’Brien stopped writing and his silver head jerked up at rare speed as he directed an almost schoolboyish look of guilt at her. ‘I was—er—I was p-p-p-p-planning,’ he finally contrived to get the word out in the tense waiting silence, ‘to tell you soon.’

Gooseflesh prickled at the nape of Kerry’s neck and her knees developed a scary tendency to wobble. ‘Yet you discussed this with Grandma rather than with me?’ she prompted in near disbelief.

‘Had to…no choice,’ Hunt O’Brien confided tautly. ‘I have to start preparing your grandmother for what lies ahead. At our age, bad news is better broken little by little and, as it seems that we shall all be forced to move out of the castle now—’

‘Move out…?’ Kerry echoed in unconcealed horror.

‘I’m afraid that I’ve f-f-failed you both.’ The older man removed his spectacles, rubbed his eyes and shook his head in weary self-reproach. ‘We’ve managed to live from day to day but, in spite of all your many wonderfully enterprising ventures to keep the estate out of debt, for the past four years and more there’s been nothing left over to cover that loan.’

Four years and more? Shattered by that admission, Kerry removed a towering pile of books from an old armchair and sat down in front of her grandfather. ‘Try to give me all the facts,’ she urged as gently as she could. ‘Loans can be restructured. I might still be able to sort this out for you.’

‘It’s far too late for that, my dear. I know I’ve been foolish.’ Replacing his spectacles, Hunt O’Brien loosed a heavy sigh. ‘I just stopped opening the letters that came from the legal firm handling Luciano’s affairs while he was in prison. After that most unf-f-fortunate business with my late brother’s will, I simply couldn’t afford to make the loan repayments.’

‘I wish you’d told me that long ago…’ Kerry was aghast that important letters had been ignored and, well aware of the debacle that had followed her great-uncle Ivor’s death, she finally asked a question which she had often longed to ask but never before dared to press.

‘How much did you have to pay Ivor’s ex-wife to drop her claim?’

Her grandfather grimaced and whispered an amount that left Kerry bereft of what remained of her breath. No longer did she need to wonder why it had become impossible for the older man to pay all dues and still make ends meet at Ballybawn.

‘I didn’t want to upset you or your grandmother by telling you what a complete mess I’ve made of things. If truth be told,’ her grandfather continued unhappily, ‘I only accepted that loan in the first place because I believed that you and Luciano were getting married.’

Kerry paled and lowered her discomfited eyes in acceptance of that latter point.

‘I didn’t worry too much then about how I would repay it because the castle would have passed down to you and your husband anyway on my death,’ he pointed out ruefully. ‘I saw that loan in terms of Luciano making an advance stake in your future together here. I also believe that he saw it in the same light then…but of course, only a few weeks later, you decided not to marry him and everything changed.’

‘Yes…everything certainly changed,’ Kerry conceded unsteadily, thinking back to the agonising aftermath of Luciano’s conviction. She had resigned from her job working for her father’s wine-store chain, packed her bags, moved out of the Linwood home and returned to Ireland to live with her grandparents again. But neither distance nor different surroundings had eased the terrible pain of having to walk away from the guy she loved, and making a fresh start had been an even bigger challenge when Luciano’s infidelity had destroyed her self-esteem.

‘At first, I hoped that matters would improve and that I would be able to catch up with the loan arrears. When that didn’t happen, I prayed that the bank would come to our rescue.’ Rising to his feet, Hunt O’Brien went over to his desk and with some difficulty tugged out a bottom drawer. ‘I’m afraid the bank turned my request down, and yesterday while I was walking in the demesne I was approached by a young man who asked me who I was and then virtually stuffed this document into my hand!’

From the cluttered desk top, the older man lifted a folded sheet. ‘I’m facing a court order for repossession of the castle.’

In the act of looking into the drawer, which was packed to bursting point with unopened envelopes, Kerry straightened to stare in appalled silence at the legal notice that her grandfather had already been officially served with.

‘I’ve spoken to the family solicitor,’ the old man confided wearily. ‘If I don’t comply with a voluntary arrangement to settle my debts, I’ll be declared bankrupt, which I believe would be worse.’

Homeless or bankrupt? What a choice! A surge of rage blistered through Kerry’s slight, taut frame. How dared Luciano threaten to evict two harmless, helpless, elderly gentlefolk from their only home at this stage of their lives? How dared he subject her grandfather’s weak heart to the stress of fear and intimidation? How dared he make her grandmother’s hands tremble with nerves? What sort of a merciless bully had prison made out of Luciano da Valenza?

Hadn’t he done enough harm yet? Wasn’t it bad enough that he had wrecked her life? She lived like a nun sooner than risk that amount of pain and disillusionment again. She no longer trusted men. The guy she adored had gone behind her back and slept with a woman who hated her. At the age of twenty-six she was so much ‘on the shelf’, as her grandmother liked to call it, that she might as well have been nailed to it!

‘I’ll look into this, Grandpa,’ Kerry murmured in a soothing undertone, eyes as bright as sparkling turquoises in her flushed and furious face.

‘If it makes you feel better, go ahead,’ he said wryly. ‘But I assure you that nothing short of a miracle could help us now.’

‘Just you go back to your book,’ Kerry advised.

‘I am hoping that we’ll be quite comfortably off once I sell my books to a publishing firm,’ Hunt O’Brien declared, startling his granddaughter with an ambition which he had never mentioned before. ‘I’ve almost finished the eighth volume. It’s my final one, you know.’

‘Congratulations,’ Kerry told him with as much enthusiastic and matching optimism as she could muster at that instant.

‘Of course, the other seven volumes could probably do with a little tweaking.’ He settled back onto his sofa and reached for his pen with a smile, the gravity of their plight clearly wiped from his mind again as he contemplated the comforting creative challenges that still lay ahead of him.

While the older man returned to his notebook, Kerry lifted out the entire drawer of unopened letters and carried it from the room. An hour later, after she had only got through about a third of what had been a one-sided effort at communication stretching back over more than four years, her heart was heavy. Interest and arrears had swollen the original debt to a colossal and terrifying size and her grandfather’s total lack of response to those warning letters had put him very much in the wrong. The loan had been secured against the castle, and the castle was her grandfather’s sole asset. There was no way that she could raise the kind of money that was now owed to Luciano. Nor were there any valuable family heirlooms left to sell: Great-Uncle Ivor’s grasping ex-wife had seen to that.

In the midst of those increasingly panic-stricken thoughts and in desperate need of fresh air to clear her buzzing head and restore her concentration, Kerry went outdoors and headed for the lake that lay below the castle. Her feet crunching on the lush green grass of late spring, she finally came to a halt beneath the spreading branches of the willow tree that overhung the water.

A low swirling mist was rising from the still surface of the lake to lend an eerie, dream-like quality to the reflection of the pale limestone battlemented walls and turrets of Ballybawn. For five years she had worked round the clock in an effort to make the great house pay for its own upkeep and she had honestly believed that she was on the brink of finally achieving that objective! Had it all been for nothing?

But Ballybawn meant so much more to her than a responsibility: it was the only real home she had ever had. Her mother, Carrie, had walked out of her life when she was only four years old. Prior to that, Kerry had dim memories of frightening adult scenes in which her father’s rage had made him seem, perhaps unfairly, a cruel and threatening man. When the marriage had finally ended, her mother had left England to return to Ireland and her childhood home. Although it had been more than ten years since Kerry’s mother had even spoken to her parents, the older couple had offered a warm welcome to their wayward daughter and her child. It was at the castle that Kerry had first learned what it was to be happy and, even when Carrie later went away and failed to return, the O’Briens had continued to make their granddaughter feel secure and loved.

But Luciano da Valenza had never managed to make her feel secure or loved, had he? Kerry swallowed the bitter lump in her throat. Abandoning caution and common sense, she had fallen in love with the first slick and sophisticated, handsome male who looked her way. She had refused to think about the fact that she was not beautiful or even especially sexy like Rochelle or the other women in Luciano’s past. She was five feet three inches tall and her build was what her acid-tongued stepmother had once described as ‘almost asexual’. Men did not do a double take when they saw Kerry on the street. Her infuriating ringlets ran every colour between copper, russet and orange, depending on the light or indeed the observer’s outlook on red hair.

Of course, Luciano had labelled that same colour ‘Titian’, which had been a surefire impressive winner with a girl who had gone through school tagged with less complimentary nicknames…a girl whose first boyfriend had been stolen by her stepsister, a girl who was a total dreamer for all her seeming practicality. At the age of twenty-one, however, Kerry had thought of herself as mature.

But, with hindsight, she knew that when she had first seen Luciano da Valenza springing out of his sleek sports-car her very lack of experience with men had been a handicap. Taking one stunned look at Luciano, she had been so mesmerised that she had walked backwards into a flowerbed and got soaked by the sprinkler system. He had thought that was very, very funny. She squeezed her burning eyes tight shut and told herself furiously to stop thinking about him.

Broken engagement, broken heart, broken dreams. Kerry shivered and lifted her hands to her tear-wet face in shame: she had always been too sensitive, too trusting and soft. Luciano’s infidelity had devastated her. But then, that Luciano should everhave shown an interest in her had been surprising and her own father had told her that too, hadn’t he?

‘You were never da Valenza’s type. I should’ve suspected that he had an ulterior motive. Now, if he’d gone after your stepsister, Rochelle, again, well…’ Harold Linwood had stressed meaningfully. ‘That would have been the normal thing to do.’

In frustration, Kerry breathed in deep and emptied her mind of the painful memories that still taunted her. The past was over and gone, she reminded herself squarely. Ballybawn was under threat again, but this time around the threat she had to overcome came from Luciano. Luciano, who had been outraged when she handed him back his ring and as incredulous as a predatory, prowling cat suddenly punched on the nose by a mouse. Luciano, who always played to win with ruthless, relentless purpose.

But exactly what would Luciano want with a cold, comfortless castle in the hilly wilds of Co Clare? The cosmopolitan delights of Dublin city were at a most inconvenient distance. And wasn’t it truly fortunate that Luciano had come into the reputed squillions of cash left to him by his natural father? She was relieved by the idea that Luciano had become so wealthy that flogging a tumbledown Irish castle would not enrich him to any appreciable extent.

Unhappily, those small positive elements aside, Kerry also knew that she had only one immediate option: she would have to fly over to London and see Luciano in person, for only he would have the power to stop that repossession order progressing as far as the High Court. But how could she face seeing him again? And on such demeaning terms? Coming cap in hand like a beggar to him?

Shivering at that degrading image, Kerry felt cold inside and out. Somehow she had to find the strength to do what had to be done, for, like so many other tasks around Ballybawn, there was nobody else but her available.

CHAPTER TWO

FOUR days later, pink in the face, out of breath and all too well aware that her delayed flight out of Shannon to London had made her almost fifteen minutes late for her two o’clock appointment with Luciano, Kerry sank down in the smart reception area on the top floor of his brand-new office building.

In an effort to get a grip on her own mounting stress level, Kerry made herself concentrate on the challenge ahead. She needed to tell Luciano why the loan was in arrears and ask for more time to make good on the payments. He was first, foremost and last a businessman. If she could convince him that he would make more money letting her grandparents stay on in the castle, surely she would have a chance of winning his agreement to a stay of execution on that repossession order? With an anxious hand she checked that the business plan she had drawn up was still safe in her bag.

Striving to steady herself, she then looked around herself, desperate for anything that would take her mind off the coming confrontation. Her opulent surroundings had that classic sharp-edge design flair that distinguished a successful business. It had been eighteen months since Roberto Tessari’s death and, regardless of Luciano’s imprisonment, his father’s companies had continued trading. In those circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Luciano should have decided to set up a London base of operation for da Valenza Technology. But how it must have galled him to have to work through and rely on intermediaries rather than have access to and sole control of what was his.

Luciano had never, ever been a team player. Or, crept in the anxious thought, very hot on the forgiveness and understanding front, Kerry reflected miserably. That she had arrived late for their meeting would have struck another bad note. Luciano had an inner clock that never let him down and he equated poor timekeeping with a lack of respect.

Kerry breathed in deep, struggling to keep herself calm, but minute by minute her nerves were winding up like coiled springs. For four days solid, she had fought not to think about what it would be like to see Luciano again. But now, even before she saw him, she was finding out. It was terrifying. Her brain felt like mush and her palms were sweating.

‘Luciano will see you now…you have fifteen minutes left!’