Bit by bit the castles are built.
—Irish Proverb
Just past six in the morning Jenna stood in front of the bathroom mirror. Her skin had picked up a healthy pink tone, and her eyes once again looked more hazel than bloodshot. All told, not bad for a woman who'd considered herself one tissue away from death the day before. Vi's tea seemed to have worked, though Jenna had no intention of puffing her friend's ego by telling her so.
The crew from Irish Gourmet was due at eleven. The shoot was to be of appetizers in the style of Muir House, and the article to focus on Jenna's philosophy of fostering local farmers and suppliers to produce the very best for the restaurant. Other than assuring herself that the food's presentation was perfect, her most pressing goal for the day was to slink out of camera's range. If given a choice between having her picture taken and eating worms, she'd go with the worms.
Because she knew that she was unlikely to be offered the option, Jenna took the extraordinary step of applying not only mascara, but also eye pencil, blusher, and lipstick. She glanced again at her face in the mirror, a passing regard that grew to be something more, something startling. She looked like someone with a marvelous secret, a woman desired by a man whom she desired in return. She was not glamorous, but she was Jenna. And today at least, she was glad for it.
Resolving to be merciful and not to shake Maureen awake until at least nine, Jenna cleaned her bedroom before making her way downstairs for a quick breakfast. She greeted and fed Harold, safe in his lobster world for one, then foraged for her own food.
As she pulled open the door to the walk-in fridge, she paused, hearing a noise not part of the house's usual repertoire. The sound, like two pieces of china tapping against each other, was gone so quickly that Jenna decided she'd imagined it. She stepped in, pulled a box of raspberries and a container of homemade vanilla yogurt, and then emerged.
Jenna yelped. A stranger stood in front of her. Some of the raspberries hit the floor, and the yogurt was almost a victim, too.
"I'm sorry if I startled you," said the woman, bending to pick up a berry that had rolled to rest at the tip of one ivory leather pump. "I'm Katherine Gilvane. Your sister said she would mention to you that I had arrived."
Jenna closed the fridge, struggling to simultaneously calm jumping nerves and recall whether Reenie had been in her room last night. It was a possibility; Jenna had slept the sleep of the exhausted as her cold left. She did have some hazy memory of Maureen saying something about the yellow room and one-hundred-twenty euros a night. The sum, at least, had to have been based in viral delusion.
"Well, welcome to Muir House, Mrs. . . ." She trailed off, realizing she'd lost her guest's name along with the berries. "I'm sorry, what did you say your name was?"
"Gilvane, Katherine Gilvane. I understand you know my son, Devlin."
Jenna very carefully set the yogurt on the counter. Then she looked at the woman in front of her. Beneath the lapels of her ivory suit jacket lay a scarf—jonquil yellow, of course. Mrs. Gilvane had eyes as clear blue as her son's, and an elegant black bob threaded with silver. The similarities were unmistakable. And for someone who claimed that she was no psychic, Vi Kilbride was piling up some unsettling statistics.
Mrs. Gilvane extended her hand. Out of an instinctive sort of politeness, Jenna managed to shake it.
"Yes, I know Dev," she replied. Whatever cordial tidbit she should have added after that affirmation escaped her. "How long will you be staying with us, Mrs. Gilvane?"
"Call me Kath—" She shook her head. "No, call me Kate. I'm hoping to have left Katherine in Dublin, where she can dust my furniture and sit placidly through Altar Guild meetings."
Bending to pick up some stray raspberries, Jenna smiled at the whimsical thought. She'd seen flashes of the same humor in Dev.
"And as for how long I'm staying, I'm really not quite sure," Kate said. "I have friends I'm needing to visit, and I've had a thought of perhaps finding a place of my own in Ballymuir."
Like mother, like son, again.
"Your berries are tumbling," Kate said in an amused voice. "Now hand me the box and go sit. I've clearly given you a fright."
Jenna obeyed, walking the few steps to the oak table in the war room. She sat, and mindless of the makeup she'd so carefully applied, leaned her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. She could hear Kate Gilvane in the next room, humming to herself as she turned on the taps to the sink, no doubt washing the fallen raspberries.
There was no arguing that she could use a paying guest. Several, even. In any bidding war, the Fahey deep pockets were negligible when compared to the wealth of a company like Harwood. And there was a tasty irony in earning money from the mother of one of Harwood's executives. Except Jenna had thoughts of getting the executive in question quite naked, and having his mother under the same roof might be an impediment. But really, debate was pointless. Kate Gilvane was here, and from the sounds of it, as comfortable in Jenna's kitchen as she.
Kate appeared in the doorway with a bowl of freshly washed berries in her hands. She set the bowl on the table and said, "I'll bring in the yogurt and we'll have ourselves a fine breakfast and a chat."
Jenna rose. "No, please sit. I'll get the yogurt. And while I'm in the kitchen, would you like coffee or tea?" she asked before she lost total control of the meal.
"Tea sounds grand," Kate said as she pulled out a chair.
Jenna escaped and started a kettle. "How about some eggs or an omelet? I can do better than just berries and yogurt," she called as she assembled a tea tray.
"Another morning, perhaps," Kate answered. "I'm not often awake this early. I was too excited to sleep."
Jenna returned to the table with yogurt, spoons, and two parfait glasses.
"You're very pretty," her guest commented.
Instead of making one of her standard self-denigrating comments, Jenna said simply, "Thank you." She put berries into the base of each glass, spooned in some yogurt, then layered in more of the same.
"You might want some sugar," she warned Kate. "I make my own vanilla yogurt, and it's not as sweet as store-bought."
"I'm sure it will be perfect. That is, after all, your reputation. I've read reviews of your cooking."
"The water should be ready," Jenna said. She slipped from her chair and tarried in the kitchen as long as she thought she could before returning with a tea tray. If Kate had found the delay surprising, she didn't show it. They ate in silence.
"And how did you come to be at Muir House?" Kate eventually asked as she poured out more tea for Jenna and herself.
Because Kate was both Dev's mother and an unknown quantity, Jenna gave the generic "for strangers" answer. "I was visiting the area. When I passed the gates on the main road, I had to see more."
"Simple enough," Kate said, but the arch of her brows implied she wasn't quite buying in. "And now you're the house's mistress. You've done well by it."
"Whatever I've given Muir House, it's given me back double."
"Then I'd be saying your arrival here is fate."
"Or insanity on my part."
Kate chuckled. "There is that."
Jenna sipped a bit more of her tea, thinking she might well develop a taste for the drink, which she'd selected this morning out of sheer politeness to her guest. It had seemed the Irish thing to do. "Did Maureen give you any keys last night?"
"Two," Kate said.
"Well, I'll assume one is for the front door. On nights that the restaurant is open, it's unlocked until the last guest leaves, sometimes as late as midnight. After that, you'll need the key."
Kate laughed. "I won't be closing the pubs. At least, I don't think I will. Is Rory O'Connor behind the family bar?"
Jenna nodded. "Rory and his daughter, most nights."
"Then I'll be needing that key, after all," Kate replied in a pleased voice. "Rory will keep me talking until the sun rises."
Knowing Rory, Jenna didn't doubt it. "I'm assuming the other key you were given is to your bedroom," she said. "You should know that it's the same skeleton key that opens every other bedroom door. I'll call a locksmith and see if I can persuade him here, but until then, I hope you won't mind too much."
Kate settled her teacup in its saucer. "I'm sure I'll be fine, and it's no surprise. The security of this house came from the strength of its owners, not locks."
"You know Muir House?"
"I've loved her all my life," Kate said simply. She rose. "I don't mean to seem lacking in chat, but it's time for me to be gone if I'm to see all I want to today."
"Dev should be stopping by this afternoon," Jenna offered, thinking Kate would want to know.
"Oh, I'll find him when I'm ready," she replied, then smiled. "I expect he'll be quite surprised, though not nearly as much as I was to learn that he was nosing about in Ballymuir." She looked ready to leave, but paused and said, "Tea and porridge with a bit of fruit should be fine for the morning, and I promise I'll not bother you until seven-thirty at the earliest."
"Would you like a dinner reservation for this evening?"
"Thank you, but it's O'Connor's for me. A toasted cheese sandwich and some of Rory's horrible jokes, I'm thinking."
"I'll see you in the morning, then," she said to Kate. "Have a wonderful day."
Kate Gilvane's answering smile was every bit as full of the devil as her son's. "Of course I will. I'm in Ballymuir."
Yes, Kate Gilvane was in Ballymuir, and an hour and a half later, Jenna was still in the kitchen wrestling with both a moral dilemma and a consommé. The dilemma was proving every bit as complex as the raft she had assembled to flavor and clarify the smoked quail consommé for her Irish Gourmet visitors. As Jenna carefully submerged a small ladle to vent the center of the egg white, ground meat, herb, and onion concoction that floated on the surface of the deep pot, she sought an equally tidy solution to the arrival of Dev's mother.
It wasn't as though Kate had ordered Jenna not to mention her arrival, but her words of finding Dev later had carried an implicit message to stay silent. Much as Jenna's conscience balked, muttering that she owed Dev a word of warning, she was intent on getting him into her bed to find out whether they could recapture the breathtaking wildness they'd shared on the hillside...and doing it before he caught sight of his mother.
She suspected that Dev, quick man that he was, would overlook the ethical issue in favor of the end result.
"You look like you swallowed the Mona Lisa." Maureen lounged in the doorway.
"Jesus, Reenie, how long have you been there?"
"Long enough to see you grow that smile, and I have to say, it's hot."
Jenna set aside the ladle and checked out her sister, Reenie seemed to have dug back into the worn-out hippie wardrobe that had been retired since her luggage had arrived. "Well thanks, though I have to say that you look, um..."
"Ready to paint. I want to get the blue room finished, which means putting a second coat on the ceiling, plus a decorative effect above the wainscoting."
She sounded as though she'd been watching too many decorators' shows on the BBC. "What sort of decorative effect?"
"Ragging. It seemed to suit me," she replied.
Jenna smiled. It might be time to give her sister credit for having a little self-knowledge.
"Anyway," Maureen said, "I'm in a hurry. I've got a feeling that your friend the witch is about to go two-for-two."
Jenna kept her voice mild as she said, "Which reminds me, you might have mentioned last night that our guest is Dev's mother."
"I was saving the news until you weren't delirious. All the better to get a reaction out of you."
Jenna winced. "Kate beat you to it."
"Nice lady, isn't she? Maybe even mother-in-law material." Maureen batted her eyelashes.
"Funny."
"I wasn't joking—too much."
Just to occupy her hands, Jenna again picked up the ladle and fussed with the raft's inner edge. The scent of the stock Aidan had made yesterday wafted up to her, smoky and delicious.
Reenie moved next to her and peeked into the pot. "I don't want to tell you what that stuff floating on top looks like."
Jenna smiled. "The raft's there to add flavor and help clarify. It looks a little foul, but trust me, once it's done its job and been discarded, this will taste like heaven."
She received a dubious "uh-huh" in response.
"I've got kind of an off-the-wall question for you," Jenna said after a moment.
"My favorite kind."
She drew in a deep breath and blurted one of the worries that had been nibbling at her composure. "Do you think it's possible for a woman to deal with sex as a no-strings act?"
Reenie frowned. "This doesn't have to do with Dev Gilvane, does it?"
Jenna nodded.
Her sister hesitated a moment, toying with the black bandanna she'd tied to cover the top of her head. "Okay, sex with no strings... Lots of women do it well. Professionals, for example. But you? I've got the feeling that you're a lot like me. Everything you do smacks you right in the soul. You could no more have sex without strings than you could boil that senile lobster living in your kitchen."
Jenna stopped harassing her consommé. "That wasn't the answer I was looking for."
"So, either you're working up the nerve to jump Dev's bones, or you've already done it."
"The deed's been done."
"And now you have regrets?" Maureen asked.
"Not regrets, exactly. It's more like I'm trying to figure out how to disconnect my heart so I can do it again."
"Disconnect?"
"We've got some issues. If I talk about it, I'm just going to get more uptight, and—"
"Maybe you should take a clue from that old shoe commercial. You know, just do it."
"The problem is, I don't 'just do' anything. If I had been you in that restaurant, Sam Olivera would have been safe from the fish. I would have been deciding how to best throw it while he slipped away."
Maureen chuckled. "Maybe if the gods took the two of us and mixed us into one person, we'd come out a fairly normal female."
"Well, it's too late for that."
"And I'm going to be too late for Vi the all-knowing if I don't get painting." Maureen headed back toward the kitchen doorway, then lingered. "For what it's worth, I like Dev—a lot. When he rescued me the other night, he was nice. And after he had me home, it was over. He hasn't mentioned my dumb move once. Stupid as it sounds, I think he's really a noble kind of guy."
These were the words Jenna needed to ease her tension. "I hope you're right."
"It's not like I'm trying to push you back into bed, but I could think of worse ideas."
"Such as throwing fish?" Jenna suggested.
"No, like not sleeping with him again." And with that easy piece of encouragement, Reenie was gone.
The Irish Gourmet crew didn't arrive at eleven, as arranged. Though Jenna's nerves were pulling tighter, she wasn't fully alarmed. Part of the charm of Muir House was getting lost on the country roads that led to it. And when the magazine people finally arrived, they would see undeniable magic.
In the dining room the round table beneath the Waterford chandelier was topped with an intricate handmade lace runner, aged to a golden hue. It was Vi's contribution to the day. The lace was, she'd said when she'd flitted in and out at around nine-thirty, a piece much loved by her nan. Even though her grandmother was no longer on Earth, Vi said that Nan was most proud to know that her work would be in a magazine.
In another family touch, antique silver serving pieces shone under the chandelier's lights.
"Thanks, Mom," Jenna murmured as she realigned the oyster forks. Last summer the silver had arrived instead of her mother—the one time Sheila Fahey had come close to violating her policy of benign neglect by scheduling a visit. Sheila's change of plans had been the table's gain.
In a kiss of color, a lush and rambling arrangement of fuchsia, yellow flag, and roses—all local flowers—sat beneath the chandelier. When presented with the florist's delivery, Jenna had assumed that the magazine had arranged for it. Then she'd pulled back the paper protecting the blossoms and discovered a note from Brendan Mulqueen—one word written in angular blue script: Comhghairdeas, the Irish for congratulations.
Jenna was touched. She knew that Brendan, like many of her regular patrons, had mixed emotions about her burgeoning success. He was pleased for her, but would much rather keep Muir House, and all of Ballymuir, a well-guarded secret.
Kitchen matters were less serene than those in the dining room. When the oysters arrived from Caherciveen—across the bay—Jenna had requested that Saul, her help in the kitchen this morning, rinse and scrub them until they were picture perfect. She might have over managed the process; now, if she entered his range of vision, he developed a twitch. Seeing the wisdom in not enraging a man with access to knives, she had left him alone with the prawns and scallops.
Careful not to make eye contact with Saul, Jenna skirted to the back of the kitchen. The smoked quail consommé had been carefully ladled from the hole in the center of the raft and put into another pot. The liquid was a gorgeous deep amber in color. All else was at the ready, too. Tiny goat-cheese cakes were breaded and biding their time in the walk-in before browning. The baby greens and raspberry coulis to finish the cakes' presentation were set and could go no further before the crew arrived.
Noon passed and the clock crept toward one. Jenna actually remembered to refresh her makeup. After that, she fussed with the arrangement on the dining room sideboard, icing the lovely French Champagne that Dev had given her. If she couldn't have the man here, she'd have a reminder of him. Since they'd missed their evening together, he'd said nothing specific about when he might next be by. For Jenna, it could not be soon enough.
She was lingering near the front entry when the bell finally rang. She knew it wasn't Dev; he was far too bold to ask permission to enter. Jenna opened the door to Tracie Butler of Irish Gourmet, who looked to be about her age, but with far greater experience in reeling out excuses. By the time Tracie had finished, Jenna still wasn't sure whether a flat tire, a cousin who lived nearby, or a farmer crossing his sheep to a high field had caused the delay. And honestly, she didn't care. She wanted the shoot over.
With Tracie was a wiry and balding photographer, whom she introduced as Reggie. After less than ten minutes in his presence, Jenna was developing a twitch to rival Saul's. Reggie trailed after her in the kitchen, the auto-drive on his camera whining as he fired away. He was too close for comfort yet just far enough off that she couldn't claim he was a hazard. When she put a dollop of sour cream atop a thin slice of potato, Reggie snapped. She touched a pan, Reggie snapped. She inhaled, Reggie snapped. All Jenna could do to distract herself was mentally will Dev Gilvane through Muir House's front door.
"Soon you won't be noticing Reggie at all," Tracie promised.
She'd have better luck disregarding a six-hundred-pound canary perched on her shoulder.
Aidan, who had arrived and begun to set up his station for the evening's menu, watched the insanity with a smirk that demanded retribution.
Jenna's smile was sweet when she asked, "Reggie, have you met my second-in-command, Aidan Lynch?"
While Aidan muttered something in Irish that Jenna was thankful she couldn't understand, the photographer turned to him and nearly gasped. "Ah, such stark and glorious features!"
Clearly not enamored with his admirer, Aidan scowled.
"We need you in a shot. Off-center with the contrast of your white jacket against—"
The photographer hesitated as Aidan smiled, dipping his fingertips into the dish of blood oranges he was neatly sectioning.
"And?" Aidan prompted as he ran one hand across the front of his jacket, leaving deep crimson stains.
Reggie looked as though he'd been deflated. "I don't suppose you'd be having a fresh jacket?"
"I don't suppose I would." Matter closed, Aidan returned to his oranges.
As Jenna finished off dishes, Tracie peppered her with questions, Reggie got in her face, and Maureen joined the group. Glad for the photographer to have a target other than herself, Jenna made the introductions. As she'd hoped, Reggie was again awed.
"You outshine the Rose of Tralee," he said to Maureen.
"Which is?" Maureen asked Jenna in a low voice as they carried finished appetizers to the dining room.
"Beauty queen," she whispered back. "Big contest every year."
"Kinda lame, but I'm a sucker for praise."
"The two most beautiful sisters in Ballymuir," Reggie proclaimed as they set out the dishes. "This must be captured." Then he frowned at Maureen's paint-splattered appearance. "I'll be needing you to..." He finished the statement with a dictatorial wave of his hand in the direction of her raggedy clothing.
Maureen smiled. "Give me five minutes and I'm yours."
While Reenie changed, Tracie coaxed Jenna through a recitation of her credentials, from the Cordon Bleu training to the renowned four-star Provencal chef with whom she'd done her first nestage, or apprenticeship, to the opening of Muir House. Facts Jenna knew as well as her own name were coming out sounding stilted and nervous. If Muir House was about local charm, it was suffering a drought.
Maureen returned to the dining room. She'd swapped her painting attire for a form-fitting black cocktail dress with an asymmetric neckline.
"No fish in any of the pictures," she directed Reggie.
Jenna laughed, and the photographer gave a befuddled, "Sorry?"
"Inside joke," Maureen said. "Where do you want me?"
"Here, by the table, but you'll have to be sitting," he replied. "We don't want you towering over our star, now do we?"
He turned and pointed at Jenna. "Bring your glorious self this way and we'll be done in no time."
Jenna sent up one last mental plea of Now, dammit, Dev.
And because he was not only smart, but a man of consummate timing, Dev Gilvane ambled into the dining room.