The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

photographs and descriptions in the reports Finkle had brought back to New York. But he’d known, before he’d opened the first file, he’d already known.
    Inherited memory? he mused, though he didn’t put much stock in that sort of thing. Inheriting his father’s eyes, the clear gray color, the long-lidded shape of them was one matter. And he was told he had his grandfather’s hands, and his mind for business. But how did a memory pass down through the blood?
    He toyed with the idea as he continued to scan the room. It didn’t occur to him that he looked more the local than the tourist as he sat there in his work clothes, his dark blond hair tousled from the morning’s labor. He had a narrow, raw-boned face that would put most in mind of a warrior, or perhaps a scholar, rather than a businessman. The woman he’d nearly married had said it looked to be honed and sculpted by some wild genius. The faintest of scars marred his chin, a result of a storm of flying glass during a tornado in Houston, and added to the overall impression of toughness.
    It was a face that rarely gave anything away. Unless it was to Trevor Magee’s advantage.
    At the moment it held a cool and remote expression, but it shifted into easy friendliness when Brenna came back toward the table with Jude. Brenna, he noted, carried the tray.
    “I’ve asked Jude to take a few moments to sit and tell you about Lady Gwen,” Brenna began and was already unloading the order. “She’s a seanachais .”
    At Trevor’s raised eyebrow, Jude shook her head. “It’s Gaelic for storyteller. I’m not really, I’m just—”
    “And who has a book being published, and another she’s writing. Jude’s book’ll be out at the end of this very summer,” Brenna went on. “It’ll make a lovely gift, so I’d keep it in mind when you’re out shopping.”
    “Brenna.” Jude rolled her eyes.
    “I’ll look for it. Some of Shawn’s song lyrics are stories. It’s an old and honored tradition.”
    “Oh, he’ll like that one.” Beaming now, Brenna scooped up the tray. “I’ll deal with this, Jude, and give Sinead a bit of a goose for you. Go ahead and get started. I’ve heard it often enough before.”
    “She has enough energy for twenty people.” A little tired now, Jude picked up her cup of tea.
    “I’m glad I found her for this project. Or that she found me.”
    “I’d say it was a bit of both, since you’re both operators.” She caught herself, winced. “I didn’t mean that in a negative way.”
    “Wasn’t taken in one. Baby kicking? It puts a look in your eye,” Trevor explained. “My sister just had her third.”
    “Third?” Jude blew out a breath. “There are moments I wonder how I’m going to manage the one. He’s active. But he’s just going to have to wait another couple months.” She ran a hand in slow circles over the mound of her belly, soothing as she sipped. “You may not know it but I lived in Chicago until just over a year ago.”
    He made a noncommittal sound. Of course he knew, he had extensive reports.
    “My plan was to come here for six months, to live in the cottage where my grandmother lived after she lost her parents. She’d inherited it from her cousin Maude, who’d died shortly before I came here.”
    “The woman my great-uncle was engaged to.”
    “Yes. The day I arrived, it was raining. I thought I was lost. I had been lost, and not just geographically. Everything unnerved me.”
    “You came alone, to another country?” Trevor cocked his head. “That doesn’t sound like a woman easily unnerved.”
    “That’s something Aidan would say.” And because it was, she found herself very comfortable. “I suppose it’s more that I didn’t know my own nerve at that point. In any case, I pulled into the street, the driveway actually, of this little thatched roof cottage. And in the upstairs window I saw a woman. She had a lovely, sad face, and pale blond hair that fell around her shoulders. She looked at me, our eyes connected. Then Brenna drove up. It seems I’d stumbled across my own cottage, and the woman I’d seen in the window was Lady Gwen.”
    “The ghost?”
    “That’s right, yes. It sounds impossible, doesn’t it? Or certainly unreasonable. But I can tell you exactly what she looked like. I’ve sketched her. And I knew no more of the legend when I came here than you appear to know now.”
    “I’d like to hear it.”
    “Then I’ll tell you.” Jude paused as Brenna came