by Nora Roberts
The hills stretched back and back, green and lush with patches of rich brown, muted gold to complete the quilt of land. Just the shadow of dark mountain peaks rose behind them.
Even while he watched, the light changed, shifted, grew, and he could see the shadows of clouds swim over the land as the sunlight beat through them.
The air smelled of grass, fading flowers, and sea.
He doubted it was the beauty of the country that brought those who wanted to land here. But he was sure it was part of the reason they had fought to stay.
“We’re a land that absorbs our invaders, and makes them one of us.”
Trevor glanced around, expecting to see an Irish touristor one of the locals behind him. Instead he looked into Carrick’s wild blue eyes.
“You get around.” With some surprise, Trevor saw that they were alone, when only moments before there had been at least half a dozen people exploring the hill.
“I prefer a bit of privacy.” Carrick winked at him. “Don’t you?”
“It’s difficult for me to be private when you pop up at will.”
“I’ve been wanting to have a word with you. How goes your theater, then?”
“We’re on schedule.”
“Ah, you Yanks are big on schedules. I can’t tell you how many come through here, checking their watches and their maps and figuring out how to do this and that and the other all with staying on schedule. You’d think they’d toss such things aside when they’re about a flaming holiday, but habits die hard in some.”
With his hair blowing in the wind, Trevor tucked his hands in his pockets. “So, you wanted to have a word with me about the American habit of clock watching?”
“Just a bit of a conversational gambit. If you’re after seeing your uncle’s resting place again, it’s this way.” Carrick turned, walking gracefully over the rough ground with his silver doublet sparkling.
“John Magee,” Carrick began when Trevor joined him by the marker. “Beloved son and brother. Died a soldier, far from home.”
Trevor felt an ache around his heart, a kind of distant grief. “Beloved son, undoubtedly. Beloved brother is debatable.”
“You’re thinking of your granda. He came here rarely, but he came.”
“Did he?”
“Aye, to stand as you are, with a scowl most often on his face and his thoughts dark and confused. Because it troubled him, he closed his heart. A deliberate click of a lock.”
“Yes,” Trevor murmured. “I can believe that. He did nothing, as I can remember, that wasn’t deliberate.”
“You’re a deliberate man yourself, in some ways.” Carrick waited until Trevor’s head lifted, until their eyes met again. “But isn’t it an interesting thing, that when he whose seed started your father stood on this hill, looked down at what was home, he didn’t see what you do. Not a lovely spot, edged with magic and welcome. He saw a trap, and would have gnawed his leg off at the ankle to escape it.”
Carrick turned to study Ardmore again. His black hair streamed back, like a cape. “Perhaps in a way, he did. And hobbled with the loss of some part of himself, he went to America. If not for his doing that, you wouldn’t stand here today, looking down and seeing what he couldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t,” Trevor corrected. “But you’re right. I wouldn’t be here without him. Tell me, who puts the flowers here on John Magee’s grave, after all this time?”
“I do.” Carrick gestured to the little pot of wild fuchsia. “As Maude no longer can, and it was the one thing she asked of me. Never did she forget him, and never did her love waver in all the years between his death and her own. Constancy is the finest of your mortal virtues.”
“Not everyone can claim it.”
“No, but those who do know a joy in it. Is your heart a constant one, Trevor Magee?”
Trevor looked up again. “It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought to.”
“That’s shading close to a lie, but we’ll shift the question for you. You’ve had a taste of fair Darcy now. Do you think you can push back from the banquet and walk away?”
“What’s between us is private.”
“Hah. Your privacy means nothing to me. Three times a century I’ve waited for you—you, I’m sure now, and no other. You’re the last of it. You stand there, worrying about being taken for a fool, which is only another kind of pride, your granda’s sort, when you’ve only to take what’s already been given. Your blood’s hot for her. Your mind’s clouded with her, but you stop short of exploring what’s in your heart for her.”
“Hot blood and a clouded mind have very little to do with the heart.”
“That’s foolishness. Isn’t the first step toward love the passion, the second the longing? And you’re past the first step, already on to the second, and too stubborn to admit it. I’ll wait.” Impatience shot into his eyes, and they seemed to burn. “But I’ve a bloody schedule of me own, so make lively, Yank.”
He snapped his fingers, a kind of lightning shot. And vanished.
It put him in a foul mood. A rash and foul mood. As if it wasn’t irritating enough to have Mick O’Toole handing him advice on his personal life, he’d been given a potful from someone who shouldn’t even exist. Both mortal and mystic were pressuring him to take some sort of definitive step with Darcy, and he’d be damned if he’d be cornered that way.
His life was his own, and so was hers.
To make a point of it, he waved off the calls when he crossed the job site and went straight into the pub’s kitchen door.
Shawn glanced up from scrubbing pots. “Hello, Trev. You’re late for lunch, but I’ll fix you up if you’re hungry.”
“No, thanks. Darcy out there?”
“She just went up to her little palace. I’ve fish stew still on the . . .” Shawn trailed off, as Trevor was already climbing the stairs. “Well, I suppose he’s not hungry for what I can serve him.”
He didn’t knock. It was rude, he knew it, and got some perverse satisfaction from it. Just as he got satisfaction from seeing Darcy’s surprise when she walked out of the bedroom with a little shopping bag in her hand.
“Sure, you’re at home, aren’t you?” However mild the words, there was the unmistakable whip of irritation through them. He enjoyed it. “It’s sorry I am I can’t entertain you at the moment, but I’m just off to Jude’s to take her the little stuffed lamb I bought for the baby.”
His response was to stride to her, fist her hair in his hand, and drag her head back even as his mouth swooped down to crush hers. Shock stabbed into her, fused with an instant and molten lust so it was like one slice from a burning sword.
She shoved at him first, and meant it. Then gripped him hard, and meant that as well. He paid no attention to either reaction until he was good and finished. And when he was, he pulled her back, and his eyes were steel bright.
“Is that enough for you?”
She struggled to find her balance, her wit. “As kisses go, it was—”
“No, damn it.” Temper roughened his voice and at that her own eyes slitted. “Is what that does to you, what you know it does to me, enough for you?”
“Have I said differently?”
“No.” But even as he struggled with his straining temper, he cupped her chin. “Would you?”
However set off he was, she was sure his study of her was cool, calculated, and thorough. A man with that measure of control was an irritant, she thought. And a challenge. “You can be sure you’ll be the first to know if I’m dissatisfied.”
“Good.”
“And as a woman of my word, I’m telling you now I don’t appreciate you bursting into my home uninvited and manhandling me because some bug’s crawled up your arse.”
With a half laugh, he shook his head, stepped back. “Point taken. I’m sorry.” He bent down, picked up the bag she’d dropped, and handed it to her. “I was just up on Tower Hill, at my uncle’s grave.”
She angled her head. “Are you grieving, Trevor, for someo
ne who died long before you were born?”
He opened his mouth to deny it, but the truth simply slid out. “Yes.”
Everything about her softened. She reached out to touch his arm. “Come sit down now, and I’ll make you some tea.”
“No, thanks.” He took her hand, lifted it to his lips in an absent gesture that made something inside her stretch and yearn. Then he turned away and paced restlessly to the window to look out at the work in progress.
Was he the invader here, he wondered, staking his claim? Or a son returning to dig in roots? “My grandfather wouldn’t speak of this place, and being a slavishly dutiful wife, my grandmother wouldn’t either. As a result—”
“Your curiosity was whetted.”
“Yes. Exactly. I thought about coming here for a long time. On and off, even made half-baked plans a couple of times. But I never seriously committed to it. Then the idea for the theater jumped into my head, full blown, as if I’d been building it there, stage by stage, for years.”
“Isn’t that the way it is sometimes with ideas?” She crossed to him, looked out with him. “They simmer around without you really being aware of it, until they’re cooked proper.”
“I suppose.” Hardly aware of it, he took her hand. Just held it. “Since the deal’s done, there’s no harm in telling you I’d have paid more for the lease, given you a higher percentage. I had to have it.”
“Well, then, there’s no harm in telling you we’d have taken less all around. But we very much enjoyed the horse trading and winding up your man Finkle.”
This time he did laugh, and most of the tension drained. “My great-uncle would have come here, and my grandfather. To Gallagher’s.”
“Oh, to be sure. Is it what they’d think of what you’re doing here that’s worrying you?”
“I don’t worry what my grandfather would have thought. Not anymore.”
There, she thought, that sore spot again. This time she probed, but gently. “Was he so hard a man?”
He hesitated, but it seemed he was in the mood to speak of it. “What did you think of the house in London?”
Puzzled, she shook her head. “It was very elegant.”
“Fucking museum.”
She blinked at that, there was such undiluted anger in his voice. “Well, I’ll say the museum part of that statement occurred to me, but it was lovely.”
“After he died, my parents gave me clearance to change a few things in it. Things that hadn’t been changed in thirty years. Opened it up a bit, softened some edges, but it’s still his place underneath. Rigid and formal, as he was. That’s how my father was raised. Rigidly, and without affection.”
“I’m sorry.” She stroked a hand in circles over his back. “It has to be sad, hard and sad, to have a father who doesn’t show he loves you.”
“I never had that problem. Somehow, through some miracle, my father was—is—caring, open and full of humor. Though his father wasn’t. He still doesn’t speak of it much, the way he was raised, except to my mother.”
“And she to you,” Darcy murmured, “because she knows you’d need to understand it.”
“He wanted to make a family, a life, that was the opposite of the way he’d been raised. That’s what he did. They kept us in line, my sister and me, but we always knew they loved us.”
“I think it shows the beauty of the gift they gave you that you don’t take it for granted.”
“No, I don’t.” He turned back to her. Odd, he hadn’t really expected her to understand, nor had he expected to feel such relief that she did. “That’s why I don’t worry what my grandfather would think of what I’m doing here. But I do think of how my parents will feel when it’s done.”
“Then I’ll say this. To my way of thinking, they’ll be proud. Ireland’s art is at its core, and you’re bringing more of it here. Along with it the practicality of jobs and revenue. It’s a good thing you’re doing, and a credit to your father, your mother, and your heritage.”
A nagging little weight fell off his shoulder. “Thanks. It matters, more than I anticipated. It was one of the things that hit me when I was standing up on the hill. It matters. What I do here, and leave here. And while I was coming to that conclusion, I had a conversation with Carrick.”
Her fingers jerked in his. When he looked down, he saw the surprise clearly on her face before she closed her mouth and made a quiet humming sound.
“Do you think I’m hallucinating?”
“No.” She paused, then shook her head. “I don’t, no. Others whose sanity I’m sure of claim to have done the same. We’ve broad minds around here.”
But she knew the legend, and it unnerved her enough that she took a step back and sat on the arm of a chair. “And what did you converse about?”
“A number of things. My grandfather. Old Maude and Johnnie Magee. Schedules, virtues, the theater. You.”
“Myself.” Now she rubbed her suddenly damp hands on her trousers. “And what would that be about?”
“You know the legend, probably better than I. It takes three couples, as I understand it, falling in love, accepting each other, taking vows.”
“So it’s said.”
“And in the past year or so, your two brothers have fallen in love, accepted it, and taken vows.”
“I’m aware of that, as I was at their weddings.”
“Then, given the quickness of your mind, I assume you’ve considered the fact that there are three Gallaghers.” He took a step closer. “You look a little pale.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d get to the point you’re dancing around.”
“All right, direct. He’s pegged us as his third and final step.”
Her chest seemed to fill all at once with heat and pressure, making her want to knock her fist against it to loosen it again. But she kept her hands still and her eyes level. “That wouldn’t sit well with you.”
“Would it with you?”
She was too flustered to catch the evasion. “I’m not the one having conversation with faerie princes, am I? And no, I don’t particularly care to have my fate and future dictated by another’s wants or needs.”
“Neither do I. Neither,” he added, “will I.”
She thought she understood now why he’d told her of his grandfather. To show her he had cold blood in him.
Slowly she got to her feet. “I see what put you in such a rare mood. The very idea of the remote possibility that I might be your fate and future set you right off, didn’t it? The very thought that a man of your education and consequence should tumble heart-first for a barmaid.”
He was so genuinely baffled it took him a moment to answer. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“Who could blame you for being angry and frustrated when such a suggestion was made? It’s a fortunate thing for both of us that love has nothing to do with the matter.”
He’d seen angry women before, but he wasn’t certain he’d ever faced one who looked so capable of inflicting real physical harm. To ward it off, he held up his hands palms out. “In the first place, what you do for a living has nothing to do with . . . anything. In the second, you’re hardly a barmaid, though it wouldn’t matter if you were.”
“I serve drinks in a pub, so what’s that if not a barmaid?”
“Aidan runs the bar, Shawn runs the kitchen, and you run the service,” Trevor said patiently. “And I imagine if you wanted, you could run the whole shot—or any other pub in your country or mine. But that’s hardly an issue.”
“It happens to be of some particular issue with me.” But she yanked back her anger and let it vibrate on the end of its tether.
“Darcy, I told you this because it concerns both of us, because we’re lovers and it’s only right we both know where we stand. Now we do, and we’re agreed we don’t intend to let ourselves get tangled up in some ancient legend.”
He took her hand again, rubbing his thumb over the knuckles to soothe out the stiffness. “Separate from that—entirely separa
te from that—I like who you are, I enjoy being with you, and I want you in a way . . . I’ve never wanted anyone else in the same way,” he finished.
She ordered herself to relax, to accept, even to be pleased. But there was a hole somewhere inside her that wouldn’t close up again. “All right. Separate from that, I feel the same. So there’s no problem at all.” Flashing a smile, she rose to her toes and kissed him warmly, then waved him toward the door.
“Now go on with you, as I’ve got to be on my way.”
“Will you come to the cottage tonight?”
She shot him a look from under her lashes. “I’d be pleased to. You can look for me around midnight, and I wouldn’t mind if you had a glass of wine poured and waiting.”
“Later, then.” He would have kissed her again, but she was already shutting the door in his face.
On the other side of it she counted to ten three full times. Then exhaled. So, they were to be reasonable and sensible and do it all exactly the Magee way, were they? He was too removed to tumble into legend, or into love.
Well, by God, she’d have him begging on his knees for her before she was done with him. He’d promise her the world and everything in it.
And when he had, well, she might just take it. That would teach the man not to shrug off the notion of loving Darcy Gallagher.
THIRTEEN
ALL IN ALL, Trevor found himself very satisfied by the way things were going. The project was moving along on schedule. The townspeople were supportive and interested. Never a day went by without at least some of them wandering by to watch the work, make comments, give suggestions, or tell him some story or other about his relations.
He’d met a few who were cousins. In fact, he had two of them employed as laborers.
With Mick out of commission for the next few days, he’d have to spend more time at the site. But he didn’t mind. It would keep his mind focused on what it needed to be focused on. And give him less time to let it wander around Darcy.
