Bonus Epilogue
Not long after Christmas, Sean and Maeve firmly decided they no wish to be apart any longer. The prospect of long weeks apart, of lying awake at night wondering how the other was faring, wishing they were together every moment they were not, was not at all to their liking.
And, thus, as Twelfth Night approached, the Christmas season coming to its close, Sean Kirkpatrick and Maeve Butler found themselves standing at the front of a church, a great many Butlers witnessing the ceremony, vowing to love and look after each other for all their remaining days.
Rufus was not in attendance and, therefore, was not permitted a say in the matter.
He, however, had grown inarguably fond of Sean and would have, if given the chance, heartily approved.
Of course, his “approval” tended to involve howls and excited barks and, at times, enthusiastic licking.
It was, therefore, likely for the best that he had remained at the six-boulders Butlers’ home for the duration of the wedding.
Finley Donaghue had long ago realized that Maeve had no thought for him beyond a neighbor and a friend of her brother’s.
His many discussions about sheep and weeds hadn’t, as Sean had once assumed, been an attempt to win her heart but rather his sincere conversation.
His chosen topics might not have been complicated, but they were honest.
“You’re for taking our sister to Kilkenny,” Liam said after the ceremony as the family piled into their hay wagon. “Seems to me m’ brother and I are about to have precious few edible meals.”
Sean, his arm wrapped firmly around his new bride, wasn’t the least persuaded by his brother-in-law’s argument. “You’ve a difficulty there; I’ll not argue that. But I’ll state quite firmly ’tisn’t my difficulty to solve.”
“Do you hear this unfeeling husband of yours, Maeve?” Kieran shook his head, quite as if he were both shocked and horrified that a newly married man hadn’t been easily convinced to wander back to his home without his wife. “Leaving us to our empty stomachs and unending misery.”
“’Tis all you deserve,” she tossed back. “I cannot look back on your first meeting with my dear lad without amazement that the two of you didn’t tease him to the point of sending him away never to return. At last your ways are catching up with you.”
Kieran’s head shaking grew quite theatrical. “Unfeeling. Unfeeling. Unfeeling.”
Their cart was rounding a turn in the road leading home when an odd sight met them a pace away. Not terribly far from where they were, a cart was trapped in the mud of the fallow field.
“Heavens, how often is this to happen?” Liam asked as he deftly changed direction. “Seems we ought to do best to erect a sign of some sort, warning the lost and wandering that fields aren’t roads, no matter what a daft map might say.”
They stopped near enough to the unfortunate wagon for Kieran to call out. “Has this cart a person looking after it or has it magically arrived all on its own?” He grinned through the question, which was his way.
Sean chuckled low, pulling Maeve ever closer. “The poor soul who’s found himself in this particular predicament is in for a great deal of teasing.”
“And how is it you’d know that, dearest?” Maeve asked with a laugh of her own.
“A touch of intuition,” he answered.
“And more than a touch of experience,” Maeve added.
“We’ll help you free your cart,” Liam called out. “Assuming you’re not wishing to stay here all your days.”
In the next moment a woman, wrapped in a cloak hardly warm enough for the bitter air of January, emerged from behind the cart.
Her hair, every bit as red as Liam’s, tugged in the stiff breeze, her cheeks pink with the cold.
A pair of sparkling eyes met those of the ginger-haired Butler, and whatever jest he meant to offer next died unspoken on his lips.
And it would be said, for generations to come, that love could be found in many ways and in many places.
But if one were to ask the six-boulders Butlers where one ought to look when hoping to lose one’s heart, they would say without hesitation that the very best place was the fallow field at the end of a lane on the road to Kilkenny.