His Cinderella Heiress (14 page)

‘So I could,' he said easily. ‘If that's what I wanted.'

‘Finn...'

‘Mmm.'

‘It is too fast.'

‘It is and all,' he said and then he didn't say anything for a while. They simply stood, hand in hand, in the moonlight while thoughts, feelings, sensations zinged back and forth between them. Things changed. Things grew.

‘I should...go to bed,' Jo said at last and the zinging increased a little.

A lot.

‘So should I,' Finn told her. ‘Noddy's waiting.'

‘Your giraffe?'

‘And your teddy's waiting for you,' he told her placidly, and she could hear the smile in his voice, even if she couldn't see it in the dark. ‘So you'll be sleeping in your tiny bed with your teddy, and I'll be sleeping in my grand bed with my giraffe. Jo...'

‘Mmm?' She was almost afraid to breathe.

‘My bed's big enough for four.'

‘It's...too soon.'

‘Of course it is.' He was instantly contrite. ‘Sorry I ever mentioned it. It's just that I thought Noddy and Loppy might sleep better with company.' His hand still held hers, and it felt...okay. ‘Same with us,' he told her. ‘I'm sure this castle has its share of ghosts.
Taibhse
. I thought I heard them last night, clanking round in the basements. I'm sure I'd sleep better with company.'

‘Just to keep the
taibhse
at bay.'

‘That's it,' he said cheerfully. ‘I'm a 'fraidy cat.'

‘I'm very sure you're not.'

‘And you, Jo Conaill?' And suddenly his voice lost all trace of laughter. He turned and took her other hand so he had them both and he was gazing down at her in the moonlight. His grip was strong and sure, and yet she knew if she pulled back he'd let her go in an instant. ‘Are you afraid, my Jo?'

‘I'm not...your Jo.'

‘You're not,' he told her. ‘As you say, it's too soon. Too fast. Too...scary?'

And yet it wasn't. What was scary about leaving her hands between his? What was scary about taking this giant step into the unknown?

A step towards loving?

Why not? Why on earth not?

‘I...it'd be only for Loppy and Noddy,' she ventured, and his smile played out again but it was a different smile, a smile full of tenderness, of promise. Of wonder.

‘Only for the children,' he agreed. ‘Jo...'

‘Mmm?' She could hardly make her voice work.

‘Will you let me carry you to our bedroom?'

Our bedroom
. There it was, just like that.
Ours
.

She'd never had an
ours.

And to be carried as she'd been carried before, heartbroken, kicking and screaming, being carried away...

But this time she'd not be carried away, she thought. She'd be carried to a bed with Loppy and Noddy. And Finn.

He was waiting for her answer. He'd wait, she thought, this big, gentle man who was the Lord of Glenconaill and yet he wasn't. This man who was just... Finn.

Finn, the man who was holding her hands and smiling down at her and waiting for her to find the courage to step forward.

Only she didn't need to step forward. He was waiting to carry her. If she could just find the breath to speak.

‘Yes, please,' she managed and his grip on her hands tightened. He knew how big this was for her. He knew her fear.

She felt exposed to him, she thought, in a way she'd never let herself be exposed before. This man held her heart in his hands. She'd laid herself open.

She trusted.

‘You're sure,
a mhuirnín
?'

‘Are you sure that means
my sweetheart
?'

‘My sweetheart. My darling. My love. Take your pick.'

‘I think,' she said, and her voice was so trembly she had trouble making it work at all, ‘that I choose them all.'

And then there was no need for words for Finn's grip on her tightened. Before she knew what he was about he'd swung her up into his arms.

And she didn't fight him. Why would she? There was no need for fighting.

As three little cows basked peacefully under the moonlight, the Lord of Glenconaill carried his lady back into his castle, up the grand staircase and into his bed.

Into his heart.

CHAPTER NINE

T
HIS
WAS
A
secret world. This couldn't possibly be real—and yet it was.

She was the Lady of the Castle. Castle Glenconaill was hers to wander at leisure, explore, to think about what could be done with all these treasures.

A week ago she'd been going from room to room deciding what was to be kept for some vague family archive—some family that wasn't hers.

Now she and Finn were hauling off dust covers, bouncing on sofas, saying, ‘Let's keep this one...no, this one...how about both? How about all?'

She was a kid in a sweet shop, suddenly knowing every sweet could be hers. This world could belong to her and to Finn, and as the days went on it felt more and more wonderful.

It felt right.

Castle or not, it felt like home.

And it had nothing at all to do with the fact that this was a castle, part of an inheritance so large she could hardly take it in. It had everything to do with the way Finn smiled at her, laughed with her, teased her. With the way Finn took her to his bed and enfolded her body with a passion that brought tears to her eyes.

With the way Finn loved her...

And there was the heart of what was happening. Finn loved her.

It's hormones
, she told herself in the moments when she was trying to be sensible. She'd read somewhere that no one should ever make a long-term relationship decision in the first few months of hormonal rush, and yet the decision seemed almost to have been made.

For Finn loved her and she was sure of it. In the closeness of the night he held her and he whispered words to her, sometimes in Gaelic, sometimes in words she knew, but, either way, the meaning was as obvious as the way he held her.

She was loved.

She was...home.

And surely that was the most seductive word of all. Jo Conaill had finally found a place she trusted, a place where she couldn't be turned out on the whim of her ditzy mother or the problems of a troubled foster parenting system. This was a place that was hers. Or, okay, it was half hers but it didn't matter that it was half hers because the other half was Finn's and Finn loved her.

And she loved him.

She loved everything about him. She loved that he was his own man. She loved that even on that first morning, after a night of lovemaking that made her feel as if her world had been transformed entirely, he'd pushed back the covers and smiled down at her and left.

‘I need to check the cows.' He'd kissed her and went to check on the newborn calf, and she'd looked out of the window and seen him turn from the cows and gaze out over the land to the sheep grazing in the distance. She knew he cared about so much more than just her.

But then he'd come back to her and they'd showered together and made love again. Afterwards she'd taken more tapestries down to the stream. Life had started again, only rebooted with a different power source.

Rebooted with love and with trust.

It was almost dark now. She was sitting by the fire sorting threads she'd bought by mail from Dublin. She had enough to start her tapestry.

She could stay here until she finished it, she thought dreamily. She could walk the hills with Finn during the day. She could help him with the stock. They could put off contacting the lawyer until...until...

She didn't want to know until when. She just wanted to
be
.

‘Hey.' He'd entered silently. She looked up and smiled, at her Lord of Castle Glenconaill in his stockinged feet, his worn trousers, his sleeves rolled to reveal his brawny arms. Her man of the land. Her lord and her lover.

‘Sewing a fine seam, My Lady?'

‘Help me sort the threads,' she said calmly. ‘I want the blues sorted left to right, pale to dark.'

‘Yes, ma'am,' he said and sat and sorted and she sat by the massive fireplace and thought she'd never been so at peace. She could never be any happier than she was right at this moment.

And then, when the blues were in a neat line, he looked up at her and his eyes gleamed in the firelight.

‘Threads sorted, My Lady,' he told her. ‘The work of the world is done. The castle's at peace and it's time for the lord of the castle to take his lady to bed. Are you up for it?'

And she grinned like an idiot, smiling into his laughing eyes, falling deeper and deeper.

And when he lifted her into his arms, as he did most nights now, there was no panic.

She was home.

* * *

Only of course she wasn't.

Paradise was for fools. How many times had she learned that as a child? Trust was what happened just before the end.

* * *

Finn was out with the sheep when he came. It was mid-morning. Jo had taken the farm truck into town to pick up feed supplement for the cows. They'd thought to go together but one of the sheep had caught itself on a fence and lacerated its hind quarters.

‘I'm not good with blood,' Jo had said, looking at the sheep with dismay. ‘I managed with the calf but that was because I could do it by feel, with my eyes closed. Yikes. Will you need to put it down?'

‘I can stitch it.'

‘You!'

‘There's no end to my talents,' he'd told her, grinning. ‘I wasn't always Lord Conaill, able to ring whoever and say, “Stitch it, my good man”. Needs must.'

‘Can you stop it hurting?' she said dubiously and he'd shown her the kit he always carried in the back of his truck and she'd shuddered and headed for the village so she didn't have to watch.

The sheep wasn't as badly injured as the amount of blood suggested. Finn cleaned, stitched, loaded her with antibiotic and set her free, then stood for a while looking out over the land, thinking of everything he could do with this place. Thinking of everything he and Jo could do with this place.

The prospect almost made him dizzy. This farm and Jo.

He'd never met anyone like her. His loyalties had somehow done a quantum shift. His castle, his lady. Jo made him feel...

‘My Lord?' It was Mrs O'Reilly, calling from the top of the ha-ha. She refused to call him anything other than
My Lord
and lately she'd even started calling Jo
My Lady
. Much to Jo's discomfort.

He turned and saw the housekeeper and then he saw who was beside her.

Martin Bourke.

Maeve's father.

Mrs O'Reilly waved and Martin negotiated the ha-ha and came across the field towards him, a stocky, steady man, grizzled from sixty years of farm life, a man whose horizons were totally set on his farm and his daughter.

Finn's heart sank as he saw him. Now what?

‘Martin,' he said, forcing his greeting to be easy-going. He held out his hand. ‘Good to see you.'

‘It's not good to see you,' Martin snapped and stood six feet back from him and glared. ‘You're sitting pretty here all right. Lord of Glenconaill. Think you're better than us, do you?'

‘You know me better than that, Martin.' He should. Martin Bourke had been his neighbour all his life. Finn and Maeve were the same age. They'd started school together, had been firm friends, had been in and out of each other's houses since childhood.

Maeve had been a friend and then, somehow, a girlfriend. There'd always been an assumption that they were destined to be a pair. But then things had changed...

‘You'll come home and marry her,' Martin snapped and Finn thought,
Whoa, that's pushing things to a new level.

‘Martin...'

‘I couldn't get any sense out of her. Nothing. That day you left... She came home weeping and went straight back to Dublin and have I got a word of sense out of her since? I have not. I thought there's been a tiff, nothing more, that it was more of this nonsense of giving her space, but yesterday I'd had enough. So I went to Dublin and I walked into this fine bookshop she's been working in and she was standing side on to the door. And I saw... She's pregnant. Pregnant and never a word to me. Her father. Did you know? Did you?'

‘I knew,' he said heavily. ‘She told me the morning I left.'

‘So...'

‘Martin, it's not...'

‘Don't tell me,' he snapped. ‘She says it's nothing to do with you and she'll come home at the weekend and we'll talk about it. Nothing to do with you? When she's been loving you for years? I know she's got cold feet. Women do, but if a child's on the way it's time to forget that nonsense. Look at you in your grand castle with your grand title. If you think you can walk away from your responsibilities... You'll come home and marry her or I'll bring her here, even if I have to pick her up and carry her. You'll make an honest woman of her, Finn Conaill, or I'll...I'll...'

‘You'll what?' Finn said quite mildly. ‘Martin, Maeve loves you. That's the only reason she'd marry me—to make you happy. I know that now. Will you push her into marrying a man she doesn't love because she loves you?'

The man stared at him in baffled fury. ‘She wants to marry you. The farms... She wants that as much as I do.'

But she didn't. It was the curse of loving, Finn thought. Maeve's mother had died giving birth to the much wanted son who'd been stillborn, and Maeve had been trying to make it up to her father ever since. Until she'd fled to Dublin she'd never had the courage to stand up for what she wanted.

‘I'm guessing this woman you have here is the reason,' Martin snapped. ‘I saw her in the village when I asked for directions. “Where's the castle?” I asked, and they pointed to this trollop with piercings and hair cut like a boy and said she's the lady of the castle and would I be looking for her or for her man? And by her man they meant you. And your housekeeper says she's living here. Is that why Maeve's crying her eyes out? If you think you can leave her with a child...'

Finn raked his hair and tried to sort it in his head. He thought of all the things he could say to this man. He thought of all the things he should say.

He could say nothing. It had to come from Maeve. She'd been his friend for ever. She was in trouble and he wasn't about to cut her loose.

‘I'll go and see her,' he told him.

‘You'll come with me to Dublin. Now.'

‘No,' Finn snapped. ‘What's between Maeve and me is between Maeve and me. You point a shotgun at the pair of us and it'll make no difference. Leave it, Martin. Go home.'

‘You'll leave this trollop and fetch Maeve home?'

‘If you ever refer to Jo as a trollop again you'll find your teeth somewhere around your ankles,' he said quite mildly. ‘Go home and wait for Maeve.'

Martin left. Finn went inside and cleaned up and thought of what he should do.

Wait until tomorrow? Tell Jo what was happening? But it sounded sordid, he thought.
Jo, I'm going to Dublin to tell my ex-girlfriend to tell her father she's having a baby that's not mine.

The words made him feel vaguely grubby. And angry. How was he in this mess? He should walk from the lot of them.

But his loyalty held him. Martin had helped him when his father died. Without Martin's help, the farm would have gone under.

And Maeve had been his friend for ever.

He could do this, he thought. He'd make a fast trip to Dublin, sort it out, bang their thick heads together if need be and be back late tonight.

Should he leave a note for Jo? How could he? How to explain the unexplainable?

He swore.

And then he lightened. This was the last obligation, he thought. The last link tying him to his old life.

He could do this and then come home to Jo. He could tell her what had happened face to face, and then they could move on with their life together. Here.

This was the start of a new loyalty, to this castle and to each other.

* * *

‘He's had to go to Dublin on family business. He'll be back late tonight. He said don't worry and he'll explain things when he gets back.'

Jo stared at Mrs O'Reilly in bemusement. She wasn't so much worried about what the housekeeper was saying. There were any number of reasons why Finn could suddenly be called away. After all, he'd left his farm for longer than he'd intended. Things could go wrong. But it was the way the housekeeper was saying it, as if there was a well of titillating facts behind the words.

She wouldn't enquire, she decided. Finn's business was Finn's business.

She headed for the stairs. She needed to wash. One of the bags had split when she'd hauled it out of the truck. She'd scooped it back together but cow food supplement stank.

But Mrs O'Reilly didn't move and then she spoke again.

‘He's got another woman and she's in the family way.' The housekeeper's words came out as a gasp. ‘I shouldn't say, but girl, it's true. Her father came today, shouting, threatening, mad as fire. Five months gone, she is, and when's he going to marry her? That's what her dadda's demanding! And it seems she's in Dublin, all alone, and your man's saying it's naught to do with him. And I shouldn't have heard but sound carries across the fields and such anger... Two bulls at each other's throats. “You make an honest woman of her”, her father said and loud enough to be heard from Dublin itself. So off they went, separate though, His Lordship looking grim as death and her father looking like he wanted his gun. And I don't like to break it to you, when you've been so good to me, but hiding things behind your back... Well, it's best you know. I'm sorry.'

Silence. Jo didn't say a word.

She couldn't.

What was there to say?

He's got another woman and she's in the family way.

This had been a fairy tale, she thought in the tiny part of her brain that wasn't filled with white noise. This inheritance, this castle, this...love story? This fantasy that she could possibly have found her home.