Briarwood Cottage Read online

  “You’ve never eaten a blueberry muffin?”

  “Of course. Sedona’s adding them to her menu, so I was her taste tester.” They’d been delicious. And for women who weren’t lucky enough to have Duncan McCaragh make love to them, probably better than a run-of-the-mill orgasm.

  “Or a strawberry pancake?”

  “From time to time.”

  “So, it could be argued, my berry pie was merely the same idea. In a different crust.”

  “What about the ice cream?” Cassandra knew she’d lose ground if he brought up the equally high mountain of whipped cream topping off her pancakes.

  “Dairy,” he answered without missing a beat. “An important part of the food pyramid. Just like a glass of milk. Or carton of yogurt.” He squeezed some body soap out of the bottle and began spreading it over her breasts. “Or that whipped cream that undoubtedly came with your strawberry pancakes.”

  She laughed because he had her there. And then, as his fingers slipped into her with a silky ease while the water streamed down and the room filled with fragrant steam, he had her again.

  *

  “I may not move for a week,” she moaned, but in a good way, as much, much later, Duncan lay sprawled on top of her in the bed.

  “That works for me.” He ran his hand from her shoulders down her back over the swell of her butt. Mine. “There’s undoubtedly someone in the village we can pay to bring us food from the pub. Or the market.”

  “Speaking of the village,” she said, “that was really strange driving through it.”

  The streets, which only the day before had been filled with Lady seekers, had been nearly deserted.

  “Yeah. I wonder where everyone went.”

  “If they’d decided to risk the curse and went to the lake, we would’ve seen them when we got home.”

  Duncan liked that she’d referred to the cottage as home. Liked the way her fingers were playing idly in his hair even more. The change in her from when she’d arrived at the cottage almost had him believing in all the tales of Irish magic and miracles. She’d shown up at his door looking worlds better than she had the last time he’d seen her, but along with being understandably exhausted, she’d also been tense. Edgy. And, which had given him hope, conflicted.

  He’d known that if he could only buy enough time, he could rid her of that hesitance. But although he’d remained positive, he’d expected it to be a longer campaign.

  He’d had another thought last night while they were at the pub. A plan that would radically change both their lives. A plan that, like her dream, actually still sounded good this morning. And even better now.

  Duncan was debating whether or not to just spring it on her or let their time together wind out a bit more, when he’d have a better chance for a positive outcome, when his cell phone rang.

  Having had the matter decided for him, at least for now, he reluctantly rolled off her and scooped up the phone. The number on the display was local, the last name familiar.

  “Duncan McCaragh,” he answered.

  “Mr. McCaragh, this is Rory Joyce. I’m Michael Joyce’s nephew?” In Irish fashion, his deep voice went up a little on the end of the sentence, making it sound like a question.

  No wonder Joyce had been so protective of his source, Duncan thought. “It’s good to hear from you. I was hoping you’d call,” he said. At that, Cass sat up. From the vibes he was picking up, she’d switched from happy, sexually contented female into full reporter mode. “And the name’s Duncan.”

  “And I’d be Rory.” There was a slight pause. “Uncle Michael said you were wanting to hear about the Lady.”

  “I do.” Duncan said carefully. “Would this be a firsthand account?”

  “It would. When I was just a young lad, she was my best friend.”

  “And now?”

  Another thoughtful pause spun out. Just when Duncan began to wonder if they’d lost the signal, Rory Joyce answered his question. “That’s not a story for the phone,” he said. “Would it be convenient if I visited you at the cottage?”

  “Of course. I assume you know the way?”

  “I do. My uncle and Bram Brennan hired me to thatch the roof last summer. I can be there in fifteen minutes, if the time suits you.”

  “Fifteen minutes suits me fine,” Duncan agreed as Cass leaped from the bed and began scooping up scattered clothing from the floor. “I’ll be looking forward to it.” As his attention was momentarily distracted when she bent down to pick up her bra, he decided he could live to be a hundred and never get tired of the sight of his wife naked. “And Rory?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” he responded, again sounding uneasy, despite his willingness to share his story.

  “You look good enough to eat,” he said, rubbing his jaw as Cass shimmied beneath the bed to retrieve her underpants.

  “Quit trying to seduce me and get dressed!”

  “We still have time.”

  “He’s going to smell sex on me.” After she’d wiggled back out, Duncan reached down, held out a hand, and helped her back onto her feet. “You always smell great to me.”

  “Stop that!” She hit his chest with her palm, pushing him away. “I need a shower and you need to get dressed.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?”

  She was holding the clothing to her chest, unfortunately depriving him of a very fine view of her breasts. “No. I do not… Now, get dressed and go make some coffee.” She dragged a hand through her tousled curls. “And of course you don’t have anything decent to serve him.”

  “I have spaghetti and a jar of Marsala sauce.”

  She closed her eyes. Not in ecstasy, as she had earlier, but in obvious frustration. “Men,” she huffed. “You people with penises strut around like you own the planet, but about certain things, you can be totally useless.”

  “That’s not what you said about my penis a few minutes ago,” he reminded her.

  “We’re wasting time.” Bright spots colored her cheekbones.

  “You haven’t heard that old Irish saying about ‘When God made time, he made plenty of it?’”

  “Get dressed,” she repeated, not bothering to respond to what they both knew was a rhetorical question. “Now.”

  She marched from the room. A moment later, he heard the water running in the shower. Which had him considering joining her.

  They were down to twelve minutes. Which was doable. But since Duncan doubted that Cass was at the moment, he scooped up his jeans and T-shirt and, following in the footsteps of all the wise husbands who’d gone before him, did as his wife had instructed.

  18

  There was no mistaking the family resemblance. Rory Joyce had a shock of dark hair, soulful blue-black eyes, and a scattering of freckles connecting his cheekbones over the bridge of his nose. He would, Duncan thought, look a great deal like his uncle in twenty years.

  “I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me,” Duncan said once introductions had been made.

  “My uncle assured me that you’re not one of those tabloid writers who’d be exaggerating the story and making the town, including myself, look like daft culchie. A country person,” he defined the word before either Duncan or Cass could ask. “Usually a daft or stupid one.”

  “No. I wouldn’t do that,” Duncan assured him with a sideways glance toward Cass, who appeared unwounded by the unflattering tabloid remark. Which was easier given that her work couldn’t be accused of such behavior, either.

  “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, giving Duncan another of those narrowed-eyed female looks that let him know she found his social skills sorely lacking. “I’d offer you something to eat, but I’m afraid we haven’t been to the market.”

  “No problem,” Rory said. “Since I was thinking that the story’s better told at the lake.”

  “Which is surrounded by an impenetrable and possibly cursed briarwood hedge,” D
uncan pointed out.

  When the young man’s grin brightened those deep eyes to sapphire, the small lines that appeared at the corners of Cass’s mouth suggested she was holding back a smile while thinking the same thing he was. That a young man as handsome as Rory Joyce could well be a heartbreaker.

  “The lake’s on my family’s land,” he said, seconding what Michael Joyce had mentioned last night in Brennan’s. “And wouldn’t we be knowing a secret passageway?”

  “And you’ll take us there?” Cass asked. Duncan heard the excitement in her voice.

  “I will,” Rory said. “If, when you write about my time with her, you don’t mention the way in.”

  “There’s no way I’d do that,” Duncan assured him. While the kid seemed both smart and sane, six-year-old boys often had soaring imaginations. When he’d been in first grade, he’d stood up at the front of the room when each student introduced him or herself, and claimed he was an astronaut who’d just returned from a mission to Mars.

  Maybe, he thought with wry amusement as he remembered that day, he was the one who should be writing for the Worldwide Buzz.

  “I do have a question,” Duncan asked.

  “I’ll do my best to answer it.”

  “What happened to the people?”

  “People?” Rory’s brow furrowed.

  “The Lady seekers,” Cass clarified.

  “Ah. They went home.”

  “All of them? Why?”

  Another furrowing of the brow. “You didn’t know?”

  “I guess not,” Duncan said.

  “She made an appearance this noon.”

  “You’re kidding!” Cass exchanged a disbelieving look with Duncan. While we were surfing? it said.

  “Not at all. There was quite a fuss when she suddenly rose out of the water and, although I know it’s going to sound even more outlandish, appeared to be posing. She swam back and forth across the lake for about ten minutes. Then disappeared beneath the water, as she does.”

  “Okay.” Duncan blew out a breath. “That’s pretty incredible.” There were also undoubtedly photographs to back the story up. Which meant that he could have some ’splaining to do to Winston Armstrong for not having taken any himself. However, if he were able to report back that he’d repaired the rift in his marriage, maybe he’d be off the hook for the lack of a firsthand Lady report.

  On the other hand, there was yet another possibility he still needed to speak with Cass about. Later.

  “But why would that make them leave?” Cass asked. “You’d think that even more people would be flooding to town after an actual sighting.”

  “There’d be no point in it,” Rory said. “Given the other part of the legend.”

  “Which would be?” Duncan was trying not to grind his back molars to dust. Although typically he found the Irish roundabout way of speaking colorful, at the moment he wished the kid would just get to the damn point. Whatever it was.

  “Once the Lady makes a public appearance, she must, according to the myth, return to her underwater kingdom and remain there for the next three years.”

  “And people believe that why?”

  Rory shrugged. “I’m not sure I care, since it always makes them leave.”

  Cassandra got it first. “It’s like the hedge,” she said. “Something that’s been added over time to keep the village from becoming another overcrowded tourist destination.”

  “It could be something like that,” he said with a quick grin that confirmed her accusation. Then he turned more thoughtful. “But I also suppose they believe because they want to. Myths and legends can be a powerful thing. My degree is in Irish studies, and I’ll begin teaching them next fall at St. Bernadette Mary High School here in Castlelough.

  “They’re part of what had our society and robust education and library systems flourishing while the Europe continent became bogged down in the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. There are some who could make a case that while the Irish perhaps didn’t entirely save civilization, as some claim, we do possess a continual cultural and intellectual record from prehistory to current times.”

  “I need to talk with you,” Cass said suddenly. “Not just about the Lady but about the history. I’m writing a novel, and you’d be such a wonderful source of research material.”

  “I’d be happy to help. And to point you to other, more august sources.”

  “Ah, but I like you,” she said, making him laugh.

  It did not escape Duncan’s notice that Rory Joyce had proven the missing link in Cass’s novel decision-making process. Just telling him about her novel had her looking like a Thoroughbred about to burst from the starting gate.

  Once again he was forced to wonder at the way things kept working out even better than he could have planned.

  19

  They made their way along the trail that Cassandra had taken earlier. Past the old cemetery and the cairn, which, hidden in the green folds of the mountain, had gone unchanged for millennia. This time, as they paused, she thought more about those early ones who’d been buried with tools, weapons, and household goods that they’d need in their next realm.

  Had they found their place of resurrection? Or were their spirits still standing guard over an ancient past?

  It occurred to her as they continued on that, while times might change, people didn’t. Hadn’t she been wandering all alone in a dark and lonely place only to have arrived here, where her once-shattered soul had found not only peace but purpose?

  Her place of resurrection.

  She was mulling over how to include a narrator who could meld a personal story to a legend that would then, like a continuing change, affect the lives of others who were drawn into the ever-expanding circle when they came to the towering hedge.

  “It’s this way,” Rory Joyce said, turning to lead them through a field of blue, yellow, white, and pink flowers, many seeming to grow out of solid rock, to an opening that a person would never notice, had they not known it was there.

  Rory held back a thick briarwood branch that had been concealing it with white flowers and stepped aside, allowing Cassandra, then Duncan to go before him through the fragrant passageway.

  “Oh, wow.” Cassandra reached for Duncan’s hand as they gazed down at Lake Caislean. Surrounded by feathery-crowned reeds, the lake glistened in the sunlight like sapphire satin set on a green velvet carpet. She imagined if they’d come at night, they might have caught faeries dancing in the moonlight. “It’s stunning.”

  “And peaceful,” Duncan murmured. “A place where a person’s head could slow down and catch up with his heart.”

  “We have a saying,” Rory said, “ciúnas gan uaigneas. It means quietness without loneliness.”

  “It so fits,” Cassandra said, grateful that all those Lady seekers hadn’t been able to invade the sanctity of this cathedral-like place.

  “Aye,” Rory said. “So, before I tell you my personal connection to the Lady, I must fill you in on her backstory.

  “She was once a queen whose long yellow hair flowed down her back in waves and glittered like a leprechaun’s gold in the sun. She ruled over a splendid kingdom on these very shores, and because she was as benevolent as she was beautiful, the ancient gods had rewarded her people by bestowing upon them a magical gift: a sweet spring whose waters brought youth to all who drank of it.”

  “The Fountain of Youth,” Duncan said.

  “Some have made that same comparison, but we’ve kept the secret well as another ploy to keep us from being overrun by even more tourists.

  “Not wanting the spring to flood the valley, the queen instructed that it be capped every night with a large stone. But unfortunately, a faerie who lived in the glen fell in love with the queen’s handsome husband. Her sour spirit had made her as ugly as an old boar, as sharp as a brier, and as evil as the devil, which made it difficult for any man, let alone one married to such a good and lovely queen, to love her back.

  “So, she turned herself into
a beautiful young girl. But still the noble king remained faithful to his lady, and when he refused to return her affections, she lost her temper and cast a wicked spell on him.

  “That night, during the summer solstice celebration, despite having always been a man who could hold his mead, the prince got drunk and passed out before putting the capstone on the spring.”

  “I can see this coming,” Duncan murmured.

  “Aye. It flowed and flowed, and by the time the sun rose in the morning, the entire valley, including the fairest of cities and all its people were now underwater. But, because the water was magic, no one drowned. Instead they adapted quite well to their new life below the lake. Although every so often, the queen, who sensibly replaced her fine satin gowns with waterproof emerald scales, comes to the surface to gaze upon the hills that she continues to miss after all these many years.

  “And there are fishermen who swear that sometimes on a still summer evening, you can look over the edge of your boat and catch a shimmering glimpse of the turrets of the queen’s castle and the townspeople busily going about their daily work.”

  “That’s a very bittersweet story,” Cassandra said.

  “It is, indeed. But isn’t all life comprised of both bitter and sweet? We can only hope they balance themselves out.”

  As he blew out a breath, Cassandra found herself holding her own. She sensed he was finally ready to tell the tale they’d come to hear. And having heard the legend, as much as her heart wanted to believe it could be true, her head, having engaged in years of fact checking, said otherwise.

  “The Lady first appeared to me when I was six years old. It was a difficult time for my family. My da died in a steeplechase accident before my first birthday, leaving my mother to struggle to keep the farm going and raise both me and her younger sisters and brothers all alone.

  “Although she always kept up a good front, late at night, I could hear her weeping in her room. My great-grandmother Fionna had taught us all that God always answers our prayers. But I’d been praying for what seemed like forever, and a da hadn’t appeared. And my aunt Kate had given me a magical druid stone, but that hadn’t helped, either.”