Chapter One
Not all roots take hold in County Mayo. For that reason, a certain Sean Kirkpatrick, his feet unsuited for firmly planting in the western lands, set those feet eastward on the promise of a position as a stable hand at Kilkenny Castle. He’d been challenged to prove his worth by driving a team of high-spirited horses from Dublin to Kilkenny in a given amount of time with not a scratch on nor a hair missing from either of the beasts. Arriving in one piecehimselfwas not a requirement.
Sean had in his possession a map of questionable authenticity but no other thing to aid him in finding his destination. He might as well have tossed a length of yarn on the seat beside him and obeyed its twists and turns for all the good the map was doing. He felt certain he’d passed the same outcropping of rocks a half-dozen times, and the trees seemed to be mocking him at every turn.
“A fine lot you are,” he muttered at them. “Couldn’t give me so much as a hint, could you? Not so much as a branch pointing me in the right direction?”
Winter had arrived weeks earlier, though the branches were not yet bare. Somehow their refusal to act as divining rods made their half-emptied state all the more dispiriting. If he had to be lost in the vast circular mess that was the road to Kilkenny, Mother Ireland ought to at least have given him a bit of color to enjoy.
Those were days of poverty, they were. Want and desperation had led many a man to do far worse than speak harshly to trees. And, though it would seem otherwise at first glance, Sean was not, in fact, mad. Lost, yes. Frustrated, decidedly. But he’d not entirely lost his mind.
Rain had fallen cold and steady all that morning, and, it now being quite firmly the afternoon, the effects of a wet morning were felt everywhere: the dripping trees, the muddy road, the wet state of Sean’s backside. He was none too happy to have not yet reached Kilkenny as he ought to have. How easily he’d pictured himself arriving at the stables a day ahead, horses in fine feather, himself not looking the least shabby. But rain and roads had conspired against him.
Don’t you go about thinking that the Irish are a superstitious people. Weare, of course, but I’d rather you didn’t think it. Still, honesty compels me to admit that Sean Kirkpatrick, upon passing the same collection of very large rocks for the seventh time in a single day, felt he’d best turn off the road and follow the rocks, seven being a lucky number and he being Irish and, therefore, not one to take chances with luck. Call that superstitious if you will. We prefer “cautious.”
The path he guided his cart along led past one field after another, each divided from the next by low walls made of stone. Buildings dotted the landscape now and then, rough stonestructures no doubt housing hay or animals. He thought he even saw, a great distance off, a thatched-roof cottage with a river-rock chimney and yet another rock-made wall. Ireland rather specializes in rocks.
Sean continued on for a full Irish mile, a distance far shorter than an actual mile but long enough for calling it a mile when sharing the story later and wishing to make things sound more desperate than they truly were. He saw no people, no animals even. He’d stumbled upon a great deal of nothing— another Irish specialty— but he’d not yet found the road to Kilkenny.
He came upon a hay barn filled nearly to the rafters, a rare enough sight during a time when the only thing most families had up to the rafters was children. Sean slowed his horses as he passed, watching for signs of life inside. There were none.
There was little point continuing down a path that could only end in muddy disappointment. He turned off and drove a bit past the hay barn, meaning to turn his cart around where he could find a bit of space to do it.
He urged the horses to the left and leaned himself a bit as well in anticipation of the turn of his vehicle. Anticipation, however, does not always prove reality. The horses moved, but the cart did not.
The team made a valiant effort to move along, tugging and pulling and glancing back at him as if in blame. The cart was utterly stuck.
Now, most men, no matter how stubborn and hardheaded, recognize the futility of continuing when a pursuit has proven impossible. But the promise of wages when one has none can override sense with the greatest of ease. Sean, operating under this particular flavor of desperation, hopped from his perch and strode, as much as one can stride through thick mud, to the horses’ heads.
He eyed the pair of them with as fearsome a look as ever his mother had produced when he’d caused mischief as a lad. He knew the look well. “Are you not eager to reach your new home, then? You’d rather play about in the mud than keep on?”
Sean swore that the beasts rolled their eyes at his scolding as if to point out that he, and not they, had been the one harebrained enough to drive into a muddy field in the first place.
“Well, you might’ve warned me, you might.” He pulled off his sodden hat and slapped it against his thigh, sending droplets of water in all directions, punctuated by the very Irish disposition for colorful and detailed cursing.
He pointed a warning finger at the horses in turn. “Don’t you go letting anyone steal you away, now. I’ve a job waiting, and it depends on you two bein’ here when I return. Do a lad a favor and don’t go wandering about with any strangers.”
A nicker was all he received in response. That’d have to do, he supposed.
He trudged back along the short path he’d taken past the tall hay barn, knowing that doing so would put him back on the road he’d been on before, the one that led through the fields and past the distant buildings. If he could make his way to the cottage, someone there might lend him a hand, and, in doing so, save his neck.
Admitting he’d clearly taken a wrong turn in his attempt to find Kilkenny, that he’d been unable to find it at all, would be embarrassing to say the least. Adding to that the confession that he’d managed to get his cart stuck in the mud was enough to make him consider simply turning around and making his way back to Mayo on foot.
As he walked around the barn, a bark so loud and deep that it echoed through him in stomach-turning vibrations destroyed what little peace he still felt. He knew of only one dog with such an enormous voice: the Irish wolfhound, a breed so large thatnot another dog in all of creation stood as tall or as menacing. And he, apparently, was about to encounter one.
Sean searched his brains, trying to remember who was the patron saint of “not being devoured by a man-eating dog.” A second bark rumbled through the air, overlapped by another and then another.
Three dogs. They bounded around the corner and directly at him, a hungry gleam in their ferocious eyes.
And that is what comes of traveling in Ireland without a reliable map.
Chapter Two
Here in the Emerald Isle, we’ve a great many terms for a woman so beautiful that the entire island sits up and takes notice every time she leaves her house: Irish Rose. The Gem of Ireland’s Crown. If a man is wise: My Wife. But we lag far behind in universal terms for women who are quite pretty but who don’t stop the earth’s rotation simply by arriving somewhere. Were there such a term, Maeve Butler could have adopted it as another given name.
She was lovely; all who saw her could confirm as much. Her eyes were fine, her hair dark and thick, and her smile filled with laughter. But those who took time to meet her learned quickly that her best feature was her quick wit. The woman was, in a word, clever.
Thus, she needed only an instant to realize that her dogs had caught a scent. The beasts had bolted, raising such a racket that their barks must’ve bothered the Marquess and his family clear up at the castle. She further sorted out, by virtue of thebeasts’ overwhelming enthusiasm, that whatever they’d taken to chasing was a bigger prize than a rabbit or bird. That left two possibilities: an unfamiliar dog or an unfamiliar person.
