Kit had always known that he had been born to privilege. He had grown up at Swanslea Park and knew that one day it would be his responsibility to oversee and to protect it. It was the home of the marquess of Templeston and he was the Templeston heir. But Swanslea Park would never belong only to him. In his heart, Kit knew that Swanslea Park would never be his. It would always belong to Drew and Wren. It would always belong as much to his sisters as it did to him. Kit loved Swanslea Park with all his heart. But it held no mystery.
Growing up, he had explored every nook and cranny of Swanslea Park. Until he’d left for school, he’d never lived anywhere else. Or imagined that he might want to. As the only son of the sitting marquess of Templeston, he had held the courtesy title of earl of Ramsey for nineteen years. And although he hadn’t been made aware of it until he reached his majority, he had, in fact, inherited the title and been the sitting Irish earl of Kilgannon for even longer. Telamor Castle had been waiting patiently for him to come claim it. And there was a great deal to claim and plenty of exciting new places to explore.
Kit turned his attention to the tower. There was a clear view of the beach below the tower and of the miles of ocean stretching beyond it. And although it was currently shrouded in clouds and mist, Kit knew that it was possible to look through the holes in the massive moss-covered crenellations and see the stars sparkling in the night sky like finely cut diamonds spread out on an infinite background of black velvet.
“See that tower over there!” He pointed to the ruins barely visible through the mists. “That was the tower of the original Telamor Castle. The old castle perched on the cliffs overlooking the beach. But the sea began to penetrate the rock face of the cliffs. The lower part of the old castle flooded and the upper part became unstable. The new castle was built during the Tudor reign. It’s farther inland.”
“What’s that?” Dalton pointed to a group of slate-roofed gables and spires farther east, past the tower ruins.
“St. Agnes’s Sacred Heart Convent,” Kit answered.
“Well, what do you know?” Dalton grinned. “A convent.” He looked from Kit to Ash and back again. “You don’t suppose there are any young ladies there?”
“Most likely,” Ash drawled. “That’s why it’s called a convent, rather than a monastery. And it’s most likely that any ladies you find there will be nuns.”
“I thought old King Henry did away with all the convents and monasteries,” Dalton objected.
“He did. In England. We’re in Ireland, where the church in Rome still flourishes.” History had never been Dalton’s long suit and religious history even less so. Kit found it amazing that he expected to receive a living as a rector as soon as one became available. Even more amazing that Dalton was holding out his hopes that the rector at Swanslea Park would retire soon and that Kit’s father would offer Dalton the living.
Dalton frowned. “Don’t tell me that we’re going to be rusticating on a luxurious estate in Ireland where the closest neighbors are nuns.”
“You should be thrilled,” Ash retorted. “After all, you’ve chosen a career in the clergy.”
“Isn’t there anyone else close by?” Dalton asked.
“Look around,” Kit told him. “Do you see anything else besides the village and the convent?”
“You don’t foxhunt, you don’t allow foxhunting on your property, and you have nuns for neighbors. What the devil are we going to do for fun?”
Stargaze. From the tower ruins. The answer popped into Kit’s brain, and he was amazed by the nostalgia he felt at the memory of the last time he stargazed from the tower ruins when once, long ago, one of the residents of St. Agnes’s crept out of her room after vespers, climbed over the stone wall surrounding the convent grounds, and made her way up the hill along the coast to the crumbling tower of Telamor Castle in order to wish upon the stars. And how once, long ago, an eight-year-old boy had accidentally discovered her hiding place and impulsively offered to marry her. Kit smiled at the memory, then gazed off into the distance, staring at the slate-roofed gables and spires of St. Agnes’s Sacred Heart Convent.
He wondered if she still lived there, then shuddered at the thought of her spending her childhood in a convent. He remembered her the way she had been the last time he’d seen her, but Kit knew the little girl was grown. Grown and probably married and living outside St. Agnes’s walls with a sturdy Irish husband and a couple of dark-haired children.
“Kit? Are you in there?”
Kit snapped to attention to find Dalton snapping his fingers and waving a hand in front of his face. “What?”
“He asked what the devil we are going to do for fun,” Ash explained.
Kit looked from Dalton to Ash and back again. “We’ll think of something. We always do.”
“How soon before we reach the new castle and begin this experiment in Irish country life?” Ashford asked.
“Another hour or so.”
Ash groaned. Although he was an excellent rider, it had been quite awhile since he’d spent so many hours in the saddle.
“What’s the matter?” Kit teased. “Life as a London dandy softening you?”
“That depends on how you look at it,” Ash retorted. “My ability to sit a saddle for more than an hour or two appears to have suffered from city life, but my ability to carouse for days on end with little sleep and dubious company has improved.”
Dalton turned to Kit with a knowing look on his face. “Life as an Irish earl has already affected you. You should know better than to exchange barbs with Ash. He’s a diplomatist. He always has the last word.”
“For now,” Kit agreed, good-naturedly. “But I live and hope.” He pressed his leg against his horse and turned him onto the path that led back down the hill to the post road and the village of Inismorn.
“It’s all well and good for you to live and hope. But where the bloody hell are you going?” Dalton asked. “Because your castle is that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction.
Kit grinned. “I’m going to church.”
“To church?” Dalton turned to Ash. “And it isn’t even Sunday. This place has ruined him already.”
“I’ve an appointment to meet Father Francis.”
“Who’s he?” Ash asked.
“He’s the priest with whom I’ve corresponded. The priest the late earl charged with overseeing the estate.”
“What does he want to do? Turn over the keys?”
Kit shook his head. “No. The doors should be unlocked. The castle is staffed.” He paused. “At least, Father Francis assured me that would be the case.”
“Why don’t Ash and I ride on ahead to the castle and make certain that’s the case?” Dalton suggested. “You don’t mind, do you?”
As a matter of fact, he did mind. He wanted to be the first person inside his castle’s doors. But there was no point in objecting and being inhospitable to his best friends. “No.”
“Good,” Dalton announced. “Because I would just as soon skip the meeting with the good father in the church.”
“Fine,” Kit answered, a bit more sharply than he intended. “You two ride on ahead to the castle. I’m sure this meeting is nothing more than a chance for Father Francis to meet me and to welcome me to Ireland and to Inismorn.”
Chapter Six
One meets his destiny often in the
road he takes to avoid it.
—FRENCH PROVERB
Welcoming him to Inismorn had been a ruse.
While Father Francis had welcomed him to Inismorn and to Ireland, he had also taken the opportunity to present him with a list of duties and responsibilities that traditionally belonged to the earl of Kilgannon, up to and including the guardianship of a minor who had been left in the earl of Kilgannon’s keeping.
“So you see, Lord Kilgannon, there is only so much a humble Irish priest can do. I promised Mariah’s mother that …”
Kit’s attention began to wander as he listened to the priest drone on, explaining how the
guardianship had come about. How it came about no longer mattered. What mattered was that it had come about. That was enough. Kit clamped his jaw shut to keep from laughing at the irony that he, a gentleman newly matriculated from university, whose sole responsibility in life so far had been the care and feeding of his horseflesh, had become the financial and legal guardian of a child. He was only two and twenty years old. It had been only a year since he had assumed legal and financial accountability for himself. Kit wanted to shout at the quirk of fate that freed him from familial dependence by bestowing a title of his own and land and funds upon him, only to thrust him into the role of surrogate parent—of a girl.
“… I would see that Mariah was properly educated and given all the advantages—”
“Of course, Father. Anything.”
“—her station in life merited—including a London season.” Father Francis shrugged his shoulders. “The Mother Superior and I made our promise to her mother in good faith, but I’m a humble priest and she is a nun. We are without the wherewithal to accomplish such a social feat. I’m afraid the responsibility for sponsoring her into society and for readying her for her entrance into it rests upon your able young shoulders …”
Kit groaned. He should have known better than to speak too soon. As it was, he had just agreed to provide all the advantages a young lady was supposed to enjoy. Including the one advantage he abhorred.
If there was anything Kit hated more than the eternal rounds of teas and galas, social calls and balls that accompanied the introduction of the latest crop of young ladies into society, it was the endless preparation for it. One of the reasons he’d been so eager to escape Swanslea Park and London for Ireland had been to avoid the months of preparation surrounding his sister Iris’s debut. And once Iris made her introduction into society, it would be time to begin preparing for his youngest sister Kate’s debut. It was all the womenfolk in his family had talked about since he returned from university. Evening conversation had centered on the latest in Parisian fashions, the most fashionable dressmakers, and included the discussion of the suitability of a dizzying array of silks and satins.
The whole household had been set on its ear in order to prepare for Iris’s debut. Everyone had a role to play in the preparations—whether they liked it or not. And Kit had been no exception. Because his father had detested the local dance master on sight, Kit had been pressed into service as a replacement. He hadn’t suffered alone. His father had spent a fair amount of time in the music room himself, but the marquess had other equally important duties to attend to and Kit had become Iris’s primary dance partner. In the past few months he’d spent hour after hour whirling his sister around the music room, suffering the pain of trodden toes and bruised and blistered feet so Iris could master the steps to a dozen intricate dances.
Kate’s debut was still more than five years away, and Kit heartily despised the notion of participating in it at any level. He hated the fuss and the household chaos, but most of all, he hated the change. He hated the idea that Iris had become a young lady and the fact that Kate would soon follow. He wanted everything at Swanslea Park to remain the same as they had always been, and Kit realized that the reason he resisted the idea of inheriting it was that it meant that his father would no longer be the marquess of Templeston. That his father would no longer be alive.
He wasn’t ready for Iris to be making her debut. He wasn’t ready for her to be contemplating marriage and motherhood, and Kit resented the fact that nobody at Swanslea Park seemed to notice. Even Ally, his old governess, had gotten caught up in the excitement. And except for his role as dance partner, Kit admitted to feeling more than a bit left out. There had been a time when he and his former governess had been constant companions. Even after he went away to school and Miss Harriet Allerton had become Iris’s and then, Kate’s, governess, she had remained Kit’s special friend and companion. They had shared the same interests: politics and mathematics and horses—especially horses. There wasn’t a better female rider in all of England, nor one who could recognize prize horseflesh any better than Ally. She delighted in the study of the breeding of thoroughbreds, poring over the stable studbooks, traveling with Kit and the marquess to the Haymarket sales, and helping to select the latest additions to the marquess’s stables. They had ridden together nearly every morning since Kit had begun to sit a horse, and their conversations had run the gamut—philosophy, mathematics, science, history, literature and poetry and languages. Kit had recited Greek and Latin while racing across the moors with Ally at his side.
He supposed he couldn’t help feeling a bit betrayed. After all, Ally had been his boon companion for as long as he could remember. She had always been a part of his life. Nothing had ever changed that—not his closeness with his mother and father, not his friendship with Ash and Dalton—until Iris’s impending coming out had turned Ally from the best horsewoman in England into a girl. Kit sighed. After weeks of partnering Iris in every dance known to modern man, Kit had decided that he would be perfectly happy to live out the rest of his life without ever dancing another step.
He had left England to escape all talk of a London season, and now some Irish priest was yammering on about providing his personal idea of Purgatory for some poor unsuspecting orphan who thought it was something she wanted, something for which to look forward.
Kit held up his hand, pushing at the air in an effort to discourage the good father from talking. “You say that the child’s parents left her in the care of the earl of Kilgannon, not the eleventh earl, Allan John Patrick Francis Kilgannon?”
“That is correct.” Father Francis heaved a sigh of relief, then lifted a sheaf of papers from the top of his desk and handed them to Kit. “There are the papers.”
Kit skimmed the legal documents, making mental note of the girl’s name, Mariah Shaughnessy, and the names of her deceased parents, Lady Siobhan and Mr. Declan Shaughnessy, and the fact that in the event of their deaths, they had, in fact, given their daughter into the care of the earl of Kilgannon. Whoever that might be. Kit frowned. His family’s longtime solicitor, Martin Bell, would never have allowed such an omission. He would have recorded the earl’s number in the legal line of succession. Numbering was the means by which the members of the nobility distinguished one earl Kilgannon from another. And in this case, it was the means by which he had become the girl’s guardian. Although he hadn’t known it, Kit had been the earl the year this document was written. He peered at the date. The ink was smudged and the letters hard to distinguish, but there was no mistaking the fact that by the time this document was written, he had already inherited the title which meant that … Kit stared at the priest. “Where is she?”
“What?” Father Francis was startled by the cold look in the young earl’s eyes and his frosty tone of voice.
“Where is she? Where is my ward? I would like to get a look at her.”
“I took her to Telamor Castle this morning. She’s waiting for you there.”
“You took a poor little orphaned girl out of a convent and left her alone on a stranger’s doorstep?”
Lord Kilgannon’s sarcasm stung, and Father Francis replied more sharply than he intended. “She isn’t alone. Her chaperone, Sister Mary Beatrix, is with her.”
“Her chaperone?” Kit retorted. “How is it that a child in desperate need of a guardian comes equipped with a chaperone? A nanny or a governess, perhaps, but a chaperone?”
“I never said she was a child,” Father Francis hedged. “You assumed …”
“And you let me assume,” Kit countered, “that my ward was still young enough to need a guardian.”
“She does need a guardian,” Father Francis replied.
“For how long?” Kit demanded.
“Until she marries …”
“Because according to this”—he waved the parchment beneath the priest’s nose before tossing it back on Father Francis’s desk—“the child, Mariah, should be approaching her age of majority very soon.”
r /> “Of course she is,” the priest said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you. Time is running out for Mariah. She cannot remain at the convent after the age of one and twenty unless she agrees to take the veil and join the order.”
“Find her a husband,” Kit suggested. “Before the next anniversary of her birth.”
“Would that we could,” Father Francis said. “But according to the terms of her trust, Mariah cannot marry until she reaches the age of one and twenty without forfeiting her fortune. And although the Reverend Mother recently accepted a proposal of marriage on Mariah’s behalf, she did not have the authority to do so. Only you have that authority. Mariah is currently betrothed to the squire, but she cannot marry him without your permission.”
“She’ll have it.”
“The Reverend Mother will be pleased to hear it. Mariah will not,” the priest replied.
“Why not?”
“Mariah doesn’t want to marry him. She wants what her mother wanted her to have.”
“And that is?”
“A London season.”
Kit muttered a curse beneath his breath. “Sorry, Father,” he apologized immediately after catching sight of the priest’s white face.
“I promised Mariah’s mother …” Father Francis stared at the young man, focusing his gaze on the earl’s eyes, attempting to appeal to his sense of justice and chivalry. “On her deathbed that I would arrange it. All she asked was one season before Mariah turned one and twenty. One season before she married, and as Mariah’s guardian, you just—”
“Agreed to provide it.” Kit shook his head. “I came to Ireland to escape the chaotic preparations for my sister’s London season. I came to Ireland to find my destiny. Apparently, I am destined to endure the hell only a season of coming-out engagements can inflict.” He turned his back on the priest, crossed the room, and retrieved his hat and gloves from the wooden chair beside the office door.