bootees which looked massively oversized on her slight frame. She was flushed from the heat of her bath, and she looked like a kid.
She was treading down the stairs as if Here Be Dragons, and it was all he could do not to move forward and give her a hug of reassurance.
Right. As if that’d go down well. Earlier he’d picked her up when she needed to be picked up and she’d pretty near had kittens.
He forced himself to stay still, to wait until she’d reached the bottom. Finally she looked around for where to go next and she saw him.
‘Hey,’ he said and smiled and she smiled back.
It was a pretty good smile.
And that would be an understatement. This was the first time he’d seen this smile full on, and it was enough to take a man’s breath away.
He had to struggle with himself to get his voice to sound prosaic.
‘Kitchen?’ he managed. ‘Dining room’s to the left if you like sitting with nineteen empty chairs and an epergne, or kitchen if you don’t mind firestove and kettle.’
‘Firestove and kettle,’ she said promptly but peered left into the dining room, at its impressive size and its even more impressive—ostentatious?—furnishings. ‘This is nuts. I have Queen Victoria in my bathroom. Medieval castle with interior decorator gone mad.’
‘Not quite medieval, though the foundations might be. It’s been built and rebuilt over the ages. According to Mrs O’Reilly, much of the current decorating was down to your mother. Apparently your grandfather kept to himself, the place gathered dust and when she was here she was bored.’
‘Right,’ she said dryly, looking askance at the suits of armour at the foot of the stairs. ‘Are these guys genuine?’
‘I’ve been looking at them. They’re old enough, but there’s not a scratch on them. Aren’t they great?’ He pointed to the sword blades. ‘Note, though, that the swords have been tipped to make them safe. The Conaills of Glenconaill seem to have been into making money, not war. To take and to hold is their family motto.’ He corrected himself. ‘Our family creed.’
‘Not my creed,’ she said dryly. ‘I don’t hold onto anything. Did you say dinner?’
‘Kitchen this way. I used your bath time to investigate.’ He turned and led her through thick wooden doors, into the kitchen beyond.
It was a truly impressive kitchen. A lord’s kitchen.
A massive firestove set into an even larger hearth took up almost an entire wall. The floor was old stone, scrubbed and worn. The table was a vast slab of timber, scarred from generations of use.
The stove put out gentle heat. There was a rocker by the stove. Old calendars lined the walls as if it was too much trouble to take them down in the new year—simpler to put a new one up alongside. The calendars were from the local businesses, an eclectic mix of wildlife, local scenery and kittens. Many kittens.
Jo stopped at the door and blinked. ‘Wow.’
‘As you say, wow. Sit yourself down. Mrs O’Reilly said she’d kept your dinner hot.’ He checked out the firestove, snagged a tea towel and opened the oven door.
It was empty. What the heck?
The firestove had been tamped for the night, the inlet closed. The oven was the perfect place to keep a dinner warm.
He closed the oven door and reconsidered. There was an electric range to the side—maybe for when the weather was too hot to use the firestove? Its light was on.
The control panel said it was on high.
He tugged open the oven door and found Jo’s dinner. It was dried to the point where it looked inedible.
‘Uh oh,’ he said, hauling it out and looking at it in disgust. And then he looked directly at Jo and decided to say it like it was. ‘It seems our housekeeper doesn’t like you.’
‘She’s never met me before tonight. I imagine it’s that she doesn’t...she didn’t like my mother.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I didn’t like my mother myself. Not that I ever met her.’
He stared down at the dinner, baked hard onto the plate. Then he shrugged, lifted the lid of the trashcan and dumped the whole thing, plate and all, inside.
‘You realise that’s probably part of a priceless dinner set?’ Jo said mildly.
‘She wouldn’t have served you on that. With the vitriol in the woman it’s a wonder she didn’t serve you on plastic. Sit down and I’ll make you eggs and bacon. That is...’ He checked the fridge and grinned. ‘Eureka. Eggs and bacon. Would you like to tell me why no one seems to like your mother?’
‘I’ll cook.’
‘No,’ he said gently. ‘You sit. You’ve come all the way from Australia and I’ve come from Kilkenny. Sit yourself down and be looked after.’
‘You don’t have to...’
‘I want to, and eggs and bacon are my speciality.’ He was already hauling things out of the fridge. ‘Three eggs for you. A couple—no, make that three for me. It’s been a whole hour since dinner, after all. Fried bread? Of course, fried bread, what am I thinking? And a side of fried tomato so we don’t die of scurvy.’
So she sat and he cooked, and the smell of sizzling bacon filled the room. He focused on his cooking and behind him he sensed the tension seep from her. It was that sort of kitchen, he thought. Maybe they could pull the whole castle down and keep the kitchen. The lawyer had told him they needed to decide what to keep. This kitchen would be a choice.
‘To take and to hold. Is that really our family creed?’ Jo asked into the silence.
‘Accipere et Tenere. It’s over the front door. If my schoolboy Latin’s up to it...’
‘You did Latin in school?’
‘Yeah, and me just a hayseed and all.’
‘You’re a hayseed?’
He didn’t mind explaining. She was so nervous, it couldn’t hurt to share a bit of himself.
‘I have a farm near Kilkenny,’ he told her. ‘I had a short, terse visit from your grandfather six months back, telling me I stood to inherit the title when he passed. Before that I didn’t have a clue. Oh, I knew there was a lord way back in the family tree, but I assumed we were well clear of it. I gather our great grandfathers hated each other. The title and all the money went to your side. My side mostly starved in the potato famine or emigrated, and it sounded as if His Lordship thought we pretty much got what we deserved.’
He paused, thinking of the visit with the stooped and ageing aristocrat. Finn had just finished helping the team milk. He’d stood in the yard and stared at Lord Conaill in amazement, listening to the old man growl.
‘He was almost abusive,’
