The Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

hitched, and her eyes filled again. But when Aidan rose to go to her, Jude shook her head frantically. “I thought he didn’t want foreign travel and babies. I thought, well, he’s just set in his ways, and he’s so practical and frugal and ambitious. But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t it at all. He didn’t want to go to the West Indies with me . He didn’t want to make a family with me . What’s wrong with me?”
    “There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing at all.”
    “Of course there is.” She dug out his handkerchief as her voice rose and fell and broke. “If there wasn’t, I’d never have let him get away with it. I’m dull. He was bored with me almost as soon as we were married. People get bored with me. My students, my associates. My own parents are bored with me.”
    “That’s a foolish thing to say.” He went to her now, taking her arms to give her a little shake. “There’s nothing dull about you.”
    “You just don’t know me well enough yet. I’m dull, all right.” She sniffled, then nodded for emphasis. “I never do anything exciting, never say anything brilliant. Everything about me is average. I even bore myself.”
    “Who put these ideas in your head?” He would have shaken her again, but she looked so pitiful. “Did it ever occur to you that this William with his bloody pie charts and cultural whatever it was is the boring one? That if your students weren’t enthusiastic it was because teaching wasn’t what you were meant to do?”
    She shrugged. “I’m the common factor.”
    “Jude Frances, who’s come to Ireland on her own, to live in a place she’s never been, with people she’s never met and to do work she’s never done?”
    “That’s different.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’m just running away.”
    He felt both impatience and sympathy for her. “Boring you’re not, but hardheaded you are. You could give a mule lessons. What’s wrong with running away if where you were didn’t suit you? Doesn’t it follow you’re running to something else? Something that does suit you?”
    “I don’t know.” And she was too tired and achy to think it through.
    “I’ve done some running myself. To and from. In the end I landed where I needed to be.” He bent down to press a kiss to her forehead. “And so will you.”
    Then he drew her away, rubbed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Now, sit down here while I go clear up a few things in the pub. Then I’ll see you home.”
    “No, that’s all right. I can walk back.”
    “You’ll not be walking in the rain and the dark and when you’re feeling sad. Just sit and drink your tea. I won’t be long.”
    He left her alone before she could argue, then stood on the stairs for a few minutes to get his own mind in order.
    He was trying not to be angry with her for not telling him about the marriage. He was a man who took such commitments seriously, because of his faith and his own sen-sibilities. Marriage wasn’t something you wound in and out of as you pleased, but something that cemented you.
    Hers had crumbled through no fault of her own, but she should have told him. It was the principle of it.
    And he’d just have to get by it, Aidan warned himself. He’d also have to do some careful treading over thesensitive areas of her that circumstance had rubbed so raw. He didn’t want to be responsible for pinching where it already hurt.
    Jesus, he thought, rubbing the back of his neck as he headed down to the pub. The woman was a bucket of work.
    “What’s the matter with Jude?” Darcy demanded the minute he stepped into the kitchen.
    “She’s all right. She had some news from home that upset her is all.” He picked up the receiver on the wall phone to call Brenna.
    “Oh, not her granny.” Darcy set down the order she’d just picked up, and her eyes were full of concern.
    “No, nothing like that. I’m going to call Brenna and see if she can cover for me a couple of hours. I want to drive Jude home.”
    “Well, and if she can’t, Shawn and I will manage.”
    Aidan paused with the phone in his hand and smiled. “You’re a sweetheart when you want to be, Darcy.”
    “I like her and I think she needs a bit of fun in her life. Seems to be there’s been precious little up to now. And having her husband leave her for another woman before her bridal bouquet was dry is bound to—”
    “Wait now—hold on a minute. You knew she was married?”
    Darcy lifted a brow. “Of course.” She hefted the order,