LITMIR.BIZ

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you can get your file as an adult?—my grandfather was appalled at my very existence. His instructions were to have me adopted, get rid of me, but when my mother was finally tracked down she sent a curt letter back saying I wasn’t for adoption; I was a Conaill, I was to stay a Conaill and my grandfather could lump it.’

      ‘Your grandfather could lump it?’

      ‘Yeah,’ she said and rose and carried her plate to the sink. She ran hot water and started washing and he stood beside her and started wiping. It was an age-old domestic task and why it helped, he didn’t know, but the action itself seemed to settle her.

      ‘It seemed Fiona was a wild child,’ she told him at last. ‘She and my grandfather fought, and she seemed to do everything she could to shock him. If I’d been a boy I’m guessing she would have had him adopted. My grandfather might have valued a boy so having him adopted away from the family might have hurt him more than having an illegitimate grandchild. But I was just a girl so all she could do to shock him was keep me as a Conaill and grind it into his face whenever she could. So Social Welfare was left with him as first point of contact and I went from foster home to foster home. Because I’d been in foster care for ever, though, there was always the possibility of adoption. But every time any of my foster parents tried to keep me, they’d contact my grandfather and eventually he’d talk to Fiona—and she would refuse. It seemed she wanted to keep me in my grandfather’s face.’

      ‘So it was all about what was between Fiona and her father. Nothing about you.’

      ‘It seems I was the tool to hurt him.’ She shrugged and handed him the scrubbed frying pan. ‘Nothing else. Why he’s left me anything... I don’t understand.’

      ‘I suspect he ran out of options,’ Finn told her. He kept his attention on the pan, not on her. ‘I was the despised poor relation who stood to inherit the title whether he willed it to me or not. You were the despised illegitimate granddaughter. I imagine it was leave everything to us or leave it to a cats’ home—and there’s no sign that he was fond of cats.’ He gazed around the kitten-adorned walls. ‘Except in here, but I doubt the kitchen was his domain.’

      ‘I guess.’ She let the water run away and watched it swirl into the plughole. ‘Isn’t it supposed to swirl the other way?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I’m in a different hemisphere. Doesn’t the water go round in opposite directions?’

      ‘What direction does it go round in Australia?’

      ‘I have no idea.’

      ‘You’ve never looked?’

      ‘It’s not the sort of thing you notice.’

      ‘We could check it out on the Internet.’

      ‘We could,’ she conceded. ‘Or we could go to bed.’ And then she paused and flushed. ‘I mean...’ She stopped and bit her lip. ‘I didn’t...’

      ‘You know, despite the fact that your mother was a wild child, I’m absolutely sure you didn’t just proposition me,’ he said gently and handed her the dishcloth to wipe her hands. ‘You’re tired, I’m tired and tomorrow we have a meeting with the lawyer and a castle to put on the market. That is, unless you’d like to keep it.’

      She stared at him. ‘Are you kidding? What would I do with a castle?’

      ‘Exactly,’ he said and took the dishcloth back from her and hung it up, then took her shoulders in his hands and twisted her and propelled her gently from the room. ‘So tomorrow’s for being sensible and we might as well start now. Bedtime, Jo Conaill. Don’t dream of bogs.’

      ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been stuck in some pretty scary places in my time but the bog’s the worst. Thank you for pulling me out.’

      ‘It was my pleasure,’ he told her. ‘And Jo...’

      ‘Yes?’ He’d let her go. She was out of the door but glancing back at him.

      ‘I’m glad I’ve inherited with you. If we have to be dissolute, unwanted relatives, it’s good that it’s two of us, don’t you think?’

      ‘I guess.’ She frowned. ‘I mean...we could have done this on our own.’

      ‘But it wouldn’t have been as much fun,’ he told her. ‘Tomorrow promises to be amazing. How many times in your life do you inherit a castle, Jo Conaill?’ Then, as she didn’t answer, he chuckled. ‘Exactly. Mostly none. Go to bed, Jo, and sleep thinking of fun. Tomorrow you wake up as Lady of the Castle Glenconaill. If we have to inherit, why not enjoy it?’

      ‘I’m not a Lady...’

      ‘You could be,’ he told her. ‘Okay, neither of us belong, but tomorrow, just for a little, let’s be Lord and Lady of all we survey. We might even Lord and Lady it over Mrs O’Reilly and if she gives us burnt toast for breakfast it’s off with her head. What do you say?’

      She gazed at him, dumbfounded, and then, slowly, her face creased into a smile again.

      It really was a beautiful smile.

      ‘Exactly,’ he told her. ‘Tomorrow this is our place. It’s where we belong.’

      ‘I don’t belong.’

      ‘Yes, you do,’ he told her. ‘Your grandfather and your mother no longer hold sway. Tomorrow you belong here.’

      ‘I guess I could pretend...’

      ‘There’s no pretence about it. Tomorrow you belong right here.’

      She met his gaze. Everything that needed to be said had been said but just for a moment she stayed. Just for a moment their gazes locked and something passed between... Something intangible. Something strong and new and...unfathomable.

      It was something he didn’t understand and it seemed she didn’t either. She gazed at him for a long moment and then she shook her head, as if trying to clear a mist she’d never been in before. As if trying to clear confusion.

      ‘Goodnight,’ she said in a voice that was decidedly unsteady.

      ‘Goodnight,’ he told her and finally she left.

      He stood where he was.

      Surely she hadn’t guessed that he’d had a crazy impulse to walk across and kiss her?

      And surely her eyes hadn’t said that that kiss might have been welcome?

      * * *

      His bedroom was magnificent, almost as magnificent as the one the old Lord had slept in. He lay in the vast four-poster bed and thought of the cramped cots he and his brothers had shared as kids, of the impoverished farm his parents had struggled to keep, of a childhood lacking in anything but love.

      But he thought of Jo and he knew he’d been lucky. She’d told him little, and yet there was so much behind her words that he could guess. A childhood of foster homes, and anyone who wanted to keep her being unable to do so.

      She looked tough on the surface but he didn’t need to scratch very deep before seeing scars.

      She was...intriguing.

      And that was something he shouldn’t be thinking, he decided. Wasn’t life complicated enough already?

      ‘No.’ He said it suddenly, out loud, and it surprised even him. His life wasn’t complicated. He’d fought to make their parents’ farm prosper. His father had died when he was in his teens and his brothers were younger. His mother had had no choice but to let him have his head. He’d set about changing things, firstly trying to keep them all from starving but in the end relishing the challenge. None of his brothers had had any inclination to stay on an impoverished farm. They’d gone on to have interesting, fulfilling careers but farming seemed to be in Finn’s blood. By the time his mother died, twenty years later, the farm was an excellent financial concern.

      And

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