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*
‘What’s your interest in Harriet Carmichael?’ Rafael asked his elderly butler smoothly, while Bianca chatted to a friend on the phone about how sublime Ireland was—with the exceptions of the weather, the absence of large shopping outlets and nightclubs, Rafael’s cold and comfortless ancestral home and the amount of time he spent in the stables.
Tolly gave him a little smile. ‘Now, wouldn’t that be telling?’
Rafael laughed with true appreciation, for only Tolly would dare to tell him to mind his own business. ‘What do you know about her?’
‘That she’ll not be single for long,’ the older man forecast with assurance, his blue eyes twinkling.
Rafael elevated a mocking black brow. ‘On what do you base that belief?’
‘She’s a fine-looking girl with a lovely smile and land and a business. When it comes to a good catch the local lads are neither blind nor stupid. No, that little lady will be snatched up and off the market by the winter.’
‘Maybe she craves something rather more exciting?’ Rafael murmured softly.
Tolly’s weather-beaten features stiffened. ‘I don’t think so, sir.’
Sir? Rafael wondered why the old man should be so thin-skinned about a young woman he had only met that day. Was it because Tolly had once known her family and already considered her part of the community? Or was he simply showing his disapproval of Rafael’s infinitely casual attitude to women and sex? Whatever, Rafael was very much amused by Tolly’s sudden formality. Across the room, Bianca was now dancing, her hips shimmying to the driving beat of the music she had put on. She shed her jacket slowly, provocatively tugged her suede belt free of her tiny mini-skirt and treated herself to a seductive appraisal in the vast gilt mirror. Rafael decided that his next lover would be less vain and more intelligent and switched on the business news.
*
Joseph Tolly lived in a small, incredibly neat gate lodge beside the distinctly ruinous rear entrance to the Flynn Court estate. For all his arrogant confidence, Harriet reflected, with a stab of wicked satisfaction that shook her, Rafael Flynn was clearly too poor to adequately maintain his ancestral home. So why the heck had he attempted to buy Kathleen Gallagher’s property from her at such a healthy price?
The old man appeared at the door before Harriet even reached it. ‘Come on in,’ he urged with a broad smile of welcome.
She was touched to see the careful preparations he had made for her visit. A snowy white lace-edged cloth had been laid on a tray that bore old-fashioned floral bone china and a luscious chocolate cake. The simply furnished room was immaculately tidy and every wooden surface gleamed.
‘Will you tell me everything you remember about my mother’s family?’ Harriet urged her host eagerly, and then, rather more self-consciously, her cheeks colouring, she added, ‘You must be wondering why I’m asking a stranger when she’s still alive. My mother isn’t very nostalgic about the past.’
‘Perhaps there wasn’t much for her to be sentimental about,’ Joseph Tolly said gently. ‘In those days this community was struggling to survive. There wasn’t much employment. Even now the tourists need encouragement to travel several miles of twisting road from the nearest town to visit Ballyflynn. Have you been to see the old place where your family used to live?’
‘I don’t know where it is.’
‘Your mother’s family lived a field away from mine, on a smallholding about two miles out of the village. The house is derelict now, but I’ll draw you a little map so that you can go and have a look around.’
‘Thank you…I’d love to do that,’ Harriet confided.
‘Shall I tell you what I remember best about your mother?’
Harriet nodded very seriously and offered to pour the tea.
Watching her take charge of the tea tray, Joseph Tolly smiled and settled himself more comfortably into his shabby fireside chair. ‘Your mother must have been about fourteen when she decided she didn’t want to be known as Agnes any more, and she started calling herself Eva instead.’
Harriet blinked in surprise, for she had not known that her parent had chosen that name for herself. Agnes? But then all she had ever known of Eva’s history was the absolute basics: that her mother was the daughter of a small farmer who had been widowed while she was still a child. Her older teenaged brother had been killed in a tractor accident.
‘What a rumpus she caused!’ Tolly chuckled. ‘The nuns at the convent school had no tolerance for girls’ fancies, but your mother defied the lot of them—even the cantankerous old priest that we had then.’ His expressive eyes invited her to enjoy his warm humour. ‘Unfortunately I think she paid the price for it, because your grandfather took her out of school early and she was a bright girl.’
‘What was my grandfather like?’ Harriet prompted eagerly.
‘Dermot Gallagher had a mean temper on him,’ Joseph told her, with a look of honest apology at having to make that admission. ‘He wasn’t a lucky man, and his disappointments soured him and made him a harsh parent. He wouldn’t let your mother have a life like other girls, so when she ran away nobody was that surprised. If she wasn’t working on the farm, he hired her out to work for other people and kept her wages.’
Harriet was sobered by what she was learning, and finally appreciated why her mother might have preferred to leave that distant past buried. ‘I wish she’d told me what it was like for her then. I had no idea her childhood was that tough.’
‘Your cousin, Kathleen, once told my late wife that when your mother tried to stand up to Dermot he would threaten to have her locked up with the nuns. That may sound unbelievable to you, but right up until twenty years ago certain convents ran commercial laundries staffed by young women who had been put in their charge because they were supposedly a threat to decent society. More than one disobedient daughter ended up in those unhappy places, and some of them never came out again.’
Harriet lost colour when she made the connection. ‘You’re talking about the Magdalene Laundries?’
‘Yes.’ Tolly nodded grave confirmation.
