Page 47 of The Granddaughter's Irish Secret
‘Maybe a bit more,’ Rose agreed. ‘Can we forget that now? I feel a little stressed about it to be honest.’
‘Okay. I won’t say anything else.’ Lily lifted the tray. ‘Come on. Let’s forget about this and have tea with Granny. Naomi seems to be falling asleep in her arms after all the shenanigans.’
Rose grabbed the teapot and followed Lily into the living room, her mind full of what Lily had just said. It made sense, of course, but she hadn’t wanted to hear it.Okay, she thought,Lily might be right. I do feel more than friendship for Noel. But what if he doesn’t feel anything for me?
Then she forgot everything as Sylvia suddenly stood up, a sleeping baby in her arms.
‘It suddenly came to me,’ she hissed, staring at Rose. ‘The Lincolns and that house and the connection with our family. How could I have forgotten that strange story?’
20
‘What, who?’ Lily asked, looking from Rose to Sylvia. Then she put the tray on the coffee table and held out her arms. ‘Here, I’ll take Naomi and put her in her cot. Then you two had better explain what’s going on.’
‘We will,’ Sylvia said as Lily took the sleeping baby and carried her away.
Rose, still holding the teapot, looked at her grandmother. ‘So? What do you suddenly remember?’
Sylvia sat down on the sofa again, looking pale and shaken. ‘I’ll tell you when I’ve had some tea and Lily’s back. She deserves to hear it after the fright I gave her.’
Rose poured tea into a cup, added some milk and handed it to Sylvia. ‘There. Drink that, it might help calm you down. You look as if you’ve woken up from a bad dream.’
‘That’s how I feel.’ Sylvia sipped some tea and the colour slowly came back into her cheeks. ‘I mean, how could I have forgotten something so important?’
‘What was it?’ Lily asked, walking back into the room. ‘What shook you up like that?’
Sylvia drained her cup and put it back on the table. Then she sat up and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Lily, Rose asked me about Iseult, your great-grandfather’s sister.’
‘I didn’t even know he had one,’ Lily said.
‘Well he did,’ Sylvia said.
‘I found photos of her in an old album in the attic,’ Rose filled in. ‘I thought she looked interesting, so I asked Granny about her.’
Sylvia nodded. ‘That’s right. I told Rose I didn’t know what happened to her and that Cornelius never talked about her. But I was wrong. I mean, not about Cornelius, but about Iseult. I do know what happened to her. But it wasn’t Cornelius who told me. It was an old cousin of his who stayed at the manor during my first summer there. I had just arrived and was trying to adjust to living in that old house, trying to run it and cope with the gardens and all that. We had practically no staff so we did a lot of the work ourselves. Lots of people came to visit during that first summer and it was hard work. I had Nora’s mother, Mary, and later on Nora, who was very young then, and a maid, and that was all. We had one gardener for that huge garden. Poor Liam tried his best to cope and run the estate with the farm.’ Sylvia drew breath. ‘So it’s not so strange that some of the things that happened slipped my mind, is it?’
‘Not very strange at all,’ Lily said. ‘It must have been hard being so young and having to cope with everything.’
‘Yes, but I loved the house and the whole place from the start,’ Sylvia said, her eyes sparkling at the memories. ‘It felt so amazing to live there and be part of it all.’ She reached out and took one of the cupcakes. ‘Goodness. We forgot about these.’
Rose squirmed in her seat, anxious to hear about Iseult and the Lincolns. ‘So what about this memory that just came back to you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll come to that,’ Sylvia replied. ‘So,’ she said, after a brief pause while she nibbled on a cupcake, ‘Cornelius’s cousin came to stay that first summer. A nice, very tall woman called Josephine, who everyone knew as Cousin Jo. She was a little younger than Cornelius, in her sixties at that time, I think. She knew all the gossip about the family and mentioned Cornelius’s sister to me and Liam during dinner, when Cornelius was out. His wife, Caroline, had died two years earlier and he was still very sad and lonely. But that’s beside the point. You asked me about Iseult and the Lincolns. This is what I remember. Cousin Jo told us that Iseult had married a man against her father’s wishes. He was twenty-five years older than her and a widower. His name, as far as I remember, was Patrick Lincoln, and he lived in West Cork.’ Sylvia looked at Rose. ‘What was the name of that house again? The house in the photo?’
‘Willowbrook House,’ Rose said. ‘The woman I think is Iseult was holding a baby. It was hard to make out if it looked like her.’
Sylvia looked doubtful. ‘Iseult had no children according to Cousin Jo. So that baby must have been someone else’s child, or the cousin was mistaken. Iseult’s husband had children by his first wife, a daughter and a son, I believe, nearly the same age as Iseult. He died only a few years after he and Iseult married. His children must have inherited that house. Maybe their children, or grandchildren, still live there?’
‘What happened to Iseult?’ Rose asked.
Sylvia shrugged. ‘I don’t know. There was some kind of rift between Iseult and her father, and I think Cornelius took their father’s side. This to me, at the time, was just family stuff that happened a long time before I came to Magnolia. It didn’t really register. I was so young, only twenty-two, and my new life seemed so challenging and exciting. Old people’s lives seemed unimportant. I only listened with half an ear to their stories. It didn’t seem to be relevant to me.’
But the topaz necklace must have been handed back to our family when Iseult died, Rose thought, not wanting to mention it in case it would alert Sylvia that there was something else going on.
Or Iseult or someone else had a copy made and kept the real one, Rose mused while she stared at Sylvia, trying to take it all in.I need to talk to this Penny Lincoln as soon as possible. She must know something about it.
‘Such a sad story,’ Lily said, looking emotional. ‘That poor young woman having no children of her own.’
‘Yes, that must have been awful for the poor girl,’ Sylvia agreed. ‘But it was such a long time ago. Let’s not dwell on it.’
