The Fire and the Earth: Glenncailty Castle, Book 2 (3 page)

Séan watched as she turned away from him and ran back to the castle.

Chapter Two

Well Met

Present Day—Two Years after the Grand Opening

Séan lifted the packed cooler out of the back of his truck. James had been too busy to make the delivery today, so Séan was delivering today’s meat to The Restaurant at Glenncaily Castle.

As he did each time he came here, he took a moment to examine the windows, the shadows at the base of the buildings. There were no ghosts on this bright and cold Tuesday afternoon. Spring had come to Ireland, though it was chilly enough at dawn, when Séan got up.

Hefting the cooler, Séan started for the castle.

There were people coming and going—guests exiting the front door, maps in hand, locals headed into the pub for a bit of lunch. In the years since Seamus had returned to the glen with his grand plans to turn his ancestral home into a luxury hotel, many things had changed. Séan’s dislike and suspicion of the place wasn’t one of them. After the grand opening, he’d gone to Seamus and demanded that he close the hotel, that he protect all the people who he’d brought here by sending them away. Seamus had called a halt to renovations. He’d asked everyone in Cailtytown who’d had an encounter with a ghost to walk through and see if they felt or saw anything. Everyone, including Séan.

Séan spent hours in the castle, even sleeping in one of the newly constructed rooms in the east wing. And yet he’d felt and seen nothing. Once, in the west wing—which was still under construction at the time, with stacks of wood and other materials blocking off most of the second floor—he thought he’d heard something, but the harder he tried to hear it, the fainter it got.

In the end Seamus had the castle blessed, the new parish priest having no idea that the church had already done its best to help the souls here. Séan had attended the blessing, hanging back and scanning the shadows, tense as a cat in a boot factory as he waited for the horrifying ghost to reappear. But nothing happened, and when he caught sight of Sorcha, she was looking at him with a mix of anger and pity.

Years had passed, and yet he was still wary of Glenncailty—and still longed for Sorcha every time he saw her. Séan carried his cooler around the outside of the pub to the kitchen.

The pub took up the whole first floor of the east wing, which was connected to the central wing by a short stone and glass hallway. Guests who went between the buildings got a look at the weather and the gardens behind the castle. The view of the gardens was somewhat obstructed by the kitchen, which had been built off the back corner of the main castle. The one-story structure was out of place, though they’d tried to make it fit in by adding stone facing. No matter what they did, it would always be a glaring modern addition to a centuries-old structure.

It was the one place Séan felt truly comfortable.

He nodded to a couple he knew who were smoking on the back patio of the pub. He tried not to think about what could have happened there, if only he hadn’t gotten it into his head to go wandering.

When he reached the kitchen door, hidden by a prickly shrub, he balanced the cooler on his knee and knocked.

“Hello there,” he greeted Jim, who held the door open for him. As always, Jim smelled like chips and other delicious fried things.

“And hello to you. James busy?” Jim held the door open with one hand while Séan entered.

“Spring’s always busy for him. Plenty of people looking to butcher now that calves are weaned.”

Séan headed for one of the prep tables. The kitchen was immaculate, from the gleaming silver counters to the white walls. The only spots of darkness were the heavy rubber mats on the floors that cushioned the chefs as they stood for hours, preparing food for both the pub and restaurant.

“Tristan here?” Séan asked.

“He is. He’s in the dining room, let me find him for you.”

“Thanks, Jim.”

Séan looked around, hoping for someplace to sit, but there was nothing. With a sigh, he leaned back against a counter and scratched his jaw. His beard needed a trim and had for a week now, but there’d been too much to do—he’d fallen into bed each night too tired to move, and last night he hadn’t even made it to the bed, falling asleep in a chair with paperwork on his lap.

“Séan, such a pleasure,” a man said in an elegant French accent. He looked up to see the head chef, Tristan, walking toward him.

Séan straightened and held out a hand, pretending not to notice when Tristan quickly examined his hand before shaking. It seemed Tristan still hadn’t forgiven him for the time he’d come in covered in slurry.

“What do you have for me today?” Tristan’s French accent deepened as he turned to the cooler. He stroked the top with all the care a child gave a pretty box on Christmas morning.

“Good beef, plenty of fat in the meat.”

“No lamb?”

“The ewes and lambs are happily eating and getting fat.” Séan grimaced.

Tristan must have heard it in his voice. “You still don’t like the lambs?”

“Sheep are a waste of grass for my cows.”

“Aw, but they are so cute, and so tasty.”

Personally, Séan liked beef better and thought sheep were stupid. When Tristan arrived from Paris with expectations that he’d turn the restaurant into a major culinary destination, the chef had approached Séan about supplying meat.

Séan was a dairy farmer. His creamery had been in his family for over one hundred years, and he had seventy-five pedigree dairy cows. He’d always done a bit of beef, since there wasn’t use for bulls in the milking parlor, and he had the land. He also kept non-pedigree suckler cows, and all their offspring were reared for beef. He, like his father before him, sold the animals to Ruins’ butcher shop, where James butchered them and sold them to local markets. He’d never planned to raise animals for meat in a more serious way, but Tristan had changed that with his request. He and Tristan had struck a bargain and he now had more beef than dairy cows. He was raising and feeding the beef cattle organically and providing the meat—butchered by James—to the castle.

“You’ll have the first lamb in a few weeks. The ones born in January will be ready soon.”

“And the mutton?” Tristan asked. “It will make stew.”

At Tristan’s request, Séan now also had a small flock of sheep and two rams. He hadn’t sponged them—artificially inseminating them—so rather than having all the sheep pregnant and lambing at the same time, he’d had lambs born New Year’s Day and some born only a few weeks ago in the traditional spring lambing.

“I won’t butcher them until the summer. There’s only a few that are too old to get pregnant again.”

“Good, good.” Tristan wasn’t really listening. He’d taken the top off the cooler and pulled out the first of the vacuum-packed bags. There were the best cuts off two sides of beef in the cooler. The lesser cuts were back at James’s waiting to be sold if Tristan didn’t want them, though they’d dry-aged long enough that they’d be more tender than most.

“Beautiful, beautiful.” Tristan crooned at each piece as he pulled it out. When all the packs were laid out, Tristan shook his head. “How can an animal so big make so little meat?”

Séan raised his eyebrows. “There’d be more meat if you’d take it all.”

“I need more steaks, not flank meat. I want to have steak on the menu, not only as a special.” Tristan sighed, picking up the porterhouse and examining it. Tristan had demanded that James hang his meat for at least two weeks, and the dry-aging time showed in the color.

“You’ve said that before. Several times. You could get meat from one of the big—”

“No. No.” Tristan motioned to the meat and a flurry of chefs descended and began hauling the packs away. “I’m fine with my eight steaks per cow. Steak will be a special only for now. I have roast on the menu, and that’s all you Irish people seem to want. We are not open enough to need more. Plus, what is most important is that I know where my food comes from, that I can touch the cow that I will cook if I wish.”

Séan had no idea what was wrong with a nice roast and still didn’t understand the “local sourcing” Tristan was always going on about, but so far he’d made good money selling his beef to Glenncailty, so he hadn’t argued.

“I have something I want you to taste,” Tristan said, herding Séan out of the way of his chefs.

“I don’t go in for fancy—”

“It’s not fancy, I promise you. It’s an Irish curry. You are the simplest man I know, and I want your opinion.”

Séan looked at Tristan. The chef was a few years younger than him, and his glossy dark hair, perpetual tan and dark eyes made him seem as foreign and European as he sounded. Séan wasn’t sure if Tristan had meant to insult him or if it had been a translation issue, so he let it slide.

“Come into the dining room and try it. If you like it, I will use the lesser beef and make it a special tomorrow.”

Séan hadn’t eaten anything since he’d gone home for tea after the morning milking, and his stomach was letting him know that bread, butter and an extra strong two-teabag cup of Barry’s Irish Breakfast were not enough to hold him until dinner. A nice, hot curry did sound good.

He followed Séan through the maze of the kitchen to the swinging doors that led onto the dining room.

The Restaurant—Séan thought it was stupid that it didn’t have a proper name, but no one asked him—took up almost a third of the main floor of the castle. The large space was divided up by little half walls, and there was a bar toward the front, though he’d never heard of anyone popping in here for a pint, when the pub, with its relaxed atmosphere, was only a few steps away.

The muted colors and sparkle of glass and silver made Séan nervous. He rarely went someplace as nice as this. The last time he’d put on a tie had been for a wedding, and the time before that to take his mother to dinner for her birthday because his sister, a successful therapist in Dublin, had been out of the country, leaving it to Séan to make their mother feel special. He could have brought her here, but he’d gone to Navan instead.

As they entered the dining room, the muscles in Séan’s back and shoulders went tense. He could feel the darkness that clung to the walls, despite the impressive chandeliers overhead. It happened every time he entered the castle proper and was a constant reminder that under the polish and success of the hotel lay something unholy that no one would acknowledge.

He’d tried to protect everyone by shutting the place down. He’d failed, and looked like a fool doing it. He’d even convinced himself that he hadn’t seen the ghost, but the impression of darkness lingered. The tragedy he’d been prepared for—sure that something bad would happen—still hadn’t come. In his optimistic moments, Séan imagined that meant that the castle wasn’t haunted, but then he’d step inside. As soon as he did, the feelings of dread crept over him, and he knew that someday this house of cards would fall.

“Sit there,” Tristan ordered. “Give me only a moment and we will be ready.”

Séan dropped into a seat, fidgeting a little as he looked at the elaborate spread of silverware in front of him. He went to rest his arms on the table, but then thought better of it. He’d gone right from the barn to James’s butcher shop in town and then out here. He’d washed his hands somewhere along the way, but that didn’t mean the rest of him was clean. He could only imagine what Tristan would say if he got blood or manure on the starched white tablecloth.

“Hello, Séan.”

Sorcha approached, stopping on the other side of the table, hands resting on the back of the chair. She wore a black blazer with a small gold nametag on one lapel. Under that she wore a trim dress of spring green with a black belt. The dress made her hair seem redder, her eyes bluer. Séan rose, nodding slightly, but didn’t offer his hand.

His heart leapt at the sight of her. It always did, and he suspected always would.

Sorcha smiled her greet-the-guests smile. It was easy to hide behind.

Séan was standing awkwardly by the chair he’d risen from. He was rumpled, his shirt, pants and jumper showing signs of wear and even some old washed-in stains. There was a piece of grass stuck to the wool on his shoulder, his hair was a mess and his beard needed to be trimmed. He was out of place in the elegant and polished dining room, like he should be out in a field, green at his feet and blue sky above.

He looked good enough to eat.

Sorcha’s smile wavered, but she held it in place. She wanted those rough, work-worn hands on her skin. Wanted to rip the clothes from his body and feel the muscles beneath. With any other man, she’d take him home, get what she wanted and then walk away. But with Séan, she wouldn’t, couldn’t do that.

Her gaze traveled up to his face. His hazel eyes were flecked with green and when his gaze met hers, Sorcha felt it all through her body, as if he’d touched her.

“Good, good.” Tristan bustled back to the table, the
maître d’
and a gaggle of servers following him. “We have new servers. Since you are here, they can train on you.”

Sorcha turned to Tristan, paying more attention to what he was saying than was needed, using it as an excuse to stop staring at Séan as if she were going to take a bite out of him.

“Sit, sit.” Tristan waved his hands, then barked something at the
maître d’
in French.