“You’re Catholic, too, I imagine?” Cameron asked me.
“In a purely technical sense, yes.”
“I’ll bring the priest, then!” Lachlan chimed in,grinning like he was about to eat a plate of Scottish tablet all by himself. “He’s our family priest and he understands about this sort of thing. Davies, you best have your cheque-book with you, he drives a hard bargain.”
Not knowing what that meant, and yet not wanting to talk to his half-siblings any more than he had to - despite his softening towards Sorcha who could make a boulder smile - Alec moved on.
“Most of the guests will be my people, or members of our respective organizations. That said, in order for it to look right we will need a few important non-combatants. Fee’s father, members of her cohort, my mother.”
That was news to me and a surprise to Alastair.
Alec turned and looked at me, green eyes mischievous, “How about your mum, my bride?”
“HAHAHAHAHAHA! No.”
“That’s fine, Fintan can walk you down the aisle with Martin.”
“The hell I will,” Grandad mumbled.I pushed the biscuit plate towards him, trying not to start laughing again.
“One or two normal guests as well, but the bulk of the guests will be here for the fight. No kids, so we will have to figure out a ring-bearer and flower girl.”
The whole thing was giving me a headache.It would be a relief when the planning was done and the firefight could break out.
“Sorcha,” Alec looked at his sister, “I know you like a good fight, and from what I have heard can hold your own, but it’s important that we have no distractions so I am hoping that you’ll make it your job to see all of those who need to be out of the fight are brought into the farmhouse basement and that they stay there until it's all over. It’ll be safer than trying to load them in cars and drive away and I trust you to be reasonable and keep the situation in hand. Which is more than I can say for most ofthe people here today.”
I saw a quick look pass between Alastair and Alec, so quick as to be invisible to anyone who had not spent a fair bit of time observing the Davies / Taylor dynamic. There was little doubt in my mind that Alastair had asked Alec to find a way to employ his child bride since she would insist on being useful, whilst still keeping her out of the line of fire.
“Is there going to be any trouble with the local authorities?” one of the Davies people asked.Preet, I thought Alec had said her name was.She was older, with pure white hair and a manner that told anyone with sense she was a very bad woman, indeed.I imagined Grandad was probably half in love with her already.
“The Garda?” he asked, and then laughed, “I could have a MOAB go off out here and they’d not notice.You don’t happen to have one of those, do you, miss?” Grandad asked, all but batting his eyelashes at her.
She smiled and didn’t answer.
Plans for where extra weapons would be hidden around the farm were worked out using the drone footage. For the moment at least Grandad was pleased at seeing his land from that angle, even if things were to go wrong it might all be gone in a few days.
We might all be gone, for that matter.
It was such a pretty place. The purples and greens and golds of the herb patch, just starting to heal up from the last attack. The neat, emerald rows of beans, perfectly straight and true, hard next to the carrot beds, which hid their rainbow jeweled bounty of heirloom brands. The potato fields, nothing to look at, yet lovingly tended to.
The chicken coop, the two barns, the pens for the goats, the few cows kept to supply milk to a cheesemaker in Cork. It was my Grandparent's life, my Da’s heart, my dream of what the world should be like, and I was about to letit be shot to hell.
What a world.
“We all have a lot of work to do, is there anything I haven’t covered before we get started?” Alec asked.
Sorcha raised her hand, “What are we going to do with the bodies? Mr. Cassidy-”
“Fintan to you, sweetheart.”
“Thank you, but my mother wouldn’t stand for it. Do you have pigs on your farm? That would be easy, if there were enough of them. And organic, Fee would like that.”
“Darling,” Alastair murmured, “that is truly revolting. Clever, but revolting.”
“Sorry, I don’t keep ‘em. We can bury the bodies. I have some scrubby woodland in the back of the beyond, no one will find them there. Though if His Nibs,” he jerked a thumb in Alec’s direction, “decides to keep having guests to MY farm I’ll expect him to buy me a drove of Tamsworth pigs. They make a fine bacon.”
Several of the people on the call went a bit green at that point, though not any of the MacTavishs.' Or me. I knew exactly how the sausage was made, having raided factory farms on a few occasions. A properly cared-for pig with an unorthodox but organic diet wasn’t such an upsetting idea compared to some of the things I’d seen.
“Ok, then let's all get to work,” Alec said.
