Aisling blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t live here,” he snapped. “And if you’re squatting, I’ll call the Garda right now.”
Oh. Hell no.
She crossed her arms. “Well, thank God, because I hate squatters.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. My name is Aisling O’Byrne. Iownthis house. Who in the name of rain-soaked arrogance are you?”
He stared at her. Blinked. Swallowed hard.
Then he grinned, slow and maddening.
“Ronan Gallagher,” he said. “Your betrothed.”
Stunned, Aisling stared.
“And that is one of the things you need to know about. Your betrothal,” Bríd said behind her. “Welcome to Ireland.”
CHAPTER6
Aisling stared at the man like he’d just announced he was the reincarnated soul of Saint Patrick, the primary patron saint of Ireland. Then she turned—slowly, disbelievingly—back to Bríd.
“Please tell me this is a prank.”
Bríd gave a serene little shrug as though betrothals-by-will were as common as tea with milk.
“I don’t believe any of this nonsense,” Aisling declared, crossing her arms so hard she nearly bruised her own ribs.
“Have you read your grandmother’s will?” the man—Ronan Something-or-Other—asked with infuriating calm.
Okay, maybe she had only skimmed it, getting to the good stuff about the house and the money left her to use to update the place, but she didn’t remember seeing anything about a betrothal. And though the man was handsome, she wasn’t going to marry a man just because the will said so.
“Yes. Well... sort of.” Aisling waved a hand. “There’s just so much gobbledygook in there, it’s like trying to read a medieval spell book. I fell asleep by page three.”
“Try page twenty-five.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Is that the secret betrothal clause? Right between the sheep tax exemptions and the clause about ancestral chickens?”
He didn’t blink. “It was signed at your birth. They believed it would be a peaceful way to bring the families together.”
Bríd sighed. “The O’Byrne and Gallagher feud.”
“Wait—families? A feud?” Her gaze whipped to Bríd again. “Are you telling me there’s been an actual feud? Like pitchforks, potato throwing, and flaming torches?”
“A hundred years’ worth,” Ronan said. “Give or take.”
Aisling groaned and stormed off, muttering to herself as she stomped down the hall, rummaging through the stack of legal papers she’d barely skimmed after arriving. She found the will, flipped through the pages with mounting dread, and returned to the kitchen, already regretting everything.
She read the clause aloud with all the dramatics of someone narrating their own emotional hostage situation.
“Clause VII: On the Union of the O’Byrne and Gallagher Lands...Furthermore, it is to be understood that, upon Aisling’s arrival in Ireland, she shall be informed of the agreement made at her birth—namely, her informal betrothal to the Gallagher heir, Ronan Conner Gallagher, grandson of Séamus. While this arrangement bears no legal compulsion, it is the earnest hope of this testator that the two parties may, in time, find their way to one another, thus fulfilling the long-held wish to reunite these adjoining lands through kinship and affection.”
By the time she finished, her ears were ringing. There it was in black and white. Her grandmother had basically tried to marry her off via a legal document like she was some 18th-century heiress in need of property consolidation.
Ronan smiled.
