Chapter 2

It was still early morning, and I had hours to kill before I could meet with Mr. McDonnell later that afternoon. My stomach rumbled ominously. I hadn’t eaten since I’d gotten on the plane over nine hours ago, and I was on the verge of getting full-on hangry.

But I had no idea how I went about feeding myself in this place. Did I just…go to the kitchen? Or would some red-cheeked cook tell me to get lost? This isn’t Downton Abbey, I reminded myself. And you’re hardly Lady Mary who’s never made a cup of coffee on her own.

I got dressed and, after asking an unsuspecting maid where the kitchen was located, made my way downstairs. I was afraid I’d gotten lost when I smelled food. I headed toward the scent of cooking meat, my mouth practically watering.

Before you got to the main part of the kitchen, there was a smaller entranceway that looked like a gigantic pantry. There were cans and bags of all kinds of food, along with fresh produce in baskets. I snagged a banana and began to eat it.

As I moved farther into the kitchen, I could hear food sizzling and what sounded like a coffeepot dinging that coffee was ready. There was a large wood stove in one corner, although it clearly hadn’t been used in decades. Windows lined the other side of the huge room, and I could just make out the white caps of the ocean waves.

I heard voices from around the corner to a smaller part of the kitchen that held what looked like the dishwasher and sink. A tall, skinny woman was saying something to a young man who couldn’t have been much older than me. They didn’t see me lurking until I cleared my throat.

The woman swiveled her head toward me. Honestly, she swiveled it so fast that I half-expected her to turn it 180 degrees like an owl. She narrowed her eyes at me.

“Who are you?” She looked at my sweats, my puppy slippers, and my oversized hoodie and said before I could answer, “You’re the American.”

“Um, hi. I was hungry, so I thought I’d get some breakfast.” I held up my already half-eaten banana, as if I needed to prove that, yes, I was hungry and consuming food on the premises.

The woman’s eyes narrowed at the banana in my hand. “I was going to use those for a fruit salad today,” she said.

The young guy at her elbow coughed into his shoulder and sauntered past me, whispering, “Good luck,” under his breath.

“Sorry. I didn’t know.” I held out the banana. “I don’t need it—”

“I’m not going to cook with a banana you’ve already eaten.”

Now I felt especially stupid. What was I doing? Flustered, I was close to tossing the banana in the trash and running back to my room, but I forced myself to take a deep breath. I set the stupid banana on a nearby counter and held out my hand. “I’m Niamh Gallagher.” Added in a harder tone, “Sean Gallagher’s granddaughter.”

The woman clucked her tongue. “I know who you are, lass.” She didn’t take my hand, though. She just kept staring at me, like she’d never seen someone like me in her life.

I was rather tempted to turn around and return to my room, but my stubbornness overtook my brain. It was one of my more admirable traits, in my opinion. Liam had learned early on that when I started to dig in my heels, he’d just have to give in. 

(Okay, maybe he hadn’t yet learned that, as he could be just as stubborn. Oftentimes we’d just end up trying to out-stubborn each other until somebody told us to stop being idiots.)

“I’m sorry, you didn’t tell me your name,” I said, knowing full well she hadn’t introduced herself yet. 

“Mrs. Janie Walsh.” She wiped her hands on her towel before turning away from me to continuing kneading some kind of dough. 

“Did you know my grandda?” I knew Mrs. Walsh was busy, but I couldn’t help myself. The butler wasn’t going to tell me anything, and neither was Mr. McDonnell. 

Mrs. Walsh pounded at the bread dough. “I’ve worked at this place for almost four decades. Aye, you could say I knew him.”

Forty years? That was dedication. “I didn’t know him. I left Ireland when I was really little.”

She looked up at me for a brief moment, her expression wry. “You’re a chatty thing, aren’t you?” She returned to her task, clearly very well-versed with kneading dough. “Your grandda was a hardheaded man, but he treated his staff well. That was enough for me.”

“He wasn’t all that fond of my brother, Liam.”

“He wasn’t fond of anyone.” Mrs. Walsh let out a breath. “Well, except for his dear wife, your grandmother. What a dear lady she was. Never high in the instep, either. When she died, I don’t think he ever recovered.”

I’d never heard much about my grandmother. She’d died long before either Liam or I was born, and given our father’s disappearance, I’d had no way to find out more about her. All I knew was that her name had been Mary and she’d died when she was in her early thirties. 

“He loved her? That’s kind of hard to believe.”

Mrs. Walsh just gave me a withering look.

I shrugged. “He wasn’t particularly kind to my brother or to our da.” Trying to sound casual, I added, “Did you know my da? Connor Gallagher?”

At the mention of my da’s name, Mrs. Walsh’s face instantly closed, like a door slamming shut. She turned to open the oven, and after placing the bread inside, she closed the door with a surprisingly loud thwack. 

Turning back to me, she said, “Lass, there are many things you don’t know, and if you want some advice, let me give you some.” Brushing the flour from her hands, she said before I could reply, “Don’t ask too many questions. Some secrets are meant to stay that way.”

She didn’t give me a chance to respond. Feeling a frisson of ice slither down my spine, I rubbed at the goosebumps springing up on my arms. 

Geez, what the hell had that advice meant? Now I was half-wondering if there was a dead body under the floorboards like that Edgar Allen Poe story. Please, no dead bodies whispering to me. I really don’t have time for that.

But if Mrs. Walsh had known my da, then maybe she had information that could help me find him. I was about to follow her and badger her, but a young woman with red hair came around the corner, nearly hitting me in the chest with a cookie sheet with freshly baked buns.

“Oh, fuck!” The girl nearly lost her hold of the sheet in her hand. I grabbed the end closest to me, and luckily only one bun slid off of it onto the floor. 

“Sorry, sorry.” I reached down to pick up the bun. I brushed it off. “Five-second rule?”

The girl’s face turned as red as her hair. “Oh, you’re the American! Mr. Gallagher’s granddaughter! I’m so sorry for cursing, miss—”

Good lord, I’d fallen into some kind of Downton Abbey RPG, hadn’t I? If she called me “milady,” I’d throw myself off of the nearest high cliff. 

“Don’t apologize. I was the one who nearly made you drop all of these buns.” I peered more closely at the one in my hand. “What are these?”

“Bannock buns with currants, miss.”

The one I was holding was still warm. Definitely better than just a banana. “Oh, excellent.” I was about to take a bite, but the girl let out a squawk.

“Don’t eat that! It fell on the floor.” She set the sheet pan down, shaking her head, and went to get a plate. She plucked the contaminated bun from my hand and tossed it into the trash before giving me a fresh one on a plate. “Do you want butter with it, miss? And perhaps some tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, please. And please: call me Niamh. What’s your name?”

The girl dimpled as she hurried to get me my order. “I’m Cara.” She soon handed me a cup of steaming coffee and placed some pats of butter and a knife on my plate. “Lovely to meet you.”

Cara had light freckles all over her nose, and a rosebud mouth with reddish eyebrows. She looked like she’d stepped out of a storybook, her skin creamy and fair. 

“Is there anything I can get you?” she said.

“No, thank you.” I collected my plate and coffee. “I’m glad somebody around here is nice,” I said offhandedly.

“Oh?”

“I ran into Mrs. Walsh.” I made sure to pitch my voice into a low whisper. “She’s terrifying.”

Cara’s lips twitched. “Is she?”

“Um, yes? I think she would’ve loved to have put a curse on me, if she were into that sort of thing.” 

“I’m pretty certain she’s a devoted Catholic.” Cara’s tone sounded strangled.

“She’s got witchy vibes. I’m telling you. Probably rides here on a broomstick.”

“I think she prefers to take the tram. Much more comfortable, especially when it rains.”

I shrugged. “That’s just what she tells people, I’m sure.”

Cara giggled then covered her mouth. “I need to return to my work. It was nice meeting you, miss—I mean, Niamh.”

She hurried off. I’d probably gone too far with the joke about Mrs. Walsh being a witch. Maybe I’d offended Cara. Great job, Niamh. Let’s not alienate the one nice person you’ve met here.

Thinking about not-nice people, I thought of the golden-haired man I’d met yesterday. That had been a strange encounter, to say the least. I just hoped I wouldn’t keep running into him. I didn’t have time for obnoxious men who thought way too highly of themselves.

You don’t have time for men in general. Fair enough. My dating life was hardly interesting lately. What with attending Harvard and working my ass off to keep my grades up, graduating, and then moving back to Seattle, I’d been busy the past few years. I’d dated a few different guys while in college, the longest relationship lasting a year. Noah had been my first—first love, first time having sex. We’d met in a chemistry class and had been paired up as lab partners. 

Noah had been sweet—too sweet. He’d been too easy to run roughshod over. It wasn’t that I wanted to boss people around, but I had what my best friend Rachel said was a commanding presence. “Guys think you’re intimidating,” she’d said when I’d been frustrated with how wishy washy Noah had acted. “He probably doesn’t know what to do with you.”

She’d been right. I’d eventually broken things off with Noah because he’d gotten, well, boring. When I’d wanted to have long conversations into the night, he’d wanted to play video games for hours instead. When I’d known I’d always wanted to major in political science, he’d switched majors every semester. And when he’d teared up when I broke up with him, I felt like I’d literally kicked a puppy.

I’d had two other shorter relationships that had amounted mostly to a friends-with-benefits type of situation. But none of them had held my attention. The sex had been decent and was nice to scratch that itch. Yet after a few sex sessions, I’d feel kind of…empty. Not that I’d regretted sleeping with them, just that I wanted more than something surface-level.

So, I hadn’t dated much in the past year. I was only twenty-two, of course, but sometimes I felt like I’d never find a guy who was worth my time. And I struggled not to dumb myself down, to make myself less intimidating, whatever that actually meant. 

The rest of the day, I wandered the estate. I got lost more than once, and I had to ask staff to point me in the right direction. Multiple times I’d tried to open doors that were locked, so I contented myself with looking at all of the artwork and sculptures throughout the house.

I didn’t run into Golden Man again. By the end of the day, I almost wished I had. I’d only had interactions with people who treated me like their mistress, and it had made me feel weird.

I finally just returned to my room and read until it was late enough to go to bed, all the while telling myself I hadn’t made a mistake in coming here.