The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

contained, and her hands stayed folded at her waist. “I’m promised to another.”
    “I’ll give you all. I’ll give you forever. Come away with me, Gwen, and a hundred lifetimes I’ll give you.”
    “ ’Tisn’t fine jewels and lifetimes I want.” A single tear slipped down her cheek, as bright as the diamonds in the grass. “I can’t leave my home. Won’t change my world for yours. Not for all your diamonds, for all your lifetimes.”
    Without a word, he turned from her and mounted his horse. And as they rose up into the sky, she walked away into the cottage, leaving the diamonds on the ground as if they were no more than flowers.
    And so they became flowers and covered the ground with fragrance, humble and sweet.

SIX
    J UDE AWOKE TO the soft, steady patter of rain and the vague memory of dreams full of color and motion. She was tempted to snuggle under the covers and slide back into sleep, to find those dreams again. But that seemed wrong. Overindulgent.
    More productive, she decided, to create and maintain a routine. A rainy Sunday morning could be spent on basic housekeeping chores. After all, she didn’t have a cleaning service here in Ardmore as she had in Chicago.
    On some secret level she actually looked forward to the dusting and mopping, the little tasks that would in some way make the cottage hers. She supposed it wasn’t very sensible of her, but she actually enjoyed rooting through the cleaning supplies, selecting her rags and cloths.
    She spent a pleasant portion of the morning dusting and rearranging the knickknacks Old Maude had scattered all over the house. Pretty painted fairies, elegant sorcerers, intriguing chunks of crystal had homes on every tabletop andshelf. Most of the books leaned toward Irish history and folklore, but there were a number of well-worn paperbacks tucked in.
    Old Maude had liked to read romance novels, Jude discovered, and found the idea wonderfully sweet.
    Rather than a vacuum, Jude unearthed an old-fashioned upright sweeper, and hummed along with its squeaky progress over rug and wood.
    She scrubbed down the kitchen and found a surprising glow of satisfaction when chrome and porcelain gleamed. Gaining confidence as she went, she wielded her polishing cloth in the office next. She would get to the boxes in the tiny closet soon, she promised herself. Perhaps that evening. And she’d ship off to her grandmother anything that seemed worthwhile or sentimental enough to keep.
    She stripped the bed in her room, gathered the rest of the laundry. She found it slightly embarrassing that she’d never done laundry before in her life. But surely it couldn’t be that complex a skill to learn. It occurred to her that she should have started the wash before she started the cleaning, but she’d remember that next time.
    In the cramped room off the kitchen, she found the basket, which she realized she should have taken upstairs in the first place, and dumped the laundry in it.
    She also discovered there was no dryer. If she wasn’t mistaken, that meant she had to hang clothes out on a line. And though watching Mollie O’Toole as she did so had been enjoyable, doing it herself, for herself, would be a little more problematic.
    She’d just have to learn. She would learn, Jude assured herself. Then, clearing her throat, she took a hard look at the washing machine.
    Hardly new, it had a spray of rust spots over the white surface. The controls were simple. You got cold water orhot, and she assumed if you wanted something clean, you used hot and plenty of it. She read the instructions on the box of detergent and followed them meticulously. The sound of water pouring into the tub made her beam with accomplishment.
    To celebrate she put on the kettle for tea and treated herself to a handful of cookies from the tin.
    The cottage was tidy. Her cottage was tidy, she corrected. Everything was in place, the laundry was going so . . . Now there was no excuse not to think about what she’d seen the night before.
    The woman at the window. Lady Gwen.
    Her ghost.
    There was no reasonable way to deny she’d seen that figure twice now. It had been too clear. So clear she knew she could, even with her rudimentary skills, sketch the face that had watched her from the window.
    Ghosts. They weren’t something she’d been brought up to believe in, though part of her had always loved the fancy of her grandmother’s tales. But unless she had suddenly become prone to hallucinations,