His Cinderella Heiress

by Marion Lennox

  Silence. Then...

  ‘What’s the story on the empty cottages on the road in?’ Jo asked, and she said it even before she knew she was going to ask. Why was she asking? Mrs O’Reilly should usher the priest out, she thought, and then she and Finn should get on with sorting the last few things that needed to be done before the lawyer arrived tomorrow.

  ‘The cottages...’ the priest repeated and Mrs O’Reilly suddenly sprang to life, like a hunting spaniel at first sight of duck.

  ‘I’ve just made coffee, Father,’ she said. ‘Would you be liking some?’

  ‘Well, I would,’ the priest told her, and Finn glanced at Jo, startled, and she shrugged because she didn’t regret asking. Not really. She was walking away from this place. Surely she should understand what she was walking away from?

  Once ensconced in a dining chair, in the midst of the absurd formality of the room, the priest seemed to relax. He took his time with his first couple of sips of coffee, seeming to consider what was best to say and then started. ‘There used to be a village much closer to the castle,’ he told them. ‘That was before the clearing, though.’

  ‘The clearing?’ Jo asked, carefully not looking at Finn. She still wasn’t sure why she was doing this.

  ‘Nineteenth century,’ the priest told her. ‘The landlords found they could make a much greater profit if the land was rolled into one holding. The tenants were cleared, and of course the potato famine hit. These cottages seem to stand for ever, though. No lord’s ever thought of pulling them down. There was a church here too, though that was pulled down to be used for the making of the church in Killblan. And a school, though that’s rubble. I’ve often thought it would be grand to restore them, put in tenants, like an artists’ community or somesuch. Something that could bring life to the district. Something...’

  He searched for the right word and finally found it. ‘Something fun,’ he said at last. ‘There’s been little fun for a long, long time. No disrespect, but the old lord was a terrible landlord, as was his father and his father before him. I was so hoping...’

  But then he stopped. He pushed back his cup as if he’d just realised he was speaking his own dream. The dream had already been dashed. He closed his eyes and then opened them and gave a brisk nod. Moving on to what was possible.

  ‘But it’s naught to do with you,’ he said, gently now. ‘You’ll have your own lives to lead, and what’s happening here is our business. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’ll let you get on. Bless you both, the pair of you, with what you decide to do with the proceeds of this place, though I’d be remiss if I didn’t say a donation to the building fund of our church in Killblan would be very welcome. But if that’s as far as you can manage...’ He dredged a smile. ‘Well, we’re thankful for what we can get.’

  And he was gone, with a warm word for Mrs O’Reilly, and not a backward glance at the pair of them. And Finn and Jo were left sitting at the dining table feeling...

  Rotten, Jo thought. Really rotten.

  Which was unfair. This had nothing to do with her. The family in this castle had rejected her out of hand. She’d been unwanted. The paintings, the tapestries on the walls, had no place for an illegitimate child of the daughter of the house. Neither had they a place for a man who was the descendant of an unwanted ‘spare to an heir’.

  But...

  ‘What would you do if you stayed?’ Finn asked.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHAT WOULD YOU do if you stayed?

  The question didn’t make sense. Jo stared at Finn across the table and thought...actually the words did make sense. It was only everything else that didn’t.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she managed.

  ‘Just what I said.’ But he wasn’t looking at her. He was staring into the dregs of his coffee cup. ‘Just for a moment, just for...fun. As the priest said. Think out of the box. If the lawyer wasn’t coming tomorrow, what would you do?’

  There was only one answer to that. ‘I’d start a tapestry of you with the cows,’ she flashed. ‘You should be on these walls.’

  He smiled, but his smile was strained. ‘It’d need to be a portrait of both of us. You with your arm elbow-deep in cow. You could have a caption underneath: “I may need to clean my watch”.’

  ‘I’m right, though,’ she muttered. ‘You should be on the walls.’

  ‘As should you. It’s only an accident of birth that we’re not. But we don’t have a place here, Jo. It’s not ours.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But if it was...’

  ‘What would you do?’ she asked curiously, and was surprised by the look of passion that flooded his face.

  ‘Drains,’ he said. ‘As Father Adrian said. I’d see to the drainage here on the castle land but, as he said, on the tenants’ land as well. I haven’t had time to even look at the tenanted farms but the land’s a mess that could be fixed. If I had my way...’ And then he stopped and the room was filled with silence.

  ‘What would you do with the cows?’ she asked at last.

  ‘The cows?’

  ‘There are three generations of cow looking in the window at us right now.’ It wasn’t true. They were half a field away but in her imagination Jo had them staring straight at them, knowing their fate was in their hands.

  ‘The sensible thing...’

  ‘You said we’re not talking sensible,’ she retorted. ‘We’re talking fun. What would you do...for fun?’

  ‘Keep them to keep the grass down?’ He grinned. ‘No, okay, the sheep could do that. But we have a newly calved cow who’ll produce more milk than her calf needs. It’d be fun to milk her once a day, to have fresh milk whenever we need it. And to watch the calf grow. Those little cows have had a pretty lean time of it. It’d be good to watch them fatten up.’

  ‘But not for the knackery.’

  ‘As you said, I’m talking fun, not sense.’ He stared out of the window, across the fields. In the distance were the ruins of the old village settlement the priest had been talking of. ‘You know...’

  ‘They’d be great with people in them,’ Jo finished for him because that was what she was thinking and maybe he was too? ‘What did the priest say? An artists’ colony, or somesuch? Wouldn’t that be a fun project to bring people to the district? Maybe this castle could even be part bed and breakfast. An upmarket one. Maybe we could cash in on tourists wanting local colour.’

  ‘It’d take a serious amount of money.’

  ‘There is a serious amount of money,’ she whispered. ‘And we wouldn’t have to do it all at once.’

  They were staring at each other over the table. Jo could almost see their thoughts bouncing back and forth. There were things she was thinking that she didn’t need to say—she could see the reflection of them in his eyes.

  ‘We couldn’t,’ she said at last, but the frisson of thought kept flashing.

  ‘Why not?’ It was taking a while between sentences. They needed space between truly enormous thoughts.

  ‘Your farm...’

  ‘I could sell my farm if I had this one. It’d be a shift in loyalties but I could do it. But you... Jo, we couldn’t do this apart. The castle needs the fortune that goes with it. It’d have to be a partnership. You’d have to stay here. You’d have to...settle.’

  And there it was, out in all its enormity. Jo was gazing at Finn and he was gazing back. His look wasn’t challenging, though. It was...

  No. She didn’t know what it was, but she did know that there was understanding behind his gaze. As if he knew how torn this whole thing could make her.

  If they stopped talking of this as a fantasy... If they decided to make it real...

  ‘You know,’ he said thoughtfully when the silence seemed as if it might extend into the middle of next week—when the enormity of what was between them wa
s starting to seem overwhelming—‘we don’t need to decide right now.’

  ‘What...what do you mean? The lawyer’s coming tomorrow.’

  ‘But I’m the Lord of Glenconaill,’ he told her and his grin suddenly flashed out again. ‘I’m a man with two suits of armour—okay, one if we share, but maybe one’s enough. I believe the Lord of Castle Glenconaill, with or without armour, can decree when and if a lowly Dublin lawyer can and can’t visit this castle.’

  And Jo thought back to the smooth-speaking, supercilious Dublin lawyer who’d treated them both as if he knew what was best for them and she couldn’t help it. She giggled.

  ‘Would you phone him and say, “This is Lord Conaill speaking”?’

  ‘I could do that.’

  ‘Grandpa has a brocade dressing jacket in his room. One of those would be just the thing for such a phone call.’

  ‘And I could say, “Myself and Lady Jo—” for if the priest is referring to you as the lady of the castle, who am I to argue and we’re sharing, right? “—Our High and Mightinesses have mutually decided we wish for more time to decide on the fate of our heritage. So please delay your travel...”’

  ‘“My good man”,’ Jo finished for him and giggled again and then she stopped giggling because what was happening was far bigger than a delay in a lawyer’s visit.

  Suddenly what was between them was huge.

  ‘We’ve kissed,’ she said, because the kisses were with her still, the way he’d touched her, the way her body had responded. ‘It didn’t...it doesn’t...’

  ‘It might,’ Finn told her. He smiled across the table and his smile was enough to make her gasp. His smile was a caress all by itself. ‘I guess this would give us a chance to see.’

  And that took her breath away. A chance to see...

  She didn’t get attached. She couldn’t get attached. She didn’t have a home and she didn’t want one.

  So how had she ended up here, with a castle and a tattered teddy bear and three cows and... Finn?

  The concept was terrifying. The concept was exhilarating.

  ‘One day at a time,’ Finn said very gently, and she thought, He does understand. He won’t be rushing me.

  But she almost wished he was. She almost wanted him to round the table and take her in his arms and say, This is where you belong. You’re staying here for ever. With me.

  Only that was the siren song. They were the words she’d been waiting a lifetime to hear, only when she had heard them they’d always turned into a lie.

  ‘You want me to make the call?’ Finn asked and she tried to think logically but his gentleness shook her logic.

  His gentleness that made her want to stay.

  ‘Only if you can do it without the dressing jacket,’ she managed. ‘Only if you can do it as you.’

  ‘Then it should be a three-way call,’ he told her. ‘If I’m not doing it as the autocratic Lord of Glenconaill then it should be from you and me, from Finn and Jo, telling him we’ve decided to stay.’

  ‘But only...’

  ‘Only for a while,’ he said, still gently. ‘Only until we...see what might happen.’

  ‘You wouldn’t sell your farm straight away?’

  ‘I have a manager and staff,’ he told her. ‘No one else needs me.’

  * * *

  Except someone did.

  The call to his manager was tricky.

  ‘I won’t be home for a while,’ he told Rob and there was a lengthy silence on the end of the phone while Rob thought about it. His manager was a friend of long-standing, and a man of few words. He wasn’t a man to rush things. Maybe he’d buy the farm, Finn thought. He could make it easy for him. But that was for the future. Meanwhile...

  ‘What about your Maeve?’ Rob asked. ‘Her father was here today.’

  ‘Martin came? Did Maeve come with him?’

  ‘She’s back in Dublin. People are saying it’s over between you, but her father talks like he’s still expecting a wedding.’

  ‘It is over,’ he said heavily. ‘But it’s up to Maeve to tell him. I don’t know why she won’t.’

  ‘Finn...’

  ‘What would you have me do?’ he demanded. ‘Walk into Martin’s living room and say, “I’m not marrying your daughter”? Maeve came over the day I left and asked me to give it a bit more time before she tells him. To be honest, I no longer know what Maeve wants, but it needs to be settled. It was only just okay to pretend before I met...’

  And then there was silence.

  ‘Before you met...?’ Rob said at last and Finn tried to think of something to say and couldn’t.

  ‘This Jo,’ Rob ventured. ‘The woman you’ve inherited with. Your cousin?’

  ‘We share the same great-great-grandfather. That’s hardly a bar...’

  ‘To what?’ Finn could almost see his manager’s eyebrows disappearing into his receding hairline. ‘Marriage? Whoa.’

  ‘Whoa’s right. I hardly know her.’

  ‘You’ve been in the same castle for a week.’

  ‘It’s a very big castle.’

  ‘I’m sure it is.’ And his manager was laughing. ‘You seem to have yourself in the midst of a love triangle.’

  Where was respect when you needed it? he thought. This was what happened when you employed friends. Surely the Lord of Glenconaill should be immune from ribbing. ‘That’s not the way it is,’ he said bluntly. But he thought of Maeve, laying claim to him even now. And he thought of Jo, not laying claim to a thing.

  Jo would never claim. She didn’t think she had the right.

  ‘There’s nothing like that in it,’ he said sharply. ‘But Rob, the sheep here...I’ve not seen anything like the quality of their coats. Someone’s put a huge amount into their breeding. I’ll get you up to see them. I’d like your advice.’

  ‘About breeding?’ And Rob was still laughing. ‘Of course,’ he told him. ‘Well, well. We live in interesting times but I think I need to avoid Maeve’s father, don’t you?’

  * * *

  ‘Raye?’

  It was the first call Jo had made to Australia since she’d arrived; the only call she had to make. Raye was part owner of the last café she’d worked at. She had Jo’s bike in the back of her shed.

  ‘Jo!’ Raye was brisk and practical and she sounded rushed. ‘Good to hear from you, girl. When can we expect you back?’

  ‘I’ve been delayed,’ Jo told her. ‘I’m sorry but I’m not sure when I’m arriving.’

  ‘You know Caroline’s heading back to the States next week. She’s your fill-in, honey. If you’re not back by then I’ll have to employ someone else.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s a pity. You’re good. But it can’t be helped,’ Raye said. ‘And I can’t keep the bike much longer. My son and his mate are driving down from Brisbane next week. I told them they could use the shed for their car. What do you want me to do with it?’

  ‘I’ll find a storage place on the Internet and have them pick it up.’

  ‘That’ll cost you.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She said it flatly. It wasn’t Raye’s business what she did. It was no one’s business but her own.

  ‘It’ll have to be collected between eight and ten, one morning before the kids arrive next week,’ Raye said, moving on. ‘That’s the only time I’m here to hand over the keys. Let me know when.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Right then. See you later,’ Raye told her and disconnected and Jo stood still and thought Raye had been her boss for six months and hadn’t asked why she was staying longer in Ireland or whether she was having a good time or...anything.

  She had no personal connection.

  That was what she wanted, Jo thought. Wasn’t it? It was the background she’d
carefully cultivated since the last disastrous foster home.

  But still...

  She was sitting on the bed in her Spartan little bedroom. The bald little teddy was sitting beside her. She picked him up and stared down into his lopsided eyes.

  ‘I do like being alone,’ she whispered, but she still held him and then Finn’s voice shouted along the corridor.

  ‘Jo, I’m heading out to check our calf before bedtime. You want to come?’

  ‘Yes,’ she called and then she smiled down at her scruffy, moth-eaten teddy. ‘Yes, I do.’

  * * *

  The calf was fine.

  The storm was well past and the night was warm and still, so Finn had decreed the threesome were best left in the field rather than ushered into the sheds. The little cow was placidly nosing her calf while her udder was being prodded and tugged, and the older cow was standing benignly beside them in the moonlight, to all appearances like a doting grandma.

  ‘We’ve done well,’ Finn said. They didn’t go close, just stood back and watched. ‘A couple of bruised arms for us and a happy ending all round.’

  ‘It is a happy ending,’ Jo said softly and then Finn caught her hand in his and held. Strong and warm and fast.

  ‘It could be,’ he said and there was all the meaning in the world in those three words.

  She didn’t pull away. She couldn’t, even if she wanted to—which she didn’t.

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she murmured.

  ‘Much too soon,’ he agreed. ‘But we’re giving ourselves time. How long does it take to make the tapestry you’re talking of?’

  ‘Months.’

  ‘There you go, then.’ He sounded smug.

  ‘Once I draw it I can finish it back in Australia.’