Chapter One
Home
HE WAS HOME. His lordship, James Stuart Kirkpatrick, having spent two years in a Russian gulag through what had been little fault of his own, (though some might argue that point) had arrived home at long last. His house, locally known by the illustrious name of Kirkpatrick’s Folly, basked in the chill light of a December afternoon, its amber stones aglow in the last of the pale winter sunlight.
The house looked much as it had when he had left it three years before, but he had changed markedly during that same time. He brought with him a son, aged one year, a Georgian dwarf, and a very pretty young man with inconvenient senses.
The door stood wide, for he was expected. He hesitated for a moment, his son in his arms, the child’s blue eyes wide with curiosity, a stuffed cat clutched in his fingers. He took a deep breath, kissed the warm reassurance of Kolya’s red-gold head, and walked back into the world he no longer knew.
An hour later he felt that while you could, contrary to what Thomas Wolfe had to say on the matter, go home again, you might find it wasn’t the same place that you left behind. Everything felt unfamiliar, even something as simple as the pathway to his bed. He was seeing everything through a scrim of exhaustion, he knew, and a good night’s sleep would make him more right with his own world. At least he hoped it would.
They were gathered, at the end of that whirlwind first hour, in the kitchen, the Aga humming warmly in the background, food upon the table, tea at the ready. Shura had already, in his inimitable way, endeared himself to Maggie by complimenting her cooking and the orderliness of her kitchen. He had run an infirmary in a gulag for several years and appreciated order and mastery when he found it. His command of English was impressive, though the heavy Georgian accent that accompanied it rendered it somewhat less than entirely comprehensible.
Vanya was quiet, taking in the house and its grounds, its inhabitants: Maggie, cook and housekeeper, Robert, secretary to Jamie, and Montmorency, the somewhat unprepossessing dog that he and Pamela had rescued many summers ago. Vanya’s amethyst eyes met his own now and again and smiled as if to acknowledge how very far they were from that frozen gulag which had been the entirety of their universe such a short time ago. Vanya did not look like the refugee that he was but rather— with those eyes and Tatar cheekbones— he seemed a Slavic faun, an emperor in exile from the Babylon of the Snows.
Robert, in his reserved Scots way, was taking in each of them, clearly uncertain what to make of their bizarre troika, plus one. Kolya had crawled across the floor, and pulled himself up with drool-festooned hands, using the impeccable grey wool of Robert’s trousers. It was to the man’s credit that he merely lifted the baby up and set him on his knee, then gave him his flawless handkerchief to chew.
Maggie, Jamie noted with a pang of sorrow, looked older, her shoulders slightly stooped, but her welcome and love no less vibrant. She took the baby from Robert when it was time to eat and snugged him firmly to her hip.
“He’s a beautiful laddie,” she said. Kolya merely goggled back at her with his vibrant blue eyes. “But then with yerself for a daddy, I would expect him to be.”
“He is Andrei’s son biologically speaking, but mine in all the other ways,” he said, feeling that Maggie deserved the truth. “I was…I am…married to his mother.”
“Married?” Maggie said, looking around suddenly as if she expected a bride to materialize here in the warmth of the old kitchen.
“Yes, for a year in September,” he said. “But she is in Russia.” More than this he would not say, he did not speak of Violet to anyone, he did not think of her if he could at all manage it.
Maggie, being Maggie, did not ask any further questions. For this, he was inordinately grateful.
Her eyes met his—eyes that had seen him grow from a small lad to the man he was now and he knew she cataloged all the changes, for better or for worse, and kept her counsel about them.
“Ye’re too bloody thin,” she said, fiercely blinking back tears. “We’ll work on fixin’ that in the next while. Now, I’d best pour the tea for yez, before it’s fit to take the paint from the walls.”
With visions of endless potatoes and roasts in his near future, Jamie hugged her tightly, so that she might have no doubt there was still strength in him. He did look, he had to admit, a wee bit like a scarecrow left out in the field too long. He had managed a haircut and shave in Paris in an attempt not to look like a barbarian returned from foreign wars. Apparently, it was not enough to civilize him.
Later, when Kolya had been put down in the bed prepared for him, and Vanya had drifted off to the library, Shura to a bath and sleep, Jamie asked Robert to join him in the study.
The fire was lit and there was tea, steaming gently, on the desk. He had dreamed of good, hot Irish tea during his entire time in Russia. He had dreamed of many things during his time there.
The small Scotsman came in. “Sir?”
“Please, Robert, sit down.”
Robert looked tired. Jamie knew the preceding two and a half weeks must have gone hard on him as well. He was very fond of Pamela and her children after all.
“Robert, I will be to the point. Tell me what happened with Casey.”
Robert sighed, his small, wise-owl face drawn down in lines of sorrow. “I wish there were something to tell, sir, but there isn’t. As far as Pamela can discern, he went out one morning to check the property—something I understand he did on a monthly basis —and he never returned home. He was meant to go to work later in the day and never showed up there. She and Patrick searched the entirety of the property and every other location they could think of, and then called the police.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow. The police, all things considered, might feel the disappearance of a man who had been no small figure on the republican scene, a sort of gift. Both Pamela and Patrick knew this all too well and would have exhausted all other avenues first.
Robert noted the lifted brow and translated it accurately.
“And what are the police doing to assist?”
“About as much as you might expect, sir.”
“And Pamela?”
Robert rubbed his eyes, as though they pained him. “Again, about what you would expect, sir. She’s in denial. Whether that is for the sake of her sanity or something that will go on indefinitely, I do not know. And perhaps she is right to hope at this point.”
A heavy silence fell between them because this was Belfast and the most likely scenario that would have snatched Casey away from his family was one that ended in blood and pain in a wee hillside hut until the merciful bullet to the back of the head came. Pamela would know this as well as anyone. Those scenarios played out in a week at most and nearly three weeks had passed since Casey’s disappearance.
“She was here earlier today. She wanted to be certain all was prepared for your arrival. I think she finds it easier at times to be here, rather than at home. There’s a passel of women there just now, and I suspect she’s more than a bit overwhelmed.”
Jamie nodded. When in the midst of a tragedy she would seek solitude.
The man sighed, his entire frame pensive inside its expensive grey wool suit.
“What is it you’re not telling me, Robert?” Jamie asked, setting his teacup down on the desk.
The Scot moved his glasses back up his nose. “Why do you think that, sir?”
“Because it’s roughly the size and shape of an elephant, and standing right here on the rug.”
“That will be my cue, then,” said a sharpish voice from the entry.
Jamie stiffened. “Grandmother,” he said, and the tone could not be construed as one of great joy.
“Grandson,” she replied and nodded to Robert, who stood and, like the wise man he was, exited the study posthaste.
Small and neat, his grandmother crossed the room to him and proceeded to startle him with a rather fierce hug. It only served to add to his feeling of having arrived in a world unfamiliar in its lineaments.
She held him out at arm’s length. “Well, ye’re a bit worse for the wear, but that’s not anything which can’t be mended.”
Jamie thought he’d had enough of being assessed. “Would you like a drink?”
She quirked a brow at him in a fashion that he recognized.
“Yes, I will take a drink.”
He poured one out for her, but not for himself. He needed to keep a clear head for a few more hours.
She sat, drink in hand, on a hassock by the fire, her bearing almost military in its composure.
“Is the news really so bad that you have to deliver it?” Jamie asked, sarcastically, though inside he wondered what could be so dreadful that hadn’t already been imparted.
“Not so bad, mayhap, but personal-like. Pamela would have told ye, but as she cannot at present, it’s down to me.”
She handed him a picture. He took it and raised one golden eyebrow at her in puzzlement.
“That would be yer son.”
“My son?” Jamie said, and laughed. “Is this some sort of bad joke? My son is upstairs, asleep in his crib.”
“Aye, well, ye’ve more than the one. Look at the picture an’ tell me ye don’t see it clear.”
He looked. He blinked and looked again. He was aware of sitting down, the starch gone from his knees entirely.
He was a young man, not a child. At least nineteen years of age, Jamie would guess. And if that was his age, only one woman could be his mother. He took a breath and looked up at his grandmother. The sharp green eyes missed nothing, and so he schooled his face as quickly as he might.
“You’ve met him?”
“Aye, he’s caused no small grief for all of us, Pamela and yon Scotsman mostly. He tried to take the companies out from under them. He didn’t succeed, but it was a fight to the finish. Pamela will tell ye the details of that when she can. His name is Julian.”
He looked back down at the picture.
He had his mother’s coloring—that dark hair, a rich brown that was like a pond seen through the barest skim of ice, gleaming with golden tints in its depths. His eyes were an intense sapphire blue, an intensity that made his gaze seem alive even in the static of a photograph.
Beyond the coloring… Jamie sighed. Beyond the coloring, there was nothing in him that was not a direct result of Kirkpatrick genes. The irony of it was almost too great. That his one living son should be one he had never seen and had no hand in raising.
“I could have been gentler with the news, but there hardly seems time for it now.”
“It’s not news that can be given gently,” Jamie said.
“So you truly did not know?”
“You think I would have allowed him to go in complete ignorance of me?”
“Aye, it might be wise to have done so. It’s neither here nor there now that he knows. He’s not an easy lad, but there’s maybe something in him worth the saving. That will be up to you.”
Jamie realized he hadn’t taken a proper breath since he had entered the study. He could not quite absorb the idea of a grown son, one that looked disconcertingly like him. His mind was elsewhere and could not yet light upon this new fact of his life.
He could feel his grandmother’s eyes once again assessing him.
“She will be awake,” she said. “I don’t think she sleeps these days. And she will be wonderin’ how ye are since ye’ve arrived home. Go see her.”
Finola left shortly thereafter, discombobulating him further with a sound kiss to his forehead, something she had not done since he was fifteen. He checked Kolya, left instructions with Vanya about where he would be should anything arise in his absence, and went out to the garage. The car was gleaming with a recent cleaning and turned over without hesitation. No detail had been overlooked around his arrival it seemed.
Twilight touched the face of the land as he moved through it, the car a low hum against the coming of night. He saw it in miniature as he drove—the narrow, winding road set like a scatter of crushed jewels in the larger setting of countryside. His mind traced the path, past the edge of the rubble-strewn city, into the squared-off farmland, banded by high dark hedges, past the tiny smoke-furled cottages and the sheep-dotted fields, the tumbling stone walls, near to the border of the murder triangle. To the sloping hill with the weary ash guarding its head, down the drive to the wee farmhouse, whitewashed and braced with brambles and bare rose cane. A house that had been built with love and hope.
“Where are you, you bloody bastard?” he said out loud.
There were a few cars in the drive, and he was glad that she was not alone. It did not bear thinking about—what these last weeks had been like for her. He took a breath of the frosty air and walked toward the emerald green door. It opened before he could raise a hand to knock.
The woman who stood before him was short, hair a vigorous and perfumed red, her eyes the clear blue of aquamarines, set bold in a small round face.
“Who might you be?” she asked, voice sharp, the blue eyes looking him over the way a crow might look over a corpse for soft spots.
“James Kirkpatrick,” he said, smiling and putting out a hand. “I’m a friend of Pamela’s.”
She wiped her hands on a tea towel and took his own. “Come in then, and be quick about it, it’s colder than a witch’s teat out there tonight, and I’ve got bread rising on the counter.”
He followed the woman inside, the scent of ham and yeast tickling at his nose. The kitchen was a hive of activity, with several women bustling about, cooking, setting the table, making tea, and one, in the corner by the hearth, rocking a small baby who was crying loudly and angrily. The woman looked up at his arrival, dark eyes sharp. He met the gaze openly, for he knew at once who she must be. Her sons favored their father, still, there was no mistaking the woman who had borne them. He was looking at Casey and Patrick Riordan’s mother. And so the baby crying in her arms must be Pamela’s. Of the woman he had come here to see, there was no sign.
He walked toward the woman in the rocking chair.
“May I try?” he asked and held out his arms.
The woman’s glance needled over his face, but she stood and held the baby out. “She’s been inconsolable all afternoon, might be that a strange set of arms will help.”
He took the baby carefully, feeling the strain in the tiny body. He held her against his chest, snugged in the curve of his left arm.
“Her name is Isabelle,” the woman said.
“Hello, Isabelle,” Jamie said to the small, red face that was crumpled up like an angry cabbage. Perhaps it was only that his voice was that of a man, but she stopped abruptly, dark eyes opening wide, though her lip still quivered like a wee jelly. Her gaze was fierce for one so small and there was no doubting just who her father was, for she had the look of Casey about her eyes. A fluff of dark curls whorled out around her head. She was a beautiful baby, but he would expect no less with her parentage.
“There now, darling girl, you’re all right.” He walked across the floor with her, joggling her slightly, and cooing nonsensical things. He could feel her tension ease, the pearled spine bending as she relaxed into his arms. She missed her daddy, poor wee girl. He spoke to her softly in Irish, knowing the language would have been natural for her father to speak in the small hours to his daughter. She snuffled, tiny catching breaths, that said she was still on the verge of crying, but willing to consider the possibility of stopping. The dark eyes were fixed to his face, the flush in her skin gone from red to the color of a pink tea rose dipped in cream. She was younger than Kolya by some months.
He held her gaze, understanding instinctively that she sought reassurance, and that to look away would be to start her crying once again. He continued to speak, low and soft, and she gave a small coo, her eyelids beginning to droop. Moments later her lashes lay against her cheeks, still dewy with tears, but her rosebud mouth was open in utter relaxation. She was fast asleep.
The woman raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, ye’ve the magic touch, haven’t ye?”
He merely smiled at her. There was no point in explaining this affinity for animals and babies he’d always had.
“Pamela’s in the byre,” the woman said simply, taking the baby back from him. “Tis a bit mad in here, an’ she slipped off for the quiet.” She smiled wearily. “From what my son Patrick has told me of ye, I don’t think she’ll mind if ye join her though.”
“How is she?” he asked, quietly, so the other women would not hear him.
“Not good, but it can hardly be hoped that she would be otherwise. Ye’ll see soon enough how it is with her.”
Aye, he would see soon enough.
The dark was settling in earnest as he crossed the yard, the frost thick under his shoes. He could smell the baby’s scent on his coat, a sweet note amongst the sharper smells of the chill evening. A small light glowed in the byre, and he could hear the soft whicker of a horse—Phouka, the pewter demon he had rather disastrously gifted to Pamela a few Christmases ago. He was glad she had brought the beast down here to her own byre, for she had always been one to find comfort in horses. He had given her Phouka for that very reason, to curb the pain of another loss, long ago. This time there would be nothing to curb the pain or the fear.
He put his hand to the door of the byre, hesitated, then took a deep breath and opened it.
The lantern was low making her silhouette ghostly in the dark of the byre. She was as he had held her in his memory, and yet utterly changed at the same time. Time, babies and grief had altered her lines subtly so that he knew he was seeing the interior changes more than the physical ones.
He said her name, quietly, not wanting to startle her. “Pamela.”
She turned slowly, the movement causing her hair to spill over one shoulder like ink diffusing through a gelid winter pool.
“Jamie.” She was pale, her eyes burning in her face, even here in the flickering lantern light. And then again, as if she didn’t quite trust his appearance, “Jamie.”
He crossed the byre floor to her. The hay was fresh and released the scent of clover and summer sun.
“Pamela, I—”
She shook her head, her eyes pleading with him not to say the words. And then she put her arms around him and he held her tightly for a moment. He could feel the terrible strain in her, as though she were trembling glass, delicate and blown to its limits. And then she pulled back, sensing, he thought, that he could read her too well. She could not afford the vulnerability of that just now.
“I’m so glad you’re home,” she said, and the words were sincere, though her face remained that set, terrible white. He could hardly have hoped otherwise.
They stood mute for a moment, for there were things to be said, but each understood there weren’t words for them just now. They had been so many things to one another, and now all the parameters had shifted, leaving them strangers, without a map by which to guide themselves in this new and raw territory.
“I understand you have a son,” she said finally, sitting down on a bale of hay and looking up at him.
“Two of them it would seem,” he said, but his voice faltered on it, for there had not been time yet to come to grips with the idea of Julian. “I’m sorry, I understand he caused you no small worry with the company.”
She shook her head. “It’s all right, it’s done now and we managed to keep most things safe. How old is your boy?”
“He turned one this month. And you have both a son and a daughter.”
“Yes, we do.” The emphasis on the word ‘we’ was soft but unmistakable.
He could feel him suddenly—the big, dark Irishman who would never have left this woman bar the finality of death. His presence was here; strong, stubborn, and with an emphasis that left his imprint behind long after he had left any room or building.
“Who told you about Julian?” she asked.
“My grandmother broke it to me in her own inimitable fashion.”
“I’m sorry for that; I had intended to tell you myself.”
“It’s all right, Pamela. I don’t think there was a good way to tell me.”
“You need to be careful, Jamie. Julian is a puzzle, and I don’t know what his motives may be concerning you.”
“And we are so certain that he is actually my son?”
“Jamie, if you had seen him in the flesh, you would have no doubts. He even moves like you. Genetics is a funny thing.”
“Pamela, we don’t need to talk about this right now.”
“No, it’s a relief to talk about something other than the fact that everyone seems to believe my husband is dead.”
He did not reply to her words for she would not want platitudes and empty phrases of comfort right now; they could not reach her in the far country in which she now dwelt. She, perhaps more than anyone, would know what an absence this long likely meant. She would either understand it or reject it. It was not for him to push her in either direction.
She took a deep breath as if she was turning away within herself, from knowledge it was too soon to face. “Come sit. I could use the company. Tell me how you managed to get out of Russia and I will tell you what I can about Julian.”
He sat on a bale of hay opposite her.
“Tea?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow.
“I have a thermos of it. I can’t seem to get warm since…since…”
“I’d love some tea,” he said softly, forestalling her, so she would not have to speak the words. It was hot and strong, and it did taste as good as he had remembered it. Pamela had always made a good cup of tea.
And so there, within the precincts of the lantern light with the smell of horse and hay surrounding them, he told her in outline of his time in Russia; the things that had led, he believed, to his imprisonment and how he had escaped in the end. It was stark in the telling, just outlines, no brush strokes to fill it in, for there were no words for that yet.
As he spoke, another part of his mind took in the woman before him, how she had changed and how she had not in the time that separated them. The strain was evident in her, her eyes dark and refracted as they were when she was deeply upset. He had seen her so before. She was still unsettlingly beautiful, though he had not expected that to change. Motherhood had only brought that beauty to its full fruition, for there was something softer about her, even now in her grief.
And when he was done, she told him about Julian. It wasn’t, he thought, the most flattering description he had ever heard of a boy, but he thought even at that, she was holding something back. There was time enough to discover what that was.
They discussed the distillery, and the plans she had put in place to have it rebuilt. The death of his Uncle, and whom she believed was behind that death and why. And then they spoke of things more personal—children, friends, the loss of their mutual friend David, who had been a British agent. Very suddenly, they came to that place where there were no words left that did not contain Casey and his lack, for it drenched the very air around them.
He took her hand, giving what small comfort the warmth of human touch could give her right now. The tension sang through her bones, her flesh chill to the touch, and wires of fear strung tightly along every inch of skin. Her composure, as fragile as the sheathe of frost that crept up to the byre door, was very dearly bought, and it was in danger of melting away completely right now. He took his hand away.
The horse laid his silver muzzle against Pamela’s head, as if he knew her sorrow, and would comfort her if he could. Her hair coiled dark against the long pewter nose, glimmering soft in the dimly lit byre. She put her hand up and stroked Phouka’s long nose absently.
When she looked up her gaze was naked, and like a knife, cut sharp and short across his chest. Her honesty had always disarmed him.
“I feel like I can’t breathe, Jamie. How am I ever supposed to breathe again if I don’t know where he is or what has happened to him?”
He would not lie to her; he was too good a friend for such things.
“I don’t know, Pamela. I will tell you this though—I promise to do whatever I can to find him.”
They both knew the words that were left unsaid, for they hung between them like a weight of sand.
Alive or dead.
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
