His Cinderella Heiress (6 page)

‘You're content?'

He grinned at that. ‘I'm a lord. How can I not be content?'

‘I meant with farming.'

‘Of course I am. I don't need a castle to be content. Cows are much more respectful than housekeepers.'

‘I'm sure they are,' she said, thinking the man was ridiculous. But she kind of liked it.

She kind of liked him.

‘No wife and family?' she asked, not that it was any of her business but she might as well ask.

‘No.' He shrugged and gave a rueful smile. ‘I've had a long-term girlfriend who's recently decided long-term is more than long enough. See me suffering from a broken heart.'

‘Really?'

‘Not really.' He grinned. ‘I'll live.'

And then Mrs O'Reilly came sniffing back in with toast and he followed her every move with an aristocratically raised eyebrow until she disappeared again. It was a bit much for Jo.

‘You do the Lord thing beautifully.'

‘You should try.'

‘Not me. I'm inheriting what there is to inherit and then I'm out of here.'

‘Maybe that's wise,' Finn said thoughtfully. ‘From all accounts, your grandpa wasn't the happiest of men. Maybe being aristocratic isn't all it's cut out to be.'

‘But being content is,' she said softly. ‘I'm glad...I'm glad, Finn Conaill, that you're content.'

* * *

The lawyer arrived just as Mrs O'Reilly finished clearing breakfast. Jo had had half a dozen emails from this man, plus a couple of phone calls from his assistant. She'd checked him out on the Internet. He was a partner in a prestigious Dublin law firm. She expected him to be crusty, dusty and old.

He turned up in bike leathers. He walked in, blond, blue-eyed, his helmet tucked under one arm, a briefcase by his side, and she found herself smiling as she stood beside Finn to greet him. There were things she'd been dreading over this meeting. Being intimidated by the legal fraternity was one of them, but this guy was smiling back at her, dumping his gear, holding out his hand in greeting. A fellow biker.

‘Whose is the bike?' he asked.

‘Mine,' she said. ‘Hired in Dublin.'

‘You should have let me know. My father would disapprove but I know a place that hires vintage babies. Or there are places that hire Harleys. We could have set one up for you.'

‘You're kidding. A Harley?' She couldn't disguise the longing.

‘No matter. After this morning, I imagine you'll be able to buy half a dozen Harleys.' He glanced at Finn and smiled. ‘And yours will be the Jeep?'

And there it was, the faintest note of condescension. Jo got it because she was used to it, and she glanced up at Finn's face and she saw he got it too. And his face said he was used to it as well.

The lawyer's accent was strongly English. She'd read a bit of Ireland's background before she came. The lawyer would be public school educated, she thought. Finn...not so much. But she watched his face and saw the faint twitch at the edges of his mouth, the deepening of the creases at his eyes and thought,
He's amused by it
.

And she thought,
You'd be a fool to be condescending to this man.

‘I'm the Jeep,' he conceded.

‘And the new Lord Conaill of Glenconaill,' the lawyer said and held out his hand. ‘Congratulations. You're a lucky man.'

‘Thank you,' Finn said gravely. ‘I'm sure every Irishman secretly longs for his very own castle. I might even need to learn to eat with a fork to match.'

He grinned to take any offence from the words and Jo found herself grinning back. This man got subtle nuances, she thought, but, rather than bristling, he enjoyed them. She looked from Finn to the lawyer and thought this farmer was more than a match for any smart city lawyer.

‘Lord Conaill and I have just been having breakfast,' she said. ‘Before he takes me on a tour of the estate.'

‘You know you're sharing?'

‘And that's what you need to explain,' Finn said and they headed into her grandfather's study, where John O'Farrell of O'Farrell, O'Farrell and O'Lochlan spent an hour explaining the ins and outs of their inheritance.

Which left Jo...gobsmacked.

She was rich. The lawyer was right. If she wanted, she could have half a dozen Harleys. Or much, much more.

The lawyer had gone through each section of the estate, explaining at length. She'd tried to listen. She'd tried to take it in but the numbers were too enormous for her to get her head around. When he finally finished she sat, stunned to silence, and Finn sat beside her and she thought,
He's just as stunned as I am.

Unbelievable.

‘So it's straight down the middle,' Finn said at last. ‘One castle and one fortune.'

‘That's right and, on current valuations, they're approximately equal. In theory, one of you could take the castle, the other the fortune that goes with it.' The lawyer looked at Jo and smiled. He'd been doing that a bit, not-so-subtle flirting. But then he decided to get serious again and addressed Finn.

‘However, if you did have notions of keeping the castle, of setting yourself up as Lord of Glenconaill and letting Miss Conaill take the rest, I have bad news. This place is a money sink. My father has been acting as financial adviser to Lord Conaill for the last forty years and he knows how little has been spent on the upkeep of both castle and land. He's asked me to make sure you know it. The cosmetic touches have been done—Lord Conaill was big on keeping up appearances and his daughter insisted on things such as central heating—but massive capital works are needed to keep this place going into the future. Lord Conaill told my father he thought your own farm is worth a considerable amount but, in my father's opinion, if you wished to keep the castle, you'd need considerably more. And, as for Miss Conaill...' he smiled again at Jo ‘...I suspect this lady has better things to do with a fortune than sink it into an ancient castle.'

Did she?

A fortune...

What would the likes of her do with a fortune?

Finn wasn't speaking. He'd turned and was looking out of the massive casement window to the land beyond.

He'd need time to take this in, she thought. They both would. This was...massive. She tried to think of how it would affect her, and couldn't. She tried to think of how it would affect Finn, but watching his broad shoulders at the window was making things seem even more disconcerting.

So focus on something else. Anything.

‘What about Mrs O'Reilly?' she found herself asking, and the lawyer frowned.

‘What about her?'

‘It's just...there's no mention of her in the will and she seems to have been here for ever. She knew my mother.'

Finn turned and stared at her. She kept looking at the lawyer.

‘I believe she has,' the lawyer said. ‘There has been...discussion.'

‘Discussion?'

‘She rang after the funeral,' the lawyer admitted. ‘Her husband was the old Lord's farm manager and she's maintained the castle and cared for your grandfather for well over thirty years. My father believes she's been poorly paid and overworked—very overworked as the old Lord wouldn't employ anyone else. My father believes she stayed because she was expecting some sort of acknowledgement in the will. She knew the castle was to be left to you, My Lord,' he told Finn. ‘But it would have been a shock to hear the remainder was to be left to a granddaughter he'd never seen.'

He hesitated then but finally decided to tell it how it was. ‘The old Lord wasn't without his faults,' he told them. ‘My father said he wouldn't be surprised if he'd made promises to her that he had no intention of keeping. It gave him cheap labour.'

‘And now?' Jo asked in a small voice.

‘Her husband died last year. The place is without a farm manager and I wouldn't imagine you'll be having ongoing use for a housekeeper. She'll move out as soon as you wish.'

‘But she's been left nothing? No pension? Nothing at all?'

‘No.'

‘That sucks,' Jo said.

‘She doesn't like you,' Finn reminded her, frowning.

‘It still sucks. She took care of my grandfather?'

‘I believe she did,' the lawyer told her. ‘For the last couple of months he was bedbound and she nursed him.'

‘And she hated my mother, so she can't be all bad. How much would a cottage in the village and a modest pension be? Actually, you don't even need to tell me. Work it out and take it from my half.'

‘She burned your dinner!' Finn expostulated.

Jo shrugged and smiled. ‘If I thought she'd just inherited my home I might have burned her dinner.'

‘She called your mother a drug addict.'

‘My mother
was
a drug addict.' She turned back to the lawyer. ‘Can you set it up?'

‘Of course, but...'

‘Take it from both sides,' Finn growled. ‘We both have a responsibility towards her and we can afford to be generous. A decent house and a decent pension.'

‘There's no need...' Jo started.

‘We're in this together,' he said.

The lawyer nodded. ‘It seems reasonable. A pension and a local cottage for Mrs O'Reilly will scarcely dent what you'll inherit.

‘Well, then,' he said, moving on. ‘Irish castles with a history as long as this sell for a premium to overseas buyers looking for prestige. If you go through the place and see if there's anything you wish to keep, we can include everything else with the sale. I'd imagine you don't wish to stay here any longer than you need. Would a week to sort things out be enough? Make a list of anything you wish to keep, and then I'll come back with staff and start cataloguing. You could both have your inheritance by Christmas.' He smiled again at Jo. ‘A Harley for Christmas?'

‘That'd be...good,' Jo said with a sideways look at Finn. How did he feel about this? She felt completely thrown.

‘Excellent,' Finn said and she thought he felt the same as she did.

How did she know? She didn't, she conceded. She was guessing. She was thinking she knew this man, but on what evidence?

‘Jo, let me know when you've finished up here,' the lawyer was saying. ‘We can advance you money against the estate so you can stay somewhere decent in Dublin. I can lend you one of my bikes. I could take you for a ride up to Wicklow, show you the sights. Take you somewhere decent for dinner.'

‘Thanks,' she said, though she wasn't all that sure she wanted to go anywhere with this man, with his slick looks and his slick words.

‘And you'll be imagining all the cows you can buy,' he said jovially to Finn and she saw Finn's lips twitch again.

‘Eh, that'd be grand. Cows...I could do with a few of those. I might need to buy myself a new bucket and milking stool to match.'

He was laughing but the lawyer didn't get it. He was moving on. ‘Welcome to your new life of wealth,' he told them. ‘Now, are you both sure about Mrs O'Reilly?'

‘Yes.' They spoke together, and Finn's smile deepened. ‘It's a good idea of Jo's.'

‘Well, I may just pop into the kitchen and tell her,' the lawyer told them. ‘I know she's been upset and, to be honest, my father was upset on her behalf.'

‘But you didn't think to tell us earlier?' Finn demanded.

‘It's not my business.' He shrugged. ‘What you do with your money is very much your own business. You can buy as many milking stools as you want. After the castle's sold I expect I won't see you again. Unless...' He smiled suggestively at Jo. ‘Unless you decide to spend some time in Dublin.'

‘I won't,' Jo said shortly and he nodded.

‘That's fine. Then we'll sell this castle and be done with it.'

CHAPTER FOUR

W
HAT
HAD
JUST
happened seemed too big to get their heads around. They farewelled the lawyer. They looked at each other.

‘How many people do you employ on your farm?' Jo asked and he smiled. He'd enjoyed the lawyer's attempt at condescension and he liked that Jo had too.

‘Ten, at last count.'

‘That's a lot of buckets.'

‘It is and all.'

‘Family?' she asked.

‘My parents are dead and my brothers have long since left.' He could tell her about Maeve, he thought, but then—why should he? Maeve was no longer part of his life.

‘So there's just you and a huge farm.'

‘Yes.'

‘But you're not wealthy enough to buy me out?'

He grinned at that. ‘Well, no,' he said apologetically. ‘Didn't you hear our lawyer? He already has it figured.'

He tried smiling again, liking the closeness it gave them, but Jo had closed her eyes. She looked totally blown away.

‘I need a walk.'

And he knew she meant by herself. He knew it because he needed the same. He needed space to get his head around the enormity of what had just happened. So he nodded and headed outside, across the castle grounds, past the dilapidated ha-ha dividing what had once been gardens from the fields beyond, and then to the rough ground where sheep grazed contentedly in the spring sunshine.

The lawyer's visit had thrown him more than he cared to admit, and it had thrown him for two reasons.

One was the sheer measure of the wealth he stood to inherit.

The second was Jo. Her reaction to Mrs O'Reilly's dilemma had blown him away. Her generosity...

Also the smarmy lawyer's attempt to flirt with her. Finn might have reacted outwardly to the lawyer with humour but inwardly...

Yeah, inwardly he'd have liked to take that smirk off the guy's face and he wouldn't have minded how he did it.

Which was dumb. Jo was a good-looking woman. It was only natural that the lawyer had noticed and what happened between them was nothing to do with Finn.

So focus on the farm
, he told himself, but he had to force himself to do it.

Sheep.

The sheep looked scrawny. How much had their feed been supplemented during the winter? he asked himself, pushing all thoughts of Jo stubbornly aside, and by the time he'd walked to the outer reaches of the property he'd decided: not at all.

The sheep were decent stock but neglected. Yes, they'd been shorn but that seemed to be the extent of animal husbandry on the place. There were rams running with the ewes and the rams didn't look impressive. It seemed no one really cared about the outcome.

There were a couple of cows in a small field near the road. One looked heavily in calf. House cows? He couldn't imagine Mrs O'Reilly adding milking to her duties and both were dry. The cows looked as scrawny as the landscape.

Back home in Kilkenny, the grass was shooting with its spring growth. The grass here looked starved of nutrients. It'd need rotation and fertiliser to keep these fields productive and it looked as if nothing had been done to them for a very long time.

He kept walking, over the remains of ancient drainage, long blocked.

Would some American or Middle Eastern squillionaire pay big bucks for this place? He guessed they would. They'd buy the history and the prestige and wouldn't give a toss about drainage.

And it wasn't their place. It was...
his
?

It wasn't, but suddenly that was the way he felt.

This was nuts. How could he feel this way about a place he hadn't seen before yesterday?

He had his own farm and he loved it. His brothers had grown and moved on but he'd stayed. He loved the land. He was good at farming and the farm had prospered in his care. He'd pushed boundaries. He'd built it into an excellent commercial success.

But this... Castle Glenconaill... He turned to look at its vast silhouette against the mountains and, for some reason, it almost felt as if it was part of him. His grandfather must have talked of it, he thought, or his father. He couldn't remember, but the familiarity seemed bone-deep.

He turned again to look out over the land. What a challenge.

To take and to hold
...

The family creed seemed wrong, he decided, but
To hold and to honour
... That seemed right. To take this place and hold its history, to honour the land, to make this place once more a proud part of Irish heritage... If he could do that...

What was he thinking? He'd inherited jointly with a woman from Australia. Jo had no reason to love this place and every reason to hate it. And the lawyer was right; even with the wealth he now possessed, on his own he had no hope of keeping it. To try would be fantasy, doomed to disaster from the start.

‘So sell it and get over it,' he told himself, but the ache to restore this place, to do something, was almost overwhelming.

He turned back to the castle but paused at the ha-ha. The beautifully crafted stone wall formed a divide so stock could be kept from the gardens without anything as crass as a fence interfering with the view from the castle windows. But in places the wall was starting to crumble. He looked at it for a long moment and then he couldn't resist. Stones had fallen. They were just...there.

He knelt and started fitting stone to stone.

He started to build.

To hold and to honour
... He couldn't hold, he decided, but, for the time he was here, he would do this place honour.

* * *

Jo thought about heading outside but Finn had gone that way and she knew he'd want to be alone. There was silence from the kitchen. Mrs O'Reilly was either fainting from shock or trying to decide whether she could tell them they could shove their offer. Either way, maybe she needed space too.

Jo started up towards her bedroom and then, on impulse, turned left at the foot of the staircase instead of going up.

Two massive doors led to what looked like an ancient baronial hall. She pushed the doors open and stopped dead.

The hall looked as if it hadn't been used for years. Oversized furniture was draped with dustsheets and the dustsheets themselves were dusty. Massive beams ran the length of the hall, and up in the vaulted ceiling hung generations of spider webs. The place was cold and dank and...amazing.

‘Like something out of Dickens,' she said out loud and her voice echoed up and up. She thought suddenly of Miss Havisham sitting alone in the ruins of her bridal finery and found herself grinning.

She could rent this place out for Halloween parties. She could...

Sell it and go home.

Home? There was that word again.

And then her attention was caught. On the walls...tapestries.

Lots of tapestries.

When she'd first entered she'd thought they were paintings but now, making her way cautiously around the edges of the hall, she could make out scores of needlework artworks. Some were small. Some were enormous.

They were almost all dulled, matted with what must have been smoke from the massive blackened fireplace at the end of the room. Some were frayed and damaged. All were amazing.

She fingered the closest and she was scarcely breathing.

It looked like...life in the castle? She recognised the rooms, the buildings. It was as if whoever had done the tapestries had set themselves the task of recording everyday life in the castle. Hunting. Formal meals with scores of overdressed guests. Children at play. Dogs...

She walked slowly round the room and thought,
These aren't from one artist and they're not from one era.

They were the recording of families long gone.

Her family? Her ancestors?

It shouldn't make a difference but suddenly it did. She hated that they were fading, splitting, dying.

Her history...

And Finn's, she thought suddenly. In her great-great-grandfather's era, they shared a heritage.

Maybe she could take them back to Sydney and restore them.

Why? They weren't hers. They'd be bought by whoever bought this castle.

They wouldn't be her ancestors, or Finn's ancestors. They'd belong to the highest bidder.

Maybe she could keep them.

But Jo didn't keep
stuff
, and that was all these were, she reminded herself.
Stuff
. But still... She'd restored a few tapestries in the past and she wasn't bad at it. She knew how to do at least step one.

As she'd crossed the boundaries of the castle last night she'd crossed a creek. No, a stream, she corrected herself. Surely in Ireland they had streams. Or burns? She'd have to ask someone.

But meanwhile it was spring, and the mountains above Castle Glenconaill must surely have been snow-covered in winter. The stream below the castle seemed to be running full and free. Clear, running water was the best way she knew to get soot and stains from tapestries, plumping up the threads in the process.

She could try with a small one, she decided, as her fingers started to itch. She'd start with one of the hunting scenes, a brace of pheasants without people or place. That way, if she hurt it, it wouldn't matter. She could start with that one and...

And nothing. She was going home. Well, back to Australia.

Yeah, she was, but first she was getting excited. First, she was about to clean a tapestry.

* * *

Finn had placed a dozen rocks back in their rightful position and was feeling vaguely pleased with himself. He'd decided he should return to the castle to see what Jo was doing—after all, they were here for a purpose and repairing rock walls wasn't that purpose—and now here she was, out in the middle of the stream that meandered along the edge of the ha-ha.

What was she doing? Those rocks were slippery. Any minute now she'd fall and get a dunking.

‘Hey!'

She looked up and wobbled, but she didn't fall. She gave him a brief wave and kept on doing what she was doing.

Intrigued, he headed over to see.

She was messing with something under water.

The water would be freezing. She had the sleeves of her sweater pulled up and she'd hauled off her shoes. She was knee-deep in water.

‘What's wrong?'

She kept concentrating, her back to him, stooped, as if adjusting something under water. He stood and waited, more and more intrigued, until finally she straightened and started her unsteady way back to the shore.

‘Done.'

He could see green slime attached to the rocks underneath the surface. She was stepping gingerly from rock to rock but even the ones above the surface would be treacherous.

He took a couple of steps out to help her—and slipped himself, dunking his left foot up to his ankle.

He swore.

‘Whoops,' Jo said and he glanced up at her and she was grinning. ‘Uh oh. I'm sorry. I'd carry you if I could but I suspect you're a bit heavy.'

‘What on earth are you doing?'

‘Heading back to the castle. All dry.' She reached the shore, jumping nimbly from the last rock, then turned and proffered a hand to him. ‘Can I help?'

‘No,' he said, revolted, and her smile widened.

‘How sexist is that? Honestly...'

‘I was trying to help.'

‘There's been a bit of that about,' she said. ‘It's not that I don't appreciate it; it's just that I hardly ever need it. Bogs excepted.'

‘What were you doing?' He hauled himself out of the water to the dry bank and surveyed his leg in disgust. His boot would take ages to dry. Jo, on the other hand, was drying her feet with a sock and tugging her trainers back on. All dry.

‘Washing tapestries,' she told him and he forgot about his boots.

‘Tapestries...?'

‘The hall's full of them. You should see. They're awesome. But they're filthy and most of them need work. I've brought one of the small ones here to try cleaning.'

‘You don't think,' he asked cautiously, ‘that soap and water might be more civilised?'

‘Possibly. But not nearly as much fun.'

‘Fun...' He stared at his leg and she followed his gaze and chuckled.

‘Okay, fun for me, not for you. I'm obviously better at creeks than you are.'

‘Creeks...'

‘Streams. Brooks. What else do you call them? Whatever, they'll act just the same as home.' She gestured to the surrounding hills, rolling away to the mountains in the background. ‘Spring's the best time. The water's pouring down from the hills; it's running fast and clean and it'll wash through tapestries in a way nothing else can, unless I'm prepared to waste a day's running water in the castle. Even then, I wouldn't get an even wash.'

‘So you just lie it in the stream.' He could see it now, a square of canvas, stretched underwater and weighed down by rocks at the edges.

‘The running water removes dust, soot, smoke and any burnt wool or silk. It's the best way. Some people prefer modern cleaning methods, but in my experience they can grey the colours. And, as well, this way the fibres get rehydrated. They plump up almost as fat as the day they were stitched.'

‘You're intending to leave it here?'

‘I'll bring it in tonight. You needn't worry; I'm not about to risk a cow fording the stream and sticking a hoof through it.'

‘And then what will you do?' he asked, fascinated.

‘Let it dry and fix it, of course. This one's not bad. It has a couple of broken relays and warps but nothing too serious. I'll see how it comes up after cleaning but I imagine I'll get it done before I leave. How's the stone wall going?'

To say he was dumbfounded would be an understatement. This woman was an enigma. Part of her came across tough; another part was so fragile he knew she could break. She was wary, she seemed almost fey, and here she was calmly setting about restoring tapestries as if she knew exactly what she was talking about.