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.
For this was no paint by numbers picture. This was...
Breathtaking.
‘This should be over the mantel in the great hall,’ he breathed and she glanced up at him, coloured and then bit her lip and shook her head.
‘Nope.’
‘What do you do with them?’
‘Give them to people I like. You can have this if you want. You pulled me out of a bog.’
And once more she’d taken his breath away.
‘You just...give them away?’
‘What else would I do with them?’
He was still looking at the canvas, seeing new images every time he looked. There were depths and depths and depths. ‘Keep them,’ he said softly. ‘Make them into an exhibition.’
‘I don’t keep stuff.’
He hauled his attention from the canvas and stared at her. ‘Nothing?’
‘Well, maybe my bike.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Where I can rent a room with good light for sewing. And where my sound system doesn’t cause a problem. I like my music loud.’ She shrugged. ‘So there’s another thing I own—a great speaker system to plug into my phone. Oh, and toothbrushes and stuff.’
‘I don’t get it.’ He thought suddenly of his childhood, of his mother weeping because she’d dropped a plate belonging to her own mother. There’d been tears for a ceramic thing. And yet...his focus was drawn again to the tapestry. That Jo could work so hard for this, put so much of herself in it
