by Lena Loneson
“Just going for a walk.”
“Aw, won’t you join us?” She had dimples and an American accent that made him feel as if he were back in Canada. Normally he would have accepted her offer. Those dimples would have been enough to entice him, even without the dangerous curves bared by her swimsuit. But this wasn’t a normal day.
“Can’t, but thanks for the offer, lass.”
“Are you sure? We’ve got cold beer, and we’ve been awful lonely lying here.”
The woman’s companion turned at this and rolled her eyes playfully at her, then looked up at Eamon. “It’s true. Here we thought we’d have romantic adventures with some gorgeous red-haired Irishmen, and you’re the first to appear through our whole visit.”
Eamon smiled, against his better judgment. She’d triggered his flirting instinct. As he opened his mouth to reply, the wind gusted out of nowhere, slapping against his face. Sand stung his eyes. He blinked to clear the grit, spat sand out of his mouth, and the wind was gone.
The brief jolt reminded Eamon that he was there for a reason—Nora’s pennywhistle. He thanked the women again and moved on. He did make an effort not to limp as he passed them, and was pleased to feel the muscles in his legs rippling as they should. Even if he wasn’t interested, he still had his pride. No need to look like an old man.
It took him less than five minutes to climb the next sand dune and descend on the long stretch of the beach where he’d rescued the Irish girl. It was closer to the hotel than he’d remembered. Eamon scanned the beach, holding his hand above his eyes to block the sun.
There—something twinkling right by the surf. The sun bouncing off silver, perhaps?
He jogged lightly to the spot, wincing as each foot landed. There was no real rush but for the sudden, ridiculous thought that treasure hunters might beat him to it, grab the pennywhistle and keep it for themselves. The woman had looked so dejected when she’d realized it had been left behind. He had to find it for her.
He laughed out loud with joy when he saw it there, still stuck into the golden sand, acting as a makeshift sundial. He shook the sand from it and secured it in his satchel, then set off for the village to find the whistle’s owner. Someone would know who she was. It shouldn’t take him long.
Chapter Six
Two hours later, Eamon was growing tired, frustrated and more than a little tipsy.
The village pub had seemed like the logical place to ask about the woman—though it was still early in the afternoon, the habitual drinkers, retirees and those taking a late lunch would be there. The types of folk who were there regularly and knew the local gossip.
These were definitely those folk. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean they were willing to share the local gossip.
“You don’t want any part of that family,” Rory said, with the others nodding along. There was a small crowd gathered around Eamon at the bar, most of them older gentlemen. The retirees, he supposed. They might not want to talk, but they were just fine with him buying another round.
Eamon sipped his Guinness slowly. He’d tried asking questions of a group of drinkers playing darts at the other end of the pub. But he’d spoken too much, come across as too interested. He’d seen their eyes shutter from the start. So he was trying again with this new group. This time, the strategy was different—describe the girl. Brunette, young, small, creator of beautiful music, webbing between her fingers, tastes like seawater. Maybe leave out the last. Ask if anyone knew her. Don’t tell them why he was looking for her.
Most definitely don’t tell them how badly he wanted to kiss her again. Desperation didn’t help to loosen tongues. A few pints, however, did.
The bartender, a pretty young blonde in a low-cut black top, passed out a second round of pints. Rory downed the rest of his Harp before picking up the next glass and taking a long sip of that too. Eamon waited.
“Isn’t that right, Pat?” Rory said between mouthfuls. “Trouble’s followed them since Mary Catherine brought that selkie home some twenty-odd years ago.” He slapped the man next to him on the back. Pat choked a little on his beer.
Eamon schooled his face into a blank look. “Selkie?”
He knew what the word meant from his first time at Tullamore, researching Irish legends for his story. He’d also heard it again today, whispered between villagers when he’d mentioned the girl in white. But it was better to play it dumb. Create enough silence, and anyone will talk. He shuffled his feet. They had started to throb again as he stood in the pub. Should have thought to grab a barstool.
“Seal-creature,” Pat said. “Changeling. The men come out of the sea, seduce the women, make them fall in love, then leave ’em. Poor Mary Catherine never saw it coming.”
Mary Catherine. Was that the young woman’s name? It didn’t suit her. Too nun-like. He’d expected something more along the lines of Sorcha or Erin. Youthful. Wild. Twenty-odd years ago, Rory had said. Clearly not his girl, then. She was barely twenty herself.
“Poor Mary Catherine?” Rory’s voice rose with the question, which seemed more an accusation. “Like she was the innocent in all this. Just like her daughter, that woman would spread her legs for anything.”
The bartender, hovering just out of reach, tsked her disapproval. But Eamon supposed she was savvy enough to stay out of the discussion if she wanted her tips.
Eamon himself felt his cheek twitch. He didn’t like hearing any woman spoken of that way. If he weren’t on investigation mode right now, he’d have half a mind to clock the guy right in the nose.
“Aw, Rory,” a woman spoke up behind them. Not the bartender—a redhead, middle-aged. Eamon had caught her name earlier but then lost it. “Yer only bitter ’cause you wanted her first.”
Rory handled that with a good-natured chuckle, taking another large gulp of his beer. Eamon sipped his stout in response. He didn’t want to shut down either of these potential sources of information by choosing a side.
“Ah, as if Rory woulda been any competition. Even as a lad I was right envious of that selkie man.” Pat punched his friend on the shoulder. With the dispassion of an anthropologist, Eamon noted that this seemed to be their form of affection.
Pat would have been around forty at the time of this story, Eamon calculated, but he didn’t argue with the “lad” description.
“Ay, he was a right handsome sort,” the redheaded woman said. Claire? He’d go with Claire. She sighed wistfully. Eamon imagined she’d have been a teenager when this selkie man appeared in the village. Not that he truly believed in the selkie myth, but they were supposed to be captivatingly handsome, otherworldly enticing. One look would have grabbed a teenaged girl’s heart and never let it go.
“Handsome? You mean you saw him too?” Rory asked. His head swiveled back and forth between Claire and Pat, indignant.
“You didn’t?”
“Seems I was the only one who didn’t,” Rory huffed. “It’s not as if the guy wandered around town much before knocking her up. Where did you see him?”
Knocking her up, twenty-plus years ago? Eamon didn’t need any journalistic instincts to figure out the connection to his Irish girl. “The daughter,” he finally spoke up. “The lass—what was her name?”
“You mean Nora? Aye, she’s the one you’re looking for.” Claire nodded, satisfied. “The selkie’s daughter, we call that one. Though not all are so gentle about it.”
“Nora,” he repeated it back. It was perfect. Better than Sorcha or Erin. Short and almost girlish, but the long O settled on his tongue, giving it a weight the other names didn’t have. He mouthed it again soundlessly. Nora. He reached a hand into the satchel hanging on his shoulder and touched the pennywhistle hidden within. Stroked the fabric of her dress.
“Oh, this lad’s got it bad!” He didn’t know the owner of that voice. Shit. Was it so obvious he wanted her spread out naked on his bed?
“That’s her, boyo. Nora Connelly.” Claire regarded him with kind eyes. “She’s broken many a heart around here, but sh
e wouldn’t know it. Caught up in her own mystery, that one. Father was a selkie, they say. Legend has it the only way to keep a selkie lover is to steal his pelt. Hide it so he can’t change back into seal form and swim away on you.”
“That’s a crock of nonsense,” Rory said. He downed the rest of his pint. Eamon waved to the bartender to get another round.
“Nonsense or not, Mary Catherine believed it. She asked me for advice on where to hide the pelt.”
Eamon turned toward the voice. It belonged to a white-haired woman, older than Claire.
“You saw it, then?” This from Rory. “A selkie’s pelt?”
“Nay.”
“Then how do you know she had it?” Rory’s voice rose. Eamon suspected his fury was more at being left out of the gossip than any remaining lust for Mary Catherine.
“I don’t. I just know she asked me where to hide it.” The woman nodded smugly.
“That’s ridiculous.”
Okay, time to break up the argument before it devolved into total nonsense. “Where do I find Nora?” Eamon asked.
The others shook their heads. “You won’t be wanting to do that,” Pat said.
There was nothing more frustrating than a secretive Irishman. Except maybe a girl who now had a name but was still hidden behind the gatekeepers of those secrets. Eamon wanted to grab one of the men by the shoulders and shake him until he spat up whatever he knew. He strengthened the Irish in his half-Canadian accent. “I think I know what I be wanting.”
Pat’s expression darkened. Damn it. Shut up and listen, the first rule of hearing tales. Don’t mock the teller, the second rule. And Eamon had just broken them both. “I’m sorry. I just really need to see her.”
“What’s your reasoning, there?” Rory asked. He seemed to view Eamon more charitably. Perhaps because his latest pint had arrived. Eamon slid the bartender his credit card. Cash wasn’t going to cover the day.
“It’s obvious, Rory,” Claire said. “The man’s in love with her.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he wanted to say. He kept his mouth shut—because he was following the first two rules, of course. Not because there was any truth to Claire’s claim. He’d met the woman only last night. She intrigued him, that was all. The chase intrigued him. It didn’t happen to him that often, a woman fleeing his bed.
“Well, then, he ought to stay away.” This from the white-haired woman. “Listen to the men, stranger. Nothing good can come from loving one of that family. Mary Catherine hid that pelt. But her man watched the sea for the rest of his short life. Every day he spent with her, loving her, but with haunted eyes. They’d be slipping from his wife’s face to the shoreline. Watching the surf more desperately with each passing hour. At night, folks say he’d search. He’d search and search for that pelt, tear the house apart in a rage, dig up the garden, his hands bloody from thorns. But he never found it.”
“What happened to him?” Claire asked. She seemed as enthralled by the story as Eamon was now.
“What happens to them all. He couldn’t live without the sea, so he didn’t.”
Eamon’s stomach turned to ice. He thought of Nora’s lithe body caught by the waves. What had she said in his bed last night? I’m a strong swimmer most times. Can’t say what got into me. Had her father intentionally drowned himself? Did she know?
“You’ve seen the seal’s markings between her fingers?” the old woman asked. Eamon nodded.
Rory snorted. “It’s a genetic mutation, not some selkie curse. I may be an old coot but even I know we have science to explain it to us. Modern times and all. No need for believing in selkies.”
Eamon ignored him. “What does it mean?”
“It means she’s got the same curse.”
“So you’re saying…she turns into a seal and goes swimming?” That was ludicrous. For a moment, he’d almost found himself believing the gossip these people had shared. But they’d downed four pints each, minimum, and while they’d been drinking the summer sun had gone away, covered by clouds. The windows of the pub had darkened. Another storm was rolling in. He could smell it in the air. It lent an ominous nature to everything in the pub, and he’d forgotten how easy it would be to believe in the foolish notions of his youth when he returned to Ireland. There was something about the country that just did it to him. That last pint of Guinness he’d swigged to keep up with the subjects he was interrogating hadn’t helped.
Maybe he wanted to believe in the myth too much. To believe in miracles. Having had Keelin ripped from his arms and swept overboard, away into the sea, meant he needed something to keep him from going crazy. Were the ancient tales just hope told in a strange form? Just monsters created to focus fear?
“You may say it’s ridiculous now. But for all we know, it could be true,” the woman said.
Eamon let out a snort of half triumph, half sadness. “Nay. I watched her swim last night. She was near-drowned when I pulled her out. If Nora could turn into a seal, she would have done it to save her own life.”
The old woman crossed herself. The others, even Rory and Pat, put down their half-full pints on the bar. Muttering, they began to clear out.
“Sorry, lad,” Rory said. “That girl’s cursed. If she’s near to drowning herself already…well, it won’t be long.” He shook his head and walked away. The men milled about, spreading themselves over different areas of the pub. One went to the loo, another for a smoke and a few took a table in the front.
Only Claire remained standing before him, watching Eamon with sad eyes. She had her hands clasped in front of her. The knuckles were white, she was clutching them so hard. Wordlessly he watched her in return.
“I had Nora in my kindergarten class,” Claire said quietly. “I was her teacher. She was eerily beautiful, even back then, and spirited. She loved music. Her fingers couldn’t do much and her mother refused the surgery, so I’d hand her a small bodhran to play. It would work her up for hours, the music. I’d never seen a lass get that excited over a bit of music.” She unclasped her hands and fiddled with her hair.
“Laddie, if you care for that girl, you have to try to save her. In the years since, I’ve watched her get smaller. She’s distant now. Not always—sometimes when she plays, I can see the old spark in her eyes. But she’s leaving us at the age of twenty. If you can do something for her, please do it now.”
Now there was a hell of a responsibility to put on him. But Eamon found himself nodding along with her and accepting directions to her mother’s home.
Chapter Seven
There was someone inside the cottage. Flickers of a dark silhouette passed behind the window curtains. Eamon inhaled deeply and wiped a few errant drops of rain from his nose. This was the place. Claire had given him the address of the Connelly home. Nora lived with her mother. Just the two of them. He didn’t know which one he’d encounter. Mary Catherine? Both of them?
The dampness clung to him, half mist and half air. He clutched the satchel at his side. In his imagination, the pennywhistle and dress were burning a hole through the bag, through his pants, to his bare skin. He was that aware of their presence.
The cottage was small and pale pink, with a sloped roof. The only door he could see, perfectly centered at the front, was painted bright pink, garishly cheerful in the darkening afternoon mist. The cottage was nearly strangled by plants. Trellises ran up on either side of the door with lush green vines pouring out of them, twisting across the pale brickwork. Thorny bushes grew up to the shuttered windows. Small white flowers were scattered everywhere, as if a rain of cotton balls had escaped the makeup aisle in a drugstore to wander the town and fall, willy-nilly, around the house.
Staring at it, he felt claustrophobic.
Mary Catherine must have been the decorator. Nothing about this place resembled Nora. No wonder she ran for the sea that went on forever if this was where she lived. The cottage was stifling. He couldn’t imagine Nora being happy there.
Right. Because he knew so much about the woman who
had shared his bed for a scant few hours the night before. The woman who hadn’t even told him her name.
Perhaps he was a fool, standing there. In the pub it had seemed urgent, like something he was destined to do—save this woman from herself. But did he know she needed saving? How had he gone from wanting to bed her to imagining himself as her knight in shining armor? The villagers’ fear of the selkie curse had gotten to him.
And there was no reason to get this nervous before knocking on a woman’s door. Eamon shook his head. Maybe some of that mist would fall out of his ears and clear his mind. Okay. Game plan—knock, grin his most charming grin and wait to see who opened the door. At least before someone noticed him skulking out here and called the Garda. Spending the night in jail wasn’t an attractive option.
He walked up to the door, gravel crunching beneath his shoes. He took a deep breath and raised the ridiculously ornate door knocker. He let it fall.
Footsteps approached, slow and heavy.
Did they sound like hers? He held his breath, listening. But of course he had no idea what Nora’s footsteps would sound like. He’d carried her, mostly drowned, to his room.
The door opened. A woman in her early fifties, not much older than Eamon himself, stared out at him. Her short dark hair showed little gray, but her face was deeply lined. He saw something of Nora in the quirk of her nose. There was nothing of Nora in the brash pink apron she wore. The scent of something delicious and cinnamony wafted out of the house. Mary Catherine kept the door open just enough to peer out at him but not enough for him to see much of the interior of the house.
She scowled at him.
Shit, he’d forgotten his charming smile. He stretched his lips, baring his teeth at her. Her deepening scowl told him that either she was immune to charm or he’d missed the mark on the smile. It had felt a bit piranha-like.
