His Cinderella Heiress (7 page)

He was sure she did.

‘You saw me working?' he managed and she nodded.

‘I walked past and you didn't see me. It feels good, doesn't it, working on something you love. So...half a yard of wall fixed, three or four hundred yards to go? Reckon you'll be finished in a week?' She clambered nimbly up the bank and turned and offered a hand. ‘Need a pull?'

‘No,' he said, and she grinned and withdrew her hand.

And he missed it. He should have just taken it. If he had she would have tugged and he would have ended up right beside her. Really close.

But she was smiling and turning to head back to the castle and it was dumb to feel a sense of opportunity lost.

What was he thinking? Life was complicated enough without feeling...what he was feeling...

And that's enough of that
, he told himself soundly. It behoved a man to take a deep breath and get himself together. This woman was...complicated, and hadn't he decided on the safe option in life? His brothers had all walked off the land to make their fortunes and they'd done well. But Finn... He'd stayed and he'd worked the land he'd inherited. He'd aimed for a good farm on fertile land. A steady income. A steady woman?

Like Maeve. That was a joke. He'd thought his dreams were her dreams. He'd known her since childhood and yet it seemed he hadn't known her at all.

So how could he think he knew Jo after less than a day?

And why was he wondering how he could know her better?

‘So do you intend to keep the suits of armour?' Jo asked and he struggled to haul his thoughts back to here and now. Though actually they were here and now. They were centred on a slip of a girl in a bright crimson sweater and jeans and stained trainers.

If Maeve had come to the castle with him, she'd have spent a week shopping for clothes in preparation.

But his relationship with Maeve was long over—apart from the minor complication that she wouldn't tell her father.

The sun was on his face. Jo was by his side, matching his stride even though her legs were six inches shorter than his. She looked bright and interested and free.

Of course she was free. She was discussing the fate of two suits of armour before she climbed back on her bike and headed back to Australia.

‘I can't see them back on the farm,' he admitted.

‘Your farm is somewhere near a place called Kilkenny,' she said. ‘So where is that? You head down to Tipperary and turn...?'

‘North-east. I don't go that way. But how do you know of Tipperary?'

‘I looked it up on the map when I knew I was coming. There's a song...
It's a Long Way to Tipperary
. I figured that's where I was coming. A long way. And you farm cows and sheep?'

‘The dairy's profitable but I'd like to get into sheep.'

‘It's a big farm?'

‘Compared to Australian land holdings, no. But it's very profitable.'

‘And you love it.'

Did he love it?

As a kid he certainly had, when the place was rundown, when everywhere he'd looked there'd been challenges. But now the farm was doing well and promising to do better. With the money from the castle he could buy properties to the north.

If he wanted to.

‘It's a great place,' he said mildly. ‘How about you? Do you work at what you love?'

‘I work to fund what I love.'

‘Which is?'

‘Tapestry and motorbikes.'

‘Tell me about tapestry,' he said, and she looked a bit defensive.

‘I didn't just look up the Internet and decide to restore from Internet Lesson 101. I've been playing with tapestries for years.'

‘Why?' It seemed so unlikely...

‘When I was about ten my then foster mother gave me a tapestry do-it-yourself kit. It was a canvas with a painting of a cat and instructions and the threads to complete it. I learned the basics on that cat, but when I finished I thought the whiskers looked contrived. He also looked smug so I ended up unpicking him a bit and fiddling. It started me drawing my own pictures. It works for me. It makes me feel...settled.'

‘So what do you do the rest of the time?'

‘I make coffee. Well. I can also wait tables with the best of them. It's a skill that sees me in constant work.'

‘You wouldn't rather work with tapestries?'

‘That'd involve training to be let near the decent ones, and training's out of my reach.'

‘Even now you have a massive inheritance?'

She paused as if the question took concentration. She stared at her feet and then turned and gazed out at the grounds, to the mountains beyond.

‘I don't know,' she admitted. ‘I like café work. I like busy. It's kind of like a family.'

‘Do they know where you are?'

‘Who? The people I work with?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you mean if I'd sunk in a bog yesterday would they have cared or even known?' She shrugged. ‘Nope. That's not what I mean by family. I pretty much quit work to come here. Someone's filling in for me now, but I'll probably just get another job when I go back. I don't stay in the same place for long.'

‘So when you said family...'

‘I meant people around me. It's all I want. Cheerful company and decent coffee.'

‘And you're stuck here with me and Mrs O'Reilly and coffee that tastes like mud.'

‘You noticed,' she said approvingly. ‘That's a start.'

‘A start of what?' he asked mildly and she glanced sharply up at him as if his question had shocked her. Maybe it had. He'd surprised himself—it wasn't a question he'd meant to ask and he wasn't sure what exactly he was asking.

But the question hung.

‘I guess the start of nothing,' she said at last with a shrug that was meant to be casual but didn't quite come off. ‘I can cope with mud coffee for a week.'

‘All we need to do is figure what we want to keep.'

‘I live out of a suitcase. I can't keep anything.' She said it almost with defiance.

‘And the armour wouldn't look good in a nice modern bungalow.'

‘Is that what your farmhouse is?'

‘It is.' The cottage he'd grown up in had long since deteriorated past repair. He'd built a large functional bungalow.

It had a great kitchen table. The rest...yeah, it was functional.

‘I saw you living somewhere historic,' Jo said. ‘Thatch maybe.'

‘Thatch has rats.'

She looked up towards the castle ramparts. ‘What about battlements? Do battlements have rats?'

‘Not so much.' He grinned. ‘Irish battlements are possibly a bit cold even for the toughest rat.'

‘What about you, Lord Conaill? Too cold for you?'

‘I'm not Lord Conaill.'

‘All the tapestries in the great hall...they're mostly from a time before your side of the family split. This is your history too.'

‘I don't feel like Lord Conaill.'

‘No, but you look like him. Go in and check the tapestries. You have the same aristocratic nose.'

He put his hand on his nose. ‘Really?'

‘Yep. As opposed to mine. Mine's snub with freckles, not an aristocratic line anywhere.'

And he looked at her freckles and thought...it might not be the Conaill nose but it was definitely cute.

He could just...

Not. How inappropriate was it to want to reach out and touch a nose? To trace the line of those cheekbones.

To touch.

He knew enough about this woman to expect a pretty firm reaction. Besides, the urge was ridiculous. Wasn't it?

‘I reckon your claim to the castle's a lot stronger than mine,' she was saying and he had to force his attention from her very cute nose to what they were talking about.

They'd reached the forecourt. He turned and faced outward, across the vast sweep of Glenconaill to the mountains beyond. It was easier talking about abstracts when he wasn't looking at the reality of her nose. And the rest of her.

‘Your grandfather left the castle to two strangers,' he told her. ‘We're both feeling as if we have no right to be here, and yet he knew I was to inherit the title. He came to my farm six months ago and barked the information at me, yet there was never an invitation to come here. And you were his granddaughter and he didn't know you either. He knew we'd stand here one day, but he made no push to make us feel we belong. Yet we do belong.'

‘You feel that?'

‘I don't know,' he said slowly. ‘It's just...walking across the lands today, looking at the sheep, at the ruined walls, at the mess this farmland has become, it seems a crime that no push was made...'

‘To love it?' She nodded. ‘I was thinking that. The tapestries... A whole family history left to disintegrate.' She shrugged. ‘But we can't.'

‘I guess not.' He gazed outward for a long moment, as though soaking in something he needed to hold to. ‘Of course you're right.'

‘If he'd left it all to you, you could have,' Jo said and he shrugged again.

‘Become a Lord in fact? Buy myself ermine robes and employ a valet?'

‘Fix a few stone walls?'

‘That's more tempting,' he said and then he grinned. ‘So your existence has saved me from a life of chipping at cope stones. Thank you, Jo. Now, shall we find out if Mrs O'Reilly intends to feed us?'

And Jo thought...it felt odd to walk towards Castle Glenconaill with this man by her side.

But somehow, weirdly, it felt right.

‘What are you working on at the moment?' Finn asked and she was startled back to the here and now.

‘What?'

‘You're carrying sewing needles. I'm not a great mind, but it does tell me there's likely to be sewing attached. Or do you bring them on the off chance you need to darn socks?'

‘No, I...'

‘Make tapestries? On the plane? Do you have a current project and, if so, can I see?'

She stared up at him and then stared down at her feet. And his feet. One of his boots was dripping mud.

Strangely, it made him seem closer. More human.

She didn't show people her work, so why did she have a sudden urge to say...?

‘Okay.'

‘Okay?' he said cautiously.

‘It's not pretty. And it's not finished. But if you'd really like to see...'

‘Now?'

‘When your foot's dry.'

‘Why not with a wet foot?'

‘My tapestry demands respect.'

He grinned. ‘There speaks the lady of the castle.'

‘I'm not,' she said. ‘But my tapestry's up there with anything the women of this castle have done.' She smiled then, one of her rare smiles that lit her face, that made her seem...

Intriguing? No, he was already intrigued, he conceded.

Desirable?

Definitely.

‘Are you sure?' she asked and he caught himself. He'd known this woman for how long?

‘I'm very sure,' he told her. ‘And, lady of the castle or not, your tapestry's not the only thing to deserve respect. I will take my boot off for you.'

‘Gee, thanks,' she told him. ‘Fifteen minutes. My bedroom. See you there.'

And she took off, running across the forecourt like a kid without a trouble in the world. She looked...free.

She looked beautiful.

Fifteen minutes with his boot off. A man had to get moving.

* * *

The tapestry was rolled and wrapped in the base of her kitbag. He watched as she delved into what looked to be the most practical woman's pack he'd ever seen. There were no gorgeous gowns or frilly lingerie here—just bike gear and jeans and T-shirts and sweaters. He thought briefly of the lawyer and his invitation to dinner in Dublin and found himself smiling.

Jo glanced up. ‘What?'

‘Is this why you said no to our lawyer's invite? I can't see a single little black dress.'

‘I don't have a use for 'em,' she said curtly.

‘You know, there's a costume gallery here,' he said and she stared.

‘A costume gallery?'

‘A store of the very best of what the Conaills have worn for every grand event in their history. Someone in our past has decided that clothes need to be kept as well as paintings. I found the storeroom last night. Full of mothballs and gold embroidery. So if you need to dress up...'

She stared at him for a long moment, as if she was almost tempted—and then she gave a rueful smile and shook her head and tugged out the roll. ‘I can't see me going out to dinner with our lawyer in gold embroidery. Can you? But if you want to see this...' She tossed the roll on the bed and it started to uncurl on its own.

Fascinated, he leaned over and twitched the end so the whole thing unrolled onto the white coverlet.

And it was as much as he could do not to gasp.

This room could almost be a servant's room, it was so bare. It was painted white, with a faded white coverlet on the bed. There were two dingy paintings on the wall, not very good, scenes of the local mountains. They looked as if they'd been painted by a long ago Conaill, with visions of artistic ability not quite managed.

But there was nothing ‘not quite managed' about the tapestry on the bed. Quite simply, it lit the room.

It was like nothing he'd ever seen before. It was colour upon colour upon colour.

It was fire.

Did it depict Australia's Outback? Maybe, he thought, but if so it must be an evocation of what that could be like. This was ochre-red country, wide skies and slashes of river. There were wind-bent eucalypts with flocks of white cockatoos screeching from tree to tree... There were so many details.

And yet not. At first he could only see what looked like burning: flames with colour streaking through, heat, dry. And then he looked closer and it coalesced into its separate parts without ever losing the sense of its whole.

The thing was big, covering half the small bed, and it wasn't finished. He could see bare patches with only vague pencil tracing on the canvas, but he knew instinctively that these pencil marks were ideas only, that they could change.