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‘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.’
CHAPTER FIVE
THE NURSERY WAS on the top floor and the stairway was narrow. The horse went first, manoeuvred around the bends with Finn at the head and Jo at the tail. Once downstairs, Finn headed for the stables and came back with crumbling timber while Jo carted more toys.
While they carried the horse down she was still shaking with anger. Her anger carried her through the first few armfuls of assorted toys but as Finn finished creating the bonfire and started helping her carry toys she felt her anger start to dissipate.
He was just too cheerful.
‘This teddy looks like he’s been in a tug of war or six,’ Finn told her, placing the teddy halfway up the pyre. ‘It’s well time for him to go up in flames.’
It was a scruffy bear, small, rubbed bare in spots, one arm missing. One ear was torn off and his grin was sort of lopsided.
She thought of unknown ancestors hugging this bear. Then she thought of her mother and hardened her heart. ‘Yes,’ she said shortly and Finn cast her a questioning glance but headed upstairs for another load.
She followed, carting down a giraffe, two decrepit sets of wooden railway tracks and a box of blocks.
The giraffe was lacking a bit of stuffing. He was lopsided.
He was sort of looking at her.
‘It’s like the French Revolution,’ Finn told her, stacking them neatly on his ever-growing pyre. ‘All the aristocracy off to the Guillotine. I can just imagine these guys saying, “Let them eat cake”.’
But she couldn’t. Not quite.
The horse was sitting right on top of the pile, still looking aristocratic and nasty. The teddy was just underneath him. It was an old teddy. No one would want that teddy.
She was vaguely aware of Mrs O’Reilly watching from the kitchen window. She looked bemused. She wasn’t saying anything, though.
These toys were theirs now, to do with as they wanted, Jo thought with a sudden stab of clarity. Hers and Finn’s. They represented generations of favoured children, but now...were she and Finn the favoured two?
She glanced at Finn, looking for acknowledgement that he was feeling something like she was—anger, resentment, sadness.
Guilt?
All she saw was a guy revelling in the prospect of a truly excellent bonfire. He was doing guy stuff, fiddling with toys so they made a sweeping pyre, putting the most flammable stuff at the bottom, the horse balanced triumphantly at the top.
He was a guy having fun.
‘Ready?’ he asked and she realised he had matches poised.
‘Yes,’ she said in a small voice and Finn shook his head.
‘You’ll have to do better than that. You’re the lady of the castle, remember. It’s an autocratic “Off with their heads”, or the peasants will sense weakness. Strength, My Lady.’
‘Off with their heads,’ she managed but it was pretty weak.
But still, she’d said it and Finn looked at her for a long moment, then gave a decisive nod and bent and applied match to kindling.
It took a few moments for the wood to catch. Finn could have put a couple of the more flammable toys at the base, she thought. That would have made it go up faster. Instead he’d left a bare spot so the fire would have to be strongly alight before it reached its target.
The teddy would be one of the first things to catch, she thought. The teddy with the missing ear and no arm. And an eye that needed a stitch to make his smile less wonky.
She could...
No. These were favoured toys of favoured people. They’d belonged to people who’d rejected her. People who’d given her their name but nothing else. People who’d made sure she had nothing, and done it for their own selfish ends.
The teddy... One stitch...
The flames were licking upward.
The giraffe was propped beside the teddy. There was a bit of stuffing oozing out from his neck. She could...
She couldn’t. The fire was lit. The thing was done.
‘Jo?’ Finn was suddenly beside her, his hand on her shoulder, holding her with the faintest of pressure. ‘Jo?’
She didn’t reply. She didn’t take her eyes from the fire.
‘You’re sure you want to do this?’ he asked.
‘It’s lit.’
‘I’m a man who’s into insurance,’ he said softly and she looked down and saw he was holding a hose.
A hose. To undo what she needed to do.
The teddy...
Even the evil horse...
She couldn’t do it. Dammit, she couldn’t. She choked back a stupid sob and grabbed for the hose. ‘Okay, put it out.’
‘You want the fire out?’
‘I’ll do it.’
‘You’ll wet the teddy,’ he said reproachfully. ‘He’ll get hypothermia as well as scorched feet. Trust me, if there’s one thing I’m good at it’s putting out fires.’
And he screwed the nozzle and aimed the hose. The water came out with satisfactory force. The wood under the teddy hissed and sizzled. Flames turned to smoke and then steam.
The teddy was enveloped with smoke but, before she realised what he intended, Finn stomped forward in his heavy boots, aimed the hose downward to protect his feet, then reached up and gathered the unfortunate bear.
And the giraffe.
He played the water for a moment longer until he was sure that no spark remained, then twisted the nozzle to off and turned back to her.
He handed her the teddy.
‘Yours,’ he said. ‘And I know I said I have too much stuff, but I’m thinking I might keep the giraffe. I’ll call him Noddy.’
She tried to laugh but it came out sounding a bit too much like a sob. ‘N... Noddy. Because...because of his neck?’
‘He’s lost his stuffing,’ Finn said seriously. ‘He can’t do anything but nod. And Teddy’s Loppy because he’s lopsided. He looks like he’s met the family dog. One side looks chewed.’
‘It’d be the castle dog. Not a family dog.’
‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong,’ he said, softly now, his gaze not leaving her face. As if he knew the tumult of stupid emotions raging within her. ‘These people rejected us for all sorts of reasons but somehow they still are family. Our family. Toe-rags most of them, but some will have been decent. Some will have been weak, or vain or silly, and some cruel and thoughtless, but they were who they were. This...’ he waved to the heap of toys spared from the flames ‘...this is just detritus from their passing.’
‘Like us.’
‘We’re not detritus. We’re people who make decisions. We’re people who’ve spared a nursery full of toys and now need to think what to do with them.’ He looked doubtfully at his lopsided giraffe. ‘You did say you could sew.’
‘I...I did.’
‘Then I’ll ask you to fix him so he can sit in my toolshed and watch me do shed stuff. Maybe Loppy can sit on your handlebars and watch you ride.’
‘That’d be silly.’
‘Silly’s better than haunted.’
She stared at the pile of ancient toys, and then she turned and looked up at the castle.
‘It’s not its fault.’
‘It’s not even the horse’s,’ Finn said gently. ‘Though I bet he collaborated.’
‘He’d probably sell for heaps.’
‘He would. I didn’t like to say but there’s been one like him in the window of the antique shop in the village at home. He has a three hundred pound price tag.’
‘Three hundred... You didn’t think to mention that when I wanted to burn him?’
‘I do like a good bonfire.’
She choked on a bubble of laughter, emotion dissipating, and then she stared at the horse again. Getting sensible. ‘We could give him away. To a children’s charity or something.’
‘Or we could sell him to someone who likes arrogant horses and give the money instead,’ Finn told her. ‘Think how many bears we could donate with three hundred pounds. Kids need friends, not horses who only associate with the aristocracy.’
There was a long silence. Mrs O’Reilly had disappeared from her window, no doubt confused by the on-again off-again bonfire. The sun was warm on Jo’s face. In the shelter of the ancient outbuildings there wasn’t a breath of wind. The stone walls around her were bathed in sunshine, their grey walls softened by hundreds of years of wear, of being the birthplace of hundreds of Conaills, of whom only a few had been born with the privilege of living here.
‘I guess we can’t burn the whole castle because of one arrogant grandfather and one ditzy mother,’ she said at last, and Finn looked thoughtful. Almost regretful.
‘We could but we’ll need more kindling.’
She chuckled but it came close to being a sob. She was hugging the teddy. Stupidly. She didn’t hug teddies. She didn’t hug anything.
‘I suppose we should get rational,’ she managed. ‘We could go through, figure what could make money, sell what we can.’
‘And make a bonfire at the end?’ he asked, still hopefully, and her bubble of laughter stayed. A guy with the prospect of a truly excellent bonfire...
‘The sideboards in the main hall are riddled with woodworm,’ she told him, striving for sense. ‘Mrs O’Reilly told me. They’d burn well.’
‘Now you’re talking.’
She turned back to the pile of unburned toys and her laughter faded. ‘You must think I’m stupid.’
‘I’m thinking you’re angry,’ Finn told her. He paused and then added, ‘I’m thinking you have cause.’
‘I’m over it.’
‘Can you ever be over not being wanted?’
‘That’s just the trouble,’ she said, and she stared up at the horse again because it was easier looking at a horse than looking at Finn. He seemed to see inside her, this man, and to say it was disconcerting would be putting it mildly. ‘I was wanted. Three separate sets of foster parents wanted to adopt me but the Conaills never let it happen. But I’m a big girl now. I have myself together.’
‘And you have Loppy.’
‘I’ll lose him. I always lose stuff.’
‘You don’t have to lose stuff. With the money from here you can buy yourself a warehouse and employ a storeman to catalogue every last teddy.’ He gestured to the pile. ‘You can keep whatever you want.’
‘I don’t know...what I want.’
‘You have time to figure it out.’
‘So what about you?’ she demanded suddenly. ‘What do you want? You’re a lord now. If you could...would you stay here?’
‘As a lord...’ He sounded startled. ‘No! But if I had time with these sheep...’
‘What would you do with them?’ she asked curiously, and he shrugged and turned and looked out towards the distant hills.
‘Someone, years ago, put thought and care into these guys’ breeding. They’re tough, but this flock’s different to the sheep that run on the bogs. Their coats are finer. As well, their coats also seem repellent. You put your hand through a fleece and you’ll find barely a burr.’
‘Could you take some back to your farm? Interbreed?’
‘Why would I do that? Our sheep are perfect for the conditions there. These are bred for different conditions. Different challenges.’ And he gazed out over the land and she thought he looked...almost hungry.
‘You’d like a challenge,’ she ventured and he nodded.
‘I guess. But this is huge. And Lord of Glenconaill... I’d be ridiculous. Have you seen what the previous lords wore in their portraits?’
She grinned. ‘You could ditch the leggings.’
‘And the wigs?’
‘Hmm.’ She looked up at his gorgeous thatch of dark brown hair, the sun making the copper glints more pronounced, and she appeared to consider. ‘You realise not a single ancestor is showing coloured hair. They wore hats or wigs or waited until they’d turned a nice, dignified white.’
‘So if I’m attached to my hair I’m doomed to peasantry.’
‘I guess.’
‘Then peasantry it is,’ he said and he smiled and reached out and touched her copper curls. ‘I don’t mind. I kind of like the company.’
And then silence fell. It was a strange kind of silence, Jo thought. A different silence. As if questions were being asked and answered, and thought about and then asked again.
The last wisps of leftover smoke were wafting upwards into the warm spring sunshine. The castle loomed behind them, vast and brooding, as if a reminder that something immeasurable was connecting them. A shared legacy.
A bond.
This man was her sort-of cousin, Jo thought, but the idea was a vague distraction, unreal. This man was not her family. He was large and male and beautiful. Yet he felt...
He felt unlike any of the guys she’d ever dated. He felt familiar in a sense that didn’t make sense.
He felt...terrifying. Jo Conaill was always in control. She’d never gone out with someone who’d shaken that control, but just standing beside him...
‘It feels right,’ Finn said and she gazed up at him in bewilderment.
‘What feels right?’
‘I have no idea. To stand here with you?’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘So am I. We have lives. It’s just...for here, for now...it feels okay.’ He paused but there was no need for him to continue. She felt it too. This sense of...home.
What was she thinking? Home wasn’t here. Home wasn’t this man.
‘My home’s my bike,’ she said, out of nowhere, and she said it too sharply, but he nodded as if she’d said something that needed consideration.
‘I can see that, though the bike’s pretty draughty. And there’s no bath for when you fall into bogs.’
‘I don’t normally fall into bogs.’
‘I can see that too. You’re very, very careful, despite that bad girl image.’
‘I don’t have a bad girl image.’
‘Leathers and piercings?’ He smiled down at her, a smile that robbed his words of all possible offence. And then he lifted her arm to reveal a bracelet tattoo, a ring of tiny rosebuds around her wrist. ‘And tattoos. My nieces and nephews will think you’re cool.’
‘Your nieces and nephews won’t get to see it.’
‘You don’t want to meet them?’
‘Why would I want to?’
‘They’re family, too.’
‘Not my family.’
‘It seems to me,’ he said softly, ‘that family’s where you find it. And it also seems that somehow you’ve found it. Your hair gives you away.’
‘If we’re talking about my red hair then half of Ireland has it.’
‘It’s a very specific red,’ he told her. ‘My daddy had your hair and I know if I’ve washed mine nicely you can see the glint of his colour in mine.’ And he lifted a finger and twisted one of her short curls. His smile deepened, an all-enveloping smile that was enough to make a woman sink into it. ‘Family,’ he said softly. ‘Welcome to it, Jo Conaill. You and your teddy.’
‘I don’t want...’
‘Family? Are you sure?’
‘Y...yes.’
‘That’s a big declaration. And a lonely one.’ He turned so he was facing her, then tilted her chin a little so her gaze was meeting his. ‘I might have been raised in poverty, but it seems to me that you’ve been raised with the more desperate need. Does no one love you, Jo Conaill?’
‘No. I mean...’ Why was he looking at her? Why was he smiling? It was twisting something inside her, and it was something she’d guarded for a very long time. Something she didn’t want twisting.
‘I won’t hurt you, Jo,’ he said into the stillness and his words made whatever it was twist still more. ‘I promise you that. I would never hurt you. I’m just saying...’
And then he stopped...saying.
* * *
Finn Conaill had been trying to work it out in his head. Ever since he’d met her something was tugging him to her. Connecting.
It must be the family connection, he’d thought. Or it must be her past.
She looked stubborn, indecisive, defiant.
She looked afraid.
She’d taken a step back from him and she was staring down at the bear in her arms as if it was a bomb about to detonate.
She didn’t want family. She didn’t want home.
And yet...
She wanted the teddy. He knew she did.
By now he had some insight into what her childhood must have been. A kid alone, passed from foster family to foster family. Moved on whenever the ties grew so strong someone wanted her.
Learning that love meant separation. Grief.
Learning that family wasn’t for her.
A cluster of wild pigeons was fussing on the cobblestones near the stables. Their soft cooing was a soothing background, a reassurance that all was well on this peaceful morning. And yet all wasn’t well with this woman before him. He watched her stare down at the teddy with something akin to despair.
She wanted the teddy. She wanted...more.
Only she couldn’t want. Wanting had been battered out of her.
She was so alone.
Family... The word slammed into his mind and stayed. He’d been loyal to Maeve for so many years he couldn’t remember and he’d thought that loyalty was inviolate. But he’d known Jo for only three days, and somehow she was slipping into his heart. He was starting to care.
‘Jo...’ he said into the silence and she stared up at him with eyes that were hopelessly confused, hopelessly lost.
‘Jo,’ he said again.
And what happened next seemed to happen of its own volition. It was no conscious movement on his part, or hers.
It was nothing to do with them and yet it was everything.
He took the teddy from her grasp and placed it carefully on the ground.
He took her hands in his. He drew her forward—and he kissed her.
Had he meant to?
He didn’t have a clue. This was unchartered territory.
For this wasn’t a kiss of passion. It wasn’t a kiss he’d ever experienced before. In truth, in its beginning it hardly felt like a kiss.
He tilted her chin very gently, with the image of a wild creature strongly with him. She could pull away, and he half expected her to. But she stayed passive, staring mutely up at him before his mouth met hers. Her chin tilted with the pressure of his fingers and she gazed into his eyes with an expression he couldn’t begin to understand. There was a sort of resigned indifference, an expression which should have had him stepping back, but behind the indifference he saw a flare of frightened...hope?
He didn’t want her indifferent, and it would be worse to frighten her. But the hope was there, and she was beautiful and her mouth was lush and partly open. And her eyes invited him in...
It was the gentlest of kisses, a soft, tentative exploration, a kiss that understood there were boundaries and he wasn’t sure where they were but he wasn’t about to broach them.
His kiss said Trust me. His kiss matched that flare of hope he was sure he’d seen. His kiss said, You’re beautiful and I don’t understand it but something inside is drawing me to you. And it said, This kiss is just the beginning.
* * *
Her first reaction was almost hysterical. Her roller coaster of emotions had her feeling this was happening to someone other than her.
But it was her. She was letting the Lord of Glenconaill kiss her.
Was she out of her mind?
No. Of course she wasn’t. This was just a kiss, after all, and she was no prude. She was twenty-eight years old and there’d been men before. Of course there had. Nothing serious—she didn’t do serious—but she certainly had fun. And this man was lovely. Gorgeous even. She could take him right now, she thought. She could tug him to her bed, or maybe they should use his bed because hers was ridiculously small. And then she could tear off his gear and see his naked body, which she was sure would be excellent, and she was sure the sex would be great...
Instead of which, her lips were barely touching his and her body was responding with a fear that said, Go no further. Go no further because one thing she valued above all others was control, and if she let this man hold her...
Except he was holding her. His kiss was warm and strong and true.
True? What sort of description was that for a kiss?
But then, in an instant, she was no longer thinking of descriptions. She wasn’t thinking of anything at all. The kiss was taking over. The kiss was taking her to places she’d never been before. The kiss was...mind-blowing.
It was as if there’d been some sort of shorting to her brain. Every single nerve ending was snapped to attention, discarding whatever it was they’d been concentrating on and rerouting to her mouth. To his mouth. To the fusing of their bodies.
To the heat of him, to the strength, to the feeling of solid, fierce desire. For this was no cousinly kiss. This wasn’t even a standard kiss between man and woman or if it was it wasn’t something Jo had ever experienced before.
She was losing her mind. No, she’d lost it. She was lost in his kiss, melting, moulding against him, opening her lips, savouring the heat, the taste, the want—and she wanted more.
Her body was screaming for more. That was what all those nerve endings were doing—they’d forgotten their no doubt normally sensible functions and they were screaming, This is where you’re meant to be. Have. Hold.