“I hurt him.” Again, Boyle flexed his fingers. “He wasn’t expecting a punch, I’m thinking. I know when one lands well, and it did. I’m thinking as well, the poison was for you. Could I have pulled you back out, as you did me? Do you know that? And if I did that, could I have gotten you to Connor in time to deal with the poison, if I’d thought to?”
“You knew what to do.” Instinctively, she lifted her hands to rub at his shoulders, found them knotted. “You knew we needed fire, and you stayed so calm. I needed you to stay calm. I’m going to believe you’d know what to do if and when he comes at us again.”
She let out a long breath. “I’m starving. I’ll go fix breakfast.”
“I’ll do it. You’re a terrible cook.”
“That’s so entirely true. Fine, you cook. I’ll give Branna a call, tell her, just in case. Are we still on for that rambling?”
“I don’t see what this changes about it.”
“Great. I’ll grab a shower, then call Branna. It’s early, and she’ll be less cranky with another fifteen minutes’ sleep.”
“I’ll put the kettle on.”
But he picked up his phone first and, while she ran the shower, punched in Fin’s number. He’d sooner know what Fin had to say before he fried up the bacon.
15
IT WAS THE COUNTRY OF HER BLOOD, AND AS SHE WATCHED it rise and fall and spread outside the truck window, Iona understood it was the country of her heart.
It settled into her like a sip of whiskey on a cold night, warm and comforting. Green hills rolled under a sky layered with clouds, stacked like sheets of linen. The sun shimmered through them, making intermittent swirls of blue luminous as opals. Fat cows and woolly sheep dotted emerald fields bisected with rough hedgerows or silvery gray rock walls.
Farmhouses, barns, pretty little cottages scattered over the land with postcard charm as the road twisted and curved. Dooryard gardens reached for spring, with brave blooms opening in wild blues, sassy oranges, delicate whites, topped here and there by the heralding trumpets of daffodils.
She would have spring in Ireland, Iona thought, the first of a lifetime. And like those brave flowers, she determined to bloom.
The road might turn, curve out like a tunnel with high, high hedgerows of wild fuchsia hugging the sides of the twists, the turns with their blooms dripping like drops of blood. Then the world opened again to the hills, the fields, and, thrillingly, the shadows of mountains.
“How do you stand it?” Iona wondered. “Doesn’t it constantly dazzle your eyes, take your breath, make your heart ache?”
“It’s home,” Boyle said simply. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be. It suits me.”
“Oh, me, too.” And finally, she thought, she felt she suited it.
The wind kicked, and a splatter of rain struck the windshield. Then the sun ran behind it to turn the drops into tiny rainbows.
Magick, Iona thought, simple and mysterious.
As was Ballintubber Abbey.
Its clean lines lent a quiet dignity to the old gray stone. It made its home on pretty grounds backed with fields of sheep spread before the green hills, the loom of mountains.
Simple grandeur, she thought, finding the oxymoron the perfect description of the ancient and the life going quietly on around it. She climbed out of the truck to study the pathways, the gardens defying winter’s last shivers, and smiled as the breeze carried the baaing of sheep.
She thought she could sit on the grass and spend an entire day happily just looking, just listening.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting the history of the place.”
She’d read some of it in her guide, but enjoyed the idea of Boyle giving her his take.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, it was Conchobair who built it—Cathal Mor of the wine-red hand, of the O’Connor clan, so he’d be one of yours.”
“Oh. Of course.” How deep her blood ran here, she thought. And how marvelous was that? “Like Ashford, before the Burkes won it.”
“There you are. Back in 1216 it was. I know the date, as they’re after restoring the east wing, I think it is, for its eight-hundred-year celebration. And so the legend—or one of them—says while Cathal was the son of King Turloch, he was forced to flee from Turloch’s queen, and spend some time laboring and in hiding before he took the throne. And there was a man who treated him kindly, and Cathal, now king, asked him what he could do to repay him. It was a church that the man, now old, wanted, in Ballintubber, and so Cathal ordered it built.”