Chapter 9
T he grounds at Blarney Castle were stunning . Even in winter, with a lot of the greenery gone, they were absolutely beautiful. The castle, which was much more square and blocky than what Tara thought of as a castle, was still impressively tall, maybe a hundred feet, and that was almost the smallest part of the whole place. The castle was settled right on the river, with battlements that still stood along the pathway and, among other things, a sign that pointed, intriguingly, to a 'poison garden.' Apparently there was an arboretum somewhere, and a lake somewhere else, and…
…and Tara decided she resented Colette Snootypants for wanting to steal peacock feathers when Tara could otherwise be enjoying a wonderful day on these magnificent grounds with the charming, handsome, and kind Declan McCarthy.
He had disappeared somewhere while she and Colette walked up toward the castle, which made sense. It would be weird for a peacock to follow them around like it was a pet dog. But he reappeared, back in human form, as they worked their way around the battlements, and offered Tara a smile. "The peafowl were just released from their pen and are all just up a little ways at the lookout tower, if you want to come see them?"
"Peafowl," Tara said with unexpected delight. "Right, you're not—they're not—all pea cocks , are they? The females are peahens. I didn't know they were collectively peafowl, though. The poor hens," she added. "They've got pretty throats, but they're just not as magnificent."
Colette steamed off ahead of them, obviously eager to go raid some peacock feathers. Tara and Declan exchanged a glance and moved fast enough to keep the designer in sight, but Declan slid his hand into Tara's as they walked, and she actually said, "We've got to get her dealt with so we can spend the rest of the day enjoying ourselves," aloud. "This place is beautiful. I'd love to see it in summer."
Declan smiled down at her. "That's the best idea I've ever heard. All of it, both enjoying ourselves and showing you the grounds in summer. C'mere to me now, though?—"
Tara laughed. "That's at least the third time you've said that when I'm right here."
His eyebrows rose and she could all but see him reviewing what he'd said. "Oh! It's nothing to do with coming closer. It means 'listen.'"
"Does it! Why?"
"I've no idea. Probably something in the Irish that got directly translated into English. We've a lot of that, but I'd never know it until someone asked like you just did. But what did I want you to c'mere for, now?" He stared thoughtfully ahead, keeping an eye on Colette, then shook himself. "Dealing with her, yeh. I texted the lads and a couple of them can be here this morning, and one of them's got a mate in the guards and he'll ring him to have him come pick her up once we've got her dead to rights, if that's what we've got to do. I want to just scare the piss out of her, though, like convince her the peacock gods will strike her down if she keeps this up."
"Now I want very much for there to be peacock gods to strike her down," Tara said almost mournfully. "That would be so cool."
"Oh, there could be." Declan sounded positively wicked. "I just can't decide if it's the kind of thing she'd need to be a little bit, ah, inebriated to see, or whether it would be so entirely mad that she'd think she was losing her mind and wouldn't tell anyone anyway for fear of not being believed."
"I am now wildly intrigued," Tara murmured, then caught her breath as the pathway opened up onto a green where at least a dozen peafowl were exploring the grounds. There were more males than females, most of them with magnificently developed trains, although one or two were clearly younger and had only short tails, comparatively. "Oh, aren't they handsome!"
Colette Snootypants had walked out into the middle of the green, and even from the distance, Tara was pretty certain she could see the designer's hands twitching. "I swear, if that woman tries to pull a tail feather…"
"Peacocks are aggressive like," Declan murmured. "She'll have her hands full if she does. But why her damned project can't wait until they shed them naturally… I'm sure someone would agree to let her buy or take them in some way, and how many feathers can one person need? We have up to a couple hundred of them, and even some of those feckin' ridiculous all-feather dresses with the trains that go on forever only use a couple thousand." He paused, then admitted, "Which is loads, and you'd need extras to make up with breakage and the like, but still, never mind us shifters, you could get nearly enough for that kind of extravagance just from working out an arrangement to collect the sheddings here and at Anavee!"
"But not for an out-of-season dress," Tara said thoughtfully. "If you wanted to make a huge splash at one of the fashion week extravaganzas right now, or a major red carpet event or something, you'd either have to be planning on it from last year, which would be harder to hide, or do something like this."
"I don't think she's that famous," Declan said, and Tara smiled up at him.
"No, not if what I found about her online is any indication. But she might be trying to be that big. All right. You go hide somewhere and shift, and then come shed a feather or two for me so I can convince her I really am a peacock whisperer, and then…"
Declan looked cheerful. "And then I'll spook the others and she'll at least have to go chasing us all through the woods while we wait for my mates to get here. Oh, God. " That last was at a sudden onset of childish shrieking in the distance. Tara and Declan both turned toward it, with Declan saying, "There must be a school outing at the castle today. I'm going to have to be careful. Children show up everywhere you don't want them to be."
"Sort of like women who catch you shifting behind the shed." Tara took a startled step back as Declan laughed out loud. "I didn't think it was that funny!"
"It's not," he said, grinning. "Except 'shifting' in Irish slang is kissing."
Tara frowned briefly, then worked her way through everything that implied and laughed, too. "Oh. Yeah. That's got a whole different kind of connotation to it here, then, doesn't it? Like I'm somebody's mom catching them making out behind the garage. Okay." She laughed again. "Okay, yeah, that is funny. But it's not what I meant!"
"No, I know. It just catches me out sometimes even when I'm just thinking about being a shifter, never mind hearing someone else say it like that. I'll be careful," he promised. "But I'm going to go hide in a bush and shift now—" They both started laughing, and he finally groaned, amused but trying to pull himself together. "I'm going to go hide and change my own shape, so I am, and then see if we can rally the peacocks somehow. This would be a lot easier if I'd called Seamus and Brian earlier," he added in a mutter, then disappeared toward some privacy while Tara approached Colette.
"Well?" the designer demanded. "Make them shed!"
"You know, it's not that easy," Tara said with a sudden, rising sense of hysteria. The idea of trying to pass herself off as a peacock whisperer was absolutely absurd, but she thought she could actually have a lot of fun with it. She put all the snobby authority into her voice that she possibly could. "First you have to establish a connection. A sense of trust. Become someone they're comfortable with, so you can approach them. It's why I've taken up photography as a profession. It's slow-moving, not very loud, and therefore not alarming. It helps to develop a bond ."
She didn't think she'd ever told that many lies in a row in her life, but Colette appeared to be swallowing it all. Maybe it was easy to make someone believe what they wanted to hear. Maybe Tara wasn't exactly lying , anyway. What little she knew about building rapport with animals, especially wild ones, basically fell along the lines of what she'd just said. It wasn't her fault that the peacock she could most successfully 'whisper' to happened to be a man most of the time.
"I just want the feathers." Colette actually sounded briefly desperate. Desperate enough to distract Tara from the ploy at hand, anyway, and to examine the other woman curiously before deciding she should at least give Colette a chance. A chance to explain herself, Tara thought, and a chance to make better choices. Maybe she would , with a little encouragement.
"Why do you need them so much? I know, they're for a project, but peacocks naturally shed their feathers…" She had no idea when, just that they did. "Later in the year. Why does it matter so much now? You could just wait, and maybe make some kind of legal arrangement to get the feathers you need, if real ones are that important."
The desperation in Colette's eyes briefly glittered toward greed, and the sympathy Tara had just built up for her started to disappear. "It's my make or break project," the designer said. "Nothing less than perfection will do. I've got a very exclusive client, and they require the most exclusive materials."
Tara had never heard someone sound so self-centered or arrogant. Colette's tone put her own attempt at sounding snobby to shame, and the designer wasn't even trying. The rest of Tara's sympathy for her evaporated. "Including fresh peacock feathers in early March."
Colette fixed her with a hard glare. "Yes. Including fresh peacock feathers in March."
Well, all right, Tara thought. She'd tried. Not very hard, maybe, but Colette Saunier didn't offer very many ins. With an almost-sad sigh, Tara went deeper into the green with her camera and quietly sat down in damp grass, taking pictures. "You can join me," she said softly, "but you have to be slow and gentle and patient . Aren't they magnificent animals?"
The designer did join her, but made horrible faces as she also sat in the damp. Tara personally admitted it would have been a good idea to bring a blanket or something waterproof to sit on, but it was too late now and she certainly wasn't going to make things easier on the ill-mannered woman beside her, who shrugged. "They're just birds."
Tara couldn't understand how anybody could look at most things and think they were 'just' anything, but relegating peacocks, of all things, to 'just' birds struck her as absurd. "Seriously? You can look at those colors and those tails and think they're just birds?"
Colette shrugged again. "They're of no use except for what I can do with them, and the fact that people fancy them. I find that much color gauche."
It was a pity Declan wasn't a seagull shifter, Tara thought quite clearly. Colette Saunier could use somebody pooping on her head. "Why would you even want to work with those kinds of colors if you don't personally like them?"
"To get paid an outrageous amount of money," Colette said coolly, and Tara decided she didn't really want to have much more conversation with this woman. Fortunately, Declan, in all his peacocky glory, decided the time was right to approach them. He came quite close, lifting his train, and began that funny, tail-rattling dance that he'd done for her at the wildlife park.
Tara put her camera down to clap for him, making a series of delighted cooing sounds that weren't performative at all: she really was thrilled to watch his dance, and the way the feathers glimmered in the soft morning light. Another of the peacocks came hurrying over like it was afraid it was missing out on some quality flirting time, then—Tara swore—it stared at Declan in dismay, like it was wondering why on earth he was putting so much effort in for a couple of humans. Its entire posture basically said " You can't hatch chicks with those birds, mate! "
Declan ignored his rival and spun and hopped a bit more, feathers rattling and glinting before he heaved a sigh and, with an expression just as effortful as the one yesterday at the wildlife park, ejected two tail feathers, which drifted gently to the ground.