Читать книгу Summer Of Love - Marion Lennox, Amy Woods - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWHAT HAD JUST happened seemed too big to get their heads around. They farewelled the lawyer. They looked at each other.
‘How many people do you employ on your farm?’ Jo asked and he smiled. He’d enjoyed the lawyer’s attempt at condescension and he liked that Jo had too.
‘Ten, at last count.’
‘That’s a lot of buckets.’
‘It is and all.’
‘Family?’ she asked.
‘My parents are dead and my brothers have long since left.’ He could tell her about Maeve, he thought, but then—why should he? Maeve was no longer part of his life.
‘So there’s just you and a huge farm.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not wealthy enough to buy me out?’
He grinned at that. ‘Well, no,’ he said apologetically. ‘Didn’t you hear our lawyer? He already has it figured.’
He tried smiling again, liking the closeness it gave them, but Jo had closed her eyes. She looked totally blown away.
‘I need a walk.’
And he knew she meant by herself. He knew it because he needed the same. He needed space to get his head around the enormity of what had just happened. So he nodded and headed outside, across the castle grounds, past the dilapidated ha-ha dividing what had once been gardens from the fields beyond, and then to the rough ground where sheep grazed contentedly in the spring sunshine.
The lawyer’s visit had thrown him more than he cared to admit, and it had thrown him for two reasons.
One was the sheer measure of the wealth he stood to inherit.
The second was Jo. Her reaction to Mrs O’Reilly’s dilemma had blown him away. Her generosity...
Also the smarmy lawyer’s attempt to flirt with her. Finn might have reacted outwardly to the lawyer with humour but inwardly...
Yeah, inwardly he’d have liked to take that smirk off the guy’s face and he wouldn’t have minded how he did it.
Which was dumb. Jo was a good-looking woman. It was only natural that the lawyer had noticed and what happened between them was nothing to do with Finn.
So focus on the farm, he told himself, but he had to force himself to do it.
Sheep.
The sheep looked scrawny. How much had their feed been supplemented during the winter? he asked himself, pushing all thoughts of Jo stubbornly aside, and by the time he’d walked to the outer reaches of the property he’d decided: not at all.
The sheep were decent stock but neglected. Yes, they’d been shorn but that seemed to be the extent of animal husbandry on the place. There were rams running with the ewes and the rams didn’t look impressive. It seemed no one really cared about the outcome.
There were a couple of cows in a small field near the road. One looked heavily in calf. House cows? He couldn’t imagine Mrs O’Reilly adding milking to her duties and both were dry. The cows looked as scrawny as the landscape.
Back home in Kilkenny, the grass was shooting with its spring growth. The grass here looked starved of nutrients. It’d need rotation and fertiliser to keep these fields productive and it looked as if nothing had been done to them for a very long time.
He kept walking, over the remains of ancient drainage, long blocked.
Would some American or Middle Eastern squillionaire pay big bucks for this place? He guessed they would. They’d buy the history and the prestige and wouldn’t give a toss about drainage.
And it wasn’t their place. It was...his?
It wasn’t, but suddenly that was the way he felt.
This was nuts. How could he feel this way about a place he hadn’t seen before yesterday?
He had his own farm and he loved it. His brothers had grown and moved on but he’d stayed. He loved the land. He was good at farming and the farm had prospered in his care. He’d pushed boundaries. He’d built it into an excellent commercial success.
But this... Castle Glenconaill... He turned to look at its vast silhouette against the mountains and, for some reason, it almost felt as if it was part of him. His grandfather must have talked of it, he thought, or his father. He couldn’t remember, but the familiarity seemed bone-deep.
He turned again to look out over the land. What a challenge.
To take and to hold...
The family creed seemed wrong, he decided, but To hold and to honour... That seemed right. To take this place and hold its history, to honour the land, to make this place once more a proud part of Irish heritage... If he could do that...
What was he thinking? He’d inherited jointly with a woman from Australia. Jo had no reason to love this place and every reason to hate it. And the lawyer was right; even with the wealth he now possessed, on his own he had no hope of keeping it. To try would be fantasy, doomed to disaster from the start.
‘So sell it and get over it,’ he told himself, but the ache to restore this place, to do something, was almost overwhelming.
He turned back to the castle but paused at the ha-ha. The beautifully crafted stone wall formed a divide so stock could be kept from the gardens without anything as crass as a fence interfering with the view from the castle windows. But in places the wall was starting to crumble. He looked at it for a long moment and then he couldn’t resist. Stones had fallen. They were just...there.
He knelt and started fitting stone to stone.
He started to build.
To hold and to honour... He couldn’t hold, he decided, but, for the time he was here, he would do this place honour.
* * *
Jo thought about heading outside but Finn had gone that way and she knew he’d want to be alone. There was silence from the kitchen. Mrs O’Reilly was either fainting from shock or trying to decide whether she could tell them they could shove their offer. Either way, maybe she needed space too.
Jo started up towards her bedroom and then, on impulse, turned left at the foot of the staircase instead of going up.
Two massive doors led to what looked like an ancient baronial hall. She pushed the doors open and stopped dead.
The hall looked as if it hadn’t been used for years. Oversized furniture was draped with dustsheets and the dustsheets themselves were dusty. Massive beams ran the length of the hall, and up in the vaulted ceiling hung generations of spider webs. The place was cold and dank and...amazing.
‘Like something out of Dickens,’ she said out loud and her voice echoed up and up. She thought suddenly of Miss Havisham sitting alone in the ruins of her bridal finery and found herself grinning.
She could rent this place out for Halloween parties. She could...
Sell it and go home.
Home? There was that word again.
And then her attention was caught. On the walls...tapestries.
Lots of tapestries.
When she’d first entered she’d thought they were paintings but now, making her way cautiously around the edges of the hall, she could make out scores of needlework artworks. Some were small. Some were enormous.
They were almost all dulled, matted with what must have been smoke from the massive blackened fireplace at the end of the room. Some were frayed and damaged. All were amazing.
She fingered the closest and she was scarcely breathing.
It looked like...life in the castle? She recognised the rooms, the buildings. It was as if whoever had done the tapestries had set themselves the task of recording everyday life in the castle. Hunting. Formal meals with scores of overdressed guests. Children at play. Dogs...
She walked slowly round the room and thought, These aren’t from one artist and they’re not from one era.
They were the recording of families long gone.
Her family? Her ancestors?
It shouldn’t make a difference but suddenly it did. She hated that they were fading, splitting, dying.
Her history...
And Finn’s, she thought suddenly. In her great-great-grandfather’s era, they shared a heritage.
Maybe she could take them back to Sydney and restore them.
Why? They weren’t hers. They’d be bought by whoever bought this castle.
They wouldn’t be her ancestors, or Finn’s ancestors. They’d belong to the highest bidder.
Maybe she could keep them.
But Jo didn’t keep stuff, and that was all these were, she reminded herself. Stuff. But still... She’d restored a few tapestries in the past and she wasn’t bad at it. She knew how to do at least step one.
As she’d crossed the boundaries of the castle last night she’d crossed a creek. No, a stream, she corrected herself. Surely in Ireland they had streams. Or burns? She’d have to ask someone.
But meanwhile it was spring, and the mountains above Castle Glenconaill must surely have been snow-covered in winter. The stream below the castle seemed to be running full and free. Clear, running water was the best way she knew to get soot and stains from tapestries, plumping up the threads in the process.
She could try with a small one, she decided, as her fingers started to itch. She’d start with one of the hunting scenes, a brace of pheasants without people or place. That way, if she hurt it, it wouldn’t matter. She could start with that one and...
And nothing. She was going home. Well, back to Australia.
Yeah, she was, but first she was getting excited. First, she was about to clean a tapestry.
* * *
Finn had placed a dozen rocks back in their rightful position and was feeling vaguely pleased with himself. He’d decided he should return to the castle to see what Jo was doing—after all, they were here for a purpose and repairing rock walls wasn’t that purpose—and now here she was, out in the middle of the stream that meandered along the edge of the ha-ha.
What was she doing? Those rocks were slippery. Any minute now she’d fall and get a dunking.
‘Hey!’
She looked up and wobbled, but she didn’t fall. She gave him a brief wave and kept on doing what she was doing.
Intrigued, he headed over to see.
She was messing with something under water.
The water would be freezing. She had the sleeves of her sweater pulled up and she’d hauled off her shoes. She was knee-deep in water.
‘What’s wrong?’
She kept concentrating, her back to him, stooped, as if adjusting something under water. He stood and waited, more and more intrigued, until finally she straightened and started her unsteady way back to the shore.
‘Done.’
He could see green slime attached to the rocks underneath the surface. She was stepping gingerly from rock to rock but even the ones above the surface would be treacherous.
He took a couple of steps out to help her—and slipped himself, dunking his left foot up to his ankle.
He swore.
‘Whoops,’ Jo said and he glanced up at her and she was grinning. ‘Uh oh. I’m sorry. I’d carry you if I could but I suspect you’re a bit heavy.’
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Heading back to the castle. All dry.’ She reached the shore, jumping nimbly from the last rock, then turned and proffered a hand to him. ‘Can I help?’
‘No,’ he said, revolted, and her smile widened.
‘How sexist is that? Honestly...’
‘I was trying to help.’
‘There’s been a bit of that about,’ she said. ‘It’s not that I don’t appreciate it; it’s just that I hardly ever need it. Bogs excepted.’
‘What were you doing?’ He hauled himself out of the water to the dry bank and surveyed his leg in disgust. His boot would take ages to dry. Jo, on the other hand, was drying her feet with a sock and tugging her trainers back on. All dry.
‘Washing tapestries,’ she told him and he forgot about his boots.
‘Tapestries...?’
‘The hall’s full of them. You should see. They’re awesome. But they’re filthy and most of them need work. I’ve brought one of the small ones here to try cleaning.’
‘You don’t think,’ he asked cautiously, ‘that soap and water might be more civilised?’
‘Possibly. But not nearly as much fun.’
‘Fun...’ He stared at his leg and she followed his gaze and chuckled.
‘Okay, fun for me, not for you. I’m obviously better at creeks than you are.’
‘Creeks...’
‘Streams. Brooks. What else do you call them? Whatever, they’ll act just the same as home.’ She gestured to the surrounding hills, rolling away to the mountains in the background. ‘Spring’s the best time. The water’s pouring down from the hills; it’s running fast and clean and it’ll wash through tapestries in a way nothing else can, unless I’m prepared to waste a day’s running water in the castle. Even then, I wouldn’t get an even wash.’
‘So you just lie it in the stream.’ He could see it now, a square of canvas, stretched underwater and weighed down by rocks at the edges.
‘The running water removes dust, soot, smoke and any burnt wool or silk. It’s the best way. Some people prefer modern cleaning methods, but in my experience they can grey the colours. And, as well, this way the fibres get rehydrated. They plump up almost as fat as the day they were stitched.’
‘You’re intending to leave it here?’
‘I’ll bring it in tonight. You needn’t worry; I’m not about to risk a cow fording the stream and sticking a hoof through it.’
‘And then what will you do?’ he asked, fascinated.
‘Let it dry and fix it, of course. This one’s not bad. It has a couple of broken relays and warps but nothing too serious. I’ll see how it comes up after cleaning but I imagine I’ll get it done before I leave. How’s the stone wall going?’
To say he was dumbfounded would be an understatement. This woman was an enigma. Part of her came across tough; another part was so fragile he knew she could break. She was wary, she seemed almost fey, and here she was calmly setting about restoring tapestries as if she knew exactly what she was talking about.
He was sure she did.
‘You saw me working?’ he managed and she nodded.
‘I walked past and you didn’t see me. It feels good, doesn’t it, working on something you love. So...half a yard of wall fixed, three or four hundred yards to go? Reckon you’ll be finished in a week?’ She clambered nimbly up the bank and turned and offered a hand. ‘Need a pull?’
‘No,’ he said, and she grinned and withdrew her hand.
And he missed it. He should have just taken it. If he had she would have tugged and he would have ended up right beside her. Really close.
But she was smiling and turning to head back to the castle and it was dumb to feel a sense of opportunity lost.
What was he thinking? Life was complicated enough without feeling...what he was feeling...
And that’s enough of that, he told himself soundly. It behoved a man to take a deep breath and get himself together. This woman was...complicated, and hadn’t he decided on the safe option in life? His brothers had all walked off the land to make their fortunes and they’d done well. But Finn... He’d stayed and he’d worked the land he’d inherited. He’d aimed for a good farm on fertile land. A steady income. A steady woman?
Like Maeve. That was a joke. He’d thought his dreams were her dreams. He’d known her since childhood and yet it seemed he hadn’t known her at all.
So how could he think he knew Jo after less than a day?
And why was he wondering how he could know her better?
‘So do you intend to keep the suits of armour?’ Jo asked and he struggled to haul his thoughts back to here and now. Though actually they were here and now. They were centred on a slip of a girl in a bright crimson sweater and jeans and stained trainers.
If Maeve had come to the castle with him, she’d have spent a week shopping for clothes in preparation.
But his relationship with Maeve was long over—apart from the minor complication that she wouldn’t tell her father.
The sun was on his face. Jo was by his side, matching his stride even though her legs were six inches shorter than his. She looked bright and interested and free.
Of course she was free. She was discussing the fate of two suits of armour before she climbed back on her bike and headed back to Australia.
‘I can’t see them back on the farm,’ he admitted.
‘Your farm is somewhere near a place called Kilkenny,’ she said. ‘So where is that? You head down to Tipperary and turn...?’
‘North-east. I don’t go that way. But how do you know of Tipperary?’
‘I looked it up on the map when I knew I was coming. There’s a song... It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. I figured that’s where I was coming. A long way. And you farm cows and sheep?’
‘The dairy’s profitable but I’d like to get into sheep.’
‘It’s a big farm?’
‘Compared to Australian land holdings, no. But it’s very profitable.’
‘And you love it.’
Did he love it?
As a kid he certainly had, when the place was rundown, when everywhere he’d looked there’d been challenges. But now the farm was doing well and promising to do better. With the money from the castle he could buy properties to the north.
If he wanted to.
‘It’s a great place,’ he said mildly. ‘How about you? Do you work at what you love?’
‘I work to fund what I love.’
‘Which is?’
‘Tapestry and motorbikes.’
‘Tell me about tapestry,’ he said, and she looked a bit defensive.
‘I didn’t just look up the Internet and decide to restore from Internet Lesson 101. I’ve been playing with tapestries for years.’
‘Why?’ It seemed so unlikely...
‘When I was about ten my then foster mother gave me a tapestry do-it-yourself kit. It was a canvas with a painting of a cat and instructions and the threads to complete it. I learned the basics on that cat, but when I finished I thought the whiskers looked contrived. He also looked smug so I ended up unpicking him a bit and fiddling. It started me drawing my own pictures. It works for me. It makes me feel...settled.’
‘So what do you do the rest of the time?’
‘I make coffee. Well. I can also wait tables with the best of them. It’s a skill that sees me in constant work.’
‘You wouldn’t rather work with tapestries?’
‘That’d involve training to be let near the decent ones, and training’s out of my reach.’
‘Even now you have a massive inheritance?’
She paused as if the question took concentration. She stared at her feet and then turned and gazed out at the grounds, to the mountains beyond.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I like café work. I like busy. It’s kind of like a family.’
‘Do they know where you are?’
‘Who? The people I work with?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mean if I’d sunk in a bog yesterday would they have cared or even known?’ She shrugged. ‘Nope. That’s not what I mean by family. I pretty much quit work to come here. Someone’s filling in for me now, but I’ll probably just get another job when I go back. I don’t stay in the same place for long.’
‘So when you said family...’
‘I meant people around me. It’s all I want. Cheerful company and decent coffee.’
‘And you’re stuck here with me and Mrs O’Reilly and coffee that tastes like mud.’
‘You noticed,’ she said approvingly. ‘That’s a start.’
‘A start of what?’ he asked mildly and she glanced sharply up at him as if his question had shocked her. Maybe it had. He’d surprised himself—it wasn’t a question he’d meant to ask and he wasn’t sure what exactly he was asking.
But the question hung.
‘I guess the start of nothing,’ she said at last with a shrug that was meant to be casual but didn’t quite come off. ‘I can cope with mud coffee for a week.’
‘All we need to do is figure what we want to keep.’
‘I live out of a suitcase. I can’t keep anything.’ She said it almost with defiance.
‘And the armour wouldn’t look good in a nice modern bungalow.’
‘Is that what your farmhouse is?’
‘It is.’ The cottage he’d grown up in had long since deteriorated past repair. He’d built a large functional bungalow.
It had a great kitchen table. The rest...yeah, it was functional.
‘I saw you living somewhere historic,’ Jo said. ‘Thatch maybe.’
‘Thatch has rats.’
She looked up towards the castle ramparts. ‘What about battlements? Do battlements have rats?’
‘Not so much.’ He grinned. ‘Irish battlements are possibly a bit cold even for the toughest rat.’
‘What about you, Lord Conaill? Too cold for you?’
‘I’m not Lord Conaill.’
‘All the tapestries in the great hall...they’re mostly from a time before your side of the family split. This is your history too.’
‘I don’t feel like Lord Conaill.’
‘No, but you look like him. Go in and check the tapestries. You have the same aristocratic nose.’
He put his hand on his nose. ‘Really?’
‘Yep. As opposed to mine. Mine’s snub with freckles, not an aristocratic line anywhere.’
And he looked at her freckles and thought...it might not be the Conaill nose but it was definitely cute.
He could just...
Not. How inappropriate was it to want to reach out and touch a nose? To trace the line of those cheekbones.
To touch.
He knew enough about this woman to expect a pretty firm reaction. Besides, the urge was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
‘I reckon your claim to the castle’s a lot stronger than mine,’ she was saying and he had to force his attention from her very cute nose to what they were talking about.
They’d reached the forecourt. He turned and faced outward, across the vast sweep of Glenconaill to the mountains beyond. It was easier talking about abstracts when he wasn’t looking at the reality of her nose. And the rest of her.
‘Your grandfather left the castle to two strangers,’ he told her. ‘We’re both feeling as if we have no right to be here, and yet he knew I was to inherit the title. He came to my farm six months ago and barked the information at me, yet there was never an invitation to come here. And you were his granddaughter and he didn’t know you either. He knew we’d stand here one day, but he made no push to make us feel we belong. Yet we do belong.’
‘You feel that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s just...walking across the lands today, looking at the sheep, at the ruined walls, at the mess this farmland has become, it seems a crime that no push was made...’
‘To love it?’ She nodded. ‘I was thinking that. The tapestries... A whole family history left to disintegrate.’ She shrugged. ‘But we can’t.’
‘I guess not.’ He gazed outward for a long moment, as though soaking in something he needed to hold to. ‘Of course you’re right.’
‘If he’d left it all to you, you could have,’ Jo said and he shrugged again.
‘Become a Lord in fact? Buy myself ermine robes and employ a valet?’
‘Fix a few stone walls?’
‘That’s more tempting,’ he said and then he grinned. ‘So your existence has saved me from a life of chipping at cope stones. Thank you, Jo. Now, shall we find out if Mrs O’Reilly intends to feed us?’
And Jo thought...it felt odd to walk towards Castle Glenconaill with this man by her side.
But somehow, weirdly, it felt right.
‘What are you working on at the moment?’ Finn asked and she was startled back to the here and now.
‘What?’
‘You’re carrying sewing needles. I’m not a great mind, but it does tell me there’s likely to be sewing attached. Or do you bring them on the off chance you need to darn socks?’
‘No, I...’
‘Make tapestries? On the plane? Do you have a current project and, if so, can I see?’
She stared up at him and then stared down at her feet. And his feet. One of his boots was dripping mud.
Strangely, it made him seem closer. More human.
She didn’t show people her work, so why did she have a sudden urge to say...?
‘Okay.’
‘Okay?’ he said cautiously.
‘It’s not pretty. And it’s not finished. But if you’d really like to see...’
‘Now?’
‘When your foot’s dry.’
‘Why not with a wet foot?’
‘My tapestry demands respect.’
He grinned. ‘There speaks the lady of the castle.’
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘But my tapestry’s up there with anything the women of this castle have done.’ She smiled then, one of her rare smiles that lit her face, that made her seem...
Intriguing? No, he was already intrigued, he conceded.
Desirable?
Definitely.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked and he caught himself. He’d known this woman for how long?
‘I’m very sure,’ he told her. ‘And, lady of the castle or not, your tapestry’s not the only thing to deserve respect. I will take my boot off for you.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ she told him. ‘Fifteen minutes. My bedroom. See you there.’
And she took off, running across the forecourt like a kid without a trouble in the world. She looked...free.
She looked beautiful.
Fifteen minutes with his boot off. A man had to get moving.
* * *
The tapestry was rolled and wrapped in the base of her kitbag. He watched as she delved into what looked to be the most practical woman’s pack he’d ever seen. There were no gorgeous gowns or frilly lingerie here—just bike gear and jeans and T-shirts and sweaters. He thought briefly of the lawyer and his invitation to dinner in Dublin and found himself smiling.
Jo glanced up. ‘What?’
‘Is this why you said no to our lawyer’s invite? I can’t see a single little black dress.’
‘I don’t have a use for ’em,’ she said curtly.
‘You know, there’s a costume gallery here,’ he said and she stared.
‘A costume gallery?’
‘A store of the very best of what the Conaills have worn for every grand event in their history. Someone in our past has decided that clothes need to be kept as well as paintings. I found the storeroom last night. Full of mothballs and gold embroidery. So if you need to dress up...’
She stared at him for a long moment, as if she was almost tempted—and then she gave a rueful smile and shook her head and tugged out the roll. ‘I can’t see me going out to dinner with our lawyer in gold embroidery. Can you? But if you want to see this...’ She tossed the roll on the bed and it started to uncurl on its own.
Fascinated, he leaned over and twitched the end so the whole thing unrolled onto the white coverlet.
And it was as much as he could do not to gasp.
This room could almost be a servant’s room, it was so bare. It was painted white, with a faded white coverlet on the bed. There were two dingy paintings on the wall, not very good, scenes of the local mountains. They looked as if they’d been painted by a long ago Conaill, with visions of artistic ability not quite managed.
But there was nothing ‘not quite managed’ about the tapestry on the bed. Quite simply, it lit the room.
It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. It was colour upon colour upon colour.
It was fire.
Did it depict Australia’s Outback? Maybe, he thought, but if so it must be an evocation of what that could be like. This was ochre-red country, wide skies and slashes of river. There were wind-bent eucalypts with flocks of white cockatoos screeching from tree to tree... There were so many details.
And yet not. At first he could only see what looked like burning: flames with colour streaking through, heat, dry. And then he looked closer and it coalesced into its separate parts without ever losing the sense of its whole.
The thing was big, covering half the small bed, and it wasn’t finished. He could see bare patches with only vague pencil tracing on the canvas, but he knew instinctively that these pencil marks were ideas only, that they could change.
For this was no paint by numbers picture. This was...
Breathtaking.
‘This should be over the mantel in the great hall,’ he breathed and she glanced up at him, coloured and then bit her lip and shook her head.
‘Nope.’
‘What do you do with them?’
‘Give them to people I like. You can have this if you want. You pulled me out of a bog.’
And once more she’d taken his breath away.
‘You just...give them away?’
‘What else would I do with them?’
He was still looking at the canvas, seeing new images every time he looked. There were depths and depths and depths. ‘Keep them,’ he said softly. ‘Make them into an exhibition.’
‘I don’t keep stuff.’
He hauled his attention from the canvas and stared at her. ‘Nothing?’
‘Well, maybe my bike.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Where I can rent a room with good light for sewing. And where my sound system doesn’t cause a problem. I like my music loud.’ She shrugged. ‘So there’s another thing I own—a great speaker system to plug into my phone. Oh, and toothbrushes and stuff.’
‘I don’t get it.’ He thought suddenly of his childhood, of his mother weeping because she’d dropped a plate belonging to her own mother. There’d been tears for a ceramic thing. And yet...his focus was drawn again to the tapestry. That Jo could work so hard for this, put so much of herself in it and then give it away...
‘You reckon I need a shrink because I don’t own stuff?’ she asked and he shook his head.
‘No. Though I guess...’
‘I did see someone once,’ she interrupted. ‘When I was fifteen. I was a bit...wild. I got sent to a home for troublesome adolescents and they gave me a few sessions with a psychoanalyst. She hauled out a memory of me at eight, being moved on from a foster home. There was a fire engine I played with. I’d been there a couple of years so I guess I thought it was mine. When I went to pack, my foster mum told me it was a foster kid toy and I couldn’t take it. The shrink told me it was significant, but I don’t need a fire engine now. I don’t need anything.’
He cringed for her. She’d said it blithely, as if it was no big deal, but he knew the shrink was right. This woman was wounded. ‘Jo, the money we’re both inheriting will give you security,’ he said gently. ‘No one can take your fire engine now.’
‘I’m over wanting fire engines.’
‘Really?’
And she managed a smile at that. ‘Well, if it was a truly excellent fire engine...’
‘You’d consider?’
‘I might,’ she told him. ‘Though I might have to get myself a Harley with a trailer to carry it. Do Harleys come with trailers? I can’t see it. Meanwhile, is it lunchtime?’
He checked his watch. ‘Past. Uh oh. We need to face Mrs O’Reilly. Jo, you’ve been more than generous. You don’t have to face her.’
‘I do,’ she said bluntly. ‘I don’t run away. It’s not my style.’
* * *
Mrs O’Reilly had made them lunch but Finn wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Her swollen face said she’d been weeping for hours.
She placed shepherd’s pie in front of them and stood back, tried to speak and failed.
‘I can’t...’ she managed.
‘Mrs O’Reilly, there’s no need to say a thing.’ Jo reached for the pie and ladled a generous helping onto her plate. ‘Not when you’ve made me pie. But I do need dead horse.’
‘Dead horse?’ Finn demanded, bemused, and Jo shook her head in exasperation.
‘Honestly, don’t you guys know anything? First, dead horse is Australian for sauce and second, shepherd’s pie without sauce is like serving fish without chips. Pie and sauce, fish and chips, roast beef with Yorkshire pud... What sort of legacy are you leaving for future generations if you don’t know that?’
He grinned and Mrs O’Reilly sniffed and sniffed again and then beetled for the kitchen. She returned with four different sauce bottles.
Jo checked them out and discarded three with disgust.
‘There’s only one. Tomato sauce, pure, unadulterated. Anything else is a travesty. Thank you, Mrs O’Reilly, this is wonderful.’
‘It’s not,’ the woman stammered. ‘I was cruel to you.’
‘I’ve done some research into my mother over the years,’ Jo said, concentrating on drawing wiggly lines of sauce across her pie. ‘She doesn’t seem like she was good to anyone. She wasn’t even good to me and I was her daughter. I can only imagine what sort of demanding princess she was when she was living here. And Grandpa didn’t leave you provided for after all those years of service from you and your husband. I’d have been mean to me if I were you too.’
‘I made you sleep in a single bed!’
‘Well, that is a crime.’ She was chatting to Mrs O’Reilly as if she were talking of tomorrow’s weather, Finn thought. The sauce arranged to her satisfaction, she tackled her pie with gusto.
Mrs O’Reilly was staring at her as if she’d just landed from another planet, and Finn was feeling pretty much the same.
‘A single bed’s fine by me,’ she said between mouthfuls. ‘As is this pie. Yum. Last night’s burned beef, though...that needs compensation. Will you stay on while we’re here? You could make us more. Or would you prefer to go? Finn and I can cope on our own. I hope the lawyer has explained what you do from now on is your own choice.’
‘He has.’ She grabbed her handkerchief and blew her nose with gusto. ‘Of course...of course I’ll stay while you need me but now...I can have my own house. My own home.’
‘Excellent,’ Jo told her. ‘If that’s what you want, then go for it.’
‘I don’t deserve it.’
‘Hey, after so many years of service, one burned dinner shouldn’t make a difference, and life’s never about what we deserve. I’m just pleased Finn and I can administer a tiny bit of justice in a world that’s usually pretty much unfair. Oh, and the calendars in the kitchen...you like cats?’
‘I...yes.’
‘Why don’t you have one?’
‘Your grandfather hated them.’
‘I don’t hate them. Do you hate them, Finn?’
‘No.’
‘There you go,’ Jo said, beaming. ‘Find yourself a kitten. Now, if you want. And don’t buy a cottage where you can’t keep one.’
She was amazing, Finn thought, staring at her in silence. This woman was...stunning.
But Jo had moved on. ‘Go for it,’ she said, ladling more pie onto her fork. ‘But no more talking. This pie deserves all my attention.’
* * *
They finished their pie in silence, then polished off apple tart and coffee without saying another word.
There didn’t seem any need to speak. Or maybe there was, but things were too enormous to be spoken of.
As Mrs O’Reilly bustled away with the dishes, Jo felt almost dismayed. Washing up last night with Finn had been a tiny piece of normality. Now there wasn’t even washing up to fall back on.
‘I guess we’d better get started,’ Finn said at last.
‘Doing what?’
‘Sorting?’
‘What do we need to sort?’ She gazed around the ornate dining room, at the myriad ornaments, pictures, side tables, vases, stuff. ‘I guess lots of stuff might go to museums. You might want to keep some. I don’t need it.’
‘It’s your heritage.’
‘Stuff isn’t heritage. I might take photographs of the tapestries,’ she conceded. ‘Some of them are old enough to be in a museum too.’
‘Show me,’ he said and that was the next few minutes sorted. So she walked him through the baronial hall, seeing the history of the Conaills spread out before her.
‘It seems a shame to break up the collection,’ Finn said at last. He’d hardly spoken as they’d walked through.
‘Like breaking up a family.’ Jo shrugged. ‘People do it all the time. If it’s no use to you, move on.’
‘You really don’t care?’
She gazed around at the vast palette of family life spread before her. Her family? No. Her mother had been the means to her existence, nothing more, and her grandfather hadn’t given a toss about her.
‘I might have cared if this had been my family,’ she told him. ‘But the Conaills were the reason I couldn’t have a family. It’s hardly fair to expect me to honour them now.’
‘Yet you’d love to restore the tapestries.’
‘They’re amazing.’ She crossed to a picture of a family group. ‘I’ve been figuring out time frames, and I think this could be the great-great-grandpa we share. Look at Great-Great-Grandma. She looks a tyrant.’
‘You don’t want to keep her?’
‘Definitely not. How about you?’ she asked. ‘Are you into family memorabilia?’
‘I have a house full of memorabilia. My parents threw nothing out. And my brothers live very modern lives. I can’t see any of this stuff fitting into their homes. I’ll ask them but I know what their answers will be. You really want nothing but the money?’
‘I wanted something a long time ago,’ she told him. They were standing side by side, looking at the picture of their mutual forebears. ‘You have no idea how much I wanted. But now...it’s too late. It even seems wrong taking the money. I’m not part of this family.’
‘Hey, we are sort of cousins.’ And, before she knew what he intended, he’d put an arm around her waist and gave her a gentle hug. ‘I’m happy to own you.’
‘I don’t...’ The feel of his arm was totally disconcerting. ‘I don’t think I want to be owned.’ And this was a normal hug, she told herself. A cousinly hug. There was no call to haul herself back in fright. She forced herself to stand still.
‘Not by this great-great-grandma,’ he conceded. ‘She looks a dragon.’ But his arm was still around her waist, and it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying. It was really hard. ‘But you need to belong somewhere. There’s a tapestry somewhere with your future on it.’
‘I’m sure there’s not. Not if it has grandmas and grandpas and kids and dogs.’ Enough. She tugged away because it had to be just a cousinly hug; she wasn’t used to hugs and she didn’t need it. She didn’t! ‘I’m not standing still long enough to be framed.’
‘That’s a shame,’ he told her, and something in the timbre of his voice made her feel...odd. ‘Because I suspect you’re worth all this bunch put together.’
‘That’s kissing the Blarney Stone.’
He shrugged and smiled and when he smiled she wanted that hug back. Badly.
‘I’m not one for saying what I don’t mean, Jo Conaill,’ he told her. ‘You’re an amazing woman.’
‘D...don’t,’ she stammered. For some reason the hug had left her discombobulated. ‘We’re here to sort this stuff. Let’s start now.’
And then leave, she told herself. The way she was feeling... The way she was feeling was starting to scare her.
* * *
The size of the place, the mass of furnishings, the store of amazing clothing any museum would kill for—the entire history of the castle was mind-blowing. It was almost enough to make her forget how weird Finn’s hug made her feel. But there was work to be done. Figuring out the scale of their inheritance would take days.
Underground there were cellars—old dungeons?—and storerooms. Upstairs were ‘living’ rooms, apartment-sized chambers filled with dust-sheeted furniture. Above them were the bedrooms and up a further flight of stairs were the servants’ quarters, rooms sparsely furnished with an iron cot and dresser.
Over the next couple of days they moved slowly through the place, sorting what there was. Most things would go straight to the auction rooms—almost all of it—but, by mutual consent, they decided to catalogue the things that seemed important. Detailed cataloguing could be done later by the auctioneers but somehow it seemed wrong to sell everything without acknowledging its existence. So they moved from room to room, taking notes, and she put the memory of the hug aside.
Though she had to acknowledge that she was grateful for his company. If she’d had to face this alone...
This place seemed full of ghosts who’d never wanted her, she thought. The costume store on its own was enough to repel her. All these clothes, worn by people who would never have accepted her. She was illegitimate, despised, discarded. She had no place here, and Finn must feel the same. Regardless of his inherited title, he still must feel the poor relation.
And he’d never fit in one of these cots, she thought as they reached the servants’ quarters. She couldn’t help glancing up at him as he opened the door on a third identical bedroom. He was big. Very big.
‘It’d have to be a bleak famine before I’d fit in that bed,’ he declared. He glanced down at the rough map drawn for them by Mrs O’Reilly. ‘Now the nursery.’
The room they entered next was huge, set up as a schoolroom as well as a nursery. The place was full of musty furniture, with desks and a blackboard, but schooling seemed to have been a secondary consideration.
There were toys everywhere, stuffed animals of every description, building blocks, doll’s houses, spinning tops, dolls large and small, some as much as three feet high. All pointing to indulged childhoods.
And then there was the rocking horse.
It stood centre stage in the schoolroom, set on its own dais. It was as large as a miniature pony, crafted with care and, unlike most other things in the nursery, it was maintained in pristine condition.
It had a glossy black coat, made, surely, with real horse hide. Its saddle was embellished with gold and crimson, as were the bridle and stirrups. Its ears were flattened and its dark glass eyes stared out at the nursery as if to say, Who Dares Ride Me?
And all around the walls were photographs and paintings, depicting every child who’d ever sat on this horse, going back maybe two hundred years.
Jo stared at the horse and then started a round of the walls, looking at each child in turn. These were beautifully dressed children. Beautifully cared for. Even in the early photographs, where children were exhorted to be still and serious for the camera or the artist, she could see their excitement. These Conaills were the chosen few.
Jo’s mother was the last to be displayed. Taken when she was about ten, she was dressed in pink frills and she was laughing up at the camera. Her face was suffused with pride. See, her laugh seemed to say. This is where I belong.
But after her...nothing.
‘Suggestions as to what we should do with all this?’ Finn said behind her, sounding cautious, as if he guessed the well of emotion surging within. ‘Auction the lot of them?’
‘Where are you?’ she demanded in a voice that didn’t sound her own.
‘Where am I where?’
‘In the pictures.’
‘You know I don’t belong here.’
‘No, but your great-great-grandfather...’
‘I’m thinking he might be this one,’ Finn said, pointing to a portrait of a little boy in smock and pantaloons and the same self-satisfied smirk.
‘And his son’s next to him. Where’s your great-grandfather? My great-grandpa’s brother?’
‘He was a younger son,’ Finn said. ‘I guess he didn’t get to ride the horse.’
‘So he left and had kids who faced the potato famine instead,’ Jo whispered. ‘Can we burn it?’
‘What, the horse?’
‘It’s nasty.’
Finn stood back and surveyed the horse. It was indeed...nasty. It looked glossy, black and arrogant. Its eyes were too small. It looked as if it was staring at them with disdain. The poor relations.
‘I’m the Lord of Glenconaill,’ Finn said mildly. ‘I could ride this nag if I wanted.’
‘You’d squash it.’
‘Then you could take my photograph standing over a squashed stuffed horse. Sort of a last hurrah.’
She tried to smile but she was too angry. Too full of emotion.
‘How can one family have four sets of Monopoly?’ Finn asked, gazing at the stacks of board games. ‘And an Irish family at that? And what were we doing selling Bond Street?’
‘They,’ she snapped. ‘Not we. This is not us.’
‘It was our great-great-grandpa.’
‘Monopoly wasn’t invented then. By the time it was, you were the poor relation.’
‘That’s right, so I was,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But you’d have thought they could have shared at least one set of Monopoly.’
‘They didn’t share. Not this family.’ She fell silent, gazing around the room, taking in the piles of...stuff. ‘All the time I was growing up,’ she whispered. ‘These toys were here. Unused. They were left to rot rather than shared. Of all the selfish...’ She was shaking, she discovered. Anger that must have been suppressed for years seemed threatening to overwhelm her. ‘I hate them,’ she managed and she couldn’t keep the loathing from her voice. ‘I hate it all.’
‘Even the dolls?’ he asked, startled.
‘All of it.’
‘They’ll sell.’
‘I’d rather burn them.’
‘What, even the horse?’ he asked, startled.
‘Everything,’ she said and she couldn’t keep loathing from her voice. ‘All these toys... All this sense of entitlement... Every child who’s sat on this horse, who’s played with these toys, has known their place in the world. But not me. Not us. Unless your family wants them, I’d burn the lot.’
‘My brothers have all turned into successful businessmen. My nieces and nephews have toys coming out their ears,’ Finn said, a smile starting behind his eyes. There was also a tinge of understanding. ‘So? A bonfire? Excellent. Let’s do it. Help me carry the horse downstairs.’
She stared, shocked. He sounded as if her suggestion was totally reasonable. ‘What, now?’
‘Why not? What’s the use of having a title like mine if I can’t use some of the authority that comes with it? Back at my farm the cows won’t so much as bow when I walk past. I need to learn to be lordly and this is a start.’ He looked at the horse with dislike. ‘I think that coat’s been slicked with oils anyway. He’ll go up like a firecracker.’
‘How can we?’
‘Never suggest a bonfire if you don’t mean it,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing we Lords of Glenconaill like more than a good burning.’ He turned and stared around at the assortment of expensive toys designed for favoured children and he grimaced. ‘Selling any one of these could have kept a family alive for a month during the famine. If there was a fire engine here I’d say save it but there’s not. Our ancestors were clearly people with dubious taste. Off with their heads, I say. Let’s do it.’
