Celtic Evil: A Fitzgerald Brother Novel: Roarke (11 page)

Silence hit the kitchen
with this explosive comment and Maggie decided it was time she
slipped out, doubting if anyone would even notice her leaving,
except Mac’s fingers had grasped her hand under the table and only
she heard the silent ‘Stay’ request.

Ryan looked between the
older woman and his brother, needing to be sure he’d heard right,
but he could tell by the way her face had fallen that it was
true.

“Kerry, ye have to believe
that I certainly didn’t know that,” Deirdre grabbed his wrist but
let go with one smoking look from him and, with a sigh, she went to
a tiny cabinet in the small room off the kitchen, unlocked a
drawer, and removed a carefully wrapped bundle of yellowed letters
and postcards.

“Mrs. Fitzgerald ordered me
and all the house staff to destroy anything that came to you from
any of the lads, but especially from Roarke.” She pulled a stool to
the table and sat, suddenly very tired after keeping this secret
for so long. “The day of the funeral, after you and she had spat so
violently, she ordered Mick and some of the others to destroy all
your parents’ things and the boys’ stuff, and told me to destroy
all letters.”

Ryan pushed the coffee
away, suddenly not wanting it. “Why? Why would she do that?” he
demanded.

“She never said boyo,”
Deirdre sighed, seeing the pain in their eyes but avoiding looking
at Kerry. “Just that so long as she was mistress of this house her
will was to be obeyed and many of the folk here feared your Gran’s
power.”

“I told her the last day
she spent in this house that she wasn’t its Mistress any longer and
hadn’t been in years,” Kerry scowled, his temper still high as he
eyed the bundle. “Are these all from him?”

Deirdre O’Connor nodded
silently. “The maid who got the mail would have burned them but I
took them and hid them away. Just as I had the staff put aside much
of your Mum and Da’s stuff that I knew would be important to you
lads one day, including the Family Book of Shadows.”

“Did you know?” he asked her one more time,
taking the bundle of letters in his hands and instantly feeling the
emotions from them.

“Saints, no, I didn’t know
that,” Deirdre breathed, startled. “Kerry, I worked for your Da’s
folks since I was a girl but my loyalty was to Toryn and Brenna. I
loved your parents and you lads like you were my own. Had I known
anything like that was going on I would have risked her ire and
told you.”

Kerry stared from the
letters in his hand back to his housekeeper. “I hope so, Deirdre.
Mac, show Miss Cavanaugh where her room is. I’ll be in the
office.”

He walked out without
another word and all Maggie could do was try to comfort.

“Can I get you some tea?”
she asked the distraught woman, whirling as glass broke and Ryan
stormed out. “Mac?”

Mac scrubbed his face,
really too tired to handle this right then. “Ian, stay with Maggie
and get Deirdre settled,” He spoke to his youngest brother since he
knew he was the most upset right then.

“Is what he said true?” the
boy asked, not understanding how any of this could have happened.
“Why would someone related to us want to hurt him so much? I mean,
I grew up in a wonderful place so why would…?”

“Don’t know, Ian,” Mac
sighed, hearing the thunder build. “Stay with Maggie.” He just
looked at her and got an understanding nod before he left the
kitchen.

Ryan was about to the front
door when Mac caught up to him. “Are you looking for fresh air or
you running?”

“You’re the bloody empath
so you picked up more from Kerry in there but it was practically
screaming at me and it still is from him, from upstairs.” His dark
haired brother kept a hand on the door handle. “Dealing with an
ancient wizard looking to kill us is one thing; coping with the
past is something else but this… No, I won’t deal with
this.”

“Why? You blame Roarke for
Mum and Da dying since they were on the island with him and we
weren’t, so why should learning some of what happened afterwards
bother you?” Mac asked casually, seeing the flash in the opposite
set of eyes.

Again, thunder blasted but
this time it shook the house and Mac groaned, this time having no
trouble picking up his older brother’s anger. “Go, Ry,” he sighed.
“We’ll manage it fine.”

Leaving his brother at the
door, he headed toward the office with some hesitance. The room had
once been their father’s private retreat and the one place the boys
had rarely bothered him. Mac wondered if it still felt the
same.

Having left the kitchen and his clearly
disturbed brothers, Kerry had closed himself off in his office and
carefully laid the letters and little cards out on the hand-carved
desk before finally picking one to read.

He had very little trouble
recognizing his younger brother’s shaky handwriting since Roarke
had been the one who had the hardest trouble learning to write
English well. He’d been diagnosed early on with a mild form of
dyslexia.

Kerry found the first
letter which had very little to say of the trouble to come for his
dark haired little brother, except that he missed home and promised
not to fight with Ryan so much if Kerry could only come get
him.

“Oh, bloody hell, Roarke,”
he whispered, continuing to read as the letters become more urgent
and his writing harder to read as they were written in what he
guessed was hurried sessions of fear, to finally the later ones
where he wrote to beg his brother to come to Mayo for
him.

The one letter that Kerry
stared at the longest was the one stained with faded red blotches.
This one had some of what was happening but Kerry knew that his
brother would never ever have written of his full
ordeal.

Lightning flashed outside
the bay window as he could picture his younger brother and the
events that he endured.

“Locals are gonna start
wondering about all this lightning,” Mac spoke from the door,
closing it as he came to sit on the edge of the desk and picked up
a faded letter. “So, how bad is it?”

“His back is nothing but
scars and from what Jessica says his chest and the rest of him
probably isn’t much better,” Kerry replied after a long while,
leaning back in the leather chair that had once been their
father’s. “I honestly don’t think he remembers everything because I
had to push to see some of it.”

Mac considered that,
knowing that he could probably ease some of the pain, but that
would have to be after their brother learned to trust them again.
“He had retrograde amnesia after the island so it stands to reason
that he’d push the worst of this back too.”

“He believes I abandoned
him, Mac,” Kerry muttered, throwing a postcard on the desk.
“Upstairs, in his sleep, he asked why I didn’t come for him. How
the bloody hell do I tell him and expect him to believe that we
didn’t know it was happening when we’ve always been
linked?”

That was something else
that Mac had been considering. “Our link hasn’t been as strong
since the funeral, since she broke us up, so odds are good that
either being apart dimmed that link or…” he stopped as his
brother’s eyes flashed.

“Or she did something to
block us from feeling,” Kerry finished for him having gotten the
hidden meaning.

“Bridgett and Padric both
asked her to let Roarke come live with me since they had plenty of
room but she refused.” Mac thought on this and mentally kicked
himself. “She told them it was better if we were apart and that the
Walshes was the perfect place for him.”

The office was silent was
Kerry began to pace, finally turning to face his brother. “Why,
Mac?” he had to ask. “You and I were older and caught the strain
between Da and his mother in those last few months but why the
bloody hell would she do this to Roarke? He was eleven years old
and still traumatized as it were.”

Hating to admit it, Mac had
to be honest. “Could be she felt like Ry did and blames Roarke for
them dying. A lot of people did and may still do.”

“We were all supposed to go
with Mum that day but Ian had a cold and you, Ryan and I all made
excuses to go later,” his brother shot back, a small part still
feeling the guilt of that since if he had been on time, things may
have been different.

Recalling that it had been
his younger brother’s wish for months to go Skelling Michael to see
the island and the sights, Brenna Fitzgerald had finally agreed to
take her fourth born son and after the other boys all made proper
noise to come over later, their father had suddenly decided to go
too. Something that he hadn’t been supposed to do.

“Da wasn’t supposed to be
there, Mac,” Kerry murmured, an uneasy feeling going through him as
something bothered him about that. “Remember, Kathleen was coming
that day so Da was supposed to stay home.”

“He said Grandmother could
wait because he wanted a few hours with his family in peace.” Mac
did remember that, fingers twirling the pen on the desk. “She made
you late from catching the boat over to meet them.”

Both brothers exchanged
looks. “Oh, God, Kerry,” Mac muttered, horror dawning on him. “Tell
me you aren’t thinking that…”

“Guess I’ll be asking her
that when she shows up.” Kerry’s voice was cold but even he
couldn’t deny how much sicker this was making him when another
thought hit him. “Damn! I thought he’d stay asleep.”

Knowing what that meant,
Mac figured it would be a long while before he got sleep this night
and wondered if he shouldn’t have told Kerry that odds were high
that Ryan had left.

It was the silence and peace of the room
that cause Roarke Fitzgerald to wake up.

Usually, even when things
were calm, he woke up agitated until he got his bearings but this
time he woke slowly, but not anxious like normal.

Lying still, he thought of
the last things he could recall and remembered the airport, then
fleeting images of pain, fear, and hearing voices filtered
in.

Cautiously he opened his
eyes to see where he was since his instincts said this wasn’t a
hospital room, and blinked several times.

The room was large with a
fireplace that had a low flame going in it, decorated in a casual
way with semi-modern furniture, but the quilt that he ran his
fingers over gave him the first inkling, then the blue-flamed
candle going on the windowsill.

Roarke slowly moved his
arms and looked next to him to see he had been holding onto Jessica
as he had… He quickly sought to blank that out as he eased away but
gently laid his friend down on the pillows and under the
quilt.

Stroking a finger down her
face, he saw how pale she was and felt the weakness. “Sleep
now,
muirnin
(sweetheart),” he whispered. Still partially asleep himself,
he wandered out of the room to see where he was and went on
feeling, knowing where he was on instinct.

The house was quiet but had
an uneasy feeling to it even in his current half-sleep state as he
entered the living room, looking around to see it had only slightly
changed.

It still held the elegance
but the furniture was more modern, not as cold or sterile as it had
once been as he ran a hand over the soft suede of the couch, and
memories took him back to laying on it to study or falling on it
when he and his brothers would have play fights in this
room.

Instinct had him looking on
the mantle shelf for the vase his mother had kept there that had
been broken during one of those fights. He recalled vividly as he
did the bad things in his life how that vase had come crashing down
to shatter when he’d been playing with Ryan and Mac, and knowing
his normally gentle mother’s punishment would be swift.

“One of the very few times
I took the blame for something you did,” Ryan spoke from the corner
of the room.

Having debated with himself
on leaving or not, Ryan Fitzgerald had decided he wasn’t coward
enough to run from this fight, so he’d retreated to the privacy of
the living room to find a drink of some kind.

He’d been nursing the same Scotch and water
for well over an hour when he felt his younger brother waking up
and had stayed still to see if normal routine would have him coming
to the living room.

Ryan sat and waited,
watching as his younger brother looked around the room, and
remembered that day the vase had broken. “I couldn’t sit down right
for nearly three days because of that,” he finished, seeing the boy
was still half-asleep when he whirled at the voice. “Hey there,
brat, long time no see.”

The voice made Roarke blink
as it slowly registered whom it was. “Ryan.”

“Well, nice to see you
remember me.” Ryan countered, still using the cocky tone he always
did when dealing with this brother. “In the hospital I wasn’t sure
you knew any of us, or do you even remember trying to kill us and
your girlfriend?”

The words sank in but he
only focused on one. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“What is with you and Mac?”
Ryan felt like smacking someone but settled for slapping his own
forehead as he motioned with his glass. “The little red-haired
reporter, wait until you get a load of her, is all gooey eyed when
she looks at him and he gave me the back off look when I flirted
tonight and little Jessica,” he paused to smile, deciding to test
the waters on this one. “She really did grow up nice so if you
aren’t interested, despite the fact she hovers over you. Let me
know, huh?”