Briarwood Cottage Page 3

When Diane’s photo appeared on the screen, Duncan pressed the button. “Checking up on me to make sure I haven’t busted up another tavern?”

  The question caused Patrick, who’d returned to the beginning of the row of glasses, to lift a brow. There was an art in pulling pints, and now that the Brian Boru Black Ale had settled, he’d begun topping them off, leaving a creamy crown of froth.

  “You may be crazy, but I’ve never gotten the impression you’re suicidal,” she responded.

  “Tell me you’ve called with the news that my sentence has been commuted and, as soon as we end this call, I’ll be placing another expensive one to Tiffany to buy you a bauble.”

  “Promises, promises.” Her laugh was warm and rich. “And as lovely as that sounds, I might have a problem explaining to my husband why I’ve let another man, especially one with your dicey reputation, buy me jewelry. So, unfortunately I’ll have to turn the enticing suggestion down…

  “No, I’m calling to warn you that Cassandra’s on her way to Castlelough.”

  Emotions too complex to catalog, ones he’d think about later, when he was back in the solitude of Briarwood Cottage, slammed through Duncan like a cluster bomb.

  “I suppose that’s not surprising,” he managed to say even as explosions went off inside his head. “A lake monster is right up her alley these days.”

  “Beastie,” Patrick murmured.

  “I don’t think the Lady of the Lake is her sole purpose in going.” She paused. Duncan tried to remember another time he’d heard his employer’s executive assistant so uncomfortable and came up blank. “She asked me where you were staying.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. And promise me you won’t yell at me?”

  “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever yelled at you?”

  “No, but you’ve never exactly been Mr. Rogers, and even less so the past few months… I told her about the cottage.”

  “Okay.” Possibilities began spinning wildly in his head, but Duncan kept his tone neutral. “When is she arriving?”

  “She didn’t say, but I got the impression that she was going to book a flight out tonight. Which means she’ll be at Shannon in the morning.”

  Duncan had no idea what his estranged wife’s intentions might be. The woman who’d been forced through that incredibly painful crucible in Egypt had, understandably, changed. Perhaps she was coming to insist he sign those damn divorce papers she’d sent him. The ones he’d burned in a wastebasket in his Damascus Four Seasons hotel room, setting off the sprinkler system, which had not pleased a staff already tense from the street battles taking place.

  Or perhaps she’d tracked him down because having finally overcome her grief, she was ready to move on with her life. He’d kept in touch with her cousin, who, while not at all happy with the idea, had promised to keep their conversations secret. At least for now. But from what Sedona Sullivan had told him, Cass was receiving therapy and had begun to return to the living.

  If that were the case, the question on the table was whether his wife intended that life to include him.

  Damn. Although walking away from their apartment that day had not only ripped his heart to shreds and taken all meaning from his life, Duncan had struggled, against nature, to be patient as her cousin kept counseling restraint.

  Now, as thoughts of a possible reconciliation teased seductively in his head, Duncan was relieved, yet again, that Briarwood Cottage was free of the Irish kitsch he’d feared. Thankfully, there wasn’t a ceramic leprechaun anywhere in the place. On the contrary, it was a remarkably comfortable two-bedroom home that managed to blend both old and new in perfect harmony. With the view of the lake and castle ruins from the bed, he couldn’t have chosen a better location for a reunion. Surely it would remind her of their honeymoon. Of those days and nights when they’d laughed and loved, and the future lay in front of them like a sweet, ripe passion fruit, waiting to be devoured.

  Unfortunately, not only did he not have any tropical fruit handy but, except for coffee, his cupboards were bare.

  *

  “Does she enjoy smoked salmon?” Sheila Monohan, of Monohan’s Mercantile, asked when a desperate Duncan asked for help planning a late breakfast for his wife.

  “Loves it,” he said, remembering rare Sunday mornings in New York going out for bagels, cream cheese, and lox, which they’d go home and eat in bed.

  “Well, then, you can do a lovely egg scramble with smoked salmon and chives.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “These brown eggs from Nora Gallagher’s laying hens are wonderful. Nora, of course, was born a Joyce, then she married Conor Fitzpatrick, who was quite the horseman, which, God rest his soul, didn’t prevent him from dying in a horrible steeplechase accident.” She made a quick sign of the cross without pausing her narrative. “But then, amazingly, given that Castlelough doesn’t have many celebrities visiting us here in the back of beyond, she married Quinn Gallagher, whom you may have heard of. He’s a famous American writer.”

  “I’ve read his books.”

  “While he’s been a very good husband and has done wonderfully generous things for our village, I can’t bring myself to read his horror novels,” the storekeeper confessed. “There are already so many things to worry about in the world, more every day, it seems; I prefer a nice love story. Though I did read his book about our Lady. It was very well done.”

  “It was,” Duncan agreed. “And one of the few movies that lived up to the book.” He didn’t mention that the fictional lake creature was what had brought him to town.

  “I suspect that’s because Quinn was here in Castlelough overseeing every bit of the filming,” she suggested. “And staying in the Joyce house, as well, which was how he and Nora met…

  “You’ll be wanting a selection of scones.” She chose three, wrapped them in cellophane, and tossed them in with the salmon and eggs. “As well as our famous brown bread and butter.” In went a loaf of bread and a white box of butter bearing what he took to be a family crest depicting two red eagles.

  Remembering how Cass had loved the luxury of fresh juice while in the Middle East, Duncan bought Spanish oranges and a juicer.

  “The fact that you’re going to so much trouble to welcome your wife will make a grand impression,” Mrs. Monohan assured him as she rang up his order.

  Not nearly as optimistic, Duncan would settle for her not throwing a new set of divorce papers in his face.

  Although his career required being able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, anywhere, anytime, he’d spent a restless night reliving every moment of their time together. Especially that last night when she’d coldly, remotely informed him that she no longer loved him and their short-lived marriage was over.

  After tossing and turning, he finally gave up on sleep, rose, and set the table with the earthenware dishes he’d found in a cupboard. Reluctantly deciding that meeting Cass at the airport might be pushing things, Duncan brewed himself a big pot of extra-dark roast high-caffeine coffee.

  And waited.

  4

  From the air, Ireland looked like an emerald set in a gleaming sapphire sea. As the plane descended into Shannon Airport, Cassandra thought, just as she had the first time she’d been to the country, how all those green fields set apart by stone walls resembled an Irish tourism postcard sprung to life.

  Her nerves were tingling as she made her way through immigration. Not because the Irish officials were at all intimidating but because, soon, after these past three months, she’d be coming face-to-face with Duncan again.

  Unable to sleep during the flight over the Atlantic, she’d spent the night trying to think of what she’d first say.

  “Hi” was way too casual, given their circumstances.

  “Hello, Duncan” was better. But then what?

  Although they hadn’t been able to make their marriage work, he’d done his best to be a caring husband from the moment he’d shown up at the Cairo
hospital. Unfortunately, his best hadn’t been able to break through the stony wall of Cassandra’s grief and guilt. The hard truth was that it had been a losing cause for him to continue to try, which was why, unable to bear his kindness, which, at the time, she’d believed that she hadn’t deserved, she’d forced him away.

  So, now, months later, she couldn’t just hand him the duplicate set of papers she’d had drawn up to replace the ones he’d never signed without some sort of lead-in conversation. What if he slammed the door in her face? She wouldn’t blame him. She had, after all, insisted that she no longer loved him.

  Which had been a lie. During their third session, Dr. Fletcher had suggested that the person Cassandra had no longer loved was not Duncan but herself. Something Cassandra had been unable to argue with.

  Given that Irish road signs could probably earn their own topic on Jeopardy (especially those in Gaeltacht regions where they were written in Irish), Cassandra was grateful for the rental car’s GPS as she made her way past hedgerows and pastures and through small market towns toward the coast. Rolling down the car windows, she breathed in the salty scent of the sea and the rich, coconut aroma of sunshine-bright yellow furze blooming on hedges, meadows, and along roadsides and felt a light easing of her tangled nerves.

  Her first trip to Ireland had been to write about mothers involved in the priest molestation scandal. The last time had been for a delayed honeymoon. Although marriage had never been in her plans, after an AP reporter they’d both known had been killed on the road to Kabul, Duncan had convinced her that since life could often be cut unexpectedly and unfairly short, they should make the most of whatever time they were gifted with.

  The very next day, they’d been landing in Barbados where, two hours later, Duncan had slid a slender gold wedding band, bought from the resort’s jewelry shop, on her finger. After a single passionate night, assignments had taken them in different directions.

  With more than a little string-pulling on both their parts, a month later, they’d managed to meet up again in Dublin while covering an EU economic conference on the collapse of the Celtic Tiger.

  Once the conference had wrapped up, after that surfing day in Bonduran, they’d stolen time for a belated honeymoon on Ireland’s west coast. It had been in Galway that Duncan had replaced her initial band with a Claddagh ring. The jeweler who’d sold them the matched set had explained that the rings’ symbolic two hands holding a crowned heart had been created in the city since the 1700s.

  Growing up bouncing back and forth between her globe-trotting parents—who seemed determined to cure all the world’s ills through their work with Doctors Without Borders—and life on a commune with Sedona and her parents, then later working in countries where governments and borders seemed in constant flux, Cassandra had appreciated the rings’ history and sense of permanence.

  After ten days exploring the West from the Ring of Kerry to Galway Bay, most of their last night together had been spent arguing about her destination.

  “I’m not some damn submissive Stepford wife who bows to her husband’s every demand,” she’d insisted as they’d stood on opposite sides of the antique four-poster bed. “I’m an international journalist.”

  “And a damn good one,” he’d shot back. “But you also happen to be my wife, and I don’t want to end up a widower before my first damn anniversary.”

  “But it’s all right for me to end up a widow?” she’d countered, hands on her hips. “Last I looked, Syria is a helluva lot more dangerous than where I’m headed!”

  Although they’d argued before (they were, after all, both strong-willed people), that was the first time she’d ever seen his infamous temper in full DEFCON mode.

  Finally, as the pink light of dawn was filtering into the cottage, they’d called a truce and managed to make up. In bed.

  Later, the drive to Shannon Airport had been mostly silent, as if by unspoken agreement on both their parts not to break the delicate détente. Unfortunately, having left the issue unsettled, once they’d turned in the rental car and made their way to the passenger security checkpoint, the tension swirling between them had become so palpable Cassandra had been relieved when she was finally on the plane leaving the Emerald Isle that had, until that furious fight, been the closest thing to heaven she’d ever known.

  A mere three weeks later, while in Egypt to report on women engaged in the democracy movement, she’d gotten swept up in the action, knocked down, trampled, and might have died had it not been for three unknown men who’d lifted her above the crowd and rushed her to an emergency field hospital for wounded protestors.

  Where she’d learned that she’d lost the child she hadn’t even been aware she’d been carrying.

  Within hours Duncan had arrived in Cairo to take her home to the apartment they’d shared on the rare occasion both happened to be in New York City at the same time. He’d stayed for six excruciatingly long weeks, sleeping on the too-short couch so she could have the bedroom to herself, cooking for her, treating her as if she were some fragile piece of his mother’s prized crystal collection, about to shatter.

  Although Cassandra had still possessed enough pride not to admit it, that was precisely how she’d felt.

  During all that time, he’d never once accused her of risking their unborn child’s life by putting herself in harm’s way. His only mention of her miscarriage was when he’d found her huddled in a tight ball in bed, silently weeping. He’d held her, dried the tears streaming down her cheeks, and assured her that everything would be all right. He loved her and they could have another child.

  As if, she’d thought bitterly at the time, children were replaceable, like a camera lens or the aviator sunglasses he was always losing. If Duncan had been anywhere near as heartbroken as she was, he’d certainly kept his emotions well hidden.

  Still not having come up with a strategy, she turned down the driveway toward a pretty, whitewashed, thatched-roof house, which a wooden sign proclaimed to be Briarwood Cottage. The only rental car available when she’d arrived at the airport was this tiny, two-seater the color of a kiwi. As she pulled up next to the big black Mercedes SUV that Duncan had undoubtedly snagged merely by flashing his killer smile at the tartan-clad woman behind the rental counter, Cassandra felt a stab of something that uncomfortably resembled jealousy.

  Damn.

  She drew in a deep breath and tried to find her center, as she’d been taught. To focus on the moment.

  “Okay,” she said, squaring her shoulders as she put the hood up on her jacket and extricated herself from the clown car, “here goes nothing.”

  5

  During the short walk from the car to the cottage, the mist, known locally as Irish sunshine, turned to rain. Cassandra had just lifted her hand to knock on the bright blue door when it opened.

  Oh, God. Seeing Duncan again after all this time caused a flutter in her stomach and blurred her brain.

  “Cass.” His deep voice, known to television viewers all over the world, accelerated her pulse. “You’re looking well.”

  Knowing that jet lag wasn’t any woman’s friend, Cassandra supposed her appearance was an improvement over those days when her unwashed hair had hung limp over her shoulders and she’d been living in wash-worn pajamas and an oversized plaid robe that she’d bought on a trip to Edinburgh to cover the independence movement.

  “Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “You, too.” Discounting the yellowing around his eye that suggested one of the sailors’ fists had connected with his face.

  Dressed in a snug black T-shirt and jeans, he looked as hard and fit as he’d been when running around the mountains of Afghanistan, or some jungle chasing down a news story. Or, given the generations of Scots warriors running in his veins, as she’d so often fantasized him—clad in a kilt, fighting off hordes of enemies with a claymore.

  A dark stubble roughened his face, and his tousled dark hair looked as if it had been finger combed. When her fingers itched to brush back that lock
that always fell over his forehead (and had even been given its own twitter account by news groupie fans), Cassandra realized she’d landed in deep, deep trouble.

  Despite her so-called reboot, Cassandra had miscalculated. She wasn’t ready for this.

  And she so wasn’t ready for him.

  “Why don’t you come in out of the rain?” he suggested. His eyes, the warm brown of the whisky his family had first made their fortune brewing, seemed oddly wary. Surely he wasn’t as uneasy about this meeting as she was?

  The moment she walked across the threshold, Cassandra felt an odd, inner strum, like harp strings being played. While interviewing the mothers of abuse victims, one, a pagan witch from County Kerry, had told her about thin places, also known as places of resurrection, where one’s spirit was totally whole, at home, with no longing or yearning to be anywhere else.

  Drawn across the room to the window, she looked out onto the view of a crumbling stone castle that had been built on the bank of an impossibly glassy blue lake.

  As a frisson of familiarity skimmed up her spine, she belatedly realized Duncan had spoken to her.

  “I’m sorry. I was distracted by your view and didn’t quite catch what you said.” She kept the unsettling sensation that this thatched-roofed cottage might actually be her place of resurrection to herself.

  He came and stood beside her, slipping his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. “Isn’t it spectacular? It’s the lake where the Lady supposedly dwells.”

  She turned her head and looked up at him. He was so close. Too close. All she’d have to do is go up on her toes, just a bit, and their lips would touch and…

  No. Don’t go there.

  “You don’t believe in her,” Cassandra guessed. He’d always been a realist. Except their first night together, when he’d insisted that they’d been fated to meet. Which, if true, had unfortunately demonstrated that fate had yet other unexpected plans in store for them.

  “I believe the town tourism council came up with a clever and apparently successful marketing ploy.” He looked down at her, his gaze sweeping over her face. “I asked if you were all right.”