Veil of Darkness (40 page)

But all her efforts were useless. Twenty years on and Alfred was still bewitched. She knew how he felt about Ellen, every plea from his heart echoed Moira’s own. When he went he left Ellen’s books, and Moira put one in the hotel library but kept the other as a painful reminder.

She never bothered to read it.

She doubts whether Alf did, either, for he was not a great reader.

Chuck Stokes Kirkwood Korda was the son she should have had. She felt that he had been ripped from her loins twenty years prematurely.

To allow Chuck’s mother’s book to be published under false pretences was something Moira could not allow. She didn’t hate the American author. Time had tempered those bitter emotions, although she still envied Ellen her son.

So, after much deep thought, Mrs Stokes sent
Magdalene
to Candice Love in an effort to stop this scandalous chicanery. The very idea that that Kavanagh piece and her cronies were claiming ownership of Chuck’s mother’s work was outrageous and Moira, dumbfounded and infuriated, lost sleep over it, rent by frustrated and righteous anger. What bare-faced deceit. What base skullduggery.

In a vague way Chuck and she are related.

Because of the delicate circumstances Mrs Stokes could not bear to come out with the truth. Proud and upright as she is, she would rather not let the world know that her husband had sired some other woman’s child and reveal her shameful, pitiable condition.

And then they had the nerve to suggest that she was the child of a murderess, and eighty-six years old.

She could have exposed the fraud quite simply by saying that
Magdalene
was left behind by a guest, but she feared the unpleasant truth might rear its ugly head, someone might do some dirty digging. When she saw the ghastly smear on the name of Ellen Kirkwood, Chuck’s mother—psychopath, murderess, what on earth did they mean?—she had no option, she felt it her duty to send a copy straight to the Kirkwood family in South Carolina.

Let them deal with it.

Let the whole mess be sorted out from a decent distance and let herself be kept well out of it.

Judge Homer Kirkwood Korda, nicknamed Rex after tyrannosaurus, examines the book in the parcel before reaching for a copy from a handful of volumes on the top shelf of his study. Granny’s big achievement: ten privately printed copies of her novel
Magdalene
, written under her maiden name. (There were twelve before Ellen returned from England and left two with a young admirer she met at the Burleston hotel.)

The judge reads on in his house in South Carolina and his large face purples.

Well, son-of-a-bitch.

No-one had thought Granny’s book much cop.

Homer never bothered to read it and he doubts that his daddy did either.

Sweet little old granny—a religious, God-fearing woman with not one mean bone in her body—was greatly loved by all who knew her, departed this life in the early Sixties and has been greatly missed ever since. Granny completed her novel at the age of thirty-eight; she sent it to Bryant for private publication and went to collect the results during a tour of England. She brought ten copies home by steamer in a roomy Gladstone bag. The following year Granny gave birth to her only son, Homer’s daddy, Chuck Stokes Kirkwood Korda, and her novel was forgotten as she got on with the job of raising her precious child.

So what the hell has been going on here?

Some goddamn impostor or what?

Some publisher trying to hoodwink the media and hijack Granny’s book?

And what’s this these folks are saying about the state of mind of the author?

Who the hell is responsible for this? The note in the front says Candice Love. What sort of a goddamn name is that?

Sweet Jesus, these dumb-ass oddballs are going to be sorry for this. Judge Homer Kirkwood Korda is going to take these crazies for everything they’ve got.

Well, surely no-one truly believed that the author of
Magdalene
leapt out and influenced the readers. That’s the trouble these days, there’s always someone else to blame. That would be very silly. That was never on the cards.

Rory Coburn, of Coburn and Watts, having handed the whole caboodle to Candice and slowly regained his health, was taken on a world tour by his penitent butler, Bentley.

During his tour—in Bali actually—Rory discovered, to his joy, that he had a book in him. It took him six months to complete and it was published last spring under the
nom de plume
of Julia Harper. A hugely successful romantic novel,
Dawn’s First Rising
, he hopes it will be the first of many.

THE END

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1999 by Gillian White

cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

978-1-4804-0222-5

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

Available wherever ebooks are sold

Open Road Integrated Media
is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

FIND OUT MORE AT

WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

FOLLOW US:

@openroadmedia
and

Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia