Chapter 34 An Experiment with Honey and Mr. Darcy
Giant’s Causeway had always been on my bucket list. I knew it would be crawling with tourists, especially in the summer, but I had seen photos of it since I was a little girl.
Those hexagonal stones and pillars were so otherworldly, something so perfect and strange that it shouldn’t be allowed to exist outside of fairy tales.
But first I had to face down the suspension bridge.
Jackie had arranged for us to meet a younger couple who lived in Ballycastle.
We had stayed a night in Derry, walking the beautiful old walls of the city and taking selfies at the Derry Girls mural.
I was delighted to use pounds instead of euros.
The next day we hit the suspension bridge first because of the long lines.
Tadhg had warned me of the heights, but since the bridge had safety ropes on either side, I decided it was statistically unlikely that I would plunge to my death.
We wove through the line like it was Disneyland, and the anticipation started to make me a little skittish.
Then we got close enough for me to see it in real life for the first time.
It was a rope bridge. Suspended between a perilous cliff and an equally perilous rocky chunk of island.
I gasped. The sky was gray and windy, and rain spat at our raincoats, conspiring to make the rope bridge slick and deadly.
Tadhg saw the look on my face and chuckled softly. “All right, you. You’ve seen it. You can officially tick it off the list. Let’s give it a miss and go have a hot cup of tea.”
“No.” My teeth chattered. More from nerves than anything else.
“Don’t be silly.”
“I can do it.”
He narrowed his eyes and scanned my face for a moment. “All right. If you’re sure. But tell me if it gets to be too much.”
It was one at a time on the rope bridge, and two-way traffic to the island, so we moved forward in inches, not feet, giving me plenty of time to freak out.
But if I thought I was at maximum freak-out, I was wrong.
So stupidly wrong. Because when we got to the front of the line, I realized that you could see.
Through. The. Rope. Straight down a billion feet to where the angry ocean crashed below, hungry to claim lost souls and stupid American tourists with FOMO.
“Want to turn back?”
“Nope.” I nodded.
“Excuse me.” Tadhg waved down an attendant. “I know it’s supposed to be one at a time, but do you think you could make an exception? My friend here is afraid of heights. I think she’d feel better if we could go together.”
“Sure. Yeah, all right. On ye go.”
We thanked her profusely. Then Tadhg took a step onto the bridge, looked back at me, and nodded encouragingly.
We locked eyes. My heart kicked up. I couldn’t get enough air.
Maybe I’d have to turn back. Then he reached his hand out.
One big, warm, firm hand. The same hand that had held mine before and made me feel so safe.
I knew what it could do, how I would feel.
It was against the rules.
But this wasn’t unnecessary. This was the lifeline I needed. So I took it. It enveloped me. Tight and safe and secure.
I put one foot in front of the other. And it was gorgeous.
And it was terrifying. And it was one of the scariest things I’d ever done.
But as we made it over to the tiny mountain island, where one might slide off at any moment, I didn’t think about the heights.
All I could think about was my hand still in his, like the only thing that mattered in the world were those few inches where his skin met mine and held me tight.
After we had looped the island and walked back over the bridge, he finally let go. But by then it was far too late. My hand tingled. I stretched it out. It felt different now. Transformed. So did I. I wasn’t Maya anymore—I was Mr. Darcy flexing his hand.
IT WAS A short drive to our next stop. My hand was still . . . well, I could still feel Tadhg’s hand there, and it wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t stop my brain from zeroing in on it. Distraction. Stimming. Knitting, that’s what I need. Simone is fucking wrong. Knitting solves every problem.
I pulled my knitting bag from the backseat and then looked for my hand cream.
“Crap.” I slumped back into my seat. It had run out the other day, and I had meant to buy some more and totally forgotten.
Tadhg cleared his throat and looked uncomfortable. “There’s, uh . . . lotion in the glove compartment, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Really?” I opened it. There were tools, important-looking vehicular documents, some rubber bands, bags for dog walks, and the nice little tube of locally farmed honey hand cream I’d seen him buy in Cork.
It had a hand-drawn label with buzzy little bees leaving trails of dotted lines behind as they flew.
I rubbed a dollop in and smelled it. Delicious.
“Honey? Really? I didn’t take you for a honey-hand-cream sort of man. Look how cute this label is!”
“It’s, uh . . . nothing.”
“What?” I looked at him. Red was creeping up his neck. Something was bothering him.
“It’s for you. I mean, I got it in case you needed it.”
I looked at him closer. “How would you know I needed hand cream, Tadhg?”
He let out a breath. “You always use it before you knit. The other day you were out, so you put your knitting away.”
I did always use it before I knitted. I hated the feel of the yarn tugging against dry skin. “Well, what in the world? Who even are you?”
“It was just—I just saw it and grabbed it. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing! That is very thoughtful and considerate.”
“Not really.” His furrow cleared. “I did it for me. You’re quiet when you’re knitting.”
I scoffed through my grin and sought out the comfort of the clacking needles, the distraction from my thoughts, and the feel of the yarn on my hands. But after this, none of it helped.
We got hot chocolates and walked them down an endless flight of cliff stairs to Kinbane Castle.
After all the tourists at the rope bridge, I was shocked to find that no one else was here, apart from a young dad and his three boys besieging the ruin.
We said hello as we crossed paths and they made their climb back up.
This castle . . . Man, this castle.
It was built on a tiny crumble of rock just a few feet from the beach and was in a picture-perfect state of ruin, covered in soft green grass, nestled into the nook of a curved bay surrounded by sheer cliff face with a white stripe of cascading waterfalls, like a flick of a painter’s brush.
“Looks like we have Kinbane Castle all to ourselves, then,” Tagdh said with a grin over his shoulder, and kept walking. My stomach flipped.
What the hell is the matter with me? I felt lightheaded. I hope I’m not catching something. That would ruin the trip.
Once you crossed onto the island and over the castle’s walls, you could literally see another country—Scottish islands on the horizon.
I clutched at my chest for the beauty of it.
I wanted to live there and do nothing but read fantasy stories with lots of yearning.
Somehow, everywhere I went in this country felt like I was nestled between the pages of a beautiful book.
I hadn’t known that places like this were real.
I hadn’t known that I could feel like I had fallen into another realm, so much more beautiful and mysterious than our own.
The drizzle made the smooth stone of the sixteenth-century castle shine.
We sat on one such weather-beaten stone that people had quarried and shaped and built a castle with five hundred years ago, and drank our hot chocolate, not caring about the little flecks of rain that pattered on our hoods and across our noses.
I sighed, heavy and soft with contentment.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
And then I had to look away.