Authors: Nora Roberts
He took the pint from Aidan with a thanks and slid the coins for it over the bar. “Aidan, you’ve been to Chicago, haven’t you?”
“Passed through, mostly. The lake’s a sight, and seems big as the sea. The wind coming off it’s like knives through the skin and into the bone. But you can get a steak there, if memory serves, that will make you weep with gratitude that God created the cow.”
He was working as he spoke, filling another order for his sister’s tray, keeping the taps going, opening a bottle of American beer for a boy who looked as if he should still be sucking on milk shakes.
The music picked up, a livelier pace now. When Darcy lifted the tray from the bar this time, she was singing in a way that made Jude stare with admiration and envy.
Not just at the voice, though it was stunning enough with its silver-bright clarity. But at the kind of ease of self that would allow someone to simply break into song in public. It was a tune about dying an old maid in a garret, which Jude concluded from the glances of the males in the room, ranging from the Clooney boy of about ten to an ancient skeleton of a man at the farthest end of the bar, was a fate Darcy Gallagher would never face.
People joined in the chorus, and the taps began to flow more quickly.
The first tune blended into a second, with barely a change of rhythm. Aidan picked up the lyrics, singing of the betrayal of the woman wearing the black velvet band so smoothly that Jude could only stare. He had a voice as rich as his sister’s and as carelessly beautiful.
He pulled a pint of lager as he sang, then winked at her
as he slid it down the bar. She felt heat rush into her face—the mortification of being caught openly staring—but she trusted the light was dim enough to mask it.
She picked up her glass, hoping she looked casual, as if she often sat in bars where song broke out all around her and men who looked like works of art winked in her direction. And discovered her glass was full. She frowned at it, certain that she’d sipped away at least half the wine. But as Aidan was halfway down the bar and she didn’t want to interrupt his work or the song, she shrugged and enjoyed the full glass.
The door of what she assumed was the kitchen swung open again. She could only be grateful that no one was paying attention to her, because she was sure she goggled. The man who came through it looked as though he’d stepped out of a movie set—some film about ancient Celtic knights saving kingdoms and damsels.
He had a loose and lanky build that went well with the worn jeans and dark sweater. His hair was black as night and wove its way over the collar of the sweater. Eyes a dreamy lake blue sparkled with humor. His mouth was like Aidan’s, full and strong and sensual, and his nose was just crooked enough to spare him from the burden of perfection.
She noted the nick on his right ear and assumed this was Shawn Gallagher, and that he hadn’t ducked quite quickly enough.
He moved gracefully across the room to serve the food he carried on the tray. Then, in a lightning move that made Jude catch her breath and prepare for the battle, he grabbed his sister, yanked her to face him, then spun her into a complicated dance.
What kind of people, Jude wondered, could swear at each other one minute, then dance around a pub together laughing the next?
The patrons whistled and clapped. Feet pounded. The dance whirled close enough to Jude for her to feel the breeze of spinning bodies. Then when it stopped, Darcy and Shawn cozily embraced and grinned at each other like fools.
After he’d kissed his sister smartly on the mouth, he turned his head and studied Jude in the friendliest of manners. “Well, who might this be, come out of the night and into Gallagher’s?”
“This is Jude Murray, cousin to Old Maude,” Darcy told him. “This is my brother Shawn, the one in dire need of your professional help.”
“Ah, Brenna told me she’d met you when you arrived. Jude F. Murray, from Chicago.”
“What’s the ‘F’ for?” Aidan wanted to know.
Jude swiveled her head to look at him, found it was just a little light. “Frances.”
“She saw Lady Gwen,” Shawn announced, and before Jude could swivel her head back again, the pub had gone quiet.
“Did she, now?” Aidan wiped his hands on his cloth, set it aside, then leaned on the bar. “Well, then.”
There was a pause, an expectant one. Fumbling, Jude tried to fill it. “No, I just thought I’d seen . . . it was raining.” She picked up her glass, drank deeply, and prayed the music would start again.
“Aidan’s seen Lady Gwen, walking the cliffs.”
Jude stared at Shawn, then back at Aidan. “You’ve seen a ghost,” she said in carefully spaced words.
“She weeps as she walks and as she waits. And the sound of it stabs into your heart so it bleeds from the inside out.”
Part of her simply wanted to ride on the music of his
voice, but she blinked, shook her head. “But you don’t actually believe in ghosts.”
He lifted that handsome eyebrow again. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because . . . they don’t exist?”
He laughed, a rich and rolling sound, then solved the mystery of her never empty glass by topping off the wine. “I’ll be wanting to hear you say that after living here another month. Didn’t your granny tell you the story of Lady Gwen and Carrick of the faeries?”
“No. Well, actually, I have a number of tapes she made for me, and letters and journals that deal with legends and myths. I’m, ah . . . considering doing a paper on the subject of Irish folklore and its place in the psychology of the culture.”
“Isn’t that something.” He didn’t trouble to hide his amusement, even when he saw the frown cloud over her face. To his mind she had as pretty a pout as he’d ever seen. “You’ve come to a good place for material for such a fine project.”
“You should tell her about Lady Gwen,” Darcy put in. “And other stories, Aidan. You tell them best.”
“I will, then, another time. If you’re interested, Jude Frances.”
She was miffed, and she realized with some distress, just a little drunk. Mustering her dignity as best she could, she nodded. “Of course. I’d like to include local color and stories in my research. I’d be happy to set up appointments—at your convenience.”
His smile came again, slow, easy. Devastating. “Oh, well, we’re not so very formal around here. I’ll just come around one day, and if you’re not busy, I’ll tell you some stories I know.”
“All right. Thank you.” She opened her purse, started
to get out her wallet, but he laid a hand over hers.
“There’s no need to pay. The wine’s on the house, for welcome.”
“That’s very kind of you.” She wished she had a clue as to just how much welcome she’d put into her bloodstream.
“See that you come back,” he said when she got to her feet.
“I’m sure I will. Good night.” She scanned the room, since it seemed polite to make it a blanket statement, then looked back at Aidan. “Thank you.”
“Good night to you, Jude Frances.”
He watched her leave, absently getting a glass as another beer was called for. A pretty thing, he thought again. And just prim enough, he decided, to make a man wonder what it would take to relax her.
He thought he might enjoy taking the time to find out. After all, he had a wealth of time.
“She must be rich,” Darcy commented with a little sigh.
Aidan glanced over. “Why do you say that?”
“You can tell by her clothes, all simple and perfect. The little earrings she had on, the hoops, those were real gold, and the shoes were Italian or I’ll marry a monkey.”
He hadn’t noticed the earrings or the shoes, just the overall package, that understated and neat femininity. And being a man, he had imagined loosening that band she’d wrapped around her hair and setting it free.
But his sister was pouting, so he turned and flicked a finger down her nose. “She may be rich, Darcy my darling, but she’s alone and shy as you never are. Money won’t buy her a friend.”
Darcy pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I’ll go by the cottage and see her.”
“You’ve a good heart.”
She grinned and picked up her tray. “You were looking at her bum when she left.”
He grinned back. “I’ve good eyes.”
After the last customer wandered his way home, and the glasses were washed, the floor mopped, and the doors locked, Aidan found himself too restless for sleep, or a book, or a glass of whiskey by his fire.
He didn’t mind that last hour of the day spent alone in his rooms over the pub. Often he treasured it. But he treasured just as much the long walks he was prone to take on nights where the sky was thrown open with stars and the moon sailed white over the water.
Tonight he walked to the cliffs, as they were on his mind. It was true enough what his brother had said. Aidan had seen Lady Gwen, and more than once, standing high over the sea, with the wind blowing her pale hair behind her like the mane of a wild horse and her cloak billowing, white as the moon overhead.
The first time, he’d been a child and initially had been filled with excited terror. Then he’d been moved beyond measure by the wretched sound of her weeping and the despair in her face.
She’d never spoken, but she had looked at him, seen him. That he would swear on as many Bibles as you could stack under his hand.
Tonight he wasn’t looking for ghosts, for the spirit memory of a woman who’d lost what she loved most before she’d recognized it.
He was only looking for a walk in the air made chilly by night and sea, in a land he’d come back to because nowhere else had ever been home.
When he climbed up the path he knew as well as the
path from his own bed to his bath, he sensed nothing but the night, and the air, and the sea.
The water beat below, its endless war on rock. Light from the half moon spilled in a delicate line over black water that was never quite calm. Here he could breathe, and think the long thoughts he rarely had time for in the day-to-day doing of his work.
The pub was for him now. And though he’d never expected the full weight of it, it sat well enough on his shoulders. His parents’ decision to stay in Boston rather than to remain only long enough to help his uncle open his own pub and get it over the first six months of business hadn’t come as that much of a surprise.
His father had missed his brother sorely, and his mother had always been one for moving to a new place. They’d be back, not to live, perhaps, but they would be back to see friends, to hold their children. But Gallagher’s Pub had been passed on from father to son once again.
Since it was his legacy, he meant to do right by it.
Darcy wouldn’t wait tables and build sandwiches forever. He accepted that as well. She stored her money away like a squirrel its nuts. When she had enough to content her, she’d be off.
Shawn was happy enough for the moment to run the kitchen, to dream his dreams and to have every other female in the village pining over him. One day he would stumble over the right dream, and the right woman, and that would be that as well.
If Aidan intended Gallagher’s to go on—and he did—he would have to think about finding himself a woman and going about the business of making a son—or a daughter, for that matter, as he wasn’t so entrenched in tradition he couldn’t see passing what he had on to a girl.
But there was time for that, thank Jesus. After all, he was
only thirty-one, and he didn’t intend to marry just for responsibility. There would be love, and passion, and the meeting of minds before there were vows.
One of the things he’d learned on his travels was what a man could settle for, and what he couldn’t. You could settle for a lumpy bed if the alternative was the floor, and be grateful. But you couldn’t settle for a woman who bored you or failed to stir your blood, no matter how fair her face.
As he was thinking that, he turned and looked out over the roll of land, over to the soft rise where the white cottage sat under the sky and stars. There was a thin haze of smoke rising from the chimney, a single light burning against the window.
Jude Frances Murray, he thought and found himself bringing her face into his mind. What are you doing in your little house on the faerie hill? Reading a good book perhaps, one with plenty of weight and profound messages. Or do you sneak into a story with fun and foolishness when no one’s around to see?
It’s image that worries you, he mused. That much he’d gotten from the hour or so she’d spent on one of his stools. What are people thinking? What do they see when they look at you?
And while she was thinking that, he mused, she was absorbing everything around her that she could see or hear. He doubted she knew it, but he’d seen it in her eyes.
He thought he would take some time to find out what he thought of her, what he saw in her, and what was real.
She’d already stirred his blood with those big sea goddess eyes of hers and that sternly bound hair. He liked her voice, the preciseness of it that seemed so intriguingly at odds with the shyness.
What would she do, pretty Jude, he wondered, if he was to ramble over now and rap on her door?
No point in frightening her to death, he decided, just because he was restless and something about her had made him want.
“Sleep well, then,” he murmured, sliding his hands into his pockets as the wind whirled around him. “One night when I go walking it won’t be to the cliffs, but to your door. Then we’ll see what we see.”
A shadow passed the window, and the curtain twitched aside. There she stood, almost as if she’d heard him. It was too far away for him to see more than the shape of her, outlined against the light.
He thought she might see him as well, just a shadow on the cliffs.
Then the curtain closed again, and moments later, the light went out.
R
ELIABILITY
, J
UDE TOLD
herself, began with responsibility. And both were rooted in discipline. With this short lecture in her head, she rose the next morning, prepared a simple breakfast, then took a pot of tea up to her office to settle down and work.
She would not go outside and take a walk over the hills, though it was a perfectly gorgeous day. She would not wander out to dream over the flowers, no matter how pretty they looked out the window. And she certainly wasn’t going to drive into the village and spend an hour or two roaming the beach, however compelling the idea.
Though many might consider her notion of exploring the legends handed down from generation to generation in Ireland a flighty idea at best, it was certainly viable work if approached properly and with clear thinking. The oral storytelling art, as well as the written word, was one of the cornerstones in the foundation of culture, after all.
She couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge that her most
hidden, most secret desire was to write. To write stories, books, to simply open that carefully locked chamber in her heart and let the words and images rush out.
Whenever that lock rattled, she reminded herself it was an impractical, romantic, even foolish ambition. Ordinary people with average skills were better off contenting themselves with the sensible.
Researching, detailing, analyzing were sensible, things she’d been trained to do. Things, she thought with only a whisper of resentment, she’d been expected to do. The subject matter she’d selected was rebellion enough. So she would explore the psychological reason for the formation and perpetuation of the generational myths particular to the country of her ancestors.
Ireland was ripe with them.
Ghosts and banshees, pookas and faeries. What a rich and imaginative wonder was the Celtic mind! They said the cottage stood on a faerie hill, one of the magic spots that hid the gleaming raft below.
If memory served, she thought the legend went that a mortal could be lured, or even snatched, into the faerie world below the hill and kept there for a hundred years.
And wasn’t that fascinating?
Seemingly rational, ordinary people on the cusp of the twenty-first century could actually make such a statement without guile.
That, she decided, was the power of the myth on the intellect, and the psyche.
And it was strong enough, powerful enough, that for a little while, when she’d been alone in the night, she’d almost—almost believed it. The music of the wind chimes and the wind had added to it, she thought now. Songs, she mused, played by the air were meant to set the mind dreaming.
Then that figure standing out on the cliffs. The shadow of a man etched against sky and sea had drawn her gaze and caused her heart to thunder. He might have been a man waiting for a lover, or mourning one. A faerie prince weaving magic into the sea.
Very romantic, she decided, very powerful.
And of course—obviously—whoever it had been, whoever would walk wind-whipped cliffs after midnight, was lunatic. But she hadn’t thought of that until morning, for the punch of the image had her sighing and shivering over it into the night.
But the lunacy, for lack of a better word, was part of the charm of the people and their stories. So she would use it. Explore it. Immerse herself in it.
Revved, she turned to her machine, leaving the tapes and letters alone for the moment, and started her paper.
They say the cottage stands on a faerie hill, one of the many rises of land in Ireland under which the faeries live in their palaces and castles. It’s said that if you approach a faerie hill, you may hear the music that plays in the great hall of the castle under the deep green grass. And if you walk over one, you take the risk of being snatched by the faeries themselves and becoming obliged to do their bidding.
She stopped, smiled. Of course that was all too lyrical and, well,
Irish
a beginning for a serious academic paper. In her first year of college, her papers had been marked down regularly for just that sort of thing. Rambling, not following the point of the theme, neglecting to adhere to her own outlines.
Knowing just how important grades were to her parents, she’d learned to stifle those colorful journeys.
Still, this wasn’t for a grade, and it was just a draft. She’d clean it up later. For now, she decided, she would just get her thoughts down and lay the foundation for the analysis.
She knew enough, from her grandmother’s stories, to give a brief outline of the most common mythical characters. It would be her task to find the proper stories and the structure that revolved around each character of legend and then explain its place in the psychology of the people who fostered it.
She worked through the morning on basic definitions, often adding a subtext that cross-referenced the figure to its counterpart in other cultures.
Intent on her work, she barely heard the knocking on the front door, and when it registered she blinked her way out of an explanation of the Pisogue, the Irish wise woman found in most villages in earlier times. Hooking her glasses in the neck of her sweater, she hurried downstairs. When she opened the door, Brenna O’Toole was already walking back to her truck.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Brenna began.
“No, you’re not.” How could a woman wearing muddy work boots intimidate her? Jude wondered. “I was in the little room upstairs. I’m glad you stopped by. I didn’t thank you properly the other day.”
“Oh, it’s not a problem. You were asleep on your feet.” Brenna stepped away from the gate, walked back toward the stoop. “Are you settling in, then? You have all you need?”
“Yes, thanks.” Jude noticed that the faded cap Brenna squashed down over her hair carried a small winged figure pinned just over the bill. More faeries, Jude thought, and found it fascinating that such an efficient woman would wear one as a charm.
“Ah, would you like to come in, have some tea?”
“That would be lovely, thanks, but I’ve work.” Still,
Brenna seemed content to linger on the little garden path. “I only wanted to stop and see if you’re finding your way about, or if there’s anything you’d be needing. I’m back and forth on the road here a time or two a day.”
“I can’t think of anything. Well, actually, I wonder if you can tell me who I contact about getting a telephone jack put into the second bedroom. I’m using it as an office, and I’ll need that for my modem.”
“Modem, is it? Your computer?” Now her eyes gleamed with interest. “My sister Mary Kate has a computer as she’s studying programming in school. You’d think she’d discovered the cure for stupidity with the thing, and she won’t let me near it.”
“Are you interested in computers?”
“I like knowing how things work, and she’s afraid I’ll take it apart—which of course I would, for how else can you figure out how a thing works, after all? She has a modem as well, and sends messages to some cousins of ours in New York and friends in Galway. It’s a marvel.”
“I suppose it is. And we tend to take it for granted until we can’t use it.”
“I can pass your need on to the right party,” Brenna continued. “They’ll have you hooked up sooner or later.” She smiled again. “Sooner or later’s how ’tis, but shouldn’t be more than a week or so. If it is, I can jury-rig something that’ll do you.”
“That’s fine. I appreciate it. Oh, and I went into the village yesterday, but the shops were closed by the time I got there. I was hoping to find a bookstore so I could pick up some books on gardening.”
“Books on it.” Brenna pursed her lips. Imagine, she thought, needing to read about planting. “Well, I don’t know where you’d find such a thing in Ardmore, but you could likely find what you’re looking for over in
Dungar-van or into Waterford City for certain. Still, if you want to know something about your flowers here, you’ve only to ask my mother. She’s a keen gardener, Ma is.”
Brenna glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a car. “Well, here’s Mrs. Duffy and Betsy Clooney come ’round to say welcome. I’ll move my lorry out of your street so they can pull in. Mrs. Duffy will have brought cakes,” Brenna added. “She’s famed for them.” She waved cheerfully to the two women in the car. “Just give a shout down the hill if you’ve a need for something.”
“Yes, I—” Oh, God, was all Jude could think, don’t leave me alone with strangers. But Brenna was hopping back in her truck.
She zipped out with what Jude considered a reckless and dashing disregard for the narrow slot in the hedgerows or the possibility, however remote, of oncoming traffic, then squeezed fender to fender with the car to chat a moment with the new visitors.
Jude stood mentally wringing her hands as the truck bumped away down the road and the car pulled in.
“Good day to you, Miss Murray!” The woman behind the wheel had eyes bright as a robin’s and light brown hair that had been beaten into submission. She wore it in a tight helmet of waves under a brutal layer of spray. It glinted like shellack in the sun.
She popped out of the car, ample breasts and hips plugged onto short legs and tiny feet.
Jude pasted a smile on her face and dragged herself toward the garden gate like a woman negotiating a walk down death row. As she rattled her brain for the proper greeting, the woman yanked open the rear door of the car, chattering away to Jude and to the second woman, who stepped out of the passenger side. And, it seemed, to the world in general.
“I’m Kathy Duffy from down to the village, and this is Betsy Clooney, my niece on my sister’s side. Patty Mary, my sister, works at the food shop today or she’d’ve come to pay her respects as well. But I said to Betsy this morning, why if she could get her neighbor to mind the baby while the two older were in school, we’d just come on up to Faerie Hill Cottage and say good day to Old Maude’s cousin from America.”
She said most of this with her rather impressive bottom, currently covered by the eye-popping garden of red poppies rioting over her dress, facing Jude as she wiggled into the back of the car. She wiggled out again, face slightly flushed, with a covered cake dish and a beaming smile.
“You look a bit like your grandmother,” Kathy went on, “as I remember her from when I was a girl. I hope she’s well.”
“Yes, very. Thank you. Ah, so nice of you to come by.” She opened the gate. “Please come in.”
“I hope we gave you time enough to settle.” Betsy walked around the car, and Jude remembered her from the pub the night before. The woman with her family at one of the low tables. Somehow even that vague connection helped.
“I mentioned to Aunt Kathy that I saw you at the pub last night, at Gallagher’s? And we thought you might be ready for a bit of a welcome.”
“You were with your family. Your children were so well behaved.”
“Oh, well.” Betsy rolled eyes of clear glass green. “No need to disabuse you of such a notion so soon. You’ve none of your own, then?”
“No, I’m not married. I’ll make some tea if you’d like,” she began as they stepped inside the front door.
“That would be lovely.” Kathy started down the hall,
obviously comfortable in the cottage. “We’ll have a nice visit in the kitchen.”
To Jude’s surprise, they did. She spent a pleasant hour with two women who had warm ways and easy laughs. It was simple enough to judge that Kathy Duffy was a chatterbox, and not a little opinionated, but she did it all with great good humor.
Before the hour was over, Jude’s head swam with the names and relations of the people of Ardmore, the feuds and the families, the weddings and the wakes. If there was something Katherine Anne Duffy didn’t know about any soul who lived in the area during the last century, well, it wasn’t worth mentioning.
“It’s a pity you never met Old Maude,” Kathy commented. “For she was a fine woman.”
“My grandmother was very fond of her.”
“More like sisters than cousins they were, despite the age difference.” Kathy nodded. “Your granny, she lived here as a girl after she lost her parents. My own mother was friends with the pair of them, and both she and Maude missed your granny when she married and moved to America.”
“And Maude stayed here.” Jude glanced around the kitchen. “Alone.”
“That’s the way it was meant. She had a sweetheart, and they planned to marry.”
“Oh? What happened?”
“His name was John Magee. My mother says he was a handsome lad who loved the sea. He went for a soldier during the Great War and lost his life in the fields of France.”
“It’s sad,” Betsy put in, “but romantic too. Maude never loved another, and she often spoke of him when we came
to visit, though he’d been dead nearly three-quarters of a century.”
“For some,” Kathy said with a sigh, “there’s only one. None comes before and none after. But Old Maude, she lived happy here, with her memories and her flowers.”
“It’s a contented house,” Jude said, then immediately felt foolish. But Kathy Duffy only smiled and nodded again.
“It is, yes. And those of us who knew her are happy one of her own is living here now. It’s good you’re getting around the village, meeting people and acquainting yourself with some of your kin.”
“Kin?”
“You’re kin to the Fitzgeralds, and there are plenty of them in and around Old Parish. My friend Deidre, who’s in Boston now, was a Fitzgerald before she married Patrick Gallagher. You were at their place last night.”
“Oh, yes.” Aidan’s face immediately swam into Jude’s mind. The slow smile, the wildly blue eyes. “We’re cousins of some sort.”
“Seems to me your granny was first cousin to Deidre’s great-aunt Sarah. Or maybe it was her great-granny and they were second cousins. Well, hardly matters. Now the oldest Gallagher lad”—Kathy paused long enough to nibble on one of her cakes—“you had your eye on him at one time, didn’t you, Betsy?”
“I might have glanced his way a time or two, when I was a lass of sixteen.” Betsy’s eyes laughed over her cup. “And he might’ve glanced back as well. Then he went off on his rambles, and there was my Tom. When Aidan Gallagher came back . . . well, I might have glanced again, but only in appreciation for God’s creation.”