Bruar's Rest

her, she just happened to be down at the end of the gorse field with her husband, tending to their horse and boiling a kettle.
    Quietness settled around as they sipped on tea. Outside the breeze was gathering force now, and Nuala was yawning for bed. ‘But,’ she protested, ‘I won’t go unless you both promise to stay for Christmas.’
    Before either could answer the large door blew open and in strode an angry young man. ‘Blasted English weather pelting down out there, hardly a Christmas scene. And what bloody idiot put a sleepy old shire in the barn? I fell over the mare in the dark. Who the hell could be so stupid?’
    Mother Foy, seeing the funny side, laughed, but his tone brought Megan to her feet, ‘I put Beth into the barn, because Mother Foy said I should. She didn’t like us helping ourselves to a stall in the stables without permission.’
    The young man closed the door at his back, then striding past her, knelt down by Mother Foy and planted a big kiss on her cheek. ‘I should have recognised Beth. How are you?’
    ‘I’m getting old. But Megan did as I asked.’
    He brushed a hand across his damp hair. ‘Sorry, young lady.’
    Megan blushed red; she could feel her face glowing. He called her a lady; no one had ever done that before.
    ‘Michael, me dear friend, Nuala tells me you have the foal of Fiddler.’
    ‘Indeed I have, Mother, and what a beauty she is, the image of her mother.’
    ‘Do you still have the horse?’
    ‘Yes, I do. I could not see me part with the love of my life.’
    ‘Can I see her?’
    ‘I wish you could, because she still has a fine sway, but I keep her at home in Ireland. Sorry.’
    ‘Well, you take good care of that beauty, because she runs like the wild Arab steed, she does. Listen to us going on about horses and me not introduced you proper to Megan.’ Much too comfortable to rise from her warm chair, she gestured at the pair to make their acquaintance, while she bade Nuala goodnight with the assurance that they would most certainly stay for Christmas.

     
    Michael Riley was as handsome a man as Megan had seen in a long while. Unable to say exactly what it was, she knew there was something about the man. Her body felt on edge, slight confusion entered her brain, why?
    That evening passed with conversations of little or no consequence, yet all the while she felt drawn to him. Perhaps it was his wild, devilmay-care attitude. She was at a loss for words to explain it, she just knew he had a power. It made her feel vulnerable, but what of him? If she’d caught his glance once, she’d done so a dozen times.
    ‘I can’t help but feel a fondness for them who have grand Scottish blood flowing through their veins,’ he said, after hearing her broad accent.
    She smiled and heard herself say, stupidly, ‘In what part of the Emerald Isle did you see first light? Is the gypsy in you?’
    ‘In honest answer to your second question, is not the wandering gypsy in us all? To your first, I saw the light of day in my parents’ tiny cottage on the shores of Galway Bay, but I was brought up in Wexford, and there it was where my father began a lifelong love—buying and selling horses. Needless to say, my old Dad passed his horse sense to me. My dear father is no longer with us, having died of pneumonia. My blessed mother found her bed cold and empty without him, and was gone herself no more than a year later. My only living relative is my dear sister Bridget, over there putting the finishing touches to the Christmas tree. There now, pretty colleen, you know the very heart of me, and I don’t share that with just anybody.’
    Mother Foy heard the last part of the conversation, and thought it best to rescue Megan before she shared more than she needed to with the handsome Michael.
    ‘I wonder if we can leave me old Beth with you for the winter. The gorse field gives little shelter, and with her being on the old side...’ From a concealed pocket in her skirt she brought a little pouch to pay her animal’s feed, but Stephen, who put an arm around Bridget, assured his old friend that they would care for her horse as long as she wanted, and added, ‘No payment for feeding’.
    ‘Now, why did I know that you would say that? Bless you all, and thanks.’ She pulled her shawl across her shoulders and drew it tight. ‘I wonder if I might enquire of you something else before the girlie and I take to our beds. Bull Buckley—you haven’t seen him sniffing about these parts,