Jewels Of The Sun - Gallaghers Of Ardmore 1 Part 3

"I don't believe she mentioned it. You're telling me you believe in ghosts."

Brenna lifted her brow again. "Well, did you see her or didn't you? There you are," she said when Jude merely frowned. "Have yourself a nap, and if you're up and about later, come on down to Gallagher's Pub and I'll buy you your first pint."

Too baffled to concentrate, Jude merely shook her head. "I don't drink beer."

"Oh, well now, that's a b.l.o.o.d.y shame," Brenna said, sounding both shocked and sincere. "Well, good day to you, Miss Murray."

"Jude." She murmured it and could do nothing but stare.

"Jude, then." Brenna flashed her gorgeous smile and slipped out the door into the rain.

Haunted, Jude thought, as she started up the stairs with her head circling lazily several inches over her shoulders. Fanciful Irish nonsense. G.o.d knew, her grandmother was full of fairy stories, but that's all they were. Stories.

But she'd seen someone- hadn't she?

No, the rain, the curtains, the shadows. She set down the tea that she'd yet to taste and managed to pull off her shoes. There weren't any ghosts. There was just a pretty house on a charming little hill. And the rain.

She fell facedown on the bed, thought about dragging the spread over her, and tumbled into sleep before she could manage it.

And when she dreamed, she dreamed of a battle fought on a green hill where the sunlight flashed on swords like jewels, of faeries dancing in the forest where the moonlight lay as tears on the leaves, and of a deep blue sea that beat like a heart against the waiting sh.o.r.e.

And through all the dreams, the one constant thing was the sound of a woman's quiet weeping.

CHAPTER Two

When Jude woke it was full dark, and the little peat fire had burned down to tiny ruby lights. She stared at them, her eyes bleary with sleep, her heart leaping like a wild stag in her throat as she mistook the embers for watching eyes.

Then her memory snapped into place, her mind cleared. She was in Ireland, in the cottage where her grandmother had lived as a girl. And she was freezing.

She sat up, rubbing her chilled arms, then fumbled for the bedside lamp. A glance at her watch made her blink, then wince. It was nearly midnight. Her recovery nap had lasted close to twelve hours.

And, she discovered, she was not only cold. She was starving as well.

She puzzled over the fire a moment. Since it seemed basically out and she didn't have a clue how to get it going again, she left it alone and went down to the kitchen to hunt up food.

The house creaked and groaned around her-a homey sound, she told herself, though it made her want to jump and look over her shoulder. It wasn't that she was thinking about, even considering the ghost Brenna had spoken of. She just wasn't particularly used to homey sounds. The floors of her condo didn't creak, and the only red glow she might come across was the security light on her alarm system.

But she would get used to her new surroundings.

Brenna was as good as her word, Jude discovered. The kitchen was well stocked with food in the doll-size fridge, in the narrow little pantry. She might be cold, she mused, but she wouldn't starve.

Her first thought was to open a can of soup and buzz it up in the microwave. So with can in hand, she turned around the kitchen and made a shocking discovery.

There was no microwave.

Well, Jude thought, that's a problem. Nothing to do but rough it with saucepan and stove, she supposed, then hit the next dilemma when she realized there was no automatic can opener.

Old Maude had lived not only in another country, Jude decided as she pushed through drawers, but another century.

She managed to use the manual can opener that she found, and put the soup in a pan on the stove. After choosing an apple from the bowl on the kitchen table, she walked to the back door and opened it to a swirling mist, soft as silk and wet as rain.

She could see nothing but the air itself, the pale gray layers of it shifting over the night. There was no form, no light, only the wisps and shapes the mist chose to make of itself. Shivering, she took one step out and was instantly cloaked in it.

The sense of solitude was immediate and complete, deeper than any she'd ever known. But it wasn't frightening or sad, she realized as she held an arm out and watched the mist swallow her hand to the wrist. It was oddly liberating.

She knew no one. No one knew her. Nothing was expected of her, except what she asked of herself. For tonight, one wonderful night, she was absolutely alone.

She heard a kind of pulse in the night, a low, drumming beat. Was it the sea? she wondered. Or was it just the mist breathing? Even as she started to laugh at herself, she heard another sound, quiet and bright, a tinkling music.

Pipes and bells, flutes and whistles? Enchanted by it, she nearly left the back stoop, nearly followed the magic of the sound into the fog like a dreamer walking in sleep.

Wind chimes, she realized, with another little laugh, a bit nervous around the edges now. It was only wind chimes, like the pretty bells at the front of the house. And she must still be half asleep if she'd considered dancing out of the house at midnight and wandering through the fog to follow the sound of music.

She made herself step back inside, firmly shut the door. The next sound she heard was the hiss of the soup boiling over.

"d.a.m.n it!" She rushed to the stove and switched off the burner. "What's wrong with me? A twelve-year-old could heat up a stupid can of soup, for G.o.d's sake."

She mopped up the mess, burned the tips of two fingers, then ate the soup standing up in the kitchen while she lectured herself.

It was time to stop b.u.mbling around, to yank herself back in line. She was a responsible person, a reliable woman, not one who stood dreaming into the mist at midnight. She spooned up the soup and ate it mechanically, a duty to her body with none of the foolish pleasure a midnight snack allowed.

It was time to face why she'd come to Ireland in the first place. Time to stop pretending it was an extended holiday during which she would explore her roots and work on papers that would cement the publishing end of her not very stellar university career.

She'd come because she'd been mortally afraid she was on the verge of some kind of breakdown. Stress had become her constant companion, gleefully inviting her to enjoy a migraine or flirt with an ulcer.

It had gotten to the point where she wasn't able to face the daily routine of her job, to the point where she neglected her students, her family. Herself.

More, worse, she admitted, where she was coming to actively dislike her students, her family. Herself.

Whatever the cause of it-and she wasn't quite ready to explore that area-the only solution had been a radical change. A rest. Falling apart wasn't an option. Falling apart in public was out of the question.

She wouldn't humiliate herself, or her family, who'd done nothing to deserve it. So she had run-cowardly, perhaps, but in some odd way the only logical step she'd been able to think of.

When Old Maude had graciously pa.s.sed on at the ripe old age of a hundred and one, a door had opened.

It had been smart to walk through that door. It had been responsible to do so. She needed time alone, time to be quiet, time to reevaluate. And that was exactly what she was going to do.

She did intend to work. She would never have been able to justify the trip and the time if she hadn't had some sort of plan. She intended to experiment with a paper that combined her family roots and her profession. If nothing else, doc.u.menting local legends and myths and conducting a psychological a.n.a.lysis of their meaning and purpose would keep her mind active and give her less time for brooding.

She'd been spending entirely too much time brooding. An Irish trait, her mother claimed, and the thought of it made Jude sigh. The Irish were great brooders, so if she felt the need to indulge from time to time, she'd picked the best place in the world for it.

Feeling better, Jude turned to put her empty bowl in the dishwasher and discovered there wasn't one.

She chuckled all the way upstairs to the bedroom.

She unpacked, meticulously putting everything away in the lovely creaky wardrobe, the wonderful old dresser with drawers that stuck. She set out her toiletries, admired the old washbasin, and indulged in a long shower standing in the claw-foot tub with the thin plastic curtain jangling around her on its tarnished bra.s.s hooks.