The Harp and the Fiddle: Glenncailty Castle, Book 1 (3 page)

“Is there a dictionary or something I can get?” Tim felt a little desperate. 

“No need—by the time you leave next week, we’ll have you speaking like a proper Irishman.” Sorcha hit the button for the elevator and turned to leave.

“Sure, you’re going to walk us up,” Paddy said, smiling at the redhead.

She leveled a look at him but returned the smile. “Of course.”

They piled into the elevator. When they got off on the second floor bits of music filled the hall. He heard the first strains of what he thought might be “Curragh of Kildare” on guitar, the rhythmic thump of a traditional Irish drum, the tinny sound of an Irish tin whistle and discordant layers of string instruments, including guitar, tenor banjo and something he thought might be a bouzouki.

“I get why we’re above the pub,” Tim said as Sorcha led them to their rooms.

“Yes, well, if you have any problems with your room or the noise level, please let us know. You dial zero on the—”

“No, I’m glad. I need to tune too. I didn’t think you’d let me do it in the hotel, that’s why I asked Paddy to take me to the barn.”

“We will ask everyone to quiet down if there are any complaints.”

“And will you be coming personally?” Paddy asked with a grin.

Tim shook his head, leaning back against the wall in the hall to watch his friend make an ass of himself. Jet lag was rearing its ugly head, and his door was temptingly close, but he didn’t want to miss this. 

“No, sad to say. It would be my night manager.”

“Pity. Will you be at the concert tomorrow?”

“I will be.”

“Then I’ll see you after, my lovely Rose of Tralee,” Paddy swept a dramatic bow and disappeared into his room.

Tim turned his snort-laugh into a cough. Sorcha turned her look of resignation on him.

“Ahem, sorry, dust or something in my throat.” Tim pushed away from the wall, the muscles in his face protesting from exhaustion when he smiled.

“We didn’t complete our tour of the castle, but I suspect you’ll want your bed or some food.” She crossed her arms. “And while you’re here I hope you meet some proper Irish gentlemen.”

“I’ll make a point of it,” Tim said with all the mock seriousness he could muster.

Sorcha lapsed back into her professional customer-service face. “Please let the front desk know if there’s anything you need. In the hotel, your options for dinner are the pub, which I pointed out to you, or the main restaurant, which is quieter.”

“Thank you.” Tim opened the door with the brass-colored key. “Actually, I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“There was a woman playing a harp. In Finn’s Stable.”

“Of course.” Sorcha nodded, smiled and turned away.

“Wait.” Damn, Paddy had not been kidding about Irish women. “Who is she? What’s her name?”

Sorcha looked him up and down. Her body language changed as she did it, her straight posture softening, her hands not folded in front of her but tapping restlessly on her thigh. She was no longer a hotel professional, but a beautiful, touchable woman. Any other time Tim would have felt something for her, but either jet lag or the dark-haired women had stolen his desire. And if he really thought that one song and a few words between him and the beautiful woman had robbed him of his ability to be attracted to anyone else, he needed to stop playing and listening to melancholy, romantic folk songs, because he was losing touch with reality. 

“Caera Cassidy. She’s our special events coordinator. She arranged all of this.”

“That’s Caera?” Tim had seen her name on all the emails about the event. He’d never imagined she was so beautiful, or young. 

“Yes.”

“She’s younger than I thought.” That was an understatement. Usually booking managers were a bit younger, but venue managers were older, with years of experience. 

“She’s very special, is Caera. Careful there.” 

As Sorcha walked away, Tim wondered if she was warning him to be careful because Caera could hurt him, or he could hurt her.

After half an hour lying on the bed, bone-weary but not tired—despite the fact that he’d spent the past ten hours traveling to Dublin from New York via London, plus two hours in the car with Paddy—Tim gave up the hope of a nap and sat up.

Digging into his bag, he took a few aspirin and gulped down water. The clashing sounds of tuning instruments and discordant bits of song were making his lingering headache worse, so he grabbed his jacket and headed out the door, stuffing the key and castle map in his pocket. 

It was barely five o’clock, but when he reached the window-filled hall connecting the east wing to the main castle it felt like 3 A.M. as rain sheeted down the glass from a black sky. There was no way he was going outside, as nice as a walk sounded, so he’d settle for touring the castle. He really liked castles. He’d even booked himself a room in a castle-looking B&B later in the week. As Tim emerged into the foyer, he wondered if there was any hope of finding Caera and begging her for a tour.

The foyer was empty except for the blonde who’d checked him in.

“Good evening, Mr. Wilcox, is there anything I can help you with?”

“Is Caera, uh…” Tim’s brain took a moment to come up with her last name, which he’d seen on her emails, “…Cassidy around?”

The blonde frowned. “I’m sorry, she’s busy preparing for the concert. Is there something you need for your performance?”

Tim considered making up something so he could talk to her, but that was a shit thing to do. He shook his head. “No, I just wanted to say hi. I think I’m going to go for a tour. Maybe just find someplace to sit.”

“I’d take you on a tour myself, but I’m afraid I’m the only one here. If you’re looking for quiet, I’d recommend the Rose Room or the formal front room. You can access them through that door.”

She directed him to another old, expensive-looking door, almost directly opposite the one he’d just come through.

With a nod of thanks, he opened the door. Rather than more wood, he found himself in a carpeted hall with fancy wallpaper and several white doors. The first one had a small plaque, labeling it the formal front room. The need to explore the castle—Tim didn’t care that it wasn’t technically a castle, it was called castle and that was enough for him—was on him, so he bypassed that room and examined each of the other doors. He found one marked
Staff
, a billiards room, the Rose Room and the door that led to the other covered hallway and the west wing.

He stepped out of the main castle building, into the covered hallway. The rain on the windows made it hard to see anything, but the air that seeped through the stones was vibrant with cold and atmosphere. Feeling like a great explorer, which he knew was stupid since Sorcha had said the TV crew was in the west wing, Tim entered the third building of the castle.

Disappointingly, the first floor of the west wing was a generic hotel hallway. Nondescript patterned carpet traversed the length of the hall, all the way to a window in the far wall, which was stone. The interior walls were beige, the doors white. A few of the doors had Do Not Disturb signs up, so he guessed those were the TV crew. Feeling more than a little stupid, Tim walked the hall, counting nine rooms and an elevator and stairs in the space by the door where a tenth room wasn’t. The only interesting things about it were the large gold keyholes and real handles on the doors, rather than the key-card mechanisms Tim was used to. 

“Worst explorer ever,” Tim muttered to himself. 

Either the aspirin or the fake exploring had lifted some of his jet lag exhaustion. Deciding to go back to the main building and check out the billiards room, he put his hand on the door handle.

And stopped.

He looked at the stairs.

He needed to check the second floor. 

Heart beating fast, for no reason he could name, Tim took the stairs two at a time. At first glance, the second floor was just another level of hotel rooms—the same paint on the walls, same carpet on the floor. But it wasn’t the same. There was something wrong. Tim knew it the way he knew when a song was right. 

Unlike downstairs, the hall didn’t end in a stone wall, but rather in more of the same beige paint. The light from the sconces between each door seemed dimmer, making the paint a sickly yellow at the windowless end of the hall.

Tim took a step, then another, wondering what the hell he was doing. The hair on his arms was standing on end, he was breathing fast and his hands were fisted and ready—for what, he didn’t know. 

Either his system had gone completely haywire or there was a something up here that he could feel but not name. 

Tim had grown up on a steady diet of folk music, the kind of songs that made a boy believe in love that transcended death. He’d grown into a man who sang about the cynic-less longings and hopes that people like to pretend they didn’t feel or believe.

He would never deny a feeling, even if he couldn’t name it. Even if it frightened him.

Tim crept forward, pausing between each step to take a breath.

This level had only five rooms, the hall about half the length of the one on the lower floor. The hall ended in a smooth wall, with no apparent access to what Tim guessed was about fifty percent of the second floor. He checked the castle map. There was nothing on this section—half the second floor of the west wing was simply blank. There was no room name or numbers, no explanation.

Tim stopped in front of the wall, staring at the expanse of beige paint. The closer he looked, the more certain he became that there was a darker patch visible in the paint—a large rectangular patch. A door.

It was cold, so cold that for a moment Tim was sure he could see his breath.

He raised his hand, fingers reaching for the darker patch on the wall. 

“Tim? Mr. Wilcox?” A lilting voice called his name, the voice seeming to echo, as if the speaker had shouted through a pipe.

Tim pulled his hand back, curling it into a fist. His heart was beating so hard he could taste his heartbeat. The cold was seeping up the legs of his pants and down his collar.

This was bad. He needed to leave.

No longer feeling like the open-minded explorer, Tim turned and ran. He braced his hands on the banisters and took the first set of stairs in one leap. He nearly crashed into Sorcha, who stood on the landing.

“Mr. Wilcox.” Sorcha’s eyes widened. She touched the back of one finger to his cheek, quickly pulling her hand away. “You’re freezing.”

“There’s something going on up there, you need to go up there and—” Tim’s words tumbled out.

“Mr. Wilcox, we don’t use the second floor of the west wing.”

Tim blinked. Was she not hearing him? “There’s something up there, it’s cold, really cold at the end of the hall, and I think maybe you walled over the door. I could see, like, an outline in the paint.”

“You could see it?”

“You
know
about it?”

“I should have warned you. No one goes up there.”

“You know what it is? Is it haunted? Was that a ghost?” Tim was secretly thrilled with the idea of a ghost encounter, but that had felt almost…dangerous. 

“There’s no such thing as ghosts. That’s a terrible thing to think, souls wandering lost.” Sorcha took his arm, drawing him down the second set of steps.

“Fine, it’s not a ghost. It’s something. Do you know what it is?”

“It’s an old building, there are places you’ll find that are—”

“No, there’s a door behind that wall. I think you accidentally walled it up when you remodeled or something. There’s something back there.”

They were standing at the head of the hallway on the lower floor. Tim glanced down it, expecting a twinge, but there was nothing. It was only the second floor. Sorcha too looked over her shoulder, then drew him out into the covered hallway.

“Mr. Wilcox, I’ll ask you not to alarm the other guests.”

“Then tell me what it was I just had a run in with.”

Sorcha shook her head. With a backdrop of sheeting rain through the windows, her red hair catching the hall lights, she looked like a sorceress, a keeper of secrets.

“I don’t know what, and if you want answers so specific, you’ll be disappointed. As for the door…” She turned to look out, into the rain. “When you cannot open a door for fear of what’s on the other side, you wall it up.”

Tim whistled between his teeth. It was nice to know he wasn’t losing his mind—there was a door outline in the paint. Being told that there was something so crazy up there that they’d walled in the door rather than deal with it blew his mind.

“You just…walled it up?” Tim rubbed his hand on the back of his head. His mind was going a million miles a minute. She must have been lying when she said she didn’t know what it was. People didn’t wall up access to half a floor of a castle because they suspected there might be something bad. They must
know
it was bad, therefore they had to know what it was.

“I did nothing.”

“What’s back there? You must know, otherwise you wouldn’t have walled it up.”

“You act like I did this, but I did not. Nor did anyone here, or even the O’Muircheartaigh family. That door was sealed shut with brick and mortar over one hundred years ago.”

Tim rocked back on his heels, eyes widening.

“So what you felt,” Sorcha continued, “must have been a draft, coming through a crack. That room, that whole part of the building, is not in the best shape. Your friend Paddy is looking for you, hoping you’ll join him in the pub for dinner.”

Tim looked over his shoulder, through the windows at the massive west wing, then let Sorcha lead him away. 

Chapter Three

In the Rain

Caera dropped into a chair at a table in the middle of the pub. As much as she’d like to take one of the two snugs or a table by the window, the policy was to leave the best seats for customers, so the staff who sought their dinner in the wood-paneled pub took the center tables. She waved to some of the regulars, including a group of old men from Cailtytown who’d taken up residence at the table closest to the little stage, which was stacked with wood barrels since there were no acts billed for tonight. But it looked like there’d be music anyway. The “boys”, as they called themselves, though none was a day under sixty, all had their instruments and were always happy for a music session.