She left Sean to ponder the mess in which he’d landed himself. She was doing a fine bit of pondering as well. Pondering a witty conversation. Pondering a man with terrible taste in coats but an impressive lack of arrogance. Pondering what it would take to convince her brothers to let her make a trip to Kilkenny if Sean Kirkpatrick meant to be there long, though she’d not mention that last part to them.
Lest it seem Maeve Butler was a woman of weakness, too timid to stand up to the dictatorship of her brothers, hers was not a concern about obtaining their permission so much as not wishing them to tag along, scaring Sean off with their relentless, if playful, tormenting. She loved her brothers, but like any sister worth her salt, Maeve found them tiresome.
She came across Liam not far down the road and waved him over. “We’ve a stranger on the land. He’s managed to get a cart stuck in the mud of the fallow field just beyond the hay barn.”
“What’s your man doing driving a cart through a field in the first place?”
The Irish have a few quirks in the language, quirks of which we’re rightly proud. One of these is the tendency to refer to a person as “your man” when we’ve no intention of making any real claim on a fellow. Maeve knew this. Liam knew this, and he hadn’t meant to inspire in his sister any kind of connection to this stranger who had such an unreliable sense of direction.
Yet his words did just that.
Fortunately, for Maeve more than anyone, she truly was as whip-smart as the neighborhood gave her credit for being. Smart enough not to fancy herself in love with a man she didn’t even know.
And smart enough not to dismiss him entirely.
Chapter Three
Liam and Kieran Butler hadn’t stopped laughing since introducing themselves. Sean attempted to take their teasing in stride. Attempting doesn’t always mean succeeding.
“Do all lads from Mayo not know the difference between a field and a road?” Liam, the ginger one with at least a stone’s worth of muscle on his brother, had latched on first thing to Sean’s home county.
“And what was it, Sean from Mayo, that convinced you to lead these beasts into the mud?” Kieran had also made a point of mentioning Sean’s home in nearly every sentence.
“It didn’t seem so terrible an idea on the map,” Sean muttered, hands thrust into his coat pockets.
The men’s identical grins only widened.
“And do you always let a map do your thinking for you?” Liam asked. “Or only on rainy days?”
“Around here,” Kieran jumped in, “every day’s a rainy day.”
“Meaning,” Liam added, “he’s somethin’ of a muttonheadeveryday.”
Sean ought to have been rewarded with a fancy title, or at least an estate, for the forbearance he showed that afternoon. Having his intelligence called into question again and again pushed his endurance to its limit.
But these two jesters had brought with them three very large draft horses, likely about the only thing that’d get Sean’s cart free of the mud and, in so doing, save his hide. So he kept his mouth shut. Never let it be said the Irish haven’t a knack for strategizing.
“Seems less than proper, though, leavin’ these fine animals stranded this way,” Kieran said. “Seems we ought to do something about them.”
“Seems.” Liam nodded, as if pondering deeply.
“I assumed that was the reason you brought the horses along.” Sean indicated them with a jerk of his thumb.
“Oh, not at all,” Liam insisted. “They’re fine company, they are, and tell the best jokes. There’s this one about a muttonhead who gets his cart stuck in the mud. It’s hilarious, I tell you.”
“Now, I’ve a difficult time believing that, brother,” Kieran said. “Not the bit about the talkin’ horses.ThatI could imagine happening. But a fella driving a cart into a muddy field? That seems unlikely.”
Sean shook his head at their nonsense. “Your sister told me that the pair of you would rib me over this. I think she made rather light of it.”
“Well, but she didn’t let her dogs eat you,” Liam pointed out. “That tells us there’s more to you than a stick in the mud.” He turned to his brother, grin growing. “Stick in the mud.Themud.That wasn’t half bad, now, was it?”
“I’ll tell you whatishalf bad: this cart.” Kieran gave it a firm tap with the toe of his boot. “He’s managed to sink this thing deep. We’ll not be pulling it out on our own.”
“Again, I figured that was why you brought the horses,” Sean said.
The brothers laughed, and, though Sean still wasn’t reveling in being the recipient of their teasing, he found that he could smile along with them.
“We could try pulling the cart out with these beasties.” Liam patted one of the very large horses they’d brought. “But I fear it’s too stuck for that and would only splinter.”
