CHAPTER ONE Dublin Weekly Nation May 1880 Marriage: On Thursday the 20th ult., at St. Patrick''s Cathedral, Dublin, Mr. Evan Chase of London to Lady Jenny Gallagher of County Wicklow, only child of Michael Gallagher, 13th Viscount Gallagher, and the late Lady Aiofe Gallagher. Mr. Chase will append his wife''s surname, as she is the sole inheritor of the Gallagher estates. Dublin Weekly Nation May 1881 Born: On Wednesday the 11th ult., James Michael Gallagher at Deeprath Castle, County Wicklow.

He is the first child of Lady Jenny Gallagher and Mr. Evan Chase-Gallagher. Dublin Weekly Nation January 1882 Died: On Sunday the 8th ult., Lady Jenny Gallagher, suddenly, at the age of twenty-two, leaving her widower and a young son. Due to the unexpected nature of her death, an inquest will be held in Rathdrum. The Illustrated London News 4 March 1882 We have it on good authority that Mr. Evan Chase-Gallagher, noted folklorist and author, has returned to England''s shores following a sojourn of two and a half years in Ireland. Little could the author have expected such heights of joy and depths of despair as he has endured since he last crossed the Irish Sea.

Love, marriage, fatherhood . to be followed so shortly by the extremity of grief known only to those whose loved ones have perished in suspicious circumstances. Lady Jenny Gallagher possessed, by the accounts of those few who knew her, a brilliant wit to match her dark Irish beauty, as well as the noted charm of her race. But such brilliance too often exacts a cost, and it is well known that the lady suffered an unquiet mind after the birth of her son. The strain on her husband, cut off from his London circle in mountainous isolation, we can only guess at. That he has published nothing since his marriage is, perhaps, telling. We understand the inquest to have been generous in their verdict of accidental death, and hope that his wife''s Christian burial will work its peace upon Mr. Chase.

We look forward to once more reading his learned and captivating prose and sharing in the talent that has seen him compared to both Mr. Dickens and Mr. Trollope. His son remains in Ireland, to be raised by his grandfather at Deeprath Castle. Twenty miles south of Dublin, Deeprath Castle brooded in its shallow valley scooped out of the Wicklow Mountains. Thirteen hundred years ago, St. Kevin had come to these mountain heights for solitude. Eight hundred years ago, Tomas Ó Gallchobair had become Thomas Gallagher by marrying the daughter of a Norman lord--changing his name, if not his heart--and built a stone keep two miles from what was then the monastic city of Glendalough.

And every hundred years or so since, a new descendant had made his mark on either land or castle until Deeprath was as idiosyncratic a mix of English and Irish as the family who lived there. "Rath" might mean "farmstead" in Old Norse, but those who lived in the Wicklow Mountains whispered that it should have been spelled "wrath." Whether the Gallaghers were meant to be the instigators of that wrath, or its victims, varied according to the story and the mood of the storyteller. Laughter, tears, joy, sorrow, love, hatred, birth, and death--every beat of every Gallagher heart resounded in the stone and wood and plaster of the castle, so that those sensitive to such things could feel the thrum of centuries through their bodies. Any animals brought into the house as pets must learn to live with the echoes or be driven out. The castle knew her own, and jealously kept their secrets. Secrets in the Norman keep, its spiral stone steps worn by thousands of feet over the centuries. Secrets in the Tudor hall that housed spinet and lute and harp.

Secrets in the Regency study, soaked in its aura of patriarchal privilege. And, above all, secrets in the library, with its soaring walls and stained-glass windows, the Gothic fan vaulting poised loftily above the thousands of books in their bays. Books in glass cases, books on open shelves, books and manuscripts and journals and maps stored in great Renaissance coffers. The library had secrets aplenty to reveal . to those who knew how to look. CHAPTER TWO 2015 Carragh Ryan perched straight-backed on the reproduction nineteenth-century chair offered her by the interviewer and was devoutly glad she''d chosen her most sober gray-green tweed shift today. The woman seated before her was eighty at least, and dressed as though she were heading to a Downton Abbey funeral. Do people still wear bombazine? Carragh''s mind rattled inwardly, as it did when she was nervous.

What even is bombazine? And do I really want this job if it''s working for her? Perhaps the woman--who had declined to give her name when Carragh entered the anonymously expensive hotel suite--could read minds. Because she now asked, "Why do you want a job of which you know virtually nothing?" Because those I do know about are all of them so deadly boring I want to claw my eyes out just applying for them . Carragh smiled, though it seemed unlikely this woman would be susceptible to flattery. "If a job has to do with books, I don''t need to know much more." "You understand the position is of limited duration. Three weeks at the most." "I understand." "It is also an .

isolated situation. You would be resident with us, without reliable mobile phone service or Internet access." Carragh couldn''t help herself; literary allusions were second nature. "Sounds very Victoria Holt or Daphne du Maurier." When the woman merely looked at her blankly, she babbled on. "Gothic writers. Mysterious manors, naïve governesses, brooding lords of the manor . never mind.

" "Am I to take it you see me in the role of Mrs. Danvers?" Carragh''s eyebrows shot up at mention of the unpleasant housekeeper from du Maurier''s Rebecca. It was the interviewer''s turn to smile. "I am three times your age, my dear. It is just possible I have read as many books as you have." The old woman had been reviewing Carragh''s résumé, and now removed her glasses and let them hang from a chain. Without the lenses, her eyes were even sharper. "Your name indicates Irish heritage.

But clearly you are not." Carragh almost found this straightforward statement refreshing. "I am adopted." "From China?" "Boston." They hovered there for a moment before the older woman moved on to the point of their meeting. "So, you are American-born, were raised in Boston, have a degree in English literature from Boston College and postgraduate work in Irish Studies at Trinity." "Yes." "And you have remained in Dublin since Trinity, doing freelance editorial work when you can get it.

Secretarial work when you cannot." "Yes." Were they ever, Carragh wondered, going to get to an actual question? Or the slightest hint about what this mysterious job would entail? Once again the nameless woman proved remarkably adept at sensing Carragh''s thoughts, for she began to question her closely and intently about everything from her familiarity with Irish ballads to her experience working in research libraries. When Carragh was ushered out twenty minutes later--a little dazed--she not only had no idea how well she''d answered, she still hadn''t figured out what, precisely, the woman wanted her to do. But she had a name, at least. Nessa Gallagher, the woman told her as she was dismissed. The surname struck a bell of familiarity, but she virtuously refused to jump to conclusions. No sense getting her hopes up unnecessarily.

Within five minutes of going online, her virtue was rewarded: Lady Nessa Gallagher had been born and raised at Deeprath Castle in County Wicklow. Carragh knew a moderate amount about Deeprath: originally a Norman castle, home of the Gallaghers for more than eight hundred years, and possessed of one of the finest Irish libraries still in private hands. The castle where Evan Chase, Victorian novelist, had arrived in 1879 for research . and left three years later a broken widower who never published again. Chase was the reason Carragh knew anything about Deeprath. In university she had studied Victorian novelists and had shelves full of Dickens and Trollope, Gaskell, the Brontës, Thackeray, Eliot, and Hardy. But she''d had a particular affinity for Evan Chase, whose books her grandmother had introduced her to before she was ten. It seemed--ironic? coincidental? miraculous?--that this opportunity would arise so soon after Eileen Ryan''s death.

At almost the very moment that Carragh had determined to drag herself out of the depression she''d fallen into after losing her grandmother. She didn''t believe in signs. Or maybe she did. One thing Carragh had learned in the last three months was that she did not know herself as well as she''d thought. Not all of the learning process had been comfortable. Still: Evan Chase. Half Welsh, half English, the writer had been among the early fantasists, his gothic tales dripping with claustrophobia and tension and echoes of the supernatural twenty years before Bram Stoker. He had written five popular novels by the time he was thirty and seemed poised to take his place among the pantheon of English favorites.

Then he had come to Ireland to research a legend--a ghostly, vengeful woman known as the Darkling Bride--and had instead found love. In swift succession Chase married a Gallagher daughter, had a son, and lost hi.