Come Midnight (27 page)

***

By the time they approached Ravenskeep's chambers, Brett reconsidered the advisability of allowing Ashleigh to come. The scene in the hallway resembled a wake. A throng of servants—at least, he assumed they were servants, for most were still in their nightclothes—had gathered about the door. Each and every countenance was grave. Some of them were weeping softly, some were praying—he heard the click of rosary beads as a young maid with an Irish accent murmured over them, head bowed—while others simply stood there, wearing long Friday faces.

He turned to the majordomo and was about to ask where the St. Clares were, when the crowd parted. A thin, unsmiling man approached from the opposite end of the hallway. He led young Lord Andrew by the hand, then paused and bent to whisper a word in the child's ear. Andrew nodded, thoughtfully but without a hint of the dour expressions of those ranged about him, and they drew near the door.

"Why, it's the duke and duchess!" the child exclaimed when he spied them. "Have you come to wake Mama up, too?" He glanced up at the man who still had him by the hand. "Jepson came to tell me about it, do you see, and we talked about how it was when I was the one couldn't wake up, after the bad accident. And I said it was Caitlin woke me—when no one else could, not even the Prince Regent's rude physician— and shouldn't I try to wake her, now she's the one needs help?"

"I see," said the duke, not troubling to hide a smile. By God, the lad makes sense! It was obvious, first time I saw them together, the Irishwoman adores the child. And he, her, of course. Who better, to try penetrating that senseless state? Ravenskeep may be too irrational, too gripped by emotion, to reach her. I know I'd damned well be half-mad if it were Ashleigh lying there. The boy, on the other hand, seems . . . I don't believe I've ever seen a young child that collected and purposeful in the face of such a crisis. Could be just what's wanted.

Brett met the eyes of the servant who held the child's hand. "Jepson, is it?"

"Yes, Your Grace," the butler replied, bowing. And after another bow, for Ashleigh: "I beg Your Graces will pardon me if I have overstepped my bounds, but—"

"Not at all," Ashleigh put in. "It's clear someone had to inform the child. As a mother, I can appreciate the care you've taken in the matter, Mr. Jepson. Indeed, from what I've heard"—she smiled at Andrew—"you appear to have made an admirable job of it."

"Thank you, Your Grace. I—" Just then, the door opened, and Patrick St. Clare peered out "There you are, lad. Come, your father's—" He spied Ashleigh and Brett. "You, too, Ashleigh. Megan's been asking for you." St. Clare flung the door wide, motioned the ducal pair forward, and, smiling, held out a hand for Andrew. The child gave him a quick smile, released the butler's hand, and took Patrick's.

Brett couldn't help smiling as well. His friend's enormous paw of a hand seemed to swallow Andrew's whole. The smile faded as they all started inside, and he threw Patrick a silent query over Ashleigh's head: What's the story?

The big man's uncertain shrug was less than satisfying. But the uneasiness in his eyes was worse.

***

The tableau at bedside drew Ashleigh up short. Since she was first to enter, when she paused to take it in, the other three were forced to halt behind her. She didn't notice. Megan's sister lay on the large tester bed, still as death. She couldn't help recalling Caitlin's rosy complexion, with its charming dusting of freckles across the nose. Now all she noticed was how very pale she was. So terribly pale, the freckles standing out against the unnatural whiteness of her skin like spatters of dried blood.

At the far side of the bed, Megan stood, tall and watchful, as poised and graceful as a cat Indeed, almost regal in her bearing. With that fiery mane tumbling down her back, she resembled some pagan goddess out of Celtic lore. She was looking down at her sister. Her barely audible murmur—Ashleigh thought she recognized the words as Gaelic—was the only sound in the quiet room. A rosary dangled from Megan's hand— Ashleigh had never known her to carry a rosary—but she didn't appear to be using it Or perhaps she was, in her own way. Megan had always had a penchant for making her own rules.

Half-kneeling, half-slumped beside his wife on the mattress, Ravenskeep bent over Caitlin's lifeless hand; he clutched it to him, his forehead nearly touching the limp fingers. The marquis's lips appeared to be moving, but Ashleigh was too far away to be sure. In any event, she couldn't apprehend any sounds.

The poor man looked half-dead himself. His hair was wildly disheveled, and a dark shadow of beard covered his jaw. The scar on his face stood out lividly against his tanned skin, which had taken on a grayish cast. He was barefoot and bare-torsoed, a pair of wrinkled, buff-colored breeches his only apparel. He reminded Ashleigh of someone who'd been in a physical fight, as if he'd been dealt several crippling blows. In a way, perhaps he had.

Brett's hands closed about Ashleigh's upper arms, and he urged her gently aside, making way for Ravenskeep's boy. Patrick stepped forward to join them but said nothing; his eyes, like theirs, were trained on the bed. The child went directly to it There, he stopped for a moment, taking in the pair on the mattress. Then he reached out, and gently touched his father's arm. "Papa, don't be afraid," he said. Softly, but it stopped Megan's stream of Gaelic cold.

Ravensford's head came up with a start. "Andrew... ?" He looked at his son as if in a daze.

The boy nodded and again patted his arm. "I came to help Mama wake up."

When his father didn't answer, only stared at him numbly, the child patted his arm yet again. Then Andrew leaned over the mattress—the top of it met him at chest level—rand stretched an arm out, until he was able to touch Caitlin's cheek. When he spoke, his child's voice piped loud and clear: "Mama, it's Andrew. I love you, Mama. We all do. We love you, ever so much, and we need you to be awake. Please, Mama . .. won't you wake up?"

Then, in a heartbeat, several things happened at once. A wrenching sob broke from Adam Lightfoot's throat.

Ashleigh gave a startled cry. Brett whipped his gaze from the bed to his wife. She was staring down at her feet. And plucking the skirt of her gown away from her legs. It was soaking wet, and so were the carpet and her shoes.

"Mother o' God, her water's broken!" cried Megan.

"By Heaven, she's moving," Patrick thundered. "There—her eyes just opened!"

"Look, Mama—we're all here!" This from Andrew, and he was laughing.

And from the bed, where Caitlin O'Brien Lightfoot used her husband's bare—and none too steady—shoulders to pull herself to a sitting position: "Ach, sure and someone had better fetch the doctor—right quick! Her Grace's wee son's that impatient t' be born!"

Epilogue

The tale of the extraordinary events that happened in Kent one night, in the second decade of the nineteenth century, became a legacy. And by the time the new millennium dawned, nearly two hundred years later, it had begun to take on the aspects of a legend. A story told and retold myriad times through the years. Yet it was passed down among only a select few. Beginning with those who had actually been there, it made its way through generations of their descendants. Some of them, that is, but not all.

Those who could be trusted to keep a secret heard it. The imprudent and loose-tongued did not. Neither did the faint-of-heart. Very young children and old, old grandmothers were spared certain details, lest they prove too unnerving, evoking bad dreams—or worse. In essence, it was only one story, but it varied in the telling. The version that came down depended upon what the original witness had seen, and of witnesses there were several.

Yet the most truncated version came from one who was not a true witness at all. Still, the vicar of Ravenskeep had a part to play in the saga of what had happened to the fifth marquis and his Irish bride. Not a large part, to be sure, since the facts had touched him only marginally. As a man of God, it fell to Mr. Wells to remind those who would listen of a transformation in his patron—a "before and after," as it were.

Wells was not an imaginative man, so perhaps this was a good thing. He could be relied upon to make much of a sinner who saw the light, without speculating too deeply upon the specifics. To Wells, the marquis was simply a man who had found God, perhaps through the inspiration of his young bride. He would begin by citing his patron as a man who had never attended church at all. Until he wed, Wells would go on, when the marquis's became the faith-inspiring voice that led the rest of the congregation in prayer—and continued to do so every Sunday, his wife and children beside him, for as long as he lived.

What that same man of God would have made of the cause of that transformation one can only surmise. The church, to be sure, made reference to the devil in its liturgy. In the rite of baptism, for instance, those who witnessed the baptism were asked to "renounce Satan." Suffice it to say that when Adam Lightfoot spoke those words, it never occurred to the good vicar to ask why his hand always reached for his wife's. Or why her voice would rise with his over the rest of the congregation's, until the rafters rung with their solemn renunciation.

***

The marquis's servants were marginal witnesses as well, but their impressions were the most far-reaching. The servants' grapevine worked with an efficiency that had no equal. That autumn and for many a season to come, tales of "some right peculiar doings" at Ravenskeep Hall spread well beyond Kent and throughout London as well. Some servants merely amplified what was already known and accepted as fact: The deserving Irish Angel who had healed the marquis's son rose to become his lady. But a few whispered of a passing strange malady that had left her near death on their wedding night, and of how her ladyship called upon those very same powers to heal herself.

Yet an Irish maid named Bridget told a somewhat different tale, though she related it strictly among her own. It was an Irish tale not meant for Sassenach ears, she said. Those who listened nodded sagely and did not doubt. There was a great evil lurking about the Hall the night her mistress nearly died, she told them. But, said Bridget, she could sense that someone had invoked the
Ard Milleadh,
and the High Destroyer had sent the thing on its dark and dirty way. Sure and that someone had to be the young mistress, she firmly attested. For wasn't Lady Ravenskeep the only one there, aside from Bridget herself, who was Irish and could know the words of the Old Tongue?

Bridget also told, them she had heard the banshee wailing that night, but from a long way off, to be sure. And again, her listeners would nod. Every one of them knew the banshee only wailed when a life was about to end—an Irish life, sure. But the banshee, too, was banished that night, Bridget told them, though she insisted it was a close call.

***

Other versions of the tale belonged to family and close kin of those who had been there. They were never related without a shiver and a cautionary word. And while these accounts were far more accurate and closer to the truth, they were much darker as well. For a long time, Megan and Patrick St. Clare shared what they knew only with each other and then in hushed voices. Even then, it was not until they had reached their own shores, until they had put an ocean between them and the source, that they felt free to discuss the subject at length.

And when their offspring—five strapping sons and then a long-awaited daughter—were finally of an age to hear, they received the story as a sacred trust. "Ye're t' tell no one what we're about t' relate," their mother would begin, "unless ye're dead sure it won't go any further."

"It's a story best kept among ourselves," their father would add. "Among us St. Clares and those you'll wed when the time comes. You may pass it on to your children—but only when they're old enough to know."

" Tis a tale o' the divil walkin' among us," Megan always cautioned, "ready t' do his dirty work—and o' someone who had the God-given strength t' fight him. 'Tis a tale o' good and evil, as we should know, for we were there—not at the very start, perhaps, but at least for some of it."

"The part that ended well," Patrick would add, and Megan would make the sign of the cross. And then, only then, would they begin to recite the facts as they knew them.

***

Closer to home, the duke and duchess of Ravensford found themselves telling and retelling the story, too. But they almost always related it on the anniversary of its conclusion. A happy conclusion, not only for the principals, but for Ashleigh and Brett as well. For that same night their babe was born—a son, just as Caitlin had said. Yet because the event was so blessed with good fortune, their telling had a peculiar ambivalence to it. Neither the duke nor his wife ever related the strange circumstances surrounding the birth without a shiver. In the end, however, there was always a softening smile.

It wasn't that they made light of what had happened. No one who had seen Caitlin lying in that bed, pale and still as death, could recall it without a shudder. But newborn babes have a way of brightening the lives of those who bring them into being with love, and the infant John Westmont, the future duke, was no exception. True, many years went by before John or his sister Marileigh or the score of orphans who became their adopted siblings learned the truth. Till then, they could only wonder at those mysterious looks that passed between their parents on each occasion of the young heir's birthday.

In later years, when all of them were young adults, it was their friends that sensed something mysterious going on. As when his siblings teasingly called Lord John "the devil's own reject," and John would merrily reply, "Hah—better his reject than the alternative!" Unfortunately for these friends, the source of this banter was destined to remain a mystery. The young Westmonts might tease and joke about it, yet they, too, kept the truth among themselves.