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“You’re territorial,” I observe, still amused. “Remarkably possessive. Where was all of this in Dublin?”

He lets out a breath that might have been a laugh in another life. “Buried.”

“Buried?” I repeat.

He doesn’t trouble himself with denial. “She makes me half-mad.”

“That bad?” I inquire.

He tips his head toward the kitchen without slowing, his expression gone rueful and unmistakably honest. “Worse.”

“Well,” I said, delighted, “that explains you nearly throwing me through a wall.”

“You were pushin’ yer luck,” he mutters.

“I make a practice of it.”

As we walk, his head turns back once more, longing written all over his face.

“She’s formidable,” I remark.

“She is,” he agrees.

“And Róisín,” I add, smiling despite myself, “is going to be trouble.”

That, finally, draws a laugh from him.

“Aye,” he says. “That she has always been.”

We go a fair distance before I speak again.

“So, what is it, then?”

He doesn’t answer right away.

I let the silence stretch, nudging a loose stone along the path with the toe of my boot. “I mean it. What is it about her that has you in such a state?”

He slows, then stops altogether. He looks out across the yard, past the noise and movement, like he’s trying to line his thoughts up properly before letting them loose.

“I feel a pull to be at her side,” he says at last. “We grew up on the same land. Crossed paths often enough when we were young.” He gives a small shrug, as if the next part is too plain to defend. “I always kent her as beautiful. Everyone did. Everyone does. That part is plain to see.”

“So what’s changed? Why the sudden urge to do more?”

A quiet breath leaves him. “I think I did.”

I frown. “That is intolerably vague.”

James huffs a short laugh. “I ken. But it’s the truth. I left. I went off and became someone else, learned how to talk, how to charm, how to be liked. I came back thinkin’ it’d make me irresistible. To anyone.”

“And she wouldn’t have it.”

“No,” he says. “She didnae soften at all. No pretendin’ I was anyone special. She looked at me like she always has—like she saw straight through whatever I thought I’d become.”

I consider that, then let out a short laugh. “She saw clean through your carefully constructed performative effort to be a suave man.”

James’s mouth tips faintly. “That she did.”

“That might put a better man off.”