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 the beasts’ 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.
She’d not seen anyone pass the hay barn, where she’d been inspecting the stacks after the day’s rain. But, then, she’d been clear in the back.
Maeve pulled her scarf more snugly around her neck and slipped out of the barn, whistling a jaunty tune. She’d always enjoyed the first cold days of the year, when harvest was over but the bone-chilling air of winter wasn’t biting her yet.
She spotted her dogs quickly; they were roughly the size of small horses, after all.
And standing on a tall rock in the midst of the barking beasts was a man.
Even from that distance, she could tell that he wasn’t someone known to her.
Not many people wandered up to the farm.
Those who did were familiar, so much so that the family could generally identify them by their coats alone.
One time, Finley Donaghue had come visiting in a new coat of which he was quite proud, and Maeve’s brother Kieran had nearly shot him, thinking he’d come upon a stranger bent on robbing them rather than their nearest neighbor.
The man on the rock wore an entirely unfamiliar coat.
“Fág é!” she called. The dogs backed off at once, still eying the stranger but no longer “hunting” him.
“Anseo.” All three dogs returned to her at once.
They were large and intimidating— the very reason her brothers insisted she keep them nearby— but they were also intelligent and well trained.
And they only responded to commands issued in Irish, which marked them as far superior to dogs who preferred English.
Maeve moved near enough to be heard by the stranger, who still stood on his rock, but remained at enough of a distance to let him know that she didn’t entirely trust him. Too many years of want and hunger had left Ireland’s people wary of strangers.
“Are you so fond of rocks, then, that you go about standing on them whenever possible?” she asked.
“I’m trying to avoid being your dogs’ next meal.”
She scratched behind one of the dogs’ ears. “These little lambs? They’d not hurt a fly.”
“Perhaps, but I’m not a fly, now, am I?”
Like any true Irishwoman, Maeve Butler held decided opinions about every topic, even those she’d not yet heard of.
She was, for example, a firm believer in not cursing in church or walking heavy-footed through a graveyard.
She also believed that a man ought to be quick-witted if he could at all help it. And this man seemed to be just that.
“Have you a name, stranger, or do we simply call you ‘He Who Stands on Rocks’?”
He stepped onto the ground but without letting his wary gaze move in the slightest from Maeve’s protectors.
Her loyal companions flanked her, not looking away from the trespasser.
They wouldn’t attack, however, unless she told them to or unless He Who Stands on Rocks did something foolish like rush at them.
“I’m Sean Kirkpatrick,” he said. “And I’m a bit turned about. I’m trying to reach Kilkenny.”
“You’re close,” she said, “but you’ve turned off the main road. This here’s a farm, not a thoroughfare.”
He looked about as if surprised. “I thought it seemed a touch too quiet.”
Miss Maeve Butler had a soft spot for clever men, ’tis true enough, but if a man also had a fine sense of humor and a bit of a handsome face, she was lost. Fortunately, she had a knack for keeping an uninterested expression on her face when her heart was leaping about.
Being the only sister in a house with two brothers made it a necessary skill.
“I’ll not say you’re as sparkly clean as a king lazing about on his throne, but you’re not dirty enough to have been walking the roads on such a wet day.” He must’ve had a horse or cart or something somewhere nearby, but she didn’t spy one.
“My team and cart are stuck in the muddy road on the other side of your barn.”
She glanced in the direction he indicated. “Muddy road? That, my friend, is a field.”
“Yes, well, my map wasn’t terribly helpful.”
“I’d say not.” She gave him a quick nod. “Best of luck to you.” To the dogs, she called, “Tar liom!” They followed obediently at her side as she walked in the direction of the curing shed.
“Hold up there a moment, lass. You’ll not be leaving me stuck, will you?” He caught up to her quickly.
Rufus, the largest of her hounds, objected. Loudly. Sean jumped backward.
“Buachaill maith,” she told Rufus, pointing for him to back down.
She eyed the newcomer a moment. “I suppose it’ll not do to let your horses suffer.
” Maeve pretended to ponder the horses’ well-being deeply.
“That does it then. I’ll send my brothers back with a few draft horses and a strong length of rope.
They’ll have your cart out, but they’ll rib you something fierce.
If you’ve any bits of your pride left intact, know that it’s about to take a beating. ”
He pulled his coat more firmly around himself. “If they’ll help me get my team to the castle stables in one piece, I’ll gladly serve as the fodder for whatever jokes they choose to make at my expense.”
Maeve was an expert at letting a smile form slowly enough that anyone seeing it couldn’t mistake its significance. An odd talent, perhaps, but a useful one. “Once they’ve pulled you free of the mud and you’ve endured their humor, let me know if you’re as ‘glad’ about it as you expect to be.”
“They’re as bad as all that, are they?”
Telling silences are also a talent of some rarity. Maeve, in addition to being clever, was rare.
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.