Dark Witch (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #1)(54)

“Connor says we need you, and I trust him. I’m going to go help Branna get started.”

“I’m with you.” Meara rose. “Give her a few minutes to settle into it, but don’t gorge on the biscuits. She’ll do whatever needs be, Fin, whatever the cost.”

“As will I.”

Iona went with Meara through the back, in and out of the storeroom, and into the house.

“Wait, before we go into Branna.” Iona stopped. “What happened between Fin and Branna? I’m not asking you to gossip, or betray the sisterhood, and one that’s so obviously close and intimate between you and Branna. I think you know that. I hope you know that.”

“I do, and still it’s not easy to say to you what she hasn’t. I’ll tell you they were in love. Young and wild for each other. Happy in it, though they scraped and squabbled. She was going onto seventeen when they came together the first time. It was after they’d been together the mark came on him. He didn’t tell her. I don’t know whether to blame him for that, but he didn’t tell her. And when she found out, she was angry, but more, she was devastated. He was defensive and the same. So it’s been an open wound between them ever since. A dozen years of wanting and turmoil and too much distrust.”

“They still love each other.”

“Love hasn’t been enough, for either of them.”

It should be, Iona thought. She’d always believed it would be. But she went with Meara toward the kitchen to do what she could to help.


*


IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AN ORDINARY GATHERING OF FRIENDS AND FAMILY ON A RAINY NIGHT. The little fire simmering in the kitchen hearth, with the big dog snoring in front of it. The wine Connor pulled out, uncorked, and poured generously into glasses. Volunteers dutifully peeling and chopping small mountains of potatoes and carrots, mincing garlic and onions while the hostess busied herself dredging chunks of beef in flour, browning it in a big, sturdy pot on the stove. The scents rising up, teasing of what was to come, and the mix of voices all talking to or over one another.

It might have been just a gathering, Iona thought while she chopped carrots, and the parts that were warmed her, gave her so much of what she’d come to understand she’d yearned for her whole life. But it wasn’t just a friendly gathering, and the undercurrents tugging and pulling beneath the surface were deadly.

Still, she didn’t want to spoil the moment, send ripples over that surface. After all, she stood hip to hip with Boyle—who unquestionably had a more competent hand than she with the kitchen knife—and he seemed more relaxed here than when they worked together at the stables.

And he smelled wonderful, of rain and horses.

Better to say nothing, she decided, than say the wrong thing. So she watched and listened instead. She watched Connor reach over to flick a tear from Meara’s cheek as she minced onions, and caught the easy flirtation in the gesture in his eyes.

“If you were mine, Meara my love,” he said, “I’d ban onions from the house so you’d never shed a tear.”

“If I were yours,” she shot back, “I’d be shedding them over more than onions.”

He laughed, but Iona wondered. Just as she wondered when Fin topped off Branna’s wineglass and, at her request, handed her oil for a skillet. Their polite tone remained as stiff as their body language, but under it—oh yeah, undercurrents everywhere—there boiled such passions, such wild emotion she’d have had to have been both blind and heartless not to feel it.

It was Connor, she thought, who kept it all going, tossing out comments, questions, knitting the group together with relentless cheer and encompassing affection.

The man struck her as next to irresistible. So why did Meara—

“You study everything and everyone,” Boyle put in, “as if there’s to be an exam within the hour. And your brain’s full of questions and conclusions.”

“It feels like family.” She spoke the first thought that popped from the tangle of them in her mind. “It’s something I always wanted to feel, be part of.”

“Sure it is family,” Connor told her. “And yours.”

“You’re generous with people. It’s your nature. Not everyone is, or at least they’re more cautious before opening the door. I’m the newest here, on a lot of levels. Observing gives me a better sense of that family. Even just observing Boyle peel and chop a lot faster and better than I do.”

“Well now, he’s no Branna O’Dwyer,” Fin told her, “but he’s a passable cook. It’s just one reason Connor and I tolerate him.”

“If a man can’t toss a few things in a pan, he’s too often hungry. Here, put the palm of your hand on the tip, fingers up, out of range.” Boyle took Iona’s hand, to show her. “And the other on the hilt so you can use that to steer the blade.”

She let him guide her hands to produce nice, neat rounds of carrot, and appreciated the light press of his body to hers.

“I’ll have to practice,” she decided. “And figure out what to do with them after I chop them. It’s probably just as well I didn’t get the chance to ask you to dinner.”

She glanced up and around at him, caught the surprise on his face, and the hint of embarrassment as the room went quiet.

“You’re better off with Branna doing the cooking,” Iona continued. “I’ll have to figure out some other way to get you on a date.”