His Cinderella Heiress

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His Cinderella Heiress Page 17

by Marion Lennox


  ‘You loved Maeve...’ She was struggling. They should find somewhere private to talk, she thought. Somewhere like the kitchen. But her onlookers seemed fascinated. Keep the punters happy, she decided, and then she decided she was pretty close to hysteria.

  ‘When you grow up with someone, you do love them,’ Finn told her. ‘They become...family. I know you don’t get that, Jo. I’m hoping I can teach you.’

  ‘But Maeve...’

  ‘Maeve and I loved as best friends,’ he told her, smiling down at her with a smile that did her head in. ‘And Maeve’s father used her loyalty to him and to his farm to coerce her. I never guessed the pressure. More fool me, but then...’ He shrugged. ‘I was one-eyed about my farm as well so maybe I was part of the problem. Marrying Maeve was just an extension of that loyalty. But over a year ago she found the strength to run. She told her father—and me—that she needed time out before marrying and she took a job in a bookshop in Dublin. And promptly met the owner and fell in love. Really, truly in love. She was so much in love that for the first time in our lives she didn’t want to talk to me about it. But her father’s emotional blackmail continued. He’s had one heart attack and terrified her with the thought of another. She kept telling both of us that she just wanted space.’

  ‘Which broke your heart?’ she ventured. She was finding it hard to breathe here. He was so close. He was here. Finn.

  He grinned at that. ‘Um...no,’ he conceded. ‘Sure, I was puzzled, and yes, my pride was hurt, but we’ve been apart for over twelve months now. And in truth I wasn’t all that upset. Maybe a part of me was even relieved. But then she told me she was pregnant and she wanted me to face her father with her. She thought it might make things better if I was there when she told him, but I thought it’d make things worse. I thought she should face him with Steven, the father of her baby, and I told her so.’

  ‘Oh...’ She’d forgotten her audience. She’d forgotten everything. ‘Oh, Finn...’

  ‘So that’s where it was when I came to the castle,’ Finn told her. ‘Maeve and I were over. That’s when I met you and that’s when I knew for certain that Maeve was right. What she and I had was nothing compared to how I felt about you.’

  And what was a girl to say about that? Nothing, Jo decided. Nothing seemed to be working. Certainly not her voice. She seemed to be frozen.

  ‘She still didn’t have the gumption to face her father,’ Finn told her. ‘But he finally discovered she was pregnant. Instead of confronting her, he came to find me.’

  ‘And you went...’

  ‘To knock some sense into the three of them,’ he told her. ‘Yes, Maeve was still terrified but I collected the family doctor on the way back to her father’s farm. It was insurance, and her father turned purple with rage and distress, but there wasn’t a twinge of heart trouble. They survived and it’s sorted. They’re about to live happily ever after; that’s assuming they have enough gumption to find their way out of a paper bag. But enough of Maeve. Jo, I came here to talk about you. About us. And even about marriage?’

  There was a concerted gasp behind them. Jo tried to speak. She couldn’t.

  And then her locals took over.

  ‘You’ve come all the way from Ireland to propose?’ It was a snap out of left field. Eric had abandoned his fire lighting and now he stalked up to Finn like a small, indignant cockerel. ‘So who are you to be asking?’ He poked him in the chest. ‘You can’t just sweep in here and carry her off.’

  ‘Ooh, maybe he can,’ one of the ladies behind him twittered. ‘He’s beautiful.’

  ‘He’s a biker. A biker!’

  ‘So’s she.’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  But she was no longer listening to her locals. She was only listening to Finn.

  ‘Jo, I’m not here to carry you anywhere,’ he said softly, smiling at her now, his lovely, gentle smile that kick-started her heart and had it doing handsprings. ‘I wasn’t so much thinking of me carrying you off but us riding into the sunset together. But there’s no rush.’ His grip on her hands was infinitely gentle. They were warming, she thought. She was feeding him warmth.

  It was a two-way street. The zing between the two of them...

  ‘I’m not here to take you back to the castle,’ Finn told her. ‘Jo, I’m not here to take you anywhere. I’m here because I’m home.’

  ‘What...?’ It was so hard to make her voice work. ‘I don’t understand.’ When her voice finally did work it came out as almost a wail.

  ‘Because where you are is my home,’ he said softly and he drew her a little closer so his lips could brush her hair. ‘That’s what I figured. And I also figured how I’d loved you back in Ireland was dumb. I just assumed you’d be part of the package. Castle and Jo. We’d marry, I hoped, and live in our castle for ever. But then you were gone and I looked around the castle and thought: I don’t love the castle. It’s just a thing. It’s just a place. How can I love a thing or a place when the only way I can truly love is to love you?’

  Then, as she said nothing—for how could she think of a single thing to say?—his grip on her hands became more urgent. ‘Jo, you said you don’t know how to do family. You said you don’t do home. But, the way I see it, home is us. Family is us. As long as you and I are together we don’t have to strive for anything else. No castles. No farms. Nothing. Not even our bikes if we don’t want them.’

  Bikes. It was a solid word, the one tangible thing she was able to get her head around. She looked out through the door and saw a great, gleaming Harley parked to the side.

  ‘I don’t...I don’t have a Harley yet,’ she managed which, in the circumstances, made no sense at all.

  ‘We can fix that. We don’t have to but we can if we want. Jo, if you’ll let me stay we can do anything we want.’

  ‘You want the castle,’ Jo whispered.

  ‘Not as much as I want you.’

  ‘Your farm...’

  ‘I’m selling the farm. Where you go, that’s where I belong.’

  ‘So you’d follow me round like a stalker...’ She was fighting to keep things light but she was failing. Miserably.

  And Finn got serious.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that to you, Jo,’ he said softly. ‘If you say the word I’ll go back to Ireland. Or I’ll get on my bike and ride around Australia to give you more time to think about it. The decision’s yours, love. I won’t carry you anywhere and I won’t follow unless you want. All I ask is that I love you but that love’s dependent on nothing but your own beautiful self. Not on location, loyalty, history. Simply on you.’

  ‘So...’ She was starting to feel almost hysterical. How could she believe this? It was a dream. How could she make her thoughts work? ‘You’ll just abandon the castle? The sheep?’

  ‘That’s why it’s taken me three weeks to be here. That and the fact that you weren’t kind enough to leave a forwarding address. I had to take our slimy lawyer out to dinner and ply him with strong drink before he’d give me your mail address and it took sheer force of personality to make your last employer tell me who’d checked recently on your references. And then I had to find someone to take care of the livestock because I don’t like Mrs O’Reilly’s cure by gun method. Luckily she has a nephew who’s worked the land with his dad and he seems sensible. So our castle’s secure in case we ever wish to come back, but if we decide we don’t want to come back then we can put it on the market tomorrow. The world’s our oyster. So love... As your astute customer suggested, I’m here to propose, but there’s no rush. While you’re thinking about it...maybe you could teach me to make porridge?’

  ‘Excellent,’ Eric said darkly but he was punched by the lady beside him.

  ‘Eric’ll make the porridge,’ she said. ‘You two go outside and have your talk out. Though can I suggest you head to the side of the shed because the wind’s
a killer.’

  ‘He can’t go down on one knee behind the shed,’ Eric retorted. ‘It’s gravel. And I don’t know how to make porridge.’

  ‘That’s what the instructions on the packet are for,’ the woman retorted. ‘And it’s only you eating it.’ She turned to face Finn. They were all facing Finn. ‘So, young man, do you want to pick her up and carry her somewhere you can propose in privacy?’

  ‘I’ll carry her nowhere she doesn’t wish,’ Finn said and his smile was gone and the look he gave Jo was enough to make her gasp. ‘Do you wish me to take you outside and propose?’

  And there was only one response to that. Jo looked up at Finn and she smiled through unshed tears. She loved this man so much.

  He’d given up his castle for her.

  He loved her.

  ‘I do,’ she whispered and then, because it wasn’t loud enough, because it wasn’t sure enough, she said it again, three times for luck.

  ‘I do, I do, I do.’

  * * *

  They stayed until the owners’ baby had outgrown her colic. They stayed until Jo had not a single doubt.

  She woke each morning in the arms of her beloved and she knew that finally, blessedly, she’d found her home.

  The two bikes sat outside waiting, but there was little chance—or desire—to use them. Finn refused wages. ‘I’m a barista in training,’ he told the owners when they demurred. ‘Jo’s teaching me to make the world’s best coffee.’ But they worked side by side and they had fun.

  Fun was almost a new word in Jo’s vocabulary and she liked it more and more.

  She loved the way Finn watched her and copied her and then got fancy and tried new ways with the menu and new ways of attracting punters. She loved the way he made the customers laugh. She loved the way he failed dismally to make decent porridge. She loved the way the locals loved him.

  She loved him.

  And each night she loved him more, and finally she woke and knew that a line had been crossed. That she could never go back. That she truly trusted.

  She was ready for home.

  ‘Surely a man’s home is his castle,’ she told him. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He was worried. ‘Jo, I’m happy to be a nomad with you for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Just as I’m starting to love not being a nomad,’ she chuckled and then got serious. ‘Finn, I’ve been thinking... We could do amazing things with our castle. We could run it as an upmarket bed and breakfast. We could ask Mrs O’Reilly to help us if she wants to stay on. We could make the farm fantastic and set up the little cottages for rent by artists. We could work on the tapestries...’

  ‘We?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘I’m bad with a needle,’ he told her. They were lying in bed, sated with loving, and their conversation seemed only partly vocal. What was between them was so deep and so real that it felt as if words hardly needed to be said out loud.

  ‘You’re dreadful at porridge too,’ she said lovingly. ‘What made you try a porridge pancake? Eric’ll never get over it.’

  ‘It was a new art form,’ he said defensively. ‘It stuck on the bottom. I’d made a crust so I thought I’d use it.’

  She chuckled and turned in the circle of his arms. ‘Finn Conaill, I love you but I’ve always known you’re not a maker of porridge. You’re a farmer and a landowner. You’re also the Lord of Glenconaill, and it’s time the castle had its people. It’s time for us to make the castle our home.’

  ‘It’s up to you, love. Home’s where you are,’ he said, holding her close, deeply contented. And she kissed him again and the thing was settled.

  They went back to Ireland. They returned to Castle Glenconaill. Lord and Lady ready to claim their rightful place.

  And three months later they were married in the village church, with half the district there for a look at this new lord and his lady.

  And they decided to do it in style.

  In the storeroom were wedding dresses, the most amazing, lavish wedding gowns Jo had ever seen. Soon they’d give them to a museum, they’d decided, but not until they’d had one last use from them.

  She chose a gown made by Coco Chanel, worn by her grandmother, a woman she’d never met but whose measurements were almost exactly hers. It was simplicity itself, a wedding gown straight out of the twenties, with a breast-line that clung, tiny slips of silk at the shoulders and layered flares of creamy silk with embroidery that shimmered and sparkled and showed her figure to perfection.

  Its nineteen-twenties look seemed as if it was her natural style. With her cropped curls, a dusting of natural make-up and a posy of wild flowers, she was stunning. All the villagers thought so.

  So did Finn.

  But Jo wasn’t the only one who’d dressed up. Finn had dressed up too, but the twenties were a bit too modern, they’d decided, for a true Lord of Glenconaill. ‘Breeches,’ Jo had decreed and he’d groaned and laughed and given in. They’d chosen a suit that was exactly what Jo imagined her hero should wear. Crisp white shirt and silk necktie. A magnificently tailored evening jacket in rich black that reached mid-thigh. Deep black breeches that moulded to his legs and made Mrs O’Reilly gasp and fan herself.

  A top hat.

  It should have looked foppish. It should have looked ridiculous. It didn’t. Bride and groom stood together as they became man and wife and there was hardly a dry eye in the congregation.

  ‘Don’t they look lovely,’ their housekeeper whispered to the woman beside her in the pew. ‘They’re perfect. They’re the best Lord and Lady Glenconaill we’ve ever had.’

  ‘That’s not saying much.’ The woman she was talking to was dubious. ‘There’s been some cold souls living in that castle before them. Kicking out younger sons, disowning daughters, treating their staff like dirt.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Mrs O’Reilly’s nephew was standing beside them, looking uncomfortable in a stiff new suit. He’d spent the last three months working side by side with Finn and if he had his way he’d be there for ever. ‘But that’s what toffs do and Finn and Jo aren’t toffs. They might be lord and lady but they’re...I dunno...okay.’

  ‘Okay’ in Niall’s view was a compliment indeed, Mrs O’Reilly conceded, but really, there were limits to what she thought was okay. And something wasn’t.

  For the bride and groom, newly married, glowing with love and pride, were at the church gate. Jo was tossing her bouquet and laughing and smiling and they were edging out of the gate and then the rest of the gathering realised what Mrs O’Reilly had realised and there was a collective scandalised gasp.

  For they’d grabbed their helmets and headed for Finn’s bike, a great beast of a thing, a machine that roared into life and drowned out everything else.

  And Jo was hiking up her wedding dress and climbing onto the back of the bike and Finn was climbing on before her.

  ‘Ready?’ he yelled back at her, while the crowd backed away and gave them room. Roaring motorbikes did that to people.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she told him. ‘Ready for the road. Ready for anything. Ready for you.’

  And he couldn’t resist. He hauled off his helmet and turned and he kissed her. And she kissed him back, long and lovingly, while the crowd roared their approval.

  ‘Ready for the rest of our lives?’ Finn asked when finally they could speak.

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Ready for home?’

  ‘I know I am,’ Jo told him and kissed him again. ‘Because I’m already there.’

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE BRIDESMAID’S BABY BUMP by Kandy Shepherd.

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